Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“Beats me.” Moss had trouble believing the atrocity stories he’d heard. Seeing that landscape without people, though, he had less trouble than before.

He and Nick went on up a poorly paved road till nightfall. Then they lay down by the roadside. All they had to cover themselves with were cotton plants. That would help give them away, too. But it got chilly after the sun went down. The plants weren’t good blankets, but they were better than nothing. Moss wasn’t sure he could fall asleep on bare ground. Five minutes later, he was snoring.

Morning twilight turned the eastern sky gray when he woke. But the growing light wasn’t what roused him. Those voices weren’t just part of his dreams. He saw three men silhouetted against the sky. They all carried rifles.

He nudged Nick, who’d stayed asleep. “Wake up!” he hissed. “We’re caught!”

One of the armed men came up to them. In a low voice, he asked, “You some o’ the Yankees what got outa Andersonville?”

“That’s right.” Suddenly hope flared in Moss. “Are you… fighting against the Confederate government?”

“Bet your ass, ofay,” the rifle-toting Negro answered. “How you like to he’p us?”

Moss looked toward Nick Cantarella. Cantarella was looking back at him. Moss didn’t think it was the sort of invitation they could refuse, not if they wanted to keep breathing. He got to his feet, ignoring creaks and crunches. “I think we just joined the underground,” he said. Nick Cantarella nodded.

Scipio didn’t think he’d ever heard “Auld Lang Syne” sung when it wasn’t New Year’s Eve. He didn’t think he’d ever heard it sung in such a variety of accents, either-none of them the least bit Scots.

Jerry Dover grinned at the cooks and waiters and busboys and dishwashers he’d bossed for so long. “I’d like to tell y’all one thing,” he said. They waited expectantly. His grin got wider. “Fuck you, you sons of bitches!”

They laughed like loons. Scipio laughed as loud as anybody, but his mirth had a bitter edge. With Jerry Dover gone, all the Negroes who worked for the Huntsman’s Lodge were liable to get fucked. Who could say what the new manager would be like? Would he take care of his people the way Dover had? Scipio supposed it wasn’t impossible. He also knew only too well it wasn’t likely.

“You go kill them damnyankees, Mistuh Dover! Shoot ’em down like the yellow dogs they is!” a cook shouted. He swigged from a bottle of champagne. Jerry Dover’s sendoff was going to put a dent in the restaurant’s liquor stock.

“If I have to pick up a gun, this country’s in deeper shit than anybody ever figured,” Dover said, and got another laugh. “It’s the Quartermaster Corps for me.”

That actually made good sense. The Confederate Army was doing it anyway. Jerry Dover knew everything there was to know about feeding people. Feeding them in the Army was different from doing it in a restaurant, but not all that different. He’d help the CSA more doing that than he would in the infantry, and somebody must have realized as much.

Scipio had an almost-empty glass in his hand. A moment later, as if by magic, it wasn’t empty anymore. He sipped. He had had bourbon in there. This was Scotch. He’d feel like hell in the morning. Right now, morning felt a million miles away.

“T’ank you, Senor Dover. You give us work.” That was Jose, one of the dishwashers from the Empire of Mexico. He’d taken a job from a black man. Scipio wanted to hate him because of that-wanted to and found he couldn’t. Jose was only trying to make a living for himself, and he worked like a man with a gun to his head. How could you hate somebody like that?

“For he’s a jolly good fellow!” The staff at the Huntsman’s Lodge started singing again, louder and more raucously than ever. In some ways, blacks and whites in the CSA understood one another and got along with one another pretty well… or they would have, if the Freedom Party hadn’t got in the way.

Jerry Dover hoisted his own glass. He’d been drinking as hard as his help. “You bastards are good,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t reckon y’all know how good you are. I’m gonna have to whip some new folks into shape, and I don’t figure they’ll be a patch on you.”

“Take us with you!” somebody behind Scipio shouted. In an instant, everyone was yelling it: “Take us with you! Take us with you!”

“Hell, I would if I could,” Dover said. “I don’t think that’ll happen, though.”

The clamor went on all the same. Scipio understood why: if these black men were busy cooking for soldiers and serving them, they’d be less likely to go to a camp. Anything-anything at all-seemed better than going to a camp.

“I don’t want anybody to get in trouble for being out too late,” Dover said after a while. The response to that was angry and profane. This was a night of license, and would have been even if not fueled by booze. Whatever the restaurant staff did short of burning the place down, he would let them get away with it.

Aurelius tapped Scipio on the arm. “How you like bein’ an old man at a young men’s fling?” the other veteran waiter asked.

“Long as I’s here,” Scipio answered. “Long as I’s anywhere.”

“Amen,” Aurelius said.

Scipio beckoned him off to one side. Once the two old men had put a little distance between themselves and the rest of the staff, Scipio said, “Tell you what I was afeared of. I was afeared of a people bomb. I done been through two auto bombs. Don’t reckon I’d las’ if somethin’ else blow up around me.”

“Auto bombs is nasty business,” Aurelius said. “People bombs… People bombs is worse.” He shuddered. “How you walk in somewhere, knowin’ you got ’splosives strapped on you? All you got to do is click the switch or whatever the hell-and then you is splattered all over the walls.”

“Way things is nowadays, lotta niggers reckon they gots nothin’ to lose,” Scipio said.

Aurelius nodded. “I know that. I don’t like it. If it ain’t a judgment on the Confederate States of America, I dunno what would be. But still, no matter how bad things is, is they ever bad enough to blow your ownself up?”

“Dat nigger in Jackson done thought so,” Scipio said. “Damn nigger was a waiter, too. My tips ain’t been the same since he done it.”

“Your tips ain’t all that’s hurtin’,” Aurelius reminded him. “They put all the niggers in Jackson on trains an’ ship ’em off to camps. All of ’em, jus’ like that.” He snapped his fingers. “An’ the Freedom Party don’t try to hide it or nothin’. Hell, the Freedom Party braggin’ to beat the band.”

“Not too long after de Great War end, I’s in de park takin’ de air, an’ who should come make a speech but Jake Featherston?” Scipio shuddered at the memory, even if it was almost a quarter of a century old. “Everybody reckon he nothin’ but a crazy man. I reckon de same thing back then. But he scare de piss outa me even so.”

Aurelius looked around to see if anyone was listening to them. Once he was satisfied, he said, “That Featherston, he ain’t nothin’ but a crazy man.”

“No.” Regretfully, Scipio shook his head. “He a crazy man, sho’, but he ain’t nothin’ but a crazy man. You hear what I’s sayin’? Nobody who’s nothin’ but a crazy man kin do as much harm as Jake Featherston.”

Aurelius considered that. He also considered his glass, which was empty. When he too shook his head, Scipio wasn’t sure whether he mourned the empty glass or the Freedom Party’s devastation. Then he said, “Well, you is right, an’ I wish you wasn’t.” He could do something about getting more whiskey. Nobody on the North American continent had had much luck doing anything about Jake Featherston.