Part 19 (2/2)

A few days later, Moss put the question he'd asked Cantarella to Colonel Summers. The senior officer looked at him as if he'd suddenly started spouting Cherokee. ”Trust a bunch of raggedy-a.s.s n.i.g.g.e.rs? You must be kidding, Major.” But for his accent, he sounded like a Confederate himself.

With such patience as he could muster, Moss asked, ”Do you know anybody who hates Jake Featherston more-or who has better reason to?”

Summers ignored that. ”Besides, Major, we've got no way to get in touch with the spooks.” He sounded like a man anxious to close off a subject he found distasteful. He might have been a maiden lady forced into talking about the facts of life.

Moss didn't laugh in his face, which proved military discipline still held. He did say, ”Sir, we have all kinds of deals cooking that stretch farther than the camp. Spread a few dollars around and you can do d.a.m.n near anything.”

”Not this.” Summers spoke as if from On High. ”Not this, by G.o.d. No Confederate guard is going to go out and get hold of the n.i.g.g.e.rs for us. That'd be like asking them to cut their own throats.”

He had a point-of sorts. ”There are bound to be ways if we look for them,” Moss persisted. ”We haven't even tried.”

”Once we're outside the barbed wire, Major, you may put your faith in n.i.g.g.e.rs or Christian Science or any other d.a.m.nfool thing your heart desires,” Colonel Summers said. ”Until then, I make the decisions, and I have made this one. Is that clear enough for you, or shall I be more explicit?”

”You are very clear . . . sir.” Moss turned the t.i.tle of respect into one of reproach.

Summers heard the reproach and went red. ”Will that be all, Major?” he asked in a voice like ice.

”I suppose so,” Moss answered bitterly. ”After all, we're not going anywhere, are we?”

”Oh, for Christ's sake!” Jefferson Pinkard slammed down the telephone and scowled at it as if it were a rattlesnake. ”Son of a b.i.t.c.h!” he added for good measure. He slammed a fist down on his desk. His coffee mug and the gooseneck lamp there jumped. He had to grab the lamp to keep it from toppling over.

He'd hated calls from Richmond ever since he started running camps. He had good reason for hating them, too. Richmond had a habit of wanting miracles, and of wanting them yesterday.

Jeff had already given them one-a more efficient, more secure way of disposing of excess Negroes than they'd ever had before. Now that wasn't good enough for them anymore. He had to come up with something better yet. He hoped the other people who were running camps had got the same call. Let one of them have a brainstorm for a change!

”Fat chance,” he muttered. Some of those people could blow their brains out if they sneezed, G.o.ddammit.

He knew the question was ridiculous and unfair. That didn't stop him from worrying at it like a dog worrying at a bone that was plumb out of meat. How could could you get rid of more spooks faster than with this fleet of special trucks? you get rid of more spooks faster than with this fleet of special trucks?

Oh, you could use more trucks, but that wasn't the answer Richmond wanted to hear. Richmond wanted something different, something spiffy, something where you could wave a hand and all of a sudden a thousand Negroes weren't there anymore.

And Richmond needed something like that, too. Pinkard couldn't very well deny it. All he had to do was look across the railroad tracks at the new women's half of the camp. Towns were getting their colored districts emptied out one after another. The blacks came into places like Camp Determination. They came in, and they didn't come out again-not alive, anyway.

How many n.i.g.g.e.rs were there in the Confederate States? How many could the camps dispose of every day? How long would the CSA need to start really cutting into their numbers?

”Gotta be done,” Jeff said heavily, as if someone had denied it. ”It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.” Every now and then, the sheer amount of work he had to do tempted him toward self-pity.

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. He could look out at the camp from the window-no subst.i.tute for prowling through it, but sometimes a fast way to spot trouble before it got out of hand. Barbed wire and machine-gun towers separated the administrative block from the seething misery in the main compound. At the moment, a long line of blacks was snaking forward, the skinny men often eager to board the trucks that would, they thought, take them to another camp. In fact, their journey would be strictly one-way. That they didn't know it, was one of the beauties of the scheme, for their ignorance kept them docile.

Pinkard shook his head. How could you come up with anything better than this? Oh, sure, it used a lot of trucks, but so what? It did the job, didn't it? Some people were just never satisfied, that was all.

He stuck his head into the chief guard's office. Vern Green was second in command here, and needed to know where Jeff was when he wasn't at the camp. ”I'm going into town for a little while,” Pinkard told him. ”Anything goes wrong, send somebody after me.”

”Will do, boss.” Green knew Jeff wouldn't be anywhere but three or four places in Snyder, one of them far more likely than any of the other. Finding him wouldn't be hard. Green couldn't help adding, ”Things are smooth, though.”

”Yeah, I know. They're smooth now, anyways,” Pinkard said. ”But just in case, I mean.”

”Sure, sure.” Vernon Green nodded. He smiled. He was no less ambitious than Mercer Scott had been back in Louisiana. Like Scott, Green undoubtedly reported back to someone in Richmond about how Jeff did his job. But he wasn't so obnoxious about it. Scott had had a drill sergeant's manner and a face like a boot. Green smiled a lot of the time, whether there was anything to smile about or not. He caught his flies with honey, not vinegar. He caught a lot of them, however he did it, and that was what a second-in-command was for.

As camp commandant, Pinkard had a motorcar laid on. He could have had a driver, too, but he didn't want one. He could drive himself just fine. Guards saluted as he left the camp. He would have to go through all the boring formalities getting back in. He shrugged. He would have had the guards' heads if they were anything but careful about letting people into Camp Determination.

Snyder, Texas, was a nice little town of perhaps three thousand people. Before the camp went up, business there had centered on cattle and on ginning the cotton grown in the surrounding countryside and making cottonseed cake that the cattle ate. The influx of guards had everybody in the four-street central business district smiling. By local standards, they made good money, and they weren't shy about spending it. And new houses were going up, because a lot of the guards were married men, and didn't want to live right by the camp.

Whoever'd named the roads in Snyder had no imagination at all. The ones that ran east-west were numbered streets. The ones that ran north-south were avenues, identified by letter. He pulled up in front of a house on Thirty-first Street near Avenue Q, in the southern part of town. Two boys were wrestling on the threadbare lawn in front of the house. They broke off when he got out of the motorcar.

”Papa Jeff!” they yelled. ”It's Papa Jeff!” They ran up to him and tried out a couple of tackles that would have drawn flags on any football field in the CSA or USA. Fortunately, they were still too little to flatten him.

He ruffled their hair. He liked Chick Blades' sons. He liked Chick Blades' widow even more. ”Easy, there,” he told the kids, trying to pry them loose from his legs without damaging them. It wasn't easy; they clung like limpets. ”Is your mama home?” he asked them.

That did the trick better than any wrestling hold. ”She sure is,” they said together, and dashed toward the house yelling, ”Ma! Ma! Papa Jeff's here!” If the racket wasn't enough to wake the dead, it would have made them turn over in their graves a couple of times.

Edith Blades came out on the front porch. She was a nice-looking blond woman in her early thirties. Each time Jeff saw her, she seemed a little less ravaged by her husband's suicide. Time did heal wounds. Jeff had got over the disastrous end of his first marriage to the point where he was game to try it again. And so was Edith, though she wouldn't tie the knot till after the first anniversary of Chick Blades' death. They were getting there.

”h.e.l.lo, Jeff. Good to see you,” she said as he walked up to the porch. ”How are things?”

”Things are . . .” He paused. ”Well, they could be better.”

”Come in and tell me about it,” she said, and then, ”Boys, go on and play. Papa Jeff will be with you in a little bit.”

They made disappointed noises, but they didn't argue too much. They were good boys, well-behaved boys. She'd done a fine job with them, before Chick died and afterwards. Jeff admired that. He also admired the way she listened to him. He'd never known that with another woman-certainly not with his first wife. Animal heat had held him and Emily together-and then broken them apart.

”Set yourself down,” Edith said when she and Jeff went back into the living room.

”In a second.” He kissed her. She let him do that. In fact, she responded eagerly. Whenever he tried for more than a kiss, though, she told him they had to wait. That didn't make him angry. He thought the more of her for being able to say no. Emily hadn't, with him or with his best friend. But he didn't want to remember Emily. ”How you doin' here?” he asked. ”You got everything you need?”

”Sure do,” Edith answered. ”And I'm not sorry to be out of Alexandria, out of that house, and there's the Lord's truth.”

”I do believe it.” Jeff wouldn't have wanted to live in a house where somebody'd committed suicide. Actually, Chick had done it in his auto, but still. . . . ”What do you think of Texas?”

”There's so much of it, and it's so big and flat,” Edith answered. ”Seemed like we were on the train forever, and that was just getting most of the way across one state. People act nice enough.” She held up a hand. ”But tell me what's gone wrong at the camp.”

Jeff did. The only thing he didn't tell her was that Chick's suicide with auto exhaust had given him the idea for the trucks that used their fumes to kill off Negroes. He would never say a word about that, not even if he was on fire. There was such a thing as talking too d.a.m.n much.

When he finished, Edith was suitably indignant for him. ”They've got their nerve,” she said. ”After everything you've done cleaning up the colored problem for them, then they expect more more? They should get down on their knees and thank G.o.d they've got a good man like you, Jeff.”

”Ha! Those . . . people in Richmond don't notice anybody but their own selves,” Jeff said. Only belatedly, after venting his spleen, did he notice the size of the compliment she'd paid him. ”Thank you, darlin'. You say sweet things.”

”You're my sweetheart,” Edith said, her voice dead serious. ”If I don't stick up for you, who's going to?”

Instead of answering with words, he kissed her again. She pressed herself against him. But when, ever optimistic, he let his hand fall on her thigh as if by accident, she knocked it away. He didn't get mad-he laughed. ”You're somethin'.”

”So are you.” Edith was laughing, too. Even if she was, he remained sure she'd keep right on holding him at bay till their wedding night. It wasn't as if she were a virgin-or she could have doubled up on Mary-but she was a respectable woman, and she acted like one.

For a moment, Jeff thought the deep thrumming he heard was the pounding of the blood in his veins. Then he realized it was outside himself. No sooner had he realized that than Edith's kids ran in, yelling, ”Ma! Papa Jeff! There's a million airplanes up in the sky! Come look! Quick!”

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