Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“Who, me?” Cincinnatus was innocence personified-not easy for a black man on the wrong side of fifty with a ruined leg. But he’d been only partly malicious. “What do you hear from him?” he asked again.

Lucullus didn’t bother pretending he hadn’t had anything to do with the white man with the mahogany eyes of a hunting hound. “Says he owes you one on account of you done that truck for him.”

The truck had held mines that went into the Licking River. At least one of them had blown a Confederate gunboat sky-high. The news should have gladdened Cincinnatus’ heart. And so it did, in fact. All the same, he said, “Reckon I owe Luther Bliss more’n one.”

“Mebbe.” Lucullus calmly filched one of the ribs off Cincinnatus’ plate and took a bite out of it. Fiery barbecue sauce ran down his chin-an occupational hazard. “How come you didn’t spill your guts to the Confederates when they done grabbed you, you feel that way?”

Cincinnatus couldn’t squawk at Lucullus’ scrounging, not after all the free food the other man let him have. As for the other… “Well, I didn’t know where the bastard was at, or I might have.”

“Better be more to it than that,” Lucullus said severely.

There was, no matter how little Cincinnatus wanted to admit it. Scowling, he said, “Don’t reckon I’d tell the Confederates where a dog was at, let alone a son of a bitch like that one.”

Laughing, Lucullus said, “That’s better.” He lit a cigarette.

“Gimme one o’ them things,” Cincinnatus said. Lucullus did, and leaned across the table so Cincinnatus could take a light from his. After a long, satisfying drag, Cincinnatus added, “You don’t know you’re playin’ with a rattlesnake there, on account of I ain’t told you.”

“He is one, sure enough.” Lucullus sounded more pleased than otherwise. He explained why: “Dat man be a serpent, sure enough, but he be our serpent. He don’t bite niggers. He bites Confederates, an’ they shrivels up an’ dies.”

That wasn’t quite literally true, but it made a telling metaphor. Cincinnatus wanted no part of it, or of Luther Bliss. “He done bit me,” he said angrily.

“Well, but he reckon mebbe you got somethin’ to do with them Confederate diehards back then.” Lucullus cocked his head to one side and studied Cincinnatus. “Plenty other folks reckon the same thing. My pa, he was one of ’em.”

And Cincinnatus had had something to do with them, not that he intended to admit it now. “That man steal two years outa my life,” he growled. “You reckon I gonna trust him far as I can throw him after that?”

“Trust him to give the Freedom Party a boot in the balls,” Lucullus said. “He do dat every chance he git.”

Before Cincinnatus could answer, a gray-haired, stooped, weary-looking black man came into the barbecue place. One of the small hells of Cincinnatus’ injuries was that he couldn’t jump to his feet. He had to make do with waving. “Pa! I’m over here! What is it?”

But he knew what it was, what it had to be. Seneca Driver didn’t only look weary. He looked as if he’d just staggered out of a traffic accident. “She gone, son,” he said as Cincinnatus did fight his way upright. “Your mama gone.” Tears ran unnoticed down his face.

Lucullus had risen, too. He set a hand on Cincinnatus’ shoulder. “Sorry to hear the news,” he said in a low voice. “Why don’t you set your pa down, he tell you what happened.”

Numbly, Cincinnatus obeyed. As numbly, his father accepted the cup of coffee Aspasia brought him. His hands added cream and sugar. Cincinnatus didn’t think he knew they were doing it. He said, “She done laid down for her nap-”

“I know,” Cincinnatus broke in, wanting to say something. “She was asleep when I went out.”

“Uh-huh.” His father nodded. He sipped from the coffee, then stared at it in surprise, as if wondering how it had got there. “Sometimes I’m glad when she go to sleep, on account of I don’t got to worry none fo’ the nex’ little while.”

“I understand that,” Cincinnatus said. “Feel the same way my ownself.”

“But she don’t usually sleep this long,” Seneca said. “I go in to see how she is, an’-” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think nothin’ special of it, on account of she makin’ messes a while now.”

“Yeah.” Cincinnatus looked down at the gnawed ribs on the plate in front of him. His mother had cleaned him when he was a baby. He’d found cleaning her one of the cruelest parts of her slide into senility.

“I put my hand on her shoulder, an’ she gettin’ cold,” his father said. “Jus’ like somebody blowed out a candle. She go easy. I bless the good Lord fo’ dat. Pray to Jesus I go so easy when my time come.”

Cincinnatus made himself nod. Grief and relief warred inside him, along with shame that he should feel relief. “It’s over now,” he said, and choked on his own tears.

Aspasia brought Seneca a plate of ribs. “Why, thank you, child,” he said in mild surprise. “You didn’t have to do nothin’ like that.”

“On the house,” she said softly. “You need anything else, you jus’ sing out, you hear?” She hurried away.

As automatically as he’d fixed the coffee to suit him, Seneca started to eat. He said, “What am I gonna do without your mother?”

“Got to let the undertaker know,” Cincinnatus said.

“I do dat. ” His father sounded impatient, almost irritable. “Yeah, I do dat. But so what? Your mama an’ me, we been together close to sixty years. Now she ain’t there no more.” He waved before Cincinnatus could speak, so Cincinnatus didn’t. “I know she ain’t hardly been here this las’ couple years, but it ain’t the same. It just ain’t.” He started crying again, as unknowingly as he had before.

“Maybe we get you up into Iowa,” Cincinnatus said. “Start everything all over up there. You got great-grandchildren you never seen.”

“I don’t believe no ofays. I especially don’t believe no Confederate ofay po liceman,” Seneca Driver replied with a shrug.

“Even if he lied, maybe we get there on our own.” Cincinnatus knew it would be easier-not easy, but easier-with his mother gone. He didn’t say that; even thinking it gave his relief and shame fresh ammunition.

“We see.” His father sounded altogether indifferent. “Got other things to fret about right now.”

With Cincinnatus at his side, he arranged them. The funeral was four days later, on a bright spring day. Cincinnatus wore a suit he’d brought down from Des Moines. It wasn’t funereally dark, but it was the only one he had. None of the neighbors and friends who’d come presumed to say anything about it.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the preacher intoned. “God bless and keep Livia Driver, who is free of the evils of this world and free to enjoy a kinder one beyond. We pray for her in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

“Amen,” Cincinnatus echoed. Preachers always said such things. He knew that. But for a Negro in the CSA, the evils of this world were altogether too real.

Part of Clarence Potter wished he hadn’t gone to school in the USA. It wasn’t that he begrudged the education; he didn’t. Yale was a first-rate school. Back before the Great War, quite a few Confederates and Yankees had studied in each other’s homelands. Some people had thought that would bring the CSA and USA closer together. It hadn’t. It never would. They were as different as chalk and Friday.

So it seemed to a patriot from either one, anyhow. Potter, despite his own differences with the government he served, certainly qualified. But not even the most ardent patriot from either country could deny that they were similar in some important ways, too, language high on the list.