Breakthroughs

Cincinnatus said, “Maybe he’d listen if I was to tell him somethin’, then.”

“Maybe he would. And if you was to tell him somethin’, maybe some smart nigger who wasn’t quite as smart as he reckoned he was would get a bullet through the ear one day when he’s drivin’ that big ugly old White truck o’ his that’s plumb full o’ shit the damnyankees’re shootin’ at his countrymen. Or maybe his wife’d have a little accident. Or maybe his kid.”

“I ain’t the only one accidents can happen to, Conroy.” Cincinnatus had to work to hold his voice steady. Plenty of people had threatened him. Threatening his family was an alarming departure.

Conroy leaned back against the park bench, looking like a fat cat with canary feathers on his whiskers. “Reckon I know a bluff when I hear one.”

“Reckon you don’t,” Cincinnatus said. “Got me a little Gray Eagle notebook. I been writin’ things in it for a long time. Anything happen to me or mine, it’ll get to the right place. I’ve made sure o’ that.”

The storekeeper stared at him in undisguised loathing. He was running a bluff, but he wouldn’t be for long; the idea of having such protection was irresistibly appealing. Conroy said, “We was a pack o’ damn fools to ever let any niggers learn their letters.”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” Cincinnatus answered with a shrug. “Too late to worry about it now, one way or the other.” The USA had fewer laws against educating Negroes than did the CSA; he hoped Achilles would get more in the way of learning than he’d ever been able to acquire. But it was too early to worry about that now. He fixed Conroy with a stare that had flint in it. “Which of your pals didn’t take to Kennedy dealin’ with the Reds?”

“None o’ your damn business,” Conroy ground out. He glared back at Cincinnatus. “You want to talk to Luther Bliss, go talk to Luther goddamn Bliss. We’ll see which one of us ends up happier afterwards.”

Cincinnatus didn’t want to talk to Luther Bliss. He never wanted anything to do with the chief of the Kentucky State Police for the rest of his life. Getting his wish there, though, struck him as unlikely. He and Conroy had reached an impasse.

He could, he supposed, ask Apicius if he knew the names of some of the other Confederate diehards. But Apicius’ Reds were as likely to have killed Tom Kennedy as anyone else. And Apicius would not take kindly to questions from Cincinnatus any which way. The cook would wonder for whom he was asking them, and would never believe he was asking them for himself alone.

Conroy heaved himself to his feet. “I reckon we’re done,” he said, and Cincinnatus did not disagree. The storekeeper shook his finger in Cincinnatus’ face. “Don’t you come around there askin’ after me no more, neither. I ain’t got nothin’ more to say to you, and I ain’t gonna be-” He shook his head. His jowls wobbled like gelatin. Off he stomped.

I ain’t gonna be-what? Cincinnatus wondered. I ain’t gonna be there, was the likeliest guess. Cincinnatus wouldn’t have wanted to live in the dingy roominghouse where Conroy made his home, but didn’t expect the storekeeper to head on to much better lodgings. Cincinnatus sighed. He’d got something to think about, but where could he go with it? Nowhere he could see.

With another sigh, he got up and headed toward the nearest trolley stop. Elizabeth would have something sharp to say about his wasting so much of a Sunday afternoon, and she’d be right. But he hadn’t known it would be a waste till he’d gone and done it, which was too late.

The trolley stop was across the street from a saloon with a plate-glass window. As Cincinnatus came to the stop and dug in his pocket for a nickel, a man in a black homburg came out of the saloon and strode across the street to the stop. He seemed as certain the motorcars would stop for him as Moses had been that the Red Sea would part for him. The sea had parted; the motorcars did stop.

“Afternoon, Cincinnatus.” Luther Bliss’ pale brown eyes looked at Cincinnatus and, the Negro would have sworn, through him as well. “That damn diehard know who parted Tom Kennedy’s hair with a.30 caliber slug?”

Cincinnatus was glad he was black. Had he been white, Bliss could have watched him turn pale. “How the devil did you know what we was talking about?” he demanded with almost superstitious awe.

Bliss’ laugh didn’t quite reach those hunting-hound eyes. “You could have been talking about a lot of things,” he answered. “All the others are worse. Let’s just hope that was the only one.”

“If you know all the people you don’t fancy in this here town, Mr. Bliss,” Cincinnatus said, “why don’t you throw ’em all in jail so you don’t have to worry about ’em no more, ’stead of leavin’ ’em run loose and raise trouble?”

“I know all the people I don’t fancy in this here state,” Luther Bliss answered, “and the reason I don’t throw ’em all in jail is simple as hell: there aren’t near enough jails to hold the bastards.” He laughed again, but Cincinnatus didn’t think he was kidding. After a moment, he dug in his pocket, continuing, “You got a hundred dollars from me on account of the president. This here is from me personal, you might say.”

He handed Cincinnatus a nickel. Looking down at the coin that sat in the pale palm of his hand, Cincinnatus said, “Sure as hell you won’t go broke spendin’ your money like this here, Mr. Bliss.”

“You’re a funny one,” Bliss said. “You better get on home now-here comes the trolley. And if I ever figure out how you got to be so funny, I’ll come round again and see if you’re still that way after I take you to pieces.” He tipped his hat and went on his way, smooth as a snake. Cincinnatus threw the nickel in the trolley car’s fare box. He didn’t want it in his pocket. It might have been listening to him.

The SS Pocahontas, Arkansas lay alongside the USS Ericsson. Staring at the supply ship, George Enos said, “If that’s not the stupidest name for a steamboat I ever saw in all my born days, I don’t know what is.”

Carl Sturtevant looked sly and smug. “I know why it’s got that name.”

“All right, I’ll bite,” George said. “Somebody doesn’t know that Pocahontas ended up marrying a Pilgrim?”

“Hell, till this minute I didn’t know she ended up marrying a Pilgrim,” Sturtevant answered. “Nah, that hasn’t got anything to do with it.”

“Come on, then-cough it up,” George said.

“Pocahontas, Arkansas, is this little no-account town a few miles south of the U.S. border,” the petty officer said. “During the Second Mexican War, the Army took the place and held it for a little while. Outside of Montana, there wasn’t much glory for our side in that war. Whatever there was, they pasted onto whatever would take it, and so we’ve got a freighter named for a Rebel whistle stop.”

“All right.” Enos waved a hand. “You got me there. I knew about the real Pocahontas, but not about that town down there named for her. I’ll tell you something else I know, too.” He looked around nervously. “I know I don’t like sitting here in the middle of the goddamn Atlantic while we take on supplies. I don’t like it for hell.”

Sturtevant raised a mocking eyebrow. “You don’t like us to have fuel so we can keep on patrolling? You don’t like fresh vittles? I don’t know about you, but I’m damn sick of kraut and beans. You don’t like getting mail? You got a wife, ain’t that right?”

“Yeah, I got a wife,” George Enos answered. “Mail’s fine, but I want to get home to Boston in one piece when the war’s finally over, too, and if I’m sitting here not moving, that damn Rebel submarine’s going to put a torpedo into our side somewhere right between the number two and number three stacks.”

“We sank that damn Rebel submarine,” Sturtevant said. “Wasn’t one of Lieutenant Crowder’s pipe dreams that time, neither. You blew the captain to pieces when he was pitching their secret papers, and then the Bonefish went under again, and she ain’t never comin’ up no more.”

Enos exhaled angrily through his nose. “You should have been a lawyer, not a sailor. You figure the Confederate Navy’s got only that one submersible in it? They build those bastards by the netful. If there isn’t already another one out here to take the place of that boat, there will be in a few days.”

Like George, Carl Sturtevant looked older than he was; sun and wind and spray had tanned his skin, turned it leather, and wrinkled it, too. He looked older still as he contemplated Enos’ words. “Well, you’re right, God damn it,” he said at last. “Now I’m going to worry, too.”

Sailors hauled sides of beef and hams and sacks of potatoes and endless cans from the Pocahontas, Arkansas to the Ericsson. They chattered at one another in English and a variety of foreign languages that seemed to consist mostly of consonants. Fuel oil gurgled through a hose connecting the hold of the Pocahontas, Arkansas to the Ericsson’s engine room.

As Sturtevant had said, it all promised that the destroyer would be able to keep on steaming and keep on feeding the crew for the next couple of weeks-provided she lived through the next couple of hours. Somewhere out