broad, we have some kids and get old and fat together. Big fucking deal, pardon my French.'
That was, in broad outline, the future Armstrong saw for himself, too. It didn't seem so bad-but, when Squidface laid it out, it didn't seem so good, either. But when the other choice was staying in…'Would you rather get your balls shot off instead? I already got one Purple Heart. That's about five too many.'
'It won't be as bad now as it was,' Squidface said. 'What I figure is, if I stay in, I can end up a top kick pretty goddamn fast. They're gonna lose all kinds of senior noncoms-some of those sorry assholes are Great War retreads, and they ain't gonna stick around. People'll call me First Sergeant Giacopelli, not Squidface. I'll get to tell lieutenants where to head in. Even captains won't look at me like I'm dogshit on the bottom of their shoe. I'll have more fruit salad on my chest than the mess hall has in cans.'
'You're gonna do what you're gonna do,' Armstrong said. 'Don't figure I can talk you out of it. Hell, I wish you luck, if it's what you really want. But I'm not gonna go that route.'
'You'll end up in an office somewhere, with a secretary to blow you if your wife won't. You're a smart guy,' Squidface said. 'I'm just a sap from the wrong side of the tracks. Army's the first place I ever got anything like a square deal.'
'If I'm so smart, what am I doing here?' Armstrong asked. Squidface laughed. Armstrong wished he hadn't made the crack about secretaries. His own father had worked in a Washington office since time out of mind. Armstrong didn't have any reason to think his old man was unfaithful, but now he'd wonder. That wasn't so good.
Then somebody let out a yell, and Armstrong and Squidface both jumped up to see what was going on. The guy who yelled was a captain. Seeing Armstrong, he said, 'Gather up your platoon, Grimes, and take 'em into Hugo. We've got trouble there.'
'Yes, sir,' Armstrong said, and then, 'Can you tell me what kind of trouble, so they know what to look out for?'
'There's a gal says a nigger raped her. He says she gave it up, and she only started yelling when somebody saw him leaving her house. All the white folks in town want to hang him up by the nuts. Before we got down here, they'd hang a coon for whistling at a white woman, let alone fucking her.'
'What are we supposed to do, exactly?' Armstrong asked.
'He's in the town jail. Don't let 'em haul him out and lynch him. We're still figuring out what really happened- trying to, anyway. So that's what's going on. Go deal with it. Do whatever you have to do to hold the jail. White folks here have to know we're the law in these parts nowadays. They aren't. Got it?'
'Yes, sir,' Armstrong replied-the only possible answer. Go deal with it, he thought. Right. Turning to Squidface, he said, 'Let's round 'em up.'
'Sure, Sarge.' Squidface said the only thing he could.
They tramped into Hugo in full combat gear, weapons loaded and ready. Finding the jail was the easiest thing in the world-it was the building with the mob in front of it. A squad of scared-looking U.S. soldiers in the jail looked as if they didn't think they could hold the mob out if it attacked. They might well have been right, too.
'Break it up there!' Armstrong yelled from behind the crowd of irate Alabamans. 'Go home!'
They whirled, almost as one. For a second, he wondered if they would charge his men. The sight of so many more soldiers in green-gray-and so many automatic weapons-seemed to give the locals pause. 'We want the nigger!' one of them yelled. Then they all took up the cry: 'We want the nigger!'
'Well, you aren't gonna get him,' Armstrong said. 'He's ours to deal with, once we work out what really went on. You people go on home. First, last, and only warning: we start shooting, we don't quit.'
'What he done to that white gal, just killin's too good for him!' shouted a man with a gray mustache stained by tobacco juice. 'We're gonna-'
'You're gonna shut the fuck up and go home right now, or you're gonna end up dead,' Armstrong broke in. 'Those are the only choices you got. We'll deal with the colored guy, or maybe with the whore he was trickin' with.' That caused fresh tumult. He silenced it by chambering a round. The harsh snick! cut through the crowd noise like a sharp knife through soft sausage. 'Enough of this shit,' Armstrong said. 'Beat it!'
He wondered if they would rush him in spite of everything. He also wondered if he and his buddies could shoot enough of them to break the rush before they got mobbed. Then, sullenly, the crowd dispersed. They were willing to kill to defend Confederate womanhood, but less enthusiastic about dying for it.
'Whew!' Armstrong said.
'Yeah.' Squidface nodded. 'Ain't you glad the war's over?'
'Christ, we almost started it up again,' Armstrong said. 'And you want to keep on doing crap like this? You gotta be out of your tree.'
'Hey, I won't be bored, anyway,' Squidface made light of it, but he wasn't about to change his mind. 'Got a butt on you?'
'Sure.' Armstrong handed him a pack. 'Wonder if that coon really did give her the old what-for?'
'Who cares?' Squidface paused to flick his Zippo, sucked in smoke, and went on, 'Way I look at it is, all the shit these white Freedom Party assholes gave the spades, who gives a shit if they get some of their own back eight inches at a time?'
'Mm, you've got something there.' Armstrong lit a cigarette, too. 'Besides, I bet she's ugly.' He and Squidface both laughed. Their side had won. They could afford to.
C assius had wondered about a lot of things in his life. Whether he would be famous never made the list. A Negro in the CSA had no chance at all of reaching that goal, so what point to wondering about it?
All he had to do, it turned out, was be a halfway decent shot. Knock one man over, and his own world turned upside down and inside out. No, he hadn't expected that. He hadn't even imagined it. None of which kept it from happening.
First, U.S. officers inside Madison grilled him. He told his story. There wasn't much of a story to tell: 'Soon as I seen it was Jake Featherston, I shot the son of a bitch. Shot him some more once he was down so's he wouldn't get up no mo'.'
'What'll we do with him?' one officer asked another over Cassius' head. They might as well have been talking about somebody in the next county.
'Hell, I don't know,' the second Yankee answered. 'If it was up to me, though, I'd put him up for a Congressional Medal of Honor.'
'Can't,' the first officer said.
'Why the hell not?'
'He isn't a U.S. citizen.'
'Oh.' The second officer laughed sheepishly. 'Yeah. You're right. But he just did more for us than a fuck of a lot of guys who are.'
One thing that happened because he'd shot Jake Featherston was that he didn't have to go out on patrol any more. He didn't have any more duties at all, in fact. He could eat as much as he wanted and sleep as late as he wanted. If they'd issued him a girl, he would have had the whole world by the short hairs. And if he'd asked, they probably would have. But he didn't think of it, and no one suggested it, so he did without.
A few days later, a newsreel crew filmed him. He told them the same story he'd given the Army officers. One of them asked, 'Did you feel you were taking revenge for all the Negroes Jake Featherston hurt?'
'He didn't hurt 'em, suh-he done killed 'em,' Cassius answered. 'My ma an' my pa an' my sister an' Lord knows how many more. Can't hardly get even for all that jus' by killin' one man. He needed killin'-don't get me wrong. But it ain't enough-not even close.'
'Why didn't you get taken with the rest of your family?' asked the white man from the USA.
'On account of I didn't go to church on Sunday. That's where they got grabbed.'
'Do you think God was saving you for something else?'
'Beats me,' Cassius answered. 'Plenty of other times I could've got killed, too.'
'What are you going to do now?'
Cassius spread his hands. 'Suh, I got no idea.'
Plenty of other people had ideas for him. Next thing he knew, he was on a train heading for the USA. He'd never ridden on the railroad before, and he would have gone hungry if one of the whites escorting him hadn't taken him to the dining car. The food was good-better than U.S. Army chow. It didn't measure up to what the Huntsman's Lodge or his mother had made, but he didn't figure anything ever would, not this side of heaven.
