American Front

Colleton fired again, missed, and swore. His trainwrecked voice made ordinary words sound extraordinarily vile. Killing a foolish possum a few minutes later partially restored his spirits. "You can get that," he told Scipio. "Give it to one of those little niggers for the pot." Every once in a while, he remembered he was still supposed to be a gentleman.

Scipio carried the possum back by the tail. Jacob Colleton had put a bullet half an inch back of one eye. The ugly little beast couldn't have known what hit it. And possum, after some time in the pot or the bake oven, was tasty eat ing indeed. "Very good shooting, sir," Scipio said, laying the little body down beside the wheelchair.

Jacob Colleton started to say something, but coughed instead. He kept coughing, and finally started to turn blue. At last, as Scipio helplessly stood by, he mastered the spasm. "Lord God almighty," he whispered, "feels as if they're taking sandpaper and a blowtorch to my insides." Along with the clips of ammunition, he had a silver flask in one pocket of his robe. He gulped from it, swallowed, and gulped again. His color slowly improved. He looked down at the possum he had killed. "Good shooting, Scipio?" He shook his head. "This is nothing. It's not even proper sport. The possum can't shoot back."

"Sir?" Scipio knew he was supposed to say something in response to that, but for the life of him couldn't figure out what.

Colleton breathed whiskey up into his face. "Don't look at me like that. I wasn't joking, not even slightly. What better game to play, what more exciting game to play, than wagering your life that you're a better shot than the damnyankee on the far side of the barbed wire? But machine guns cheat, artillery cheats, gas cheats worst of all. It doesn't care how good a soldier you are. If you're in the wrong place, it kills you -and there's no sport at all about that."

Again, Scipio kept his mouth shut. A robin flew down toward a treetop. Jacob Colleton fired while it was still on the wing. It seemed to explode in midair. Feathers drifted to the ground. Scipio's eyes got wide. That wasn't just good shooting -it was outstanding shooting. And, since there wasn't much left of the poor songbird, Colleton hadn't done it for any reason but to show off… and maybe to savor the moment of killing something. Scipio shivered.

After he'd killed a squirrel and missed a couple of shots, Jacob said, "Enough of this. Take me back inside."

"Yes, sir," Scipio said, and he did. He helped Miss A

He escaped from the bedroom with more than a little relief. But, try as he would, he could not escape Jacob Colleton. Down in the kitchen, he ran into Cassius; the hunter was bringing in a turkey he'd killed in the woods beyond the cotton fields. Cassius had been very quiet since his return from what he'd told A

A stove had made the kitchen blazing hot. No stove burned outside, but it was blazing hot there, too, and so muggy Scipio expected rain. He and Cassius strolled along side by side. They made an incongruous pair because of their difference in dress, but nobody paid them any mind. Both the field hands and the white folks were used to seeing them together.

In a low, casual voice, Cassius said, "Kip, you got to keep Marse Jacob 'way from them trees." He pointed to the little wood into which Jacob Colleton had been shooting.

"How kin I do dat?" Scipio demanded. In a flash, he went from Congaree dialect to the English he used around Miss A

Cassius guffawed and slapped his thigh. "Do Jesus, that fu

Scipio stared at him in something approaching agony. "Ah cain't, Cass. He say go dere, we gots to go dere. I tell he no, I dance me all round why fo' no, he jus' git mo' and mo' 'spicious. You hear what I say?"

"I don't got to hear you, Kip. You got to hear me," Cassius said, not loudly, but not in a way Scipio thought he could ignore, either. "Don' wan' no white folks traipsin' through they woods. Don' wan' no white folks nowheres near they woods, you hear?"

"Better shoot me now," Scipio said. He'd never tried standing up to Cas sius till this moment. He'd never had any chance before; the hunter had effortlessly dominated him. But now he'd asked the impossible. If he was too stupid to recognize that, too bad -too bad for everyone, too bad for everything.

He stared at Scipio now; defiance was the last thing he'd expected. "You got to, Kip," he said at last. "Ain' no two ways 'bout it. You got to." But he wasn't ordering now; he sounded more like a man who was pleading.

"How come I got to?" Scipio demanded.

Cassius didn't want to tell him. He could see that, with no room for doubt. After a long, long pause, the hunter said, "On account of I got a whole raf' o' guns, whole raf o' bullets back in there. White folks finds that, ain't gwine do nothin' but hang all the niggers on this here plantation."

"Reckoned it were sumpin' like dat," Scipio said, nodding; wherever Cas- sius had been when he was away, it wasn't in bed with a nineteen-year-old wench named Drusilla. Where had he got the weapons? How had he got them back here? Scipio didn't know, or want to know. He pointed toward the woods in question. "You worry too much, you know dat? Marse Jacob, he cain't git out o' that chair, not hardly. He shoot hisself a possum, I gits it an' brings it back. He ain't goin' in they woods. An' you wants me to ruin everything on account of you gits de vapors. Do Jesus!" He clapped a hand to his forehead.

Cassius soberly studied him. "All right, Kip, we does it yo' way," he said, and Scipio breathed again. "You better be right. You is wrong, you is dead. You is wrong, we all dead."

He walked off shaking his head, perhaps wondering if he'd done the right thing. Scipio stood where he was till he stopped trembling. He'd got away with it. Not only had he been right, he'd made Cassius recognize that he was right. As triumphs went, it was probably a small thing, but he felt as if he'd just won the War of Secession all by himself.

"Pa," Julia McGregor asked with the intent seriousness of which only eleven-year-old girls seem capable, "are you going to send me back to school when it opens again after harvest time?"

Arthur McGregor looked up from the newspaper he was reading. He rested while he could; harvest would be coming soon. The paper was shipped up from the USA, and full of lies; since the demise of the Rosenfeld Register (which had been only half full of lies), no local paper had been permitted. But even lies could be interesting if they were new lies: why else did people read so many books and magazines?

"I'd thought I would," he answered slowly. "The more you learn, the better off you'll be." He brought that last out like an article of faith, even if he couldn't see how he was all that much better off for his own schooling. He studied his elder daughter. "Why? Don't you want me to?"

"No!" she said, and shook her head so vigorously that auburn curls flipped into her face.

"I don't want to go, either," Mary exclaimed.

"Hush," he told her. "I'm talking to your big sister." Mary did hold her tongue, but looked mutinous. She had an imp in her that wouldn't placidly let her do as she was told. Her backside got warmed more often than Julia's or Alexander's ever had. But the imp also drove her to acts of real, even foolhardy, courage, as when she'd charged at the American officer who'd wanted to take McGregor hostage in Rosenfeld. Her father turned back toward Julia. "You used to like school. Why don't you want to go any more?"