Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

Most people who heard the news believed every word of it. Why not? Nothing else in the Confederate States challenged the reporting. One evening after a Freedom Party meeting, though, Rodriguez went to La Culebra Verde for a few drinks. If Magdalena yelled at him when he got home, then she yelled at him, that was all. He didn't feel like standing at the bar; he spent too much time on his feet in the fields. He and Carlos Ruiz took a table against the wall. When the barmaid came up and asked what they wanted, they both ordered beers.

Away she went, hips swinging in her flounced skirt. Rodriguez's eyes followed her-in a purely theoretical way, he told himself. Magdalena, no doubt, would have had another word for it. He shrugged. He was a dutiful enough husband. He hadn't done more than look at another woman since coming home from the war. If he'd gone upstairs with a few putas while he wore butternut… well, he'd usually been drunk first, and he'd been a lot younger, and he'd been a long way from home, with no assurance he'd ever see his wife again. What she didn't know and couldn't find out about wouldn't hurt her.

He noticed Ruiz wasn't watching the barmaid. "Are you all right?" he asked his old friend. "She's pretty."

Ruiz started. His laugh sounded embarrassed. "I wasn't even thinking about her. I was thinking about the war." He had two sons in the Army.

"Oh." Rodriguez couldn't tease him about that. He said, "Gracias a Dios, everything goes well."

His friend made the sign of the cross. "I hope so. By all the saints, I hope so. They tell us about victory after victory-heaven knows that's true."

"That proves the war is going well, si?" Rodriguez said. The barmaid came back and set two foam-topped mugs on the table. He smiled at her. "Thank you, sweetheart."

Her answering smile was a professional grimace that showed white teeth. "You're welcome." She hurried away, her backfield in motion.

Rodriguez raised his mug. "Salud." He and Carlos Ruiz both drank. Rodriguez sucked foam off his upper lip. "Why aren't you happy about the war, then?"

Ruiz eyed his beer. "If it's going as well as they say it is, why haven't los Estados Unidos given up?"

"They're the enemy," Rodriguez said reasonably.

"Well, yes." Ruiz finished his beer and waved to the barmaid for a refill. Rodriguez hadn't intended to pour his down, but he didn't want to fall behind, either. He gulped till the mug was empty. Ruiz, meanwhile, went on, "But in 1917 they beat us over and over. They beat us like a drum." He'd fought in Kentucky and Tennessee, where the worst beatings had happened. "And when they'd beaten us hard enough and long enough, we had to give in. Now everyone says we're beating them like that. So why aren't they quitting, the way we had to?"

Rodriguez shrugged. "We'd been fighting for three years then. We couldn't fight any more. This war is hardly even three months old yet."

"And if it goes on for three years, we will probably lose again," Carlos Ruiz said gloomily. "If a little man fights a big man, sometimes he can hit him with a chair right at the start and win like that. But if the big man gets up off the floor and keeps fighting, the little man is in trouble."

"Countries aren't men," Rodriguez said.

Ruiz shrugged again. "I hope not. Because we've knocked the United States down, but we haven't knocked them out."

The barmaid set fresh beers on the table and took away the empty mugs. Her smile might have been a little warmer-or maybe Rodriguez's imagination was a little warmer. He was pretty sure she did put more into her walk this time. She's just trying to get a bigger tip out of you, he told himself. He enjoyed watching her even so. Thinking about the war took a real effort. "We've cut the United States in half," he said.

"Si, es verdad," Ruiz said. "But even if it is true, so what? Why did we cut los Estados Unidos in half? To make them quit fighting, yes? If they don't quit fighting, what good does it do us?" He started emptying his second mug of beer as methodically as he'd finished the first.

"Well…" Rodriguez thought for a little while. "If they're cut in half, they can't send men and supplies from one part to the other. That's what Senor Quinn says, and the wireless, too. How can they fight a war if they can't do that? They'll run out of men and food and guns."

"They still have men on both sides. They still have food on both sides, and factories, too." Carlos Ruiz seemed determined to be glum. "We've made it harder for them, si, sin duda. But also without a doubt, we haven't beaten them unless they decide they're beaten. It isn't like it was with us at the end of the last war, when we couldn't stand up any more. They can go on for a long time if they decide they want to, and it looks like they do." He tilted back his mug. His throat worked. He set the mug down empty and waved to the barmaid again.

Rodriguez had to gulp to get his mug dry, too, by the time she walked over. He said, "At the rate we're going, you're not going to be able to stand up any more, and neither am I." But he nodded when his friend ordered refills for both of them.

Ruiz said, "I'll be able to get home. I'm not worried about that. But if I get drunk tonight-so what? I don't do it very often any more. If I have a headache tomorrow, I'll have a headache, that's all. That's tomorrow. Tonight, I'll be drunk."

Magdalena would have something besides so what? to say to getting drunk. Rodriguez suspected Carlos' wife would, too. That didn't make the idea any less tempting. Rodriguez didn't get drunk very often any more, either. Did that mean he couldn't do it every once in a while if he felt like it? He didn't think so. The two beers he'd already drunk argued loudly that they ought to have some company.

Here came the barmaid. She had company for those beers in her hands. "Here you are, senores," she said, bending low to set the fresh mugs on the table. Rodriguez tried to look down her ruffled white blouse. By the way Carlos Ruiz craned his neck now, so did he. By the way the barmaid giggled, she knew exactly what they were doing, and knew they wouldn't-quite-have any luck.

They drank. The barmaid brought over a plate of jalapenos. Those were free, but they made the two men thirstier. They drank some more to put out the fire. They weren't the only ones doing some serious drinking tonight, either. Somebody at the bar started to sing. It was a song Rodriguez knew. Joining in seemed the only right thing, the only possible thing, to do. He'd never sounded better, at least in his own ears. And the rest of the audience wasn't inclined to be critical, either.

It was two in the morning when he and Carlos staggered out of La Culebra Verde. "Home," Rodriguez said, and started to laugh. Everything was funny now. It might not be when Magdalena saw the state he was in, but he wasn't going to worry about that. He wasn't going to worry about anything, not right this minute. He embraced his friend one last time. They went their separate ways.

The long line of power poles pointed the way home. They went straight across the countryside. Hipolito Rodriguez didn't, but he did go generally in the same direction. And he found the power poles convenient in another way, too. He paused in front of one of them, undid his trousers, and got rid of a good deal of the beer he'd drunk. A couple of miles farther out of Baroyeca, he did the same thing again.

The night was cool and dry. Days here in late summer kept their bake-oven heat, but the nights-growing longer now-were much more tolerable. Crickets chirped. Moths fluttered here and there, ghostly in the moonlight. Bigger flying shapes were bats and nightjars hunting them.

A coyote trotted past, mouth open in an arrogant, almost-doggy grin. Have to look out for my lambs, Rodriguez thought, wondering if he'd remember when he got home. Farmers around here shot coyotes on sight, but the beasts kept coming down out of the mountains and stealing stock.