lot of them are going to get off, and they'll brag about what they did till they're old and gray.'
'Except when Yankees are around,' Moss said. 'Then they'll swear up and down that they didn't know what was going on. Some prick will probably write a book that shows how they didn't really massacre their Negroes after all.'
'Oh, yeah? Then where'd the smokes go?' Goodman asked. 'I mean, they were there before the war, and then they weren't. So what happened?'
'Well, we killed a bunch of 'em when we bombed Confederate cities.' Moss was a well-trained attorney; he could spin out an argument whether he believed in it or not. 'Some died in the rebellion. Some went up to the USA. Some died of hunger and disease-there was a war on, you know. But a massacre? Nah. Never happened.'
Barry Goodman's mouth twisted. 'That's disgusting. That'd gag a maggot, damned if it wouldn't.'
'Bet your ass,' Moss said. 'You think it won't happen, though? Give it twenty years-thirty at the outside.'
'Disgusting,' Goodman repeated. 'Well, we're gonna hang some people, anyway. Better believe we are. Maybe not enough, but some. And Pinkard's one of 'em.'
'I've got to do everything I can to stop you,' Moss said. 'And I will.'
'Sure.' Major Goodman didn't despise him for playing on the other side, the way several military prosecutors up in Canada had. That was something, anyhow. 'You have a job to do, too. But they aren't just asking you to make bricks without straw. They're asking you to make bricks without mud, for cryin' out loud.'
Since Moss knew exactly the same thing, he couldn't very well argue. He just sighed. 'I'd feel better about defending him if he thought he was a murderer, you know? If he felt bad about it, if he felt guilty about it, he'd be somebody I could give a damn about. I'd want to get him off the hook. It wouldn't be just an assignment. But as far as he's concerned, everything he did was strictly line of duty, and every one of the Negroes he got rid of had it coming.'
'I know. I've seen the documents, and I've seen him in court. What he was doing, it was a job for him. He turned out to be good at it, so they kept promoting him.' Goodman shook his head. 'And look where he ended up.'
'Yeah. Look.' Moss looked at his glass. It was empty again. How did that happen? Two quick doubles were making his head spin, so that was how it happened. If he got another one…If he got another one, he'd stagger back to BOQ, and he'd need aspirins and coffee in the morning. His client deserved better than that. On the other hand, his client also deserved worse than that. He glanced over to Goodman. 'I'll have another one if you do.' That would even things up-and salve his conscience.
The prosecutor laughed. 'I was going to say the same thing to you. I need another one, by God.' They both waved to the barkeep. Stolidly, the enlisted man built two more doubles.
Moss got about halfway down his before a really ugly thought surfaced. 'What if we elected somebody because he wanted to get rid of all the people with green eyes in the country? Do you think he could find guys like Pinkard to do his dirty work for him?'
Barry Goodman frowned. 'It'd be harder,' he said slowly. 'We haven't hated people with green eyes since dirt, the way whites hate blacks in the CSA.'
'Yeah, that's true.' Moss conceded the point. Why not? They weren't in court now. 'All right-suppose we elected a guy who wanted to get rid of our Negroes, or our Jews. Could he get help?' Was Goodman Jewish? With a name like that, maybe yes, maybe no. His looks didn't say for sure, either.
Whatever he was, he answered, 'I'd like to tell you no, but I bet he could. Too damn many people will do whatever the guy in charge tells 'em to. They figure he knows what he's doing, and they figure they'll get in trouble if they don't go along. So yeah, our Featherston could get his helpers. Or do you think I'm wrong?'
'Christ, I wish I did,' Moss answered. 'But the Turks did it to the Armenians way back when, and the Russians have been giving it to the Jews forever. So it's not just the Confederates going off the deep end. They were more efficient about it than anybody else has been, but we could do that, too.'
'Now we've got this big, ugly, bad example staring us in the face,' Goodman said. 'Maybe it'll make everybody too ashamed to do anything like it again. I sure want to think so, anyhow. It'd give me hope for the goddamn human race.'
'I'll drink to that. To the goddamn human race!' Moss raised his glass. Goodman clinked with him. They drank together.
U.S. authorities in Hugo, Alabama, took their own sweet time about trying the Negro accused of raping a white woman there. They wanted to let things calm down. Armstrong Grimes approved of that. He'd managed to stave off one riot in front of the jail. He knew he might not be so lucky the second time around.
He'd lost his enthusiasm for the uniform he wore. He'd gone through the whole war from start to finish. All right, fine. He'd seen the elephant. He'd got shot. He'd paid all the dues anybody needed to pay. As far as he was concerned, somebody else could come down and occupy the CSA.
The government cared for his opinion as much as it usually did. It already had him down at the ass end of Alabama, and it would keep him here as long as it wanted to. If he didn't like it, what could he do about it? Not much, not when his only friends for hundreds of miles were other U.S. soldiers in the same boat he was.
So all right. He was stuck here. But he was damned if he'd give the U.S. Army a dime's worth more than he had to. Sitting quiet and not stirring up the locals looked mighty good to him.
To his surprise, Squidface stayed all eager-beaver. 'You outa your mind?' Armstrong asked the Italian kid. 'The more you piss these people off, the more likely it is somebody'll shoot at you.'
'Somebody's gonna shoot at us. You can bet your ass on that,' Squidface answered. 'But if we keep these shitheads off balance, like, it'll be penny-ante stuff. We let 'em start plotting, then half the fuckin' state rises up, and we have to level everything between here and the ocean to shut it down. You know what I'm sayin', man?'
Armstrong grunted. He knew, and didn't like knowing. He wanted to think like a short-timer, somebody who'd escape from the Army soon. To Squidface, who wanted to be a lifer, the problem looked different. Squidface wanted long-term answers, ones that would keep this part of Alabama not quiet but quieter for years to come. Armstrong didn't give a damn what happened in 1946 if he'd be out of here by 1945.
If. That was the question. The Army seemed anything but eager to turn soldiers loose. Despite taking hostages, despite shooting lots of them, it hadn't clamped down on the diehards in the CSA. No matter what the surrender orders said, everybody knew Confederate soldiers hadn't turned in all their weapons or all their explosives. And they were still using what they'd squirreled away.
'You think they can make us sick enough of occupying them, we give it up and go home?' he asked Squidface.
The PFC's mouth twisted. 'Fuck, I hope not. We'll just have another war down the line if we do. And they gotta have more guys down here who know how to make superbombs. Genie's out of the bottle, like. So if it's another war, it's a bad one.'
'Yeah.' Armstrong agreed unenthusiastically, but he agreed. 'But if they hate us forever and shoot at us from behind bushes forever, how are we better off? It's like a sore that won't scab up.'
'Maybe if we kill enough of 'em, the rest'll figure keeping that shit up is more trouble than it's worth.' Squidface had an odd kind of pragmatism, but Armstrong nodded-he thought the same way.
Two days later, a sniper killed a U.S. soldier. When that happened these days, people in Hugo tried to get out of town before anybody could grab them as hostages. The occupying authorities discouraged that by shooting at them when they saw them sneaking off.
Armstrong ended up leading a firing squad. The rifles issued to the men doing the shooting had one blank round per squad per victim. If you wanted to, you could think that maybe you hadn't really killed anybody. You could also think you could draw four to a king and end up with a royal flush. By the time you'd pulled the trigger twenty times, your odds of innocence were about that low.
After the shootings, a U.S. officer spoke to the people left in Hugo: 'Get it through your heads-we will punish you. If you know beforehand that somebody's going to shoot at us, you'd better let us know. If you don't, we'll keep shooting people till we run out of people to shoot.'
Armstrong got drunk that night. He wasn't the only one from the firing squad who did. He hated the duty. Shooting people who could shoot back was one thing. Shooting blindfolded people up against a wall? That was a different business, and a much nastier one.
'No wonder those Confederate assholes invented all those fancy ways to kill niggers,' he said, very far in his
