American Front gw-1

by Harry Turtledove

  Nellie stared in dismay. Her cheeks got hot. The worst was, her daughter's shot was an understatement. Edna didn't know that, thank God. As parents will, though, Nellie rallied. "As long as you are living under my roof, you will-"

  But Edna interrupted again: "Some roof." She tossed her head once more. "I could do better than this by lifting my little finger."

  "By lifting your skirt, you mean," Nellie retorted. "No daughter of mine is going to make her way through the world by selling herself on street corners, I tell you that. I won't just report that cavalryman's name to the Rebel commandant, Edna-I'll give him yours, too."

  They glared at each other, two sides of the same coin, though neither realized it. With what looked like a distinct effort, Edna made herself stop snarling. "It's not like that, Ma. I've never once prostituted myself, and I never will, neither. But I'm not going to sit cooped up in this damned shop all day long, either, watching the dust on the counter getting thicker and thicker and thicker. I'm going to be twenty-one in a couple months. Don't I deserve a life?"

  "Not that kind," Nellie said, breathing hard. (She wished she could say everything Edna had.) "You want that kind, find yourself a man you're going to marry. Then you can have it." Only after she was done speaking did she realize how little Edna's language, which would have been shocking before the war began, shocked her now. Everything was coarsened, cheapened, turned to trash and vileness.

  "And how am I supposed to meet anybody I might want to marry if I stay here all the time?" Edna shot back. "About the only people who come in are Confederate soldiers, and if you don't want me to have anything to do with them-"

  "That man was not going to marry you," Nellie said positively. "All he wanted was to have his way with you." Edna did not have a snappy comeback to that, by which Nellie concluded she'd won a point. Trying to sound earnest rather than furious, Nellie went on, "You just can't trust men, Edna. They'll say whatever they have to, to get what they want, and afterwards they'll leave you flat, go off whistling, and never care whether they've left you in a family way-"

  "How do you know so much about it?" Edna said.

  "Ask any woman. She'll tell you the same if you can get her to let her hair down." Automatically, Nellie's hand straightened the curls on her own head. She felt dizzy with anger at her daughter. Memories that hadn't come back to her in years-memories she'd thought, she'd hoped, long forgotten-came bubbling back up to the surface of her mind, memories of the harsh taste of rotgut whiskey and the deceptively sweet clink of silver dollars and the occasional quarter-eagle on the top of a pine nightstand.

  "I'm not going to die an old maid, Ma," Edna insisted.

  "I didn't ask you to," Nellie said. "But I-"

  "Sure sounded to me like you did," her daughter interrupted. "Don't go out, don't meet nobody; if you do meet somebody, don't have any fun with him, on account of all he wants to do is lay you anyways. You maybe caught me this time, Ma, but you can't watch me every hour of every day. I'm not gonna wear your ball and chain, and you can't make me."

  Edna stormed past Nellie and out of the coffeehouse. As Nellie had with Nicholas Kincaid, she tried to kick her daughter. As she had then, she missed. The door slammed. Nellie burst into tears.

  At last, she dug in her handbag for a cheap cotton handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then, slowly, her steps dragging, she went to the door, too. She opened it, stepped outside, and looked up and down the street. She didn't see Edna. She started to cry again.

  A Negro in fancy livery driving a high-ranking Confederate officer with a white mustache came down the street in a gleaming motorcar. Nellie wanted to scream the filthiest things she knew at him. After the automobile-a procession in and of itself-had passed, she crossed the street and went into Mr. Jacobs' cobbler's shop.

  The little bell above his door worked. He looked up from the marching boot he was repairing. Behind magnifying lenses, his eyes looked enormous. The wrinkles on his round little face rearranged themselves into an expression of concern. "Widow Semphroch!" he exclaimed. "Whatever can be wrong?"

  Nellie found herself telling him what was wrong. Everybody needed someone with whom to talk, and she'd known him for as long as she'd been in business across the street from his shop. He wasn't one to spread gossip around. He wouldn't blab of her troubles with Edna, either, or of how much she hated the Rebel soldiers and officers who kept sniffing round her daughter.

  When she was finished, he pulled a handkerchief-a bright green silk- out of his trouser pocket, took off his spectacles, made a production out of polishing the lenses, and then set the glasses on the counter by his last. He studied Nellie for close to a minute without saying anything. Then, in a thoughtful tone of voice, he remarked, "You know, Widow Semphroch, I am sorry for you and for your poor daughter. I wish there were some way you could take revenge on these Confederates who have caused you so much grief."

  "Oh, good Lord, so do I!" Nellie said fervently.

  The shoemaker continued to study her. "When the Rebs came into your coffeehouse, they must have had all sorts of… interesting stories to tell. Wouldn't you say that's so, Widow Semphroch? It is here, that I can tell you. The ones who come in to get their shoes repaired, they do run on at the mouth. And me, I just listen. 1 listen very carefully. You never can tell what you might hear."

  Nellie started to answer Mr. Jacobs, then suddenly stopped before she'd said anything. Now she looked sharply at him. He'd just told her something, without ever once coming right out and saying it. If she hadn't been paying attention, she wouldn't have noticed-which, no doubt, was what he'd intended.

  She said, "If I hear anything like that, Mr. Jacobs, maybe you'd like me to let you know about it. If you think that would be interesting, of course."

  "It might," he answered. "Yes, it might." They nodded, having made a bargain neither of them had mentioned.

  When she was in New Orleans, Anne Colleton had thought she would be glad to get home to South Carolina. Now that she was back in her beloved Marshlands, she often wished she'd stayed in Louisiana.

  Even the trend-setting exhibition of modern art she'd arranged, the trend-setting artists who'd crossed the Atlantic to exhibit their works, now seemed more albatross than triumph. She set hands on hips and spoke to Marcel Duchamp in irritable, almost accent-free French: "Monsieur, you are not the only one who regrets that the outbreak of war has left you here rather than in Paris, where you would rather be. I agree: it is a great pity. But it is not something over which I have any say. Do you understand this?"

  Before replying, Duchamp took a long drag at the skinny cigarillo in his hand; he used smoking as a sort of punctuation to his speech. He made everything he did, no matter how trivial, as dramatic as he could. Exhaling a long, thin plume of smoke the February sunlight-tolerably warm here- illuminated, he spoke in mournful tones: "I am confined here. Is that what you do not understand, Mademoiselle Colleton? This is the only word I can use- trapped like a beast in jaws of steel. Soon I shall have to gnaw off a limb to escape." He made as if to bite at his own wrist.

  I haven't got the time to deal with this now, Anne thought. Aloud, she said, "You did not sound this way when you accepted my invitation-and my money-to come to the Confederate States last summer."

  "I had not thought I would be here an eternity!" Duchamp burst out. "What is bearable-forgive me: what is pleasant-for a time in the end becomes unpleasant, imprisoning."

  "Ships sail for England and France from Charleston every week, Monsieur Duchamp," Anne said in frigid tones. "You are not held here without bond, as if you were a Negro criminal. You have but to use the return fare I gave you when you came here. I would not have you stay where you feel unwelcome."

  Duchamp paced back and forth, so swiftly that he almost appeared to be many places at once, as if he were the inspiration for his own Nude Descending a Staircase. Anne Colleton judged that much of his agitation was real. "Yes," he said. "Ships do sail. You have reason there. But it is also true that th
ey reach their intended ports far less often than a prudent man would wish."

  "Even prudence is not always prudent," Anne replied. "What did Danton say before the Legislative Assembly? L'audace, encore I'audace, toujours I'audace. If you wish so much to be gone, you will find the audacity to go."

  The artist looked most unhappy. Anne smiled without moving her lips. He hadn't expected her to throw a quotation from the French Revolution in his face. Instead of answering her, he bowed and walked off, thin and dark and straight as his cigarillo.

  Anne did smile then, but only for a moment. Duchamp would start being difficult again in another few days-unless, of course, he seduced a new serv ing wench, in which case he would imagine himself in love. But even if he did that, it wouldn't last long, either. The one constant about Marcel Duchamp was mutability.

  In the Confederate States of America, mutability was not well thought of. The CSA tried to hold change to a minimum. If you shut your eyes just a little, the thought went, you could believe everything was as it had been before the War of Secession.

  "We need to be reminded that isn't so," Anne murmured. "It just isn't." That was one of the reasons she'd arranged her exhibition: to make more peo ple see what the twentieth century really meant. It was also one of the reasons the exhibition had been so deliciously scandalous.

  But change had come to Marshlands in other ways, too, ways she didn't like so well. How was she supposed to raise a decent crop of cotton if her col ored hands kept leaving the plantation to work in factories in Columbia and Spartanburg and even down in Charleston? It's the war. She'd heard that ex cuse so many times, she was sick of it.

  And not even all her power, all her wealth, all her connections, had let her pull all her hands back to the fields. She'd had to raise what she paid to keep the drain from being worse than it was. That cut into her profits. And pay in the factories was going up, too. She scowled. She wasn't used to being in the position of wanting the good old days back again.

  The front door opened and closed. Anne glanced at a clock. Half past eleven: time for the postman to come. She hurried toward the front hallway- and almost bumped into the butler, who was bringing the mail on a silver tray.

  "Thank you, Scipio," she said, more warmly than she was in the habit of speaking to servants.

  "My pleasure, madam," he replied, deep voice grave as usual.

  She took the tray from him. His sober features were as familiar to her as anything else at Marshlands, and more comfortable than a lot of the furniture. She wondered for the briefest moment how she would run the plantation if Scipio took a position elsewhere. But no. It was inconceivable. Born and bred here, a fixture since the days when Negro slavery remained the law of the land, Scipio was as much a part of Marshlands as she was herself. Nice to have something on which I can rely, she thought.

  After setting the tray on a stained mahogany table, she sorted rapidly through the mail. She discarded advertising circulars unread, as not deserving anything better. Invoices and correspondence pertaining to the business side of Marshlands she set aside for later consideration. That left half a dozen per sonal letters.

  "Do you require anything else of me, madam?" Scipio asked.

  He had already started to turn to go when Anne said, "Wait. As a matter of fact, I should like to discuss something with you in a few minutes." Obediently, the butler froze into immobility. He would stay frozen till she let him know he could move, however long that took.

  To her disappointment, none of the letters was from her brothers. They were both in combat. Neither, so far, had been hurt, but she knew that was only by the grace of the God in Whom she believed so sporadically. Notes from friends and distant cousins were welcome, but could not take the place of news of her own flesh and blood.

  And whom did she know in Guaymas? The grimy port and railroad town wasn't anyplace you'd want to go on holiday, especially not when the United States were still liable to cut the railroad line that linked it to the rest of the Confederacy. Making it back to civilization through the bandit-ridden hinterlands of the Empire of Mexico struck her as adventurous without being enjoyable.

  Curious, she used a letter opener shaped like a miniature cavalry saber to slit the envelope. The letter inside was in the same firm, clear, unfamiliar hand as the outer address. Dear Anne, it read, / hope this finds you as well as I found you on the train to New Orleans and in the town. As you will see, I remain there no longer, that not being a primary center for one of my training — not enough beasts to hunt. I can't say that here, having shot at several big ones and hit a few. Well, there's hunting and there's hunting, as the saying goes. I find I enjoy both kinds, and hope to pursue the other if I am ever out your way. By contrast with the rest of the letter, the signature below was al most a scrawl: Roger Kimball.

  Anne Colleton folded the letter again. The submariner had discretion; she gave him that much. No spy would be able to infer what he did from that let ter. She could see why New Orleans was not a chief submarine base: the Gulf of Mexico being a Confederate lake, enemy ships were probably few and far between. Not so at Guaymas; the USA had a much longer Pacific coastline than the CSA.

  No spy would be sure they'd been lovers, either. She worried about that less than most women might have, but it remained in her mind. She wondered whether to answer the letter or pretend she'd never got it. The latter choice was surely safer, but Anne had not got where she was by always playing safe. Either way, she didn't have to decide right now.

  And, in fact, she didn't want to decide now. "Scipio," she said, and the butler began to move, seemingly began to breathe, for the first time since she'd started going through her mail. "Scipio," she repeated, gathering her thoughts, and then, "Do you know of anything special that's driving so many niggers out of the fields and into the factories? Besides money, I mean-I know what money does."

  "I had not really thought about it, past endeavoring to see that we always have enough hands to perform the required labor," Scipio replied after a momentary hesitation: perhaps for thought, perhaps not.

  Could she believe that? She did some fast thinking of her own, and decided she could. Scipio's duties centered on the mansion, and on keeping it and its staff in smooth working order. The field hands weren't his main concern. "Let me ask that another way," she said. "Have you noticed unusual unrest among any of the hands? I'm especially concerned about the new ones, you under stand. I'm sure the bucks and wenches who've grown up on this plantation are contented with their lot: again, except possibly over money."

  Scipio's dark, handsome features reflected nothing but meticulous attention to her words. So he had been trained, and no one could deny the training was a success. Not even Anne, who had caused that perfect mask to be made, could hope to lift up one edge, so to speak, and see what lay behind it. And his beautifully modulated voice revealed only a polite lack of curiosity as he replied, "Madam, I assure you I make every effort to weed out any undesir able influences before they find positions here. And, as you say, the loyalty of your long-time staff is of course unquestioning."

  "Thank you, Scipio. You do relieve my mind," Anne said. With a gracious nod, she released him to pursue the rest of his duties. He'd told her exactly what she wanted to hear.

  The Confederates had the U.S. soldiers exactly where they wanted them, or so they thought. Captain Irving Morrell wondered how — wondered if-he was going to prove them wrong. The war to which he'd returned two and a half months before bore only a faint resemblance to the one from which he'd been carried in Sonora back in August. For that matter, the heavily forested Kentucky hill country in which he was operating now wasn't anything like the dusty desert where he'd been wounded.

  His leg throbbed. He ignored it, as he'd been ignoring it ever since he hiked out of Shelbiana. Somewhere ahead, a good many miles ahead, lay Jenkins right by the Virginia border. In between seemed to be nothing but mountains and valleys and tiny coal-mining towns and even tinier farming hamlets and enough Rebels with guns to mak
e advancing slow, hard, pain ful work.

  Atop the hill ahead and in the trenches at its base were enough Confederates not just to slow the U.S. advance but to bring it to a halt. With the lieutenants and sergeants under him, Morrell slipped from one tree to another, drawing as close to the Rebel line as he could.

  The sergeants would have been doing that job anyhow, but both lieutenants — their names were Craddock and Buhl-looked notably unhappy. "See for yourself," Morrell said as they sheltered behind a gnarled oak. He spoke as if he were in the pulpit expounding on Holy Writ. "See for yourself. Without good reconnaissance, your force is only half as useful as it would be otherwise-sometimes less than half as useful."

  They couldn't argue with him-he outranked them. But they didn't look convinced, either. It wasn't that they were cowards; he'd already seen them fighting with all the courage any superior officer could want from his men. What they lacked was imagination. The way the war was chewing up the offi cer corps, they'd make captain if they lived. He supposed they might even end up majors. He was damned, though, if he saw them going any further, not if the war lasted till they were ninety.

  Bill Craddock pointed out to the cleared ground in front of the Confeder ate line. "How are we supposed to cross that, sir?" he said, clearly with the expectation that Morrell would have no answer. "Rebel machine guns'll chew us up like termites gnawing on an old house."

  "We'll have to bring our own machine guns forward before we move," Morrell said. "We can bring them up within a hundred yards of their trenches, and concentrate our fire on the places where we want to break in. And… Lieutenant, have you ever gone down to the Empire of Mexico and watched a bullfight?"

  "Uh — no, sir," Craddock answered. His broad, stolid face showed he hadn't the faintest idea what Morrell was driving at, either.

  With a mental sigh, the captain explained: "The fellow in the bull ring has a sword. That doesn't sound like enough against an angry bull with sharp horns, does it? But he also has a cape. The cape can't hurt the bull, not in a million years. But it's bright and it's showy, and so the bull runs right at it- and the bullfighter sticks the sword in before the bull even notices."