“Ask you somethin’ else?” Bathsheba said.
Rodriguez didn’t sigh, though he felt like it. “Go ahead,” he said, and wondered what sort of trouble her next question would land him in.
“Antoinette give herself to you, it keep her alive any longer?”
The question itself didn’t surprise him. The brutal bluntness of it did. Again, he did his best to evade: “I got a wife at home down in Sonora. I don’t need nobody here.”
“Uh-huh.” Her agreement was more devastating than calling him a liar would have been. And he didn’t tomcat around the women’s side the way a lot of male guards did. Every now and then, yes, but only every now and then.
“Is true. I do,” he said. He usually felt bad after he took a woman here. But not while he did it-oh, no, not then.
“All right.” Bathsheba sounded as if that wasn’t worth quarreling about. She got to the point: “Antoinette give herself to some other guard, then, it keep her alive any longer?”
He couldn’t very well get around that, however much he wanted to. He gave the best answer he could, saying, “Maybe. Ain’t no way to be sure.”
“Ain’t no way to be sure about nothin’, is there?” Somehow, Bathsheba still didn’t sound bitter. “Reckon some o’ them ofays, they think it’s funny to lie down with a girl one day an’ reduce her population the nex’.”
She was righter than she knew, or maybe she knew the way guards’ minds worked much too well. “I never done nothin’ like that,” Rodriguez said. That was true, but it didn’t do him much good. And it didn’t make him sound very good, even to himself.
“Didn’t say you did,” Bathsheba answered. “Wouldn’t’ve asked if I reckoned you was one o’ them. I is pretty much used up. Don’t want to go, mind, but if I gots to, I gots to. But Antoinette, she jus’ startin’ out. You do somethin’ fo’ her, you make an ol’ nigger cleanin’ lady happy.”
“I do what I can.” Rodriguez had no idea how much that would be. “She don’t got to do nothin’ like that for me.”
Bathsheba started to cry. “You is a good man,” she said, even if Rodriguez wasn’t so sure of that himself right now. “You is a decent man. I reckon you is a God-fearin’ man.” She cocked her head to one side and eyed him, the streaks of tears on her cheeks shining in the sun. “So what you doin’ here, doin’ what you doin’?”
He had an answer. He’d always hated mallates, ever since they did their level best to kill him after he put on the Confederate uniform. Like any Freedom Party man, he thought Negroes meant nothing but danger and misfortune for the Confederate States. The country would be better off without them.
But how did he explain that to a colored woman in rags, her hair going all gray, who’d just offered her only daughter to him not for her own sake but for the younger woman’s? How did he explain that to a wife and daughter who loved an old man on the other side of the camp, an old man now dead, an old man whose death Rodriguez didn’t have the heart to tell them about?
He couldn’t explain it. Even trying was a losing fight. He just sighed and said, “I got my job.”
“Don’t seem like reason enough.” Had Bathsheba got mad and screamed at him, he could have lost his temper and stormed off. But she didn’t. And that meant he couldn’t. He had to listen to her instead. He had three stripes on his sleeve and a submachine gun in his hands. She had nothing, and chances were neither she nor her pretty daughter had long to live.
So why did he feel he was the one at a disadvantage? Why did he feel she could call the shots? Why did he wish he were still down on the farm outside of Baroyeca? He didn’t know why. He didn’t like wondering, not even a little bit.
Jake Featherston was not a happy man. Being unhappy was nothing new for him. He ran on discontent, his own and others’, the way a motorcar ran on gasoline. He recalled only two times in his life when he was happy, and neither lasted long: when he took the oath of office as President of the CSA, and when his armies drove all before them pushing north from the Ohio to Lake Erie and cutting the United States in half.
Being President was still pretty good, but it was also a lot more work than he ever thought it would be. Hard work corroded happiness. And Al Smith, damn him, was supposed to lie down with his belly in the air after the Confederates went and licked him. When he didn’t, he dragged Jake and the Confederacy into a long war, the last thing anybody on this side of the border wanted.
Now the CSA would have to take a Yankee punch, too. Jake muttered under his breath. Like any barroom brawler, he wanted to get in the first punch and clean up afterwards, especially when the other guy was bigger. He tried it, and he didn’t knock out the USA. He didn’t have enough to hit again. Standing on the defensive went against every ounce of instinct in him. Instinct or not, sometimes you had no choice.
His secretary looked into his office. “The Attorney General is here to see you, sir.”
“Thank you kindly, Lulu. Bring him in,” Jake said.
Ferd Koenig seemed bigger and bulkier than ever. “Hello, Jake,” he said-he was one of the handful of men these days who could call the President by his first name.
“Hello, Ferd,” Jake answered. “Have a seat. Pour yourself some coffee if you want to.” A pot sat on a hot plate in the corner. Jake smacked a desk drawer. “Or I’ve got a fifth in here if you’d rather have that.”
“Coffee’ll do.” Koenig fixed himself a cup, then sat down. After a sip, he said, “Want to thank you for letting that Freedom Party Guard unit go into action in west Texas. They’ve done a pretty good job.”
“Better than I expected, to tell you the truth,” Featherston said. “You want to pick up recruiting for your combat wing, I won’t tell you no.”
“Thanks, Mr. President. With your kind permission, I will do that,” Koenig said. “We need a fire brigade when things get hot.”
“That’s a fact. Other fact is, some of the generals are getting jumpy. I can feel it,” Jake said. “A counterweight to the Army could come in goddamn handy one of these days. You never can tell.”
“Lord, isn’t that the truth?” Koenig set the coffee cup on the desk. “Pour me a shot in there after all, would you?”
“Help yourself.” Jake got out the bottle and slid it across the desk. “Shame to do that to good sippin’ whiskey, but suit yourself.”
“I want the jolt, but I run on coffee these days.” Koenig added a hefty slug of bourbon, then tasted. He nodded. “Yeah, that’ll do the trick.” He eyed Jake. “You really mean that about the Guards units?”
“Hell, yes.” Jake poured himself a shot, too, only without the coffee. He raised the glass. “Mud in your eye.” After a respectful drink-he couldn’t just knock it back, not after he called it sipping whiskey-he went on, “If Party guards aren’t loyal, nobody will be. You raise those units, and by God I’ll see they’re equipped with the best we’ve got.”
“Army won’t like it,” the Attorney General predicted.
“Fuck the Army,” Featherston said. “That’s the whole point. So what else have we got going on?”
“Did you forget?” Ferd Koenig asked. “Day after tomorrow, we clean out Richmond. Isn’t it about time the Confederate States had a nigger-free capital?”
“Oh, I remember, all right. You don’t need to worry about that,” Jake said. “All the cops and stalwarts and guards are geared up for it.” He chuckled. “With the niggers gone, we won’t need so many of those people around here. We can put some of ’em in the Army-and in your Party Guards outfits-and some in the factories, and we’ll be better off both ways.”
“If we didn’t have all those Mexicans coming in, we’d never be able to make enough to stay in the war,” Koenig said.