"Can we get back to Charleston?" Justin asked.
The older man returned to here and now in a hurry. "We can try," he said, and Justin brightened—till he went on, "if you don't mind getting arrested somewhere south of Palestine or along whatever other highway we use. They're serious about not letting people move around."
Justin pointed to the armored vehicles pulling out of Elizabeth. "What about them?"
"They're soldiers. Soldiers always break the rules," Mr. Brooks said with a shrug. "I know what the consul was thinking when he ordered them to move, though. Maybe they're not infected. E they are, maybe they'll go someplace where other people are infected, too. But whether they're infected or not, he needs them to fight the uprising. And so—they're moving."
"If they're infected, they won't keep fighting long," Justin said.
"Mm, maybe not," the coin and stamp dealer allowed. "But if they're that sick, chances are they'll infect the Negroes they're shooting at. Do you think the consul's heart would break if they did? I sure don't."
"You've got a nasty way of looking at things, don't you?" Justin said.
"Thank you," Mr. Brooks answered, which left him with no comeback at all.
Explosions blossomed with a terrible beauty, there on the TV screen. The rattle and bang of small-arms fire blasted from the speakers. Bodies lay in the street, some white, some black. A white man and woman supported a reeling teenage boy. Blood ran down his face. "Why?" he said as he staggered past the camera. A box in the corner of the screen said this was Charleston. But it might have been Richmond or Newport News or Alexandria or Roanoke. Uprisings crackled through the whole state— blacks murdering whites, whites savagely striking back.
Beckie watched with a special kind of horror. Every time somebody—who didn't matter—fired a burst from an automatic rifle, she flinched. Finally, she couldn't stand it any more. She put her hands up in front of her eyes. "Oh, my God!" she moaned. "Oh, my God!"
"See how bad it is?" Gran didn't mind when it was bad. If anything, she liked it that way—then everybody was complaining along with her. "Those people are getting what they deserve."
She hadn't talked about Negroes that way when she lived in California. Coming back to Virginia was bringing out all sorts of nasty things Beckie didn't know about and didn't want to know about.
But that wasn't why she couldn't bear to watch the TV right now. "Uncle Luke!" she said. By the way it came out, she couldn't have found anything nastier if she tried for a year.
"What about him?" Mr. Snodgrass asked. "He's the fellow who drove you here, isn't he?"
"My sister's husband," Gran said with a grimace that declared it wasn't her fault.
That would have been funny if the TV were showing something else. The way things were ... "He was running guns," Beckie said.
"What?" Mr. Snodgrass and Gran said at the same time. No, her grandmother hadn't believed her when she said it before. She might have known Gran wouldn't.
"He was," Beckie said. "He dropped us off here, and then he went on to wherever he went to deliver them."
"I never heard anything so ridiculous in all my born days," Gran said. "Lord knows I don't love Luke, but—"
"Why do you say that, Rebecca?" Mr. Snodgrass broke in.
"Because I was in the back seat, and there was this blanket so I couldn't put my feet all the way down on the floor," Beckie said. "And I moved it back to see why I couldn't, and I found all these rifles."
"Why didn't you say something then?" Gran asked, which had to be in the running for dumbest question of all time.
"What was she supposed to say?" Mr. Snodgrass asked. " 'Got any ammunition for these?'"
"I was just scared the customs people would find them when we crossed the bridge," Beckie said, remembering how scared she'd been and wishing she could forget it. "Wouldn't that have been great?"
A millimeter at a time, Gran got the idea that she wasn't crazy and she wasn't blowing smoke. She should have known that since they got out of Uncle Luke's Honda here in Elizabeth, but... As the realization sank in, her grandmother started to get angry. "Why, that low-down, no-good, trifling skunk!" she exclaimed. "I told my sister when she wanted to marry that man, I told her he was . . ."
She went on. Beckie stopped listening to her. Maybe she had told Great-Aunt Louise what a so-and-so Uncle Luke was. Or maybe she'd had a good time at the wedding and kept her mouth shut. That didn't seem like Gran, but it was possible. Either way, what difference did it make now? But Beckie knew the answer to that. Gran had to prove, to herself and to the world, that she was right all along.
"Maybe he wasn't sending the guns—selling the guns—to the Negroes," Mr. Snodgrass said. "Maybe they went. . . somewhere else, anyway." When you had to go that far to look for a bright side to things, weren't you better off leaving them dark? It looked that way to her.
On the television, meanwhile, planes dropped bombs on what was probably the Negro district in Roanoke. Virginia soldiers were herding prisoners—black men, most of them in jeans and undershirts—along a highway. "These fighters will receive the punishment they so richly deserve," the announcer said. He sounded happy about it.
One of the prisoners turned toward the camera and mouthed something. I'm innocent, I didn't do anything. Beckie was no great lip-reader, but she could figure that out. Figuring out whether to believe him was another story. There was a Negro rebellion here. Blacks were playing for keeps just as much as whites were. She would have bet anything that some of the men in that column, maybe most of them, were part of the uprising. She also would have bet not all of them were. The white soldiers would have grabbed anybody who looked as if he might be dangerous—if they left someone alone, he might get the chance to prove he was.
Mr. Snodgrass was watching, too. "What a mess," he said. "What a crazy mess." But he didn't seem to see that if white Virginians treated black Virginians better they might not have this kind of mess. He wasn't a bad man, but he just didn't see it—couldn't see it. Maybe that was the scariest thing of all.
Justin nodded to Beckie when she let him into the Snodgrasses' house. "How are you doing?" he asked.
"Not so good," she answered, her voice hardly above a whisper. "Mrs. Snodgrass died yesterday—a doctor in Parkers-burg managed to get a call through to let Mr. Snodgrass know."
"Oh. I'm sorry." Justin wasn't just sorry, though—he was jealous. "I still can't reach Charleston."
"Charleston?" Then Beckie remembered. "Your mother's down there. I hope she's okay."
"You ain't the only one!" Justin exclaimed. "Somehow or other, I've got to get down there and find out."
"How?" Beckie asked reasonably. "Those aren't just roadblocks between here and there. Those are roadblocks with soldiers. Can you go sneaking through the woods?"
Justin wanted to say yes. He told the truth instead: "No, I'm a city kid." He wanted to add some pungent comments to that. In the home timeline, he would have; people there took swearing for granted. They weren't so free-and-easy about it here.
"Well, then, do what's smart," Beckie said. "Sit tight. Maybe your mom will be able to get through to you if you can't get through to her."
"Maybe." Justin didn't believe it. He couldn't reach her with his cell phone. Mail was shut down. Telegrams here were as dead as they were in the home timeline. E-mail was wireless, again like home. That was great—convenient as anything— when the system was up. When it went down ... It was down now, in this part of Virginia, anyhow.
"What could you do there that you can't do here?" Beckie had to be able to tell he meant no even if he didn't say it.