Breakthroughs

At last, the cargo bay in his truck was full. Whistling under his breath, he cranked the White’s engine to loud, flatulent life. When it was going, he jumped into the cab and fed it more gas. Other trucks rumbled awake, too. With Lieutenant Straubing in the lead, they headed south.

More of the road down to Te

A man in the trucking business-a man like Cinci

He wasn’t going to hold his breath hoping he would get it. Laws against blacks weren’t so tough as they were in the CSA, though that varied from state to state. What didn’t vary was that most whites in the USA would have been just as well pleased if they could have readmitted Kentucky without its Negroes.

He rolled past a truck by the side of the road, the driver, a black man, out there with a jack and a pump and a patch, repairing the puncture. Cinci

Parts of the country were very much as they had been before the war began: prosperous farmlands raising wheat and corn and tobacco and horses. More, though, looked as if a mad devil had lost his temper and spent twenty years kicking it to pieces. That wasn’t even so far wrong, except that war had done the job faster than any devil could have managed.

Near Covington, almost three years had passed since U.S. forces overran the countryside. Grass had grown over trenches; rain had softened their outlines; some of the rubble and wrecked buildings had been cleared away; some had even been rebuilt. The farther south Cinci

Cinci

He also steered the truck past columns of men coming away from the front. A few of them, a very few, showed the same high spirits as the soldiers who were replacing them. Most simply trudged along toward the north, putting one foot in front of the other, their faces and no doubt their minds far away. They’d seen so much hell, they didn’t yet realize they’d escaped it-or perhaps they’d brought it with them.

They’d converted the White from acetylene lamps to electric ones not too long before; Cinci

At last, about nine o’clock, they pulled into the supply depot. “We expected you an hour ago,” complained an officer with a quartermaster’s badge: crossed sword and key over a wheel on which perched an eagle. Cinci

“Sorry, sir,” Lieutenant Straubing said. “We made the best time we could.” He had to give a soft answer: the other man outranked him.

“Likely story,” the quartermaster sniffed. “Well, you’re here now, so we’ll unload you.” He made it sound as if he were doing the truck convoy an enormous favor.

“That’s good, sir,” Straubing said equably. “I can certainly see you’ve been ready for us this past hour.”

In the cab of his truck, Cinci

Lieutenant Straubing, having got what he wanted, turned into the soul of helpfulness, offering all sorts of suggestions so the soldiers could do the job quicker and more efficiently. He seemed to be everywhere at once. When he passed Cinci

Straubing used the quartermaster’s embarrassment to get him to order his men to run up tents in which the drivers from the truck convoy could spend the night. More and more trucks kept rattling into the depot, as those that had had punctures or breakdowns on the road down from Covington caught up with the rest.

Straubing also arranged for bedrolls and hot meals for the men in his charge. Spooning up greasy stew full of meat that might have come from an elderly cow or a fairly tender mule, Herk said, “The lieutenant, he looks out for his people, no two ways about it.”

“He does that,” Cinci

Tom Ke

His life probably would have been simpler if he had. Too late to worry about that, though. Too late to worry about Tom Ke

“Come on, boys-eat up and get some sleep,” Straubing called, like a father telling a houseful of children what to do. “We’re heading back to Covington before it gets light; they’ll need us again soon as we can be there. I told you before, the war’s not done till the Rebs roll over and play dead along the whole line.”

The men in the convoy obeyed as children would obey their father, too. Cinci