Scipio still found revolutionary rhetoric and the Congaree dialect an odd blend. No one cared about his opinion in such matters, though, and he was canny enough to keep it to himself. Cassius had asked his opinion about the other matter, though, and might even have been ready to hear it. Scipio decided to take a chance there.
He pointed to what had been the country courthouse of Kingstree, South Carolina. The two-story, buff-colored building with a fancy, fanlighted pediment, built in the style of the early years of the last century, no longer flew the Stars and Bars. Instead, the red revolutionary banner of the Congaree Socialist Republic fluttered above it. Red paint had been daubed over the name KINGSTREE, which was carved into the frieze above the pediment. In letters equally blood-colored, someone had given the town a substitute name: PEOPLE’S TREE.
“Dat kind o’ thing, Cass—an’ we done a lot of it—dat kind o’ thing, like I say, dat skeers de white folks out o’ dey shoes,” he said.
Cassius looked back at the courthouse, then swung his gaze toward Scipio once more. As soon as Scipio saw the expression on the chairman’s face, he knew he had failed. “Ain’t gwine have no backslidin’ in this here revolution,” Cassius declared. “We is bringin’ liberty to de people, an’ if dey is too foolish to be grateful, dey pays de price.”
He truly did not seem to realize that terrorizing everyone who was not ardently on his side to begin with would ensure that he drew few new supporters who didn’t have great grievances against the Confederate States. Hardly any Negroes lacked such grievances. But, exactly because whites had been inflicting grief instead of taking it, the system that had been in place suited them well enough.
And now he went on, “De niggers here in People’s Tree, dey live in the sections dey call Buzzard’s Roost and Frog Level. You t’ink de white folks, dey want to live in sections wid they names?” He spat on the ground to show how likely he reckoned that was. Scipio didn’t think it was very likely, either. But destroying white privilege only boosted white fear. And then Cassius wondered why whites fought against the Red revolution with everything they had.
Once more, Scipio tried to suggest that: “De more we puts they backs up, the harder they tries to put us down.”
For a moment, he thought he’d got through to Cassius. The chairman of the Congaree Socialist Republic sighed and shook his head. He said, “We git a messenger under flag o’ truce las’ night.”
“Dat a fact?” Scipio said. If it was a fact, it was news to him. That was worrisome in and of itself. Cassius had been in the habit of letting him know what happened as soon as it happened. A change in the pattern was liable to mean Scipio’s status was slipping, which was liable to prove hazardous to his life expectancy. Warily, he asked, “Dis messenger, what he say?”
“He say dat, if we doesn’t lay down we arms, de white folks liable to start killin’ de niggers in de part o’ de country we ain’t managed to liberate. What you t’ink o’ dat?”
Scipio’s first reaction was horror. His second reaction was horror, too. The Confederates could do that, and who would be able to stop them? The answer to that question came all too clear: nobody. “What you say?” he asked Cassius.
“I say two things,” the ex-hunter answered. “I say, if dat de game dey gwine play, we got plenty white folks to kill, too. Dey got mo’ niggers’n we got white folks, but dey think one white folks worth a whole heap o’ blacks. So dat make dis cocky ’ristocrat think some.”
Scipio nodded. It was a brutal ploy, but one to match the threat from the CSA. He had no doubt Cassius would carry it out, either, and was sure the chairman had left no doubt in the Confederate envoy’s mind. “Dat one,” he said, his voice showing his approval. “What de other?”
Cassius startled him by laughing out loud, a deep, rich, nasty laugh, the kind of laugh you let out after you’d heard a really good, really ripe dirty story. A moment later, Scipio understood why, for the chairman said, “I tell he, we don’t even got to do no killin’ to git our own back, if de ’pressors start de persecution in de unliberated land. I tell he, dere plenty white folks wimmin in the Congaree Socialist Republic. I don’ say no more. Ain’t got no need to say no more.”
“Do Jesus!” Scipio said. Confederate laws against miscegenation were harsh, and vigorously enforced. For some reason, Confederate white men seemed convinced that the first thing blacks would do, given any sort of chance, was make a beeline for white women. Even after the uprisings in the Congaree Socialist Republic, it hadn’t happened much. Scipio had heard of a few cases, but the revolutionary government had more urgent things—survival, for instance—with which to concern itself. But now, to use the mere idea as a club with which to beat the Confederates over the head…Scipio stared at Cassius in astonished admiration. “You is a devil, you is.”
Cassius took that as the compliment it was intended to be. “Wish you was there. This white folks captain, he got a seegar in he mouth. When I say dat, he like to swallow it.” He laughed again.
So did Scipio. The story was worth laughing about—if it turned out to have a happy ending. “Once he cough de seegar up, what he say?”
“He say we never dare do no such thing.” Cassius’ eyes glittered. “I tell he we is a pack o’ desp’rate niggers, an’ who know what we do? De white-folks gov’ment been sayin’ dat so much an’ so loud, dey lackeys all believes it. So he say, de honor o’ de white folks wimmin matter to de gov’ment, an’ dey don’t do nuffin to hurt it. You know what dat mean.”
“Mean dey don’t want white folks wimmin birthin’ a pack o’ yaller babies,” Scipio said.
Cassius nodded with yet another chuckle. “Marx, he know ’bout dis. If de peasant wench have de lord’s baby, dey call dat de droit de seigneur.” What he did to the pronunciation of the French words was a caution, but Scipio understood him. He went on, “But de lord’s lady, if she have a baby by de peasant, everybody run around like chickens wid a fox in the henhouse. An’ if that baby yaller, like you say—”
“You reckon de white folks think twice, then?” Scipio asked.
“Dey think fo’-five times ’fore they want the likes o’ me humpin’ dis fifteen-year-old buckra gal wid de hair in de yaller braids,” Cassius said positively, and Scipio thought he was right. The chairman spat again. “Like I got me trouble findin’ wimmin wants to do it.”
He wasn’t boasting, just stating a fact. He’d boasted plenty, back when he was chief hunter on the Marshlands plantation. As chairman of the Congaree Socialist Republic, he seemed to find it beneath his dignity. Scipio prodded him a little: “Drusilla,” he said slyly.
He won a chuckle from Cassius, which relieved him: when Cassius was thinking about Cassius, he wasn’t thinking about Scipio. “Ain’t looked fo’ she since de revolution come,” Cassius said. “Maybe I ought to.” His hands described an hourglass in the air. He’d used the excuse of fooling around with Drusilla, who’d lived on the late, purged Jubal Marberry’s plantation, to travel by routes only he knew and bring back weapons from the USA.
Scipio spoke another name: “Cherry.”
He’d intended that to come out sly and man-to-man, too. Somehow it didn’t, not quite. And Cassius stopped grinning. His answer, this time, was serious: “Dat gal, she do anything to help de revolution. If dat mean sleep wif you, she do it.”
“That so,” Scipio agreed. She’d slept with Jacob Colleton, to keep the mistress’ gassed brother distracted from any of the revolutionary buildup on the plantation, and then she’d used his abuse of her—or what she claimed to be his abuse of her—to touch off the uprising at the right moment. She was, Scipio knew, sharing a bed with Cassius these days.
But the chairman, instead of leering and bragging—for Cherry was one fine-looking, strong-minded woman—held up a forefinger in warning. “She do anything to help the revolution,” he said. “Anything at all. If dat mean cut yo’ balls off while you sleep, she do dat, too, an’ she don’ think twice.”
If he thought Scipio would argue
with him, he was mistaken. The former butler was more afraid of Cherry than he was of Cassius, and that was saying something. Finding out that she also intimidated the chairman was interesting. He wondered if and how he’d be able to use that.
Before he had a chance to think about it, he heard a screaming whistle in the sky, coming out of the south. Several artillery shells burst with thunderous roars a few hundred yards outside of the renamed People’s Tree. More explosions farther south meant the People’s Revolutionary Army line was taking a pounding. Artillery was the one thing the Republic conspicuously lacked.
Cassius swore with bitter resignation. “I don’ reckon we gwine hold they white folks out of this here town more’n another two-three days.”
“What we do then?” Now Scipio sounded nervous, and knew it. When Cassius was optimistic about the way the fighting was going, he was often wrong; when he was pessimistic, he was always right.
“Fall back. What else kin we do?” the chairman answered. “We maybe lose dis here stand-up war”—the first time he had admitted the possibility, which sent a chill up Scipio’s spine—“but we go to de deep swamp, fight they white folks forever. An’ some o’ we, we jus’ goes back to bein’ ordinary niggers again, niggers what ain’t never done nothin’ de white folk get they-selves in a ruction about—till we sees de chance. We sees de chance, an’ we seize de chance.” He looked sharply at Scipio, to make sure he caught the wordplay.
Scipio did, and gave back a dutiful smile. He hoped that smile covered what was no longer a chill but a blizzard inside him. If Cassius admitted the revolution was starting to come unraveled, then it was. And, while Cassius and some of his followers could no doubt carry on a guerrilla campaign against the Confederacy from out of the swamps they knew better than any white man did, Scipio wasn’t any of those followers. His skills at living under such conditions were nonexistent. He couldn’t go back to being an ordinary Negro, either; the uprising had literally destroyed the place he’d had in the world.
What did that leave? He saw nothing. He’d always had trouble believing the revolution would succeed. Whenever he’d oh so cautiously raised doubts, no one paid him any mind. Now he saw himself vindicated. Much good it does me, he thought bitterly.
George Enos looked to his left. The woody shoreline of Tennessee lay to port of the monitor Punishment. George looked to his right. To starboard were the hills of northeastern Arkansas. U.S. land forces held the Tennessee side of the Mississippi. God only knew who could lay claim to the Arkansas side of the river. It wasn’t trench warfare over there—more like large-scale bushwhacking.
Wayne Pitchess came up to Enos. He was looking toward the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi, too. “If we ever clear out those Rebs, we’ll have a better chance of heading down the river and grabbing Memphis,” he said.
“Thank you, Admiral,” George said, which made Pitchess glare at him in mock anger. He went on, “We get Memphis, that’s a long step toward cutting the CSA right in half. Sure would be fine.”
“Now who’s the admiral?” Pitchess retorted, and Enos spread his hands, admitting to attempted strategizing. His buddy’s face took on a wistful expression. “Wonder if we’ll ever see the day. If it takes us a year and a half to clear a quarter of the river, how long do we need to do all of it?”
“Reminds me of the kind of questions that ran me out of school and onto a fishing boat,” George said, to which Pitchess nodded. George looked south now, toward the distant Tennessee city. “I feel like Moses looking toward the Promised Land, knowing I’m never going to get there.”
“Sailor, you have the wrong attitude,” Pitchess declared, sounding very much like the morale-building lectures that came out of the Navy Department and were read with straight faces by the officers of the Punishment. “If only we don’t worry about the minefields in the Mississippi and the shore batteries that can blow us out of the water and the Confederate river monitors, we’ll waltz into Memphis day after tomorrow.”
“Now there’s sugar for my morning coffee,” Enos exclaimed, and Wayne Pitchess laughed out loud. “Now, Mr. Sugar, sir, what happens if I do worry about those things, or even about one of ’em?”
“Then it takes longer,” Pitchess said, “and you get written up for malicious fretting and impeding the war effort. They issue you a ball and chain and a sledgehammer, and you start making boulders into sand. Sounds bully, don’t it?”
The Punishment inched down the Mississippi. Everyone on deck kept an eye peeled for the round, spiked ugliness of mines. George methodically checked and cleaned the action of his machine gun. Lieutenant Kelly would have given him hell had he neglected it, but he didn’t need the officer riding him to make sure he attended to what needed doing. Hosing bullets out at the Rebs was the likeliest way he’d stay alive in an action; if the gun jammed, that gave the enemy a free shot at him. Best, then, that it didn’t jam.
Kelly came up behind him and watched in approval so silent that George jumped when he turned around and discovered him there. “You take care of the equipment,” the Navy man said, as if surprised to discover that trait in someone so recently a civilian.
“Sir, I put in a lot of years on a fishing trawler,” George answered. “We didn’t spend so much time polishing things as we do here, but everything had to work.” The Atlantic, he thought, was much less forgiving of mistakes than the Mississippi. It would, quite impersonally, kill you if you gave it even a quarter of a chance.
On the other hand, the Rebels would kill you most personally if they got their chance, or even a piece of their chance. He supposed that pretty much balanced things out. Kelly might have been thinking along those lines, too, for he said, “We have to be ready every second.”
“Yes, sir,” Enos agreed.
Kelly sighed. “I do wish we were something more than fire support for the Army. Out on the ocean, by all I hear, ships do what they need to do, not what some fool in green-gray thinks they need to do.”
As far as George was concerned, a dark blue uniform could also cover up a fool. He carefully did not mention that to Kelly, who was liable to think Enos had him in mind with the comment. What he did say was, “Crazy kind of war we’re fighting here.”
“Sailor, if you think I’m going to argue with you, you’re the one who’s crazy,” Kelly told him. “Snapping-turtle Navy is a strange sort of place.”
Enos would have said more, but klaxons started shouting. He would have run to his battle station, but he was already there. What he did do was run a belt into his machine gun, then look around to see what he was supposed to use for a target. He didn’t spot anything.
Word was not long in coming. Fingers began pointing south. Squinting, Enos spotted a tiny smudge of smoke on the horizon. It was what the smoke from the Punishment’s stacks might have looked like, if seen from a distance of several miles. Which meant—
“Well, well,” Lieutenant Kelly said, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. “You don’t see ship-to-ship actions very often in river warfare. Aren’t you glad we’ve found an exception for you, Enos?”
“Sir, I’ll fight,” George said. “You know I’ll fight. Expecting me to be glad about it is probably asking too much.” He’d had revenge enough by now for what the Rebs had done to him while he was a fisherman. He wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of the war somewhere far away from the roar of guns and close to Sylvia, George, Jr., and Mary Jane. He wondered if his little girl remembered him. Then he wondered if Sylvia remembered him—he hadn’t had a letter for a while.
Kelly said, “The next interesting question is whether we saw the Rebs before they saw us.” Interesting was such a nice, bland word to apply to a question that was liable to determine whether the Punishment remained a river monitor or turned into a flaming hulk in the next few minutes.
With a small noise, half whir, half grind, the turret of the Punishment began to revolve. The big guns elevated a few degrees. Before they could fire, though, a couple of great columns of water fountained u
p from the Mississippi, several hundred yards ahead of the monitor. Secondary splashes rose from shell fragments hitting the water.
“Well, well,” Kelly said again, as calmly as if the toast were too dark to suit him. “That answers that, doesn’t it?”
It did, and, as far as George was concerned, it was the wrong answer. He felt singularly useless. Whatever happened in the duel between the Punishment and the Confederate monitor, it wasn’t going to happen at ranges where a machine gun would do any good. That meant he had to remain a spectator at what might be his own destruction. He’d had to do that before, aboard the submersible-hunting trawler Spray. He didn’t think he’d get used to it if he had to do it a hundred times.
The Punishment’s guns bellowed. The deck quivered under Enos’ feet. He hoped the fellow at the rangefinder knew his business. No way to be certain, not with land and the twists of the river hiding the enemy from sight. Only smoke by which to gauge positions—it was a particularly deadly version of blindman’s buff.
Smoke spurted from the Punishment’s stacks. Now the monitor had to move quickly, either that or present a sitting target to its Confederate counterpart. Moving, though, was as likely to mean heading into the path of enemy fire as away from it. George wondered how Commander Heinrich, the skipper of the Punishment, chose which way to go. However he did it, he earned his money.
More shells from the Confederate gunboat splashed into the Mississippi. These were closer, so that some of the water they kicked up came raining down onto the deck of the Punishment. Enos wished he had his slicker from the Ripple.
Lieutenant Kelly, though, was grinning. “They haven’t straddled us,” he said. “Their next salvo will be long, and the one after that, if we’re lucky, longer yet. That gives us more time to find them and hit them.” He spoke as if that were all in a day’s work—and so, in fact, it was. George still hadn’t got used to the notion that, wearing this uniform, his day’s work involved killing people.
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