In At the Death sa-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "I told him that," Abraham Washington said. "I told him, but he didn't want to listen. He went and volunteered anyway."

  "He got the chance to show he was as good as a white man, and he went and took it," Cincinnatus said. "How you gonna blame him for that?"

  Luther Washington grinned from ear to ear. "Somebody understands why I did what I did!"

  His father only sniffed. By the way Abraham Washington sounded, his people had lived in Des Moines for generations. He was used to being thought as good as a white man-or nearly as good, anyhow. Having grown up in the CSA, Cincinnatus could see why Luther was willing to lay his life on the line to get rid of the nearly. During the Great War, plenty of Negroes joined the Confederate Army to win citizenship for themselves. Plenty more would have this time around, if only Jake Featherston had let them. That urge to prove himself-that feeling you had to keep proving yourself-stayed strong in Negroes on both sides of the old border.

  Cincinnatus didn't want to think about Jake Featherston, not at his daughter's wedding. He looked around the church. The Changs had gone over with Achilles and Grace and their grandchildren-who, in Cincinnatus' considered and unbiased (of course!) opinion, were the brightest and most beautiful grandbabies in the whole world.

  And there were a few whites, as he'd told Joey Chang there would be. They were doing their best-some doing better than others-to be friendly with the colored people sitting around them. Cincinnatus smiled to himself. The whites were a small minority here. They were getting a tiny taste of what Negroes in the USA went through all the time.

  But it was better here than it ever had been down in the Confederacy. Not good, necessarily, but better. Cincinnatus had experience with both places. He knew when he was better off. He'd voted here. His children had graduated from high school. Maybe his grandchildren would go to college. Down in the CSA, back before the Great War, he'd been unusual-and an occasional object of suspicion-because he could read and write.

  A burly young man whose shoulders strained the fabric of his tuxedo jacket came up. His name was Amos Something-or-other. He was one of Calvin's friends, and the best man. "Wedding procession's forming up," he said.

  "That's us," Elizabeth said. Cincinnatus couldn't very well tell her she was wrong.

  Amanda seemed ready to burst with glee. That was how the bride was supposed to act on her wedding day. Calvin didn't look ready to run for his life. For a groom on his wedding day, that would do.

  The organist struck up the wedding march. Down the aisle everybody went. A photographer fired off one flashbulb after another. Yellow-purple spots danced in front of Cincinnatus' eyes.

  Up at the front of the church, he and the rest of Amanda's supporters went to the right, those of Calvin Washington to the left. The minister did what ministers do. After a while, he got to, "Who giveth this woman?"

  "I do," Cincinnatus said proudly.

  Amanda and Calvin got to say their "I do" s a couple of minutes later. Amanda's ring had a tiny diamond on it. Tiny or not, it sparkled under the electric lights. It shone no brighter than Amanda's smile, though. The kiss the new husband and wife exchanged was decorous, but not chaste.

  Down the street three doors to the reception, Joey Chang's good beer was highly unofficial, but also highly appreciated. The minister drank several glasses and got very lively. Cincinnatus hadn't expected that. Preachers were supposed to be a straitlaced lot, weren't they? But if this one wanted to let his processed hair down, why not?

  One of the white men congratulated Cincinnatus. "Your daughter's a pretty girl, and she seems mighty nice," he said.

  "Thank you kindly." Cincinnatus was ready to approve of anybody who approved of Amanda.

  "This is a good bash, too," the white man said. "People get together and have a good time, they're all pretty much the same, you know?"

  He seemed to think he'd come out with something brilliant. "I won't quarrel with you," Cincinnatus said.

  "And you've got to tell me who makes your beer," the white man added.

  "That fella right over there." Cincinnatus pointed to Joey Chang, who held a glass of his own product. "His daughter's married to my son."

  "Well, how about that?" the white man said, which was safe enough under almost any circumstances. "Stir everything around, huh?"

  "Why not?" Cincinnatus waited to see if the ofay would go any further.

  But he didn't. He just said, "How about that?" again.

  Good, Cincinnatus thought. He wanted no trouble, not today. He never wanted trouble, but he'd landed in some. He wouldn't worry about that, either. This was Amanda's day, and it should be a good one. He smiled. He wanted her night to be better yet.

  XX

  "You! Pinkard!" After Jeff Pinkard got convicted in the Yankees' military court-kangaroo court, he thought of it still-U.S. personnel replaced all the Texans at the Houston jail. He hated those sharp, harsh, quick accents.

  "Yeah?" he said. "What is it?"

  "Get up," the guard told him. "You got visitors."

  It was only a week till they hanged him. "Yeah?" he said again, heaving his bulk off the cot. "Visitors?" That roused his curiosity. The only person he'd seen lately was Jonathan Moss, here to tell him another appeal had failed. He had none left-the President of the USA and the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to spare him. "Who?"

  "You'll find out when you get there, won't you?" The guard unlocked his cell. Other men in green-gray stood by with submachine guns at the ready. If Jeff got cute, he'd die a week early, that was all. And nobody'll miss me, either, he thought miserably. When you were going to hang in a week, self-pity came easy.

  He went down the hall in front of the guards. Was getting shot a quicker, cleaner way to go than the rope? He didn't want to go at all, dammit. As far as he was concerned, he hadn't done anything to deserve killing.

  When he got to the visiting room, he stopped in his tracks. There on the other side of the wire were Edith and Willie and Frank, and little Raymond in his wife's arms. All of them except Raymond started to cry when they saw him.

  "Aww," Jeff said, and then, "You shouldn't have come."

  "We would've done it more, Papa Jeff," Willie said, "only the damnyankees wouldn't let us for a long time."

  "We're here now," Edith said. "We love you, Jeff."

  "Yeah, well, I love y'all, too," Jeff said. "And a whole fat lot of good it's gonna do anybody."

  He went up to the mesh that separated him from his family. He pressed his hands against it as hard as he could. They did the same thing on the other side. Try as he would, he couldn't quite touch them.

  "It's not right, Papa Jeff," Frank said. "They got no business messin' with you. It was only niggers, for heaven's sake."

  "Well, you know that, and I know that, and everybody down here knows that, too," Jeff answered. "Only trouble is, the Yankees don't know it, and they're the ones who count."

  "Can't anybody do anything?" Edith asked.

  "Doesn't look like it. Oh, people could do something, but nobody wants to. What do you expect? They're Yankees."

  His wife started crying harder. "It's not fair. It's not right. Just on account of they won the damn war…What am I gonna do without you, Jeff?"

  "You'll do fine," Jeff said. "You know you will." What am I gonna do without me? he wondered. That, unfortunately, had no good answer. He was going to die, was what he was going to do. "And don't you worry none about me. I'll be up in heaven with God and the angels and stuff."

  He didn't really believe in heaven, not with halos and harps and white robes. Playing the harp all day got old fast, anyway. But Edith was more religious than he was. If he could make her feel better, he would.

  She went on crying, though, which made Willie and Frank snuffle more, too. "I don't want to lose you!"

  "I don't want it to happen, either, but I don't have a whole lot to say about it," he replied.

  "You've got a baby. You've got me. You've got my boys, who you raised like you were their daddy," Edith sa
id.

  All of that was true. It cut no ice with anybody up in Yankeeland. The Yankees went on and on about all the Negroes he'd killed. As if they'd cared about those Negroes alive! They sure hadn't wanted them going up to the USA. From what he heard, they still didn't want Negroes from the CSA going up to the USA.

  They were going to hang him anyhow. They could, and they would.

  A guard came in on the other side, the free side. "Time's up," he said.

  "We love you, Jeff!" Edith said through her tears. She carried Raymond out. The boys were still crying, too.

  "Come on, Pinkard," said a guard on Jeff 's side of the visiting room. "Back to the cell you go."

  Back he went. The cell was familiar. Nothing bad would happen to him while he was in it. Pretty soon, though, they'd take him out one last time. He wouldn't be going back after that. Well, what else did one last time mean?

  Two days later, he had another visitor: Jonathan Moss again. "Thought you gave up on me," he said through the damned unyielding mesh.

  "I don't know what else I can do for you," Moss said. "I wish I did. I haven't got a hacksaw blade on me or anything. Even if I did, they would have found it when they searched me."

  "Yeah," Pinkard said. "So-no reprieve from the governor. Hell, no governor. Son of a bitch thinks he's President of Texas now. No reprieve from the President of the USA. No reprieve from the assholes on the Yankee Supreme Court. So what else is there?"

  "Well, you're not the only one they're coming down on, if that makes you feel any better," Jonathan Moss replied.

  "You mean, like misery loves company?" Jeff shrugged. "I'd love it if I didn't have the misery. But yeah, go ahead-tell me about the others. I don't have a wireless set, and they don't give me papers, so I don't know jack shit about what's going on out there."

  "They hanged Ferdinand Koenig and Saul Goldman yesterday."

  "Goddamn shame," Pinkard said. "They were good men, both of 'em. Confederate patriots. Why else would you Yankees hang people?"

  "For murdering millions? For telling lies about it in papers and magazines and on the wireless?" Moss suggested.

  "We didn't get rid of anybody who didn't have it coming," Jeff said stubbornly. "And like your side didn't tell any lies to your people during the war. Yeah, sure."

  The military attorney sighed. "We didn't tell lies about things like that. We didn't do things like that-not to Negroes, not to Jews, not to anybody."

  He undercut what Jeff would have said next: that the USA didn't have many Negroes to get rid of. The United States were crawling with Jews. Everybody knew that. Instead, he said, "What other kind of good news have you got for me?"

  "If it makes you feel any better, you aren't the only camp commandant and guard chief to get condemned," Moss told him. "Vern Green goes right with you here. And…you knew Mercer Scott back in Louisiana, right?"

  "Yeah." Pinkard scowled at him. "You know what? It doesn't make me feel one goddamn bit better."

  "I'm sorry. If there were anything else I could try, I'd try it. If you have any ideas, sing out."

  Jeff shook his head. "What's the use? Nobody in the USA cares. Nobody in the USA understands. We did what we had to do, that's all."

  "'It looked like a good idea at the time.'" Moss sounded like somebody quoting something. Then he sighed. "That isn't enough to do you any good, either."

  "Didn't reckon it would be," Jeff said. "Go on, then. You tried. I said that before, I expect. Won't be long now."

  In some ways the days till the hanging crawled past. In others, they flew. The last days of his life, and he was stuck in a cell by himself. Not the way he would have wanted things to turn out, but what did that have to do with anything? He asked the guards for a copy of Over Open Sights.

  "Wouldn't you rather have a Bible?" one of them said.

  "If I wanted a Bible, don't you reckon I would've told you so?" Jeff snapped.

  A little to his surprise, they brought him Jake Featherston's book. He paged through it. Everything in there made such good sense. A damn shame it hadn't worked out for real. But the Negroes in the CSA were gone, or most of them were, and the damnyankees couldn't change that even if they did win the war.

  The night before they were going to hang him, the guards asked what he wanted for supper. "Fried chicken and fried potatoes and a bottle of beer," he answered. They gave it to him, except the beer came in a tin cup. He ate with good appetite. He slept…some, anyhow.

  They asked him what he wanted once more at breakfast time. "Bacon and eggs and grits," he told them, and he got that, too. He cleaned his plate again, and poured down the coffee that came with the food.

  "Want a preacher?" a guard asked.

  Pinkard shook his head. "Nah. What for? I've got a clean conscience. If you don't, you need a preacher worse'n I do."

  They cuffed his hands behind him and led him out to the prison yard. They'd run up a gallows there; he'd listened to the carpentry in his cell. Now he saw it was a gallows built for two. Another party of U.S. guards led Vern Green out from a different part of the jail.

  Vern looked like hell. His nerve must have failed him at last. He gave Jeff a forlorn nod. "How come you ain't about to piss yourself like me?"

  "What's the use?" Jeff answered. "I'd beg if I thought it'd do any good, but it won't. So I'll go out the best way I know how. Why give these assholes the satisfaction of watching me blubber?"

  Reporters watched from a distance. Guards made sure they stayed back. Otherwise, they would have got up to the condemned men and yelled questions in their faces. Jeff figured Yankee reporters had to be even worse than their Confederate counterparts, and the Confederates were pretty bad.

  A guard had to help Vern Green up the stairs to the platform. Jeff made it under his own power. His knees were knocking, but he didn't let it show. Pride was the last thing he had left. And much good it does me, too, he thought.

  Along with more guards and the hangman, a minister waited up there. "Will you pray with me?" he asked Jeff.

  "No." Jeff shook his head. "I made it this far on my own. I'll go out the same way."

  Vern talked with the preacher. They went through the Twenty-third Psalm together. When they finished, Vern said, "I'm still scared."

  "No one can blame you for that," the minister said.

  A guard held out a pack of cigarettes to Jeff. "Thanks," he said. "You'll have to take it out for me."

  "I will," the guard said. The smoke was a Raleigh, so it tasted good. Vern also smoked one. The guards let them finish, then walked them onto the traps. The hangman came over and set the rope around Jeff 's neck. Then he put a burlap bag over Jeff 's head.

  "Make it quick if you can," Jeff said. The bag was white, not black. He could still see light and shadow through it. His heart pounded now-every beat might be the last.

  "I'm doing my best," the hangman answered. His footsteps moved away, but not far. They've got no right, damn them, Jeff thought. They've-A lever clacked.

  The trap dropped.

  S tuck in fucking Alabama," Armstrong Grimes grumbled. "What could be worse than this?"

  Squidface was cleaning his captured automatic Tredegar. He looked up from the work. "Well, you could be in hell," he said.

  "Who says I'm not?" Armstrong said. "It's a godforsaken miserable place, and I can't get out of it. If that's not hell, what do you call it?"

  "Pittsburgh," Squidface answered, which jerked a laugh out of Armstrong. After guiding an oily rag through the Tredegar's barrel with a cleaning rod, Squidface went on, "If you're gonna get screwed any which way, lay back and enjoy it, you know?"

  "Tell me another one," Armstrong said. "Army chow. The people fucking hate us. We're not careful, we get scragged. Even the broads are scared of us now. If they get friendly, they end up dead. And we don't take hostages for that, so there's nothing to hold the locals back."

  "Army chow's not so bad," Squidface said. "There's always enough of it nowadays, anyhow. Back before I went in, I couldn
't always count on three squares." He was skinny enough to make that easy to believe.

  But Armstrong was in the mood to bitch, and he wasn't about to let anybody stop him. "You're just saying that 'cause you're turning into a lifer."

  "Yeah? So? You oughta do the same," Squidface answered. "God knows how long you're gonna stay stuck here. You make a pretty good soldier, even if you are a big target. Why not leave the uniform on? You go back to Civvy Street, you'll end up bored outa your skull all the goddamn time."

  "I'd sooner be bored than bore-sighted," Armstrong said.

  Squidface ignored the joke. That pissed Armstrong off, because he thought it was better than most of the ones he made. But, as if he hadn't spoken, the PFC continued, "Besides, you can't tell me you aren't getting any down here. Up in the USA, the girls'll slap your face if you try and cop a feel. You want to fuck, you gotta get married."

  "There's still whorehouses in the USA," Armstrong said.

  "Yeah? So?" Squidface said again.

  He left it right there. Armstrong grunted. With a whore, it was nothing but a business deal. Some of the gals down here were looking for love. They wanted to think they mattered to you, so you mattered to them. They weren't just going through the motions. That did make it better.

  All the same…"You figure because you want to stay in, everybody ought to want to stay in."

  "My ass," Squidface retorted. "Plenty of the cocksuckers in this company, I wish they'd get the fuck out. Raw recruits who don't know their nuts from Wednesday'd be better. But you're all right. You could do it. You might even end up an officer."

  "Christ! What're you smoking?" Armstrong laughed out loud. "Whatever it is, I want some."

  "I'm serious, man," Squidface said. "Me, I'm a noncom. It's what I'm made for. You've got more of the 'Yes, sir!' they like when they promote people."

  "Oh, man, give me a fucking break," Armstrong said.

  "You do," Squidface insisted. "Shit, you're Armstrong. You never got a gross nickname hung on you or nothin'."

  "That's 'cause I've got a gross name instead," Armstrong said. "Hot damn."