The Victorious opposition

"Du

"How?" Bathsheba asked, and he didn't have a good answer for her. Passbooks were checked these days as they'd never been before the war. Any black without a good reason for being where he was-and without the papers to back up that reason-was in trouble. People talked about camps. No one knew much about them, though; they were easy to get into, much harder to leave.

Even so, he said, "Better we takes de chance. They catches me…" He didn't go on. If they caught him and realized who he was, he wouldn't last ten minutes. No trial. No procedure. They'd just shoot him.

Bathsheba was still staring at him. His wife clucked sadly, a sound of reproach: self-reproach, he realized when she said, "I shoulda pussected what you was." He needed a heartbeat or two to figure out that she meant suspected. She went on, "If you was a Red, you had to hide out. And you was smart, gettin' out o' the state where you was at."

"I weren't no Red, not down deep, not for real an' for true," Scipio said. "But dey suck me in. I don't go 'long wid dey, dey shoots me jus' like de buckra shoots me." That was the truth. Cassius and Cherry and the rest of the Reds on the Marshlands plantation had been in deadly earnest. Confidence in their doctrine had sustained them-till rifles and what little else they got from the USA ran up against the whole panoply of modern war, and till they discovered their oppressors wouldn't vanish simply because they were called reactionaries.

Bathsheba's mind went in a different direction. Suddenly, she said, "I bet Xerxes ain't even your right name."

"Is now. Has been fo' years."

"What your mama call you?"

"Scipio," he said, and wondered how long it had been since he'd spoken his own name. More than twenty years; he was sure of that.

"Scipio." Bathsheba tasted it, then slowly shook her head. "Reckon I like Xerxes better. I's used to it." She sent him an anxious look. "You ain't mad?"

"Do Jesus, no!" he exclaimed. "You go an' forget you ever hear de other one. Dat name get around, de buckra after we fo' sure. Dey still remembers me in South Carolina." Was that pride in his voice? After all these years, after all that terror, after being sure at the time that he was walking into a disaster (and after proving righter than even he'd imagined), was that pride? God help him, it was.

His wife gave him a kiss. "Good." She was proud of him, too, proud of him for what had to be the stupidest thing he'd ever done in his life. Madness. It had to be madness. There was no sensible explanation for it. But no sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Bathsheba said, "Every once in a while-Lord, more'n every once in a while-them white folks deserves a whack in the chops, they truly does."

And that did make sense. When things were bad, you tried your best to make them better. How didn't matter much. "Let's go to bed," he said.

"How you mean dat?" Bathsheba asked.

Now he kissed her. "However you wants, sweetheart."

He went up to the Huntsman's Lodge the next day with a certain amount of apprehension. He checked the autos parked near the restaurant with special care. None of them looked as if it belonged to either the police or Freedom Party goons. He had to go to work. If he didn't, he wouldn't eat, and neither would his family. In he went.

Jerry Dover met him just inside the door. "Go home," the manager said bluntly. "Get the hell out of here. You're still sick. You'll be sick another couple of days, too."

Scipio blinked. "What you say?"

"Go home," Dover repeated. "Damn Freedom Party woman asking all kinds of questions about you."

Ice congealed in Scipio's belly. He might have known A

"I told her you ain't who she thinks you are. I told her you been working here since 1911," Jerry Dover answered. His eyes twinkled.

"God bless you, Mistuh Dover, but when she catch you in de lie-"

"She ain't go

"How you do dat?" Now Scipio was all at sea.

Still gri

That made a perfect thumbnail sketch of the A

"Go home," Jerry Dover repeated once more. "She may come back and try to raise some more trouble for you. I don't want that. I need you here too bad. And don't get your bowels in an uproar. I'll pay your wages."

Home Scipio went, in a happy daze. Safe-really safe-from A

"I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth," the president of the Confederate States said into the microphone as soon as the engineer behind the glass wall gave him the high sign. "And the truth is, folks, that Kentucky is ours again and Texas is whole again and our country is a long way back towards being what it's supposed to be again.

"The people spoke, and the Yankees had to listen. The people said they were sick and tired of being stuck in the USA. They came back where they belonged. The Stars and Bars are flying in Lubbock and San Antonio and Frankfort and Louisville. We took back what was ours, because that was how the people wanted it."

He didn't say anything about losing the plebiscite in Sequoyah. The papers and the wireless in the CSA hadn't said much about it, either. People got the news he wanted them to have, slanted the way he wanted it to go. Oh, his coverage wasn't perfect. By the nature of things, it couldn't be. Too many people could also pick up wireless stations from across the U.S. border. But not a lot of them did. Confederates and Yankees had disliked and distrusted one another for a long time now.

"Here and there along the border, the Yankees are still holding on to what's ours: in Sonora, in Arizona, in Arkansas, and right here in Virginia," Jake continued. "Al Smith tried to make me promise I wouldn't talk about those things if we had the elections last month, but I don't call that an honest kind of promise. No, sir, folks, I don't call it honest at all, not even a little bit. He was saying, 'I'll give you back some of what's yours if you forget about the rest of what's yours.' Now you tell me, friends-is that fair? Is that right?"

Bang! He slammed his fist down on the table, a favorite trick of his. "I tell you it's not fair! I tell you it's not right! And I tell you that the Confederate States of America deserve to be whole again! The CSA will be whole again! This here that we've done now is only the begi