to speak to you.'
'He would, would he?' Morrell said. 'So he didn't run away with the Confederate army?'
'I guess not, sir.'
'Well, send him in, then. Let's see what he's got to say for himself.'
The mayor had gray hair and was skinny as a rail. He introduced himself as Andrew Crowley. When Morrell asked him why he hadn't fled, he answered, 'I wanted to protect my people, so I chose to remain.' He threw back his head, a gesture straight out of a corny movie.
'That's nice,' Morrell said. 'How many Negroes are you protecting?'
'I was speaking of Confederate citizens, sir,' the mayor answered, 'not of Confederate residents.' One word made all the difference in the world.
'They all look like people to me,' Morrell said.
'You don't understand the way we do things in this country,' Crowley told him.
'Maybe I don't,' Morrell allowed. 'Of course, if you hadn't invaded mine I wouldn't be down here now. Since I am, I have to tell you that murder looks a lot like murder, no matter who you do it to. I haven't got a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for you, Mr. Mayor.'
'We did what the government in Richmond told us to do,' Crowley insisted. 'Don't see how you can go and flabble about that.'
'Yeah, sure. Now tell me you never once yelled, 'Freedom!' in all your born days.'
Andrew Crowley's hollow cheeks turned red. 'I-' He stopped. Maybe he'd been about to deny it. But how many people could give him the lie-to say nothing of the horse laugh-if he tried?
'Here's what's going on,' Morrell told him. 'We'll try to keep your people from starving. We'll try to keep them from coming down sick. If they stay quiet, we'll leave 'em alone. If they don't, we'll make 'em sorry. Shoot at a U.S. soldier, and we'll take twenty hostages and shoot 'em. Kill any U.S. soldier, and we'll take fifty hostages and shoot 'em. Kill a Negro, and it's the same price. Got that? Is it plain enough for you?'
'You're as cruel and hard as the government warned us you would be,' Crowley whined.
'Tough beans, Mr. Mayor.' Was Morrell enjoying himself playing the tyrant? As a matter of fact, he was. 'Your soldiers were every bit as sweet in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Only difference now is, the shoe's on the other foot. Hope you like the way it feels.'
'You've got to be kidding,' the mayor said. 'Fifty people for a worthless nigger? If that's not a joke, it ought to be.'
'Chances are you don't need to worry about it much,' Morrell said. 'I bet you've taken most of yours off to be killed by now. Isn't that right?'
'Even if it is, the idea's ridic-' Crowley broke off several words too late. He went red again, this time at what he'd admitted by letting his mouth run free.
'Get out of my sight,' Morrell said. 'I don't think we've got much to say to each other. You wouldn't like it if I told you what I thought. Just get out before I chuck you in the calaboose.'
Crowley got. This probably wasn't the interview he'd wanted to have. Morrell didn't intend to lose any sleep about that. He went into the bathroom and washed his hands. He wasn't Pilate, turning his back on the truth. He knew it when he ran into it, and its touch disgusted him.
He was glad he was only a soldier. He didn't have to try to figure out how to administer captured C.S. territory on any long-term basis. All he had to worry about was making sure the locals didn't give his men too much trouble. The War Department didn't care if he got rough doing it. That suited him fine, because the little he'd seen south of the Ohio inclined him to be gentle.
A long lifetime earlier, this had been part of the country he'd grown up in, the country he served. It wasn't any more. Nothing could be plainer than that. Attitudes toward the USA, attitudes toward Negroes…
Jake Featherston hadn't been in the saddle here for even ten years. But the hatreds he'd exploited and built on had been here long before he used them to such deadly effect. You couldn't create those out of nothing. Without them, the black rebellions during the Great War wouldn't have had such lasting and terrible aftereffects. Did whites here have guilty consciences? They had plenty to feel guilty about, that was for sure. If they didn't, the CSA's Negroes never would have launched uprisings almost surely doomed to fail.
Will the Confederates go on fighting for the next eighty years even if we wipe their country off the map? That was Morrell's greatest dread, and the greatest dread of everyone in the USA who thought about such things at all. The Mormons were bad. Canada gave every sign of being worse. But the Confederate States? If these people stayed determined, they could be an oozing sore for a long, long time.
If the United States didn't wipe their country off the map, wouldn't they start another big war in a generation? And wouldn't that be even worse?
G eorge Enos, Jr., was a shellback. You couldn't get to the Sandwich Islands from Boston by sea without becoming a shellback. That gave him the privilege of harrying the poor, hapless polliwogs aboard the Josephus Daniels. The sailors who hadn't crossed the Equator before paid for the honor of swearing allegiance to King Neptune.
The poor polliwogs got sprayed with saltwater from the hoses. Some of them were painted here and there with iodine. The cook who doubled as a barber cut their hair in strange and appalling ways. One rating who was inordinately proud of his handlebar mustache got half of it hacked off. Anyone who squawked got thumped, too.
Sid Becker, a chief petty officer who might have been the hairiest man George had ever seen, played King Neptune. His mermaids had mop tops for wigs, inflated condoms for breasts, and some kind of padding to give them hips. They also had hellacious five o'clock shadows, no doubt to emulate their sovereign.
Polliwogs had to kiss each stubbly mermaid and then kiss King Neptune's right big toe, which was as hairy as the rest of him. George and the other shellbacks whooped as they gave out what they'd taken when they were initiated into the fraternity of the sea.
Sweetest of all, as far as George was concerned, was that Myron Zwilling was a polliwog. King Neptune didn't respect rank or anything else; that was a big part of what made the ceremony what it was. The exec did have the sense to know he couldn't complain about anything that happened to him.
He didn't have the sense to know he ought to look as if he were enjoying it. He went through it with the air of a man who had no choice. George wondered if he was noting who did what to him for payback later. He wouldn't have been surprised-that seemed like Zwilling's style.
After crossing the Equator, the ship got back to work: keeping Argentine beef and grain from getting across the Atlantic, and keeping the Royal Navy from interfering. She could do the first on her own. For the second, she had help from a pair of escort carriers: the Irish Sea and the Oahu. The limeys had carriers in these waters, too. If one side's airplanes found the other…there would be a big brawl.
George was glad Captain Carsten gave the crews so much gunnery practice. The more time he put in as a loader, the faster he got. The more shells the twin 40mm mount threw, the better the chance it had of knocking down an enemy Swordfish or Spitfire before the airplane could perpetrate whatever atrocity its crew had in mind. Maybe even more than the other sailors in the gun crew, George liked that idea. They hadn't been attacked from the air when they couldn't shoot back. He had.
Having their own airplanes along enormously extended how far they could see. A wireless call sent the flotilla steaming south after a convoy more than a hundred miles away. The enemy freighters and their escorts would have got away if the baby flattops hadn't joined the destroyers and cruisers in the South Atlantic.
'Keep an eye peeled for subs,' Swede Jorgenson warned as the Josephus Daniels picked up speed. The new gun chief added, 'Be just like the limeys to have a couple traveling with the convoy just to fuck us over.'
Even though the destroyer escort had its fancy new hydrophone, that struck George as good advice. He scanned the blue water for a telltale periscope. Maybe it wouldn't help, but it sure couldn't hurt. He didn't want to die the way his father had. He didn't want to die at all, but especially not that way.
Fighters and dive bombers streaked off the escort carriers. These new carriers didn't seem to have torpedo airplanes aboard. Scuttlebutt said the brass had decided they were sitting ducks, and dive bombers could do the job better.
Reaching the enemy convoy took a while. The Oahu and the Irish Sea slowed down the rest of the U.S. ships. The baby flattops were no faster than any of their predecessors. 'Snails with flight decks,' Jorgenson said scornfully.
