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.
“How much trouble do you think civilians can make?” By the troubled note in Lieutenant Wheat’s voice, he was worrying about the same thing.
“It can’t be worse than Utah. That’s all I know for sure.” Martin paused for a moment. “Of course, Utah was pretty bad.”
A brief burst of gunfire came from the Confederates, formally marking the end of the truce. A U.S. machine gun fired back, and after that it was time for everyone to keep his head down again.
The Confederates launched a salvo of their rockets. Most of them came down on Earlington. Civilians hadn’t evacuated the town, and bore the brunt of the hellish weapons’ bursts. “So much for taking care of their own,” Martin said into Delbert Wheat’s ear; they both crouched in the same shell hole. If something came down on them, the platoon would need new leaders.
“They don’t give a damn. They never have,” the young officer answered. “All they care about is scoring points off us.”
Chester nodded. It looked like that to him, too. Chaos reigned in the town. Wounded U.S. soldiers screamed for medics. So did wounded civilians. The corpsmen dealt with soldiers first. That was likely to hurt their popularity with the locals. They didn’t seem to care. Chester didn’t, either.
U.S. warplanes streaked low overhead. They were fighters, but each one carried a bomb slung under its belly. They were bound to be slower and less maneuverable till they dropped those bombs. Explosions on the Confederate side of the line said they weren’t wasting any time.
Barrels rumbled down toward the front, too. One platoon particularly caught Chester’s eye. All five machines were the newest U.S. model, sleek and deadly as so many tigers. All five were unbuttoned, too, their commanders and drivers looking out to see where they were. When they got closer to the firing, the drivers would close their hatches. Some barrel commanders liked to stand up in the cupola as long as they could. They took chances doing that, but their machines fared better.
One of those commanders drew Chester’s notice as he rolled down Highland Park and into the northern outskirts of Earlington. He spotted Chester, too, and no surprise, for they were about the same age: middle-aged survivors in a world of young men. Over the din of his engine, he called, “You went through it before and you came back for another round?” His accent said he came from somewhere close to the Canadian border.
“Yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment-just like you,” Chester shouted back. They grinned and waved at each other. “Stay safe,” Chester added.
“You, too.” The barrel commander laughed. So did Martin. If they wanted to stay safe, what were they doing here?
Lieutenant Wheat gave Chester a quizzical look. “You know that guy?”
“No, sir,” Chester answered. “But us old farts, we’ve got to stick together.”
His platoon went into the line not long after the barrels clattered past. With help from the armored behemoths, they shoved the Confederates all the way out of Earlington. More rockets came in from the south. Featherston’s soldiers had lots of nasty weapons. Whether they had enough men to use them was a different question. For all their firepower, Confederate troops seemed thin on the ground.
That barrel commander fought his machine aggressively. His gunner hit a Confederate barrel at what had to be over a mile, and set it afire. Two other Confederate barrels decided they’d be better off somewhere else. They trundled away in a hurry. Chester approved-the less he had to worry about enemy armor, the happier he was. Before too long, he trudged past the burning enemy machine. The push south rolled on.
Cincinnatus Driver made sure the.45 on the seat of his truck was loaded and sat where he could grab it in a hurry-he never let it slide out of reach. The road between Paris and Winchester wasn’t safe for U.S. convoys. The drive south had pushed the Confederate Army out of this part of Kentucky. But C.S. stragglers and bushwhackers who didn’t wear uniforms still took potshots at U.S. vehicles from the trees that grew too damn close to the side of the road.
A bloated body hung from a telegraph pole. The placard tied around the man’s neck said, FRANC-TIREUR. That was officer talk for bushwhacker. No doubt U.S. authorities hanged him there to warn his buddies. His wasn’t the first corpse Cincinnatus had seen. They didn’t seem to do much to intimidate the Confederates.
He sighed. Things hadn’t been that much different in the Great War. You did what they told you to do, and you hoped you came out the other side in one piece. You volunteered for this, Cincinnatus reminded himself. Were you born stupid, or did you have to study? He concluded he was born stupid; he’d never been much for studying. But he’d had too recent a close-up look at the Confederacy. Any black man who did, naturally wanted to kill the country with an axe.