War veteran, he paid the price for his murderous folly.'
Another camera cut. The bespectacled white man standing beside Jake Featherston didn't look like a veteran; he put Pinkard more in mind of a professor. Featherston spoke again: 'Those damn blacks-beg your pardon, folks-stabbed us in the back during the war. They're trying to do it again. This time, though, we're good and ready for 'em, and we won't let 'em get away with it.'
Murmurs of agreement ran through the Odeum. Fort Deposit was in the Black Belt, but no black faces had been visible in the theater before the lights went down. Indeed, armed guards outside and on the roof made sure no marauding Negroes would cause trouble while the motion picture played.
At the Olympic closing ceremonies, smartly turned-out Confederate soldiers ringed the stadium, protecting it as the guards protected the theater here. Aeroplanes with the words confederate citrus company painted in big letters on their sides streaked low above the stadium. They flew wingtip to wingtip, in formations only professional pilots who were also daredevils would have tried.
They could fight if they had to, Pinkard realized. He wondered if they were Great War veterans, or if they'd picked up their experience flying for Maximilian in the Mexican civil war. That didn't matter. Wherever they'd got it, they had the right stuff. So did the machines they flew: sleek low-winged metal monoplanes that made the slow, sputtering canvas-and-wire contraptions of the Great War seem like antiques by comparison.
After a moment's pause, the newsreel shifted subjects. veteran steps down, a card said. 'Jeb Stuart Jr., who first came to prominence in the Second Mexican War more than fifty years ago, has left the Confederate General Staff after revelations about his unfortunate role in failing to prevent the Red uprising of 1915,' the announcer said. On the screen, Stuart looked ancient indeed, ancient and doddering. 'President Featherston will soon name a younger, more vigorous replacement.'
Other newsreel snippets showed dams rising in the Tennessee River valley, tractors plowing, and other machines harvesting. 'Agriculture makes great strides,' the announcer said proudly. 'Each machine does the work of from six to six hundred lazy, shiftless sharecroppers.' The camera panned across shabbily dressed colored men and women standing in front of shanties.
'And in lands stolen from the CSA after the war, in Sequoyah and the part of occupied Texas miscalled Houston…' The announcer fell silent. The pictures of dust in dunes, in drifts, in blowing, choking curtains, spoke for themselves. Leaning forward against a strong wind, a man lurched through drifted dust towards a farmhouse with a sagging roof. His slow, effortful journey seemed all but hopeless. So did the wail of a baby on the lap of a scrawny woman in a print dress. She sat on the front porch of a house whose fields lay dust-choked and baking under a merciless sky.
Gloating, the announcer said, 'This is how the United States care for the lands they took from their rightful owners.'
'Damnyankees,' a woman behind Pinkard whispered.
After those grim scenes, the serial that followed came as something of a relief. It portrayed a pair of Confederate bunglers who'd ended up in the Army during the war and had escape after unlikely escape. Jeff knew it was ridiculous, but couldn't help laughing himself silly.
The main feature was more serious. It was a love story almost thwarted by a colored furniture dealer who kept casting lustful looks toward the perky blond heroine. Pinkard wanted to kick the Negro right in the teeth. That the people who'd made the motion picture might want him to react just like that never once crossed his mind.
He rose and stretched when the picture ended, well pleased that the black man had got what was coming to him. Then he left the theater and walked over to the bus that would take him back to the Alabama Correctional Camp (P). The bus was heavily armored, with thick wire grating over the windows. Pinkard wasn't the only white passenger who drew a pistol before boarding. Here at the edge of the Black Belt, rebellion still sizzled. He wanted to be able to fight back if the Negroes shot up the bus. His heart thudded in his chest when the machine got rolling.
It reached the Alabama Correctional Camp (P) without taking fire. Jeff breathed a sigh of relief when he got off. Two sandbagged machine-gun nests guarded the front entrance. They were new. Black raiders hadn't been shy about shooting into the camp, and didn't seem to care whether they hit guards or prisoners. New belts of barbed wire ringed the place, too. They were as much to keep marauders out as they were to keep inmates in.
Jeff's white skin was enough to get him past the machine-gun nests unchallenged. At what had been the entrance, another guard carefully scrutinized both him and his identity card. 'Oh, for Christ's sake, Toby,' he fumed, 'you know goddamn well who I am.'
'Yeah, I do,' the lower-ranking guard said, 'but I gotta be careful. There was that camp in Mississippi where one of the prisoners managed to sneak out with a phony card.'
'You ever hear of anybody sneaking in with a phony card?' Jeff demanded. Toby only shrugged. Pinkard let it go. He couldn't complain too hard, not when the camp needed solid security.
A mosquito bit him on the back of the neck. He swatted and missed. Its buzz as it flew away sounded as if it were laughing at him. The camp lay quiet in the summer night. Snores floated out the windows of the prisoners' barracks. Men who'd proved too enthusiastic about being Whigs or Rad Libs weren't going anywhere-except for hasty trips to the latrines.
'What do you say, Jeff?' a guard called as Pinkard headed toward his much more comfortable barracks. 'How was the picture?'
'Pretty good, Charlie,' he answered. 'Got to do something about those damn niggers, though. That one who took a shot at the president…' He caught himself yawning and didn't go on. Instead, he just said, 'Freedom!'
'Freedom!' Charlie echoed. It was a handy word when you wanted to say something without bothering with a real conversation.
Pinkard's mattress creaked when he lay down. In the warm, muggy darkness, he was some little while falling asleep. He'd laid out the camp with room to grow. The expanded security perimeter had come from that extra room, which was fine. The land was there, for whatever reason. If it hadn't been, that would have caused a problem. As things were… As things were, he rolled over and slept.
Reveille woke him. He got out of bed, put on a fresh uniform, washed his face and shaved, and went out to look at morning roll call and inspection. The politicals were lined up in neat rows. They wore striped uniforms like any convicts, with a big white P stenciled on the chest and back of each shirt and the seat of each pair of trousers.
Guards counted them off and compared the tally to the number expected. When Pinkard saw the count start over again, he knew the numbers didn't match. The politicals groaned; they didn't get fed till everything checked out the way it was supposed to. One of them said, 'Take off your shoes this time, goddammit!'
Without even pausing, a guard walking by backhanded the talky prisoner across the face. The political clapped his hands to his nose and mouth, whereupon the guard kicked him in the belly. He fell to the ground, writhing.
Jeff ate breakfast with assistant wardens not involved in the count. Ham and eggs and grits and good hot coffee filled him up nicely. When the count finally satisfied the guards making it, the prisoners got the very same breakfast-except for the ham and eggs and coffee.
One of the assistant wardens said, 'I hear we've got some new fish coming in today.'
'Yeah?' Jeff pricked his ears up. 'What kind of new fish?'
'Blackfish,' the other man answered.
'Niggers?' Pinkard said, and the other fellow nodded. Jeff swore. 'How the hell are we going to keep 'em separate? Nobody said nothin' about niggers when we were laying out this place.'
'What the devil difference does it make?' the other fellow said. 'Half the bastards we've got in here-shit, more than half-they're already nigger-lovers. Let 'em stick together with their pals.' He laughed.
To Jeff, it wasn't a laughing matter. 'They'll make trouble,' he said dolefully. He didn't want trouble-he didn't want trouble the prisoners started, anyhow. He wanted things to go smoothly. That made him look good.
With a shrug, the other assistant warden said, 'They won't bust out, and that's all that matters. And how much trouble can they make? We've got the guns. Let 'em write the governor if they don't like it.' He guffawed again. So did Pinkard-that was funny.
Sure enough, the colored prisoners came in a little before noon. Some of them were wounded, and went into the meager infirmary. The rest… The rest reminded Jeff of the Red rebels he'd fought just after he got conscripted into the C.S. Army. With them inside it, this camp would need more guards. He was morally certain of that. What,
