As if by magic, all the U.S. soldiers brought up their weapons at the same time. Their sergeant stepped forward and shoved the mouthy Confederate to the floor. He kicked him in the ribs-probably not hard enough to break any, but not with any token little thump, either. "How about now, fucker?" he asked. "Have we licked you yet, or do we have to blow your goddamn head off to get the message across? Talk fast, or you're dead meat."
"Reckon…maybe…I'm licked," the man in butternut wheezed.
"Bet your sweet ass you are." The sergeant kicked him again, then stepped back. "Get it straight-you fuck with us, we make you sorry you tried, on account of we'd sooner kill you than look at you."
As long as U.S. forces felt that way, Moss judged, they at least had a chance of staying ahead of any Confederate insurgency. The soldier in butternut struggled to his feet. His buddies helped him get away from the men in green-gray. All the new occupiers looked ready to spray bullets around the train station. They grinned at Moss. "We showed him!" one of them crowed.
"You bet," Moss replied, and their grins got wider. What would they say if they found out he was heading west to see if he wanted to defend the Confederate officers who ran a murder factory? Nothing he wanted to hear-he was sure of that. And so he didn't tell them.
When he passed from Louisiana to Texas, the Lone Star flag replaced the Stars and Bars. He wondered how long the United States would go on letting the Texans pretend they were independent. Recognizing their secession from the CSA had been a useful way to get them out of the war, but he didn't think it was likely to last.
A Texas Ranger stood on the platform holding a small cardboard sign with his name on it. When Moss admitted who he was, the Texan-who was short and wiry, going dead against the image the men of his state liked to put across-said, "I'm here to take you to the city jail, sir."
"Then let's go," Moss answered.
The Ranger didn't have much to say. Houston seemed almost intact. Not many Confederate cities were farther from U.S. bomber bases. People on the street wore old, shabby clothes, but they didn't look hungry.
"How do you feel about working with the United States?" Moss asked when the auto-a Confederate Birmingham-stopped in front of the red-brick fortress that housed prisoners.
"Sir, where we were at, it looked like the best thing to do." With that less than ringing endorsement, the Texas Ranger killed the engine. He hopped out and held the door open for Moss.
U.S. officers meticulously checked Moss' ID and then patted him down before admitting him to the building. He got checked and searched again when he went into the visitors' room. A tight steel mesh separated his side from that of the man he might be representing.
In came Jefferson Pinkard. The fellow who'd run Camp Determination and Camp Humble was about Moss' age. He had a big, burly frame: muscles with a lot of fat over them. He looked tough, but not vicious. Moss knew how little that proved, but found it interesting all the same.
Pinkard was giving him the once-over, too. "So the damnyankees found another bastard willing to speak up for me?" he asked in a Deep-South drawl.
"I don't know that I am yet," Moss answered. "Why did you want to kill off as many Negroes as you could?"
Had Pinkard denied it, Moss would have walked out. He didn't, though. He said, "Because they were enemies of my country. They were shooting at us before we started fighting you Yankee bastards."
"Men, women, and children?" Moss said.
"They're black, they don't like us," Pinkard said. "'Sides, what business of yours is it, anyway? They were Confederate niggers. We can do what we damn well please in our own country. Far as I know, we didn't do anything to coons from the USA."
As far as Moss knew, that was true. He thought it was Pinkard's strongest argument. A country was sovereign inside its own borders, wasn't it? Nobody had gone after the Ottoman Sultan for what he did to the Armenians or the Tsar for pogroms against Jews…or the United States for what they did to their Indians. But…"Nobody ever made camps like yours."
"Nobody ever thought to." Jefferson Pinkard didn't sound repentant-he sounded proud. "Fuck, you assholes are gonna hang me. You won, and I can't do shit about it. But the only thing I was doing was, I was doing my job. I did it goddamn well, too."
"I read that the mayor of Snyder killed himself after he got a look at the mass graves your camp had there," Moss said.
"Some people are soft," Pinkard said scornfully. "Yeah, we lost the war. But we'll never have to worry about niggers down here, not the way we did before. Hell, you can even ask these chickenshit Texas traitors-they'll tell you I'm all right in their book. I helped clean out Texas along with the rest of the CSA. You can defend me or not, however you please. I know what I did, and I'm damned if I'm sorry."
You're damned, all right, Moss thought. Did guilty people really and truly need lawyers just like anybody else? Did he want to be one of them? There were all kinds of ways to go down in history. Was this the one he really had in mind?
If he didn't do it, who would? Whoever it was, would the fellow do as good a job as Moss would himself? He had to doubt it, especially with the Army's chief defense lawyer already down for the count. He didn't believe anybody could get Pinkard off, but he'd always enjoyed giving military prosecutors a run for their money.
In the end, that-and being at loose ends as a pilot with the war over-decided him. "Do you want me to defend you? I'll give it my best shot."
"D'you reckon you can get me loose?" Pinkard asked. "Or was I right the first time?"
"Long odds against you, mighty long. Anybody who tells you different is lying, too, just so you know."
The camp commandant grunted. "Fuck. It looked that way to me, too, and to that Goldstein guy, but I was hoping maybe you saw it different. But, shit, even if you don't, Colonel Moss, I'm mighty glad to have you. Do whatever the hell you can, and see if you can embarrass 'em before they put a noose around my neck."
He didn't have unreasonable expectations, anyhow, which was the start of being a good client. "I think we've got ourselves a deal," Jonathan Moss said. Because of the wire screen, they couldn't even shake on it.
A lot of the Confederate officers at Camp Liberty! sank into despair when they finally believed their country had surrendered. Most of the ones who took the surrender hardest had been in there longest. They hadn't seen the disasters of the past year and a half with their own eyes. Jerry Dover had. He knew damn well that the Confederate States were licked.
"Yeah, we lost," he'd say whenever somebody asked him about it-or sometimes even when nobody did.
"Why don't you soft-pedal the doom and gloom, Dover?" Colonel Kirby Smith Telford asked him. The senior C.S. officer was convinced Dover wasn't a Yankee plant, which didn't mean he was happy with him. "People already feel bad enough without you rubbing it in."
"Christ on a crutch, it's over. We're licked," Dover said. "How can it be doom and gloom after we're doomed?"
"Keeping our chins up means we can respect ourselves," Telford answered. "It makes U.S. forces respect us more, too."
That last might even have been true. It left Dover no happier. "What difference does it make?" he demanded. "We don't even have a country any more. The United States are occupying the whole CSA. Far as I can see, that turns us into damnyankees."
"My ass," Telford said. "I'll see them in hell before I bow down and worship the goddamn Stars and Stripes."
"Yes, sir. I feel the same way," Dover said. "Only problem is, as long as we feel that way, why should the Yankees let us out of this place?"
"Why? Because the war's over, dammit, that's why." But not even Kirby Smith Telford could make himself sound as if he thought that was reason enough.
The U.S. authorities showed no signs of letting their commissioned POWs go free. After a few days, Colonel Telford asked them why not. The answer he got left him scowling.