Harry Turtledove: In At the Death

C assius began to think he might live through the war. Black guerrillas who took up arms against the CSA and the Freedom Party always hoped to live, of course. But hoping and believing were two different things. Sooner or later, he'd figured, Gracchus' band would run out of luck. Then he'd either die on the spot or go to a camp the way his mother and father and sister had. Quick or slow, it would be over.

Now…Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't. He'd already watched U.S. fighter-bombers stoop on a truck convoy the Negroes stalled with a land mine planted in a pothole. What followed wasn't pretty, which didn't mean he didn't like it. Oh, no-it meant nothing of the sort.

And the rumble and growl of artillery in the northwest wasn't distant or on the edge of hearing any more. Now it grew into an unending roar, louder by the day and as impossible to ignore as a toothache. Whenever the guerrillas camped for the night, the same phrase was on their lips: "Damnyankees comin' soon."

They wanted the U.S. soldiers to get there soon. They would likely die if the U.S. soldiers didn't. They called them damnyankees anyhow. There as in so many other things, they imitated Confederate whites. They found yellow women prettier than brown ones and much prettier than black ones. They liked straight hair better than kinky, sharp noses better than flat. In all of that, they were typical of the Confederacy's Negroes.

The main way they weren't typical was that they were still alive.

Not far away, trucks rattled through the darkness, bringing C.S. troops forward to try to stem the U.S. tide. The guerrillas let most convoys go. They couldn't afford to get into many real fights with real soldiers. Gracchus had enough trouble scraping up new recruits as things were. Except for the scattered, harried rebel bands, not many Negroes were left in the Georgia countryside.

"Suppose the damnyankees come," Cassius said, spooning up beans from a ration a Mexican soldier would never open now. "Suppose they come, an' suppose they kill the Confederate sojers an' the ofays who put on white shirts and yell, 'Freedom!' all the goddamn time."

Gracchus was gnawing on a drumstick from a chicken liberated from a white man's coop. "Then we wins," he said, swallowing. "Then we starts puttin' our lives back the way they was 'fo' all this shit happen."

In a way, that sounded wonderful. In another way…"How? How we do dat, boss?" Cassius asked. "All the Yankee sojers in the world ain't gonna give me my ma an' pa an' sister back again. They ain't gonna bring back all the niggers the ofays done killed. We is like ghosts of the folks what used to be here but ain't no more."

Gracchus scowled as he threw the leg bone aside. "We ain't ghosts," he said. "The ones who got killed, they's ghosts. I bet this whole country have more hants'n you kin shake a stick at, this war finally done."

Cassius didn't exactly believe in hants. He didn't exactly not believe in them, either. He'd never seen one, but so many people were sure they had, he had trouble thinking they were all crazy or lying. He did say, "Hants ain't slowed down the ofays none."

"Might be even worse without 'em," another Negro said.

"How?" Cassius asked, and nobody seemed to want to answer that.

He didn't want to take the argument with Gracchus any further. He didn't want the guerrilla chieftain to think he was after that spot himself. As far as Cassius was concerned, Gracchus was welcome to it.

But, even if he kept quiet, he still thought he was right. Blacks in the CSA had had a vibrant life of their own, much of it lived right under the white majority's noses. With so many Negroes dead, how would the survivors ever start that again? How could they even live alongside the whites who hadn't tried to stop Freedom Party goons from stuffing them into trains for one-way journeys to camps, who'd often cheered to see them disappear? What could they be but a sad reminder of something that had once been alive but was no more? And if that wasn't a ghost, what was it?

The next morning, a scout came back in high excitement. "The Mexicans, they's pullin' out!" he said.

"They ain't goin' up to the front to fight?" Gracchus asked. "You sure?"

"Sure as I's standin' here," the scout replied. "They's marchin' south."

"They ain't here to fight the damnyankees," Cassius said. "They is here to keep us in line."

Francisco Josй's men were less enthusiastic about going after Negroes than white Confederates were. But their being here let the Confederacy put more men in the field against the United States. They did inhibit the rebel bands…some.

"If they's buggin' out fo' true, they must reckon the Confederate Army can't hold the Yankees back no mo'." Gracchus' voice rose with excitement. "Do Jesus, I hope they's right!"

The black guerrillas got another surprise the next day. A Confederate captain approached a scout with a flag of truce. The scout blindfolded him and brought him into camp. No one offered to take the blindfold off once he got there, either.

That didn't seem to faze him. "I have a proposition for you people," he said.

"Go on. Say your say. Tell your lies," Gracchus answered.

"No lies. What I ask is very simple: leave us alone while we fight the USA," the C.S. officer said. "You stay quiet, we won't come after you. We'll even give you rations so you don't have to plunder the countryside."

"Put rat poison in 'em first, I reckon," Gracchus said.

"If you agree, I will come back as a hostage and food taster," the captain said. "Don't jog our elbow. That's all we want. You tell us no, you'll get the stick instead of the carrot. I promise you that."

"Shoulda started leavin' us alone a hell of a long time ago," Cassius said.

Shrugging, the soldier said, "Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. Too late to worry about it now, though. It's water under the bridge."

"Easy fo' you to say, ofay." Some of Gracchus' rage and hatred came out. "You ain't got no dead kinfolks."

"Hell I don't," the captain said, and Cassius realized he hated them at least as much as they hated him. "Damnyankee bombs blew up my mother and father and sister. Another sister'll limp forever on account of 'em. And you're helping the USA. Far as I'm concerned, we ought to feed you rat poison, and better than you deserve. But I don't give those orders. I just follow them."

"You got nerve." Gracchus spoke now with a certain reluctant admiration.

"I told you-I've got orders," the Confederate said. "So what'll it be? Will you back off and let us fight the United States, or do we come in here and clean out all of you raggedy-ass coons?"

Gracchus didn't answer right away. He wasn't an officer with a chain of command behind him and the automatic authority to bind and to loose. He couldn't order his fighters to obey a truce if they didn't want to. Cassius knew he didn't. He spoke to the captain: "You coulda done that, reckon you would've a long time ago."

"You don't get it, boy," the white said, and never knew how close he came to dying on the spot. He continued, "Before, you were just a rear-area nuisance. But if you think we'll let you fuck with us when the front's so close, you better think again."

Maybe he had a point of sorts. But even if he did…"What happens when the Yankees push you outa here?" Cassius ground out. "You reckon we ain't got us a lot o' bills to pay? You reckon we ain't gonna pay 'em soon as we git the chance?"

That got home. The C.S. captain bit his lip. "All the more reason for us to get rid of you now," he said.

"You kin try." Gracchus seemed to have made up his mind. "Yeah, you kin try, but I don't reckon you kin do it. When the war started, you coulda got what you wanted from us easy. All you had to do was leave us alone. Well, you didn't do nothin' like that. You know what you done. Like my friend here say"-he named no names-"we owes you too much to set it down. We takes you back to your own folks now. Ain't got nothin' left to say to each other no more."