“You’re doing an honest job,” the farmer said. “Looks like you could use a meal.”
“Maybe some.” Cassius wolfed down the food. He savored the Dr. Hopper, and smiled when bubbles went up his nose. “Can I pour a bucket o’ water over my head? Feel mighty good if I do.”
“Go right ahead,” the farmer answered.
Cassius walked over to the well and did. He finished somewhere between three and four in the afternoon. The farmer didn’t make any fuss about giving him the second installment of his pay, and even brought him another sandwich without being asked. “Thank you kindly,” Cassius said with his mouth full.
“Want to stick around for a spell?” the white man asked him. “I could use a hand, and you pull your weight. Say…four dollars a week and board?”
The money was chicken feed, though a place to sleep and three-or at least two-meals a day made up for some of that. But Cassius shook his head. “I better keep movin’ on,” he said.
“You won’t find many better deals,” the farmer warned.
Not from ofays, Cassius thought. With Negroes, though, he had a chance for something this fellow couldn’t hope to give him: vengeance. That still burned in him. “Obliged,” he said again, “but I got places to go.”
“And I know where you’ll end up: in trouble,” the farmer said. “You come sneakin’ round here after dark raisin’ Cain, I’ll give you a bellyful of double-aught buckshot. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
That meant guerrillas were active in these parts: for Cassius, good news. Still, he said, “I wouldn’t do nothin’ like that with you, suh. You treated me fair. You treated me better’n fair, an’ I know it.”
“How long will you remember, though?” The white man shrugged. “Reckon we’re quits. I don’t have anything against you-you did a job of work there. Ain’t seen anybody go at it like that for a long time.”
“I was hungry,” Cassius said with a shrug.
“Makes a difference,” the farmer agreed.
“You know what they’re doin’ in the city, suh?” Cassius asked. “You know they got all the niggers shut up inside barbed wire? You know they’re takin’ ’em to camps an’ killin’ ’em? They took my ma and my pa and my sister yesterday.”
“No. I didn’t know any of that. They don’t talk about it much,” the farmer said.
Only after Cassius was a couple of miles down the road, still another sandwich tied up in a rag, did he realize the man had to be lying. Who were they? What did they say? He wondered why the man bothered to waste time lying to a black. Why not just tell the truth and gloat? One answer occurred to him after another half a mile or so. He’d been closer to the axe than the farmer was, and he’d shown he knew how to use it.
Armstrong Grimes was fit to be tied, and he didn’t care who knew it. What was his reward, what was his regiment’s reward, what was his division’s reward for making the Mormons realize they couldn’t throw enough bodies on the fire to put it out? Why, to go to Canada, to go up against a bigger rebellion. He’d called the shot too well.
“How many people in Utah?” he demanded of Yossel Reisen.
“I don’t know,” his fellow sergeant answered as the train rattled along through the upper Midwest-or maybe it was in Canada. One stretch of plain looked just as dreary as another. Yossel went on, “Half a million, maybe?”
“Yeah, and not all of ’em were Mormons, either,” Armstrong said. “All right-how many people in Canada?”
“Millions,” Reisen said. “Got to be millions.”
“Fuckin’-A it does. That’s what I figure, too,” Armstrong said. “So what do we have to do? Kill every goddamn one of them?”
“Hey, don’t get sore at me,” Yossel told him. “I didn’t give the orders. I’ve got to take ’em, same as you do.”
“I’ll tell you what’s sore. My ass is sore,” Armstrong grumbled. The car he was in had hard benches packed too close together to squeeze in as many soldiers as possible. The smell and a dense cloud of cigarette smoke thickened the air. The Army cared nothing for comfort. It valued efficiency much more. Armstrong shifted from one weary cheek to the other. He nudged his buddy. “You oughta write your Congresswoman.”
“Armstrong, the first time you said that, it was funny,” Yossel Reisen said. “The fifth time you said it, I could put up with it. By now, though, by now it gives me a fucking pain in the ass, you know?”
“All right, already. Got a butt?” Armstrong asked.
“Sure.” Yossel passed him a pack. He lit up. It helped pass the time. When Armstrong returned the pack, Reisen stuck one in his mouth. Armstrong leaned close to give him a light. After Yossel’s first drag, he said, “We’ve got to lick the damn Confederates. If we don’t, we’ll be stuck with our own shitty tobacco forever.”
“There you go.” Armstrong blew out a cloud of smoke. “One more reason to hate Jake Featherston. I thought I already knew ’em all. We’ve got to kick his scrawny butt, all right. I wish we could do it, too, instead of fucking around with the goddamn stinking worthless Canucks.”
Yossel chuckled. “I don’t quite follow you. Tell us how you really feel.”
Before Armstrong could answer, he discovered they were already in Canada: somebody shot out a window in his railroad car. The bullet missed everybody, but glass sprayed soldiers. Everybody jumped and yelled and swore.
Machine gunners on the roofs of two or three cars opened up on the sniper. Armstrong had no idea if they hit him, but he did hope they made the bastard keep his head down. Then he said, “My guys-you all right?” He still had his platoon. No eager young second looey had come out to take his place.
“I got somethin’ in my eye, Sarge,” somebody right behind him said. “Is it glass?”
“Lemme see.” Awkwardly, Armstrong turned around. “Don’t blink, Boone, for Christ’s sake.” He yanked at the private’s eyelid. Damned if he didn’t see a chunk of glass not much bigger than a grain of salt. “Don’t flinch, either, dammit.”
“I’ll try,” Boone said. Not flinching when somebody’s hand came at your eye was probably harder than holding steady in combat. The soldier managed…pretty well.
“Hang on.” Armstrong peered down at his thumb. Sure as hell, he’d got the glass out. He flicked it away. “Blink. How’s your eye?”
“Better, Sarge,” Boone said in glad surprise. “Thanks a million.” He blinked again. “Yeah, it’s all right now.”
“Bully.” Armstrong didn’t know why he said that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever used it. Even his old man hardly ever said it. But getting something out of somebody’s eye made you feel fatherly, and fathers talked in old-fashioned ways.
Yossel Reisen gave him a quizzical look. “Bully?”
“Well, what about it?” Armstrong snapped. He was embarrassed he’d come out with it, too.
“Nothing,” Yossel said. But it wasn’t nothing, because he added, “You sounded like George Custer, that’s all.”
“Thanks a lot, Yossel.” Armstrong had often wondered why his father gave him Custer’s middle name and not his first one. George Grimes would have been a perfectly ordinary handle. Armstrong…wasn’t. He shrugged. Yossel had a funnier name yet, although maybe not if you were a Jew.
A few minutes later, the train screeched and squealed to a stop. They weren’t anywhere that Armstrong could see-just out in the middle of the damn prairie. Before long, though, officers started yelling, “Out! Out!”
“What the fuck?” Boone said. Armstrong only shrugged. He didn’t know what was going on, either.
He was standing out on the prairie with his men, waiting for somebody to tell him what to do next. Either nobody was in a hurry to do that or nobody knew. He looked around. In Utah, he’d got used to always having mountains on the horizon. No mountains here. This was the flattest country he’d ever seen; it made Ohio look like the Himalayas. The train tracks stretched out toward infinity. As far as he could tell, the two rails met there.