cups. 'You shoot people day after day, you gotta start going bugfuck, don't you?'
'Don't sweat it, Sarge,' said Squidface, who'd also poured down a lot of bad whiskey. 'You're already bugfuck.'
'You say the sweetest things.' Armstrong made kissing noises.
For some reason-no doubt because they were smashed-they both thought that was the funniest thing in the world. So did the other drinkers. Pretty soon everybody was pretending to kiss everybody else. Then somebody really did it, and got slapped. That was even funnier-if you were drunk enough.
Nothing seemed funny to Armstrong the next morning. Strong coffee and lots of aspirins soothed his aching head and gave him a sour stomach instead. He got a different kind of headache when he went into Hugo to buy a ham sandwich for lunch instead of enduring rations.
'I don't want your money,' said the man who ran the local diner. 'I don't want to serve you. I don't aim to serve any Yankee soldier from here on out, but especially not you.'
'What did I do?' Armstrong was still hung over enough to be extra grouchy. I don't need this shit, he thought unhappily.
'You told those bastards to shoot my brother-in-law yesterday, that's what. Your damn captain made me watch you do it, too. I ought to feed you, by God, and put rat poison in your sandwich. I'd do it, too, if you bastards wouldn't murder more folks who never done you no harm.'
'You're gonna get your ass in a sling,' Armstrong warned. All he wanted was a sandwich, not an argument.
'I ain't hurting nobody,' the local said. 'I don't aim to hurt nobody, neither. But I don't want Yankee money any more. I don't reckon anybody in this here town wants Yankee money any more.'
If he hadn't said that last, Armstrong might have walked out in disgust. As things were, he growled, 'Conspiracy, huh? You are gonna get your ass in a sling.' He didn't just walk out; he stomped out.
And he reported the conversation to the first officer he found. 'A boycott, eh?' the captain said. 'Well, we'll see about that, by God!'
They did, in short order. By the end of the week, nobody in Hugo would sell U.S. soldiers anything. On Friday, an edict came down from the military governor in Birmingham. It banned 'failure to cooperate with U.S. authorities.' If you tried going on with the boycott, you'd go to jail instead.
Naturally, the first question that went through Armstrong's mind was, 'If a girl doesn't put out, can we arrest her for failure to cooperate?'
'Sure, Grimes,' said the major who was getting the troops up to speed on the new policy. 'Then you can arrest yourself for fraternizing.'
'Ah, hell, sir,' Armstrong said. 'I knew there was a snatch-uh, a catch-to it.'
'Thank you, Karl Engels,' the major said dryly. 'Can we go on?' Armstrong nodded, grinning. Karl was his favorite Engels Brother. He'd even talked about growing a long blue beard and joining the comedy troupe himself.
Maybe the people who joined the boycott figured they were safe because they weren't doing anything violent. The failure-to-cooperate order was announced over bullhorns and posted in notices nailed to every telegraph pole in the towns where boycotters were trying to show their displeasure.
As soon as somebody said he wouldn't sell a soldier something after that, the offender disappeared. 'Where you taking old Ernie?' a local asked Armstrong when he was one of the men who arrested the man who ran the Hugo diner.
'To a camp,' Armstrong answered.
'A camp? Jesus God!' The local went pale.
Armstrong laughed a nasty laugh. 'What? You think we're gonna do to him like you did to your niggers? That'd be pretty goddamn funny, wouldn't it?'
'No,' the local said faintly.
'Well, I don't think we'll waste his sorry ass-this time,' Armstrong said. 'But you bastards need to get something through your heads. You fuck with us, you lose. You hear me?' When the Alabaman didn't answer fast enough to suit him, he aimed his rifle at the man's face. 'You hear me?'
'Oh, yeah.' The local nodded. He was old and wrinkled himself, but he was game. 'I hear you real good.'
'You better, Charlie, 'cause I'm not bullshitting you.' Armstrong lowered the weapon.
And the boycott collapsed even faster than it had grown. Some of the men and women who got arrested came back to Hugo. Others stayed disappeared. Armstrong didn't know what happened to them. His best guess was that they were in prison camps somewhere. But he couldn't prove that the United States weren't killing them the way the Confederate States had killed Negroes. Neither could the locals. It made them uncommonly thoughtful.
'See?' Squidface said. 'This is how it's supposed to work. We keep these bastards on their toes, they can't do unto us.'
'I guess,' Armstrong said.
The next day, a land mine ten miles away blew a truck full of U.S. soldiers to kingdom come. U.S. authorities methodically took hostages, and shot them when the fellow who'd planted the mine didn't come forward. Rumor said that one of the soldiers who'd done firing-squad duty shot himself right afterwards.
'Some guys just can't stand the gaff,' was Squidface's verdict.
'I guess,' Armstrong said. 'But I don't like firing-squad duty myself. I feel like a goose just walked over my grave.'
That was the wrong thing to say around Squidface, who goosed him. The wrestling match they got into was more serious-more ferocious, anyhow-than most soldierly horseplay. Squidface eyed a shiner in a steel mirror. 'You really do have this shit on your mind,' he said.
Armstrong rubbed bruised ribs. 'I fuckin' told you so. How come you don't listen when I tell you something?'
''Cause I'd have to waste too much time sifting through the horseshit,' Squidface answered, which almost started another round.
But Armstrong decided his ribs were sore enough already. 'They let soldiers vote, who'd you vote for?' he asked.
'Dewey,' Squidface answered at once. 'He's got a chickenshit mustache, but the Dems wouldn't've been asleep at the switch the way the Socialists were when Featherston jumped on our ass. How about you?'
'Yeah, I guess,' Armstrong agreed. 'I bet the Socialists'd pull us out of here faster, though.'
'Just on account of you think like a short-timer doesn't make you one,' Squidface said. Armstrong sighed and nodded. Wasn't that the truth?
XVII
'Hey, Chester!' Captain Hubert Rhodes called. 'C'mere a minute.'
'What's up, sir?' Chester Martin asked.
'Got something from the War Department that might apply to you,' the company commander answered. 'You're over fifty, right?'
'Yes, sir,' Martin answered. 'And some of the shit I've been through, I feel like I'm over ninety.'
'Well, I can understand that.' Rhodes took a piece of paper out of his tunic pocket. He was in his early thirties, at the most-he didn't need to put on glasses before he read something. 'Says here the Army is accepting discharge applications from noncoms over fifty who aren't career military. That's you, right?'
'Yes, sir,' Chester said again. 'Jesus! Have I got that straight? They'll turn me loose if I ask 'em to?'
'That's what it says. See for yourself.' Rhodes held out the paper.
Chester's current reading specs had cost him half a buck at a local drugstore. He'd lost track of how many pairs of reading glasses he'd broken since reupping. These weren't great, but they were better than nothing. He read the order, wading through the Army bureaucratese. It said what Captain Rhodes said it said, all right. 'Where do I get this Form 565 it talks about?' he asked. 'Or is the catch that they haven't printed any copies of it, so I'm
