American Front

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Lucien Galtier muttered unhappily to himself as he loaded the jug of kerosene into the back of his wagon. The ration the American soldiers allowed people was ridiculously small. Thank God, nights were shorter now than they had been in the middle of winter, but he still had to leave a lot of his lamps dry. The world, he was convinced, held no justice.

"No, it certainly is not fair," he told his horse, which, for once, forbore to argue with him. "When a man comes into a town, he cannot even buy for himself a drink of a sort he cannot get at home."

Strictly speaking, that wasn't true. None of the taverns in Riviere-du-Loup had signs up ordering-or even advising-townsmen and local farmers to stay out. Nor were the taverns out of liquor; a lot of their stock these days was shipped up from the United States, but that did not mean it would not burn in your boiler. Drinks, in fact, were actually cheaper these days than they had been before the war started, because the occupying authority taxed liquor at a lower rate than the provincial government had.

All of which was silver lining on a large, dark cloud. If you went into a tavern, you were almost certain to find it full of American soldiers, which was the reason the occupying authority held down liquor prices. And American soldiers, especially American soldiers with drink in them, did not take kindly to sharing what they thought of as their taverns with the locals.

"Oh, you might go in, have a whiskey, and get out again," Lucien said. His horse's ears twitched, perhaps in sympathy but more likely, knowing the beast, in mockery. "But if there should be a fight, what is one to do? There are always many soldiers, they are always all against you, and, even if your country men come to your aid, it leads merely to riot and then to punishment of the entire unfortunate town. All this for one little drink? It is not worth it!''

The horse snorted. Maybe that meant it agreed Maybe that meant it thought Galtier was complaining too much, too. If it did, too bad. He could complain to the horse without worrying his wife — and without making her angry, too, for she was less than delighted when he went into a tavern even for one whiskey, her fixed view of the matter being that no one ever went into a tavern for only one whiskey.

Galtier was just climbing up into the wagon when, from behind him, a cheery voice said, "God bless you, Lucien."

He turned. "Oh. Good day to you, Father Pascal. Pardon me, if you please. I did not hear you come up. I am desolate."

"There is no need to apologize, my son," Father Pascal said with an ami able wave of his hand. "You are full of your own concerns, as any busy man would of course be." He studied Galtier. His black eyes, though set rather close together, were clever and keen. "I pray your affairs march well?"

"They march well enough, thank you, Father." Lucien would complain to his horse. He would complain to his wife. He would not complain to Father Pascal. These past months, he had even taken to editing his confessions, which he knew imperilled his soul but which helped keep his mortal flesh secure. Fa ther Pascal was too friendly to the Americans to suit him.

"I am glad to hear that." The priest salted his words with the lightest sprinkling of irony. Lucien sometimes thought he talked like a lawyer. Father Pascal went on, "I am glad to see you have survived a winter difficult in so many ways."

"Yes, I have survived," Galtier agreed. I would have done better than that had the Americans whom you love so well not stolen everything that would have let me get through with something more than bare survival.

"And your family, they are all thriving?" Father Pascal asked.

"We are well, thank you, yes." No one had starved, no one had come down with tuberculosis or rheumatic fever. Was that thriving? Lucien didn't know, not for certain. Whatever doubts he had, though, he would not admit to the priest.

Father Pascal raised his hands in a gesture of benediction. His palms were pink and plump and soft, with none of the calluses ridging Galtier's hands. His nails were clean, and not a one of them broken. Truly, he lived a different life from that of a farmer.

"God be praised they are well," he said, turning his clever eyes toward heaven for a moment. "And how do your prospects seem for the coming year?"

"Who can guess?" Lucien said with a shrug. "The course of our health, the course of the weather, the course of the war — all these things are in God's hands, not mine." There. Now I have been pious for him. Maybe he will go away.

But Father Pascal did not go away. "In God's hands. Yes. We are all in God's hands. The course of the war-who can guess the course of the war? But then, who would have guessed a year ago the Americans would be here?"

"You are right in that regard, Father," Galtier said. Some priests might have compared the coming of the Americans to the Ten Plagues God had vis ited upon the Egyptians. Father Pascal didn't. Every line on his chubby, well-fed face said he was content with the military government.

Maybe Lucien let some of that thought show on his own face: a mistake. Father Pascal said, "I am but a humble religious, a priest of God. Who the secular ruler over my parish may be is not my concern."

Father Pascal was a great many things, but humble was none of them. Was he lying, or did he think of himself so? Galtier couldn't tell. "Certainly, Father, I understand," he said, still seeking a polite way out of this meeting.

"I am so glad you do," the priest said heartily, laying one of those smooth, well-manicured hands on Lucien's arm. "For too many people, impartiality is often mistaken for its opposite. Do you believe it, I am often accused of favouring the Americans?"

Yes, I believe that. I have good reason to believe that. "What a pity," Galtier said, but he could not bring himself to shake off Father Pascal's hand, climb into the wagon, and get away as fast as he could. That might arouse sus picion, too.

"If you should hear this vicious lie, I beg of you, give it no credit," Father Pascal said, with such earnestness in his voice that for a moment Lucien won dered whether what everyone said was wrong. But then the priest continued, "Should you hear such calumnies, my son, I would be in your debt if you would be generous enough to inform me who has spoken them, that I may pray for the salvation of his soul."

"Of course, Father," Lucien said. Clocks in the church towers began chiming eleven, which gave him the excuse he needed. "Father, forgive me, but I have a long ride back to my farm, and the hour is later than I thought."

"I would not keep you. Go with God." Smiling, sleek, doing ever so well under the new regime, Father Pascal went on down the street with the determined strides of a man who has important places to go, important things to do. He nodded to two American soldiers and then to an old woman in mourning black.

"Does he think me a simpleton, a cretin?" Lucien asked his horse when they were well out of Riviere-du-Loup and the animal's ears were the only ones that could hear. "Tell me who is saying bad things about me and I will pray for him, he says. He will pray, by God: pray that the Americans catch the poor fellow. And he will tell the American commandant, to help make his prayers come true. What do you think of that, my old?"

The horse did not answer. The Lord had not chosen to do for it as He had once for Balaam's ass.

To Lucien's silent, patient audience of one, he went on, "A simpleton? A cretin? No, he thinks me worse than that. He thinks me a collaborator, as he is himself. And this, this is what I think of him." He leaned over the side of the wagon and spat in the dirt. The very idea offended him. Why would anyone collaborate with the Americans?

Whenever Scipio went to Cassius' cottage, he went with fear and trembling in his heart. The fear was not a simple one, which only made it tougher to deal with. Half the time, he was afraid the mistress had found out what he was doing and that white patrollers — or maybe white soldiers-with rifles and bayonets and dogs with long sharp teeth were on his trail. The other half, he was afraid Cassius and his fellow would-be revolutionaries had somehow divined he was not heart and soul with them in their Red fervour, and that they were going to get rid of him because of that.

Sometimes, too, he carried both fears at once. In odd moments, he tried to figure out which was deeper, more compelling. It was like trying to decide whether you'd rather be hanged or shot — just like that, he thought uncomfortably. When all your choices were bad, did worse matter?

Here was the cottage. He felt conspicuous coming out to the huts in his fancy butler's livery, though he'd been doing it for years. He'd been passing a good deal of time in Cassius' cottage for years, too. He kept telling himself no one should notice anything amiss. Making himself believe it was harder. Never till the previous fall had he done the kinds of things in this cottage he was doing now.

He knocked. "That you, Kip?" came the question from within: Cassius' voice.

"This me," Scipio agreed, swallowing the misery he dared not show.

The door opened. There stood Cassius. "Come in wid we," he said, smiling, slim, strong, dangerous as a water moccasin in the swamps. "Set a spell. We talk about things, you 'n' me."

"We do dat," Scipio said, and stepped into the cabin. He never saw any one there but the people who had been reading The Communist Manifesto together the night he'd found out they weren't just labourers but Reds. That made sense; the less he knew, the less he could betray.

"Wet yo' whistle?" Cassius asked, and pointed to a jug of corn whiskey sitting up on the mantel.

Scipio started to shake his head, but found himself nodding instead. Cassius handed him the jug. He took a long pull. The raw, illegal whiskey ran down his throat like a river of fire and exploded in his belly.

The woman named Cherry said, "You he'p we learn dese prayers, Kip?" She handed him a paperbound book with an orange cover. The printing on that cover did indeed proclaim it a tract, just as the blue-covered book that had got him into this mess had said it was a hymnbook. You couldn't tell a book by its cover, though, not in Cassius' cottage you couldn't.

Island and a couple of other people did start to sing hymns, in case any body was snooping around outside. Under cover of their racket, Cassius sat down by Scipio at the rickety table in his cottage and bent over the book with the orange cover with him. The hunter's finger pointed out a passage. "Read dat," he said.

Obediently, Scipio's eyes went back and forth. Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital, he read. Capital is only the fruit of labour, and could never have existed if labour had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

"What you think o' that there?" Cassius asked.

"All fit in wid everything else," Scipio answered. "Sound like de trut'." He almost slipped out of the dialect of the Congaree; the words he'd just read did not fit in with that ignorant speech.

Cassius' finger — scarred, callused-found another place. "Now you read dat."

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing, Scipio read. With some, the word means for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and with the product of his labour. With others, the same word means for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labour. The fullness of time, I am convinced, will prove to the world which is the true definition of the word, and my earnest hope remains that the United States of America shall yet lead the way in the proving.

"Who write this?" Scipio asked. A lot of what he'd read here had the taste of being translated from a foreign language. Not this; it was simple and direct and powerful, English as it was meant to be written. One of the things he'd acquired serving Anne Colleton, and which he discovered he could not simply abandon, was a sense of style.

Cassius' eyes gleamed with amusement. "Same fellow write the other."

Scipio gave the hunter a dirty look. Cassius enjoyed leading him around by the nose, the same way he enjoyed all reversals and practical jokes. Cassius also enjoyed having an intellectual advantage on him. Scipio had never be lieved Cassius did much thinking at all. He hadn't even known the hunter could read. He'd turned out to be wrong. Cassius' thought was anything but wide-ranging, but in its track it ran deep.

Patiently, Scipio asked the next question. "And who that is? Not them Marx and Engels fellers, I bet."

Everybody looked at him. When your thought ran in a narrow track, and ran deep in that track, climbing up and peering over the edge became suspicious. These Reds despised the way all the white folks in the Confederate States thought alike. But if any of their own number presumed to deviate from their doctrine, he got in just as much trouble, maybe more.

"Why for you say dat?" Cherry demanded. She looked as if she wanted to drop Scipio in the Congaree swamp right then and there.

He wished he'd kept his mouth shut. He'd wished that a lot of times around these people. But, since he hadn't, he had to answer the question: "It ain't wrote like t'other stuff I read."

Cassius laughed. "Got we a perfesser here. But is he dat smart?" He shook his head. "No, or he know who do dat work." Unlike a lot of jokers, he knew when to cut a joke short, as he did now. "These words wrote by Abraham Lincoln."

" Lincoln? Do Jesus!" Scipio thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Should cipher that out my own self."

"He see the truth early on," Cassius said. "He say that first one while he president of the USA, an' de second one years after, in Montana Territory."

"Do Jesus!" Scipio said again, impressed. Lincoln had served only one term as president of the United States; he'd been unceremoniously booted out of office after the Confederacy broke away from the USA. But he hadn't left politics even then. He'd led most of the Republicans into union with the Socialist Party after the Second Mexican War. "No wonder he sound like one o' we."

Cassius nodded strong agreement. "Dat man be alive today, he wid we. He want ev'body equal. Only way to do dat, make de revolution. Cain't do it no ways else. Git de 'pressors off we, we do swell. Whole country do swell."

He and his revolutionary cohorts all nodded, like the preacher and the congregation in church on Sunday morning. Scipio made sure he nodded, too. If you didn't pay attention to the preacher, he gave you a hard time later. If you didn't pay attention to Cassius, he gave you a funeral.

Now he said, "Miss Anne, she talk wid any new strange white folks? They after our scent like hounds. We got to watch sharp."

"Nobody new I see," Scipio answered truthfully. Then he asked, "How they after we?" From the moment he'd first set eyes on the deadly words of The Communist Manifesto, he'd known what sort of game he was playing and what its likely outcome would be, but he didn't like Cassius reminding him of it.

The hunter — the Red-said, "They done cotched a few o' we: Army niggers get careless, talk too much where de white folks hear. Sometimes you catch one, he know de name o' 'nudder one, and he know two more names-"

That picture was clearer than any Marcel Duchamp had ever painted. Sci pio wanted to get up and run somewhere far away from Marshlands. As Anne Colleton's butler, he had a passbook that gave him more legal freedom of movement than any other Negro on the plantation. He wasn't very much afraid of the patrollers' catching up to him. But if he tried to disappear, it was all too likely Cassius' revolutionaries would hunt him down and dispose of him. He imagined Red cells in every group of blacks in the Confederacy. What one knew, all would know; whom one wanted dead, all would work to kill…

Cassius said, "De day don' wait much longer. De revolution happen, an' de revolution happen soon. We rise up, we get what dey hoi' back from we fo' so long. De white folks want de cotton, let de white folks grow de cotton an' grub it out o' de groun'. Dey don't 'sploit us no mo', never again."

Scipio did keep his mouth shut, though that meant biting down on the inside of his lip till he tasted blood. The white folks weren't going to sit around peaceable and quiet when the rebellion started. He'd tried saying that a few times, but nobody wanted to listen to him.

He wondered if he could get into the Empire of Mexico some kind of way, and never, ever come back.

Marching with a hangover was not Paul Mantarakis' idea of fun. It did, however, beat the stuffing out of going into a front-line trench to be shot at and shelled. He'd be doing that soon enough — much too soon to suit him. Any time between the current moment and forever would have been much too soon to suit him.

A couple of men away from Mantarakis, Gordon McSweeney tramped along singing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." McSweeney had a big bass voice and couldn't have carried a tune in a washtub. His booming false notes made Mantarakis' headache worse.

You couldn't just tell him to put a sock in it, though, however much you wanted to. If you did, you'd find yourself facing a couple of hundred pounds of angry, fanatical Scotsman. Guile was called for.

Even hung over, guile Mantarakis had. "That was a good leave, wasn't it, Gordon?" he said.

Addressed directly, McSweeney felt obliged to answer, which meant he stopped singing: the point to the exercise in guile. "Indeed, a good leave," he said seriously-he was always serious, except when he was furious. "I prayed harder, I think, than I ever have before."

"Dice weren't going your way, eh?" Mantarakis knew that was a mistake, but couldn't resist. The idea of praying in a town like Dixon, Kentucky, after it had become a U.S. Army leave center tickled his sense of the absurd.

"I do not gamble," McSweeney said indignantly. "I do not poison my body and my spirit with spirituous liquors, and I do not consort with loose, vile, immoral women."

Sergeant Peterquist was marching along a couple of men over on McSweeney's other side. Grinning, he said, "Sort of takes a lot of the point out of going on leave, doesn't it?"

"I will not be mocked," McSweeney said, about as close as he dared come to telling his sergeant to go to hell. He was bigger than Peterquist, and meaner, too, but Mantarakis would have bet on the non-com if they ever tangled. Peterquist was a sneaky bastard. He would have made a pretty fair Greek, Paul thought, meaning it as a compliment.

Ignoring McSweeney, the sergeant asked Mantarakis, "You go to a house with white girls or colored?"

"Colored," Mantarakis answered. "It was cheaper. And you go to any place like that, white or colored, you ain't lookin' for anything special, just to get the lead out of your pencil. Had a little more money to drink with."

McSweeney started singing his hymn again, louder than ever, so he wouldn't have to listen to his comrades' lewd conversation. Peterquist looked at Mantarakis. They both grinned ruefully. Maybe neither of them made a good Greek — they should have been able to figure out what the effect of talking about going to a whorehouse would have on the pious McSweeney. But when you were coming out of Dixon, what was on your mind (unless you were pious) was all the different ways you'd had a good time.

The countryside looked as if hell had been there, but had gone away on vacation. Like every inch of Kentucky in U.S. hands, it had been fought over, but that had been the fall and winter before. New grass was beginning to spring up, hiding the worst scars of the fighting.

Even the town of Beulah, Kentucky, eight or nine miles north of the front, didn't look too bad. It had also been in U.S. hands, and out of Confederate artillery range, most of that time, though the Rebel offensive coming up out of the south meant long-range guns bore on it again. Still, it seemed resigned to the prospect of flying the Stars and Stripes for the first time in a couple of generations, and a good many buildings damaged when it was captured had been repaired since.

South of Beulah, though, you were back in the war, no two ways about it. Mantarakis trudged past wagon parks city blocks on a side, and horse corrals alongside them full of animals chewing on hay and oats. Every so often, his regiment had to get off the dirt road onto the verge to let a convoy of trucks rumble past, carrying supplies up to the line, or to make way for an ambulance, red cross prominently displayed on a white background, transporting wounded men back toward Beulah.

There were munitions dumps scattered here and there across the landscape, too, shells standing on the ground as if they were the dragon's teeth

Cadmus had sown to raise a crop of soldiers. But they didn't raise men; they razed them. When the pun occurred to Mantarakis, he tried to explain it to the men marching with him, and got only blank looks for his trouble.

The Rebel offensive had been halted just south of Dawson Springs. There, hell hadn't gone on vacation. The Confederates might not have managed to take the town, but they'd shelled it into ruin. So many of the buildings were either burnt or wrecked, so many craters pocked the ground, it was hard to tell where exactly the roads had run before Dawson Springs made war's acquaintance.

Just past Dawson Springs, Mantarakis heard a buzzing in the air. His head swivelled rapidly till he spotted the aeroplane coming north. It skimmed along low to the ground, paralleling the road down which he was marching. For a moment, that made him think it was an American aeroplane returning from the front. Then he spied the Confederate battle flags painted on the fabric under each wing.

The pilot must have seen the regiment before Paul noticed him. He brought the aeroplane down even lower, right down to treetop height. That gave the observer a perfect chance to rake the column of U.S. soldiers with his machine gun.

Men screamed and fell and ran every which way. A few, cooler-headed than the rest, stood in place and fired back at the Rebel aeroplane with their Springfields. Mantarakis admired their sangfroid without trying to imitate it. He was utterly unashamed to dive into a muddy ditch by the side of the road. Bullets kicked up dirt not far away.

Ignoring the rifle fire, the aeroplane wheeled through a turn and came back south down the other side of the road, raking the regiment all over again. Then, pilot and observer no doubt laughing to each other about shooting fish in a barrel, it streaked away for home, going flat out now.

Mantarakis got out of the ditch. He was filthy and wet, as if he'd been in the trenches for a month instead of away from them. Muddy water dripped from the brim of his cap, his nose, his chin, his elbows, his belt buckle.

Gordon McSweeney stood like a rock in the middle of the roadway, still firing after the Confederate aeroplane although, by now, his chances of hitting it were slim indeed. Officers and non-coms shouted and blew whistles, trying to get the regiment back into marching order.

A familiar voice was missing. There lay Sergeant Peterquist, not moving. Blood soaked the damp, hard-packed dirt of the roadway. A bullet had torn through his neck and almost torn off his head. "Kyrie eleison," Mantarakis murmured, and made the sign of the cross.

"Popery — damned popery," McSweeney said above him.

"Oh, shut up, Gordon," Mantarakis said, as if to a pushy five-year-old.

The really funny thing was that the Orthodox Church reckoned the pope every bit as much a heretic as any Scotch Presbyterian did.

"You'll do his soul no good with your mummeries," McSweeney insisted.

Paul paid no attention to him. If Peterquist was dead, somebody would have to do his job. Mantarakis looked around for Corporal Stankiewicz, and didn't see him. Maybe he'd been wounded and dragged off, maybe he was still hiding, maybe… Maybe none of that mattered. What did matter was that he wasn't here.

Even if he wasn't, the job, again, needed doing. Mantarakis shouted for his section to form up around him, and then, as an afterthought, to get the dead and wounded off to the side of the road. A lot of people were shouting, but not many of the shouts were as purposeful as his. Because he sounded like someone who knew what he was doing, men listened to him.

Lieutenant Hinshaw had his whole scattered platoon to reassemble. By the time he got around to the section Sergeant Peterquist had led, it was ready to get moving again, which was more than a lot of the column could say.

"Good work," Hinshaw said, looking over the assembled men and the casualties moved out of the line of march (Stankiewicz was among them: shot in the arm on the Rebel aeroplane's second pass). Then he noticed the absence of non-coms. "Who pulled you people together like this?"

Nobody said anything for half a minute or so. Mantarakis shuffled his feet and looked down at the bloodstained dirt; he didn't want to get a name for blowing his own horn. Then Gordon McSweeney said, "It was the little Greek, sir."

"Mantarakis?" Most of the time, Paul was in trouble when the lieutenant called his name. But Hinshaw nodded and said, "If you do the work, you should have the rank to go with it. You're a corporal, starting now."

Mantarakis saluted. "Thank you, sir." That meant more pay, not that you were ever going to get rich, not in this man's Army. It also meant more duties, but that was how things went. You got a little, you gave a little. Or, in the Army, you got a little and, odds were, you gave a lot.

The pillar of black, greasy smoke rose high into the sky northwest of Okmulgee, Sequoyah, maybe higher, for all Stephen Ramsay knew, than an aeroplane could fly.

The fires at the base of that pillar didn't crackle, didn't hiss, didn't roar- they bellowed, like a herd of oxen in eternal agony. Even from miles away, as he was now, it was the biggest noise around. It was the biggest sight around, too: an ugly red carbuncle lighting up a whole corner of the horizon.

Captain Lincoln looked at the vast, leaping, hellish flames with sombre satisfaction. "We've denied that oil field to the enemy," he said.

"Yes, sir," Ramsay said. "Anybody tries to put out those fires, he's gonna be a long time doin' it."

"Less than you'd think, Sergeant, less than you'd think," Lincoln said. "Put a charge of dynamite in the right place and whumpl — out it goes. But even if the damnyankees do that, they won't be drawing any crude oil or gas from those wells for a long time, which was the point of the exercise."

"They sure won't, sir." Ramsay sighed and patted his horse's neck with a gloved hand. "Who would've thought the damnyankees could push us back like this? We don't do some fightin' back, they're gonna run us out of Se quoyah altogether, push us into Texas an' Arkansas."

"Too damn many of 'em." Lincoln spat down into the dirt. "We're liable to have to fall back through Okmulgee, and the chief of the Creek Nation will pitch a fit if we do."

"Yeah, well, if he doesn't like it, he's just going to have to go peddle his papers," Ramsay said. "Either that or pull some men out from under his war bonnet."

Lincoln sighed. The war had worn on him-not just the fighting, but the dickering, too. Ramsay hadn't figured dickering would be a part of war-if you had a gun, you could tell the other guy what to do, couldn't you? — but it was. The captain said, "We aren't like the USA. One of the reasons we fought the War of Secession was to keep the national government from telling the states what they had to do."

"Makes us a hell of a lot freer than the damnyankees," Ramsay said, it being an article of faith in the CSA that living in the USA was at most a short step better than living under the tyranny of the czars. These days, of course, Russia was an ally, so nobody said much about the czars, but the principle remained the same.

"Yeah, it does," Lincoln said with another sigh. "But it means sometimes we have to go through a whole lot of arguing to get through something the Yanks could deal with by giving a couple of orders. And here in Sequoyah, you may have noticed, it's even more complicated than it is anyplace else."

"Nov, that you mention it, sir, I have noticed that," Ramsay admitted, drawing a wan smile from the captain.

Sequoyah, by itself, was a Confederate state. But within its borders lay five separate nations, those of the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, the Five Civilized Tribes. They kept their local autonomy and guarded it with zeal; the governor of Sequoyah sometimes had more trouble getting their chiefs to cooperate with him than President Wilson did with the governors of the Confederate states. And, since a lot of the state's petroleum and oil lay under land that belonged to the Indian nations, they had enough money on their own to keep the state government coming to them hat in hand.

They were enthusiastic about the government in Richmond, not resigned like most people in the Confederacy. They had reason to be, because it kept the state government off their backs. But they expected the national government — which now meant the Army-to come through for them, too, and justify faith by works.

Lincoln said, "If I have to tell Charlie Fixico I'm pulling out of Okmulgee without even trying to defend the town, you know what he's going to do? He's going to write his congressman, back in Richmond. And since his congress man just happens to be named Ben Fixico, that makes me toast without any marmalade. But what am I supposed to do?"

He wasn't really looking for an answer. Captains didn't get answers from sergeants. Lieutenants frequently did, but not captains. Captains had to come up with their own answers, no matter how unpleasant a prospect that was.

And come up with an answer Lincoln did. He got help from a Yankee field gun, which started landing shells in front of the cavalry company. The foun tains of smoke and dirt were several hundred yards short, but the Confeder ates had no field guns of their own with which to reply. Before long, the U.S. forces would move that gun forward and bring up others alongside it.

"Back to Okmulgee!" Lincoln shouted. At his order, the company bugler sounded the retreat.

With the rest of the company, Ramsay rode southeast toward the capital of the Creek Nation. Okmulgee lay in a low, broad valley, with tree-covered hills on either side. As the Confederates came into the valley, Ramsay saw that the town was seething like an anthill to which somebody had just delivered a good swift kick. A train was pulling out, heading south. It had nothing but freight cars, but Ramsay would have bet those were packed with people; he'd even seen some with signs painted on their sides: 36 MEN OR 8 HORSES. The road south out of Okmulgee was certainly packed, with people, wagons, buggies, barrows, horses, and other livestock. Captain Lincoln might have intended retreating through Okmulgee rather than into it, but getting out the other side wouldn't be easy.

The Creek Nation Council House was a two-story brown stone building in the center of town. With the cupola rising above it, it was easily the most impressive structure in Okmulgee, and would have made a good fort till can non started blowing it to bits. Outside the Council House waited a delegation of red-skinned men in sombre black suits. They had gathered together a bunch of younger Indians who wore much more nondescript clothes-except for red bandannas tied to their left sleeves as armbands-and who carried a motley assortment of weapons: shotguns, squirrel guns, and what looked to be a cou ple of single-shot muzzle-loaders that went all the way back to the days of the War of Secession.

One of the Creek bigshots stepped out into the middle of the road as the cavalry drew near. He held up his right hand. Captain Lincoln had the choice of reining in or pretending he wasn't there. Swearing under his breath, the captain reined in.

"Save our city!" the Indian cried. "Save our nation! Do not abandon us to the merciless United States, whose soldiers we fought a hundred years ago, long before the South saw it had to escape the brutal oppression that came from Washington. As chief of the nation, I beg you. The delegations from the House of Kings and the House of Warriors beg you as well."

Charlie Fixico gestured to the Indians in fancy dress. They added their voices to his. It was, when you got down to it, a hell of an impressive performance.

He moved his hand, and the delegation-local senators and congressmen, Ramsay supposed they were-fell silent so he could talk some more. "We do not ask you to perform any duty we would not share," he said, now pointing to the young Indians with armbands. "We will help you defend our homes and our lands. We will fight whether you stay or go, but we beg you to stand by us now as we stood by you in the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War."

Captain Lincoln looked mad at first, and then helpless. Stephen Ramsay understood that. It was a hell of a speech. He wondered how many times Charlie Fixico had practiced it in front of a mirror so he could bring it out pat like that. If Captain Lincoln led the cavalry out of Okmulgee now, he'd feel like a skunk for the rest of his days-and a lot of the troopers who heard the speech would think he was a skunk, too.

Ramsay glanced over to the young Creek men. Were they really ready to do or die for the Creek Nation? Even if they were, would it make any difference? You ran amateur soldiers up against veterans, odds were the amateurs would come out looking as if they'd just been through a grinding mill.

He was glad the decision was not his to make. Captain Lincoln looked back toward the northwest, toward the burning oil wells his troopers had had to abandon. There were more oil wells in and around Okmulgee, and still more south of town. If he could save any of them for the Confederacy, that would be worth doing. If, on the other hand, he was just throwing his command away…

Charlie Fixico went down on his knees and held his hands up high in the air. At that, so did the men from the House of Kings and the House of Warriors. Ramsay had never seen anybody just get down and beg like that.

"God damn it," Captain Lincoln muttered under his breath, with luck not so loud the Creeks could hear it. Then, realizing he had to give an answer, he raised his voice: "All right, Chief, we'll make a stand in Okmulgee. Let's get some firing pits dug, and we'll see what we can do."

Charlie Fixico scrambled to his feet, spry for a fellow a long way from young. He clutched Lincoln 's hand. "God bless you, Captain. You won't be sorry for this," he exclaimed.

By the look in his eye, Captain Lincoln was sorry already. In town here, the company would have to fight as infantry, sending their horses south with the retreating Creeks. Ramsay took charge of the young men- am I supposed to call 'em braves? he wondered-with armbands on their sleeves. They were ready as all get-out to shoot at the damnyankees, but when he sent them into a hardware store to commandeer shovels-so they could start digging foxholes and trenches, they almost balked.

"Look," he said, more patiently than he'd expected, "the idea is to kill the other guy, not to get killed yourself. Shells start falling here, bullets start flying around, you're going to be damn glad to have a hole in the ground to hide in."

They weren't soldiers. It wasn't so much that they didn't believe him. They didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about. They worked like sulking Negroes till Charlie Fixico yelled something at them in their own language. After that, they sped up-a little.

Captain Lincoln sited one of the company machine guns so it fired up Sixth Street and the other so it fired up Fourth. When the Yankees came into town, those would give them something to think about. "Wait till you have a good target," Ramsay told the crew at Sixth and Morton, in front of the Creek Council House. "We want to make the bastards pay for everything they get."

U.S. troops were not long in coming. Field guns started landing three- inch shells on the town. The red-armbanded Creeks dove for the holes they hadn't wanted to dig. To Ramsay's amazement, one of them shouted an apology to him.

He waved back. He wondered how much ammunition each Indian had for his gun. With all those different calibers, no hope in hell the cavalry could resupply them when they ran dry. He also wondered what the Yankees would do with any Creeks they captured. Was a red armband uniform enough to let them count as prisoners of war? Or would the Yanks call them francstireurs and shoot them out of hand, the way the Huns had done in France and were doing in Belgium? For the Creeks' sake, Ramsay hoped they didn't find out.

He had his own foxhole nicely dug, sited under a tree that would give him cover if and when he had to pull back, as he probably would sooner or later. He peered north up Fifth Street, looking to see how close the Yanks were.

As he'd expected, here they came, green-gray waves of infantry trudging toward Okmulgee, leaning forward a little under the weight of their packs. "Hold fire till they're good and close," Captain Lincoln yelled. "We want the machine guns to be able to chew up a whole bunch of 'em when we open up."

His own men understood the reasoning behind the order. But the Creeks had never been in combat before. As soon as they saw U.S. soldiers, they started shooting at them. Sure as hell, one of them not far from Ramsay did have a rifle musket from his grandfather's day. A great cloud of black-powder smoke rose above the kid's firing pit.

The Yankees went to earth the minute they started taking fire. Ramsay swore under his breath. Now they'd advance in small groups instead of the one great wave the machine guns might have broken.

Well, the game didn't always go the way you wished it would. "Fire at will," Captain Lincoln shouted, sounding as disgusted as Ramsay felt. The machine guns started chattering. U.S. soldiers fell. Ramsay found a target and fired. The Yankee he'd aimed at went down.

But more U.S. soldiers kept coming. The Confederates fired steadily, taking a good toll. And the Creeks surprised Ramsay. They stayed in their places and kept shooting. You couldn't hope for anything more, not from raw troops. They might not have had discipline, but they were brave.

When their entry into Okmulgee stalled, the damnyankees gave the town another, bigger dose of artillery to make the defenders keep their heads down. Under cover of the bombardment, they got men into the northern fringes of the built-up area. The forward most Confederate troopers came running back toward the center of town. Ramsay didn't notice any Creeks coming back. He whistled softly. They were brave.

He felt cramped, fighting in amongst buildings rather than out on the plains. Unhorsed, he felt slow, too. Could he get away, if trouble got bad? He began to think he'd have to find out the hard way.

Then-and he laughed as the comparison occurred to him-like cavalry riding to the rescue, artillery fire began falling on the advancing Yankees just outside of Okmulgee. If that wasn't a whole battery of those quick-firing three-inchers, he'd go off and eat worms. Caught out in the open, the U.S. soldiers toppled as if scythed.

Ramsay whooped like an Indian-just like an Indian, because several Creeks not far away were letting out the same kind of happy yells. They probably figured the fight was as good as won. Ramsay wished he could believe the same thing. Unfortunately, he knew better. Whatever else you said about the Yankees, they were stubborn bastards.

Still, if there was artillery in the neighbourhood, maybe there was infantry around, too. Put a regiment in here instead of a cavalry company and some ragtag civilians, and Okmulgee would hold against damn near anything the USA could throw at it. He looked back over his shoulder, then started laughing all over again.

"Hell of a war," he muttered, "when the cavalry's got to look to the infantry to come to the rescue."

Jonathan Moss looked with something less than joy untrammelled toward the new aeroplanes the squadron was receiving. The Wright 17s, usually nick-named Wilburs, were very different machines from the Curtiss Super Hudsons they were replacing. He'd grown used to the Super Hudsons. He knew everything they could do, and he wasn't so stupid as to try to make them do things they couldn't. That was how you ended up dead.

Captain Elijah Franklin expounded on the Wilbur's virtues: "Now we have aeroplanes than can climb and dive with the Avros the damned Canucks and limeys are flying. We won't have to scurry for home if we get in trouble."

Moss caught Lyman Baum's eye. Both men shook their heads, just a little. They hadn't run for home when they faced Avros-very much the reverse. A Curtiss machine could turn inside the circle of which the British-made aeroplanes were capable, but the Wilbur was a bus as big as a bus itself, and "Sir?" Moss stuck up a hand.

"What is it?" Franklin asked, a bit testy at being interrupted before his spiel was done. He had a pinched, narrow face, and looked as if his stomach pained him all the time. It probably did. That didn't keep him from drinking like a fish when he wasn't flying.

"Sir, one of the biggest advantages we had in the Curtiss was a forward-facing machine gun," Moss said. "This is a tractor machine, with the prop in front. Now we're going to be limited to observer fire, just like the Canucks. If I see a target, I want to be able to aim at it and shoot it straight on, not wiggle around so the observer gets to fire off at an angle."

Everybody in the squadron spoke up, loudly agreeing with him. Franklin stood quiet, perhaps waiting to see if the hubbub would die away. When it didn't, he held up a hand. Little by little, he got quiet. Into it, he said, "They're working on that," and then clammed up again.

The terse announcement produced more hubbub. Through it, Jonathan Moss called, "You mean somebody has finally made a working interrupter gear, sir?"

If you could synchronize the speed at which your machine gun fired with that at which your prop revolved, you could mount a forward-facing gun on a tractor aeroplane and not shoot yourself down faster than the enemy. Moss had heard of a couple of people who'd shod their wooden propellor blades with steel to deflect ill-timed bullets, but sooner or later a ricochet was going to come straight back at you, so that wasn't the ideal solution. An interrupter gear, though Then Captain Franklin said, "No, they don't have one yet," and dashed his hopes. But the squadron commander went on, "They are getting close, though, or at least they think they are. And when they do get one, they promise the front-line squadrons will have it first thing."

"They promise Santa Claus brings you toys, too, and the Easter Bunny hides eggs," Stanley McClintock said. "They promised we'd be in Toronto before the snow fell, and Winnipeg, and Richmond, and Guaymas-though I don't know that it ever snows down there. But I believe that kind of story when it comes true, and not a minute before then."

"If you're a defeatist," Franklin said coldly, "you can take off your wings right now. I'll give you a white feather instead, the way the limey girls do when their boyfriends don't want to go off and fight."

McClintock stomped toward the squadron commander, of whom he made close to two. Franklin moved not an inch. It wasn't his rank armouring him, Jonathan Moss knew, just a stubborn determination not to back down to anybody. McClintock shouted, "God damn it, Captain, you know I'm no coward. But when I switch buses, I want to have a pretty good idea that I'm doing it for a reason, that the new bus"-he jerked a thumb toward a Wilbur-"is likelier to keep me in one piece than the old one was."

"You've flown it," Franklin said. "We've all flown it. It performs a damn sight better than a Curtiss. Is that so, or isn't it?"

"It doesn't turn as well," Moss said.

"That's true," Franklin admitted, "but it climbs better and it dives better and it accelerates better. One of the reasons the Super Hudson turned so tight was that it couldn't go fast enough to take up a lot of space in a turn. Is that so, or isn't it?"

Moss kept quiet. It was so. You didn't want the Canadians or British chasing you, because they'd damn well catch you. But he'd got comfortable with his old machine. It was, he supposed, like a marriage: you knew what your partner was going to do. Now he was going to a partner he didn't know nearly so well.

Franklin said, "Enough of this nonsense. We've got them and we're damn well going to use them till we get something better. They've shipped the Super Hudsons off to… Colorado, I think they said, or maybe Utah. Someplace where they can do reconnaissance and not have to go up against anybody's varsity, anyway. We do. That's another reason we get the Wilburs-you men can do your job as pilots, and the observers you'll have with you can observe. Life's getting too complicated for one man to do both jobs up there at the same time."

But for a sigh, Moss remained quiet. Again, the squadron commander was probably right. Again, Moss found the truth unpalatable.

Lyman Baum said, "Other thing is, sir, I don't like trusting my neck to the observer. I'd rather have my own gun now instead of waiting to get one in the great by-and-by. Observers-"

He let that hang there. Most observers who were just observers and not pilot-observers like the members of the squadron were guys who had been through flight school and hadn't made it as pilots. That made everybody suspect there was something second-rate about them. If you knew darn well you were first-rate and you'd got used to being your own gunner, how were you going to shout "Hurrah!" at the idea of turning over the shooting to somebody you didn't figure could match you?

As if Baum's question had been a cue, a truck chugged up to the aerodrome and started disgorging men in khaki with overladen duffel bags and with flight badges that had only one wing, not a pilot's two. Captain Franklin nodded; he'd expected them. "Gentlemen, your observers," he said while the newcomers were still getting out. "Does anyone care to express any further ill-founded opinions?… No? Good."

Moss kicked at the dirt. The captain had a point. You couldn't condemn out of hand a man you'd never met. But Baum had a point, too. If a fellow was liable to be a lemon, did you really want to meet him?

Whether you did or not, you were going to. From a breast pocket, Franklin pulled out a sheet of stationery folded in quarters. Before he unfolded it, he waved the observers over to him. They came, some with their bags slung over a shoulder, some carrying them in front, some dragging them along the ground. "We have the following pairings," Franklin announced, unfolding the paper: "Pilot Baum and Observer van Zandt; Pilot Henderson and Observer Mattigan…" On and on he went, till he said, "Pilot Moss and Observer Stone."

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Moss burst out amid laughter. "You did that on purpose, Captain, and don't try to tell me different."

"Well, that tells me who you are," the newly teamed observer said, stepping forward. "I'm Percy Stone." He let his duffel bag fall from his shoulder to the ground and stuck out his right hand.

"Jonathan Moss," Moss said, shaking it, and studied Captain Franklin's idea of a joke. Stone was a couple of years younger than he, he guessed, with a long, ruddy face, a brown Kaiser Bill mustache, and a disarming grin underneath it. He didn't look like a loser or a washout. "What did you do before the war started?" Moss asked him.

"I had a little photography studio in Ohio," Stone answered. "You?"

"I was studying the law," Moss said. He waved that aside, as he would have any question both irrelevant and immaterial, and stared at Percy Stone. Maybe Captain Franklin's idea of a joke had given him something a good deal better than your average One-Wing Wonder. "A photographer, were you? No wonder they turned you into an observer."

"No wonder at all," Stone agreed. "I wanted to be a pilot. They told me if I kept squawking about it they'd stick me in the infantry, and I could see how I liked that. You know what, Lieutenant Moss? I believed 'em."

"Good thing you did," Moss said. "I don't have any doubt the powers that be meant every bit of it." He kicked Stone's duffel bag, then picked it up himself. "Come on; let's get you settled in. Tomorrow, if the weather's decent, we'll get up there and you can take some pretty pictures of the enemy line. How does that sound?"

"Better than a poke in the eye with a carrot," Stone said, and both young men grinned. The observer waved toward the tents. "Lead on, Macduff!" It was a misquotation, but Moss wasn't about to ruffle any feathers by saying so.

As if the arrival of the observers had changed the squadron's luck, the weather, which had been cold and foggy and drizzly, turned something close to springlike the next morning. Of course, by the calendar spring was only a week and a half away, but, up till now, Ontario had shown no signs of paying attention to the calendar. As far as Moss could see, blizzards were liable to keep coming all the way through July.

The next morning, Percy Stone exclaimed with pleasure when he saw the camera he was to use. "Ah, one of the new models," he said. "They're the next thing to foolproof. In fact, they're the next thing to moron proof." He exclaimed again when he discovered the Wright in which he was to fly had a conical recess in which the camera would fit built into the fuselage floor in the observer's cockpit. "Someone was awake during the design work here."

Moss shrugged as he climbed into the forward cockpit. A ground crew man spun the prop. The engine started to roar, seemingly right in his lap. He didn't like that. The slipstream blew the noise to him now, not away from him as it had in a Curtiss pusher. No help for it, though. This was the bus he had, so this was the bus he'd fly.

Fly he did, north and west. Every so often, Percy Stone would shout some thing at him. He caught perhaps one word in five. One of these days, somebody would have to figure out how to let pilot and observer talk back and forth and understand each other. That could be as important as perfecting the interrupter gear.

Endless hammering had finally let the Americans break out of the Niagara Peninsula. Threatened from west and east at the same time, the foe had evacuated the town of London, which had held so long and cost so many American lives. One fairly short push along the northern shore of Lake Ontario and Toronto would fall. That would bring the war in the north a long step closer to being won.

Under his flying goggles, Moss made a sour face. The limeys and Canucks, damn them, hadn't been idle while the U.S. soldiers pounded at their front door. They'd built a whole new series of lines behind the ones they'd had to abandon. Smash one and you found the next just as tough.

Moss was supposed to get Percy over the town of Berlin, south and west of Guelph, so the observer could photograph Canadian railheads and other targets for the U.S. artillery. Berlin was the name the town bore on his map, anyhow; the Canadians were calling it Empire these days. The region had been settled by Germans, a lot of whom, after the war broke out, had been resettled to Baffin Island and other such tropic climes lest they prove gladder to see Germany 's American allies than the forces of the British Empire.

Both the USA and Germany had trumpeted the Canadians' inhumanity to the skies. The Canadians and the British defended themselves on the grounds of the exigencies of war. (Moss suspected the argument sold newspapers down in South America. Past that, he didn't see much point to it.)

Because the weather was so clear and fine, the Canadian landscape-what had been farming country, now chewed to pieces by the war, torn and gouged and tied down with barbed wire-lay neatly spread out below the Wright 17. And, because it was so clear and fine, the biplane and its flightmates were all too easily visible to the enemy troops down below.

Black puffs of smoke started appearing in the sky, all around Moss and Stone. Moss started stunting the aeroplane, changing course and speed at random intervals to confuse the antiaircraft gunners and throw off their aim. The gunnery-the hate, everybody on the receiving end called it-was more a nuisance than anything else, but you didn't want to think you'd stay lucky all the time.

A shell burst a scant handful of yards below the Wilbur, which bounced in the air. Percy Stone picked that moment to shout "Now!" over and over till Moss waved to show he understood. For the photographic run, the aeroplane had to fly level and straight.

Back there, the observer would be yanking the loading handle to bring the first photographic plate into position, then pulling a string every few seconds. Every time he did, the camera would expose the plate then behind the lens. Sliding the loading handle forward and back again brought the exposed plate down into an empty changing box below and to the side of the camera body and slid a fresh one into place, ready for the next pull of the string. The camera held eighteen plates altogether.

Stone yelled something else. Moss couldn't make out the words, but he thought it was about time to go around and return to the aerodrome on a track parallel to the course they'd flown so far. When he did that, the observer stopped screaming, so he supposed he'd been right.

"Done!" Stone shouted at last, and Moss gave the Wright all the juice it had to get out of the antiaircraft fire and head for home.

The aeroplane rolled to a stop on the landing strip. Moss killed the engine. For a moment, silence seemed louder than the roar had. He needed a distinct effort of will not to shout as he said, "That wasn't so bad." After a reflective pause, he added, "Any run where they don't send their aeroplanes up after you is a pretty good one, as a matter of fact."

"Oh, I don't know," Percy Stone said. "I was sort of looking forward to the chance of shooting the tail right off my own bus." His grin was so disarming, it almost let Moss forget that that was one of the things that could happen when an observer got overeager.

Moss climbed out of the cockpit and jumped down to solid ground. Stone followed more slowly and more carefully; he had to remove the camera and the precious exposed plates from their mounting. Moss liked the precise way he did things. "This may work out pretty well," he said.

Percy Stone's grin got wider and more wicked. "Oh, darling," he breathed, "I didn't know you cared." Laughing, the two men headed off toward the photographic laboratory together.

Sylvia Enos stared at the new form the Coal Board clerk handed her. "Fill this out and bring it to Window C, over there, when you've finished it," the clerk droned, almost as mechanically as a gramophone record. Sylvia wondered how many times a day he said the exact same thing.

She wished Brigid Coneval weren't down with the grippe. But Mrs. Coneval was, which meant Sylvia had had to bring George, Jr., and Mary Jane with her to the Coal Board office of a Saturday afternoon. She was just glad the office stayed open on Saturday afternoons; if it hadn't, she would have had to try to get time off from work to fill out this new and hideous form.

She sat down in one of the hard chairs that filled the open area in front of the Coal Board office windows. George, Jr., sat down next to her. She plopped Mary Jane into the chair on the other side. "Be good, both of you, while I answer these questions," she said.

Every time she had to fill anything out, it was a race against the clock. The children would get into mischief; it was only a question of when. To delay the inevitable, she gave her son a lollipop and her daughter a bottle, then took out a fountain pen and bent over the sheet full of tiny type to find out what sort of information they wanted from her now.

COAL RATION ALLOTMENT

REASSESSMENT EVALUATION

SURVEY REPORT,

The form said at the top. Sylvia sighed. It seemed to be a law- or perhaps a Coal Board policy-that every form had to be more complicated than the one it replaced. This one certainly lived up to the requirement.

She had no trouble filling out her own name or the address of the flat in which she and the children lived. Then the form asked for the names of all individuals residing at that address. That was all fine. But next it asked for the present status of each individual, and gave check-off boxes for MILITARY, CIVILIAN GAINFULLY EMPLOYED, CIVILIAN UNEMPLOYED OTHER THAN STUDENT, STUDENT, AND CHILD BELOW AGE.

None of those boxes fit her husband, and there was no OTHER line on which to explain. Painful experience had taught her nothing caused more trouble than filling out a Coal Board form the wrong way. She glanced at her children. They both seemed occupied. "Wait here," she told them. "I have to go ask that man a question."

When she got to the front of the line again, the clerk who'd given her the form looked as delighted to see her as she was to see the landlord on the first of every month. "What seems to be your trouble?" he asked in a voice that said he knew she was bothering him on purpose.

She pointed to the check-off boxes. "What do I do about my husband here?" she asked. "He's a Confederate prisoner at-"

"Prisoners of war go under the Military heading," the clerk said, more exasperated than ever.

"But he's not a prisoner of war; he's a detainee," Sylvia said. "A commerce raider captured him when he was out on Georges Bank."

"Then he's a Civilian Gainfully-" The Coal Board clerk stopped. You couldn't say George Enos was gainfully employed, not when he was at a camp or wherever the Rebs kept their detainees down in North Carolina. But he wasn't unemployed, either. The clerk looked as if he hated Sylvia. He probably did, for breaking up the smooth monotony of his day. He turned and called, "Mr. Colfax, can you please come here for a moment?" Being his superior, Mr. Colfax rated politeness. Sylvia barely rated the time of day.

She turned to look back at her children. George, Jr., was teasing Mary Jane with the lollipop. She could have told him that was a mistake. Mary Jane grabbed the lollipop and stuffed it into her own mouth. George, Jr., started to scream.

"Excuse me," Sylvia said hastily. She took the lollipop away from Mary Jane, returned it to its rightful owner, swatted every available backside, and warned of measures yet more dire if the two of them didn't behave themselves. That done, she went back to the clerk. The next woman in line had come up to the window in the meanwhile, giving him an excuse to pretend she didn't exist. He seized on the excuse with alacrity.

But then Mr. Colfax, who wore not only pince-nez but a red vest to show he was someone above the common run of clerk, came out of whatever office he'd been given to prove he was above the common run of clerk. The window clerk proved willing to ignore the other woman at the window instead of Sylvia: as long as he was ignoring someone, he was happy.

Upon hearing of the ambiguity, Mr. Colfax chewed on his lower lip, which was red and meaty and made for such mastications. At last, he said, "Properly speaking, this man should not be included in the calculations, for no coal need be expended on cooking and heating water for him."

"It's not his fault he's not here," Sylvia protested. "He's a prisoner-"

"No, he is a detainee, as you yourself specified," the window clerk said, relishing his moment of petty triumph. "Fill out the form accordingly and take it to Window C. Thank you, Mr. Coifax." Mr. Colfax nodded and disappeared. Sylvia wished he were gone for good.

When she looked to her children again, Mary Jane was toddling over to take a good look at the brass cuspidor in one corner of the room. Its polished, gleaming surface was stained here and there-as was the floor around it-by the tobacco-brown spittle of men whose intentions were better than their aim. Sylvia let out a small shriek and, skirts flapping around her, managed to intercept Mary Jane just before her daughter got feet and hands in the disgusting stuff.

Gripping Mary Jane in one hand and the precious if annoying form in the other, she returned to the seat where George, Jr., waited placidly. "Why didn't you keep your sister from wandering off and getting into mischief?" she said. "You have to be my big boy till Papa gets home, you know."

"I'm sorry, Mama," he said, his face serious, his eyes big, looking so much like his father, Sylvia thought her heart would break. "I didn't see her go, I really didn't. I was looking at this bug I caught." He opened his hand. He was holding a cockroach. It jumped down and started to scurry across the floor toward any shelter it could find.

Sylvia lashed out with a foot. The cockroach crunched under the sole of her shoe. George, Jr., started to cry, but then discovered the remains of the cockroach were about as interesting as it had been alive. "Look at its guts sticking out!" he exclaimed, loudly and enthusiastically.

Heads turned, all through the Coal Board office. Sylvia felt herself flushing, and wished she could sink through the floor. "Don't play with them any more, do you hear me?" she told George, Jr. "They're dirty and nasty."

At last, she got the chance to finish filling out the form. It asked for things she didn't know, like the quality of the insulation in her flat, and for things she had a devil of a time figuring out, like the number of cubic feet the flat contained. Her education had stopped in the middle of the seventh grade, when it became obvious she needed a job more than schooling. She hadn't had to figure out the volume of anything since then, and hadn't expected to need to do it now.

At last, the dreadful task was done. By the time it was, Mary Jane was get ting cranky. Sylvia carried her over to the line in front of Window C. "You stay here," she told George, Jr., "and no more bugs, not if you want to be able to sit down when we ride the trolley home." If we ever get a chance to go home, she thought wearily. But she'd got through to her son, who sat on both hands, as if to protect the area she'd threatened.

The line moved about as slowly as U.S. troops advancing on Big Lick, Virginia-Big Licking, the papers had taken to calling it. Some of the people must have made mistakes on their forms, because, faces set and angry, they had to go back to the previous window and get new copies to fill out. They had to stand in line again there, too.

When she finally reached him, the clerk who reigned supreme over Window C proved to be a fresh-faced young fellow who, for a miracle, seemed friendly and anxious to help. He smiled at Mary Jane, who stared back at him over the thumb she had in her mouth.

Then he glanced down at the coal ration form. "I don't see your husband listed here, ma'am," he said to Sylvia. "You're a widow?" He actually sounded sympathetic, which, from Sylvia's previous experience with Coal Board clerks, should have been more than enough to get him fired.

"No," she said, and explained what had happened to George.

"That doesn't matter," the clerk said. "If he's a captive of the Confederate States, you're entitled to the coal for him."

"Back there-" Sylvia pointed to the window from which she'd come. "Mister, uh, Colfax said I wasn't, because George is a detainee, not a prisoner of war."

"Doesn't matter," the clerk repeated, his voice firm. "Mr. Colfax doesn't know everything there is to know."

Sylvia shot a venomous look back at that window. But when she started to cross lines out and make changes on the form, the clerk said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but these forms must be perfect the first time, to eliminate any suspicion that the changes originated in this office. I'm afraid you do have to go back and get a fresh copy to fill out."

She stared at him, at Mary Jane, at George, Jr. (would he catch a mouse instead of forbidden bugs?), and at the line to the window from which she'd thought she'd escaped. She needed the coal. Coal Board rations were stingy. Even with what she'd get for George, she'd have none too much. But standing in line again-in two lines again-and then having to fill out the requisition form once more, even if this time she could copy from what she'd done before… Another half hour? Another hour? Was it worth the time? When could she shop?

"Come on, lady," a gruff voice said behind her. "I ain't got all day."

Sylvia didn't have all day, either. But she did need the coal. Sighing, ignoring George, Jr.'s, stricken look, she walked across the room and got back into the line in which she'd stood before.