Several POWs tried to. They did their best to outshout the guerrilla who'd killed the sergeant. Cassius weighed in to balance them if he could.
"He said that to this guy?" the corporal said when he finished.
"He sure did," Cassius answered.
"Shit on toast," the noncom said. "He told me that, I bet I woulda blown his fuckin' head off." The POWs screamed at him, too. He flipped them off. "Listen up, assholes-something you better figure out. You lost. These guys"-he pointed at Cassius and the other Negro-"they won. Better get used to it, or a hell of a lot of you are gonna end up dead. And you know what else? Nobody's gonna miss you, either."
"We won't ever put up with bein' under niggers!" a captive shouted.
"That's right!" Two or three more echoed him.
"Then I figure you'll be underground." The corporal pointed to the corpse. "Take your carrion over to the gate. We'll put him where he belongs."
He got more curses and jeers, and ignored all of them. After he went away, the other Negro stuck out his hand to Cassius. "Thanks for backin' me. I'm Sertorius."
"My name's Cassius." Cassius took the proffered hand. As he had with Gracchus, he asked, "Reckon we ever be able to do anything down here without the Yankees backin' our play?"
"No," Sertorius said calmly. "But so what? Yankees don't come down here, fuckin' Confederate ofays kill us anyways. They really did take my mama, God damn them to hell an' gone."
"Mine, too, an' my pa, an' my sister," Cassius answered.
"How come they miss you?"
"On account of I didn't go to church. That's where they got everybody else."
"I heard stories like that before," Sertorius said. "If there's a God, He got Hisself a nasty sense o' humor."
"Reckon so." Cassius had wondered about God even before the ofays got his family. He'd always kept quiet, because he knew his mother didn't want him saying-or thinking-things like that. He had the feeling his father was sitting on the same kind of doubts. The older man never talked about them, either. One of these days, the two of them might have had some interesting things to say to each other. They never would now.
The black guerrillas had a camp alongside that of the U.S. soldiers who guarded the POWs and made sure the lid stayed on in Madison. They slept in U.S. Army tents, and used U.S. Army sleeping bags. Those gave them better, softer nights than they'd had most of the time on their own.
They got U.S. Army mess kits, too, and ate U.S. Army chow with the men from north of the Mason-Dixon line. They didn't have to wait till the soldiers in green-gray were served before they got fed. They just took their places in line, and the cooks slapped down whatever they happened to have. Sometimes it was good, sometimes not. But there was always plenty. For Cassius, whose ribs had been a ladder, that was plenty to keep him from complaining.
When he went into Madison, kids would ask, "Got any rations? Got any candy?"
No. Starve, you little ofay bastards. That was always the first thought that went through his head. But hating children didn't come easy. They hadn't done anything to him. And some of them looked hungry. He knew what being hungry was all about.
Then one of them called, "Hey, nigger! Got any candy?"
He didn't shoot the boy, who must have been about eight. That would have got him talked about. He did say, "You call me a nigger, brat, you can damn well starve for all I care."
The kid looked at him as if he were crazy. "Well, what are you if you ain't a nigger?"
"A colored fellow, or a Negro, or even a black man," Cassius answered. "Call somebody a nigger, it's an insult, like."
"You're a nigger, all right, an' you suck the damnyankees' cocks," the brat squeaked. He didn't get a handout from Cassius, or a lesson. He also still didn't get shot, but he came much closer to that than to either of the other two.
He'd likely feel the way he did till the day he died. So would countless others just like him. In the face of hate like that, what were the surviving Negroes in the CSA supposed to do? After the war ended, how could they settle down and make a living? If U.S. soldiers didn't back them, how long would they last? Not long-that seemed only too obvious.
And if U.S. soldiers did back them, the white majority-much larger now than before the murders started-would hate Negroes more than ever…assuming such a thing was possible.
"We is fucked," Cassius said sorrowfully. "We is so fucked."
"What? On account o' that ofay kid?" Gracchus said. "Little shithead run his mouth like that, he get hisself killed goddamn quick, an' nobody be sorry, neither."
"No, not on account o' him," Cassius said, which wasn't exactly true. "On account of everything." He started to explain, then gave up. What was the use? Once upon a time, he would have found a place in Augusta-not the place he would have had if he were white, but a place. He would have fit in. Now?
Now he carried a Tredegar, and he was ready to kill any white who got in his way. That too was a place…of sorts.
Chester Martin smoked a cigarette outside of Monroe, Georgia, and waited for the next raiding party to head east. The company-strength expedition had proved what the brass thought before-the Confederates hadn't had anything worth mentioning to oppose a U.S. thrust. Why not try it again, in greater strength?
To Chester, the answer seemed obvious enough. If you hit them there once, wouldn't they get ready to make sure you couldn't do it again?
Lieutenant Boris Lavochkin looked at him-looked through him-with those cold, pale Slavic eyes. "You're welcome to stay behind when we go, Sergeant," he said.
"You know I don't want to do that, sir," Chester said. "But I don't want to get my tit in a wringer, either, not when I don't have to."
"No guarantees in this business," Lavochkin said.
He wouldn't listen. Everything had come his way for a long time now. He thought it would keep right on happening. And he wasn't the only one. The brass never would have signed off on a raid if they didn't think it would fly. Maybe they were right. Chester could hope so, anyhow.
He did talk to Captain Rhodes, who, he was sure, knew his ass from his end zone. "If they're laying for us, sir, we'll be all dressed up with no place to go," he said.
"What do you think the odds are?" the company commander asked.
"Well, sir, we sure as hell won't take 'em by surprise twice," Martin answered.
"No, but how much can they do about it?" Rhodes said.
"Don't know, sir," Chester said. "I bet we find out, though. If I wanted to be a goddamn guinea pig, I would've bought myself a cage."
That made Captain Rhodes grin, but he didn't change his mind. "We've got our orders," he said. "We're going to go through with them. If we run into trouble, I expect we'll have backup. But I think we have a decent chance to bang on through, same as we did the last time around."
"Hope you're right, sir." Chester didn't believe it. Nobody above him cared what he believed. To the men in his platoon, he was God the Father to Lavochkin's Son and Rhodes' Holy Ghost. To the officers above him, he was just a retread with a big mouth. And the fellows with shoulder straps were the ones whose opinions mattered.
Two mornings later, the long, muscular armored column rolled down the road from Monroe to Good Hope, the same road the smaller raiding band had traveled not long before. Chester thought that might surprise whoever was in charge of the Confederate defenders. They wouldn't believe anybody could be dumb enough to hit them the same way twice running. Chester had trouble believing it himself.
They didn't run into any traffic on the way to Good Hope. They also didn't run into any ambushes, for which Chester was duly grateful. Maybe the C.S. brass really couldn't believe their foes would try the same ploy twice.