American Front

VII

Captain Irving Morrell lay between starched white sheets in an airy Tucson hospital that smelled of carbolic acid and, below that, of pus. He was sick of hospitals. The words sick to death of hospitals ran through his mind, but he rejected them. He'd come too close to dying to make jokes, or even feeble plays on words, about it.

His leg still throbbed like a rotten tooth, and here it was December when he'd been hit in August. More than once, the sawbones had wanted to take it off at the hip, for fear infection would kill him. He'd managed to talk them out of it every time, and having a toothache down there was heaven compared to what he'd gone through for a while. He could even walk on the leg now, and with aspirin he hardly noticed the pain-on good days.

A doctor with captain's bars on the shoulders of his white coat approached the bed. Morrell had never seen him before. He didn't know whether he'd see him again. The doctors here-the doctors at every military hospital these days- were like factory workers, dealing with wounded men as if they were faulty mechanisms to be reassembled, often moving from one to the next without the slightest acknowledgment of their common humanity. Maybe that kept them from dwelling on what they had to do. Maybe they were just too swamped to invest the time. Maybe both-Morrell had learned things were seldom simple.

The doctor pulled back the top sheet. He peered down at the valley in the flesh of Morrell's thigh. "Not too red," he said, scribbling a note. The skin of his hands was red, too, and raw, cracked from the harsh disinfectant in which he scrubbed many times a day.

"It's the best I've ever seen," Morrell agreed. He didn't know whether that was true or not, but he did know how much he wanted to get out of here and return to the war that was passing him by.

The doctor prodded at the wound with a short-nailed forefinger, down at the bottom of the valley where a river would have run had it been a product of geology rather than mere war. "Does that hurt?"

"No." The lie came easily. Morrell's conscience, unlike his leg, hurt not at all. Compared to what he'd been through, the pain the doctor inflicted was nothing, maybe less. I really am healing, he thought in some amazement. For a long time, he'd thought he never would.

Another note, another prod. "How about that?"

"No, sir, not that, either." Another lie. If I can convince everyone else it doesn't hurt, I can convince myself, too. If I can convince the quack, maybe he'll let me out of here. Worth trying for. The judgment was as cool and precise as if Morrell were picking the weak spot in an enemy position. That was how he'd got shot in the first place, but he chose not to dwell on such inconvenient details.

Two orderlies came into the warm, airy room, one pushing a wheeled gurney, the other walking beside it. Bandages covered most of the head of the still figure lying on the gurney. Yellow serum stained the white cotton at a spot behind the left temple. Between them, the orderlies gently transferred what had been a man from the gurney to a bed. The axles creaked slightly as they turned the gurney in a tight circle and rolled it away.

In his time on his back, Morrell had seen a lot of wounds like that. "Poor bastard," he muttered.

The doctor nodded. Next to that breathing husk, Morrell was a human being to him. "The worst of it is," the doctor said, "he's liable to stay alive for a long time. If you put food in his mouth, he'll swallow it. If you give him water, he'll drink. But he'll never get up out of that bed again, and he'll never know he's in it, either."

Morrell shivered. "Better to be shot dead quick and clean. Then it's over. You're not just-lingering."

"That's a good word," the doctor said. "Head wounds are the dreadful ones. Either they do kill the man receiving them-and so many do, far out of proportion to the number received-or they leave him a vegetable, like that unfortunate soldier." He clicked his tongue between his teeth. "It's a problem where I wish we could do more."

"What's to be done?" Morrell said. "A service cap won't stop a bullet, any more than your tunic or your trousers would."

"Of course not," the doctor said. "Some of the elite regiments wear leather helmets like the ones the German army uses, don't they?"

"The Pickelhaube," Morrell agreed. "That might help if you fell off a bicycle, but it won't stop a bullet, either. A steel helmet might, if it wasn't too heavy to wear. You probably couldn't make one that would keep everything out, but-"

He and the doctor looked at each other. Then, at the same moment, their eyes went to the bandaged soldier with half his brains blown out. The doctor said, "That might be an excellent notion, certainly in terms of wound reduction. I may take it up with my superiors and, upon your discharge, I suggest you do the same with yours. Knowing how slowly the Army does everything, we could hardly hope for immediate action even if we get approval, but the sooner we start seeking it-"

"The sooner something will get done," Morrell finished for him. He hated the way Army wheels got mired in bureaucratic mud. Maybe, with the war on, things would move faster. He hadn't had a chance to find out; he'd been flat on his back almost since fighting broke out. But the doctor had spoken a magic word. "Discharge?"

"You're not one hundred per cent sound," the doctor said, glancing down at the notes he'd written. "Odds are, you'll never be a hundred per cent sound, not with that wound. But you have function in the leg, the infection is controlled if not suppressed, and we may hope exercise will improve your overall condition now rather than setting it back. If not, of course, you will return to the hospital wherever you happen to be reassigned."

"Of course," Morrell said piously, not meaning a word of it. Inactivity had been a pain as bad as any from his wound. Once he got back in the field, he wouldn't report himself unfit for duty, not unless he got shot again-and not then, either, if he could get away with it. He'd buy a walking stick, he'd detail a sergeant to haul him around as necessary-but he'd stay in action. There had been times when he thought he'd go crazy, just from being cooped up in one place for weeks at a time.

"I am serious about that," the doctor said; Morrell had had better luck fooling some of the other quacks they'd sicced on him. "If the infection flares up again, or if it should reach the bone, amputation will offer the only hope of saving your life."

"I understand," Morrell said, which didn't mean he took the medical man seriously. If they hadn't chopped the leg off when it was swollen to twice its proper size and leaking pus the way an armored car with a punctured radiator leaked water, they weren't going to haul out the meat axe for it now.

"Very well." The doctor jotted one more note. "My orders are to put any men, especially experienced officers, who are at all capable of serving back on active-duty status as soon as possible. Therapeutically, this is less than ideal, but therapeutic needs must be weighed against those of the nation, and so you will be sent east for reassignment."

"I will be glad to get out of here," Morrell said, "but isn't there any chance of sending me back down to the campaign for Guaymas? Last I heard, we'd bogged down less than a hundred miles from the town."

"That's my understanding, too," the doctor said. "The reassignment center, however, has been established in St. Louis. You'll get your orders there, whatever they turn out to be."

Morrell nodded, accepting his fate. That sounded like the Army: set up one central center somewhere, and process everyone through it. If you went a thousand miles, then came back to somewhere only a hundred miles from where you'd started, that was just your tough luck. You chalked it up to the way the system worked and went on about your assigned business.

And, of course, there were no guarantees he'd get sent back to Sonora. He could as easily end up in Pennsylvania or Kansas or Quebec or British Columbia. War flamed all over the continent.

He started to ask the doctor when he could expect to head out of Tucson, but the fellow had moved on to the next bed and was examining a sergeant who'd taken a shell fragment that had shattered his arm. He had suffered an amputation, and was bitter about it. Now that the doctor was looking at him, Morrell might as well have ceased to exist.

Knowing he would soon be allowed to escape the confines of the military hospital, to see more of Tucson's notched, mountainous skyline than the window showed him, should have given him the patience to bear his remaining time in enforced captivity with good grace. So he told himself. Instead, he felt more trapped in his bed than ever. He fussed and fidgeted and made himself so unpleasant that the nurses, with whom he had for the most part got on well, started snapping back at him.

Three days later, though, an orderly brought him a new captain's uniform to replace the hospital robe he'd worn so long. In size, the new uniform was a perfect match for the blood-drenched, tattered one in which he'd been wounded. It hung on him like a tent. He could have concealed a football under his tunic without unduly stretching it, and he had to use the point of a knife to cut a new hole in his belt so his trousers would stay up. They flapped around his skinny legs like the baggy cotton bloomers women wore when they exercised.

He didn't care. Even with the stick, walking down the corridor to the buggy that would take him to the train station left him dizzy and light-headed. He didn't care about that, either. The driver was a gray-haired civilian who, by his bearing, had spent a good many years in the Army. "Glad to be getting back into it, sir?" he asked as Morrell struggled up into the seat behind him. After he spoke, he coughed several times. Morrell wondered if he'd come here to New Mexico in hopes of healing consumptive lungs.

That was however it was. The question had only one possible answer. "Hell, yes!" Morrell said. The driver chuckled and flicked the reins. The two-horse team started forward. Morrell leaned back in his seat. He could relax now. He was heading back toward the world where he belonged.

By the time Jonathan Moss pulled on woolen long Johns, trousers, boots, tunic, heavy wool sweater, even heavier sheepskin coat, and leather flying helmet and goggles, he felt as if he'd doubled in weight. He'd certainly doubled in width. And, with so many layers of clothing swaddling him, he could hardly move. He waddled through the doorway of the battered barn by the airfield. Forcing each leg forward took a separate and distinct effort.

One of the mechanics looked up from a poker game in the corner and said, "Think you'll be warm enough, Lieutenant?" He laughed and, without waiting for an answer, turned his attention back to the dealer. "Gimme two, Byron, and make 'em good ones for a change, why don't you?"

Nettled, Moss snapped, "It's cold enough down here, Lefty. Go up five thousand feet and it's a hell of a lot colder."

"Yeah, I know, sir," the mechanic said, unabashed. He studied the cards Byron had dealt him. By his revolted expression, they hadn't even come out of the same deck as the other three in his hand. You took that expression seriously at your own peril. If Lefty wasn't a rich man by the time the war ended-if the war ever ended-it would only be because he'd invested his winnings in lousy stocks.

One thing about flying: going up in the air meant Moss wouldn't lose any money to the mechanic for a while. Bad weather had grounded the reconnaissance squadron the past few days. It wasn't exactly choice out there now, but they might be able to get up, look around, and come back in one piece.

Moss chuckled wryly to himself as he walked out into watery sunshine. When the fighting started-which seemed like a devil of a long time ago now- a lot of officers hadn't wanted to pay any attention to the reports the aeroplane pilots brought back. Now people were screaming blue murder because they'd been deprived of those reports for a few days. Go on and fly, the attitude seemed to be. So what if you crash? — as long as we get the information.

"Nice to be wanted," Moss said, and chuckled again. He climbed up into his Super Hudson. The first thing he did was check the action of the machine gun mounted in front of him. The next thing he did was check the belt of ammunition that fed the machine gun. He found a couple of cartridges he didn't like. He took off his mittens, extracted the bad rounds from the belt, and yelled for an armorer. He soon had new cartridges more to his satisfaction. If your machine gun jammed in an aerial duel, all you could do was run away. Since the Avros the Canadians flew were faster than the Curtiss machines, you didn't want to have to try to do that.

One by one, the other pilots of the four-aeroplane flight came out of the barn and got up into their aircraft. Baum and Nelson and McClintock were as heavily wrapped as he was, and distinguishable one from another mostly because McClintock was half a head taller than Nelson, who overtopped Baum by a like amount. They too started checking their machine guns and ammunition.

After what seemed like forever but couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes, the mechanics deigned to put down their cards long enough to help send the airmen on their way. Lefty sauntered out to Moss' aeroplane. He had an unlighted cigar clamped between his teeth; he wouldn't strike a match till he got back to the barn.

Around that cigar, he said, "You come back safe now, sir, you hear? You got money I ain't won yet."

"For which vote of confidence I thank you," Moss said, and Lefty laughed. The mechanic grabbed hold of one blade of the two-bladed wooden prop and spun it, hard. The engine sputtered but didn't catch. Lefty muttered something so hot, it should have lighted the cigar all by itself. He spun the prop again. The engine sputtered, stuttered, and began to roar.

Moss glanced over to his flightmates. Baum's engine was going, and so was McClintock's. Lefty trotted toward Nelson's aeroplane, as did a couple of other mechanics. Nelson spread his hands in frustration. You hated to break down, but what were you supposed to do sometimes?

Moss pounded a fist down onto his leg. He could hardly feel the blow through all the clothes he had on, but that didn't matter. The flight would be short a man, no help for it. If they got jumped, the Canucks and limeys would have an edge.

He shook his head. Lone wolves of the air didn't last long these days. The British and Canadians had started formation flying, and U.S. pilots had to match them or else come out on the short end whenever a single plane met up with a flight. The kind of scout mission he'd flown in September would have been suicidally risky nowadays; the air was a nastier place than it had been.

Down below, a couple of U.S. soldiers took shots at him; he spied the upward-pointing muzzle flashes. "God damn you, stop that!" he shouted- uselessly, of course, for they could not hear him, but he knew he was nowhere near the enemy lines. Only fool luck would let a rifleman down an aeroplane, but the troopers down there were surely fools for shooting at machines on their own side, and they might have got lucky.

He flew as leader, with Baum on his right and McClintock off to his left. He wished Nelson had been able to get his engine to turn over, then shrugged. He'd made a lot of wishes that hadn't come true. What was one more?

The flight buzzed along, inland from the northern shore of Lake Erie. After untold exertions and untold casualties, the U.S. Army had finally dislodged the limeys and Canucks from their grip on Port Dover. It did them a lot less good than it would have a couple of months before. For one thing, the Canadians had had plenty of time to build up new defensive lines behind the one that had fallen-the exhilarating hope of a charge to take the defenses at London in the rear remained just that, a hope.

And for another, the weather made movement so hard that the Canadians and British could probably have pulled half their men out of line without the Army's being able to do much about it. The closest big U.S. town to the fighting was Buffalo, and Buffalo was notorious for frightful winters. Moving up into Canada didn't do a thing to make the wind blow less or the snow not fall.

"The war was supposed to be over by now," Moss muttered. Troops weren't supposed to have to try to advance-hell, aeroplanes weren't sup posed to have to try to fly-in weather like this. Canada was supposed to have fallen like a ripe fruit, at which point the United States could turn the whole weight of their military muscle against the Confederates.

Oh, parts of the plan had gone well. Farther east, the Army hadn't had any great trouble reaching the St. Lawrence. Crossing it, though, was turning out to be another question altogether, and the land on the other side was fortified to a fare-thee-well. They'd come ever so close to Winnipeg, too, though they probably wouldn't get there till spring, which in those parts meant May at the earliest.

But not quite reaching Winnipeg meant trains full of wheat and oats and barley kept heading east from the Canadian prairie-and there was talk that the Canucks, weather be damned, were pushing another railroad line through north of the city. The grain's getting through, in turn, meant the Canadian heartland, the country between Toronto and Quebec City, wouldn't starve. Of course, it hadn't been intended to starve Canada into submission, not at first-out-and-out conquest was the goal. But both the first plan and the alternative had failed, which left-what?

"Which leaves a whole lot of poor bastards down there dead in the mud," Moss said. When things didn't go the way the generals thought they would, soldiers were the ones who had to try to straighten them out-and who paid the price for doing it. The only thanks they got were mentions in TR's speeches. It didn't seem enough.

Clouds floated ahead, dark gray and lumpy. More of them were gathering, back toward the horizon: advance scouts for more bad weather ahead. Moss took his Super Hudson down below the bottom of the nearest clouds, wanting a good look at whatever the enemy had in the area.

His busy pencil traced trench lines, artillery positions, new railroad spurs. Some of the aeroplane squadrons were starting to get cameras, to let photographs take the place of sketches. Moss wasn't enthusiastic about the idea of wrestling with photographic plates in the cockpit of an aeroplane, but if he got orders to do that, he knew he would.

He and his wingmen were only a couple of thousand feet above the ground. The Canucks and Englishmen down there opened up on them with everything they had. Thrum! Thrum! The noise of bullets tearing through tight-stretched fabric was not one Moss wanted to hear. One of those accidental rounds-or maybe not so accidental, not flying this low-could just as easily tear through him.

Climbing a little helped, for it put ragged streamers of clouds between the aeroplanes and the men on the ground. But those ragged streamers also meant Moss couldn't see as much as he liked. After playing hide and seek for a minute or so, he came back down into plain sight so he could do his own job as it needed doing.

By then, he, Baum, and McClintock were past the front line. The fire from the ground was lighter here, and he descended another few hundred feet. Men down there swelled from ants to beetles.

And here came what looked like a procession of toy trucks and wagons, bringing supplies up from the railhead to the front. Jonathan Moss let out a whoop the slipstream blew away. He waved to catch his wingmen's attention, and pointed first down to the supply column and then to the machine gun mounted in front of him. The limeys and Canucks-and even the Americans- had been taking pot-shots at them the whole flight long. Now they could get some of their own back.

He swooped down on the column like a red-tailed hawk on a pullet in a farmyard. Safely back of the lines, the wagons and trucks had no armed escort whatever. He squeezed the triggers to the machine gun and sprayed bullets up and down the length of it. As he pulled up and went around, he yelled with glee at the chaos he, Baum, and McClintock had created. Some horses were down. So were some drivers. Two trucks were burning. Two more had run into each other when their drivers jumped out and dove into a ditch rather than staying to be machine-gunned. A cloud of steam in the chilly air said one of them had a broken radiator.

The three pilots shot up the column twice more, starting fresh fires and knocking over more horses, and then, at Moss' wave, flew eastward again, back toward the aerodrome. When he neared the front line this time, Moss was not ashamed to use the cover of clouds to avert antiaircraft fire. Getting information was important, but so was bringing it back to the people who could use it.

The bottom of the cloud deck was only a few hundred feet off the ground when the three Curtiss Super Hudsons landed. Moss had breathed a long sigh of relief on spotting the aerodrome; he'd worried that the clouds would turn into fog and force his comrades and him to set down wherever they could.

When his biplane bounced to a stop, he jumped out of it, an enormous grin on his face. Baum, a little skinny guy with a black beard, and McClintock, who, for reasons known only to himself, affected the waxed mustache and spikily pointed imperial of a Balkans nobleman, were also all teeth and excitement. "Wasn't that bully!" they shouted. "Wasn't it grand?"

"Just like the ducks in a shooting gallery," Moss agreed, and then, quite suddenly, he sobered. Not long before, he'd been sick because he had to shoot down a Canadian aeroplane to save his own life. Now here he was celebrating the deaths of a whole raft of men who, unlike the aeroplane pilot and observer, hadn't even been able to shoot back.

He'd always been glad he wasn't an infantryman: if you were a mudfoot, war, and the death and maiming that went with war, were random and impersonal. What had he just been doing but dealing out random, impersonal death? He'd thought of himself as a knight in shining armor. What sorts of filthy things had knights done that never got into the pages of Malory and Ivanhoe? He didn't know. He didn't want to find out, not really.

He looked down at himself. His imaginary suit of armor seemed to have a patch or two of rust on it. No matter who you were or what you did, you couldn't stay immaculate, not in this war.

"Close to quitting time," Jefferson Pinkard grunted as he and Bedford Cunningham secured a mold that would shape the steel just poured from the crucible into a metal pig a freight car could carry to whatever factory would turn it into weapons of war.

Before his friend could even begin to agree with him, that granddaddy of a steam whistle proclaimed to the whole Sloss Foundry that he'd been right. "Lived through another Monday," Cunningham said, not altogether facetiously.

Accidents were way up since the start of the war. Everybody was working flat out, with no slack time from the start of a shift to the end. A lot of the men were new because so many had gone into the Army, and the new fellows made more mistakes than the old hands they replaced. And, what with working like dogs every minute of every shift, new hands and old got drunk more often to ease the strain, which didn't help-especially on Mondays.

No sooner had that thought crossed Pinkard's mind than a horrible shriek rang out on the casting floor. "Oh, Christ!" he said, breaking into a run. "That damn fool up there poured when they weren't paying attention- probably talking about going off shift, just like we was."

There by the mold next to his lay Sid Williamson. He wasn't quiet now, as he usually was. He writhed and shrieked. The stink of hot iron was everywhere. So was the stink of burnt meat. Jeff looked at him and turned away, doing his best not to be sick to his stomach. He'd been burned plenty of times himself, but never like this-oh, God, never like this.

He shook his fist up at the kid handling the crucible, who was staring white-faced at what he'd done. Such things happened even with experienced men in that place, but that didn't keep him from blaming the son of a bitch who'd made this one happen. It could've been me, he thought. Jesus God, it could've been me.

"Burn ointment-" Bedford Cunningham began.

Another steelworker was already slathering it on Williamson. It wouldn't do any good. Jeff knew damn well it wouldn't do any good. So did everybody else on the floor, including, no doubt, the burned man. A couple of his pals got a stretcher under him, which brought out fresh cries, and hustled him away. He might live-he was young and strong. Pinkard wouldn't have bet on it, though. He'd never be back at the foundry again. Jeff would have bet anything he owned on that.

He wiped his sweaty, grimy face with a sweaty, grimy forearm. It was chilly and wet outside, but not in here. In here, it was always somewhere between August and hell, not that, in Birmingham, there was a whole lot of difference between one and the other. Even so, some of the sweat on his face was cold.

Still shaking, he and Cunningham turned together to let the fellows on the evening shift take over the work, which had to get done no matter what, no matter who. They both stopped with the turns a little more than half made. Pinkard watched Cunningham's jaw drop. He felt his own doing the same thing. He needed a couple of tries before he could say, "Where's Henry? Where's Silas?"

The two Negroes in collarless shirts looked nervous. They were big, strong bucks-they looked plenty strong enough to be steelworkers. But that didn't have anything to do with anything, and they knew it. So did Pinkard and Cunningham. One of the Negroes said, "They's in the Army, suh. We is their replacements."

"And who the hell are you?" Bedford Cunningham set his hands on his hips. Both black men were bigger than he was, and younger, too, but that didn't have

anything to do with anything, either. A black man who fought back against a white-his goose was cooked, anywhere in the CSA.

"I'm Lorenzo," said the Negro who had answered before.

"My name's Justinian," the other one said.

"I don't care if you're Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost," Jeff Pinkard exploded, which won him a startled chuckle from Cunningham. "What the hell they doin', puttin' Negroes on the evenin' shift? Nights was bad enough, but this here-"

"Suh, we been on nights since they let us," Lorenzo said, which was true; Pinkard had seen him around for a while. "When these white folks you was expectin', when they goed into the Army, the bosses, they look around, but they don't find no other whites kin do the job-no 'sperienced whites, I should oughta say. And so here we is."

"World's goin' to hell in a handbasket, Jeff, no two ways about it," Bed Cunningham said mournfully. "We seen it comin', an' we was right. Next thing you know, a couple of coons'll be doin' our jobs, too."

"Yeah, well, if that's so, it's on account of they put a rifle in my hands in stead," Pinkard answered. "And I'll tell you somethin' else, too: when I get out o' the Army, I'm still gonna have that rifle in my hands. Any nigger who tries to keep my job when I want it back, he's gonna be sorry. And any boss who tries to help him keep it, he's gonna be sorrier yet."

"Amen," Cunningham said, as if he'd been preaching in the Baptist church of a Sunday morning. "We had ourselves two revolutions in this here country to make it like we want it. Reckon we can have us a third one to keep it that way." He spat on the floor. "Shit, how do we even know these boys can do the work? Maybe we better watch and find out." He folded his arms across his chest.

"Ought to find out if they've got the balls to do it, too," Jeff said. He pointed over to the other mold. "You boys know what happened to Sid just now?"

"Yes, suh," Lorenzo answered quietly. "We seen that before, workin' nights. Hope he come through all right."

It was a soft answer, not one Pinkard particularly wanted to hear just then. He was edgy, looking for trouble. Since he couldn't find any, he scowled and said, "All right, get on with it, then." If they couldn't do the job, complaining to the foreman and maybe to the foundry manager would be worthwhile. Pinkard stepped aside. "We're gonna watch you."

And, for the next half hour, he and Cunningham did nothing but watch. To his dismay, the Negroes had no troubles. They weren't so smooth together as the two white men they were replacing, but they hadn't worked together for years, either. They did know enough of what they were doing to do just about all of it right.

At last, Jeff stuck an elbow in Cunningham's ribs. "Let's go home," he said. "Wives'll be worryin', thinkin' we got hurt or somethin'." He shivered. "Wasn't us, but it might have been."

"Yeah," his friend said with a strange kind of sigh: not quite defeat, but a long way from acceptance. As one, they turned their backs on the Negroes and left the Sloss Foundry building.

Walking home felt strange. Because they'd stayed past shift changeover, they were almost alone. A few men coming in late for evening shift rushed past them, worried expressions on their faces. They'd catch hell from the foremen and they'd see their pay docked. Would they get fired? An hour earlier, Pinkard would have thought no-who'd replace them with so many white men in the Army? Now that question had a possible new answer, one he didn't like.

Sure enough, when they got back to their side-by-side yellow cottages-though they looked gray in the fast-fading evening twilight-Emily Pinkard and Fanny Cunningham were standing together on the grass of their front lawns, grass that was going brown from the cold December nights. "Where have you been?" the two women demanded as one.

"Stayed a little late at the foundry, is all," Jefferson Pinkard said.

Emily came up and stood close to him. After a moment, he realized she was smelling his breath to see if he'd been off somewhere drinking up some illegal whiskey. Fanny Cunningham was doing the same thing with Bedford. When Bedford figured out what was going on, he angrily shoved his wife away. Pinkard just shrugged. If he'd been Emily, he would have guessed the same thing.

"What were you doing at the foundry?" Emily asked, evidently satisfied he was telling the truth.

Then the tale came out, Jefferson and Bedford splitting it, their breath steaming as they spoke. Their wives exclaimed in indignation and fear, both because of what had happened to Sid Williamson and because of the news about the black men. Pinkard understood that plenty well. Henry and Silas had been replaced by Negroes after they went into the Army. Would Pinkard and Cunningham be replaced so they could go into the Army? Or would they be replaced for no better reason than that the foundry bosses could save some money?

"Come on inside," Bedford Cunningham said to his wife. "We got some things we better talk about, you an' me."

Pinkard had a pretty good notion what those things might be. Bedford had teased him when he'd let Emily go to work in the munitions factory, but all of a sudden he was pretty damn glad he had. Even if they did throw him out of work, he and Emily wouldn't go hungry. If his friend wasn't thinking about having Fanny look for some kind of work, he would have been surprised.

"I waited supper on you," Emily said. "I put that roast and the potatoes in the covered crock 'fore I left this mornin', and they'll still be fine now."

"All right." Pinkard let her lead him up the walk to their house. He hung his cap on the tree inside the door, right beside the flowered hat Emily had worn to her job today. Now that she was going out in public every day, she'd bought several new hats. Each one cost a day's pay for her, but she'd earned the money herself, so Pinkard didn't see how he had any business complaining.

In spite of her promises, the cottage wasn't so clean and tidy as it had been before Emily went to work. He'd said things once or twice, the first few weeks: after all, she had promised to keep up the housework. Before long, though, he'd stopped complaining. When you got right down to it, what difference did a little dust make? She was helping the CSA win the war. Didn't that count for more?

And supper, as she'd promised, was fine. She made a lot of meals like that these days: things she could fix up in a hurry, put over a low fire before she went out the door, and then just serve as soon as she and Jefferson were both home.

"That's mighty good," he said, patting his belly. "And since I wasn't off gettin' lit up like you thought I was, why don't you get me a bottle of beer?"

Even by the ruddy light of the kerosene lamp, he could see her face go red. "You knew, too?" she said over her shoulder as she went back into the kitchen. "You didn't let on like Bedford did."

"I think Fanny nags Bedford more'n you do me," he answered. "Makes him feel like he got to get his own back every so often. Ah, thanks." He took the illicit bottle she handed him, swigged, and made a sour face. "He's done a lot better'n that-tastes like he had a horse stand over the bottle." He swigged again. "A sick horse, you ask me."

Emily giggled, deliciously scandalized. She also drank. "It's not that bad," she said: faint praise. And, as usual, she was right. The beer was drinkable- or, if it wasn't, Jefferson 's bottle emptied by magic.

He went into the kitchen with her and worked the pump at the sink while she washed the supper dishes. "How'd it go with you today?" he asked. He'd discovered, to his surprise, that he liked sharing work gossip with her. "You already heard my news for the day."

"Mine ain't much better," Emily said, scrubbing a greasy plate with harsh lye soap. "Clara Fuller, she hurt her hand on a drill press. They say she's liable to lose her little finger."

"That's no good," Pinkard said. "Accident like that, the whole shift is looking over its shoulder the next two days." Only after he'd said it did he realize how strange the idea of a woman at a machine would have struck him before the war started. About as strange as the idea of a Negro doing his job on the evening shift, as a matter of fact.

When the dishes were done and dried and put away, they went out to the living room and talked and read for a little while, till they were both yawning more than they were talking. After a few minutes of that, they gave up with sleepy laughs. They went out to the outhouse, first Emily, then Jeff. She was in bed by the time he came back to put on his pajamas. He slid under the cover and blew out the lamp.

Her back was to him. He reached over and closed a hand around her right breast. She didn't stir. She didn't say anything. She was already deep asleep. A moment later, so was he.

Somewhere up ahead along the muddy, miserable road lay the town of Morton 's Gap, Kentucky. Somewhere beyond and maybe a little north of Morton's Gap lay Madisonville. Somewhere beyond Madisonville- in a mythical land far, far away, as best as Paul Mantarakis could telllay the much-promised, seldom-seen glittering thing called Breakthrough.

Just at sunrise, Mantarakis walked slowly down the trench line. You couldn't walk any way but slowly; with every step you took, the mud grabbed your boot and made you fight to pull it out again. If you lay down in the mud, you were liable to drown. He'd heard of its happening, more than once, as the U.S. line congealed in the face of Confederate resistance and winter.

There stood Gordon McSweeney, his canvas shelter half wrapped around his shoulders as a cloak to hold the rain at bay, water dripping off the brim of his green-gray- now green-gray-brown- forage cap. His long, angular face was muddy, too, and set in its usual disapproving lines. McSweeney disapproved of everything on general principles, and of Mantarakis not just on general principles but alsoand particularly-because he wasn't Presbyterian.

And then, to Mantarakis' amazement, those gloomy features rearranged themselves into a smile so bright, it was almost sweet. "Merry Christmas, Paul," McSweeney said. "God bless you on the day."

"Christmas?" Mantarakis stared blankly before nodding and smiling back. "Merry Christmas to you, too, Gordon. Doesn't seem like much of a spot for doing anything about it, though, does it?"

"If Christ is in your heart, where your body rests does not matter," McSweeney said. When he talked like that, he usually sounded angry. Today, though, the words came out as if he meant them, no more. He really must have had the Christmas spirit deep in his heart.

"Merry Christmas," Mantarakis repeated. He kept walking. It was Christmas for McSweeney, it was Christmas for everybody in his unit-and for the Rebs in their wet trenches a couple-three hundred yards away-but it wasn't Christmas for him. It wouldn't be Christmas for him till January 6. The Orthodox Church had never cottoned to the Gregorian calendar. Maybe I should tell McSweeney it's Papist, Mantarakis thought with a wry smile. That would give the Bible-thumper something new to get in a sweat about, not that you could sweat in this miserable weather.

He shook his head. For one thing, having McSweeney act like a human being for a change was too good to fool with. And, for another, he was too used to having the whole world celebrate Christmas almost two weeks ahead of him to try and change anybody's mind about it now.

"Hey, Paul!" Sergeant Peterquist called from a little way down the trench. "We got us a sheep here-Ben brought it up with the regular supplies. Don't know where he came by it, but I'm not asking questions, neither. You wanna see what you can turn it into?"

"Sure will, Sarge," Mantarakis said. He wasn't officially company cook, but he was better at the job than Ben Carlton, who was supposed to have it, and everybody knew as much. And what a Greek couldn't do with mutton couldn't be done. He added, "Merry Christmas," as he came up to the sergeant.

"Same to you, Paul," Dick Peterquist answered. He wasn't much bigger than Mantarakis, but towheaded instead of swarthy. Because he was so fair, he looked younger than the forty years Mantarakis knew he had. He might have carried a few gray hairs, but who could tell, in amongst the gold? He pointed down to the carcass at his feet. "Doesn't that look good?"

Paul whistled softly. It wasn't really a sheep, it was an almost-yearling lamb from this past spring's birth. "Ben outdid himself this time," he said. Carlton might not have been much of a cook, but he was a hell of a scrounger. "You said sheep, Sarge, and I figured something old and tough and gamy. This here, though-" His mouth watered just thinking about it. "Make stew with some and roast the rest, I guess. You can't beat roast lamb."

"You do it up the best way you know how, that's all," Peterquist said. "Make us a hell of a Christmas dinner."

Mantarakis nodded. He figured he'd save the tongue and the brains and the kidneys and sweetbreads for himself; nobody else was likely to want them, anyhow. To most soldiers, they were "guts," and not worth having. He wished he could get his hands on a little wine so he could saute the kidneys in it. Of course, he wished he were back in Philadelphia, too, so what were wishes worth?

He unsheathed the bayonet he wore on his left hip: twenty inches of sharp steel. It wasn't a proper butcher knife, but it would do the job. He'd just squatted down over the lamb when a Southern voice, thin in the distance, called, "Hey, you Yanks! Wave a hankie an' stick a head up! We won't shoot y'all-it's Christmas!"

"What do we do?" Mantarakis asked Peterquist.

"Shit, they ain't gonna lie to us like that," the sergeant answered. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, then gave it a dubious look: it was more nearly brown than white. He waved it anyway, and stuck his head up above the front lip of the trench. Now he whistled. "I'll be damned."

That made Mantarakis look, too. The calls kept coming, from up and down the Confederate line. Some men in butternut were walking about in front of their trench line. Any other day of the year, they would have been asking to be shot dead. On Christmas, no. U.S. troops were coming up out of the trenches, too, and heading on over toward the drifts of barbed wire that separated one line from the other.

Without waiting on anybody's permission, Paul scrambled up onto the ground between the trench lines and headed toward the Confederate positions, too. He waited for Peterquist to yell at him or try to drag him back, but, a moment later, the sergeant was right up there beside him. "I'll be damned," he said again, and Mantarakis nodded.

Realizing he was still holding the bayonet he'd intended to use to cut up the lamb, he stuck it back in its leather sheath. He wasn't going to need it, not today. Rebs and U.S. soldiers were snipping through barbed wire not to kill one another but to get together, say "Merry Christmas," and shake hands. For a day, or at least a moment, fifty years and more of hatred vanished as if they'd never been.

Some of the Confederates had rifles slung on their shoulders, but they, like he, seemed to have forgotten about them. "Hey, you! Yank!" one of them called, and pointed at him. "Want some seegars? Got anything you can swap me for 'em?"

This was tobacco country, but the fields had been fought over, not harvested. And cigars, with any luck, were going to be Habanas, anyhow. Kentucky tobacco couldn't come close to what they grew in Cuba. "I've got some garlic powder and some mint," Mantarakis answered. "Make your stews taste better, if you want 'em."

"Don't like garlic," the Rebel said, and made a face. "Stinks, if'n you ask me. But mint's right nice. What other kind o' tasty things y'all got?"

"Got some cinnamon, a little bit," Paul said. He hid the scorn he held for the Confederate: how could you dislike garlic? But the fellow's eyes lit up when he mentioned cinnamon, so maybe they had some hope of a deal after all. Mantarakis dug in his pack and displayed the little tins of spice, whereupon the Rebel held up four cigars. After some dickering, they settled on six.

By then, a couple of paths through the wire had been cleared. Paul went through one of them, toward the Confederate lines. He had the feeling of being partly in a dream, as if nothing could happen to him no matter what he did. It was the exact opposite of what he usually felt on a battlefield: that he was liable to end up dead or mangled in spite of everything he could do to prevent it.

He handed the tins over to his Confederate counterpart and received the cigars in return. The bands, printed on shiny, metallic paper, bore the picture of a fellow with a bushy gray beard, who, the gold letters underneath his face declared, was Confederate President Longstreet, who'd licked the United States in the Second Mexican War. Maybe the cigars were Habanas, then. He sniffed them. Wherever they came from, they smelled pretty good.

"Merry Christmas, Yankee," the Confederate said. He was a mediumsized, stocky fellow with muttonchops and light brown hair that stuck out from under his cap in all directions. As he stowed away the spices, he laughed a little. "Don't think I hardly ever said nothin' to a damnyankee before, 'cept maybe somethin' like 'Hands up 'fore I shoot you!' "

"Yeah, I'm the same way with you birds, pretty much," Mantarakis said. Oh, maybe a Confederate sailor or two had come into one of the Philadelphia greasy spoons where he'd worked, but taking an order for a sandwich or a steak was damn near as impersonal as talking from one side of a rifle to the other. He gave his name, then said, "Who are you? What do you do?"

"I'm Colby Gilbert, Paul," the Rebel answered. He stuck out his hand. Mantarakis shook it. The Reb grinned. "Right glad to meet you, Paul, long as you don't ask me to say your last name. What do I do? I got me a farm, forty, maybe fifty miles outside o' Little Rock, Arkansas. How about your own self?"

"Cook in Philadelphia," Paul answered.

"No wonder you got them nice spices, then. You got a family?" Gilbert asked. Before Mantarakis could answer, the Reb pulled a photograph out of his breast pocket: himself, a plain blond woman, a little boy, and a baby of indeterminate sex, all in what had to be Sunday best. "This here's me and Betsy and Colby, Jr., and Lucy." The baby was a girl, then.

"I'm not married yet," Mantarakis said. "A couple of my brothers have children, so I'm an uncle." He trotted out a family joke: "One of my sisters is expecting, so I'll be an aunt pretty soon, too."

Colby Gilbert scratched his head, then laughed. "Didn't know you damnyankees could be funny. Never even thought you might. Ain't that queer?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Paul looked ahead to Morton's Gap, or what was left of it. What struck him as funny was being here in a foreign country, talking like an old friend with a real, live enemy.

Somebody, from one trench or another, had thrown out a football. Soldiers from both the USA and the CSA wanted a game, but before they could play, they argued over the rules-the United States ' version let you advance the ball by throwing it forward, if you did it from five yards back of the scrim line, while by the Confederacy's rules no forward passes could be thrown, only laterals. The disagreement stayed good-natured, though, and, when the Rebs whooped and cheered to see how far one of the U.S. soldiers could heave the ball and how nimbly another one ran under it and caught it, they agreed to try the damnyankee style of play themselves.

Men in green-gray and men in butternut stood shoulder to shoulder and cheered the two teams of gladiators wrestling in the mud. Several flasks went through the crowd; Paul had a nip of brandy and another of raw, searing corn liquor. Probably because they understood the passing game better, the U.S. team won, 26–12. Everybody cheered both sides, anyway.

"Shitfire," a loud Southern voice declared, "if I'd knowed damnyankees was people just like us, damn me to hell if Id've been so all-fired eager to grab me a gun an' shoot 'em."

"You Rebels, I think you may be Christians, too." That was Gordon McSweeney, sounding surprised. For once, Paul didn't blame him. If you lived in the USA, you figured everybody in the CSA grew horns and a pointy tail. From the way the Confederates talked, they seemed to think the same thing about Americans.

"What the hell we fightin' for, then?" somebody asked. Mantarakis didn't know whether the question had come from a soldier of the USA or the CSA. He decided it didn't matter, anyhow. And nobody tried to answer it.

The crowd from the football match dispersed slowly, reluctantly. A few U.S. soldiers followed new-made friends into the Confederate lines for supper; a few Rebs, Colby Gilbert among them, came back with the U.S. troops. "I'll show you what garlic is good for," Mantarakis said, going to work on the lamb carcass he'd been about to cut up before the impromptu Christmas truce broke out.

Gilbert showed his family photo again, and admired those of the U.S. soldiers who were married. He traded cigars for this and that, and did admit the meat Paul was cooking smelled mighty good. Mantarakis had just put a big chunk of roast leg on Gilbert's mess tin (shaped a little different from those the U.S. soldiers carried) when Lieutenant Norman Hinshaw, the platoon commander, came up to the fire, no doubt drawn by the rich cooking odors.

Hinshaw stared in dismay at Colby Gilbert. "They're raising hell about this back at regimental headquarters," he said. "If he doesn't get his ass back to his own side, we've got to take him prisoner."

"Aw, have a heart, Lieutenant," Mantarakis said. "At least let him finish eating. It's Christmas, right?" Even if it wasn't Christmas for him, he used the argument without qualm of conscience.

Lieutenant Hinshaw looked at the rest of his men. When he saw all of them, even Sergeant Peterquist, nodding, he threw up his hands. "All right, he can stay," he said. "But tomorrow, if we see him, we kill him."

"Same to you, Lieutenant," Colby Gilbert said. "Nothin' personal, of course."

He ate slowly, enjoying every bit, garlic or no. Mantarakis gave him another chunk of meat to take back to his own lines. A chorus of good-byes followed him when he left the U.S. trenches. As the sun set a couple of hours later, a new chorus rang out: Christmas carols, sung first by the U.S. soldiers, then by the Confederates, and at last by both armies together.

Not a shot disturbed the night. Paul rolled himself in his blanket, confident for once he'd wake up to see the dawn.

And when dawn came, a savage U.S. artillery bombardment tore at the Confederates' front-line positions. Mantarakis huddled in a little ball in the mud, for the Rebs were shelling the U.S. trenches, too. Maybe the brass on both sides was making sure the truce wouldn't last more than a day. If so, they got their wish. Rifles began to bark, and machine guns to hammer. The war had come back, and come back strong. Later that day, it started to snow.

Church bells chimed in 1915 as if the new year were something worth celebrating. Sylvia Enos lay alone in her bed, listening to the bells, to the firecrackers, to the occasional gunshots, to the sound of happy- or at least drunk- people in the streets. Tomorrow was Saturday, a half day of work, and she knew she had to be up before six, but she could not relax her mind enough to sleep.

In the next room, George, Jr., whimpered. Most nights when he did that, Sylvia prayed he'd go right back to sleep. Now she wouldn't have minded his waking… too much.

She whimpered a little herself, and bit her lip to make herself stop. Not knowing was the hardest part. The Ripple hadn't come back from Georges Bank, and hadn't come back, and hadn't come back-and now, two months and more after it put out, no one, not even Sylvia, thought it would come back.

But what had happened to it? The weather had been good-not perfect, but good, so a storm couldn't have sunk the trawler. Had it collided with another vessel? Had a Confederate commerce raider sunk it? And if a raider had sunk it, had the crew had a chance to get off first?

"Please, God, do whatever You want with me, but let George be safe," Sylvia said quietly in the darkness. She hadn't been much given to prayer before the Ripple disappeared, but she'd found it made her feel she was doing something, however small a something, for her husband. Past prayer, she had nothing to do.

At last, she fell asleep, only to be wakened a few minutes later by a drunken brawl out in the hallway in front of her flat. The racket woke Mary Jane, too. She was wet, so Sylvia groggily changed her diaper and put her back to bed. The toddler sighed and went to sleep right away. Sylvia wished she'd be so lucky, but wasn't.

When the alarm clock went off beside her head, she thought at first it was the bells from the midnight just past. The clattering went on and on, though. Under her breath, she muttered something George had brought home from T Wharf. His hair would have curled to hear her say it, but there was no one to hear her say it, and so she did.

She struck a match and lighted the gas lamp by the bed, then quickly put on her corset, shirtwaist, and long, dark blue wool skirt over her winter underwear. She let out a silent thank-you to whatever gods of fashion had decreed bustles no longer mandatory. That saved time.

She stoked up the fire in the stove and set water to boil for oatmeal and for coffee. Breathing a sigh of relief that she'd managed to get through the month with a little coal left in the scuttle, she went into the other bedroom to get the children up and moving.

"I don't want to get up," George, Jr., moaned.

"I don't want to get up, either, but I have to, and so do you," Sylvia said. He grumbled some more, but got out of bed. If he'd dawdled, the flat of her hand on his backside would have got him moving in a hurry, and he knew it. Mary Jane, on the other hand, woke up sweetly, as she did most mornings.

She made the oatmeal, put on butter and salt, and fed alternate mouthfuls to herself and Mary Jane while George, Jr., ate. The children drank water; there had been a tainted milk scare the week before, and she'd been leery of buying it. She wished she had some for her coffee, too, but if her large wishes weren't being granted, she didn't expect to get her small ones.

"Come on- time to go to Mrs. Conevals," she said. "It's Saturday today, so I'll be back in the afternoon, not at nighttime." George, Jr., nodded at that; Mary Jane was still too little to have it mean anything to her.

Brigid Coneval lived down at the end of the hall, near the bathroom. Her husband was off at the front: in New Mexico, if Sylvia's memory was straight. Instead of going off to work in a factory herself, Mrs. Coneval kept body and soul together by using the money he sent home and by caring for the children of other women who had to go out to work and who had no family to mind their own.

Sylvia knocked on her door. She had to knock loudly; the racket inside the flat was already frightful, and, when Brigid Coneval opened the door, Sylvia saw that only about half her usual mob had arrived. "Good mornin' to you, Mrs. Enos," Mrs. Coneval said in a musical brogue. "Have you had any word of that man o' yours, now?"

"No," Sylvia said bleakly. "Just- nothing." She urged her children into the flat, saying, as she did every day, "Do as Mrs. Coneval tells you, and play nicely with the other children." George, Jr., kissed her good-bye; Mary Jane nibbled the end of her nose, which amounted to the same thing.

Inside the flat, somebody sneezed. Sylvia sighed. Cooping her children up with so many others was asking for them to come down with colds or worse; diphtheria and measles, whooping cough and chicken pox (though George, Jr., had already had most of those) ran riot in wintertime, when people stayed tightly packed together so much of the time. But what else could she do? Unlike Brigid Coneval, she had no husband sending home even a little money. For all she knew, she had no husband at all.

Shaking her head, she went downstairs and out into the street. It was still dark outside; the sun wouldn't be up for most of another hour. Breath making a foggy cloud around her, she walked down to the corner and waited for the trolley. Up it came a few minutes later. She climbed in and dropped her nickel in the fare box. A fellow in a rain slicker who looked like a fisherman stood up to give her his seat. She took it with a murmur of thanks.

She changed trolleys, then got off and walked over to the canning plant, a square brick building that looked ancient though it wasn't and that smelled of fish even more powerfully than T Wharf. The workers coming in with her were a mixed lot, some white men who hadn't yet been called into the Army, some colored men who weren't likely to be called into the Army unless things got even worse than they were already, and a lot of women like her who needed to keep body and soul together and families running while their men were gone.

A couple of women were wearing black; they'd lost their husbands in the fighting that sprawled across North America. Sylvia wondered if she should be doing the same. Stubbornly, she refused to give up hope. She wouldn't don widow's weeds till she knew for a fact she was a widow.

Before she'd had to look for work, she'd never operated anything more complicated than a sewing machine. The machine that put labels on cans of mackerel as they came sliding along a conveyor belt wasn't much more complicated. You pulled a lever to shunt the can off the belt, another one to route it through the machine, and a third to send it on its way, now adorned with a fish that looked more like a tuna than a mackerel-but, since the housewife in Ohio or the bachelor in Nebraska had probably never seen either in the flopping flesh, what harm was done?

You did have to watch out that the labelling machine didn't run out of paste, and every once in a while the endless strip of labels would jam. When that happened, you had to shut down the line till you could clear and fix the feed mechanism. Most days, though, it was just pull this one, pull that one, pull the other one, then pull this one again, from the start of the shift right through to the end.

Sometimes time crawled by. Sometimes it sped; Sylvia had found herself almost mesmerized by what she was doing, and had an hour or two slip by al most without conscious thought. You could talk through the clatter of thousands of cans and of the machinery that moved them on their way, but often there wasn't a whole lot to say.

Saturday half-shift often passed more slowly, at least in mental terms, than a full day's work. Sylvia had expected that, especially after being off for the New Year's holiday. But it didn't happen. She came out into the bright winter sun with the feeling that she had a lot of time to do the rest of the day's chores. She went to the grocer's and the butcher's and the yard-goods store for cloth and patterns for the clothes her children would be wearing come spring.

"Good to see you, Mrs. Enos," the clerk there said as he took her money. "Business has been slow. A lot of people are buying ready-to-wear goods these days."

"Making them myself is cheaper-if I can find the time." Sylvia shook her head. She didn't have much money since George had disappeared, but she didn't have much time, either. How could you win?

When she got back to her apartment building, she checked the rank of mailboxes in the front hall. She found a couple of advertising circulars, a Christmas card from her cousin in New York (she muttered rude things about the post office), and an envelope with a stamp she did not recognize and a rubber-stamped notice saying it had been forwarded through the International Society of Red Cross Organizations.

The rubber stamp nearly obscured the address. When she got a look at that, she shivered and felt so light-headed, she had to lean against the iron bank of mailboxes for a moment before she could open the envelope: it was in her husband's handwriting.

Dear Sylvia, the note inside read, I want you to know I am all right and not hurt. The Ripple was caught and sunk by the (here someone had rendered a word or two illegible with black ink). They took us to North Carolina, where I am now. They treat us well. The food is all right. You can write me in care of the Red Cross and it will get to me sooner or later. They may end up letting me go in a while because I wasn't in the Navy and they exchange civilians with the United States. I hope so. I love you. Give my love to the children to. I hope I see you before to long. Love again from your George.

Sylvia leaned against the mailboxes again. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Oh, dear," Henrietta Collingwood, a neighbor, said as she came downstairs. She pointed to the letter Sylvia was still holding. "I hope it is not bad news." By her voice, she sounded certain it was.

But Sylvia shook her head. "No, Henrietta," she said. "The best news of all: he is alive."

"Come on, nigger-lovers, get movin'," the Confederate guard said. He gestured with the bayonet of his rifle as if he would have liked to use it on the crew of the Ripple.

George Enos and the rest of the captured fishermen obediently got up and headed across the barbed-wire enclosure of Fort Johnston for their daily louse inspection. Anybody discovered with the little pests got his hair washed with kerosene and his clothes and bedding baked in an oven. That killed the lice for a while, but in a week or two they'd be back again.

Enos shivered. The wind off the Atlantic here at the outlet of the Cape Fear River was bitingly cold, though he still had on the gear he'd been wearing when the commerce raider Swamp Fox captured the Ripple. "I thought North Carolina was supposed to be hot and sticky all the time," he said.

"Shut up, nigger-lover," the guard said, his voice flat and harsh. Enos would have been surprised if he was eighteen; his face was full of angry red blotches. But he had a gun and he had the rest of the Confederate Army behind him, so Enos shut up. The crew of the Ripple had that unlovely handle hung on them because they'd insisted on treating Charlie White like a human being even after the Swamp Fox plucked them off the steam trawler and then sank it.

Technically, they were detainees, not prisoners of war. U.S. commerce raiders had scooped up Confederate merchant seamen, too. They were being exchanged, one for one, in the order of capture, using the good offices of the Kingdom of Spain, one of the few nations neutral in the fight that roiled across the world. Enos figured he'd probably get back to Boston about a week before the war ended, if it ever did. He hadn't said that in his letter to Sylvia, but it remained at the back of his mind.

No matter what anybody called him, though, George felt like a prisoner of war. The worst of it was, he hadn't even been at war when the Confederates nabbed him. All he'd been doing was trying to make a living. The Rebels didn't give a damn about that. To them, capturing a fishing boat counted as a blow against the United States. It struck him as dreadfully unfair. War was about soldiers and sailors. It wasn't about fishermen, not as far as he was concerned. But nobody cared what he thought. Nobody cared how much he missed his wife, either. That was something else war was about: not caring.

Off to one side, chips flew as Charlie White chopped firewood. The cook worked with grim intensity, slamming the axe down again and again. It was his turn for the job; Enos had done it a couple of days before, and yesterday a sailor off a freighter the Swamp Fox had sent to the bottom. The Rebs didn't work Charlie any differently from the way they worked their other detainees. That would have been against international law, and they would have caught hell for it when word got back to the United States.

But they didn't treat him as they would have treated a white man, either, always jeering at him-and, to a lesser degree, at the crewmen of the Ripple for insisting he was their friend, not a servant or a pet. They had Negro servants here at Fort Johnston, men who acted like dogs around Southern whites. Enos wondered what they used for self-respect.

He didn't have much left himself. The medical orderly-the Rebs didn't waste a doctor on damnyankees, not unless they were dying-snapped, "Bend over, nigger-lover." When Enos obeyed, the fellow ran fingers through his hair, examining the nape of his neck and the short hairs behind his ears. Reluctantly, the orderly said, "All right, you're clean-go on."

Enos went. He suspected the Rebs of claiming the men from the Ripple were lousy even when they weren't, just so they could put them through the process of getting rid of the vermin. Afterwards, your head smelled for days as if you'd been soaking it in the well of a kerosene lantern.

To give him his due, the medical officer did try to keep from spreading lice from one man to another. Between inspections, he dipped his hands into a bowl from which rose the antiseptic smell of dilute carbolic acid, then dried them on a towel. He looked over Patrick O'Donnell, and let the captain of the Ripple pass inspection in the same grudging manner he had Enos.

O'Donnell went over to the barbed wire and stood around looking bored. Enos walked up and stood beside him. "Another exciting day, isn't it, Skipper?" he said.

"You might say that," O'Donnell allowed. Both men laughed. About the only excitement in these parts was finding out whether your day's ration of cornbread had mold or not, and whether the chunk of boiled sowbelly the Rebs gave you with it was all fat or whether it had a tiny bit of real meat attached.

Thinking of that made George Enos laugh again. "Remember that time when Fred got a whole strip of meat in his sowbelly? I bet they fired the cook who gave it to him the day after, because it sure hasn't happened again."

"Bet you're right," the skipper said. "Sure sounded like they were giving somebody holy hell that night, too. Might've been the cook."

Ever so casually, he turned and glanced toward the disappearing turrets that held Fort Johnston 's three twelve-inch guns. Any ships that tried to ascend the Cape Fear River and bombard or mine Wilmington, North Carolina, would have to pass the guns here and in other forts farther up the river. Enos wouldn't have liked to try it. In their endless practices, the Rebs seemed very alert.

He'd never asked O'Donnell why he spent so much time by the wire. It wasn't really his concern, and confirming his suspicions wouldn't have done him or the captain of the Ripple any good. But he was pretty sure that, when they finally did get exchanged, O'Donnell would give the U.S. Navy a set of drawings for the interior grounds of Fort Johnston better than anything they had now.

Enos had other things on his mind. "You think they'll give us our jobs back when we get out of here?" he asked. "God only knows what Sylvia's doing to make ends meet."

"I hope you get your job back, George," O'Donnell answered. "With me, it doesn't matter so much." A skipper who lost his ship, even if it wasn't his fault, had trouble getting another one. But that wasn't what O'Donnell meant. If and when the Confederates shipped him back to the United States, he was going straight into the Navy. They'd be glad to have him again, what with his experience.

They'd probably be glad to have George Enos, too. He'd never served on a warship, but he was a sailor. He'd have an easier time figuring out what was going on than some landlubber from Dakota.

He didn't want to go into the Navy, the way O'Donnell did. Being kept away from Sylvia and his children had forcibly reminded him how much he missed them. You went aboard a cruiser, you were there for months at a time, and even when you got back to port, who could say where that port would be? If you were in San Diego, say, and got forty-eight hours' liberty, so what? You couldn't get back to Boston, let alone make the round trip, in that length of time.

He laughed. "What's funny?" O'Donnell asked.

"Thinking about getting liberty and what I'd do with it if I'm too far from home to go back and if I join the Navy and if I ever get out of here. Too damn many ifs." Enos laughed again. "Hell, liberty from the Navy is one thing. Liberty from here is a whole different one." To that, Patrick O'Donnell could only nod.

And liberty from Fort Johnston was a different thing for the two white men from what it was for Charlie White. A Confederate soldier walked up and stood watching the Ripple's cook chop wood. "Hey, nigger," he said in an assumed tone of casual interest, "you think maybe back 'fore we manumitted you coons, my pa or granddad fucked your mother?"

Charlie stopped chopping. For a horrible second, George was afraid he'd try to use his hatchet against a rifle. But he just paused, then shook his head. "Nah. If that had happened, I'd be a whole lot uglier."

Every detainee who heard the answer howled and jeered at Charlie's comeback. The Reb who'd walked into it turned red as brick. He started to bring his rifle to bear on the cook. Now the detainees yelled even louder for a Confederate officer. Before anybody with bars or stars on his collar got to the barbed-wire enclosure, the soldier lowered the rifle, snarling, "Nigger gets uppity, he gets his sooner or later, wait an' see if he don't."

"You haven't got the balls to do that to anybody who could shoot back," Lucas Phelps told him.

"Fuck you, too, pal-fuck you special," the guard said. Phelps slowly and deliberately turned his back and walked away. The guard raised his voice: "Where you think you're goin', nigger-lover?"

"To the shithouse," the fisherman answered over his shoulder. "I'm gonna pretend the hole is your face."

"Watch it, Lucas," George Enos said softly. Then he and all the other fishermen cried out in alarm and horror, for the guard brought the rifle up to his shoulder, took aim-he could hardly have missed, not from a range of twenty feet at the most-and fired at the back of Lucas Phelps' head. Phelps took another half step and then crumpled, surely dead before he knew what hit him: George got a good look at the blasted ruin the bullet had made of his face as it exited. All the detainees screamed "Murder!" at the top of their lungs.

At the sound of the shot, an officer did come. He led the soldier away. Two days later, the fellow was back at his post, looking meaner than ever. Nobody said a word to him, not if he could help it.

Enos had another reason to hope exchange came soon. It was already too late for his comrade.