The Grapple

Of course, as soon as the deuce-and-a-half was empty, he had to drive back to the big depot in Defiance to load up again for another trip to Findlay. The CSA had heavily bombed Defiance earlier in the war. Not many enemy airplanes came over these days. U.S. fighters and bombers took off from airstrips on the outskirts of town. Antiaircraft guns by the score poked their long snouts up toward the sky. Camouflage netting masked some of them. Others stood out in the open, as if warning the Confederates they were there.

Cinci

“My dad went out to Colorado to see if he could get rich mining,” he said, every vowel sharp, every consonant distinct. “He didn’t-only a few people did-and he ended up ru

“Folks out there give you a lot of trouble on account o’-?” Cinci

“Well, I know what nigger means, that’s for damn sure.” Butler shrugged. “But Jews are kikes and Chinamen are Chinks and Irishmen are micks and Mexicans are greasers and Italians are wops and even Poles are lousy Polacks, for God’s sake. I don’t get too excited about it. Hell, my brother’s married to a white woman.”

That made Cinci

“They’ve been married almost twenty years. People are used to them,” the other driver said. “Every once in a while, John’ll hear something stupid if he’s standing in line for a film with Helen or out at a diner or something like that, but it’s not too bad.” He chuckled. “Of course, he’s my big brother-he goes about six-three, maybe two-fifty. I don’t care if you’re green-you want to be careful what you say around him.” He was of ordinary size himself.

“Does make a difference,” Cinci

Before he could ask, somebody shouted that their trucks were ready to roll. “Got to get moving,” Butler said. “I want to parade through Nashville or Birmingham or one of those places. And if I hear some Confederate asshole yell, ‘Freedom!’-well, I want to pull out my.45 and blow his fucking head off.”

He sounded altogether matter-of-fact about it, the way a U.S. white man would have. But for the color of his skin, he might as well have been a U.S. white man. He seemed as sure of his place in the world and as comfortable with it as any white man, whether from the USA or the CSA. Cinci

He climbed into the cab of his truck, slammed the door, turned the key in the ignition, and put the beast in gear. South and east he rolled, back toward Findlay. No shellfire fell on the road this time. U.S. guns, or maybe dive bombers, had silenced the Confederate batteries that were shelling it. Cinci

What if Jake Featherston was right in front of you? He glanced over to the pistol. Well, you could make exceptions for everything. Dream as he would, though, he didn’t expect to be sharing a diner with the President of the CSA any time soon.

When he rolled into Findlay, he got waved through the town. “What’s goin’ on?” he called to a soldier with wigwag flags.

“We broke through again, that’s what,” the white man answered. “They need their shit farther forward.”

“I like that,” Cinci

Shells were falling not far from the new unloading area, but they’d been falling in Findlay and beyond it only a couple of hours before. The men who hauled crates out of the back of his truck had an air of barely suppressed excitement. They didn’t seem to think the Confederates would be able to slow this latest push.

Do Jesus, let ’em be right, Cinci

Cinci

War was a filthy business for everybody, no doubt about it. Cinci

Brigadier General Irving Morrell was a man in a hurry. He always had been, ever since his days as a company commander at the start of the Great War. He took the first position he ever attacked-and he got shot charging with the bayonet when he ran out of ammunition. That taught him an important lesson: like anything else, being in a hurry had its disadvantages.

It also had its advantages, though. Massing barrels and smashing Confederate lines made the CSA say uncle in 1917. At the Barrel Works at Fort Leavenworth after the Great War, Morrell designed a machine with all the features a modern barrel needed: a reduced crew, a powerful engine, a big gun in a turret that turned through 360 degrees, and a wireless set.

He designed it-and he found nobody in the USA much wanted it. The Great War was over, wasn’t it? There’d never be another one, would there? Being a man in a hurry sometimes put you too far ahead not only of the enemy but also of your own side.

By the time it became clear the Great War wouldn’t be the last one after all, the state of the art all over the world had caught up with Morrell’s vision. Germany and Austria-Hungary built barrels incorporating all the features he’d envisioned more than fifteen years earlier. So did France and England and Russia. And so did the Confederate States.

So did the United States, but belatedly and halfheartedly. When the fighting started, Morrell had to try to defend Ohio without enough machines-and without good enough machines. He failed. Even in failure, he alarmed the Confederates. A sniper gave him an oak-leaf cluster for his Purple Heart and put him on the shelf for weeks.

Returning to duty, he didn’t have much luck in Virginia, a narrow land bristling with fortifications. But he was the architect of the U.S. thrust that cut off, surrounded, and destroyed the Confederate army that fought its way into Pittsburgh. Now the armored force he led was driving west through Ohio. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. If, somewhere south of Columbus, his force could meet up with the one pushing southeast from northwestern Ohio and Indiana, they would trap all the Confederates to the north of them in another pocket.

He didn’t think Jake Featherston could afford to lose one army. He knew damn well the President of the CSA couldn’t afford to lose two. What could be better, then, than giving Jake exactly what he didn’t want?