'I never said they couldn't,' Featherston answered. 'But they won't.'
Nathan Bedford Forrest III looked exasperated. The first officer to bear the name had been a rawboned man who looked a bit like Jake Featherston. His descendant had a rounder face, though he kept his great-grandfather's dangerous eyes. They looked all the more dangerous when he glowered. 'Why won't they? You've promised to keep those states demilitarized, and you're going back on your solemn word. What better excuse do they need?'
'If they attack me for moving my men into my states, they've got a war on their hands,' Jake said calmly. 'I'm telling you, General, they don't have the stomach for it.'
'And I'm telling you, Mr. President, you'll take the country down in ruins if you're wrong.' The first Nathan Bedford Forrest had had a reputation for speaking his mind. His great-grandson took after him.
'To hell with the country,' Featherston said. Nathan Bedford Forrest III gasped. Jake went on, 'I've got twenty dollars of my own money against twenty dollars of yours, General. The damnyankees won't move.'
Forrest frowned. 'You sound mighty damn sure of yourself, Mr. President.'
'I am mighty damn sure of myself,' Jake Featherston answered. 'That's my job. Suppose you let me tend to it while you tend to yours.'
'I am tending to my job,' Nathan Bedford Forrest III said. 'If I didn't point out to you that we're liable to have a problem here, I wouldn't be tending to it. The damnyankees outweigh us. They're always going to outweigh us. Remember how much trouble the Germans had against the Tsar's armies in the Great War? That wasn't because one Russian was as good a soldier as one German. It was because there were a hell of a lot of Russians. There are a hell of a lot of soldiers in the USA, too.'
Jake Featherston nodded. 'They'll be able to outnumber us, like you said. That means we'll just have to outquick 'em. You going to tell me we can't do that?' His voice developed a hard and ugly rasp. If General Forrest was going to tell him something along those lines, he'd be sorry.
'No, sir.' Forrest didn't try. 'We've got the airplanes, and we've got the barrels, and we've got the trucks, too. We'll run 'em ragged.' Like Jake, like most of the Confederates who were really involved with them, he called barrels by the name they had in the USA. Some of the men who'd done their service well away from the trenches still used the British name instead: tanks. Featherston found that a useless affectation. But the general wasn't through, for he added, 'If there is a war, sir, we'd better win it pretty damn fast. If we don't, we've got troubles. They're bigger than we are, like I say, and they can take more punishment. We don't want to get into a slugging match with them. Do you hear what I'm saying?'
'I hear you,' Jake said coldly. 'You make yourself very plain.'
'Good. That's good. I want you to understand me,' Nathan Bedford Forrest III said. 'If I have a choice, I'd just as soon see us not have a war at all. Three years of the last one should have been enough to satisfy us for the rest of our days.'
Three years of war hadn't been enough to satisfy Jake Featherston. He'd fought with undiminished hatred from beginning to end. Some of that hatred had been aimed at the Yankees, the rest at his own side. He'd had plenty to go around. He still did. 'General, I don't need to explain my policies to you. I just need you to carry them out,' he said. 'Is that plain enough for you, or shall I draw you a picture?'
Nathan Bedford Forrest III looked back at him. 'Oh, that's plain enough,' he answered. 'But if you're being a damn fool, sir, don't you think somebody has the duty to come out and tell you so?'
'People told me that before I got Kentucky and Houston back,' Jake said in a low, furious voice. 'Was I right, or were they? People told me that when I brought dams and electricity into the Tennessee Valley. Was I right, or were they? People told me that when I made damn sure the farms in this country had the mechanical gear they needed, so we wouldn't get stuck relying on niggers we can't trust. Was I right, or were they?'
'Damned if I know about that last one,' Forrest said. 'Now we've got those niggers robbing houses in town instead.' Featherston waited. The general nodded. 'All right, sir. I get your point. But you'd better be able to take my twenty dollars. That's all I've got to say.'
'Look here, General-I hope there won't be a war, too,' Featherston said. 'But one way or the other, the Confederate States are going to get what we want. We deserve it, it's our right to have it, and we're going to get it. Is that plain enough for you? Thanks to the Whigs, we've been waiting for almost twenty-five years. That's too damn long. We can't wait forever.'
'Yes, sir. Whatever you decide needs doing, we'll try our best to give it to you,' Forrest said. 'Doing that is our job. Figuring out what we need-that's yours.' He got to his feet, saluted, and left.
Jake looked after him. As the door closed, he said, 'I know what needs doing,' though Nathan Bedford Forrest III could not hear him. 'And by God, I aim to do it.'
Mary Pomeroy paused with a forkful of scrambled eggs halfway to her mouth. 'It's not fair!' she said. 'The Yanks let Kentucky and Houston vote on where they wanted to go, and now they're back in the CSA. It they let us vote, the Americans would be gone from here so fast, it would make your head swim.'
Mort Pomeroy chewed up a mouthful of bacon-Canadian bacon, not the skinny strips that went by the name in the USA-before saying, 'They let that Sequoyah place vote, too, and it voted to stay in the United States.'
Red curls flew as Mary tossed her head. 'At least it had a choice. The Yanks don't give us any.'
'I can't do anything about that.' Mort ate another chunk of bacon. He might have been chewing on his words, too. After swallowing the bacon, he spat out the words: 'And neither can you.'
She bridled. The Yanks had shot her brother for trying to do something about the occupation. Her father had fought a one-man war against the USA till his own bomb blew him up instead of General Custer, for whom it was intended. Mort braced himself, regretting what he'd said and getting ready for an argument. Before she could answer him, Alec spoke from his high chair: 'More bacon?' He was wild for bacon and ham and sausage-anything salty, in fact.
'Sure, sweetheart,' Mary told him, and gave him some. While she cut it up for him, she wondered what to say to her husband. In the end, all that came out was, 'Maybe you're right. Maybe I can't.'
Mort blinked, plainly thinking he'd got off easy. He waited for her to come out with something else. When she didn't, he decided to count his blessings. He finished his bacon and eggs, his toast and jam, and his tea. Then he got into his overcoat, hat, and earmuffs for the trip across the street to the diner. It was warmer today than it had been lately; the high might get up into double digits. On the other hand, it might not, too.
Mary also finished her breakfast. Then she let Alec chase little pieces of bacon around his plate with his fork as long as he ate one every so often. When it stopped being breakfast and turned into playtime, she extracted him from the high chair and carried him over to the sink so she could wash his greasy face. He liked that no better than he ever did, and he was getting big enough to put up a pretty good fight. But she was still bigger, and so, whether he liked it or not, the grease came off.
She read to him for a while. He liked Queen Zixi of Ix, even if a Yank had written it. She didn't suppose L. Frank Baum had particularly disliked Canada. The book gave no sign that he'd ever heard of it-or of the United States, either. Hard to go wrong with a world so thoroughly imaginary.
When Alec started to fidget in her lap, she let him down to play. She didn't have to watch him quite every second these days; he was old enough not to stick everything into his mouth the instant he saw it. That let Mary go into the kitchen and play with something of her own.
Alec wandered in to watch. 'Whatcha doing?' he asked.
'Fixing something,' Mary answered.
'Is it busted?' he asked. 'It don't look busted.'
'Doesn't,' Mary said. 'It doesn't look busted.'
'If it doesn't look busted, how come you're fixing it?'
Conversations with children could be surreal. By now, Mary had got used to that, or as used to the unpredictable as you could get. She said, 'I'm not fixing it like that. I'm fixing it up.'
'Are you making it fancy-like?'
She shook her head. 'No, I'm just taking care of what needs taking care of.' That didn't mean much to Alec. It didn't mean much to her, either. She didn't care. It kept him from asking too many more questions, which was what she'd had in mind. She worked on it for a while, then put it away. Before too long, it would be done.
'Can we go out and play?' Alec asked.
'No. It's too cold.'
'Can we throw snowballs? I'll bop you in the nose with one.'
