'They'll do all right for themselves in the United States,' the U.S. general predicted. 'And I'll give you-and your president-some free advice, too.'
'Free advice?' Anne didn't laugh in his face, but she came close. 'I'm sure it's worth every penny you charge for it.'
She hoped that would make him angry. If it did, he didn't show it. He just nodded, setting his chins in motion, and said, 'Oh, no doubt. Well, I'll give it to you anyway, mostly 'cause I know you won't listen to it.'
Anne could simply have turned her back and walked out the door. Instead, with ill-concealed impatience, she said, 'Go ahead, then. Get it over with.'
'Thanks a lot.' The U.S. officer wasn't bad at sarcasm, either, even if he was built like a zeppelin. 'If you people are smart, you won't land on this state too hard. You won the plebiscite, yes. But you didn't win it by as much as you thought you would, and you can't tell me any different. If you come down on Kentucky with both feet, you'll have about as much fun holding it down as we have since the last war.'
That made more sense than Anne wished it did-enough that she decided to mention it in her report to President Featherston. She wouldn't suggest that he follow the fat man's advice; she knew better. But noting it as an item of intelligence wouldn't hurt.
She also decided she would note the way-Rowling? she had to check that-had spoken of the last war. Unless she altogether misread his tone, he was already thinking about the next one.
As had been his habit since the days of the Mexican civil war, Jefferson Pinkard prowled the barracks in the prison camp he ran in Louisiana. Camp Dependable wouldn't boil over while his back was turned.
It might boil over anyway. He knew that. The black prisoners in the camp had little to lose. They'd been captured in arms against the Confederate States. Nothing good was going to happen to them. They only thing that kept them in line was the certain knowledge that they would die if they rose up against the guards. Jeff's endless prowling was designed not least to make sure they stayed certain of that.
Whenever he stepped into a barracks, he had a pistol in his hand and half a squad of guards with submachine guns at his back. The Negro captives jumped down from their bunks and sprang to attention as soon as he came in. They were certain of what would happen if they didn't show him that courtesy, too.
'You, boy!' Pinkard pointed to one of them, a big, muscular buck. 'Give me your name and number and where you were captured.'
'I's Plutarch, suh,' the Negro replied. He rattled off the camp number, finishing, 'I was cotched up in Franklin Parish, suh. Some damn nigger sell me out. I ever find out who, dat one dead coon.'
A lot of prisoners here had similar complaints. Some Negroes didn't want guerrilla war in their back yards. The ones who didn't had to be careful with what they did and said, though. A lot of them had ended up gruesomely dead when the men they were trying to betray took vengeance.
'Any complaints?' Pinkard asked.
Plutarch nodded. 'I ain't got enough to eat, I ain't got enough to wear, an' I's here. 'Side from that, everything fine.'
'Funny nigger,' growled one of the guards behind Pinkard. 'You'll laugh outa the other side of your face pretty damn quick, funny nigger.'
Several of the other blacks in the barracks had smiled and nodded at what Plutarch had to say. None had been rash enough to laugh out loud. Now even the men who'd smiled tried to pretend they hadn't. Pinkard said, 'You get the same rations and same clothes as everybody else. And if you didn't want to be here, you never should have picked up a gun.'
'Huh!' Plutarch said. 'White folks rise up against what they don't like, they's heroes. Black folks do the same, we's goddamn niggers.'
'Bet your ass you are, boy,' that guard said.
'There's a difference,' Pinkard said.
Plutarch nodded. 'Sure enough is. Y'all won. We lost. Ain't no bigger difference'n dat.' That wasn't the difference Jeff had had in mind, which didn't mean the prisoner was wrong. Pinkard poked through the barracks. He knew how things were supposed to be, and carefully checked out everything that didn't match the pattern. Nothing looked like the start of an escape attempt, but you couldn't be sure without a thorough inspection.
On to the next barracks. As before, prisoners tumbled out of their bunks and stood at stiff attention. There was one difference here, though: Willy Knight dwelt in Barracks Six. The tall, blond, former vice president stood out from the black men all around him like a snowball in a coal field.
He was not the man he had been when Freedom Party guards brought him to Camp Dependable. He was scrawnier; camp rations weren't enough to let anybody keep the weight he'd come in with. He was dirtier, too- water for washing was in short supply. And, in an odd way, he was tougher than he had been. That he'd been tough enough to stay alive surprised Jeff Pinkard, who wouldn't have given him the chance of a snowball: a snowball in hell.
Hell this might well have been. But none of the Negro inhabitants here had taken advantage of the chance to get rid of a Freedom Party big shot. That surprised Pinkard, too-it did, but then again, it didn't. The blacks might have suspected Knight was in here as much as bait as for any other reason. Anybody who harmed him was liable to pay the price.
They might not have been wrong, either. For the moment, Jeff's orders were to look the other way if anything happened to Willy Knight. But one telegram could change that, and could change it days or weeks or months after something nasty happened to the ex-vice president.
Almost as if Knight were any other prisoner, Pinkard pointed at him and snapped, 'You! Give me your name and number!' He couldn't make himself call another white boy.
Knight repeated his name and camp number, then added, 'I was captured in Richmond, Virginia, trying to save the country.'
'I want something from you, I'll ask for it,' Jeff said.
The guard who'd growled at Plutarch growled at Willy Knight, too: 'You really want to catch hell, just go on runnin' your mouth.'
Knight shut up. The first time someone had said something like that to him, he'd asked what could be worse than coming to the camp to begin with. The guards had spent the next couple of weeks showing him what could be worse. Another way he was different now was that he didn't have any front teeth. He'd learned something, but not everything, about keeping quiet.
Pinkard didn't ask him if he had any complaints. Even if Knight did, nobody was going to do anything about them. That being so, why waste time and breath?
The warden did inspect Barracks Six with care unusual even for him. If some of the colored prisoners escaped, that would be a misfortune. He'd get called on the carpet. If Willy Knight escaped, that would be a catastrophe. Somebody's head would have to roll, and he knew whose. He might end up in one of these hard, narrow bunks himself-or they might simply shoot him and get it over with. Nobody, but nobody, was going to escape from Barracks Six.
Everything seemed shipshape. Pinkard didn't trust the way things seemed. He had no reason not to. He just didn't. He took out a little book and scribbled a note to himself. Half the men in here would get cleared out before the day was done, to be replaced by prisoners from other barracks. If plots were stirring, that would slow them down. People would have to figure out who could be trusted and who couldn't. I better stick a new informer or two in here, too, Jeff thought. The less that went on without his knowing it, the better the camp ran.
He was heading for the next barracks when a guard came up to him with a yellow envelope. 'This here wire just came in, boss,' the man said, and thrust it at him.
'What the hell?' Pinkard took the envelope, opened it, and extracted the telegram inside. 'What the hell?' he said again, this time in tones of deep dismay.
'What's the matter?' the guard asked.
'What's the matter?' Jeff would echo anybody, not just himself. 'I'll tell you what's the matter. We're going to get a new shipment of prisoners, that's what-a big new shipment of prisoners. Nice of 'em to let us know, wasn't it? They're supposed to start comin' in this afternoon.'
'A new shipment of prisoners?' The guard proved he could repeat what he'd just heard, too. Then he exploded, much as Jeff wanted to do. 'Jesus H. Christ! Where the hell we gonna put 'em? We already got niggers
