Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

By the way he said it, he might have meant since the War of Secession, or possibly since the War of the Roses. Chester laughed and shook his head. “Nope. I got out in 1917”-undoubtedly before the private was born-“and went on with my life.”

“Oh.” The youngster digested that, which had to be easier than digesting the Swiss steak. He risked another question: “How come you came back? They conscripted me. I had to go. But you must’ve had it made.”

“Well, not quite,” Martin said. “I was doing all right, but I wasn’t rich or anything. But I didn’t want to see Jake Featherston kicking us in the slats, and so here I am.”

“Uh-huh.” The private seemed surprised anybody who didn’t have to would put on the uniform. Maybe he was what was wrong with the USA, part of the reason the country was having so much trouble with the CSA. On the other hand, maybe he just had a good deal of common sense.

Chester wondered how the Chicago-bound train would go to avoid both the Mormon uprising and the chance of bumping into Confederate raiders. It headed east through Kingman and Flagstaff, New Mexico, and on to Santa Fe, where it turned north for a run through the mountains to Denver. It got hung up there for two days, though, at a little Colorado town called Salida. Somebody said Salida meant exit in Spanish, but there was no exit from the place till damaged track up ahead was repaired. Avalanche? Sabotage? No one seemed to want to say, which left Chester suspecting the worst.

He dug a greatcoat out of his duffel and used it to stay warm. Sleeping in his seat was anything but delightful. Everybody grumbled. Nobody could do anything but grumble. Misery might not have loved company, but had a lot of it.

Once they got going again, they made pretty good time till they came to Chicago. The Confederates had done what they could to bomb the railroad yards. Given the accuracy of night bombing, that meant the whole city had caught hell. But the crawl at which the train proceeded showed the enemy had hurt the tracks and the stations to which they led.

Following signs that said MILITARY PASSENGERS for the transfer to Milwaukee, Chester stood in line for twenty minutes and then presented his voucher to a bored-looking corporal who eyed it and said, “You’re late.”

“My whole goddamn train is late. So sue me,” Chester said. The corporal looked up, wondering who could be so cavalier about this business. Seeing a man with a lot more stripes than he owned instead of a scared young private, he kept his mouth shut. Chester went on, “I knew I was late before I got here. Now I want to know how to get where I’m going.”

“I’ll fix it, Sergeant,” the corporal promised, and he did. If he took it out on some luckless kid later on, Chester didn’t find out about that.

From Chicago to Milwaukee was a short hop, like the one from Toledo to Cleveland. Naturally, whatever eastbound transport they’d planned from Milwaukee was also obsolete. Another noncom did some more fixing. An hour and a half later, Martin found himself taking off in a twenty-two-seat Boeing transport, bound for Buffalo: the first airplane ride of his life.

He didn’t like it. It was bumpy-worse than bumpy, in fact. Several people were airsick, and not all of them got all of it in their sacks. There was a snowstorm over Buffalo. The pilot talked about going on to Syracuse or Rochester. He also talked about how much-or rather, how little-fuel he had. The kid next to Chester worked his rosary beads hard.

They did put down in Buffalo, snowstorm or not. The transport almost skidded off the end of the runway, but it didn’t quite. The rosary beads got another workout during and after that. “Give ’em some for me, too,” Chester said when the airplane finally decided it did intend to stop. The only thing that could have made the landing more fun would have been Hound Dogs shooting up the transport while it came in.

He wondered if the Army would try to fly him down to Virginia. If they did, he might have found out more about Confederate fighters than he ever wanted to know. But he got on another train again instead. And he got delayed again, twice: once from bombed-out rails and once from what they actually admitted was sabotage.

Somebody in the car said, “Christ, I hope we’re doing the same thing to the Confederates.”

“If we weren’t, we would’ve lost the goddamn war by now, I expect,” somebody else replied. Chester suspected that was true. He also suspected the United States were using Negro rebels to do a lot of their dirty work down there. He knew they’d done that in the last war; he’d led a Negro Red through U.S. lines to get whatever he needed in the way of arms and ammunition. Blacks now had even less reason to love the CSA than they’d had then.

“You’re late,” a sergeant growled at him when he finally got where he was going.

“That’s right,” Chester said. “I’m damn lucky I’m here at all.” The other sergeant stared at him. He stared back. He’d had three years of guff the last war. Enough, by God, was enough.

Cincinnatus Driver sat in the Brass Monkey soaking up a bottle of beer. The Brass Monkey wasn’t the best saloon in Covington, Kentucky. It wasn’t even the best saloon in the colored part of Covington. But it was the closest one to the house where he lived with his father and his senile mother. He walked with a cane and had a permanent limp. Close counted.

A couple of old black men sat in a corner playing checkers. They were regulars, and then some. As far as Cincinnatus could tell, they damn near- damn near-lived at the Brass Monkey. They’d nurse a beer all day long as they shoved black and red wooden disks back and forth. Every so often, they would stick their heads up and join in some conversation or other. More often, though, they stayed in their own little world. Maybe they were smart. The one outside looked none too appetizing to any Negro in the Confederate States of America.

Talk in the saloon reflected that. A middle-aged man named Diogenes blew cigarette smoke up at the ceiling, smiled, and said, “Shoulda got outa here when the gettin’ was good. Too damn late now.”

“Do Jesus, yes!” another man said, and knocked back his shot. He set a quarter on the bar for another one. “We is nothin’ but the remnants-the stupid remnants, I should oughta say. Remnants.” He repeated the fancy word with an odd, somber relish.

He wasn’t wrong. After Kentucky voted to return to the CSA in early 1941, a lot of blacks voted with their feet, heading across the Ohio to states that remained in the USA. Cincinnatus had intended to do that with his father and mother. He’d been sure ahead of time how the plebiscite would go. If he hadn’t stepped in front of a car searching for his mother after she wandered off…

Diogenes savagely stubbed out his cigarette. “God damn Al Smith to hell and gone. Reckon he fryin’ down there now, lousy, stinkin’ son of a bitch.”

Several men nodded, Cincinnatus among them. Al Smith hadn’t had to give Jake Featherston that plebiscite. He hadn’t had to, but he’d done it. Cincinnatus wasn’t sorry he was dead, not even a little bit.

The bartender ran a rag over the smooth top of the bar. The rag was none too clean, but neither was the bar. Cincinnatus couldn’t tell what, if anything, went on behind that expressionless face. Nodding while somebody else cursed Al Smith had probably been safe enough. He wouldn’t have cursed Smith himself, not where people he didn’t know could hear. Even if everybody here was black, that was asking for trouble. Anybody-anybody at all-could be an agent or a provocateur.

And sometimes trouble came without asking. The doors to the Brass Monkey flew open. In stormed half a dozen Freedom Party guards, all in what looked like C.S. Army uniforms, but in gray cloth rather than butternut. They all had submachine guns and mean looks on their faces. When the one with a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve said, “Don’t nobody move!” the saloon suddenly became a still life.