“Look out!” a woman cried. “He gonna-”
And he did. He pulled the trigger, hard. And that was most definitely that.
Chester Martin had never gone south of the Ohio River. He’d spend the Great War in Virginia, on the Roanoke front in the west and then, after recovering from his first wound, in the northern part of the state, pushing down toward Richmond. He’d been not far from Fredericksburg when the fighting ended in 1917-and not far from the same town when he got wounded twenty-five years later.
He liked Kentucky better. He especially liked how far the U.S. Army had driven into Kentucky, and how fast it was moving. They’d passed Madisonville and were heading south toward Earlington. Madisonville was a tobacco town. The crop was nowhere near ripe, which didn’t stop several U.S. soldiers from plucking their own, drying or half cooking the leaves, and trying to smoke them afterwards. They proved one thing in a hurry: making cigarettes wasn’t as easy as it looked.
Earlington, by contrast, made its living from coal. U.S. Army engineers dynamited the entrances to one mine after another. “Is that smart, sir?” Martin asked his platoon commander. “Shouldn’t we be using those mines ourselves?” He knew how much coal the steel industry needed, and it wasn’t the only one.
Lieutenant Wheat only shrugged. “I guess the first thing is to deny this coal to the enemy,” he answered. “We can worry about everything else later. It’s not like we don’t mine plenty of our own.”
“I suppose so, sir.” If Chester didn’t sound convinced, it was because he wasn’t. But he didn’t decide such things, even if the news would have come as a surprise to the men in the platoon.
Somewhere not far away, a rifle went off. He and Lieutenant Wheat both reached for their weapons-that wasn’t a Springfield. It also wasn’t one of the Confederates’ automatic rifles, or an older bolt-action Tredegar. Martin didn’t know exactly what it was-some kind of squirrel gun, he supposed. He would have bet whoever squeezed the trigger wasn’t aiming at a squirrel.
The same thought must have gone through Delbert Wheat’s mind, for he said, “They don’t love us around here, do they?”
“Not hardly,” Chester said. The.22 or whatever it was barked again. “I bet we’re going to have to take more hostages.” Soldiers in butternut were trying to hold a line on the southern fringes of Earlington, and they would have to fall back from there in the next day or two. But Confederate civilians had rediscovered the thrills of guerrilla warfare. Kids and old men and even women turned into bushwhackers whenever they saw the chance.
The laws of war said people who weren’t in uniform but took up arms anyway were fair game. Those laws didn’t say taking hostages was all right, but every army on enemy territory did it. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes it just made more civilians want to pick up squirrel guns.
“We kill enough of these fuckers, sooner or later the rest will get the idea,” Wheat said. “Or if they don’t, we’ll kill all of them.” He didn’t sound worried-more as if he looked forward to it.
After a third shot rang out, Martin got to his feet. “Somebody ought to do something about that damn sniper,” he said.
He hadn’t gone more than a step or two before a U.S. machine gun stuttered out a short burst, and then another one. A triumphant shout went up: “Got the son of a bitch!”
“Talk about service,” Lieutenant Wheat said. Chester grinned and nodded and hunkered down again. He pulled out a pack of Raleighs-properly grown, properly cured tobacco-and lit up. After a deep drag, he nodded again. Yeah, this was what smokes were supposed to taste like.
A soldier trotted back to him and the lieutenant. “There’s a Confederate captain with a flag of truce, wants to talk to us about civilians,” he said.
“Bring him back here,” Wheat said. “We can talk.”
“Blindfold him first,” Chester added. “No point letting him see what we’ve got. That may be part of what he’s after.” The platoon commander nodded. The soldier saluted Wheat and hurried away.
“Would you like to sit in on this?” the lieutenant asked politely.
“If you don’t mind, sir,” Chester answered, as politely. The platoon leader didn’t want to let the Confederates hornswoggle him. Chester was his ace in the hole, and appreciated being invited without having to invite himself.
When the C.S. captain took off his blindfold, he proved to be about thirty, with the ribbon for the Purple Heart-a decoration that went back to George Washington, and that both sides used-on his chest. He said his name was Wilbur Pease. He didn’t seem surprised to find a first sergeant sitting in with a second lieutenant, which showed he knew how the world worked.
Wheat did the talking: “Well, Captain, what’s on your mind?”
“I’ve had reports of atrocities against civilian citizens, Lieutenant, and I’ve come to investigate and to protest,” Pease answered.
“Considering what the Confederate States are doing to their Negroes, aren’t you in a poor position to talk about atrocities?” Wheat asked.
Wilbur Pease didn’t even blink. “Civilian citizens, I said. Negroes are only residents, not citizens. They don’t have the rights of citizens.” We can do whatever we want to them, Martin translated. Captain Pease went on, “I’m talking about white people, people who matter.” His racism was so complete, so perfect, he didn’t know he had it.
“We have a problem with-what’s the fancy French for it, Sergeant?”
“Francs-tireurs, sir.” Chester pronounced it franks-teeroors; he knew no more French than Chinese.
It satisfied both Lieutenant Wheat and Captain Pease. The U.S. officer went on, “If we catch people out of uniform shooting at us, we’re going to kill them. It’s as simple as that, Captain. We nailed one a few minutes ago. If we have to take hostages to make them think twice, we’ll do that, too. And we’ll shoot the hostages if it comes to that. I’m sorry, but these jerks with guns need to understand that we’re serious.”
“The laws of war-” Pease began.
“You did the same damn thing on our soil,” Chester Martin said. “Don’t get all high and mighty about it.”
“And don’t encourage the, uh, francs-tireurs, either,” Wheat added. “That way, everybody will be better off.”
Captain Pease scowled. His troops wouldn’t be better off. The more U.S. soldiers flabbled about civilians with rifles, the more distracted from fighting the regular Confederate army they were. “I deny that we encourage civilians to take up arms against invaders,” he said.
“Of course you do, Captain,” Wheat said.
“And the stork brings babies and sticks ’em under cabbage leaves,” Chester added.
“All right,” Pease said angrily. “I can see you don’t take this seriously.”
“Oh, we do,” Wheat said. “We take it so seriously, we’ll do whatever we have to to stamp it out. And if that means you run short on civilians, we won’t lose any sleep about it. Whatever people in these parts try to do to us, we’ll do worse to them. I promise you that, Captain. It worked in Utah. It should work here.”
“If you want that kind of fight, I’m sure you can have it,” Wilbur Pease said. “You’d better put my hoodwink back on-I’d like to return to my side of the line.”
“I’ll do it, sir,” Chester said to Lieutenant Wheat. As he blindfolded Pease, he went on, “We don’t have anything in particular against the Confederate Army. You play fair when you fight us. Civilians playing soldier-that’s a different story.”
“Yes, it is. You’ll see.” Pease held out his hand. “Someone take me back, please.”
A soldier led him through the U.S. positions. Chester’s face was troubled as he watched the Confederate officer go. A different story…He wondered if his own words would come back to haunt him. Auto bombs, people bombs…The Kentuckians hadn’t started making life as miserable for the U.S. Army as they could.