Drive to the East

From Chicago to Milwaukee was a short hop, like the one from Toledo to Cleveland. Naturally, whatever eastbound transport they’d pla

He didn’t like it. It was bumpy-worse than bumpy, in fact. Several people were airsick, and not all of them got all of it in their sacks. There was a snowstorm over Buffalo. The pilot talked about going on to Syracuse or Rochester. He also talked about how much-or rather, how little-fuel he had. The kid next to Chester worked his rosary beads hard.

They did put down in Buffalo, snowstorm or not. The transport almost skidded off the end of the runway, but it didn’t quite. The rosary beads got another workout during and after that. “Give ’em some for me, too,” Chester said when the airplane finally decided it did intend to stop. The only thing that could have made the landing more fun would have been Hound Dogs shooting up the transport while it came in.

He wondered if the Army would try to fly him down to Virginia. If they did, he might have found out more about Confederate fighters than he ever wanted to know. But he got on another train again instead. And he got delayed again, twice: once from bombed-out rails and once from what they actually admitted was sabotage.

Somebody in the car said, “Christ, I hope we’re doing the same thing to the Confederates.”

“If we weren’t, we would’ve lost the goddamn war by now, I expect,” somebody else replied. Chester suspected that was true. He also suspected the United States were using Negro rebels to do a lot of their dirty work down there. He knew they’d done that in the last war; he’d led a Negro Red through U.S. lines to get whatever he needed in the way of arms and ammunition. Blacks now had even less reason to love the CSA than they’d had then.

“You’re late,” a sergeant growled at him when he finally got where he was going.

“That’s right,” Chester said. “I’m damn lucky I’m here at all.” The other sergeant stared at him. He stared back. He’d had three years of guff the last war. Enough, by God, was enough.

Cinci

A couple of old black men sat in a corner playing checkers. They were regulars, and then some. As far as Cinci

Talk in the saloon reflected that. A middle-aged man named Diogenes blew cigarette smoke up at the ceiling, smiled, and said, “Shoulda got outa here when the gettin’ was good. Too damn late now.”

“Do Jesus, yes!” another man said, and knocked back his shot. He set a quarter on the bar for another one. “We is nothin’ but the remnants-the stupid remnants, I should oughta say. Remnants.” He repeated the fancy word with an odd, somber relish.

He wasn’t wrong. After Kentucky voted to return to the CSA in early 1941, a lot of blacks voted with their feet, heading across the Ohio to states that remained in the USA. Cinci

Diogenes savagely stubbed out his cigarette. “God damn Al Smith to hell and gone. Reckon he fryin’ down there now, lousy, stinkin’ son of a bitch.”

Several men nodded, Cinci

The bartender ran a rag over the smooth top of the bar. The rag was none too clean, but neither was the bar. Cinci

And sometimes trouble came without asking. The doors to the Brass Monkey flew open. In stormed half a dozen Freedom Party guards, all in what looked like C.S. Army uniforms, but in gray cloth rather than butternut. They all had submachine guns and mean looks on their faces. When the one with a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve said, “Don’t nobody move!” the saloon suddenly became a still life.

The white men fa

No black in the CSA could go anywhere or do anything without showing the book first. It proved he was who he was and that he had the government’s permission to be where he was and do what he was doing. Cinci

“Hey, Clint!” he exclaimed. “Here’s one we’re looking for!”

Clint was the noncom in charge of the squad. He pointed his submachine gun at Cinci

Cinci

They hauled him away in a paddy wagon. He felt some small relief when they took him to a police station, not a Freedom Party meeting hall. The police still stood for law, no matter how twisted. The Party was a law unto itself, and beyond anyone else’s reach.

And a police captain rather than a Freedom Party guard questioned him. “You know a man named Luther Bliss?” the cop demanded.

That told Cinci

“Oh, yeah? How come?” The policeman exuded skepticism.

“On account of he lured me down here and threw me in jail back in the Twenties,” Cinci

His reply seemed to take the policeman by surprise. “How come?” the cop repeated. “He reckon you was a Red nigger?”

“Hell, no.” Cinci