The Grapple

His back wouldn’t like sleeping on the floor wrapped in a blanket, with a rolled-up jacket doing duty for a pillow. The rest of him didn’t care at all. He sank into slumber like a submersible slipping below the surface of the sea, and he dove deep.

It was still dark when he woke. For a muzzy moment, he thought another thunderstorm was pummeling northern Georgia. Then he realized this was manmade thunder. Muzzle flashes flickered on the walls of the battered house where he slept. The artillery roared and roared and roared again.

“Gun bu

“Hope they blast the shit outa whatever they’re aimin’ at.” Cinci

Were the fellow who shook him awake at sunup in the Army, he would have been a top sergeant. The man had a leg gone below the knee and was a couple of years older than Cinci

“Have a heart, Ray,” Cinci

“Where we going?” Williamson asked as he refilled his tin coffee mug.

“Southeast.” Also like a good top sergeant, Ray had all the answers. “Soon as we break out of these fucking chickenshit mountains, get out into the flat country, the Confederates can kiss their sorry ass good-bye. They can’t stop us now. Weather can sometimes, but they can’t. We get down into the flat country, they won’t even slow us down.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe he was wrong. It sounded good to Cinci

He didn’t know exactly where the truck convoy was heading. All he had to know was that he was going the same way as the truck in front of him. He shook his head. No, one more thing: if they got bushwhacked, he knew he had to fight back. He had plenty of ammo for the piece on the seat beside him.

But the convoy got through. There’d been more bushwhacking farther north. Here, the Confederates still seemed startled to see Yankee invaders. Cinci

The gun bu

“Sounds good to me,” Cinci

“Yeah, I bet,” the youngster said. “If you could push a button and smash up the country, you’d do it like that, I bet.” He snapped his fingers.

“You was in my shoes, wouldn’t you?” Finding a white man who understood what a Negro might be feeling always surprised Cinci

Then the gun bu

“Maybe we are.” Cinci

“Yeah, I’m passing. It’s easier. You’ve got to know that. None of my girlfriends ever knew-that’s for damn sure. And besides, if the government thought I was a nigger, they never would have let me join the Army. And you know what? I want to kick Jake Featherston’s ass just as much as you do.”

“More power to you, then,” Cinci

“How about that? Country’s turning into a regular zoo.” The kid gri

Driving away from the front, Cinci

He rolled past a burnt-out Confederate barrel in a field. U.S. technicians were salvaging what they could from the machine. Four hastily dug graves lay nearby. Cinci

Jake Featherston stared at the situation maps pi

He swore again. He knew the answer to that: uranium bombs. Somehow, the Confederacy had to stand the gaff till they were ready, and to hope like anything the USA didn’t get them first. “Got to hang in,” Featherston said softly. “Got to hang on. Got to.”

A moment later, Lulu poked her head into the office. “Professor FitzBelmont is here to see you, Mr. President,” she said, and sniffed slightly. She didn’t know why the tweedy physics professor was so important to the Confederate States. Jake didn’t think she did, anyhow. Whenever he put something about the uranium-bomb project in writing, he took care of it himself, bypassing her. Security for this couldn’t be too tight. He wouldn’t have let his own shadow know about U-235 if he could have helped it.

All he said now was, “Thanks. Send him in.”

Henderson V. FitzBelmont closed the door behind him. He nodded to Jake. “Mr. President,” he said, and then, belatedly, “Uh-freedom!”

“Freedom!” Jake didn’t get angry at the forced way the professor brought out the slogan, as he would have with most people. He waved him to a chair and asked, “How are you?”

“Sir, I’m alive,” FitzBelmont said wearily as he sat down. “I’m alive, and I’m not hurt. I’ve always tried to be a rational man. I don’t have much use for the idea of miracles. Things are what they are, that’s all. But if anyone wants to say it’s a miracle that I’m here now, I won’t argue with him.”

“I heard Lexington got hit hard,” Featherston said sympathetically. From all the reports he had, Lexington had got one night’s worth of what Richmond took several times a week. “You see what it’s like when you come here. Now you’ve been through it yourself.”

“Seeing it’s one thing. Going through it…” The professor shook his head in stu

“It’s like anything else, Professor-the first time it happens, it’s the worst thing in the world, but when it happens twenty, fifty, a hundred times, it’s just something you’ve got to deal with and go on,” Jake said.