Walk in Hell

"Sir, they will follow me." McSweeney spoke with a calm, absolute confidence. "Whatever else they may feel about me, they're afraid of me."

"I don't doubt that," Captain Schneider muttered, perhaps more to himself than to McSweeney. But he shook his head again. "That won't do, I'm afraid. A U.S. noncom or officer whose men hate him or fear him ends up with a wound from a Springfield, not a Tredegar."

Gordon McSweeney considered that. "Whoever would do such a thing would surely spend eternity in hell."

"As may be," Schneider said. "That's not the point. The point is to keep your men from wanting to shoot you in the first place."

"If they would only do that which is required of them, we would not have this problem," McSweeney said.

Captain Schneider sighed. "Sergeant, have you ever, even once in your life, considered the wisdom of tempering justice with mercy?"

"No, sir," McSweeney answered, honestly shocked.

"I believe you," Schneider said. "The one thing-the only thing-I'll give you is that you hold yourself to the same standards as everyone else. That time a couple of days ago when you reported yourself for not polishing the inside of your canteen cup-that was a first for me, I tell you. But what did I do about it?"

"Nothing, sir." McSweeney's voice reeked disapproval.

Captain Schneider either didn't notice or pretended not to. "That's right. That's what I'm going to keep on doing when you bother me with tiny things, too. Sergeant, I order you not to report trivial infractions to me until and unless they constitute a clear and obvious danger to the discipline or safety of your squad. Do you understand me?"

"No, sir," McSweeney said crisply.

"All right, then, Sergeant. I am going to leave you with two quotations from the Good Book, then. I want you to concentrate on the lessons in John 8:7 and Matthew 7:1." With an abrupt about-face, Schneider stalked off.

Gordon McSweeney knew the Scriptures well. But those were not verses he was in the habit of studying, so he had to go and look them up. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her, he read in John. The verse in Matthew was even shorter and more to the point, saying, Judge not, that ye be not judged.

He stared out the door through which Captain Schneider had departed. The captain, as far as he was concerned, had the letter without the spirit. If God chose to urge mercy, that was His affair. Could a man not so urged by the Lord afford such a luxury? McSweeney didn't think so.

He was, in any case, by temperament more drawn to the Old Testament than to the New. The children of Israel, now, had been proper warriors. God had not urged them to mercy, but to glorify His name by smiting their foes. And their prophets and kings had obeyed, and had grown great by obeying. Against such a background, what did a couple of verses matter?

Jesus Christ hadn't always been meek and mild, either. Hadn't He driven the money-changers from the Temple? They hadn't been doing anything so very wrong. Trivial infractions, Captain Schneider would have called their business, and thought Jesus should have left it alone.

McSweeney flipped back a few pages in the Book of Matthew and grunted in satisfaction. "Chapter 5, verse 29," he murmured: And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

He looked at the men in his squad. None of them dared meet his eye. Would any have the nerve to shoot him under cover of battle? He shook his head. He didn't believe it, not for a moment. Would they leave him in the lurch when he attacked? Maybe they would. His glance flicked to the flamethrower. Anyone who carried one of those infernal devices was on his own anyhow.

"Justice," McSweeney said, and gave a sharp nod. Only the wicked feared justice, and with reason, for they deserved chastisement. Thus the United States would chastise their seceded brethren, and chastise as well the wicked foreigners who had made secession possible.

God wills it, McSweeney thought, for all the world like a Crusader before the walls of Jerusalem. And Jerusalem would fall. He would make it fall, and break anyone and anything standing in the way.

Achilles smiled at Cinci

His wife smiled back, wanly. "Why shouldn't he be happy? He can sleep as long as he wants, an' he can wake up whenever he please. An' he's still too little to know his ma can't do likewise."

"I heard him there in the middle of the night," Cinci

"He was happy," she said, rolling her eyes, which were still streaked with red. "He was so happy, he wanted to play. He didn't want to go back to bed, not for nothin' he didn't. Did you?" She poked Achilles in the ribs. He thought that was the fu

No sooner had Cinci

Cinci

"He jus' like his father, then," Cinci

"Does it?" Cinci

"Gettin' pretty la-de-da, ain't you?" his mother said. "Trolley here, trolley there, like you got all the money is to have. Pretty soon you gwine buy youself a motorcar, ain't that right?"

"Wish it was," Cinci

The rain began just before he got to the trolley stop, which wasn't particularly close to his house. One stop served the entire Negro district near the Licking River. He remembered the complaints he'd heard about routing the track even so close to his part of town.

When the trolley car rattled up, he threw his nickel into the fare box and sat down in the back. The Yankees hadn't changed the rules about that sort of thing; they had rules of their own, not quite so strict as those of the Confederacy but not tempered by intimate acquaintance, either. He sighed. If your skin was dark, you had trouble finding a fair shake anywhere.

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. Rain started coming down in sheets. The trolley filled up in a hurry, as people who usually would have walked to work decided against it today. Whites started moving back into the Negro section. One by one, Cinci