"If Doc makes it, there isn't a medal fancy enough to pin on his chest," the noncom said. "Anyway, pile on in. We can sort out all this stuff—he used a word something like stuff, anyway—"when we get back to Charleston."
"Will do!" Justin said joyously. They were heading just where he wanted to go. He'd hoped they would be. He limped around to the back of the truck. One of the men inside held out a hand to help him up and in. "Thanks," he told the local, who nodded.
Everybody already in the truck kind of squeezed together to give him just enough room to perch his behind on one of the benches against the side of the rear compartment. It was a hard, cramped seat, but he couldn't complain. He was in the same boat as all the other soldiers there. All the other soldiers, he told himself.
With a growl from its diesel engine, the truck rolled forward again. It ran right through the exhaust fumes of the vehicles in front of it. Justin coughed. A couple of soldiers lit cigarettes. He coughed some more. But nobody else grumbled about it, so he kept quiet. Lots more people smoked in this alternate than in the home timeline. Virginia raised tobacco. He tried to tell himself this one brief exposure to secondhand smoke wouldn't do him in. He hoped he was right.
And the truck was heading for Charleston! Once he got there, all he had to do was ditch his uniform, put on the regular clothes he'd stashed in his pack, and find Mr. Brooks' coin and stamp shop. Mom would be there, and everything would be fine. He nodded happily. He had it all figured out.
Somebody knocked—pounded, really—on the door to Mr. Snodgrass' house. "I'll get it," Beckie called.
"Thank you kindly," Mr. Snodgrass said from his bedroom.
In Los Angeles, the door would have had a little gizmo that let her look out and see who was there. No one in Elizabeth bothered with such things. Living in a small town did have a few advantages. She opened the door. "Hello, Mr. Brooks," she said, and then, after taking a second look at him, "Are you okay?"
"Well, I don't exactly know." He was usually a calm, quiet, self-possessed man. He seemed anything but self-possessed now. "Have you seen Justin? Is he with you?"
"No, he's not here," Beckie said. "I haven't seen him since the last time the two of you came over."
'Then I'm not okay." Mr. Brooks' voice went hard and flat. "He's gone and done something dumb. I wondered if the two of you had gone and done something dumb together." A beat too late, he realized how that had to sound and added, "No offense."
"But of course," Beckie murmured, and the coin and stamp dealer winced. She went on, "Whatever he's doing, he's doing without me, thank you very much." And then she realized she had a better notion of what Justin was up to than his uncle did.
Her face must have given her away, because Mr. Brooks said, "You know something."
"I'm not sure. Maybe I do." What am I supposed to say? Beckie wondered. Justin had told her, but he plainly hadn't told Mr. Brooks. But shouldn't Mr. Brooks know what he was doing? He was Justin's uncle, and as close to a parent as Justin had here.
Yeah, and Gran is as close to a parent as I've got here. Beckie knew that wasn't fair. Unlike Gran, Mr. Brooks had a clue. Even so ...
"What's he gone and done?" the coin and stamp dealer asked, sounding like somebody braced for the worst.
"Well, I'm not exactly sure." Beckie was stalling for time, but she wasn't quite lying. Justin hadn't known exactly what he would do, because he didn't know how things would break. /'// just have to play it by ear, he'd said.
"He's figured out some kind of scheme to get back to Charleston, hasn't he?" Mr. Brooks said. "I told him that wasn't a good idea, but I could see he didn't want to listen. Is that what's going on?"
Beckie didn't say yes. But she didn't have to. Once Mr. Brooks got hold of the ball, he didn't have any trouble running with it.
He clapped a hand to his forehead. "Oh, for the love of... Mike. Does he think he can con the soldiers into giving him a lift? They won't do that, not unless . . ." He hit himself in the head again, harder this time—so hard, in fact, it was a wonder he didn't knock himself flat. He'd done his best not to cuss before. What he said now almost peeled the paint off the walls in the front hall. "I'm sorry," he told Beckie when he ran down, though he obviously didn't mean it.
"It's okay," she said. "I want to remember some of that for later, though."
Mr. Brooks smiled a crooked smile. "Hope you never get mad enough to need it, that's all I've got to say. One of the soldiers who got sick was about his size. Did he tell you that?"
Again, Beckie didn't say yes. Again, she didn't need to.
"Okay, the good news is, he didn't go off somewhere and then come down with the disease. The gypsies didn't steal him, either—though right now they're welcome to him." Mr. Brooks didn't sound as if he was joking. "The bad news is, he doesn't know thing one about what being a soldier means."
"And you do?" Beckie asked.
She regretted the question as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The ordinary-seeming bald man looked at her— looked through her, really. All of a sudden, she had no trouble at all imagining him much younger, and very tired, and scared to death. "Oh, yeah," he said softly, his eyes still a million kilometers—or maybe twenty or twenty-five years—away. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do."
"I'm sorry," she whispered. Then she wondered what she was sorry for. That she'd doubted him? Or that, a long time ago, he'd seen and done some things he'd likely tried to forget ever since? Both, maybe.
He shook himself, almost like a dog coming out of cold water. "Well, as a matter of fact, so am I," he said. "But I'm afraid I'm not half as sorry as Justin's going to be. The question is, will he be sorry because he did something dumb and got caught, or will he be sorry 'cause he did something dumb and got killed?"
"K-Killed?" Beckie had trouble getting the word out.
"Killed," Mr. Brooks repeated. "If he's going back to Charleston . . . Well, there's still fighting there. Those soldiers weren't doing much up here. The powers that be might have decided to get some use out of them after all. You learn to fight same as you learn anything else: you practice, and then you do it for real. Justin's never had any training. He knows how to load a gun, and that's about it. If he doesn't give himself away, he's liable to stop a bullet because he doesn't know how not to."
"What can you do?" Beckie asked.
"Good question. If I had a good answer, I'd give it to you, I promise," Mr. Brooks said bleakly. "He's been gone since some time in the night. I don't know when—I was asleep. He could be in Charleston already. Or he could be in the stockade already, if they figure out he's no more a soldier than the man in the moon. I hope he is. If he's in the stockade, I have time to figure out what happens next. If they just throw him into a firefight. . . Nobody can do anything about that."
"Why would they even think he was only pretending to be a soldier?" Beckie asked. "Nobody would look for anyone to try something like that. Most people don't want to be soldiers, and the ones who do join their state's army for real."
"Right the first time. Right the second time, too. You're a smart kid, Beckie. Only thing is, I wish you weren't," Mr. Brooks said. "Because if you are right—and I'm afraid you are—Justin's in a lot more trouble than if you're wrong."
"We've got to be able to do ... something." Beckie wished she hadn't faltered there at the end. It showed she didn't know what that something might be.
"Yeah," Mr. Brooks said. "Something." His tone of voice and the worried look on his face said he didn't know what, either.
The convoy of trucks and armored fighting vehicles from around Elizabeth was getting close to Charleston. They'd already been waved through two checkpoints outside of town. The sergeant in charge of this—squad?—was listening on an earpiece and talking into a throat mike. He wore three chevrons on his sleeve, the way a U.S. Army sergeant would have. So what if they were upside down? Justin still knew what they meant. Virginia officers' rank badges were a different story. But if an officer told him what to do, he knew he had to do it.