XX

Y ou! Pinkard!" After Jeff Pinkard got convicted in the Yankees' military court-kangaroo court, he thought of it still-U.S. personnel replaced all the Texans at the Houston jail. He hated those sharp, harsh, quick accents.

"Yeah?" he said. "What is it?"

"Get up," the guard told him. "You got visitors."

It was only a week till they hanged him. "Yeah?" he said again, heaving his bulk off the cot. "Visitors?" That roused his curiosity. The only person he'd seen lately was Jonathan Moss, here to tell him another appeal had failed. He had none left-the President of the USA and the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to spare him. "Who?"

"You'll find out when you get there, won't you?" The guard unlocked his cell. Other men in green-gray stood by with submachine guns at the ready. If Jeff got cute, he'd die a week early, that was all. And nobody'll miss me, either, he thought miserably. When you were going to hang in a week, self-pity came easy.

He went down the hall in front of the guards. Was getting shot a quicker, cleaner way to go than the rope? He didn't want to go at all, dammit. As far as he was concerned, he hadn't done anything to deserve killing.

When he got to the visiting room, he stopped in his tracks. There on the other side of the wire were Edith and Willie and Frank, and little Raymond in his wife's arms. All of them except Raymond started to cry when they saw him.

"Aww," Jeff said, and then, "You shouldn't have come."

"We would've done it more, Papa Jeff," Willie said, "only the damnyankees wouldn't let us for a long time."

"We're here now," Edith said. "We love you, Jeff."

"Yeah, well, I love y'all, too," Jeff said. "And a whole fat lot of good it's gonna do anybody."

He went up to the mesh that separated him from his family. He pressed his hands against it as hard as he could. They did the same thing on the other side. Try as he would, he couldn't quite touch them.

"It's not right, Papa Jeff," Frank said. "They got no business messin' with you. It was only niggers, for heaven's sake."

"Well, you know that, and I know that, and everybody down here knows that, too," Jeff answered. "Only trouble is, the Yankees don't know it, and they're the ones who count."

"Can't anybody do anything?" Edith asked.

"Doesn't look like it. Oh, people could do something, but nobody wants to. What do you expect? They're Yankees."

His wife started crying harder. "It's not fair. It's not right. Just on account of they won the damn war…What am I gonna do without you, Jeff?"

"You'll do fine," Jeff said. "You know you will." What am I gonna do without me? he wondered. That, unfortunately, had no good answer. He was going to die, was what he was going to do. "And don't you worry none about me. I'll be up in heaven with God and the angels and stuff."

He didn't really believe in heaven, not with halos and harps and white robes. Playing the harp all day got old fast, anyway. But Edith was more religious than he was. If he could make her feel better, he would.

She went on crying, though, which made Willie and Frank snuffle more, too. "I don't want to lose you!"

"I don't want it to happen, either, but I don't have a whole lot to say about it," he replied.

"You've got a baby. You've got me. You've got my boys, who you raised like you were their daddy," Edith said.

All of that was true. It cut no ice with anybody up in Yankeeland. The Yankees went on and on about all the Negroes he'd killed. As if they'd cared about those Negroes alive! They sure hadn't wanted them going up to the USA. From what he heard, they still didn't want Negroes from the CSA going up to the USA.

They were going to hang him anyhow. They could, and they would.

A guard came in on the other side, the free side. "Time's up," he said.

"We love you, Jeff!" Edith said through her tears. She carried Raymond out. The boys were still crying, too.

"Come on, Pinkard," said a guard on Jeff 's side of the visiting room. "Back to the cell you go."

Back he went. The cell was familiar. Nothing bad would happen to him while he was in it. Pretty soon, though, they'd take him out one last time. He wouldn't be going back after that. Well, what else did one last time mean?

Two days later, he had another visitor: Jonathan Moss again. "Thought you gave up on me," he said through the damned unyielding mesh.

"I don't know what else I can do for you," Moss said. "I wish I did. I haven't got a hacksaw blade on me or anything. Even if I did, they would have found it when they searched me."

"Yeah," Pinkard said. "So-no reprieve from the governor. Hell, no governor. Son of a bitch thinks he's President of Texas now. No reprieve from the President of the USA. No reprieve from the assholes on the Yankee Supreme Court. So what else is there?"

"Well, you're not the only one they're coming down on, if that makes you feel any better," Jonathan Moss replied.

"You mean, like misery loves company?" Jeff shrugged. "I'd love it if I didn't have the misery. But yeah, go ahead-tell me about the others. I don't have a wireless set, and they don't give me papers, so I don't know jack shit about what's going on out there."

"They hanged Ferdinand Koenig and Saul Goldman yesterday."

"Goddamn shame," Pinkard said. "They were good men, both of 'em. Confederate patriots. Why else would you Yankees hang people?"

"For murdering millions? For telling lies about it in papers and magazines and on the wireless?" Moss suggested.

"We didn't get rid of anybody who didn't have it coming," Jeff said stubbornly. "And like your side didn't tell any lies to your people during the war. Yeah, sure."

The military attorney sighed. "We didn't tell lies about things like that. We didn't do things like that-not to Negroes, not to Jews, not to anybody."

He undercut what Jeff would have said next: that the USA didn't have many Negroes to get rid of. The United States were crawling with Jews. Everybody knew that. Instead, he said, "What other kind of good news have you got for me?"

"If it makes you feel any better, you aren't the only camp commandant and guard chief to get condemned," Moss told him. "Vern Green goes right with you here. And…you knew Mercer Scott back in Louisiana, right?"

"Yeah." Pinkard scowled at him. "You know what? It doesn't make me feel one goddamn bit better."

"I'm sorry. If there were anything else I could try, I'd try it. If you have any ideas, sing out."

Jeff shook his head. "What's the use? Nobody in the USA cares. Nobody in the USA understands. We did what we had to do, that's all."

"'It looked like a good idea at the time.'" Moss sounded like somebody quoting something. Then he sighed. "That isn't enough to do you any good, either."

"Didn't reckon it would be," Jeff said. "Go on, then. You tried. I said that before, I expect. Won't be long now."

In some ways the days till the hanging crawled past. In others, they flew. The last days of his life, and he was stuck in a cell by himself. Not the way he would have wanted things to turn out, but what did that have to do with anything? He asked the guards for a copy of Over Open Sights.

"Wouldn't you rather have a Bible?" one of them said.

"If I wanted a Bible, don't you reckon I would've told you so?" Jeff snapped.

A little to his surprise, they brought him Jake Featherston's book. He paged through it. Everything in there made such good sense. A damn shame it hadn't worked out for real. But the Negroes in the CSA were gone, or most of them were, and the damnyankees couldn't change that even if they did win the war.

The night before they were going to hang him, the guards asked what he wanted for supper. "Fried chicken and fried potatoes and a bottle of beer," he answered. They gave it to him, except the beer came in a tin cup. He ate with good appetite. He slept…some, anyhow.