right?'
'Yeah.' Eddie nodded.
'Well, this is better. This guy'll probably end up all right,' O'Doull said. Eddie didn't answer, which might have been the most devastating comeback of all.
VII
When Cassius walked down the street, white people scurried out of his way. That still thrilled him. It had never happened before he started this occupation duty. His whole life long, he'd been taught to move aside for whites. Dreadful things happened to colored people who didn't.
Now he had a Tredegar in his hands and the U.S. Army at his back. Anybody who didn't like that-and there were bound to be people who didn't-and was rash enough to let him know it could end up suddenly dead, and no one would say a word. Other members of Gracchus' band had shot whites in Madison for any reason or none, and then gone about their business. Oh, the ofays in town flabbled, but who paid attention to them? Not a soul.
White women were particularly quick not just to get out of the way but to get out of sight. Cassius had seen that ever since he got here. Shooting wasn't the only revenge Negroes could take on their former social superiors. Oh, no-not at all.
Cassius scowled when he saw blue X's painted on walls. Those would come down or get painted over in a hurry-they were shorthand for C.S. battle flags. If a property owner didn't cover them up, U.S. soldiers would assume he was a Confederate sympathizer. They'd probably be right, too. Right or wrong, they'd make him sorry.
More than a few whites had already disappeared from Madison. The U.S. Army said they'd gone into prisons farther from the front. Negroes loudly insisted the U.S. soldiers had shipped them to camps. Cassius had done it himself. He wanted the ofays quivering in their boots. They'd made him quiver too damn long.
They'd made him fight back, too. Tales of horror like that were liable to make the local whites fight back. Cassius didn't care. If the ofays wanted to try, they could. He figured the U.S. Army would start massacring them then.
And he would get to help.
He came to a street corner at the same time as another Negro marching from a different direction. 'Mornin', Sertorius,' he said. 'How you doin'?'
'I's tolerable,' his fellow guerrilla replied. 'How 'bout yourself?'
'Could be worse,' Cassius admitted. 'We got us plenty o' grub, we got warm places to sleep, an' we got all the Yankees on our side. Yeah, sure enough could be worse.'
'Amen,' Sertorius said, as if Cassius were a preacher. 'Couple months ago, things was worse.' He wore a U.S. helmet, and made as if to tip it. Cassius returned the gesture with the cap he had on. 'See you,' Sertorius added, and went on marching his assigned route.
'See you.' Cassius also walked on. Odds were they would see each other at the end of the day. They weren't living in fear, the way they had when they skulked and hid in the countryside. The ofays feared them now. Cassius liked that better. Who wouldn't?
And sometimes the ofays were starting to treat them with respect. A kid maybe eight or nine years old came up to Cassius. 'Got any rations you can spare?' he asked, his voice most polite.
Cassius would have told a grown man to go to hell. A skinny kid, though, was a skinny kid. Cassius started to reach for one of the ration cans in his belt pouch. Then he took another look at the boy. His hand stopped. 'You called me a goddamn nigger before,' he said. 'You said I sucked the damnyankees' dicks. Far as I'm concerned, you kin starve.'
The white boy looked almost comically astonished. 'I didn't mean it,' he said, and smiled a winning smile.
How dumb was he? How dumb did he think Cassius was? That was the real question, and Cassius knew the answer-dumb as a nigger, that was what he thought. 'Now tell me one I'll believe,' Cassius said scornfully.
If looks could have killed, he would have fallen over dead on the spot. The white kid started to say something-probably something as sweet and charming as the insults he'd dealt out the last time he ran into Cassius. Then he glanced at the Tredegar and went away instead. That was the smartest thing he could have done. Cassius likely would have shot him if he'd run his mouth twice.
An old man came up behind him. 'You won't even feed a little boy?' the geezer asked. 'What's the world coming to?'
'I ain't gonna feed that little bastard no matter what the world's comin' to,' Cassius answered. 'Some other kid, maybe, but not him.'
'Why not?'
'On account of he done called me a nigger and a cocksucker.'
Well, you are a nigger. Cassius could see it in the old white man's shrewd gray eyes. The fellow had sense enough not to say it, though. And cocksucker was an insult to anybody. 'Oh,' was all that came out of the ofay's mouth. He walked on past Cassius, careful not to come close enough to seem threatening.
At noon, another black man took over Cassius' beat. Cassius went back to the tents outside of town to see if the U.S. Army cooks had any hot food. Sure enough, big kettles of chicken stew simmered over crackling fires. Cassius dug out his mess kit and got in line.
'How'd it go?' asked the white soldier in front of him. 'Any trouble with the local yokels?'
'Nah.' Cassius shook his head. But then he corrected himself: 'Well, a little. This kid who don't like niggers-an' I know he don't like niggers-tried to bum food offa me.'
'Hope you told him to fuck himself,' the soldier said. 'Little asshole can starve for all I care. Just save somebody on our side the trouble of shooting him once he grows up.'
'You reckon another war's comin'?' Cassius asked as the line snaked forward.
'Shit, don't you?' the white man replied. 'Sooner or later, we'll let these Confederate bastards back on their feet. A half hour after we do, they'll clean the grease off the guns they got stashed away and start greasin' us.'
Was that savage cynicism or sage common sense? When it came to gauging the chances of peace and war, how much difference was there? Cassius didn't know. He did know Confederate whites despised both blacks and U.S. whites. He'd always known C.S. Negroes didn't love whites-and how little reason they had to love them. Now he'd discovered that white soldiers from the USA couldn't stand Confederate whites, either. That was reassuring.
Plainly, quite a few soldiers in green-gray didn't like Negroes, either. But they hated Confederate whites more-at least while they were down here. Confederate whites wanted them dead, and were willing-no, eager-to pick up weapons and make sure they died. Negroes in the CSA, by contrast, made natural allies. The enemy of my enemy…is at least worth dishing out rations to, Cassius thought.
The cook loaded his mess kit with as much chicken stew as anybody else got. 'Here y'are, buddy,' he said, his lips barely moving because of the cigarette that dangled from the corner of his mouth.
'Thanks.' Cassius moved on.
When he got a cup of coffee to go with the stew, he found it heavily laced with chicory. But it came from the same big pot-almost a vat-that served the U.S. soldiers. No one was giving him particularly lousy coffee. The good stuff was hard to come by-that was all. As long as he got his fair share of what there was, he had no kick coming.
He made sure he washed his mess kit after he finished eating. The U.S. Army came down hard on you if you didn't. One dose of a jowly sergeant screaming in his face about food poisoning and the galloping shits was enough to last him a lifetime. He did notice that the sergeants screamed just as loud at white men they caught screwing up. Again, as long as they tore into everybody equally, Cassius could deal with it.
Once he'd policed up-a term that had sounded funny when he first heard it, but one he was used to now-he went over to the POW camp outside of Madison. Watching Confederate soldiers behind barbed wire was even more fun than looking at animals in cages had been when his father took him to the zoo.
