A couple of men farther down the bar were talking, one of them also nursing a beer, the other with a whiskey in front of him. Kimball paid them only scant attention for a bit, but then began to listen more closely. He emptied his schooner and walked over to the fellow who was drinking whiskey. "You wouldn't by any chance be from the United States, would you?" he asked. His harsh Arkansas drawl made it very plain he was not.

He was looking for a yes and a fight. As the man on the bar stool turned to size him up, he realized the fight might not be so easy. He was a little heavier and a little younger than the other man, but the fellow owned a pair of the steeliest gray eyes he'd ever seen. If he got in a brawl, those eyes warned he wouldn't quit till he'd either won or got knocked cold.

And then his friend laughed and said, "Jesus, Clarence, swear to God I'm gonna have to stop taking you out in public if you don't quit talking that way."

"It's the way I talk," the man with the hard eyes-Clarence- said. He turned back to Kimball. "No, whoever the hell you are, I am not a damnyankee. I sound the way I sound because I went to college up at Yale. Clarence Potter, ex-major, Army of Northern Virginia, at your service-and if you don't like it, I'll spit in your eye."

Kimball felt foolish. He'd felt foolish before; he expected he'd feel foolish again. He gave his own name, adding, "Ex-commander, C.S. Navy, submersibles," and stuck out his hand.

Potter took it. "That explains why you wanted to wipe the floor with a Yankee, anyhow. Sorry I can't oblige you." He threw a lazy punch in the direction of his friend. "And this creature here is Jack Delamotte. You have to forgive him; he's retarded- only an ex-first lieutenant, Army of Northern Virginia."

"I won't hold it against him," Kimball said. "Pleased to meet the both of you. I'd be happy to buy you fresh drinks." He wouldn't be happy to do it, but it would make amends for mistaking Potter for someone from north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

"I'm pleased to meet damn near anybody who'll buy me a drink," Delamotte said. He was a big, fair-haired fellow who sounded as if he was from Alabama or Mississippi. He kicked the bar stool next to him. "Why don't you set yourself down again, and maybe we'll get around to buying you one, too."

Being closer to Clarence Potter, Kimball sat beside him. The bartender served up two more beers and another whiskey. Kimball raised his schooner on high. "To hell with the United goddamn States of America!"

Potter and Delamotte both drank: no Confederate officer cut loose from his country's service in the aftermath of defeat could refuse that toast. The ex-major who talked like a Yankee and looked like a tough professor offered a toast of his own: "To getting the Confederate goddamn States of America back on their feet!"

That too was unexceptionable. After drinking to it, Kimball found himself with an empty schooner. He wasn't drunk, not on two beers, but he was intensely and urgently thoughtful. He didn't much care for the tenor of his thoughts, either. "How the hell are we supposed to do that?" he demanded. "The United States are going to be sitting on our neck for the next hundred years."

"No, they won't." Potter shook his head. "We will get the chance."

He sounded positive. Roger Kimball was positive, too: positive his new acquaintance was out of his mind. "They made you butternut boys say uncle," he said, which might have come close to starting another fight. Confederate Navy men, who'd battled their U.S. counterparts to something close to a draw, resented the Army for having to yield. But now, not intending pugnacity, he went on, "Why do you reckon they'll be fools enough to ever let us do anything again?"

"Same question I've been asking him," Delamotte said.

"And I'll give Commander Kimball the same answer I've given you." Potter seemed to think like a professor, too; he lined up all his ducks in a row. In rhetorical tones, he asked, "Toward what have the United States been aiming ever since the War of Secession, and especially since the Second Mexican War?"

"Kicking us right square in the nuts," Kimball answered. "And now they've finally gone and done it, the bastards." He'd done some nut-kicking of his own, even after the cease-fire. That last, though, was a secret he intended to take to the grave with him.

"Just so," Clarence Potter agreed, emphasizing the point with a forefinger. "Now they've finally gone and done what they've been pointing toward since 1862. Up till now, they had a goal, and they worked toward it. Christ, were they serious about working toward it; you have no notion how serious they were if you've never seen a Remembrance Day parade. Scared me to death when I was up in Connecticut, believe you me it did. But now they don't have a goal any more; they've achieved their goal. Do you see the difference, Commander?"

Before Kimball could answer, Jack Delamotte said, "What I see is, I'm thirsty, and I bet I'm not the only one, either." He ordered another round of drinks, then ate some sardellen and lit a cigar almost as pungent as the fish.

After a pull or two at his beer, Kimball said, "Major, I don't follow you. Suppose their next goal is wiping us out altogether? How in blazes are we supposed to stop 'em?"

"Goals don't work like that, not usually they don't," Potter said. "Once you got to where you always thought you were going, you like to ease back and relax and smoke a cigar-a good cigar, mind you, not a stinking weed like the one Jack's stuffed into his face-and maybe marry a chorus girl, if that's what you reckoned you would do after you made it big."

"So that's what you figure is going to happen, eh?" Kimball chuckled. "You figure the United States scrimped and saved for so long, and now they'll buy a fancy motorcar and put a beautiful dame in it? Well, I hope you're right, but I'll tell you this much: it won't happen as long as that goddamn Roosevelt is president of the USA. He hates us too much to care about chorus girls."

"I never said it would happen tomorrow," Potter replied. "I said it would happen. Countries live longer than people do." He knocked back his whiskey with a sharp flick of the wrist and ordered another round.

While the bored man behind the bar was drawing the beers, Jack Delamotte leaned toward Kimball and said, "Now you're going to hear Clarence go on about how we need to find a goal of our own and stick to it like the damnyankees did."

"It's the truth." Potter looked stubborn-and slightly pie-eyed. "If we don't, we'll be second-raters forever."

"Won't see it with the regular politicians," Kimball said with conviction. "They got us into the swamp, but I'm damned if I reckon they've got even a clue about how to get us out." Neither Potter nor Delamotte argued with him; he would have been astonished if they had. He went on, "I heard this skinny fellow on the stump a week or two ago. The Freedom Party, that was the name of his outfit. He wasn't too bad-sounded like he knew what he wanted and how to get there. His name was Feathers, or something like that."

To his surprise, Clarence Potter, who'd struck him as a sour-puss, threw back his head and guffawed. "Featherston," the ex-major said. "Jake Featherston. He's about as likely a politician as a catfish is on roller skates."

"You sound like you know him," Kimball said.

"He commanded a battery in the First Richmond Howitzers through most of the war," Potter answered. "Good fighting man- should have been an officer. But that battery had belonged to Jeb Stuart III, and Jeb, Jr., blamed Featherston when his son got killed. Since Jeb, Jr.'s, a general. Featherston wouldn't have got past sergeant if he'd stayed in the Army till he died of old age."

Slowly, Kimball nodded. "No wonder he was ranting and raving about the fools in the War Department, then."