And they were. They even had some sort of portable PA system. "Surrender!" somebody blared. "Surrender or die! First, last, and only warning! There is no escape!"
There wasn't, either. The barrels and the automatic weapons ahead could tear the dismayed Confederates to pieces. They'd lost their last race with the enemy. Blackledge set down his automatic rifle and walked into captivity with his hands and his head high.
If he can do it, so can I, Jorge thought. He laid his weapon on the ground and walked toward the waiting U.S. soldiers. One of them pointed into the town. "Line up by the courthouse," he said, not unkindly. "Some trucks'll take you off to prison camp."
"All right." Jorge pointed back the way he'd come. "We left wounded in the woods. My buddy's there."
"We'll get 'em-don't flabble about it. You move along now."
Dully, Jorge obeyed. The men with whom he'd endured so much tramped through the late-afternoon stillness in the little town of Appomattox-a sign on the courthouse gave him the name of the place-toward the end of the war.
T hings were quiet outside of Birmingham, and inside, too. Cincinnatus Driver approved of that. After all the shells that had flown back and forth, a truce was holding now. A U.S. officer had gone into Birmingham to confer with C.S. General Patton.
None of the drivers, of course, knew what the U.S. officer would tell the surrounded general. That didn't stop them from guessing. "If he don't quit, I bet we drop a superbomb on him," Cincinnatus said.
"Sounds good to me," Hal Williamson said. Several other men nodded. Williamson went on, "All the trouble Patton's caused, we ought to drop a bomb on the fucker anyway."
More nods, Cincinnatus' among them. "I wonder when he'll come out," the Negro said. The officer, a major, had gone in not far from their encampment. If he came out the same way, maybe he would tell them what was what. You could hope so, anyway.
"How long d'you think he'll give Patton?" somebody asked.
"I wouldn't give him long," Williamson said. "If it's surrender or get one of those bombs in the kisser, what does he need to figure out?"
Cincinnatus lit a cigarette. Not even tobacco smoke soothed him much. He wanted to know what was going on there inside the battered heart of the Confederate industrial town.
So did the other drivers. "That Patton's a stubborn bastard," one of them said. "What if he doesn't give in?"
"His funeral, in that case," Cincinnatus said, and then, "Couldn't happen to a nicer fella… Well, it could happen to Jake Featherston, but I reckon that's comin', too."
Williamson pointed into the ruin that was Birmingham. "Here comes our guy," he said. "And look! He's got one of those butternut bastards with him."
Sure enough, two men came out of the city, each of them carrying a large flag of truce. The C.S. officer looked clean and neat despite the disaster that had befallen the place he was defending. He also looked as unhappy as if he were burying his only son. That told Cincinnatus most of what he needed to know.
"They givin' up, suh?" he called to the U.S. officer, the rising lilt in his voice saying he already had a good notion of the answer.
All the drivers burst into cheers when the major nodded. "They sure are," he answered, "or it looks that way, anyhow. We've still got a few little things to iron out-that's why Captain Monroe is with me."
The Confederate started to give the men standing near the big green-gray trucks a polite nod. Then he saw Cincinnatus among them. "You have those damned black terrorists here?" he demanded of the officer in green-gray.
"I ain't a guerrilla." Cincinnatus spoke for himself. "I don't blame those folks for risin' up-don't get me wrong-but I ain't one of them. I'm a citizen of the USA, and proud of it, too."
"That's telling him!" Hal Williamson said.
Captain Monroe looked even more mournful than he had before. The U.S. major, whose name Cincinnatus still didn't know, grinned from ear to ear. "You asked, Captain," he said. "Now you know."
"It's still wrong," Monroe said stubbornly. "Niggers got no business fighting."
"You call me nigger again, you ofay asshole, you ain't gonna last to dicker your goddamn surrender," Cincinnatus said. Captain Monroe's jaw dropped all the way to his chest. He couldn't have been more astonished if an Army mule had cussed him out.
"Somebody doesn't seem to agree with you," the U.S. major observed. "And since he's here, maybe he's got a point, you know?"
Monroe shook his head. Cincinnatus hadn't expected anything different. Speaking of Army mules…When it came to the Confederates' views of Negroes, they could have given the beasts mulishness lessons.
As the two officers went back to confer with U.S. higher-ups, Hal Williamson thumped Cincinnatus on the back. "That butternut bastard can't make nasty cracks about you!"
"He better not," Cincinnatus said. "The guys who can talk are the guys who end up winnin'. You lose, you got to listen to the fellas on the other side doin' the braggin'."
"That's us!" Two drivers said it at the same time. Cincinnatus nodded.
After that, with the ceasefire holding, the drivers had nothing to do but sit around and smoke and eat and play cards. Cincinnatus didn't mind, not even a little. Nothing could go wrong while he was in the middle of a big U.S. army. Nobody was likely to shoot at him from ambush. His truck wouldn't hit a mine and explode in flames. And they gave him the same combat bonus for this as they did for driving through bushwhacker country.
Three hours later, the U.S. major and C.S. Captain Monroe returned, both of them with their white flags. The officer in green-gray was all smiles, while Monroe, his shoulders slumped, his head bowed, showed nothing but gloom.
"It's all over," the U.S. major said. "They'll come out. One more nail in the coffin, and a big one, too."
"Did you have to say that?" Monroe barked.
"I'm sorry, Captain, but will you tell me it's not the truth?" the major asked. The Confederate officer didn't answer, which in itself told everything that needed telling. The major nodded to the group of truck drivers. "We gave them one thing: Patton gets to address his men after they lay down their arms."
"Why not?" Cincinnatus said. "Talk is cheap." His pals laughed. The U.S. major didn't, but mostly, Cincinnatus judged, to keep from offending his C.S. counterpart. As for Captain Monroe, his glare said Cincinnatus belonged in a camp even if he was a U.S. citizen. Cincinnatus scowled back, remembering how close he'd come to ending up in one. How many other Negroes from Covington's barbed-wire-enclosed colored district were still alive? Any? He just didn't know.
The two officers went back into Birmingham. Cincinnatus listened to shouts, some of them amplified, inside the city. Spreading the word, he judged. After another hour or so, Confederate soldiers started coming out. They weren't carrying weapons, and they held their hands above their heads. A few had bits of white rag tied to sticks. They were skinny, and their uniforms had seen a lot of wear, but, like Captain Monroe, they all looked surprisingly well bathed and well groomed. Patton was supposed to be a stickler for stuff like that.
They weren't shy about scrounging ration tins from anybody in green-gray they saw. "Thanks, pal," one of them said when Cincinnatus tossed him a can. Then the man did a double take at his dark skin. He looked at the can. "Yeah, thanks," he repeated, and went on.
"Wow," Hal Williamson said. "This place made half the shit they threw at us, seems like. And now it's out of business." He mimed swiping the back of his hand over his forehead in relief.
"So where do we drop the superbomb we were gonna put here?" another driver asked.
"New Orleans. Gotta be New Orleans." The answer came to Cincinnatus as soon as he heard the question. "Satchmo won't like it, but too bad for him."
"No offense, Cincinnatus, but I don't much care for the music he plays," Hal said.