Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

Not entirely by coincidence, Cincinnatus' amble took him past Lucullus Wood's barbecue place. He started to go inside, but he was still reaching for the knob when the door opened-and out strode a gray-uniformed policeman gnawing on a beef rib as long as a billy club.

"You comin' in, uncle?" the cop said around a mouthful of beef. Grease shone on his lips and chin. He held the door open for Cincinnatus.

"Thank you kindly, suh," Cincinnatus said, looking down at the ground so the policeman wouldn't see his face. The man had done something perfectly decent: not the sort of thing one necessarily expected from a cop in Covington at all. But then he'd gone and spoiled it with one word. Uncle. Like boy, it denied a black male his fundamental equality, his fundamental humanity. And, worse, the policeman seemed to have no idea that it did.

Lucullus' place did a brisk breakfast business, mostly on scraps and shreds of barbecued beef and pork cooked with eggs and with fried potatoes or grits. Cincinnatus sat down at a bench and ordered eggs and pork and grits and a cup of coffee. Everything came fast as lightning; Lucullus ran a tight ship. Cincinnatus' eyes widened when he took his first sip of the coffee. He sent the waitress an accusing stare. "You reckon I don't know chicory when I taste it? There any real coffee in this here cup at all?"

"There's some," she answered. "But we havin' trouble gettin' the real bean. Everybody havin' trouble gettin' the real bean, even white folks. We got to stretch best way we know how."

Cincinnatus took another sip. Some people in the CSA-especially blacks-had a taste for coffee laced with chicory. Some even liked it better than the real bean. He hadn't even tasted it since he moved up to Iowa. It did help pry his eyes open. He couldn't deny that. "You go on, girl," he told the waitress. "It'll do. But you let Lucullus know he got somebody out front who wants a word with him."

"I do that," she said, and hurried off.

Lucullus didn't come out right away. Cincinnatus would have been astonished if he had. When he did, he planted his massive form across the table from Cincinnatus and said, "So you ain't much for chicory, eh?"

"It's all right. It's tolerable, anyways," Cincinnatus answered. "What it says that you can't get no coffee… that's another story."

"There's some. There's always some, you wanna pay the price for it," Lucullus said. "But it ain't cheap no more, like it was before the war. I charge my customers a quarter a cup, pretty damn quick I ain't got no customers no more."

With his barbecue, he would always have customers. Cincinnatus took his point just the same. After another forkful of grits, he spoke in a low voice: "I seen six buses first pickup this mornin'. More comin' in fifteen minutes, police say."

"Six, with more comin'," Lucullus echoed quietly. Cincinnatus nodded. Lucullus clicked his tongue between his teeth. "They got a lot o' niggers workin' for 'em."

"You don't work for 'em, somethin' worse happen," Cincinnatus said. "You don't work hard for 'em, somethin' worse happen. You seen that sabotage flyer?"

"Yeah, I seen it," Lucullus answered. His smile was broad and genuinely amused. Cincinnatus hadn't asked him if he'd had anything to do with putting it up. Seeing it was safe enough. The other wasn't.

"Lots o' colored folks try that, they end up dead," Cincinnatus said.

"Colored folks don't try somethin' like that, we all liable to end up dead," Lucullus said. Cincinnatus made a face. That was going too far… wasn't it? But Lucullus nodded. "You reckon Jake Featherston don't want us dead?"

"Well, no," Cincinnatus said; nobody in his right mind could believe that. But he went on, "There's a difference between wantin' us dead an' makin' us dead."

"You go on thinkin' that way, you gonna git your population reduced." Lucullus pointed at Cincinnatus with a thick, stubby forefinger. "You hear that before?"

"I heard it," Cincinnatus said unwillingly.

"You suppose the folks who say it, they jokin'?" Lucullus persisted.

"How the hell do I know?" Cincinnatus spoke with more than a little irritation. "I ain't been in the goddamn Confederate States for a hell of a long time. Never wanted to be in the Confederate States again, neither. How do I know how you crazy niggers talk down here?"

That made Lucullus laugh, but not for long. He said, "We talks that way on account o' what goes on at them camps in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana. You don't believe they reduces their population there? You don't believe they kills people so they don't got to worry 'bout feedin' 'em no more? You don't believe that?"

Cincinnatus didn't know what he believed. "Don't want to believe it," he said at last. "Even Featherston ain't that much of a son of a bitch."

"Hell he ain't." Lucullus had no doubts. "Mebbe they kills us whether we fights back or no. We sits quiet, though, they kills us for sure."

"He's fightin' the damnyankees," Cincinnatus said. "How's he gonna do that if he's doin' all this other shit, too? USA's bigger'n the CSA. Featherston's a bastard, but he ain't no fool. He got to see he can't waste his men and waste his trains and waste all his other stuff goin'after niggers who ain't doin' him no harm."

"You been up in Ioway. You ain't been payin' enough attention to the CSA. Even when Kentucky was in the USA, I had to," Lucullus said. "Why you reckon Confederate factories make about nine million tractors and harvesters and combines a few years back?"

"I seen that when it happened. Don't tell me I don't pay no attention," Cincinnatus said angrily. "Any damn fool can tell you why they done it: on account of any factory that can make tractors can make barrels, too, that's why."

Lucullus looked surprised, and not just at his vehemence. "That's part o' why, I reckon," he admitted. "But they's more to it than that. They put all them machines in the fields. Just one of 'em do the work of a hell of a lot o' nigger farmhands. Niggers want to work, they got to go to town. Mister Jake Featherston got hisself a whole new proletariat to exploit… an' the niggers who fights back, or the niggers who can't find no work no way, nohow, he goes an' he reduces their population."

Cincinnatus stared at him. That had to be the most cynical assessment he'd ever heard in his life, and he'd heard a lot of them. But, along with the cynicism, it made a lot more sense than he wished it did. Then Lucullus went back to his office. He returned a minute or so later. Cincinnatus wouldn't have minded if the barbecue king had brought back a bottle. Even though it was early, he could have used a drink after the talk they were having. But Lucullus wasn't carrying a bottle. Instead, he set a book on the table between them.

"Over Open Sights," Cincinnatus read aloud.

"It's all in here," Lucullus said. "Featherston ain't just a bastard, like you say. He's a bastard who knows what he wants to do. An' he wrote some of this shit back during the Great War. He say so, for Chrissake. He's knowed what he wants to do for years."

Scipio watched a plump, prosperous white businessman eat his venison at the Huntsman's Lodge. The man's supper companion was a very pretty blonde half his age-not his wife, as Scipio knew. He was saying, "Have you had a look at Over Open Sights, sweetcakes?"

That wasn't, to put it mildly, the approach Scipio would have taken. The girl said, "I've seen it, but I haven't read it-yet." She added the last word in a hurry.

"Oh, baby, you have to." The man paused to take a big gulp from a glass of burgundy whose rich bouquet Scipio savored from ten feet away. He'd ordered it because it was expensive. Treating a vintage like that was a disgrace, to say nothing of a waste. Scipio couldn't do a thing about it, though. Nor could he do anything but stare impassively as the man went on, "He's sound on the nigger question. He's very, very sound. He knows just what he wants to do about coons."