Settling Accounts_ Drive To The East Part 7

None of the guards paid any attention. They stayed right there, waiting for their sandwiches and slapping down quarters as they got them. When Rodriguez's turn came, the man in the boiled s.h.i.+rt and the black bow tie-as much a uniform as his own gray one-gave him a funny look. His dark skin and black hair said one thing, while the outfit he had on said another. Rodriguez just waited. The man handed him the sandwich.

"Gracias," Rodriguez said as he paid him. He spoke more Spanish than English, but his English was more than good enough for Rodriguez said as he paid him. He spoke more Spanish than English, but his English was more than good enough for thank you. thank you. He wanted to make the Texan twitch, and he did. He wanted to make the Texan twitch, and he did.

When they'd all got their food and their tobacco, they deigned to reboard the bus. The driver muttered to himself. He did no more than mutter, though. Considering how badly he was outnumbered, that was smart of him.

Rodriguez sank down into his seat with a grunt of relief. Not long after his farmhouse got electricity, he'd almost electrocuted himself. He hadn't been the same since-otherwise, he might have gone to the front himself, and not into the Confederate Veterans' Brigades.

Away went the bus, rattling west down the imperfectly paved highway. "Reckon I'm gonna p.a.w.n my f.u.c.kin' kidneys when we finally get where we're goin'," one of the men in gray said.

"You been f.u.c.kin' with your kidneys, Jack, there's some s.h.i.+t your pappy never learned you," another one replied. Goatish laughter erupted. The rattletrap bus filled with cigarette smoke.

Towards evening, the bus came into Snyder. It looked like all the other Texas towns through which Rodriguez had pa.s.sed on the way west: bigger than some, smaller than others. Then the bus rolled on a few miles farther. Somebody sitting up near the front who could see out through the big windscreen said, "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" It was an expression of awe, not anger.

Other soft oaths, and a few not so soft, followed. Rodriguez, who was sitting somewhere near the middle, tried to peer past the men in front of him to find out what they were getting excited about. He didn't have much luck. They were all s.h.i.+fting and moving, too.

The bus stopped. This was where they were going, whatever this this was. The driver answered that, saying, "Welcome to Camp Determination. Everybody off." was. The driver answered that, saying, "Welcome to Camp Determination. Everybody off."

With a tired wheeze, the bus' front door opened. One by one, the new camp guards filed out. Some of them gathered in front of the luggage bin, waiting for the driver to unlock it so they could get out their duffels. Others, Rodriguez among them, took a look at Camp Determination first. He decided the fellow who said son of a b.i.t.c.h son of a b.i.t.c.h had known just what he was talking about. had known just what he was talking about.

"I was eighteen years old and in the Army in the last war before I saw a town that size," said one of the gray-haired men in gray uniforms.

"Si, me, too," Rodriguez agreed. You could drop Baroyeca down in the middle of that camp, and it wouldn't even make a splash. me, too," Rodriguez agreed. You could drop Baroyeca down in the middle of that camp, and it wouldn't even make a splash.

Barbed wire surrounded an enormous square of Texas prairie. Machine guns poked their snouts out of guard towers outside the wire perimeter. Barracks halls built of bright yellow pine as yet unbleached by the sun and unstained by the rain and rusty nails rose in the middle distance. There were a lot of them, but the vast acreage inside the barbed wire had room for at least as many more.

Somebody else pointed in a different direction. "Holy Jesus!" the man said. "Will you look at all them trucks?"

There they sat, on an asphalted lot separated from the barracks by more barbed wire. Along with the rest of the guards, Hipolito Rodriguez had become very familiar with those trucks. They looked like ordinary Army machines, except that the rear compartment was enclosed in an iron box-an airtight iron box. Pipe the exhaust in there and people who got into the trucks didn't come out again . . . not alive, anyhow.

"They're gonna get rid of a h.e.l.l of a lot o' n.i.g.g.e.rs in this place," the man next to Rodriguez said. "h.e.l.l of a lot." of a lot."

"You want to shut your mouth about that, Roy," somebody else told him. "We don't talk about that s.h.i.+t. If we do it amongst ourselves, we're liable to do it where the c.o.o.ns can hear us, and then we'll have trouble." He'd learned his lessons well; the Freedom Party guards who'd trained them at the much smaller camp near Fort Worth had rammed that home again and again. "Far as the n.i.g.g.e.rs know, when they get on those trucks, they're always going somewhere else."

"Yeah, yeah," Roy said impatiently. "Far as I I know, they're all goin' to h.e.l.l, and it d.a.m.n well serves 'em right." know, they're all goin' to h.e.l.l, and it d.a.m.n well serves 'em right."

"Come on, come on." The bus driver sounded even more impatient than Roy did. "Y'all get your gear and get moving. I got to get moving myself, get the h.e.l.l outa here and back towards where I live."

Rodriguez found the gray canvas bag with his last name and first initial stenciled on it in black paint. He slung it over his shoulder and joined the column of guards thumping toward what looked like the main gate, at least on this side of the square. Extra guard towers watched over it. Anyone who tried attacking it without a barrel would get chopped to hamburger.

The camp was already manned. A couple of the men at the gate lowered the muzzles of their submachine guns toward the ground. "New fish," one of them remarked.

"Don't look so new to me." His pal had the heartlessness of a man with all his hair and all his teeth.

"Sonny boy, I learned to mind my own business before you were a hard-on in your old man's dungarees," said a man from the Confederate Veterans' Brigade.

"I believe you, Pops," the guard answered. "Some people need as big a head start as they can get." He didn't smile when he said it.

Guards on duty and new arrivals glared at one another. Before anybody could get around to demanding papers and showing them-and before anybody could get around to tossing out more insults like grenades-a man with a deep voice spoke from inside the gate: "What's going on here? Are these the new guards they've been promising us? About G.o.dd.a.m.n time, that's all I've got to say."

As soon as the men at the gate heard that voice, they became all business. As soon as Hipolito Rodriguez heard it, he had to look around to remind himself that he wasn't in a trench somewhere even farther west in Texas, with d.a.m.nyankee machine-gun bullets cracking by overhead and d.a.m.nyankee sh.e.l.ls screaming in.

Out through the gate came Jefferson Pinkard. He was older now, but so was Rodriguez. He had a good-sized belly and two or three chins and harsh lines on his face that hadn't been there in 1917. Back when Rodriguez was training, he'd heard that a man named Pinkard was high in the camp hierarchy. He'd wondered if it was the man he'd known. He didn't wonder anymore.

He took half a step out of line to draw Pinkard's eye to him, then said, "How are you, Senor Senor Jeff?" Jeff?"

Pinkard eyed him for a moment without recognition. Then the big man's jaw dropped. "Hip Rodriguez, or I'm a son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he exclaimed, and thundered forward to fold Rodriguez into a bear hug. The two of them pounded each other on the back and cursed each other with the affection a lot of men can show no other way.

"Teacher's pet," said one of the guards who'd ridden on the bus with Rodriguez. But he made sure he sounded as if he was joking. If one of his comrades turned out to be a war buddy of the camp commandant's, he didn't want to seem to resent that, not if he knew which side his bread was b.u.t.tered on.

When Pinkard let Rodriguez go, he said, "So you're here to help us deal with the d.a.m.n n.i.g.g.e.rs, are you? Freedom!"

"Freedom!" Rodriguez echoed automatically. He was used to saying it in English now instead of going, Libertad! Libertad! the way he had down in Baroyeca. " the way he had down in Baroyeca. "Si, Senor Jeff. That is why I have come." Jeff. That is why I have come."

"Good," Camp Determination's commandant told him. "We're gonna have us a h.e.l.l of a lot of work to do, and we're just about ready to do it."

Since coming to Augusta near the end of the Great War, Scipio hadn't gone far from his adopted home. For one thing, he hadn't cared to go anywhere else; he'd made his life there, and hadn't wanted to wander off. And, for another, travel restrictions on Negroes had started tightening up again even before the Freedom Party came to power. They'd got much worse since.

Just how much worse, he discovered in detail when he went to the train station to buy a ticket for Savannah. The line for whites was much longer than the one for blacks, but it moved much, much faster. Whites just bought tickets and went off to the platforms to board their trains. Blacks . . .

"Let me see your pa.s.sbook, Uncle," said the clerk behind the barred window. Scipio dutifully slid it over to him. The man made sure the picture matched Scipio's face. "Xerxes," he muttered, botching the alias the way most people did when they saw it in print. "What's the purpose of your visit to Savannah, Uncle?"

"See my family there, suh," Scipio said. He had no family in Savannah, but it was the safest reason to give.

The clerk grunted. "You got permission from your employer to be away from work?"

"Yes, suh." Scipio produced a letter from Jerry Dover on Huntsman's Lodge stationery authorizing him to be absent for one week.

Another grunt from the clerk. He jerked a thumb to the left. "Go on over there for search and baggage inspection."

Scipio went "over there": to a storeroom now adapted to another purpose. A railroad worker-a weathered fellow who couldn't have been far from his own age-patted him down with almost obscene thoroughness. Two more white men of similar vintage pawed through his carpetbag.

"How come you do all dis?" Scipio asked the man who was groping him.

"So n.o.body sneaks a bomb on the train," the white man answered matter-of-factly. "It's happened a couple-three times. We've had to tighten up." He turned to the men checking Scipio's valise. "How's it look?"

"He's clean," one of them said. "Bunch of junk, but it ain't gonna go boom."

Stung by that appraisal of his stuff, Scipio said, "Ask you one mo' thing, suh?"

"Yeah?" The white man who'd searched him spoke with barely contained impatience. Why are you bothering me, n.i.g.g.e.r? Why are you bothering me, n.i.g.g.e.r? lay at the bottom of it. But Scipio had sounded properly deferential, so the fellow let him go on. lay at the bottom of it. But Scipio had sounded properly deferential, so the fellow let him go on.

"What you do when a lady come in here?"

"Oh." The man laughed and gestured as if grasping a woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s from behind. Scipio nodded; that was what he'd meant. The frisker said, "We got a couple of gals who take care of that. Don't you worry your head about it, Uncle. Just get on down to Platform Eight."

"Thank you, suh." Scipio picked up the carpetbag and headed for the platforms. The Confederate authorities-or maybe it was just the railroad employees-were shrewd. If they had white men groping black women, they would stir up trouble they didn't need. They already stirred up a whole great storm of troubles; at best, life for Negroes in the CSA was one long affront. But it often wasn't the sort of affront that made people flash into fury. Back in the days of slavery-the days into which Scipio had been born-white men did as they pleased with black women . . . and with black men who presumed to object. Resentment still simmered, ready to boil. The railroads didn't turn up the heat under it.

The corridors were designed so that n.o.body could give Scipio anything while he was on the way from the inspection station to the platform. Some of the barriers were of new, unweathered wood. We've had to tighten up lately, We've had to tighten up lately, the railroad man said. They seemed to have done a good job. the railroad man said. They seemed to have done a good job.

Several whites were already waiting on the platform. A couple of them sent Scipio suspicious glances. Do you have a bomb? Did you sneak it past the inspectors? Will you blow us up? Do you have a bomb? Did you sneak it past the inspectors? Will you blow us up? For his part, he might have asked them, For his part, he might have asked them, If you send colored folks into camps, why don't they come out again? If you send colored folks into camps, why don't they come out again?

He didn't say anything, any more than they did. The questions hung in the air just the same. Despair pressed down heavily on Scipio. How were you supposed to make a country out of a place where two groups hated and feared each other, and where anybody could tell to which group anyone else belonged just by looking? The Confederate States of America had been working on that question for eighty years now, and hadn't found an answer yet.

The Freedom Party thought it had. It said, If only one group is left, the problem goes away. If only one group is left, the problem goes away. The trouble was, the problem went away for only one group if you tried that solution. For the other, it got worse. No one in the Party seemed to lose any sleep over that. The trouble was, the problem went away for only one group if you tried that solution. For the other, it got worse. No one in the Party seemed to lose any sleep over that.

More whites came onto the platform. So did a few more Negroes. The blacks all grouped themselves with Scipio, well away from the whites. Had they done anything else, they would have fallen into a category: uppity n.i.g.g.e.rs. n.o.body in his right mind wanted to fall into that category these days.

A little blond boy pointed up the tracks. "Here comes the train!" He squeaked with excitement.

It rumbled into the station. Departing pa.s.sengers got off, got their luggage, and left the platform by a route different from the one Scipio had used to get there. He and the other Negroes automatically headed for the last two cars in the train. They wouldn't sit with whites, either: they knew better. And if the cars in which they sat were shabbier than the ones whites got to use, that was unlikely to be a surprise.

Rattles and jolts announced the train's departure. It rolled south and east, the tracks paralleling the Savannah River. When Scipio looked across the river, he saw South Carolina. He shook his head. Even after all these years, he wasn't safe in the state where he'd been born. Then he shook his head again. He wasn't safe in Georgia, either.

Cotton country and pine woods filled the landscape between Augusta and Savannah. Scipio saw several plantation houses falling into ruin. Marshlands had done the same thing. Raising cotton on plantations wasn't nearly so practical when the colored workforce was liable to rise up against you.

People got on and off at the stops between the two cities. Scipio wouldn't have bet that G.o.d Himself knew the names of hamlets like McBean Depot, Sardis, and Hershman.

And, when the train was coming out of the pine woods surrounding Savannah, it rolled through a suburb called Yamacraw that seemed to be the more southerly town's Terry. Negroes did what they could to get by in a country that wanted their labor but otherwise wished they didn't exist. Drugstores in white neighborhoods sold aspirins and merthiolate and calamine lotion-respectable products that actually worked. Scipio saw a sign in Yamacraw advertising Vang-Vang Oil, Lucky Mojoe Drops of Love, and Mojoe Incense. He grimaced, ashamed of his own folk. Here were the ignorant preying on the even more ignorant.

As soon as he got on the east side of Broad Street, things changed. The houses, most of them of brick, looked as if they sprang from the eighteenth century. Live oaks with beards of moss hanging from their branches grew on expansive lawns. That moss declared that Savannah, its climate moderated by the Atlantic only fifteen miles away, was a land that hardly knew what winter was.

"Savannah!" the conductor barked, hurrying through the colored cars as the train pulled into the station. "This here's Savannah!" He didn't quite come out and snap, Now get the h.e.l.l off my train, you lousy c.o.o.ns! Now get the h.e.l.l off my train, you lousy c.o.o.ns! He didn't, no, but he might as well have. He didn't, no, but he might as well have.

Scipio grabbed his carpetbag and descended. As at Augusta, the exit to the station kept him from having anything to do with boarding pa.s.sengers. He gave the system grudging respect. That it should be necessary was a judgment on the Confederate States, but it did what it was designed to do.

Once he got out of the station, he stopped and looked at the sun, orienting himself. Forsyth Park was east and south of him. He walked towards it, wondering if a policeman would demand to see his papers. Sure enough, he hadn't gone more than a block before it happened. He displayed his pa.s.sbook, his train ticket, and the letter from Jerry Dover authorizing him to be away from the Huntsman's Lodge. The cop looked them over, frowned, and then grudgingly nodded and gave them back. "You keep your nose clean, you hear?" he said.

"Yes, suh. I do dat, suh," Scipio said. His Congaree River accent had marked him as a stranger in Augusta. It did so doubly here; from what little he'd heard of it, Savannah Negroes used a dialect almost incomprehensible to anyone who hadn't grown up speaking it.

Forsyth Park was laid out like a formal French garden, with a rosette of paths going through it. With spring in the air, squirrels frisked through the trees. Pigeons plodded the paths, hoping for handouts. Flowering dogwood, wisteria, and azaleas brightened the greenery.

Scipio had to find the Albert Sidney Johnston monument. The Confederate general, killed at Pittsburg Landing, was something of a martyr, with statues and plaques commemorating him all over the CSA. In this one, he looked distinctly Christlike. Scipio fought the urge to retch.

He sat down on a wrought-iron bench not far from the statue. One of those importunate pigeons came up and eyed him expectantly. When he ignored it, he half expected it to c.r.a.p on his shoes in revenge, but it didn't. It just strutted away, head bobbing. You'll get yours, You'll get yours, it might have said, and it might have been right. it might have said, and it might have been right.

A squirrel overhead chittered at him. He ignored it, too. He had no certain notion how long he'd have to wait here, so he tried to look as if he were comfortable, as if he belonged. Several white women and a few old men pa.s.sed with no more than casual glances, so he must have succeeded. Very few white men between the ages of twenty and fifty were on the streets. If they weren't at the front, they were in the factories or on the farms.

"How do I get to Broad Street from here?" asked a woman with brown hair going gray.

"Ma'am, you goes west a few blocks, an' there you is," Scipio answered.

"Oh, dear. I was all turned around," the woman said. "I'm afraid I have no sense of direction, no sense of direction at all."

The code phrases were the ones Scipio had been waiting for. He hadn't expected a woman to say them. He wondered why not. Jerry Dover hadn't said anything about that one way or the other. A woman could do this as well as a man-maybe better, if she was less conspicuous. Scipio took a small envelope out of the hip pocket of his trousers. As casually as he could, he set it on the bench and looked in the other direction.

When he turned his head again, the envelope was gone. The woman was on her way toward Broad Street. No one else could have paid any attention to, or even seen, the brief encounter in the park. Scipio wasn't sure what he'd just done. Had he given the Confederate States a boost or a knee in the groin? He had no way of knowing, but he had his hopes.

IV.

Jefferson Pinkard was a happy man, happier than he had been since moving out to Texas to start putting up Camp Determination. For one thing, Edith Blades was coming out to Snyder with her boys before too long. That would be nice. She didn't want to marry Jeff till her husband was in the ground for a year, but he'd still be glad to have her close by instead of back in Louisiana.

And, for another, now he had a man he could trust absolutely among the guards. "Hip Rodriguez!" he murmured to himself in glad surprise. He hadn't seen the little greaser for twenty-five years, but that had nothing to do with anything. After what they'd been through together in Georgia and west Texas, he knew he could count on Rodriguez. He didn't know how many times they'd saved each other's bacon, but he knew d.a.m.n well it was more than a few.

And he knew how important having somebody absolutely trustworthy was. Running prison camps was a political job, though he wouldn't have thought so when he started it. And the higher he rose, the more political it got. When the only man over you was the Attorney General, you found yourself in politics and maneuvering up to your eyebrows, because Ferdinand Koenig was Jake Featherston's right-hand man-and about two fingers' worth of the left as well.

Back by Alexandria, Mercer Scott was heading up Camp Dependable these days. Scott had led the guard force when Jeff commanded the camp. He'd had his own ways to get hold of Richmond. No doubt the guard chief here did, too. The Freedom Party people at the top wanted to make sure they knew what was going on, so they had independent channels to help them keep up with things.

And if the guard chief started telling lies, or if he started scheming, having someone on your side in the guard force was like an insurance policy. Hip Rodriguez couldn't have fit the bill better.

With a grunt, Pinkard got up from his desk and stretched. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the top drawer, lit one, started to put the pack back, and then stuck it in his pocket instead. He was about to start his morning prowl through the camp when the telephone rang.

"Who's bothering me now?" he muttered as he picked it up. His voice got louder: "This here's Pinkard."

"h.e.l.lo, Pinkard. This is Ferd Koenig in Richmond."

"Yes, sir. What can I do for you, sir?" Speak of the devil and he shows up on your front porch, Speak of the devil and he shows up on your front porch, Jeff thought. Jeff thought.

"I want to know how things are coming," Koenig said, "and whether you can make a few changes in the way the camp's laid out."

"Things were were coming fine, sir. There's been no problem on s.h.i.+pments out of here," Pinkard answered. coming fine, sir. There's been no problem on s.h.i.+pments out of here," Pinkard answered. s.h.i.+pments s.h.i.+pments was a nice, bloodless way to talk about Negroes sent off to be asphyxiated by the truckload. It kept him from thinking about what went on inside those trucks. He didn't feel bloodless toward Ferd Koenig. If the son of a b.i.t.c.h thought he could run a Texas camp from Richmond . . . he might be right, because he had the authority to do it. Grinding his teeth, Pinkard asked, "What do you need changed?" was a nice, bloodless way to talk about Negroes sent off to be asphyxiated by the truckload. It kept him from thinking about what went on inside those trucks. He didn't feel bloodless toward Ferd Koenig. If the son of a b.i.t.c.h thought he could run a Texas camp from Richmond . . . he might be right, because he had the authority to do it. Grinding his teeth, Pinkard asked, "What do you need changed?"

"Way you've got the place set up now, it's just for men-isn't that right?" the Attorney General said.

"Yes, sir. That's how all the camps have been, pretty much," Jeff replied. "Not a h.e.l.l of a lot of women and pickaninnies packing iron against the government." There were some, but not many. He didn't know if there were separate camps for black women, or what. He guessed there were, but asking questions about things that were none of your business was discouraged-strongly discouraged.

"That's going to change." Koenig's voice was hard, flat, and determined. "You can bet your bottom dollar that's going to change, in fact. What's wrong with the CSA is that we've got too many n.i.g.g.e.rs, period. Not troublemaking n.i.g.g.e.rs, but n.i.g.g.e.rs, period-'cause any n.i.g.g.e.r's liable to be a troublemaker. Am I right or am I wrong?"

"Oh, you're right, sir, no doubt about it," Jeff said. Koenig was just quoting Freedom Party chapter and verse. Jake Featherston had been going on about n.i.g.g.e.rs and what they deserved ever since he got up on the stump for the Party. Now he was keeping his campaign promises.

"All right," Koenig said. "If we're gonna get rid of 'em, we've got to have places to concentrate 'em till we can do the job. That means everybody we clean out of the countryside and the cities. Everybody. So can you separate off a section for the women?"

"I can if I have to," Pinkard replied; you didn't come right out and tell the big boss no, not if you wanted to hold on to your job you didn't. Thinking fast on his feet, he went on, "It'd mess things up here pretty bad, though, the way Determination is laid out now." Ain't that the truth? Ain't that the truth? he thought. "What'd be better, I reckon, is building a camp for women right he thought. "What'd be better, I reckon, is building a camp for women right alongside alongside the one we've got now. That way, we could start from scratch and do it right the first time. Lord knows we've got the land we need to do it." the one we've got now. That way, we could start from scratch and do it right the first time. Lord knows we've got the land we need to do it."

He waited for Koenig to tell him all the reasons that wouldn't work. Not enough time was always a good one, and often even true. After perhaps half a minute's silence, the Attorney General said, "Can you have a perimeter up and a place for s.h.i.+pments to go out of ready in ten days' time? They can sleep in tents or on the ground till you get the barracks built."

"Ten days? Oh, h.e.l.l, yes, sir," Jeff said, trying not to show how pleased he was. He would have agreed to five if he had to. He hadn't expected Koenig to say yes at all.

But Koenig went on, "That's what I like to see-a man who'll show initiative. I told you one thing, but you had a different idea, and it looks to me like a better idea. Make sure you fix up this new camp so it's the same size as the one you've got now. It'll need to be."

"I'll take care of it," Pinkard promised, slightly dazed. "Uh-if you aim to do s.h.i.+pments out of two big camps like that, I'm gonna need more trucks. The ones I've got now won't begin to do the job."

"More trucks," Koenig echoed. Across all those miles, Jeff heard his pen scratching across paper. "You'll have 'em." Another pause. "Instead of building the new camp right right alongside, why not put it across the railroad spur from the old one? That way, you can separate the n.i.g.g.e.rs out soon as they get off the trains." alongside, why not put it across the railroad spur from the old one? That way, you can separate the n.i.g.g.e.rs out soon as they get off the trains."

"I'd have to run another side of barbed wire that way, 'stead of using what we've got." Pinkard thought for a moment. "I'd need to get some dozers back again, too, to level out the ground over there."