Walk in Hell

If he thought Scipio would argue with him, he was mistaken. The former butler was more afraid of Cherry than he was of Cassius, and that was saying something. Finding out that she also intimidated the chairman was interesting. He wondered if and how he’d be able to use that.

Before he had a chance to think about it, he heard a screaming whistle in the sky, coming out of the south. Several artillery shells burst with thunderous roars a few hundred yards outside of the renamed People’s Tree. More explosions farther south meant the People’s Revolutionary Army line was taking a pounding. Artillery was the one thing the Republic conspicuously lacked.

Cassius swore with bitter resignation. “I don’ reckon we gwine hold they white folks out of this here town more’n another two-three days.”

“What we do then?” Now Scipio sounded nervous, and knew it. When Cassius was optimistic about the way the fighting was going, he was often wrong; when he was pessimistic, he was always right.

“Fall back. What else kin we do?” the chairman answered. “We maybe lose dis here stand-up war”-the first time he had admitted the possibility, which sent a chill up Scipio’s spine-“but we go to de deep swamp, fight they white folks forever. An’ some o’ we, we jus’ goes back to bein’ ordinary niggers again, niggers what ain’t never done nothin’ de white folk get they-selves in a ruction about-till we sees de chance. We sees de chance, an’ we seize de chance.” He looked sharply at Scipio, to make sure he caught the wordplay.

Scipio did, and gave back a dutiful smile. He hoped that smile covered what was no longer a chill but a blizzard inside him. If Cassius admitted the revolution was starting to come unraveled, then it was. And, while Cassius and some of his followers could no doubt carry on a guerrilla campaign against the Confederacy from out of the swamps they knew better than any white man did, Scipio wasn’t any of those followers. His skills at living under such conditions were nonexistent. He couldn’t go back to being an ordinary Negro, either; the uprising had literally destroyed the place he’d had in the world.

What did that leave? He saw nothing. He’d always had trouble believing the revolution would succeed. Whenever he’d oh so cautiously raised doubts, no one paid him any mind. Now he saw himself vindicated. Much good it does me, he thought bitterly.

George Enos looked to his left. The woody shoreline of Tennessee lay to port of the monitor Punishment. George looked to his right. To starboard were the hills of northeastern Arkansas. U.S. land forces held the Tennessee side of the Mississippi. God only knew who could lay claim to the Arkansas side of the river. It wasn’t trench warfare over there-more like large-scale bushwhacking.

Wayne Pitchess came up to Enos. He was looking toward the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi, too. “If we ever clear out those Rebs, we’ll have a better chance of heading down the river and grabbing Memphis,” he said.

“Thank you, Admiral,” George said, which made Pitchess glare at him in mock anger. He went on, “We get Memphis, that’s a long step toward cutting the CSA right in half. Sure would be fine.”

“Now who’s the admiral?” Pitchess retorted, and Enos spread his hands, admitting to attempted strategizing. His buddy’s face took on a wistful expression. “Wonder if we’ll ever see the day. If it takes us a year and a half to clear a quarter of the river, how long do we need to do all of it?”

“Reminds me of the kind of questions that ran me out of school and onto a fishing boat,” George said, to which Pitchess nodded. George looked south now, toward the distant Tennessee city. “I feel like Moses looking toward the Promised Land, knowing I’m never going to get there.”

“Sailor, you have the wrong attitude,” Pitchess declared, sounding very much like the morale-building lectures that came out of the Navy Department and were read with straight faces by the officers of the Punishment. “If only we don’t worry about the minefields in the Mississippi and the shore batteries that can blow us out of the water and the Confederate river monitors, we’ll waltz into Memphis day after tomorrow.”

“Now there’s sugar for my morning coffee,” Enos exclaimed, and Wayne Pitchess laughed out loud. “Now, Mr. Sugar, sir, what happens if I do worry about those things, or even about one of ’em?”

“Then it takes longer,” Pitchess said, “and you get written up for malicious fretting and impeding the war effort. They issue you a ball and chain and a sledgehammer, and you start making boulders into sand. Sounds bully, don’t it?”

The Punishment inched down the Mississippi. Everyone on deck kept an eye peeled for the round, spiked ugliness of mines. George methodically checked and cleaned the action of his machine gun. Lieutenant Kelly would have given him hell had he neglected it, but he didn’t need the officer riding him to make sure he attended to what needed doing. Hosing bullets out at the Rebs was the likeliest way he’d stay alive in an action; if the gun jammed, that gave the enemy a free shot at him. Best, then, that it didn’t jam.

Kelly came up behind him and watched in approval so silent that George jumped when he turned around and discovered him there. “You take care of the equipment,” the Navy man said, as if surprised to discover that trait in someone so recently a civilian.

“Sir, I put in a lot of years on a fishing trawler,” George answered. “We didn’t spend so much time polishing things as we do here, but everything had to work.” The Atlantic, he thought, was much less forgiving of mistakes than the Mississippi. It would, quite impersonally, kill you if you gave it even a quarter of a chance.

On the other hand, the Rebels would kill you most personally if they got their chance, or even a piece of their chance. He supposed that pretty much balanced things out. Kelly might have been thinking along those lines, too, for he said, “We have to be ready every second.”

“Yes, sir,” Enos agreed.

Kelly sighed. “I do wish we were something more than fire support for the Army. Out on the ocean, by all I hear, ships do what they need to do, not what some fool in green-gray thinks they need to do.”

As far as George was concerned, a dark blue uniform could also cover up a fool. He carefully did not mention that to Kelly, who was liable to think Enos had him in mind with the comment. What he did say was, “Crazy kind of war we’re fighting here.”

“Sailor, if you think I’m going to argue with you, you’re the one who’s crazy,” Kelly told him. “Snapping-turtle Navy is a strange sort of place.”

Enos would have said more, but klaxons started shouting. He would have run to his battle station, but he was already there. What he did do was run a belt into his machine gun, then look around to see what he was supposed to use for a target. He didn’t spot anything.

Word was not long in coming. Fingers began pointing south. Squinting, Enos spotted a tiny smudge of smoke on the horizon. It was what the smoke from the Punishment’s stacks might have looked like, if seen from a distance of several miles. Which meant-

“Well, well,” Lieutenant Kelly said, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. “You don’t see ship-to-ship actions very often in river warfare. Aren’t you glad we’ve found an exception for you, Enos?”

“Sir, I’ll fight,” George said. “You know I’ll fight. Expecting me to be glad about it is probably asking too much.” He’d had revenge enough by now for what the Rebs had done to him while he was a fisherman. He wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of the war somewhere far away from the roar of guns and close to Sylvia, George, Jr., and Mary Jane. He wondered if his little girl remembered him. Then he wondered if Sylvia remembered him-he hadn’t had a letter for a while.

Kelly said, “The next interesting question is whether we saw the Rebs before they saw us.” Interesting was such a nice, bland word to apply to a question that was liable to determine whether the Punishment remained a river monitor or turned into a flaming hulk in the next few minutes.

With a small noise, half whir, half grind, the turret of the Punishment began to revolve. The big guns elevated a few degrees. Before they could fire, though, a couple of great columns of water fountained up from the Mississippi, several hundred yards ahead of the monitor. Secondary splashes rose from shell fragments hitting the water.

“Well, well,” Kelly said again, as calmly as if the toast were too dark to suit him. “That answers that, doesn’t it?”

It did, and, as far as George was concerned, it was the wrong answer. He felt singularly useless. Whatever happened in the duel between the Punishment and the Confederate monitor, it wasn’t going to happen at ranges where a machine gun would do any good. That meant he had to remain a spectator at