Drive to the East

“Leastways we gets to hit back,” Cassius said.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;/He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. Having watched the brutal collapse of the Congaree Socialist Republic, Scipio knew black uprisings against whites in the CSA had no hope. He looked around. Was there hope anywhere else in the Terry? Not that he could see. All he said was, “Be careful, son. Be careful as you kin.”

Cassius’ face lit with a terrible joy, the joy of a man who had nothing left to lose.

Midnight was the traditional time for the knock on the door. Had the police come then, Cinci

There were four of them. Three were older than Cinci

They started to walk on past Cinci

Cinci

“He’s on the list!” the cadet exclaimed, his voice breaking.

“He sure as hell is,” the cop with the mustache agreed. Cinci

“What for?” Cinci

The white-mustached cop chuckled. “Buddy, if I had a dime for every asshole I nabbed who hadn’t done anything, I could’ve quit workin’ a hell of a long time ago. Now you can come along quiet-like or you can come along some other way. But you’re go

One cane against all that firepower made ridiculous odds. And the policemen were pros. The old-timers didn’t come close enough to let Cinci

“Smart fellow,” the mustachioed cop said. He turned to the cadet. “He’s smarter’n you are, Newt. How’s that make you feel?” By the look on Newt’s face, it made him want to cry.

A blue jay scolded Cinci

When the gate closed behind him and he passed out of the barbed-wire perimeter around the colored quarter, that small latch click had a dreadfully final sound. A police car waited just beyond the gate. The policeman with the mustache took Cinci

“Know how to get what you want, I reckon,” Cinci

When they got to the station, they didn’t tell Cinci

But they let him keep the cane. Maybe they knew how much trouble he had getting around without it. Police, though, weren’t in the habit of showing white prisoners consideration, let alone blacks. Sitting on the edge of the cot-the only place he could sit except for the concrete floor-he scratched his head.

A guard who must have been called back from retirement brought him supper on a tray: two cheese sandwiches on coarse, brownish bread and a big cup of water. Cinci

The guard nodded when he came back to pick up the tray. “You know the drill, all right. Reckon you been in the joint before.”

“Not for anything I did,” Cinci

“Likely tell. That’s what they all say.” Bending made the guard swear under his breath: “Goddamn rheumatism.”

Cinci

He waited for them to come and start squeezing him for whatever they thought he knew. No matter what they did, he couldn’t tell them much about Luther Bliss. He had no idea where the U.S. secret policeman was staying, or even if he was still in Covington. If they started asking him about Lucullus, though… He could do Lucullus a lot of harm. He didn’t want to, but he knew the best will in the world wouldn’t always stand up against enough pain.

They left him in there. They fed him. The food was a long way from good, but he didn’t go hungry. They took out the honey bucket twice a day. It was just… jail. It didn’t feel as if they were softening him up for anything drastic. They could easily have done much worse.

Maybe they thought they were lulling him. He didn’t mind. He would take whatever he could get. Boredom wasn’t much, but it beat the hell out of brutality. If he yawned, if he paced-well, so what? He could have bled. He could have spat out teeth. He’d heard of things they could do with a motorcar battery and some wires that made his stomach turn over. Compared to any of that, boredom was a walk in the park on a su

It had to end. And when it did, it was even worse than he’d feared. Police didn’t come for him. Instead, the man at the head of three guards who carried submachine guns was a jackbooted Confederate major with a face like a clenched fist. “You’re Cinci

“Yes, suh,” Cinci

“Damnfool notion, letting niggers have last names,” the officer muttered. Cinci

Cinci

That didn’t mean they would tell him. “Shut up,” the major said. “You’re coming along with me.” He looked as if he would sooner have scraped Cinci

They marched him down the corridor to the front desk. The Confederate officer signed whatever paperwork he had to sign to take Cinci