“I like it,” Fodor said, and damned if he didn’t show up the next day with a can of white paint and some stencils. GRIM REAPER 1 went on the right-hand gun barrel, GRIM REAPER 2 on the gun on the left. “Way to go, Enos. Now they’ve got names.”
“Oh, boy.” George tried not to sound too gloomy. He was stuck on the Oregon, though, and he wished to God he weren’t.
After so long in the war zone, Cincinnatus found Des Moines strange. Sleeping in his own bed, sleeping with his own wife—that was mighty good. Getting used to a peacetime world wasn’t so easy.
He flinched whenever an auto backfired or a firecracker went off. He automatically looked for somewhere to hide. He noticed white men half his age doing the same thing. They noticed him, too. “You go through the mill, Pop?” one of them called when they both ducked walking down the street after something went boom.
“Drove a truck all the way through Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia,” Cincinnatus answered. “Wasn’t right at the front, but I got bushwhacked a couple-three times.”
“Oughta do it,” the white man agreed. “I was in Virginia, and I got shot. Then they sent me to Alabama. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being jumpy.”
“Man, I know what you mean,” Cincinnatus said with feeling. They gave each other waves that weren’t quite salutes as they passed.
Cincinnatus knew just where he was going: to the recruiting station where he’d signed up to drive a truck. It was right where it had been. UNCLE SAM STILL NEEDS YOU! said the sign out front. He went inside.
Damned if the same recruiting sergeant wasn’t sitting in there, doing paperwork with a pen held in a hook. The man looked up when the door opened. “Well, well,” he said, smiling. “I know you, and your name will come to me in a second if I let it. You’re Mr.—Driver.”
“That’s right, Sergeant.” Cincinnatus smiled, too. “I first came in here, I called you suh.”
“You didn’t know the ropes then. I see you do now,” the noncom answered. “I’m glad you came through in one piece. I bet you cussed the day you stuck your nose in here plenty of times.”
“Best believe I did,” Cincinnatus said. “You mind if I sit down?”
“Not even a little bit. I remember you had a bad leg. And you can see I’m busy as hell right now, right?” The sergeant got to his feet. “Can I grab you a cup of coffee?”
“I’d thank you if you did,” Cincinnatus replied. “Stuff ’s startin’ to taste good again.”
“We’re getting real coffee beans for a change, not whatever kind of crap we were using instead,” the recruiting sergeant said. “You take cream and sugar?”
“Both, please.” Cincinnatus hesitated. “You know, I never learned your name the las’ time I was here.”
“I’m Dick Konstam—a damn Dutchman, but at your service. You’ve got a fancy handle. I remember that, but you’d better remind me what it is.”
“Cincinnatus—that’s me…. Thank you kindly.” Cincinnatus sipped from the paper cup. The coffee was strong, but it hadn’t been sitting on the hot plate long enough to get bitter yet. He took another sip. Then he asked the question he’d come here to ask: “Sergeant Konstam—uh, Dick—how the hell do I get myself to fit back into things? Wasn’t near so hard the last time around.”
Konstam paused to light a cigarette. It was a Niagara. He made a sour face. “Tobacco still sucks.” He blew out smoke. “You sure you want to talk about that with me, Cincinnatus? What makes you think I’ve got any answers?”
“You done it yourself. And you’ve seen plenty of other fellows come and go through here,” Cincinnatus said. “If you don’t know, who’s likely to?”
“Well, I hated everything and everybody when I caught this.” Sergeant Konstam held up the hook. Cincinnatus nodded; he could see how that might be so. The white man took another drag—he handled a cigarette as deftly as a pen. After he exhaled a gray stream of smoke, he went on, “But life is too short, you know? Whatever you’ve got, you better make the most of it, you know?”
“Oh, yeah. I hear that real good,” Cincinnatus said.
“Figured you did. You’re a guy who busts his hump. You made something out of yourself, and that’s pretty goddamn tough for somebody your color. Probably a lot easier to be a shiftless, no-account nigger the way most people expect.”
“Know somethin’?” Cincinnatus said. The sergeant raised a questioning eyebrow. Cincinnatus explained: “Think maybe this is the first time I ever heard a white man say nigger an’ I didn’t want to punch him in the nose.”
“Yeah, well, some colored guys are niggers. It’s a shame, but it’s true. And some Jews are kikes, and some Dutchmen are goddamn fuckin’ squareheads—not me, of course.” Konstam flashed a wry grin. “We got rid of all those assholes, we’d be better off. Good fuckin’ luck, that’s all I got to tell you. We’re stuck with ’em, and we just have to deal with ’em the best way we know how.”
“Like them Freedom Party goons,” Cincinnatus said.
Sergeant Konstam nodded. “They fill the bill, all right. Only good thing about them is, we can shoot the fuckers if they step out of line. Nobody’s gonna miss ’em when we do, either.”
“Amen,” Cincinnatus said. “If I was whole myself…” He didn’t want to go on and on about his physical shortcomings, not when he was talking to a mutilated man. “My work was messed up after I got back from Covington. Ain’t gonna get no better now.”
“Remind me what line you were in.”
“Had me a hauling business. Had it, yeah, till before the war. Damned if I know how to put it back on its feet now. Ain’t got the money to buy me a new truck. Even if I did, I need somebody to give me a hand with loadin’ an’ unloadin’ now.”
“Got a son?” Konstam asked.
“Sure do,” Cincinnatus said, not without pride. “Achilles, he graduated high school, an’ he’s clerking for an insurance company. He don’t want to get all sore and sweaty and dirty like his old man. And you know what else? I’m damn glad he don’t.”
“Fair enough. Good for him, and good for you, too. Insurance company, huh? He must take after his old man, then—wants to make things better for himself any way he can. Maybe his kids’ll run a company like that instead of working for it.”
“That’d be somethin’. Don’t reckon it’d be against the law up here, the way it would in the CSA. Don’t reckon it’d be easy, neither. Achilles’ babies, they’re half Chinese.”
Konstam laughed out loud. “Ain’t that a kick in the head! Who flabbled more when they got hitched, you and your wife or your son’s new in-laws?”
“Nobody was what you’d call happy about it,” Cincinnatus said. “But Achilles and Grace, they get on good, and it ain’t easy stayin’ mad at people when there’s grandbabies. Things are easier than they were a while ago, I got to say that.”
“Glad to hear it.” Dick Konstam whistled through his teeth. “I wasn’t exactly thrilled when one of my girls married a Jewish guy. Ben hasn’t turned out too bad, though. And you’re sure as hell right about grandchildren.” His face softened. “Want to see photos?”
“If I can show you mine.”
They pulled out their wallets and went through a ritual as old as snapshots. If people had carried around little paintings before cameras got cheap and easy, they would have shown those off, too. Cincinnatus and the sergeant praised the obvious beauty and brilliance of each other’s descendants. Cincinnatus didn’t think he was lying too hard. He hoped Dick Konstam wasn’t, either.
The sergeant stuck his billfold back in his hip pocket. “Any other problems I can solve for you today, Mr. Driver?”
He hadn’t solved Cincinnatus’ problem. He had to know it, too. But he had helped—and he sounded like a man who wanted to get back to work. “One more thing,” Cincinnatus said. “Then I get out of your hair. How can I keep from wantin’ to hide behind somethin’ every goddamn time I hear a loud noise?”
“Boy, you ask the tough ones, don’t you?” K
onstam said. “All I can tell you is, don’t hold your breath. That took me years to get over. Some guys never do. Poor bastards stay nervous as cats the rest of their days.”
“Don’t want to do that.” But it might have more to do with luck than with what he wanted. Slowly and painfully, he got to his feet. “I thank you for your time, Sergeant, an’ for lettin’ me bend your ear.”
“Your tax dollars in action,” Konstam replied. “Take care of yourself, buddy. I wish you luck. You haven’t been back all that long, remember. Give yourself a chance to get used to things again.”
“I reckon that’s good advice,” Cincinnatus said. “Thank you one more time.”
“My pleasure,” the sergeant said. “Take care, now.”
“Yeah.” Cincinnatus headed for home. A work gang with paste pots were putting up red, white, and blue posters of Tom Dewey on anything that didn’t move. HE’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S WHAT, they said.
They were covering up as many of Charlie La Follette’s Socialist red posters as they could. Those shouted a one-word message: VICTORY!
Cincinnatus still hadn’t decided which way he’d vote. Yes, the Socialists were in the saddle when the USA won the war. But they also helped spark it when they gave Kentucky and the state of Houston back to the CSA after their dumb plebiscite. The promise of that vote helped get Al Smith reelected in 1940.
The colored quarter in Covington was empty because of the plebiscite. If Cincinnatus wanted to, he could blame the auto that hit him on the plebiscite. Oh, he might have had an accident like that here in Des Moines chasing after his senile mother. He might have, yeah. But he did have it down in Covington.
How much did that count? He laughed at himself. It counted as much as he wanted it to, no more and no less. Nobody could make him vote for the Socialists if it mattered a lot in his own mind. Nobody could make him vote for the Democrats if it didn’t. “Freedom,” he murmured—in the real sense of the word, not the way Jake Featherston used it. Cincinnatus grinned and nodded to himself. “I’m here to tell you the truth.” The truth was, he was free.
When he got back to the apartment, he found his wife about ready to jump out of her skin with excitement. Half a dozen words explained why: “Amanda’s fella done popped the question!”
“Do Jesus!” Cincinnatus sank into a chair. When he left Des Moines not quite two years earlier, his daughter hadn’t had a boyfriend. She did now. Calvin Washington was a junior butcher, a young man serious to the point of solemnity. He didn’t have much flash—hell, he didn’t have any flash—but Cincinnatus thought he was solid all the way through. “She said yes?”
Elizabeth nodded. “She sure did, fast as she could. She thinks she done invented Calvin, you know what I mean?”
“Expect I do.” Thoughtfully, Cincinnatus added, “He’s about the same color she is.”
“Uh-huh.” His wife nodded again. “It don’t matter as much here as it did down in Kentucky, but it matters.”
“It does,” Cincinnatus agreed. That an American Negro’s color did matter was one more measure of growing up in a white-dominated world, which made it no less real. Had Calvin been inky black, Cincinnatus would have felt his daughter was marrying beneath herself. He didn’t know whether Amanda, a modern girl, would have felt that way, but he would have. Were Calvin high yellow, on the other hand, he might have felt he was marrying beneath himself. Since they were both about the same shade of brown, the question didn’t arise. “When do they want to get hitched?” Cincinnatus asked.
“Pretty soon.” Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled. “They’re young folks, sweetheart. They can’t hardly wait.”
“Huh,” Cincinnatus said. It wasn’t as if his wife were wrong. Whether he was ready or not, the world kept right on going all around him.
The first thing Irving Morrell said when he got into Philadelphia was, “This is a damned nuisance.”
John Abell met him at the Broad Street station, as he had so many times before. “If you want to get it quashed, sir, I’m sure we can arrange that.”
“No, no.” Regretfully, Morrell shook his head. “The man’s a cold-blooded son of a bitch, but even a cold-blooded son of a bitch is entitled to the truth.”
“Indeed,” the General Staff officer murmured. Abell was a cold-blooded son of a bitch, too, but one of a rather different flavor. He had two virtues, as far as Morrell could see: they were on the same side, and Abell didn’t go around telling the world how goddamn right he was all the time. Right now, he asked, “Shall I take you over to BOQ and let you freshen up before you go on?”
Morrell looked down at himself. He was rumpled, but only a little. He ran a hand over his chin. Not perfectly smooth, but he didn’t think he looked like a Skid Row bum, either. He shook his head. “No, let’s get it over with. The sooner it’s done, the sooner I can head west and see my wife and daughter.”
“However you please,” Abell said, which meant he would have showered and shaved and changed his uniform first. But he left the editorializing right there. “My driver is at your disposal.”
“Thanks.” Morrell followed him off the platform.
They didn’t have far to go. Morrell didn’t have to look at the slagged wreckage on the other side of the Schuylkill, which didn’t mean he didn’t know it was there. Its being there, in fact, was a big part of why he was here.
There was no fresh damage in Philadelphia now that the war was over. Some of the wrecked buildings had been bulldozed, and the rubble hauled away. Repairmen swarmed everywhere. Glass was beginning to reappear in windows. “Looks…neater than it did before,” Morrell remarked. “We’re starting to come back.”
“Some,” Abell said. “It won’t be the way it was for a long time. As a matter of fact, it will never be the way it was.”
“Well, no. You can’t step into the same river twice.” Some Greek had said that a couple of thousand years before Morrell. He didn’t remember who; John Abell probably did. Morrell, no great lover of cities, didn’t much care how Philadelphia rose again. As long as it had peace in which to rise, that suited him.
The War Department had set up a Tribunal for Accused Confederate War Criminals in a rented office building not far from the government buildings that dominated the center of town. Despite the stars on Morrell’s shoulder straps and those on John Abell’s, getting in wasn’t easy. Security was tight, and no doubt needed to be.
A neatly lettered sign outside a meeting room turned courtroom said UNITED STATES OF AMERICA VS. CLARENCE POTTER, BRIGADIER GENERAL, CSA. “I would never tell you to perjure yourself,” Abell said as they paused outside the door, “but I wouldn’t hate you if you did, either.”
“I’m Irving Morrell, and I’m here to tell you the truth,” Morrell said. Abell winced. Morrell went on in.
Inside the makeshift courtroom, everyone except a few reporters and the defendant wore green-gray. The reporters were in civvies; Clarence Potter had on a butternut uniform that, even without insignia, singled him out at a glance. Morrell knew of him, but had never seen him before. He was a little older and more studious-looking than the U.S. officer expected, which didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. He’d already proved he was.
His defense attorney, a U.S. major, got to his feet. “Since General Morrell has chosen not to contest our subpoena, I request permission to get his remarks on the record while he is here.”
He faced a panel of five judges—a brigadier general sitting in the center, three bird colonels, and a lieutenant colonel. The general looked over to the light colonel who seemed to be the prosecutor. “Any objections?”
“No, sir,” that officer replied. I’m stuck with it, his expression said.
“Very well,” the chief judge said. “Come forward and be sworn, General Morrell, and then take your seat.”
When Morrell had taken the oath and sat down, Potter’s defense counsel said, “You are aware that General Potter is on trial for conveying the Confederate superbomb to Philadelphia while wearing the U.S. uniform fo
r purposes of disguise?”
“Yes, I know that,” Morrell said.
“This is considered contrary to the laws of war as set down in the 1907 Hague Convention?”
“That’s right.”
“Had the Confederates ever used soldiers in U.S. uniform before?”
“Yes, they had. Their men in our uniforms helped get a breakthrough in eastern Ohio in 1942. They even picked men who had U.S. accents. It hurt us.”
“I see.” The defense attorney looked at some papers. “Were the Confederates alone in using this tactic?”
“No,” Morrell said.
“Tell the court about some instances when U.S. soldiers under your command used it.”
“Well, the most important was probably the 133rd Special Reconnaissance Company,” Morrell replied. “We took a page from the CSA’s book. We recruited men who could sound like Confederates. We armed them with Confederate weapons, and put them into Confederate uniform.”
“Where did you get the uniforms?” asked the major defending Potter.
“Some from prisoners, others off casualties,” Morrell said.
“I see. And the 133rd Special Reconnaissance Company was effective?”
“Yes. It spearheaded our crossing of the Tennessee in front of Chattanooga.”
“Surprise and deception made it more effective than it would have been otherwise?”
“I would certainly think so.”
“Thank you, General. No further questions.”
The chief judge nodded to the prosecutor. “Your witness, Colonel Altrock.”
“Thank you, sir.” Altrock got to his feet. “You say you were imitating Confederate examples when you dressed our men in enemy uniform, General?”
“I believe that’s true, yes,” Morrell said.
“Would you have done it if the enemy hadn’t?” Altrock asked.
“Objection—that’s a hypothetical,” the defense attorney said.
After the judges put their heads together, their chief said, “Overruled. The witness may answer the question.”
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