He listened to Spartacus and tried to look wise. Cantarella, sure as hell, had a couple of suggestions that made the guerrilla leader nod in admiration. 'Yeah, we do dat,' Spartacus said. 'We sure 'nough do dat. Featherston's fuckers, dey don't know which way dey should oughta run.'
'That's the idea,' Cantarella said. 'If they go in a bunch of wrong directions, the right one gets easier for us.'
The guerrillas struck at night. They stayed under cover while the sun was in the sky. Doing anything else would have asked to get slaughtered. A Negro threw a grenade into the depot from the north, while another black banged away with a Tredegar-trying to stir up the anthill.
They did it, too. Whistles shrilled. Men shouted. Soldiers boiled out after the Negroes. Moss hoped the guerrillas had splendid hidey-holes or quick legs.
As soon as the Confederates were well and truly stirred, the guerrillas' machine gun opened up from the west. Nick Cantarella had finally persuaded the gunner to fire short bursts and not squeeze off a belt of ammo at a time. It made the weapon much more effective and much more accurate.
Somebody inside the supply dump yelled, 'Let's get those coons, goddammit! They come around here, they give us the chance to wreck 'em. We better not waste it.' Shouted orders followed. The officer-he plainly was one- knew what he was doing, and how to get his men to do what he wanted.
A scream said at least one machine-gun bullet struck home. The Confederates fired back. They also started moving against the machine gun. A few black riflemen posted near the guerrillas' heavy weapon discouraged that. They were more mobile than the machine-gun crew, and gave the C.S. attackers some unpleasant surprises.
But the big surprise the guerrillas had in mind came from the far side of the supply depot. As soon as the Confederates were well engaged to the west, Spartacus whistled to the rest of the band and said, 'Let's go!'
As it always did when he went into action, Jonathan Moss' heart pounded. He clutched his Tredegar and loped forward. Cutters snipped through the strands of barbed wire around the depot. The supply dump was new and in a rear area. The Confederates hadn't had the time or energy to protect it the way they would have closer to the front.
'No shootin' here, remember-not unless you got to,' Spartacus called quietly. 'In an' out fast as you can, like you was screwin' with her pappy asleep right beside you.' From the way some of the Negroes chuckled, they'd done things like that.
Most of them carried rifles or pistols or submachine guns. Three or four, though, pushed wheelbarrows instead. Moss couldn't imagine a homelier weapon of war. But a man with a wheelbarrow could move much more food than someone who had to carry a crate in his arms or on his back.
'What the hell?' a Confederate called-the Negroes weren't quiet enough to escape all notice.
'We're on patrol here,' Moss said, doing his best to imitate a Southern accent. 'Why the devil aren't you chasing those damn niggers?'
'Uh-on my way, sir.'
Moss heard rapidly retreating footsteps. He knew he'd better not laugh out loud. In his own ears, he hadn't sounded much like a Confederate at all. But he had sounded like a white man, and the soldier never dreamt he'd run into a damnyankee here. To him, anybody who sounded like a white had to be on his side, and anybody who sounded like an authoritative white had to be entitled to order him around.
'How d'you like being a Confederate officer?' Nick Cantarella whispered.
'Fine, except the bastards don't pay me,' Moss whispered back.
'Hell they don't,' Spartacus said. 'We's at the payoff now. In there, boys-grab an' git!'
The Negroes rushed into the tent that sheltered crates of rations from the elements. Soft thumps announced that several of those crates were going into the wheelbarrows. The guerrillas emerged, their grins the most visible thing about them.
Then a shot rang out. 'Jesus God, we got chicken thieves!' a Confederate screamed.
One of the chicken thieves shot him an instant later. 'Scram!' Spartacus said-surely the most succinct order Moss had ever heard. It was also just right for the circumstances.
Firing as they went, the guerrillas withdrew from the depot. Men with rifles and submachine guns covered the wheelbarrows' retreat. When a bullet struck home with a wet slapping sound, a hauler dropped. Nick Cantarella grabbed the wheelbarrow handles and got it moving again.
They made it out of the supply dump and back into the woods. Moss' greatest worry was that the Confederates would pursue hard, but they didn't. 'Shit, they already did more than I figured they would,' Cantarella said. 'They're rear-echelon troops, clerks and stevedores in uniform. If they wanted to mix it up, they'd be at the front.'
'I guess,' Moss said. 'I'm not complaining, believe me.'
Cantarella gave him the ghost of a grin. 'Didn't think you were. That was smart, what you did there to keep the one asshole off our ass.'
'Thanks.' Praise from the other Army officer always made Moss feel good. It made him feel like a real soldier, not a pilot stuck in the middle of a ground war he didn't understand-which he was.
Once the guerrillas got clear of the depot, Spartacus abandoned the wheelbarrows. His men grumbled, but he held firm. 'Gotta do it,' he said. 'Otherwise, them wheels show the butternut bastards every place we been. Trail's a lot harder to get rid of than footprints.'
Moss and Cantarella took their turns playing pack mule along with everybody else. White skin gave them no special privileges here. If they'd tried to claim any, they wouldn't have lasted long. Moss wondered whether Confederates caught in like circumstances would have been smart enough to figure that out. After some of the things he'd seen in Georgia, he wouldn't have bet on it.
His back grumbled at lugging-toting, they said down here-a heavy crate. He was the oldest man in the guerrilla band. Spartacus, who'd been a Confederate noncom in the Great War, was within a couple of years of him, but Spartacus was the CO. Nobody expected him to fetch and carry.
After what seemed like forever, the Negroes and the U.S. soldiers they'd taken in got back to the swampy hideout from which they'd started. And then…to the victors went the spoils. 'Let's eat!' Spartacus said, and they did.
C.S. military rations were nothing to write home about. In truces to pick up wounded men, Confederate soldiers traded tobacco and coffee to their U.S. counterparts for canned goods made in the USA. And U.S. rations, as Moss knew too well, wouldn't put the Waldorf out of business any time soon.
But greasy hash and salty stew filled the belly. Moss' had rubbed up against his backbone too often lately. He was amazed at how many tins of meat he could bolt down before he even started getting full.
'Man, I feel like I swallowed a medicine ball,' Nick Cantarella said after a while.
'Yeah, me, too,' Moss said. 'I like it.'
He lit a cigarette, the way he might have after a fine meal in a fancy restaurant. He'd had plenty to eat, and nobody was shooting at him right this minute. How could life get any better?
C incinnatus Driver wanted to strut through the streets of Ellijay, Georgia. Strutting wasn't in the cards when you walked with a cane and a limp, but he felt like it anyway. How could a black man from the USA not want to strut in a little town his country had taken away from the Confederacy?
Here I am! he felt like shouting. What are you ofay bastards gonna do about it? And the whites of Ellijay couldn't do one damn thing, not unless they wanted the U.S. Army to land on them with both feet.
The hamlet seemed pleasant enough, with a grassy town square centered on a rock fountain. Groves of apple and peach trees grew nearby; Cincinnatus had heard the trout and bass fishing in the nearby stream was first-rate. Ellijay probably made a nice place to live…for whites.
Whenever the locals saw Cincinnatus, though, the way they acted gave him the chills. They stared at him as if he were a rare animal in a zoo-a passenger pigeon come back to life, say. They hadn't thought any Negroes were left in these parts, and didn't bother hiding their surprise.
'What're you doin' here?' a gray-haired man in bib overalls asked around an enormous chaw.
'Drivin' a truck for the United States of America,' Cincinnatus answered proudly. 'Helping the Army blow all this Confederate white trash to hell and gone.'
He thought the Georgian would swallow the cud of tobacco. 'You can't talk that way! You ought to be strung up, you know that?'
Along with his cane, Cincinnatus carried a submachine gun some Confederate soldier would never need
