They asked him what he wanted once more at breakfast time. "Bacon and eggs and grits," he told them, and he got that, too. He cleaned his plate again, and poured down the coffee that came with the food.

"Want a preacher?" a guard asked.

Pinkard shook his head. "Nah. What for? I've got a clean conscience. If you don't, you need a preacher worse'n I do."

They cuffed his hands behind him and led him out to the prison yard. They'd run up a gallows there; he'd listened to the carpentry in his cell. Now he saw it was a gallows built for two. Another party of U.S. guards led Vern Green out from a different part of the jail.

Vern looked like hell. His nerve must have failed him at last. He gave Jeff a forlorn nod. "How come you ain't about to piss yourself like me?"

"What's the use?" Jeff answered. "I'd beg if I thought it'd do any good, but it won't. So I'll go out the best way I know how. Why give these assholes the satisfaction of watching me blubber?"

Reporters watched from a distance. Guards made sure they stayed back. Otherwise, they would have got up to the condemned men and yelled questions in their faces. Jeff figured Yankee reporters had to be even worse than their Confederate counterparts, and the Confederates were pretty bad.

A guard had to help Vern Green up the stairs to the platform. Jeff made it under his own power. His knees were knocking, but he didn't let it show. Pride was the last thing he had left. And much good it does me, too, he thought.

Along with more guards and the hangman, a minister waited up there. "Will you pray with me?" he asked Jeff.

"No." Jeff shook his head. "I made it this far on my own. I'll go out the same way."

Vern talked with the preacher. They went through the Twenty-third Psalm together. When they finished, Vern said, "I'm still scared."

"No one can blame you for that," the minister said.

A guard held out a pack of cigarettes to Jeff. "Thanks," he said. "You'll have to take it out for me."

"I will," the guard said. The smoke was a Raleigh, so it tasted good. Vern also smoked one. The guards let them finish, then walked them onto the traps. The hangman came over and set the rope around Jeff 's neck. Then he put a burlap bag over Jeff 's head.

"Make it quick if you can," Jeff said. The bag was white, not black. He could still see light and shadow through it. His heart pounded now-every beat might be the last.

"I'm doing my best," the hangman answered. His footsteps moved away, but not far. They've got no right, damn them, Jeff thought. They've-A lever clacked.

The trap dropped.

S tuck in fucking Alabama," Armstrong Grimes grumbled. "What could be worse than this?"

Squidface was cleaning his captured automatic Tredegar. He looked up from the work. "Well, you could be in hell," he said.

"Who says I'm not?" Armstrong said. "It's a godforsaken miserable place, and I can't get out of it. If that's not hell, what do you call it?"

"Pittsburgh," Squidface answered, which jerked a laugh out of Armstrong. After guiding an oily rag through the Tredegar's barrel with a cleaning rod, Squidface went on, "If you're gonna get screwed any which way, lay back and enjoy it, you know?"

"Tell me another one," Armstrong said. "Army chow. The people fucking hate us. We're not careful, we get scragged. Even the broads are scared of us now. If they get friendly, they end up dead. And we don't take hostages for that, so there's nothing to hold the locals back."

"Army chow's not so bad," Squidface said. "There's always enough of it nowadays, anyhow. Back before I went in, I couldn't always count on three squares." He was skinny enough to make that easy to believe.

But Armstrong was in the mood to bitch, and he wasn't about to let anybody stop him. "You're just saying that 'cause you're turning into a lifer."

"Yeah? So? You oughta do the same," Squidface answered. "God knows how long you're gonna stay stuck here. You make a pretty good soldier, even if you are a big target. Why not leave the uniform on? You go back to Civvy Street, you'll end up bored outa your skull all the goddamn time."

"I'd sooner be bored than bore-sighted," Armstrong said.

Squidface ignored the joke. That pissed Armstrong off, because he thought it was better than most of the ones he made. But, as if he hadn't spoken, the PFC continued, "Besides, you can't tell me you aren't getting any down here. Up in the USA, the girls'll slap your face if you try and cop a feel. You want to fuck, you gotta get married."

"There's still whorehouses in the USA," Armstrong said.

"Yeah? So?" Squidface said again.

He left it right there. Armstrong grunted. With a whore, it was nothing but a business deal. Some of the gals down here were looking for love. They wanted to think they mattered to you, so you mattered to them. They weren't just going through the motions. That did make it better.

All the same…"You figure because you want to stay in, everybody ought to want to stay in."

"My ass," Squidface retorted. "Plenty of the cocksuckers in this company, I wish they'd get the fuck out. Raw recruits who don't know their nuts from Wednesday'd be better. But you're all right. You could do it. You might even end up an officer."

"Christ! What're you smoking?" Armstrong laughed out loud. "Whatever it is, I want some."

"I'm serious, man," Squidface said. "Me, I'm a noncom. It's what I'm made for. You've got more of the 'Yes, sir!' they like when they promote people."

"Oh, man, give me a fucking break," Armstrong said.

"You do," Squidface insisted. "Shit, you're Armstrong. You never got a gross nickname hung on you or nothin'."

"That's 'cause I've got a gross name instead," Armstrong said. "Hot damn."

"All the same." Squidface wasn't about to let up. "I can see the newspaper story now. It's fucking 1975, and Colonel Armstrong Grimes gets a Medal of Honor for leading the regiment that takes Paris away from the Germans."

"If the Germans want the place, they're welcome to it, far as I'm concerned," Armstrong said. "It's full of Frenchmen-or it was till they blew it up."

"So don't listen to me."

"Like I ever did." As long as they were zinging each other, Armstrong was happy enough. But they'd come much too close to getting serious there, and getting serious made him nervous.

He wasn't the only U.S. soldier who got nervous in Alabama. Somebody well up the chain of command had the bright idea that a football game between occupiers and locals might show people that men from the USA weren't so different from anybody else-no horns, no tails, no pitchforks.

The company CO asked Armstrong, "Didn't you play football in high school?"

"Some," he answered. "I was second string. I wasn't that great or anything."

"You want a chance to knock Confederates on their ass without getting gigged for it?"

"Where do I sign up?"

Squidface wanted nothing to do with that. "I'm glad I'm a little guy," he said. "Those assholes on the other side, they're gonna be lookin' for a chance to rack you up. This ain't gonna be no friendly game."

"Yeah, well, we'll work out on them, too," Armstrong said.

"They better have plenty of ambulances ready," Squidface said darkly.

They got uniforms. Whoever was in charge of what they were calling the Peace Bowl had clout. U.S. soldiers wore blue suits, their Confederate counterparts red. They got cleats to take the place of their boots. They got helmets. Armstrong wondered if he wouldn't do better with his regular steel pot than with this leather contraption.

The athletes on the U.S. team were in much better shape than the high-school guys had been. Armstrong felt he'd earned something when he got named a starting tackle. They had a quarterback who could really throw and a couple of ends who could catch. The ends weren't the swiftest in the world, but they'd do.