In at the Death (59 page)

“Only when I worry about my ship,” Sam answered.

All the senior officers sitting across from him nodded. “There is that. Yes, indeed. There is that. You understand what command’s all about, all right. Suppose we give you a choice. You can keep the
Josephus Daniels
and go on occupation patrol in Confederate waters. Or, if you’d rather, you can have a real destroyer out in the Sandwich Islands. I don’t know what kind of duty that would be. Technically, we’re still at war with the Empire of Japan, but it looks like we’ll let things peter out on the
status quo ante bellum
, same as we did the last time around. You may end up gathering moss out there. If you go down to the Confederacy—to the South, I suppose I ought to call it, since we’re going to try to hold on to it…”

“If I go down there, it won’t be dull, whatever else it is,” Sam finished for him.

“Well, yes,” the rear admiral said. “That’s how it looks.”

“I’ll hang on to the DE, sir,” Sam said. “If I were Captain Cressy’s age, I’d take the bigger, newer ship. It’d look spiffier in my service jacket. But I figure I can do more good keeping the Confederates in line. The Pacific war…” He shook his head. “The supply lines are just too damn long to let either side fight a proper war out there.”

“That’s how it’s been so far, anyhow,” Captain Cressy said. “If we get airplanes that can carry a superbomb from Midway, say, to the Philippines—”

“Or if they get one that can carry a superbomb from Guam to Honolulu,” the rear admiral broke in.

“Or if either side gets a bomber that can fly a superbomb off an airplane carrier,” Sam said.

“
There’s
a cheerful thought. With these new turbos, it’ll probably happen in the next few years,” the rear admiral said. “Or else the smart boys’ll make the bombs smaller, so the prop jobs we’ve already got can carry them. Interesting times, interesting times.” However interesting they might be, he didn’t sound as if he looked forward to them.

Sam understood that, because he knew he didn’t. “Sir, how the heck is the Navy going to fight a war when one airplane with one bomb can knock out a flotilla?”

“You want the straight dope?” the rear admiral asked.

“Yes, sir!” Sam said eagerly.

“All right. The straight dope is, right now nobody has the faintest idea in the whole wide world. If you’ve got any hot suggestions, put ’em down in writing and send ’em to the Navy Department. They’ll go into the mix—you bet your sweet ass they will.”

“The only idea I’ve got about a superbomb is, being under it when it goes off is a bad plan.”

“You’re even with everybody else, Sam,” Captain Cressy said. “Hell, you’re ahead of some people. There are officers and civilians in Philadelphia who think the Kaiser is our buddy and the Japs don’t know how to build superbombs, so why worry?”

“I believe you. Even though it’s Philadelphia, I believe you,” Sam said. “Some people don’t believe things are real till they happen to them. And if a superbomb happens to you, it’s too late.”

“Sometimes you can talk till you’re blue in the face, and it doesn’t do you one damn bit of good. Makes you wonder.” The rear admiral shook his head. “All right. We’ll cut orders for you, and we’ll get your ship refitted. And congratulations again, Commander.”

“Thank you, sir!” Sam got to his feet and saluted. Hearing it that way sounded even better. It was as if he’d got the whole third stripe, not just half of it. Most of the time, people didn’t bother calling you
Lieutenant Commander
, any more than they bothered calling you
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
. Sam knew all about that. He’d been a j.g. for a long time.

Two and a half stripes! And they still had a slot for him! He really hadn’t expected the one, and he’d flabbled about the other. Once he got back to his ship, he owed all the officers drinks. Well, he could take care of that. He could tie one on if he felt like it—he’d earned the right.
Maybe I will
, he thought.
When am I ever going to have another promotion party?
The answer to that was all too plain. Never.

S
omebody said you could never go home again. Back in Augusta, Georgia, Jerry Dover would have said that whoever it was had a point. The city he came back to wasn’t the one he’d left when he joined the Confederate Army.

When he left, the war hadn’t touched Augusta. Negro rebels had set off auto bombs in town, but that was different. So was the isolation of the Terry from the white part of town. Whites and Negroes had always lived apart. Barbed wire between them didn’t seem to matter so much—not if you were white, anyhow.

Everything had got shabby even before he joined up. Nobody put any effort into keeping things neat; that all went into doing whatever it took to beat the damnyankees. Well, the whole damn country did whatever it took to beat the damnyankees, and that turned out not to be enough.

And now the whole damn country was paying for it.

Augusta sure was. The Stars and Stripes flew over city hall for the first time in more than eighty years. The Yankees had captured the town more or less by sideswipe in their drive down the Savannah River to the port of the same name. They’d bombed it a few times, but the Confederates didn’t make a stand here. Jerry Dover had seen what happened to places where one side or the other made a stand. He thanked heaven Augusta wasn’t one of them.

Incidental damage was bad enough. Streets had craters in them. Walls had chunks bitten out of them. Most windows stared with blind eyes. The smell of death was old and faint, but it was there.

His family had survived. His house was—mostly—intact. He supposed he ought to thank heaven for all that, too. As a matter of fact, he did. But he would have liked things better if the town and the way of life he’d liked so well had come through the war in one piece.

They hadn’t. It wasn’t just that U.S. soldiers tramped through the streets of Augusta now. The life, the energy, were gone from the city. Like the rest of the CSA, it had done everything it knew how to do. It didn’t know how to do anything any more.

So many men were missing. A lot were dead. A lot were maimed. Some remained in U.S. POW camps, though every day more came back on the train. But even the ones who were there seemed missing in action. After a losing war, how could you give a shit about putting things back together and making a living again?

Jerry Dover was one of the most hardheaded, practical men around.
He
had a hell of a time giving a rat’s ass about what happened next. And if he did, what about his countrymen? He saw what about them. They came back, and they had no idea what the hell to do after that.

A lot of them drank. Good booze was in short supply, and hideously expensive when you could find it. There was plenty of rotgut and moonshine, though. The Yankees didn’t mind if taverns opened up. Maybe they figured drunks would be too bleary to bother them. And maybe they were right.

Maybe they weren’t, too. Some of the drunken ex-soldiers didn’t care what happened to them any more. They would pick a fight for the sake of picking it. The Yankees, who weren’t
ex
-soldiers, had a simple rule: shoot first. Augusta crackled with gunfire. The U.S. soldiers often didn’t bother burying corpses. They left them on the sidewalk or in the gutter to warn other hotheads.

Because the United States played by the Geneva Convention rules and paid him at the same rate as one of their officers, Dover had money in his pocket when he got home. Green money—U.S. money—was in desperately short supply in the conquered Southern states. No one knew what brown money—Confederate cash—was worth any more, or whether it was worth anything. In the bad days after the Great War, one U.S. dollar could have bought billions, maybe trillions, of Confederate dollars. It wasn’t that bad now, but it wasn’t good. Not even the occupying authorities seemed sure what to do about the currency of a defunct country.

Putting all that together made leaving the house an adventure every time Jerry did it. He needed to look for work; his greenbacks wouldn’t last forever, or even very long. But he was lucky if he could get more than a couple of blocks before jumpy kids in green-gray challenged him.

On a typical hot, muggy afternoon, a Yankee corporal barked, “Hey, you!”

“Yes?” Dover stopped in his tracks. He didn’t want to give the soldiers any excuse to do something he’d regret later.

“You fight in the war?” the corporal snapped.

“Yes,” Dover said.

The noncom held out his hand. “Let’s see your release papers.”

“I’m going to reach into my left trouser pocket to get them out,” Dover said. He waited till the U.S. soldier nodded before moving. When he did, he moved slowly and carefully. He showed the Yankee he was holding only papers. “Here.”

“Gimme.” The corporal examined the papers and then sent Dover a fishy stare. “You were a light colonel, and they let you go anyway?”

“No, not me. I’m still back in Indianapolis,” Dover answered.

“Funny guy. I’m laughing my ass off,” the U.S. soldier said. Dover’s big mouth had got him into trouble before.
When will I learn?
he wondered unhappily. The soldier in green-gray went on, “How come they turned you loose? And don’t get cute with me, or you’ll be sorry.”

“I was only in the Quartermaster Corps. And I signed the papers that said I wouldn’t give any more trouble. Hell, I know we lost. You guys wouldn’t be here if we didn’t,” Dover said.

“Bet your balls, buddy.” The corporal scratched his bristly chin. “Doesn’t seem like enough, somehow. Not a lot of officers released yet.”

“Well, there is one thing more,” Dover admitted reluctantly.

“Yeah?”

“The guy who shot Jake Featherston, his father used to work in the restaurant I managed. Maybe he said I wasn’t a total bastard.”

“Maybe he was lying through his teeth. Or maybe you are.” The corporal gestured with his tommy gun. “C’mon with me. We’ll get this shit sorted out.”

“Right,” Dover said, resignation in his voice. If he said no, he’d get shot. So they went to the corporal’s superiors. Dover told his story over again. A U.S. second lieutenant with more pimples than whiskers called somebody on a field telephone. The kid—he had to be younger than the corporal—talked, listened, and hung up.

“They’ll get back to us,” he said.

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Dover asked.

“Wait right here,” the baby-faced officer answered. Dover didn’t say anything, but he couldn’t have looked very happy. The lieutenant said, “What’s the matter, Pops? You got a hot date stashed somewhere?”

“No,” Jerry Dover said with a sigh. His last “hot date,” down in Savannah, had blackmailed him and was probably some kind of Yankee spy. That didn’t mean sitting around in a green-gray tent made his heart go pitter-pat with delight. Since his other choices seemed to be the stockade and the burial ground, he sat tight.

After a while, they gave him a couple of ration cans. He ate without another word. He’d had U.S. rations plenty of times during the war and in the POW camp. Eating them in his home town added insult to injury.

After two and a half hours, the field telephone rang. The lieutenant picked it up and listened. “Really?” he squeaked in surprise. “All right—I’ll take care of it.” He hung up and eyed Jerry. “Your story checks out.”

“It should. It’s true,” Dover said.

“I know that—now. I wouldn’t’ve believed it before.” The junior officer scribbled something on Dover’s papers. “There. I’ve written an endorsement that should keep them from hauling you in again.”

“That’d be nice,” Dover said, and then, belatedly, “Thanks.” Maybe the endorsement would do some good, maybe it wouldn’t. But at least the kid with the gold bars made the effort. Dover supposed a lot of Yankees would have laughed to see him get in trouble time after time. He put the papers back in his pocket.

“You’re done here,” the lieutenant said. “You can go.”

“Thanks,” Dover said again, and ambled off.

He got stopped one more time before he made it to the Huntsman’s Lodge. This U.S. patrol didn’t haul him in, so maybe the lieutenant’s endorsement really did help. Stranger things must have happened, though Dover had a hard time thinking of one.

The Huntsman’s Lodge was open for supper. That didn’t surprise Jerry Dover; the fancy places always made it. Most of the customers were U.S. officers. Some of them were eating with pretty girls who definitely didn’t come from the USA. That didn’t surprise Jerry Dover, either. It was the way the world worked.

Most of the waiters and busboys were Mexicans. The ones who weren’t were whites: a couple of sixteen-year-olds and a couple of old men. That was a revolution; in the prewar CSA, most whites would sooner have died than served anyone.

One of the Mexicans recognized Dover. The short, swarthy man came over and shook his hand. “Good to see you again,
Señor
,” he said.

“Good to be seen, by God,” Dover answered. “Willard Sloan still running things here?”

“
Sí
—uh, yes. I take you to him.”

Dover grinned. “You reckon I don’t know the way, Felipe?”

All the same, he let the waiter escort him to the tiny, cramped office where he’d put in so many years. Seeing Sloan behind
his
battered desk was a jolt. The current manager of the Huntsman’s Lodge was in his late forties, with a lean face, a bitter expression, and hard blue eyes. When he sat behind the desk, you could hardly tell he used a wheelchair. His legs were useless; he’d got a bullet in the spine during the Great War.

He eyed Jerry Dover with all the warmth of a waiter eyeing a patron sliding out the door without paying his check. “Think you can take my job away from me, do you?” he said.

“That’s not what I came here for,” Dover answered, which was at least partly true. “Just…wanted to see how things were. I spent a lot of years here, you know.”

“Yeah,” Sloan said glumly. “Owners know you’re back yet?”

“No,” Dover said.

“Maybe I ought to plug you now, then.” Sloan sounded serious. Did he keep a pistol in a desk drawer? The way things had gone in the CSA, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. The cripple gave Dover another wintry stare. “Or maybe I just ought to shoot myself, save somebody else the trouble.”