Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

Whoever’d named the roads in Snyder had no imagination at all. The ones that ran east-west were numbered streets. The ones that ran north-south were avenues, identified by letter. He pulled up in front of a house on Thirty-first Street near Avenue Q, in the southern part of town. Two boys were wrestling on the threadbare lawn in front of the house. They broke off when he got out of the motorcar.

“Papa Jeff!” they yelled. “It’s Papa Jeff!” They ran up to him and tried out a couple of tackles that would have drawn flags on any football field in the CSA or USA. Fortunately, they were still too little to flatten him.

He ruffled their hair. He liked Chick Blades’ sons. He liked Chick Blades’ widow even more. “Easy, there,” he told the kids, trying to pry them loose from his legs without damaging them. It wasn’t easy; they clung like limpets. “Is your mama home?” he asked them.

That did the trick better than any wrestling hold. “She sure is,” they said together, and dashed toward the house yelling, “Ma! Ma! Papa Jeff’s here!” If the racket wasn’t enough to wake the dead, it would have made them turn over in their graves a couple of times.

Edith Blades came out on the front porch. She was a nice-looking blond woman in her early thirties. Each time Jeff saw her, she seemed a little less ravaged by her husband’s suicide. Time did heal wounds. Jeff had got over the disastrous end of his first marriage to the point where he was game to try it again. And so was Edith, though she wouldn’t tie the knot till after the first anniversary of Chick Blades’ death. They were getting there.

“Hello, Jeff. Good to see you,” she said as he walked up to the porch. “How are things?”

“Things are…” He paused. “Well, they could be better.”

“Come in and tell me about it,” she said, and then, “Boys, go on and play. Papa Jeff will be with you in a little bit.”

They made disappointed noises, but they didn’t argue too much. They were good boys, well-behaved boys. She’d done a fine job with them, before Chick died and afterwards. Jeff admired that. He also admired the way she listened to him. He’d never known that with another woman-certainly not with his first wife. Animal heat had held him and Emily together-and then broken them apart.

“Set yourself down,” Edith said when she and Jeff went back into the living room.

“In a second.” He kissed her. She let him do that. In fact, she responded eagerly. Whenever he tried for more than a kiss, though, she told him they had to wait. That didn’t make him angry. He thought the more of her for being able to say no. Emily hadn’t, with him or with his best friend. But he didn’t want to remember Emily. “How you doin’ here?” he asked. “You got everything you need?”

“Sure do,” Edith answered. “And I’m not sorry to be out of Alexandria, out of that house, and there’s the Lord’s truth.”

“I do believe it.” Jeff wouldn’t have wanted to live in a house where somebody’d committed suicide. Actually, Chick had done it in his auto, but still… “What do you think of Texas?”

“There’s so much of it, and it’s so big and flat,” Edith answered. “Seemed like we were on the train forever, and that was just getting most of the way across one state. People act nice enough.” She held up a hand. “But tell me what’s gone wrong at the camp.”

Jeff did. The only thing he didn’t tell her was that Chick’s suicide with auto exhaust had given him the idea for the trucks that used their fumes to kill off Negroes. He would never say a word about that, not even if he was on fire. There was such a thing as talking too damn much.

When he finished, Edith was suitably indignant for him. “They’ve got their nerve,” she said. “After everything you’ve done cleaning up the colored problem for them, then they expect more ? They should get down on their knees and thank God they’ve got a good man like you, Jeff.”

“Ha! Those… people in Richmond don’t notice anybody but their own selves,” Jeff said. Only belatedly, after venting his spleen, did he notice the size of the compliment she’d paid him. “Thank you, darlin’. You say sweet things.”

“You’re my sweetheart,” Edith said, her voice dead serious. “If I don’t stick up for you, who’s going to?”

Instead of answering with words, he kissed her again. She pressed herself against him. But when, ever optimistic, he let his hand fall on her thigh as if by accident, she knocked it away. He didn’t get mad-he laughed. “You’re somethin’.”

“So are you.” Edith was laughing, too. Even if she was, he remained sure she’d keep right on holding him at bay till their wedding night. It wasn’t as if she were a virgin-or she could have doubled up on Mary-but she was a respectable woman, and she acted like one.

For a moment, Jeff thought the deep thrumming he heard was the pounding of the blood in his veins. Then he realized it was outside himself. No sooner had he realized that than Edith’s kids ran in, yelling, “Ma! Papa Jeff! There’s a million airplanes up in the sky! Come look! Quick!”

“What the-?” Jeff was off the couch and heading for the door as fast as he could go, Edith right behind him.

They stared up and up and up. Passing high above them, scribing ruler-straight contrails across the sky, were more big airplanes than Jeff had ever seen before. They flew east in what was obviously a strong defensive formation: in staggered echelons where one bomber could easily fire on enemy fighters attacking another. And enemy fighters, here, could mean only one thing: Confederate fighters.

“Damnyankees.” Jefferson Pinkard made the calculation almost without conscious thought. “I bet they’re headin’ for Forth Worth and Dallas.”

“How could they?” Edith said.

“They’ve got their nerve, sending ’em out in the daytime.” Pinkard had a nasty feeling the bombers would get through. The war west of the Mississippi had been quiet. He doubted the Confederate authorities were ready for an attack on this scale. The damnyankees had pulled a fast one here.

“Will they drop bombs on us, Papa Jeff?” Frank Blades asked anxiously.

“Nah.” Now Jeff spoke with great assurance. He set a big, meaty hand on the boy’s shoulders. “Ain’t nothin’ here the Yankees would ever want to touch. Don’t you worry ’bout a thing, not as far as that goes.”

One thing Chester Martin had to give to Lieutenant Thayer Monroe: the kid could read a map. “We want to call down more fire on these emplacements in back of Fredericksburg, eh, Sergeant?” he said. “I make their positions out to be in square Green-6. That sound right to you?” There was something else Martin had to give him: he did ask the older man’s opinion, and sometimes even listened to it.

Martin looked out from the ruins of Fredericksburg toward the heights to the south and southwest. They weren’t mountains; they were hardly even hills. But they were plenty to let the Confederate field guns and mortars dug in on them make life hell on earth for the U.S. soldiers in the Virginia town.

“Yes, sir. I think Green-6 is right,” he said. The platoon commander called for the signalman with the field telephone, then shouted into it. U.S. artillery was still on the far side of the river. Chester had the nasty suspicion that the Confederates had let the U.S. Army get foot soldiers over the Rappahannock so they could bleed them white. All attempts to break out from the town had failed. None seemed likely to succeed, at least not to him.

“Goddammit!” Lieutenant Monroe hung up in disgust. “I can’t get through. Bastards must have cut the wires again.”