He got to his feet, tipped his battered black homburg, and said, "I'll see you again, Nellie, one day before too long." His walk to the door was slow and deliberate, as if he was daring her to tell the Rebs who he was.
He hadn't called her Little Nell. She kept quiet. But he hadn't taken any notice when she'd told him to go away and stay away, either. What am I going to do? she thought. She had no more answer for that than for, What is the world coming to?
"Sir," the truck driver in green-gray said to Lieutenant Straubing, packing what should have been a title of respect with all the scorn he could, "it ain't right, us white men working alongside niggers." He set hands on hips and glared at Cincinnatus, who happened to be the black man closest to him.
"See here, Murray," Straubing said, "you will do as you are ordered or you will face military punishment."
"Then we will, won't we, boys?" Murray turned for support to the new truck drivers-well over half the unit-who had joined the transport company to replace the men killed, wounded, or captured in the Confederate raid south of Berea, Kentucky. He was a little, skinny, bandy-legged fellow, with a narrow face, a receding chin, a beaky nose, and a shock of red hair: all in all, he reminded Cincinnatus of an angry chicken.
But he had backers. The new men in the unit were fresh out of the USA. A lot of them, probably, had never seen a Negro before coming down to Covington, let alone thought of working alongside one-or rather, a good many more than one.
"Don't want to maybe trust my life to a coon," one of them said.
"Hear tell some of them get paid more'n white men," another added. "Ain't nobody can tell me that's proper."
Cincinnatus looked over to Herk. The two of them had escaped the Rebel raiders together, and had shared what food they could steal and what miserable shelter they could find till they came upon a U.S. outpost. Herk hadn't treated Cincinnatus like a nigger then. Of course, Herk had needed him then. Now the white man stood silent as a stone, when Cincinnatus needed him.
"You men are making a mutiny," Lieutenant Straubing warned. "A court-martial will take a dim view of that."
Murray, who had enough mouth for any three men, laughed out loud. "No court's going to say anything but that white men are better than niggers, sir, and that's the truth."
Under the tan he'd got from going out with his trucks, Straubing turned pale. Cincinnatus' heart sank. His guess was that Murray knew what he was talking about. Without much conscious thought, Cincinnatus and the rest of the black truck drivers bunched together. The whites with whom they'd been driving stood apart from them. Those whites didn't go over with the new men who backed Murray, but they didn't support their colored comrades, either.
Reds are right, Cincinnatus thought bitterly. CSA and USA, it's the same thing-whites are so mystified, they put race ahead of class.
"That's your last word, Murray?" Lieutenant Straubing demanded tensely. When the redheaded driver nodded, Straubing hurried out of the warehouse depot, biting his lip. A chorus of jeers rang out behind him, as if chasing him away.
"Get you black boys hauling like mules, the way God made you to," Murray said to the Negro truck drivers. The men at his back nodded.
"Don't know why you so down on us," Cincinnatus said. "We just doin' our jobs, makin' our pay, feedin' our families."
"Doing white man's work," Murray snapped. Like Lieutenant Kennan, he looked to be one of those U.S. whites who hated Negroes more savagely than any Confederate did, not least because he was so much less familiar with them than Confederates were. Cincinnatus, who had been driving a truck in the CSA before the war broke out, thought about pointing his old job out to the damnyankee. But he didn't think it would help, and kept quiet.
The door to the depot flew open. In strode Lieutenant Straubing, followed by a squad of soldiers carrying bayoneted Springfields. Straubing pointed to Murray. "Arrest that man," he snapped. "Charges are insubordination and refusal to obey lawful orders."
Two of the men in green-gray stomped up to Murray, who looked comically amazed. One of them grabbed him by the arm. "Come on, you," he snapped. Murray perforce came.
Straubing's gaze traveled over the other new drivers. "Anyone else?" he asked in a voice that held nothing but ice. A couple of drivers stirred where they stood. "Vasilievsky, Heintzelman, you are under arrest, too. Same charges as Murray."
"Come on, you two lugs," one of the soldiers Straubing had brought said when neither driver moved for a moment. "You won't like it if we have to come and get you, I promise."
Numbly, their eyes wide with shock, the two white men obeyed. "Anyone else?" Lieutenant Straubing said again. None of the new drivers moved or spoke. As Cincinnatus had seen other soldiers do, they tried to disappear while standing in plain sight. Straubing nodded. "Very well." He turned to the men he'd called. "Take those three to the stockade. Murray-this fellow here-is the ringleader. I will prefer formal written charges when I have the time, which I don't right now. These shenanigans are liable to make me late, and I won't stand for that."
Saluting, the soldiers led Murray, Heintzelman, and Vasilievsky out of the depot. The three drivers looked as if they were standing in front of White trucks bearing down on them at thirty miles an hour. None of them could have been more astonished than Cincinnatus. He'd associated Lieutenant Straubing's uncommon easiness on matters of race with a certain weakness. Evidently he'd been wrong.
Straubing glanced over toward the new truck drivers who hadn't been arrested. As if they were puppets controlled by the same puppeteer, they stiffened to attention. "If this sort of nonsense happens again," Straubing said pleasantly, "it will make me angry. Do you gentlemen want to find out what happens when I get angry?"
"No, sir," the drivers chorused.
"Good," Straubing said. "Now that we understand that, I am going to give you the idea behind what we're doing here. What we're doing here is moving supplies from the riverside here down to the fighting front. Anything that helps us do that is good. Anything that hurts is bad. If a man does his job, I don't care-and you won't care-if he is black or white or yellow or blue. If he can't or won't, I will run him out of here. If you are white and I order you to work with a Negro who is doing his job, you will do it. If you are white and I order you to work beside a trained unicorn who is doing his job, you will do that, too. Again, do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," the new drivers said in unison.
"Then let's get on with it," Lieutenant Straubing said. "We are going to have to press harder than we would have, thanks to this idiocy. You would be safer blaspheming the Holy Ghost than you would, tampering with my schedule."
As the drivers went off to their vehicles, Cincinnatus approached Straubing and said, "Thank you kindly, suh."
The white man looked almost as nonplused as Murray had when he was arrested. "I suppose you're welcome, Cincinnatus," he answered after a moment, "but I didn't do it for you."
"Sir, I understand that," Cincinnatus said. "I-"
"Do you?" Straubing broke in. "I wonder. I did it for the sake of the United States Army. You Negroes have shown you can do this job, and if you do it, white men don't have to, and we can put rifles in their hands. I would sooner have taken on more of you, but this new contingent got sent to me instead. We'll see what we can make of them."
"Uh, yes, sir," Cincinnatus said. Straubing was indeed a good deal less sentimental, more hardheaded than he'd reckoned.