The Victorious opposition

A guard trotted up to him, heavy belly bouncing above his belt. "Telephone call for you, boss," the man said. He hadn't missed any meals. None of the guards had. Neither had Pinkard himself.

"Thanks, Eddie," he said, though he didn't know why he was thanking the guard. Telephone calls weren't likely to be good news. He tramped back to the office and picked up the phone. "Pinkard speaking."

"Hello, Pinkard." The clicks and pops on the line said it was a longdistance call. "This is Ferdinand Koenig, calling from Richmond."

"Yes, sir!" The attorney general was Jake Featherston's right-hand man. "Freedom!"

"Freedom! I've heard you aren't happy because you haven't been getting enough advance notice of prisoner shipments," Koenig said, as if he'd just finished listening to Jeff bitching to Mercer Scott.

"Uh, yes, sir. That's true," Jeff said. Meanwhile, he was thinking, Goddammit, some son of a bitch here is telling stories about me back in Richmond. Have to find out who the bastard is. He didn't suppose he should have been surprised that Koenig-as attorney general or as Freedom Party big wig?- had spies in Camp Dependable. All the same, he wanted to be rid of them.

The attorney general didn't sound too angry as he said, "Don't suppose I can blame you for that. Here's your news then: you've got about fifteen hundred niggers-maybe two thousand-heading your way. They ought to be there in three, four days."

"Jesus Christ!" It wasn't a scream, but it came close. Pinkard went on, "Sir, no way in hell this camp will hold that many more people. We're overflowing already."

"That's why I'm telling you now." Koenig spoke with what sounded like exaggerated patience. "You have the time to get ready for those black bastards."

"I don't suppose we'll get the rations we need to feed 'em," Jeff said. Only silence answered him. He hadn't really expected anything else. Reproachfully, he continued, "Sir, you know I'm a good Party man. I don't mean any disrespect or anything like that. But what the hell am I supposed to do to get my camp ready for a shipment that big?"

"Whatever you have to do." Ferdinand Koenig paused. Pinkard didn't think he would say anything more, but he did, repeating, "Whatever you have to do. Is that plain enough, or do I have to draw you a picture? I'd better not have to draw you a picture. I heard you were a pretty smart fellow."

Maybe he had just drawn a picture. "Jesus Christ!" Jeff said again, not much liking what he thought he saw. "You mean-?"

Koenig cut him off. "Whatever you have to do," he said for the third time. "You can take care of it, or I'll find somebody else who will. Your choice, Pinkard. Which would you rather?"

Jeff thought it over. It didn't take long. He was a good Party man. The Party mattered more to him than anything else. The ruins of his marriage proved that. And, where Emily had screwed around, the Party had always been faithful. Without it, God only knew what he would have done when he lost his job at the Sloss Works. Didn't loyalty demand loyalty in return? "I'll take care of it, Mr. Attorney General. Don't you worry about a thing."

"I wasn't worried," Koenig said. "Like I told you, if you didn't, somebody else would. But I'm glad it's you. I know you've put in a lot of time for us. And I know you'll do a good job here, too. You won't screw it up and leave a bunch of loose ends or anything like that." You'd better not, was what he meant.

"Hell, no," Jeff said quickly. "When I do somethin', I do it right and proper."

"Good," Koenig said, and the line went dead.

Pinkard stared at the telephone for close to half a minute. "Fuck," he muttered, and finally hung it up. He trudged out of the office.

"What's up?" Mercer Scott called to him.

Are you the spy? I wouldn't be surprised. I've run my mouth around you. Well, no more, goddammit. But Scott had to know about this. Jeff said, "In three or four days, we're getting another fifteen hundred, two thousand niggers."

Scott stared. "Holy shit!" he said. "They can't do that! This place won't hold 'em."

"Oh, yes, it will," Pinkard said.

"How?" Scott demanded. "You were just now telling me it wouldn't hold the niggers we've got, and you were right. You know damn well you were right."

"I'll tell you how." And Pinkard did.

"Holy shit," Scott said again, this time in an altogether different tone of voice. "You sure you know what you're talking about? You sure you know what you're doing?" Under other circumstances, the questions would have infuriated Jeff. Not now.

He nodded uneasily. "I know, all right. Get the guards we need-you'll know the ones we can count on. Then pull out the niggers."

"All at once?" Scott asked.

After a moment, Jeff shook his head. "No. That'd be asking for trouble. Take out a couple hundred. Less chance of anything going wrong."

"Yeah." The guard chief eyed him. "How come I'm the lucky one? What are you go

Had things been different, that would have infuriated Jeff, too. The way things were, Mercer Scott had the right to ask. Pinkard shook his head. "You stay here and get the next bunch ready. I'm going out with the first ones, and I won't come back till the job's done."

"All right." Scott nodded. "That's fair. I can't tell you it ain't." He stuck out his hand. Pinkard shook it. He was grateful for any sort of reassurance he could get.

Along with fifteen guards, he led two hundred Negroes away from Camp Dependable. The black men came willingly enough. As far as they knew, it was just another work detail. When they'd gone two or three miles from the camp, he ordered them to dig a long, deep trench. "This here ain't nothing but a waste o' time," one of them said. But he was only complaining, the way people did when they had to do work they didn't care for.

Pinkard didn't argue with him. When the ditch was dug, he ordered the Negroes to lie down in it. That drew more complaints. "You gots to put us on top of each other?" a man said. "We ain't no goddamn fairies."

The guards stepped up onto a parapet made from the dirt the Negroes had dug out. Even when they aimed their submachine guns at the men in the trench, the blacks didn't seem to believe what was happening. This is my camp, Jeff thought miserably. I'm responsible for what goes on here. He nodded to the guards. The order was his to give, and he gave it: "Fire!"

They did. As soon as they started shooting, it was as if the ground convulsed. The submachine guns roared and stuttered and spat flame. The guards slapped in magazine after magazine. Pinkard was appalled at how much ammunition his men needed to kill the prisoners. The stenches of blood and shit filled the humid air. At last, the screaming stopped. Only the groans of the dying were left.

More than one guard vomited into the trench. Jeff felt like heaving up his guts, too, but sternly refrained. "Scrape dirt over 'em," he told the guards. "We've got more work to do." The guards grumbled, but not too much. They seemed too stu

And it got harder after that. The Negroes at the camp had to have understood what was going on when the guards came back and the men they'd been guarding didn't. But Mercer Scott was no fool. The first gang of blacks had gone off willingly enough, yes. He made sure the next bunch were shackled. That way, nobody tried to run off into the woods and swamp.

Over the course of the next three days, Pinkard reduced the population of Camp Dependable by two thousand men. That was how he referred to it in his reports. That was how he tried to think about it, too. If he thought about reducing population, he didn't have to dwell on shooting helpless prisoners.

A few of the guards were exhilarated after the job was done. They were the ones who thought Negroes had it coming to them. Most of the men were very subdued, though. They didn't mind jailing blacks or starving them. Shooting them in cold blood seemed to be something else again.