The Grapple (65 page)

Lieutenant Bassler stayed quiet for so long, Armstrong wondered if he’d said something dumb. Well, too bad if he had. Bassler shouldn’t have asked him if he didn’t want to know what he thought. Then the young officer said, “You know, Grimes, I’m going to pass that up the line. We don’t think about the Negroes in the CSA as much as we should. I’m sure we’re doing some things to help them, same as the Confederates did what they could to help the Mormons in Utah.”

“Mostly the Mormons used our weapons, sir,” Armstrong said. “That way, they could get ammo from us. Sometimes they took our guns, too. But they already had a lot when we got there, yeah.”

“Uh-huh,” Bassler said. “But that’s not my point. My point is that we ought to be using the Negroes systematically, and we aren’t. Somebody with stars on his shoulder straps needs to think about that. Maybe the President does, too.”

Armstrong was convinced they wouldn’t think about it on the suggestion of a no-account noncom. Then they drove through the gap between Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, the gap U.S. forces now held. Bare-chested gun bunnies fed 105s that sent death down into Georgia. Eyeing the high ground to either side, Armstrong said, “My hat’s off to those paratroopers. They saved us a world of grief.”

“You can sing that in church, Sergeant,” Bassler said. “We got over the Tennessee with a ruse, and we took the mountains with a trick. Makes you wonder what we’ll have to do to go forward from here.”

“Well, the country looks easier, anyway,” Armstrong said. “If we start banging barrels through the gap, can those butternut bastards stop us?”

“Good question. I think we’ll find out before too long, once the logistics buildup gets done,” Bassler said. They were close enough to the front to watch incoming artillery burst less than a quarter of a mile away. Bassler tapped the driver on the shoulder. “This’ll do. We’ll hoof it from here. They’ll start aiming at the command cars if we come much closer.” Looking grateful, the driver hit the brakes.

Armstrong ended up with Cal Henderson in his new squad. He was introduced to Whitey and Woody and Alf and Rocco and Hy and Squidface and Zeb the Hat. When he said, “Let’s try not to get each other killed, all right?” they all nodded.

“You’ve been through some shit,” Squidface opined. “That’s good.”

“A little bit,” Armstrong allowed. “You guys look like you have, too.”

“Hell, we’re here,” Squidface said. He was a PFC, skinny and dark and needing a shave. He didn’t have tentacles or even particularly buggy eyes. One of these days, Armstrong figured he’d find out how the nickname happened. Till then, he didn’t need to flabble about it.

The Confederates threw a little more artillery at the U.S. positions. Nobody in Armstrong’s new squad even moved. These guys were veterans, all right; they could tell by listening when falling shells were liable to be dangerous. They watched Armstrong as the shells burst, too. They wanted to see if he got all hot and bothered. When he lit up a Duke and went on talking as if nothing were happening, they relaxed a little.

“You guys think we can break out?” he asked. He’d heard what Lieutenant Bassler had to say. These men would have to do the bleeding.
So will I,
Armstrong thought. (So would Bassler—second lieutenants were expendable, too. But Armstrong didn’t worry about him.)

They all loudly and profanely insisted they could. Armstrong figured that meant they’d get the chance to try before real long.

J
onathan Moss counted himself lucky to be alive. He didn’t think what was left of Spartacus’ band would attack another airstrip any time soon. Doing it once had cost the black guerrillas too much.

“They was layin’ for us,” Spartacus said. He, Moss, Nick Cantarella, and a dozen or so Negro fighters sat around a couple of small campfires. “Was they layin’ for anybody who come by, or did somebody rat on us?”

That was an ugly thought. A Negro would have to be crazy or desperate to betray his comrades to whites in the CSA, but it could happen. If a man knew his loved ones were in a camp, could he make a bargain with the Devil? Of course he could. Moss could find other reasons that might make a black turn traitor—simple jealousy of Spartacus came to mind—but saving kin stood highest on the list of likely ones.

“Some lyin’ nigger might be sittin’ right here next to me,” Spartacus said. “Damn cottonmouth might be gittin’ ready to bite again.”

The guerrillas stirred. One of them, a heavyset fellow called Arminius, said, “We went to the damn airstrip on account o’ these ofays. Anybody sell us out, reckon they’s the ones. Like calls to like, folks say.”

“It couldn’t very well have been us,” Moss said. “You people have kept an eye on us ever since we joined the band. You think we don’t know that? I don’t blame you for doing it, but it’s no secret.”

He talked like a lawyer: he reasoned from evidence. No surprise—he
was
a lawyer. Sometimes, though, legal tactics weren’t what the situation called for. Moving quickly but without any fuss, Nick Cantarella got to his feet. “Anybody says I kiss Jake Featherston’s ass can kiss mine.” He eyed Arminius. “Shall I drop my drawers for you?”

The black man jumped up with a roar of rage. He charged Cantarella. He was a couple of inches taller than the escaped POW, and much wider through the shoulders. He wasn’t afraid of anything—Moss had seen that plenty of times.

He swung an enormous haymaker, intending to knock Cantarella into the middle of next week. No doubt the white officer tried to infuriate him so he would fight foolishly. Cantarella got what he wanted. He grabbed Arminius’ arm, jerked, and twisted. The Negro let out a startled squawk as he flew through the air. He landed hard. Cantarella kicked him in the side.

Arminius groaned, but tried to yank Cantarella’s foot out from under him. “Naughty,” the U.S. officer said, and kicked him above his left ear. Arminius groaned and went limp. The brawl couldn’t have lasted half a minute. Cantarella looked around. “Anybody else?”

No one said anything. “Sit down,” Spartacus told him. “I don’t reckon you done nothin’. I reckon you did, you be dead no matter how fancy you fight. You gots to sleep some o’ the time.”

“Throw water on Arminius,” Cantarella said. “He’ll be fine once his headache goes away. I don’t think I broke anything—didn’t do it on purpose, anyhow.”

A bucket—
no, they call it a pail here,
Moss thought—from a nearby creek revived Arminius. He didn’t remember the fight or what led up to it. He did say, “My head bangin’ like a big ol’ drum.”

“I bet it is,” Spartacus said. He eyed Cantarella. “Where you learn dat?”

“Here and there,” Cantarella answered.

“You learn me how to do it?”

“Probably,” the U.S. officer said. “Most of the time, it’s no damn good. Somebody got a gun, he’ll punch your ticket for you before you get close enough to throw him through a wall.”

“Learn me anyways,” Spartacus said. “Mebbe I got to impress some niggers, git ’em to jine up with me. I do dat fancy shit, dey reckon I’s tough enough to suit.” He paused. His mouth twisted. “Hope I find me some niggers to impress. Ain’t so many left no more, ’cept for the ones already totin’ guns.”

He was right about that. Ten years earlier, the countryside hereabouts would have been full of sharecropper villages, full of blacks. Mechanization and deportation had taken care of that. Not many Negroes remained out here, and fewer all the time. Mexican soldiers and Freedom Party stalwarts and guards from the towns took ever more to train stations. Off they went to one camp or another. And it grew clearer and clearer that the camps didn’t house them, or not for long. The camps just killed them, as fast as they could.

“Assembly line for murder,” Jonathan Moss murmured.

“What you say?” Spartacus asked.

“Nothing. Woolgathering, that’s all.” Moss was glad the guerrilla chief hadn’t understood him.

Nick Cantarella had. “Army’s coming,” he said. “Won’t be too fucking long, either. Chattanooga’s fallen. Even the Confederate propaganda mill can’t spew lies about that any more. If our guys aren’t in Georgia already, they will be pretty damn quick. Territory north of Atlanta’s rough, but it’s not
that
rough. I don’t think Featherston’s fuckers can stop ’em once they get rolling again.”

“We still be breathin’ when they gits here?” Spartacus asked. “Can’t hardly think about hittin’ towns no mo’. Got to stay alive first.”

“What happen to me?” Arminius asked, holding his head as if afraid it might fall off any minute now. Considering what Cantarella did to it, it might, too. Moss wouldn’t have wanted a well-aimed shoe clomping into the side of
his
noggin.

“You done did somethin’ dumb, dat’s what,” Spartacus answered, and then came back to the problem at hand: “Wanna
hit
the damn ofays. Don’t wanna jus’ lurk out here like swamp niggers in slavery days.”

“You can get dynamite, right?” Cantarella asked. Spartacus nodded. Cantarella went on, “And you can get alarm clocks, too, yeah?”

“Reckon so,” Spartacus said. “What you thinkin’ ’bout? People bombs is too risky, even if we finds folks willin’ to do it. These days, ofays see a nigger they don’t know, they jus’ start shootin’. Can’t get close enough to blow up a lot of ’em.”

“Auto bombs,” Cantarella said. “Set the timer for sunup, but drive in during the middle of the night, park the son of a bitch, and then get out if you can. All the shrapnel flying, auto bombs make a mess of things even if they don’t have a big crowd around ’em.”

Spartacus sighed. “Yeah, we do dat. Dey don’t patrol as good as dey oughta. But it ain’t the same, you hear what I say?”

“We hear,” Moss said. He didn’t want to make himself too prominent right now. The guerrillas had attacked the airstrip on his account. He would have enjoyed strafing Confederates in Georgia if he’d stolen an airplane. He would have enjoyed flying off to U.S.-held territory even more. Instead…Instead, the band wrecked itself. That was all there was to it. Spartacus and the surviving Negroes—fewer than half those who’d gone to the airport—didn’t want to admit that, even to themselves, for which he couldn’t blame them. But it was true.

They’d fought the Mexicans on even terms before the debacle. Now they ran from them. They had to. They would get chewed to bits if they didn’t.

A buzz in the air overhead made everybody look up nervously. “Reckon the woods hides our fires good enough?” Spartacus said.

“We’ll find out,” Nick Cantarella answered.

That wasn’t what Moss wanted to hear. And, a minute or so later, he wanted even less to hear the screech of falling bombs. They wouldn’t be big ones—ten-pounders, say, thrown out of the airplane by hand the way bombardiers did it back in the early days of the Great War. But when he had no trench or foxhole to jump into, all he could do was flatten out on the ground and hope for the best.

The Confederate pilot wouldn’t be aiming any fancy bombsight, not in an obsolete airplane like the one he was flying. He’d just fling the bombs out and hope for the best. Not much chance of doing damage that way, not unless he got lucky. But when the first bomb knocked down a tree less than a hundred yards from the fires, Moss wasn’t the only one who cried out in fear.

More bombs rained down, some bursting farther away, others closer. Fragments snarled past. One man’s cries went from fear to pain. Moss got up and bandaged the gash in the Negro’s leg. He didn’t have needle and thread, but used a couple of safety pins to help close the wound.

“Thank you kindly, suh,” the guerrilla said, and then, “Hurts like a motherfucker.”

“I’m sorry—I don’t have any morphine,” Moss said.

“Didn’t reckon you did,” the black man answered. “Somebody ’round here will, mebbe. When the bombs let up, he get up off his ass an’ stick me. You got balls, ofay, movin’ while they’s comin’ down.”

“Thanks.” Moss didn’t think the risk was especially large, which was why he’d done it. He didn’t say that, though. Being old and white isolated him from Spartacus’ band. No one till Arminius had blamed him for the fiasco at the airstrip, but it stuck in his mind—and, no doubt, in the guerrillas’ minds, too. Any way he could find to win back respect, he gladly accepted.

After a few minutes, the little puddle-jumper of an airplane buzzed and farted away. The Negro Moss had bandaged was the only man hurt. Spartacus said, “We gots to git outa here. That pilot, he gonna tell the ofays an’ the greasers where we at. They come after us in the mornin’.”

“We ought to pull out, yeah,” Nick Cantarella said. “But we should set up an ambush, blast the crap out of those bastards when they poke their noses where they don’t belong.”

Spartacus thought about it. At last, reluctantly, he shook his head. “Can’t afford to lose nobody now. Can’t afford to lose no machine gun, neither.”

Cantarella looked as if he wanted to argue. After a moment, he shrugged instead. “You’re the boss. Me, I’m just a staff officer.”

“Nah. Them fuckers never come up where they kin hear the guns,” Spartacus said. Moss and Cantarella both guffawed. Most of the guerrillas looked blank. Sure as hell, Spartacus had seen staff officers in action—or in inaction—when he wore butternut during the last war. The men he led weren’t old enough to have fought for the CSA the last time around.

If they’d had the chance, if they’d been treated decently, they might have done it this time. How many divisions could the Confederates have squeezed from their colored population? Enough to give the USA fits; Moss was sure of that. But the Freedom Party didn’t want Negroes on its side. It wanted them gone, and it didn’t care what that did to the country.

Moss shook his head. He didn’t have it quite right. The Freedom Party thought getting rid of Negroes was more important than using them. That struck Moss as insane, but it made whites in the CSA happy. Jake Featherston wouldn’t have got elected if it didn’t; it wasn’t as if he ever made any secret about what he had in mind.

The guerrillas had to rig a litter of branches and a blanket to take the wounded man along—he couldn’t walk. He offered to stay behind and shoot as many soldiers and stalwarts as he could, but Spartacus wouldn’t let him. “Can’t do enough with no rifle, and we ain’t leavin’ no machine gun here,” he said. They got the Negro—his name was Theophrastus—onto the litter and hauled him away.