The Victorious Opposition

by Harry Turtledove

  She shook her head. “Not till you’re better. And you aren’t going anywhere for quite a while, believe you me you’re not.”

  “Plebiscite,” he said in dismay. The nurse shrugged again. Cincinnatus drifted back into unconsciousness. If he whimpered, it might have been pain and not fear. Pain was what the nurse took it for, anyhow. She gave him another shot of morphine.

  Winter in Covington, Kentucky, was of positively Yankee fury. Anne Colleton didn’t care for it a bit. But she didn’t complain, either. She’d pulled every wire she could reach to get to be a Confederate election inspector. Now that she was here, she intended to make the most of it.

  Disapproval stuck out like spines from the fat brigadier general who commanded the local U.S. garrison. He knew what was going to happen when the votes were cast on Tuesday. He knew, but he couldn’t do one damned thing about it.

  Anne disliked the idea of Negroes voting in the plebiscite as much as Brigadier General Rowling (she thought that was his name, but wasn’t quite sure—he wasn’t worth remembering, anyhow) disliked the idea of the plebiscite itself. She had grumbled about that.

  Brigadier General—Rowling?—wouldn’t listen. He said, “Your president agreed to it, so you’re stuck with it.”

  She had no answer for that. What Jake Featherston said, went. “Let them enjoy it while they can, then,” she said, “because they sure won’t be doing any voting after Kentucky comes back where it belongs.”

  The U.S. officer scowled. She’d hoped he would. He said, “Maybe you’d like to go into the colored district yourself on Tuesday so you can see everything is on the up and up?”

  “I’m not afraid, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

  “Bully for you,” said the fat man from the United States. Anne couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard anyone say bully, even sardonically.

  January 7, 1941, dawned clear and cold. Anne Colleton got up to see the sun rise to make sure she missed none of the plebiscite. Polls opened at seven. Polling places were officially marked by the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars flying in front of them—and unofficially by the armed U.S. soldiers who stood outside each one to make sure there was no trouble. Jake Featherston had offered to send Confederate soldiers into Kentucky and Houston and Sequoyah to help with that, but President Smith had told him no, and he hadn’t pushed it. For the moment, they remained U.S. territory.

  For the moment, Anne thought with a ferocious smile.

  Both the USA and the CSA had poll watchers at every polling place. They checked the men and women who came in to vote against the lists of those who were eligible. Every now and then, they would argue. Both sides kept lists of contested voters. If the plebiscite turned out to be close, those lists would turn into weapons. In Kentucky and Houston, at least, Anne didn’t think the vote would be close.

  She did go into the colored part of Covington. Her motorcar flew the Stars and Bars from the wireless aerial. In most of Covington, people had cheered when they saw it. In the colored district . . . Anne wished she’d thought to take down the flag.

  Some of the U.S. poll watchers in the colored part of town were Negroes: young men who’d grown up and got an education while Kentucky belonged to the USA. Because the voting rolls for Negroes were new and imperfect, they bickered constantly with their C.S. counterparts, and argued with them as if they believed they were just as good as whites. In the Confederate States, that would have been a death sentence.

  One of the Confederate poll watchers said as much: “When this here state goes back where it belongs, you better recollect what happens to uppity niggers, Lucullus.”

  The Negro—Lucullus—looked steadily back at him. “You better recollect what happens when you push folks too far,” he answered. “You push ’em so far they don’t care if they lives or dies, why should they care if you lives or dies?”

  “Talk is cheap,” the white man fleered. Lucullus said not a word. Anne feared he’d won the exchange.

  When she came out of the polling place—a little storefront church—she discovered her auto had a smashed windscreen (though they said windshield in the USA). Her driver was out of the motorcar, hopping mad and yelling at a U.S. soldier: “Why the hell didn’t you stop that goddamn nigger? He flung a brick right in front of your nose, and you just stood there.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” The green-gray-clad soldier sounded anything but sorry. By his accent, he was from nowhere near Kentucky. “I didn’t see a thing.”

  “What is your name?” Anne demanded. “I’m going to report you to your commanding officer.”

  “Jenkins, ma’am. Rudy Jenkins,” the soldier answered. “And you can report as much as you please, but I won’t lose any sleep over it.”

  She thought about telling him where to go and how to get there in the sort of language he would use himself—thought about it and decided it would do no good. Oh, she intended to give his name to that stuffed pork chop in a brigadier general’s uniform, but she was sure that would do her no good, either. Jenkins might get a public slap on the wrist, but he was bound to get some private congratulations along with it.

  She turned to the driver. “Just take us on to the next stop. This fellow can laugh as much as he pleases, but he’ll be leaving soon, and we’re going to stay.”

  The driver fumed. But Rudy Jenkins fumed even more. Anne nodded to herself. She’d done that right.

  Before she left the colored district, the auto picked up a couple of more dents. The driver plainly wanted to curse some more; her presence in the motorcar inhibited him. “To hell with these goddamn bastards,” she said, her voice crisp. “From now on, no one will give a shit what they think. Right?”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am.” He sounded scandalized. She smiled; she’d heard a lot of men sound that way. On they went, to a new polling place in the white part of town. There, Freedom Party stalwarts waving Party flags paraded just outside the hundred-foot electioneering limit. The U.S. soldiers by the polling place looked as if they wanted to shoot the men in white shirts and butternut trousers. The stalwarts were careful not to give them an excuse.

  Anne went from one polling place to another till the polls closed at eight o’clock. Then the driver took her to the Covington city hall, where the votes would be counted. As at the polling places, both the USA and the CSA had observers present to make sure the count went straight.

  Watching it progress, Anne found more people in Covington voting to stay in the United States than she would have liked: certainly more than the Negro vote—and what a mad notion that was!—accounted for. Some of the whites who’d grown up in the USA must have been too lazy to want a change. Even so, returning to the Confederacy took an early lead in Covington, and never lost it.

  Wireless sets blared in the white-painted, windowless, smoke-filled room where the ballots were tallied. They let the counters and the observers keep track of what was going on in the rest of Kentucky and in the other states where there were plebiscites. Return to the CSA held the same sort of lead in Kentucky as a whole as it did in Covington—less than Anne would have liked, but plenty to win. Houston was going for the CSA in a rout: better than three to one. Sequoyah . . . Sequoyah gave the damnyankees something to smile about, because the people there seemed to be choosing to stay in the United States.

  The tally in Covington finished about half past one. By then, Anne’s driver had fallen asleep in a folding chair. She eyed him in some admiration; she didn’t think she could have done that in a quiet room, let alone in the noisy chaos at city hall. He jerked and almost fell out of the chair when she shook him awake again. She was sorry about that, but not sorry enough to keep from doing it.

  Noisy chaos roiled through the rest of Covington, too, as she saw on the short trip back to her hotel. Freedom Party stalwarts and others who backed the CSA danced in the streets, waving Party flags, the Stars and Bars, and the Confederate battle flag. A lot of them were drunk. They cheered the Confederate flag on the aerial of Anne’s batter
ed auto. Somehow, the cheers turned into a rousing chorus of “Dixie.”

  Anne wondered if the celebrants would go into the colored district and take their revenge on Covington’s Negroes for voting to stay in the USA—or for having the nerve to vote at all. Maybe the U.S. soldiers who still patrolled the town would keep them from doing that. But any Negroes who stayed in Covington after Kentucky changed hands wouldn’t have a happy time of it. Anne supposed a lot of them would go while the going was good. The United States are welcome to them, she thought.

  She snatched a few hours’ sleep. When she came downstairs for breakfast, she got a copy of the Covington Chronicle. The banner headline summed things up:

  UNTIED STATES!

  A smaller subhead below gave the details:

  KENTUCKY, HOUSTON RETURN TO CSA!

  SEQUOYAH STAYS UNDER STARS AND STRIPES!

  After bacon and eggs and lots of coffee, Anne paid a call on the U.S. commandant in Covington. “The people have spoken, Brigadier General,” she said—and if she was gloating, she thought she had good reason to.

  A cup of coffee steamed on the fat officer’s desk. He looked to have had even less sleep than she had. “The people are a bunch of damned fools,” he said. “They elected Featherston, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t talk about your president that way,” she said.

  “Why not? I do.” The commandant swigged from the coffee cup. He got down to business: “Under the agreement, we have thirty days to withdraw our men. Yours are not to follow. Kentucky will stay demilitarized. U.S. citizens wishing to leave the state may do so until it passes under Confederate sovereignty. A lot of them, I expect, will already have made plans to do so.”

  “Collaborators and niggers,” Anne said scornfully. “You can have ’em.”

  “They’ll do all right for themselves in the United States,” the U.S. general predicted. “And I’ll give you—and your president—some free advice, too.”

  “Free advice?” Anne didn’t laugh in his face, but she came close. “I’m sure it’s worth every penny you charge for it.”

  She hoped that would make him angry. If it did, he didn’t show it. He just nodded, setting his chins in motion, and said, “Oh, no doubt. Well, I’ll give it to you anyway, mostly ’cause I know you won’t listen to it.”

  Anne could simply have turned her back and walked out the door. Instead, with ill-concealed impatience, she said, “Go ahead, then. Get it over with.”

  “Thanks a lot.” The U.S. officer wasn’t bad at sarcasm, either, even if he was built like a zeppelin. “If you people are smart, you won’t land on this state too hard. You won the plebiscite, yes. But you didn’t win it by as much as you thought you would, and you can’t tell me any different. If you come down on Kentucky with both feet, you’ll have about as much fun holding it down as we have since the last war.”

  That made more sense than Anne wished it did—enough that she decided to mention it in her report to President Featherston. She wouldn’t suggest that he follow the fat man’s advice; she knew better. But noting it as an item of intelligence wouldn’t hurt.

  She also decided she would note the way—Rowling? she had to check that—had spoken of the last war. Unless she altogether misread his tone, he was already thinking about the next one.

  As had been his habit since the days of the Mexican civil war, Jefferson Pinkard prowled the barracks in the prison camp he ran in Louisiana. Camp Dependable wouldn’t boil over while his back was turned.

  It might boil over anyway. He knew that. The black prisoners in the camp had little to lose. They’d been captured in arms against the Confederate States. Nothing good was going to happen to them. They only thing that kept them in line was the certain knowledge that they would die if they rose up against the guards. Jeff’s endless prowling was designed not least to make sure they stayed certain of that.

  Whenever he stepped into a barracks, he had a pistol in his hand and half a squad of guards with submachine guns at his back. The Negro captives jumped down from their bunks and sprang to attention as soon as he came in. They were certain of what would happen if they didn’t show him that courtesy, too.

  “You, boy!” Pinkard pointed to one of them, a big, muscular buck. “Give me your name and number and where you were captured.”

  “I’s Plutarch, suh,” the Negro replied. He rattled off the camp number, finishing, “I was cotched up in Franklin Parish, suh. Some damn nigger sell me out. I ever find out who, dat one dead coon.”

  A lot of prisoners here had similar complaints. Some Negroes didn’t want guerrilla war in their back yards. The ones who didn’t had to be careful with what they did and said, though. A lot of them had ended up gruesomely dead when the men they were trying to betray took vengeance.

  “Any complaints?” Pinkard asked.

  Plutarch nodded. “I ain’t got enough to eat, I ain’t got enough to wear, an’ I’s here. ‘Side from that, everything fine.”

  “Funny nigger,” growled one of the guards behind Pinkard. “You’ll laugh outa the other side of your face pretty damn quick, funny nigger.”

  Several of the other blacks in the barracks had smiled and nodded at what Plutarch had to say. None had been rash enough to laugh out loud. Now even the men who’d smiled tried to pretend they hadn’t. Pinkard said, “You get the same rations and same clothes as everybody else. And if you didn’t want to be here, you never should have picked up a gun.”

  “Huh!” Plutarch said. “White folks rise up against what they don’t like, they’s heroes. Black folks do the same, we’s goddamn niggers.”

  “Bet your ass you are, boy,” that guard said.

  “There’s a difference,” Pinkard said.

  Plutarch nodded. “Sure enough is. Y’all won. We lost. Ain’t no bigger difference’n dat.” That wasn’t the difference Jeff had had in mind, which didn’t mean the prisoner was wrong. Pinkard poked through the barracks. He knew how things were supposed to be, and carefully checked out everything that didn’t match the pattern. Nothing looked like the start of an escape attempt, but you couldn’t be sure without a thorough inspection.

  On to the next barracks. As before, prisoners tumbled out of their bunks and stood at stiff attention. There was one difference here, though: Willy Knight dwelt in Barracks Six. The tall, blond, former vice president stood out from the black men all around him like a snowball in a coal field.

  He was not the man he had been when Freedom Party guards brought him to Camp Dependable. He was scrawnier; camp rations weren’t enough to let anybody keep the weight he’d come in with. He was dirtier, too—water for washing was in short supply. And, in an odd way, he was tougher than he had been. That he’d been tough enough to stay alive surprised Jeff Pinkard, who wouldn’t have given him the chance of a snowball: a snowball in hell.

  Hell this might well have been. But none of the Negro inhabitants here had taken advantage of the chance to get rid of a Freedom Party big shot. That surprised Pinkard, too—it did, but then again, it didn’t. The blacks might have suspected Knight was in here as much as bait as for any other reason. Anybody who harmed him was liable to pay the price.

  They might not have been wrong, either. For the moment, Jeff’s orders were to look the other way if anything happened to Willy Knight. But one telegram could change that, and could change it days or weeks or months after something nasty happened to the ex–vice president.

  Almost as if Knight were any other prisoner, Pinkard pointed at him and snapped, “You! Give me your name and number!” He couldn’t make himself call another white boy.

  Knight repeated his name and camp number, then added, “I was captured in Richmond, Virginia, trying to save the country.”

  “I want something from you, I’ll ask for it,” Jeff said.

  The guard who’d growled at Plutarch growled at Willy Knight, too: “You really want to catch hell, just go on runnin’ your mouth.”

  Knight shut up. The first time someone had said something li
ke that to him, he’d asked what could be worse than coming to the camp to begin with. The guards had spent the next couple of weeks showing him what could be worse. Another way he was different now was that he didn’t have any front teeth. He’d learned something, but not everything, about keeping quiet.

  Pinkard didn’t ask him if he had any complaints. Even if Knight did, nobody was going to do anything about them. That being so, why waste time and breath?

  The warden did inspect Barracks Six with care unusual even for him. If some of the colored prisoners escaped, that would be a misfortune. He’d get called on the carpet. If Willy Knight escaped, that would be a catastrophe. Somebody’s head would have to roll, and he knew whose. He might end up in one of these hard, narrow bunks himself—or they might simply shoot him and get it over with. Nobody, but nobody, was going to escape from Barracks Six.

  Everything seemed shipshape. Pinkard didn’t trust the way things seemed. He had no reason not to. He just didn’t. He took out a little book and scribbled a note to himself. Half the men in here would get cleared out before the day was done, to be replaced by prisoners from other barracks. If plots were stirring, that would slow them down. People would have to figure out who could be trusted and who couldn’t. I better stick a new informer or two in here, too, Jeff thought. The less that went on without his knowing it, the better the camp ran.

  He was heading for the next barracks when a guard came up to him with a yellow envelope. “This here wire just came in, boss,” the man said, and thrust it at him.

  “What the hell?” Pinkard took the envelope, opened it, and extracted the telegram inside. “What the hell?” he said again, this time in tones of deep dismay.

  “What’s the matter?” the guard asked.

  “What’s the matter?” Jeff would echo anybody, not just himself. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter. We’re going to get a new shipment of prisoners, that’s what—a big new shipment of prisoners. Nice of ’em to let us know, wasn’t it? They’re supposed to start comin’ in this afternoon.”