Walk in Hell (17 page)

Again, loud, profane agreement came from everybody in earshot. There were several conversations farther back in the chow line that Carsten couldn’t make out, but their tone suggested other people were also imperfectly delighted with the bill of fare they’d been enjoying—or rather, not enjoying—lately.

Vic Crosetti’s long, fleshy nose twitched; his nostrils dilated. “Whatever that is they’re gonna do to us, it ain’t salt beef.” He made the pronouncement in a way that brooked no disagreement.

A moment later, Carsten caught the whiff, too. “You’re right, Vic.” He made a sour face. “That’s fish, and it’s been dead a long, long time.”

Tilden Winters delivered his own verdict: “You ask me, one of the cooks got diarrhea again.”

“If that joke ain’t as old as the Navy, it’s only on account of it’s older,” Sam said. The closer he got to the pots from which the horrible smell was coming, though, the more he wondered if it was a joke this time.

He took a tray with more reluctance than he’d ever known. As he came up to one of the cooks, the fellow ladled a dollop of stinking yellowish stuff onto the tray, then added some sauerkraut, a hard roll, and a cup of coffee. Sam pointed at the noxious puddle. “You got a sick cat, Johansen?”

“Funny man. Everybody thinks he’s a cotton-picking funny man,” the cook said. “It’s herrings in mustard sauce, and I’ll say ‘I told you so’ when you come back for seconds.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Sam told him, which, considering the stench, was a curse of no mean proportion. He took the tray over to a table, sat down, and looked dubious. “Hey, Vic, maybe the padre ought to give it the last rites.”

Crosetti shook his head. “Way it smells up the galley, it’s been dead a hell of a lot too long for that to do any good.”

Ever so cautiously, Carsten scooped up a forkful and brought it to his mouth. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “It tastes as lousy as it smells.” He looked down at the tray with loathing that was almost admiration. “I didn’t figure it could.”

Tilden Winters made the taste test, too, then gulped down his coffee as if it were the only thing standing between him and an early grave. Seeing their reaction, Crosetti said, “I don’t think I want any. Never was much for sauerkraut, but tonight—”

Most of the time, such grumbling would have got them in Dutch with the cooks. This evening, their complaints went unnoticed in the wider tide of revolted complaint echoing through the galley. “Do the officers eat this shit, too?” somebody shouted.

Carsten’s eyes lit up. He knew he could trust Crosetti for what he had in mind, and Winters was a pretty square guy, too. “Listen,” he said, “if they try and feed us this kind of slop, they oughta know what we think of it, right?”

“Sounds good to me,” Winters said. “Sounds damn good to me.” Crosetti nodded, too. Carsten gestured to both of them. They all put their heads together. After they were done laughing, they solemnly clasped hands to seal the bargain.

Tilden Winters got up first. He slammed his tray down on the stack, then started saying to the cooks what everybody else had been saying to one another. He had a talent for abuse, and certainly a fitting subject for it, too. A good many other sailors joined in his vehement griping. That brought several cooks over, both to defend their honor, such as it was, and to keep the men from getting any creative ideas like flinging the herrings around the galley.

Carsten, however, had already had a more creative idea than that. He and Crosetti took advantage of the confusion to slip behind the galley counter, grab one of the kettles full of the herring-and-mustard mixture—fortunately, one with a lid—and slip off before anyone noticed what they were doing. As soon as they were away, they looked like a couple of sailors on some assignment or other; the kettle wasn’t that different from any of a number of containers aboard the
Dakota
.

No one paid them the least attention as they headed up into officer country. Again, looking as if you belonged was more important than actually belonging. In a prison-yard whisper, Crosetti said, “Only slippery part is gonna be if he’s in there.”

“Hey, come on,” Carsten said. “If he is, we go, ‘Sorry, sir, wrong cabin,’ and we ditch the stuff instead of dumping it. Either way, we’re jake.”

The cabin door bore a neatly stenciled inscription:
LIEUT
.-
CMDR
.
JONATHAN Y
.
HENRICKSON
,
CHIEF SHIP’S PURCHASING OFFICER
. Sam knocked, his knuckles ringing off steel. Nobody answered. He turned the latch. The cabin door opened easily. He grinned again. He’d been wondering if Henrickson was the sort who locked his door. But no.

Inside, the cabin was as neat as a CPO’s dreams of heaven, with everything in its place—
exactly
in its place—and a place for everything. Somehow, that only made what they were about to do the sweeter.

“Come on, let’s get going,” Crosetti said. “Our luck ain’t gonna hold forever.” That might have been cold feet, but it didn’t sound as if it was—just a steady professional warning his comrade (
no, his accomplice,
Sam thought) of things that could go wrong.

They took the lid off the kettle. Instantly, the stink of the herrings filled the cabin. They proceeded to make sure the stink wasn’t all that filled it: they methodically poured herrings and mustard sauce over everything they could, desk, bedding, clothes, deck, everything. As soon as they’d finished, they got the hell out of there.

An officer in the passage would have spelled disaster. Sam’s shoulders sagged in relief when the long, gray-painted metal corridor proved bare. “Now all we got to do is look ordinary.”

“You’re too ugly to look ordinary,” Crosetti retorted. But Carsten took not the slightest offense—they’d pulled it off. When they got back down to their proper part of the ship, Tilden Winters looked a question at them. They both nodded. So did he. That was all he did, too, before returning to the friendly argument about Honolulu whores in which he’d been involved before his partners in crime returned.

The hue and cry started about an hour later. Grim-faced petty officers started escorting cooks and galley helpers up to officer country near the bridge. When the first batch of them returned, rumor of what had happened started spreading through the sailors. The general reaction was delight.

“If I knew who done that,” Hiram Kidde declared, although no one yet was quite sure of what
that
was, “the first thing I’d do is kick his ass.” He was, after all, a CPO himself. But he’d suffered through the herrings in mustard sauce, too. “And after that, by Jesus, I’d pick him up and buy him a beer. Hell, I’d buy him all the beer he could drink.” The gunner’s mate roared laughter. “What I wouldn’t give to see Henrickson’s face.”

None of the cooks knew anything. Carsten carefully didn’t look at Crosetti. Somebody might have noticed them lifting the kettle. But it didn’t seem as if anyone had. That didn’t stop the officers from trying to get to the bottom of who had perpetrated the atrocity. They kept right on trying, all the way up until the
Dakota
docked in Honolulu.

Carsten went up before Lieutenant Commander Henrickson himself. “No, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir. All I know is ship’s scuttlebutt.”

“What did you think of the fish?” the purchasing officer demanded, his thin mouth set in a tight, bloodless line.

“Sir, beg your pardon, but I didn’t like it worth a damn,” Carsten told him.

He sighed. “I’m afraid everyone says that. I hoped the bastards who did this would sing songs about how good it was, to try to turn looks away from them. No such luck, though. Damn sailors are too damn sly.” That last was an angry mutter. Carsten carefully did not smile.

Back when Scipio had been butler at Marshlands, he’d wondered how a man could ever get used to the racket of battle. Even single gunshots had been plenty to set his heart pounding. He was inclined to laugh at his former self nowadays. He hadn’t known much back then.

He hadn’t known much about a lot of things back then. As far as a lot of them went, he would gladly have remained ignorant, too. Much of what Cassius fondly thought of as revolutionary practice looked to Scipio an awful lot like what the whites of the Confederate States had been doing, only stood on its head.

Sometimes the strain of keeping his mouth shut was almost more than he could bear. But he’d turned his own experience in the days before the Congaree Socialist Republic to his advantage, too. Anne Colleton hadn’t been able to see past the smooth butler’s mask he wore, and neither could Cassius now.

Fortunately, Cassius hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t noticed Scipio’s mask. The chairman of the Republic had plenty of other things on his mind. He somehow managed to make the undyed, unbleached cotton homespun of Negro field laborers into a good approximation of a uniform, and even to look smart in it, which was far beyond Scipio’s ability. What he could not do, though, was lose the worried expression on his face.

“Ain’t got enough white folks wid we, Kip,” he said now. “De po’ buckra, de gov’ment ’press them same as it done to we. Dey gots to see where dey class int’rest is at. Dey gots to see de revolution fo’ dey, too, not jus’ fo’ we.” He shook his head. “But dey don’. Dey is still de dogs o’ de massers dat ’sploits dey. Cipher dat out fo’ me, Kip. Don’ make no sense.”

Scipio still found revolutionary rhetoric and the Congaree dialect an odd blend. No one cared about his opinion in such matters, though, and he was canny enough to keep it to himself. Cassius had asked his opinion about the other matter, though, and might even have been ready to hear it. Scipio decided to take a chance there.

He pointed to what had been the country courthouse of Kingstree, South Carolina. The two-story, buff-colored building with a fancy, fanlighted pediment, built in the style of the early years of the last century, no longer flew the Stars and Bars. Instead, the red revolutionary banner of the Congaree Socialist Republic fluttered above it. Red paint had been daubed over the name
KINGSTREE
, which was carved into the frieze above the pediment. In letters equally blood-colored, someone had given the town a substitute name:
PEOPLE’S TREE
.

“Dat kind o’ thing, Cass—an’ we done a lot of it—dat kind o’ thing, like I say, dat skeers de white folks out o’ dey shoes,” he said.

Cassius looked back at the courthouse, then swung his gaze toward Scipio once more. As soon as Scipio saw the expression on the chairman’s face, he knew he had failed. “Ain’t gwine have no backslidin’ in this here revolution,” Cassius declared. “We is bringin’ liberty to de people, an’ if dey is too foolish to be grateful, dey pays de price.”

He truly did not seem to realize that terrorizing everyone who was not ardently on his side to begin with would ensure that he drew few new supporters who didn’t have great grievances against the Confederate States. Hardly any Negroes lacked such grievances. But, exactly because whites had been inflicting grief instead of taking it, the system that had been in place suited them well enough.

And now he went on, “De niggers here in People’s Tree, dey live in the sections dey call Buzzard’s Roost and Frog Level. You t’ink de white folks, dey want to live in sections wid they names?” He spat on the ground to show how likely he reckoned that was. Scipio didn’t think it was very likely, either. But destroying white privilege only boosted white fear. And then Cassius wondered why whites fought against the Red revolution with everything they had.

Once more, Scipio tried to suggest that: “De more we puts they backs up, the harder they tries to put us down.”

For a moment, he thought he’d got through to Cassius. The chairman of the Congaree Socialist Republic sighed and shook his head. He said, “We git a messenger under flag o’ truce las’ night.”

“Dat a fact?” Scipio said. If it was a fact, it was news to him. That was worrisome in and of itself. Cassius had been in the habit of letting him know what happened as soon as it happened. A change in the pattern was liable to mean Scipio’s status was slipping, which was liable to prove hazardous to his life expectancy. Warily, he asked, “Dis messenger, what he say?”

“He say dat, if we doesn’t lay down we arms, de white folks liable to start killin’ de niggers in de part o’ de country we ain’t managed to liberate. What you t’ink o’ dat?”

Scipio’s first reaction was horror. His second reaction was horror, too. The Confederates could do that, and who would be able to stop them? The answer to that question came all too clear:
nobody
. “What you say?” he asked Cassius.

“I say two things,” the ex-hunter answered. “I say, if dat de game dey gwine play, we got plenty white folks to kill, too. Dey got mo’ niggers’n we got white folks, but dey think one white folks worth a whole heap o’ blacks. So dat make dis cocky ’ristocrat think some.”

Scipio nodded. It was a brutal ploy, but one to match the threat from the CSA. He had no doubt Cassius would carry it out, either, and was sure the chairman had left no doubt in the Confederate envoy’s mind. “Dat one,” he said, his voice showing his approval. “What de other?”

Cassius startled him by laughing out loud, a deep, rich, nasty laugh, the kind of laugh you let out after you’d heard a really good, really ripe dirty story. A moment later, Scipio understood why, for the chairman said, “I tell he, we don’t even got to do no killin’ to git our own back, if de ’pressors start de persecution in de unliberated land. I tell he, dere plenty white folks wimmin in the Congaree Socialist Republic. I don’ say no more. Ain’t got no need to say no more.”

“Do Jesus!” Scipio said. Confederate laws against miscegenation were harsh, and vigorously enforced. For some reason, Confederate white men seemed convinced that the first thing blacks would do, given any sort of chance, was make a beeline for white women. Even after the uprisings in the Congaree Socialist Republic, it hadn’t happened much. Scipio had heard of a few cases, but the revolutionary government had more urgent things—survival, for instance—with which to concern itself. But now, to use the mere idea as a club with which to beat the Confederates over the head…Scipio stared at Cassius in astonished admiration. “You is a devil, you is.”

Cassius took that as the compliment it was intended to be. “Wish you was there. This white folks captain, he got a
see
gar in he mouth. When I say dat, he like to swallow it.” He laughed again.

So did Scipio. The story was worth laughing about—if it turned out to have a happy ending. “Once he cough de
see
gar up, what he say?”

“He say we never dare do no such thing.” Cassius’ eyes glittered. “I tell he we is a pack o’ desp’rate niggers, an’ who know what we do? De white-folks gov’ment been sayin’ dat so much an’ so loud, dey lackeys all believes it. So he say, de honor o’ de white folks wimmin matter to de gov’ment, an’ dey don’t do nuffin to hurt it. You know what dat mean.”

“Mean dey don’t want white folks wimmin birthin’ a pack o’ yaller babies,” Scipio said.

Cassius nodded with yet another chuckle. “Marx, he know ’bout dis. If de peasant wench have de lord’s baby, dey call dat de
droit de seigneur
.” What he did to the pronunciation of the French words was a caution, but Scipio understood him. He went on, “But de lord’s lady, if she have a baby by de peasant, everybody run around like chickens wid a fox in the henhouse. An’ if that baby
yaller
, like you say—”

“You reckon de white folks think twice, then?” Scipio asked.

“Dey think fo’-five times ’fore they want the likes o’ me humpin’ dis fifteen-year-old buckra gal wid de hair in de yaller braids,” Cassius said positively, and Scipio thought he was right. The chairman spat again. “Like I got me trouble findin’ wimmin wants to do it.”

He wasn’t boasting, just stating a fact. He’d boasted plenty, back when he was chief hunter on the Marshlands plantation. As chairman of the Congaree Socialist Republic, he seemed to find it beneath his dignity. Scipio prodded him a little: “Drusilla,” he said slyly.

He won a chuckle from Cassius, which relieved him: when Cassius was thinking about Cassius, he wasn’t thinking about Scipio. “Ain’t looked fo’ she since de revolution come,” Cassius said. “Maybe I ought to.” His hands described an hourglass in the air. He’d used the excuse of fooling around with Drusilla, who’d lived on the late, purged Jubal Marberry’s plantation, to travel by routes only he knew and bring back weapons from the USA.

Scipio spoke another name: “Cherry.”

He’d intended that to come out sly and man-to-man, too. Somehow it didn’t, not quite. And Cassius stopped grinning. His answer, this time, was serious: “Dat gal, she do anything to help de revolution. If dat mean sleep wif you, she do it.”

“That so,” Scipio agreed. She’d slept with Jacob Colleton, to keep the mistress’ gassed brother distracted from any of the revolutionary buildup on the plantation, and then she’d used his abuse of her—or what she claimed to be his abuse of her—to touch off the uprising at the right moment. She was, Scipio knew, sharing a bed with Cassius these days.

But the chairman, instead of leering and bragging—for Cherry was one fine-looking, strong-minded woman—held up a forefinger in warning. “She do
anything
to help the revolution,” he said. “Anything at all. If dat mean cut yo’ balls off while you sleep, she do dat, too, an’ she don’ think twice.”

If he thought Scipio would argue with him, he was mistaken. The former butler was more afraid of Cherry than he was of Cassius, and that was saying something. Finding out that she also intimidated the chairman was interesting. He wondered if and how he’d be able to use that.

Before he had a chance to think about it, he heard a screaming whistle in the sky, coming out of the south. Several artillery shells burst with thunderous roars a few hundred yards outside of the renamed People’s Tree. More explosions farther south meant the People’s Revolutionary Army line was taking a pounding. Artillery was the one thing the Republic conspicuously lacked.

Cassius swore with bitter resignation. “I don’ reckon we gwine hold they white folks out of this here town more’n another two-three days.”

“What we do then?” Now Scipio sounded nervous, and knew it. When Cassius was optimistic about the way the fighting was going, he was often wrong; when he was pessimistic, he was always right.

“Fall back. What else
kin
we do?” the chairman answered. “We maybe lose dis here stand-up war”—the first time he had admitted the possibility, which sent a chill up Scipio’s spine—“but we go to de deep swamp, fight they white folks forever. An’ some o’ we, we jus’ goes back to bein’ ordinary niggers again, niggers what ain’t never done nothin’ de white folk get they-selves in a ruction about—till we sees de chance. We sees de chance, an’ we
seize
de chance.” He looked sharply at Scipio, to make sure he caught the wordplay.

Scipio did, and gave back a dutiful smile. He hoped that smile covered what was no longer a chill but a blizzard inside him. If Cassius admitted the revolution was starting to come unraveled, then it was. And, while Cassius and some of his followers could no doubt carry on a guerrilla campaign against the Confederacy from out of the swamps they knew better than any white man did, Scipio wasn’t any of those followers. His skills at living under such conditions were nonexistent. He couldn’t go back to being an ordinary Negro, either; the uprising had literally destroyed the place he’d had in the world.

What did that leave? He saw nothing. He’d always had trouble believing the revolution would succeed. Whenever he’d oh so cautiously raised doubts, no one paid him any mind. Now he saw himself vindicated.
Much good it does me,
he thought bitterly.

George Enos looked to his left. The woody shoreline of Tennessee lay to port of the monitor
Punishment
. George looked to his right. To starboard were the hills of northeastern Arkansas. U.S. land forces held the Tennessee side of the Mississippi. God only knew who could lay claim to the Arkansas side of the river. It wasn’t trench warfare over there—more like large-scale bushwhacking.

Wayne Pitchess came up to Enos. He was looking toward the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi, too. “If we ever clear out those Rebs, we’ll have a better chance of heading down the river and grabbing Memphis,” he said.

“Thank you, Admiral,” George said, which made Pitchess glare at him in mock anger. He went on, “We get Memphis, that’s a long step toward cutting the CSA right in half. Sure would be fine.”

“Now who’s the admiral?” Pitchess retorted, and Enos spread his hands, admitting to attempted strategizing. His buddy’s face took on a wistful expression. “Wonder if we’ll ever see the day. If it takes us a year and a half to clear a quarter of the river, how long do we need to do all of it?”