"Emil's here. We can start now," another poker player said. The guy with the roll flipped him off. The other man turned to Cincinnatus. "How about you, buddy? Got any jack that's burning a hole in your pocket?"

"Nope," Cincinnatus said. "Don't play often enough to get good at it. Don't like playin' enough to get good at it. So why should I throw my money down the toilet?"

"On account of I got grandkids who need shoes?" suggested the man sitting at the card table. "We need suckers in this here game-besides Emil, I mean."

"You'll see who's a sucker," Emil said. "You'll be sorry when you do, too."

"If you're no good at somethin', why do it?" Cincinnatus said.

"Well, there's always fucking," the other driver replied, which got a laugh.

"Maybe you ain't no good at that," Cincinnatus said, which got a bigger one. "Me, though, I know what I'm doin' there."

"That's telling him," Williamson said.

Cincinnatus' answering grin was crooked. Even his buddies seemed surprised when he held his own in banter or didn't turn cowardly when he got shot at or generally acted like a man instead of the way they thought a nigger would act. It might have been funny if it weren't so sad. These were U.S. citizens, men from a country where Negroes mostly had the same legal rights as anybody else, and they thought-or at least felt down deep somewhere-he ought to be a stupid buffoon.

What about white people in the Confederate States? His mouth tightened, the grin disappearing altogether. He knew the answer to that, knew it much too well. They thought Negroes were so far below ordinary human beings that they got rid of them without a qualm. And what would the local in overalls say about that? He'd probably say the Confederacy's Negroes had it coming.

"Fuck him, too," Cincinnatus muttered.

"Who? Dolf there?" Williamson nodded toward the poker player who'd gone back and forth with Cincinnatus. "What'd he do to you?"

"No, not Dolf. This peckerhead redneck I was talkin' with in town," Cincinnatus answered, not even noticing he was tarring the Confederate with the same kind of brush whites in the CSA used against blacks. "He reckoned I was uppity. If I was really uppity, I would've plugged the son of a bitch."

"Probably no great loss," Williamson said. "We're gonna have to kill a lot of these Confederate assholes to scare the rest into leaving us alone." Again, Confederate whites might have talked about Negroes the same way.

The next morning, soldiers loaded crates of 105mm shells into the back of Cincinnatus' truck. The convoy of which he was a part rattled north to replenish the guns that had been firing at the Confederates the day before. The artillery position was only a few miles away. Even so, a halftrack and three armored cars came along with the trucks. No one inside Ellijay seemed eager to take on the assembled might of the U.S. Army, but things were different out in the countryside. It seethed with rebellion.

Two bushwhackers fired from the undergrowth that grew too close to the side of the road before the convoy got halfway to where it was going. One bullet shattered a truck's windshield. Another flattened a tire. The armored cars sprayed the bushes with machine-gun fire. Cincinnatus hadn't seen any muzzle flashes. He would have bet the soldiers in the armored cars hadn't, either.

One of those cars stayed behind to help the truck driver with the flat change his tire-and to shield him from more bullets while he worked. Cincinnatus hoped the driver would be all right. He had to keep going himself. He wished a barrel with a flail were preceding the convoy. That way, it would probably blow up any land mines before they blew up people. As things were…

As things were, they didn't run into-or over-any. Cincinnatus figured the convoy was lucky. He also figured it had no guarantee of being lucky again on the way back. Who could guess what holdouts or stubborn civilians were doing while nobody in a green-gray uniform could see them?

Gun bunnies unloaded the crates. "We'll give 'em hell," one of them promised. Cincinnatus nodded, but the artillerymen couldn't do anything about the enemies likeliest to hurt him.

He wished he could stay by the gun pits. Bushwhackers didn't come around here. But then, as he was driving back towards Ellijay, he heard thunder behind him. A glance in the rear-view mirror told him the artillerymen were catching it. Wherever you went, whatever you did, the war would reach out and grab you and bite you.

Snipers fired a few shots at the trucks on the way back to the depot. When they got there, one of the drivers said, "You guys are gonna have to help me out of the cab. They got me in the knee."

"Jesus, Gordie, how come you ain't screamin' your head off?" another driver asked. "How the hell'd you make it back?"

Gordie started laughing to beat the band. "On account of I lost that leg in 1915," he answered. "Fuckers ruined the joint in my artificial one, but that's about it."

"How'd you work the clutch without your knee joint?" Cincinnatus asked.

"Grabbed the leg with my hand and mashed down on the sucker," Gordie said. "Wasn't pretty. Don't figure I did my gear train any good. But who gives a damn? I made it back. 'Course, the leg's just a piece of junk without that joint. Better find me a wheelchair or some crutches-I ain't goin' anywhere without 'em."

Cincinnatus had a lot of parts that didn't work as well as they should have. He wasn't out-and-out missing any, though, and he never would have imagined that losing a leg could prove lucky for anybody. If they'd already got you there once, they couldn't do it again.

The supply dump stocked both wheelchairs and crutches. That didn't surprise Cincinnatus, although it saddened him. Maimed men were a by-product of war. The powers that be understood as much.

Gordie's leg went out for repairs. Technicians who dealt with such things were also necessary. When it came back, the amputee was full of praise. "Feels like I just got new spark plugs on my Ford," he said. "Joint's smoother and easier to work than it ever was before, I think. Quieter, too." He still walked with a rolling gait like a drunken sailor's, but so did anybody who'd lost a leg above the knee. The roll locked the joint till the next step. Cincinnatus also thought the artificial leg was quieter now than it had been.

Except for harassing fire as he drove his routes, everything seemed pretty quiet. He'd drifted into a backwater of the war. Part of him wanted to be doing more. The rest-the larger portion-thought that part was out of its tree.

III

G eorge Enos, Jr., liked being back on the East Coast. When the Josephus Daniels came in to the Boston Navy Yard for refit or resupply-or even to deliver a package-he had a chance for liberty, a chance to see his wife and kids. Unlike a lot of sailors, he preferred getting it at home to laying down money in some sleazy whorehouse and lying down with a girl who was probably more interested in the current crossword puzzle than in him.

That didn't stop him from lying down with a whore every once in a while. It did leave him feeling guilty whenever he did. That, in turn, meant he drank more on liberty than he would have otherwise. He couldn't get drunk enough to stop feeling guilty, which didn't keep him from trying.

When he came into Boston, he didn't have to worry about it. He could go to bed with Connie with a clear conscience. And, being away so much, he felt like a newlywed whenever he did. Most of his married buddies weren't lucky enough to have caught a warm, willing, pretty redhead, either.

"I wish you didn't have to leave," she said, clinging to him with arms and legs the night before he was due back aboard his ship. When she kissed him, he tasted tears on her lipstick.