screwed regardless?'
Rhodes laughed, for all the world as if the Army would never pull a stunt like that. But then, like a magician with a top hat, he pulled out a rabbit-or rather, a Form 565. 'Came with the bulletin. I wish I could talk you into sticking around, but I know I'd be wasting my breath.'
''Fraid so, sir. I got shot once in each war. Nobody can say I didn't do my bit. I have a wife and a life back in L.A. I want to get back while I've still got some time left.' Chester looked at the form. 'I've got to get my immediate superior's signature, huh? Well, Lieutenant Lavochkin won't be sorry to see me go-I've cramped his style ever since he got here.'
'Good thing somebody did, at least a bit,' Rhodes said. Both men laughed, more than a little uneasily. Chester didn't want to think about the massacre he'd been part of. Officially, Rhodes didn't know about that. But what he knew officially and what he knew were different beasts. He went on, 'If Boris gives you any trouble, send him to me. I'll take care of it.'
'Thank you, sir. I appreciate it, believe me,' Chester said. 'I'm gonna hunt him up right now. Sooner I get everything squared away, happier I'll be.'
'All right.' Rhodes stuck out his hand. 'It's been a pleasure serving with you, and that's the God's truth.'
'Thanks,' Chester repeated as they shook. 'And back at you. The lieutenant…' He shrugged. No, he wouldn't be sorry to say good-bye to the lieutenant.
He found Boris Lavochkin right where he thought he would: on the battered main street of Cheraw, South Carolina. Lavochkin carried a captured automatic Tredegar and looked extremely ready to use it. By the way he eyed Chester as the veteran noncom approached, he might not have minded using it on him. Lavochkin didn't like getting his style cramped.
Chester pretended not to notice. 'Talk to you a second, sir?'
'You're doing it,' Lavochkin answered, and lit a cigarette. He didn't offer Chester one, and Chester wasn't sure he would have taken it if Lavochkin had.
'Right,' Chester said tightly. He explained about the War Department ukase, and about Form 565. 'So all I need is your signature, sir, and pretty soon I'll be out of your hair for good.'
'You're bugging out?' Boris Lavochkin didn't bother hiding his scorn.
'Sir, I've put in more combat time than you have,' Martin answered. 'Like I told Captain Rhodes, I've got a life outside the Army, and I aim to live it. I've seen as much of this shit as I ever want to, by God.'
'Suppose I don't sign your stupid form?'
'Well, sir, I've got three things to say about that. First one is, you better go talk to Captain Rhodes. Second one is, you damn well owe me one, on account of I kept you from killing all of us when we superbombed Charleston. And the third one is, you can bend over and kiss my ass.'
Lavochkin turned a dull red. Chester stood there waiting. He had a.45 on his belt; few U.S. soldiers ever went unarmed in the former CSA, peace or no peace. But the lieutenant could have shot him easily enough. Lavochkin didn't, even if the Tredegar's muzzle twitched. He was a bastard, but a calculating bastard. 'Give me the damn thing. It'll be a pleasure to get rid of you,' he snarled.
'Believe me, sir, it's mutual.'
Leaning the automatic rifle against his leg, Lavochkin pulled a pen from his left breast pocket and scribbled something that might have been his name. He thrust Form 565 back at Chester. 'There!'
'Thank you, sir.' Chester's voice was sweet-saccharine-sweet. Boris Lavochkin gave him a dirty look as he took the signed Form 565 back to Captain Rhodes.
Rhodes signed, too, and without kicking up any fuss. 'I'll send this back to regimental HQ, and they'll move it on to Division,' he said. 'And then, if all the stars align just right, they'll ship you home.'
'Thanks a million, Captain.' When Chester spoke to Hubert Rhodes, he sounded as if he meant it, and he did.
'You don't owe the country anything else, Chester,' Rhodes said. 'I'd like you to stick around, 'cause you're damn good at what you do, but I'm not gonna try and hold you where you don't want to be.'
'That's white of you.' Martin listened to what came out of his mouth without thought. He shook his head. 'There's an expression we have to lose.'
'Boy, you said it.' Rhodes nodded. 'Especially down here, where the whites aren't on our side and the Negroes are-what's left of 'em.'
'Yeah,' Chester said grimly. Some Negroes had come out of hiding now that U.S. troops were on the ground here. Some more, skinny as pipe cleaners, had come back from the camps in Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi. Back before the Freedom Party got its massacre going, South Carolina had had more blacks than whites. It sure didn't any more-not even close.
The ones who had lived through everything wandered around like lost souls. Chester couldn't blame them. How could they rebuild their shattered lives in towns and countrysides where whites had shown they hated them? Chester wouldn't have wanted to try it himself, and he was a middle-aged man with a decent education and a considerable sense of his own worth. What chance did an illiterate sharecropper or his barefoot, maybe pregnant wife have?
While he was wondering about that, a white man in a snappy suit approached him and Hubert Rhodes and said, 'Talk to you, Captain?'
'You're doing it,' Rhodes said. 'What's on your mind?'
'My name is Walker, Nigel R. Walker,' the man said. 'Up until the surrender, I was mayor of Cheraw. Now there's some foolish difficulty about letting me go back to my proper function in the community.'
Rhodes looked at him-looked through him, really. 'You were a Party member, weren't you, Mr. Nigel R. Walker?'
'Well, sure,' Walker said. 'Membership for officials was encouraged-strongly encouraged.'
'Then you're out.' Rhodes' voice was hard and flat. 'No Freedom Party members are going to run things down here any more, and you can take that to the bank. Those are my orders, and I'm going to follow them.'
'But you're being unreasonable,' Walker protested. 'I know of several towns in this state where men with much stronger Party ties than mine are very actively involved in affairs.'
Chester knew of towns like that, too. Some occupying officials wanted to put things back together as fast as they could. They grabbed the people who were most likely to be able to do the job. If some of those people had screamed, 'Freedom!' for a while, they didn't care. They thought of themselves as efficiency experts. What Chester thought of them wasn't fit to repeat in polite company.
'I know some U.S. officers are skirting those orders,' said Captain Rhodes, who felt the same way he did. 'And if they can do that with a clear conscience, then they can. I can't. I can't come close. As far as I'm concerned, you disqualified yourself when you joined that pack of murderous goons. Is that plain enough, Mr. Nigel R. Walker, sir, or shall I tell you what I really think of you?'
'I'm going to take my objections to your superiors, Captain.' Walker strutted off, his stiff back radiating anger.
Rhodes sighed. 'He should have asked Lavochkin-Boris would have plugged him. You see, Chester? He is good for something.'
'Damned if you're not right,' Martin said. 'The nerve of this asshole, though!'
'He was a big fish in a little pond,' Rhodes said, and Chester nodded-nothing except possibly the Apocalypse would ever make Cheraw a big pond. Rhodes went on, 'He thinks he has the right to go on being a big fish.'
'Ought to ship him to one of those camps. That'd teach him more about rights than he ever dreamt of, the fucker,' Chester said savagely.
'Yeah.' The company commander sighed again. 'He may even be a decent guy. For all I know, he is. Plenty of people did join the Party because it was a meal ticket. I've never heard any Negroes claim he was especially bad. But I've never heard 'em say he was especially good, either. To me, that means he's tarred with the Party brush. He might not have done anything much, but he didn't try to stop anything, either. So screw him.'
'No, thanks-too damn ugly,' Chester said. Rhodes laughed. Chester started thinking of Rita. He'd been a good boy ever since he put the uniform back on, and he knew his right hand better than he'd ever wanted to.
One day followed another. The weather started turning cool and nasty. That was what Chester thought at first, anyhow. Then he realized that, compared to what he would have had to put up with in Toledo, it was pretty damn good. He'd lived in Los Angeles long enough to get spoiled.
