He had picked men with him, men who could have formed a line and stopped-or tried to stop-the collapse, but who stood with their rifle butts trailing in the dust and watched men who had been fighters but were now only fugitives running past.
Cherry’s appeal to the faltering followers of the Republic was more fundamentaclass="underline" “Kill de white folks! Got to kill de white folks! Dey catches you, dey kills you sure!”
She was probably right. No-she was almost certainly right. But the men who had done so much had concluded they could do no more. Neither her fiery words nor her even more fiery beauty were enough to turn them back toward the trenches they could not hold.
She rushed over to Scipio and, to his startlement and no small alarm, threw herself into his arms. Her breasts were firm and soft against his chest. “Make dey stop, Kip,” she said in a bedroom voice. “Make dey stop, make dey fight. You de best talkin’ man we gots. Make dey go back an’ fight and I is yours. I do whatever you wants, you make dey stop.” She ran her tongue over her full lips, making them even moister and more delicious-looking than they had been. Every sort of promise smoldered in her eyes.
Scipio sighed and shook his head. “Cain’t,” he said regretfully-not so much regret that he would not have her, for she frightened him more than he wanted her, but regret that this collapse would get so many people killed, with him all too likely to be among them. “Cain’t, Cherry. It over. Don’t you see? It over.”
“Bastard!” she screamed, and twisted away from him. “Liar! Quitter!” She slapped him, a roundhouse blow that snapped his head sideways on his neck and left the taste of blood in his mouth. Blood on my hands, too, he thought. Blood on all our hands. Cherry cared nothing about the blood on her hands. He counted himself lucky she hadn’t pulled out a knife and gutted him with it.
In spite of haranguing the Negroes who didn’t want to be soldiers any more, Cassius heard the exchange between Cherry and Scipio. Cassius, as best Scipio could tell, never missed anything. He came trotting over to the two of them. Scipio’s guts knotted with fear all over again. Cherry was Cassius’ woman. No-Cherry was her own woman, and had been giving herself to Cassius. That wasn’t quite the same thing, even if, from Cassius’ point of view, it probably looked as if it were.
But Cassius didn’t want to quarrel. The ex-hunter, now chairman of what was left of the Congaree Socialist Republic, sadly studied Scipio. “It over now, Kip?” he asked. “You t’ink it over now fo’ true?”
“Don’t you?” Scipio waved his arms. As he did so, a shell landed only a couple of hundred yards away, black smoke with angry red fire at the core. Dirt leaped upward in graceful arcs, beauty in destruction. “We done everything we kin do. Dey gots too many buckra, too many rifles, too many cannons. Dey whip we, Cass.”
“Too many buckra,” Cassius said bitterly. “Dey don’ rise fo’ dey class int’rest, de fools. De ’ristocrats got dey all mystified up.” He lifted a weary hand. “We been over this before. I know. We make de struggle go on.” He pointed north, toward the swamps of the Congaree. “Gwine make de stand up there. De niggers in de ’pressed zones, dey always gwine know de struggle go on. De white folks, dey never takes we fo’ granted again.”
That, no doubt, was true. Scipio wished he thought it likelier to help than to hurt. It was liable to be another fifty years before the Negro cause revived in the CSA. He didn’t say that. What point, now? What he did say was, “I cain’t go to de swamp with you, Cass.”
To his surprise, the ex-hunter burst out laughing. “I knows that-you was just a house nigger, and you don’t know nothin’ ’bout that kin’ o’ life. What you gots to do is, you gots to blend in. Don’ let nobody know you got dat white folks’ talk hidin’ in your mouth. Git work in de field, in de factory, be a good nigger till de heat die down, then hurt they white folks however you kin.” He slapped Scipio on the back. Then he and Cherry, hand in hand, headed north along with some of the other Negroes who still had fight in them.
Scipio stood in the St. Matthews square till shells started landing a good deal closer than a couple of hundred yards away. Then he turned on his heel and ran, along with so many other blacks, men and women both. From behind came shouts of, “De buckra! De buckra comin’!” He ran harder. The leaders of the Congaree Socialist Republic, unlike their Confederate counterparts, hadn’t gone in for fancy uniforms. In his undyed cotton homespun, he could have been anybody at all.
And anybody at all was just who he aimed to pretend to be. Once white control washed over this part of what was again South Carolina, he’d lie low, find work, eventually find better work, and spend the rest of his life trying to pretend this whole unfortunate business had never happened.
He stopped running about half a mile outside St. Matthews. That was partly because his wind wasn’t all it should have been; before the uprising, he had lived soft. It was also partly because he calculated that a Negro overrun while fleeing was more likely to be killed on sight than one who looked to have some business where he was. If he seemed a field hand or a farmer, maybe the white soldiers wouldn’t figure he’d been in arms against them. And, as a matter of fact, he hadn’t. He’d never once fired a weapon at the duly constituted forces of the Confederated States of America.
Not that that mattered. His laugh came bitter as Cassius’. If the white folks ever figured out who he was, he’d hang. He wouldn’t simply hang, either. What they’d do to him first…
He moaned a little, down deep in his throat. He’d never been a physically brave man. The idea of being tortured made him want to piss himself with fright. He forced himself to something dimly resembling calm. Your wits are all you’ve got now, he thought. If you don’t use them, that will kill you.
Gunfire and faint shouts rose behind him. That would be the white folks, entering St. Matthews. He nodded to himself. The Congaree Socialist Republic was dead, all right, even if Cassius could keep a nasty ghost of it going in the swamps.
When Scipio came to a patch of woods, he chose a winding path through them over going around. In the woods, he thought, he would be perceived as doing something in particular rather than simply trying to escape from the victorious whites. That again might help keep them from shooting him for the fun of it.
Maybe there was a farm on the far side of the woods. Maybe the world had just gone topsy-turvy. Whatever the reason, a fat hen walked out from among the pine trees and stood in the path, staring at him from beady black eyes. For a moment, that didn’t mean much to him. Then it did. Food, he thought. No more communal kitchens, no more suppers arguing the workings of the dialectic. If he was going to eat, he’d have to feed himself.
Slowly, he bent and picked up a fist-sized stone. The chicken kept watching him from about ten feet away. He drew back his arm-and let fly, hard as he could. The bird had time for one startled squawk before the stone hit. Feathers exploded out from it. It tried to run away, but had trouble making its legs work. He sprang on it, snatched up the stone, and smashed in its little stupid head.
He wore a knife on his belt. He cut off the broken head and held the chicken by the feet, letting it bleed out. Then he gutted it. He worked slowly and carefully there; he’d seen the job done in the kitchens at Marshlands more times than he could count, but couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it himself. He saved the liver and gizzard and heart, putting them back inside the body cavity.
He’d just tossed the rest of the offal into the bushes by the side of the path-a fox or a coon or a possum would find a treat-when a white man called, “You there, nigger! What are you doin’?”
“Got me a chicken, suh,” Scipio said. He turned toward the white man-a Confederate major-and put on a wide, servile smile. “Be right glad to share, you leave me jus’ a little bit.” That was how sharing between blacks and whites worked (when it worked at all) in the CSA.