hand…
Though Pinkard didn't want to admit it, even to himself, the captured Negroes scared him to death. They had taken up arms against the Confederate States not in hope of victory-as the colored Reds had a generation earlier- but because they simply couldn't stand the way things were. Now that they'd been taken prisoner, they expected nothing from the men into whose hands they'd fallen. They expected nothing-and they were seldom disappointed.
Camp Dependable was a rougher place now than it had been when inoffensive politicals filled it. These days, guards always carried submachine guns. They carried the weapons with safeties off, and they always traveled in pairs in areas where prisoners went. So far, the blacks hadn't managed to steal a submachine gun from a guard. Jeff hoped that record would last. He wondered if it could.
He had other worries, too, though not of the life-and-death sort. Just keeping track of the prisoners was a record-keeper's worst nightmare. They didn't come into the camp with passbooks in the pockets of their dungarees. He assumed most of the names they gave were false. Even had those names been genuine, they wouldn't have helped much. Negroes in the CSA had never been allowed to take surnames, as they were in the USA. With passbooks, the powers that be didn't have too much trouble sorting out who was who. Without them…
The camp had an underofficer who specialized in taking fingerprints and forwarding them to Baton Rouge and to Richmond for identification. If the people in Baton Rouge and Richmond had cared as much as Pinkard did about matching those fingerprints to the ones in their files, he would have been happier. As things were, he wasn't sure who most of his prisoners were. The only thing he was sure of was that they had good reason for concealing their identity.
'We've got to be careful, dammit,' he would tell the guards every morning. 'These nigger bastards don't want to argue with us like the politicals did. They want to kill us. That's why they're here. Thing we can't do is give 'em the chance.'
Work parties that left the barbed-wire perimeter of the camp made him especially nervous. The blacks who went out on road-building details and other hard labor were chained to one another. They wore balls and chains on their left ankles. They couldn't possibly run. So Jeff told himself. He worried even so.
And it was all his baby. When the politicals had gone off to another camp, the warden at Camp Dependable had gone with them. 'You made this place a going concern,' he told Pinkard before he went away. 'You know it best, and that makes you best suited to keeping these black devils in line here.'
Maybe he'd even been right. Regardless of whether he had, Jeff didn't love him and never would. The then- warden had had a choice between an easy job and a hard one. He'd taken the easy one himself and left the hard one to somebody else. If he'd fought in the war, he would have sent patrols forward while he stayed in a nice, safe dugout in his own trench line. Jeff had known officers like that. He'd despised them, too.
Higher rank. Fancier emblems on his collar tabs. A bigger paycheck every month. Pinkard approved of all those things. But he didn't approve of the way he'd got them.
He checked the clock in his office. Half past five. About time for the working party to come back. Pinkard heaved himself out of the swivel chair, which creaked under his weight. He headed for the front gate. He always liked to watch the gangs come in. If he could get a report on the spot, he didn't give the guards a chance to come up with any lies. He knew such things happened. He'd done the like himself, and didn't want it done to him.
His timing was good. He got to the gate two or three minutes before the work party returned. The Negroes clanked along, slowed by their chains and the weights attached to their ankles-and slowed also by doing work they didn't want to do and coming back to a place where they didn't want to be.
'How did it go?' Jeff called to the chief guard, a stocky, hard-faced man named Mercer Scott.
'Another day,' Scott answered with a shrug. He shifted a plug of tobacco and spat a stream of brown juice on the ground. 'Three niggers keeled over. Two of 'em croaked, and we flung 'em in the swamp. The other one got back up on his feet when we thumped him a couple times. Lazy bastard just wanted a break. I'll break his black ass, he tries that kind of shit with me.' He spat again.
'Who died?' Pinkard asked. 'I've got to try and keep the records straight, you know.'
'Yeah, yeah.' Mercer Scott screwed his face into a parody of deep thought. 'One was that mincing little faggot named Dionysus. He's been poorly since that big buck beat him up last month. And the other one… Hell, who was the other one?' He turned to another guard. 'Who was the other nigger we pitched in the swamp, Bob?'
'The skinny bastard,' Bob answered. 'Cicero, that's his name.'
'Oh, yeah. That's right. I couldn't recollect if he was today or yesterday.' Scott turned to Jeff. 'That's who it was, all right. Dionysus and Cicero. No loss, either one of 'em.'
Pinkard nodded and scribbled a note to himself. The camp held several Ciceros, but only one of them was in this work gang, so he wouldn't have any trouble with that. He said, 'Good enough. Make sure the count matches, then bring 'em on inside.' A mosquito lit on the back of his wrist. He smashed it Hell might have more mosquitoes than Louisiana, but he wasn't sure anyplace else did.
One by one, the Negroes counted off. The reek of their unwashed bodies was harsh in Pinkard's nostrils. The guards smelled nearly as ripe. In this heat and humidity, everybody stank.
One of Pinkard's aides pounded on the door to his quarters at half past twelve that night. He woke up grabbing for his pistol. Nobody would bother him at that time of night for anything but trouble. As far as he was concerned, trouble came in two flavors: escape and uprising. 'What the hell?' he demanded, throwing the door open in just his pajamas.
'Warden, they need you at the front gate right away,' the aide said.
Jeff shoved his feet into slippers and jammed his hat down onto his head so people would have some idea of who he was. 'I'm coming,' he said. 'What am I walking into?'
'I don't exactly know,' the aide answered, and Jeff wanted to clobber him with the pistol. He went on, 'There's folks from Richmond there. Reckon they'll tell you what you need to know.'
'From Richmond?' Pinkard's mind raced. Was he in trouble? What kind of trouble could he be in? He couldn't think of anything he'd screwed up. He'd done his job here. He'd done it back in Alabama, too. He'd been a good Freedom Party man since the days just after the war, and he'd stayed in the Party through the hard times after Grady Calkins shot President Hampton. Hell, he'd broken up with his wife because Emily was fooling around on him on nights when he went to meetings. 'Get out of my way, goddammit.' He pushed past the aide and hustled to the gate.
None of the guards said a word about what he had on. He could deal with them later, when he was in proper uniform. The men at the gate wore the regalia of Freedom Party guards, high-ranking ones. Their cold, hard faces would have scared the bejesus out of even a thoroughgoing son of a bitch like Mercer Scott. 'You are Jefferson Pinkard?' one of them asked. He didn't say anything about how Pinkard was dressed, either.
'That's right,' Jeff answered. 'Who the-devil are you?'
'Chief Assault Band Leader Ben Chapman.' The accent wasn't Virginia; it was Alabama, much like Pinkard's own. 'I have a prisoner to deliver to this camp. You are to acknowledge receipt.'
'You do? I am?' Pinkard said. The Party officer nodded. 'Well, who the hell is he?' Jeff asked testily. 'And what are you doing bringing him here in the middle of the goddamn night?'
'Orders,' Chapman said, as if orders were the most important thing in the world. Well, maybe he had a point there. 'And the prisoner is'-he lowered his voice so Pinkard could hear but the guards at the front gate couldn't- 'a fellow by the name of Willy Knight.'
'Holy Jesus!' Jeff exploded. Having the vice president of the CSA-well, the former vice president, after his resignation and imprisonment (to say nothing of his impeachment and conviction)-in his prison camp was the last thing he wanted. The responsibility if something went wrong… and things were only too likely to go wrong. 'Didn't anybody tell you this here camp is full of niggers?'
Chief Assault Band Leader Chapman shrugged. He had an athlete's grace, and an athlete's watchful eyes, too. 'Goddamn spooks deserve whatever happens to 'em,' he said. 'And the goddamn son of a bitch we brought down here deserves whatever happens to him, too. Nobody will say a word if he comes out of this place feet first.'
That took a load off Pinkard's mind. But, still cautious, he asked, 'Will you put that in writing?'
'Nothing about this business goes down in writing,' Chief Assault Band Leader Chapman said scornfully. 'Nothing except your name on the form that says we got Knight here in one piece.'
'I might have known,' Jeff muttered, and Chapman nodded, as if to say, Yes, you might have. With a sigh, the
