Bliss brayed out a loud, stupid laugh. "Love you, too," he said, and blew Cincinnatus a kiss.

Cincinnatus turned to Lucullus. "What you doin' with this man? Whatever it is, he ain't doin' it for you. He's doin' it for his ownself, nobody else." Bliss laughed again, even more raucously. Cincinnatus glared at him once more. All that did was prove looks couldn't kill.

Before saying anything of consequence, Lucullus waved for a waitress and told her to fetch Cincinnatus a plate of pork ribs and a bottle of Dr. Hopper. Only after she went away did he remark, "Ain't always who you're for what matters. Sometimes who you're against counts fo' mo'."

"Yeah, sometimes." Cincinnatus pointed at Luther Bliss. "He's against you, for instance, on account of you're a Red." Keeping his voice down so the whole place wouldn't hear what he was saying took almost more willpower than he had in him.

"I got bigger worries right now, bigger fish to fry." Bliss talked normally. He just made sure nobody in his right mind would want to listen. That was a considerable talent. He had a lot of them. Getting Cincinnatus to trust him would never be one.

The waitress brought the food and the soda pop. Nobody said anything till she left. Cincinnatus wondered whether that was wasted caution. People who worked for Lucullus were probably involved in his schemes up to their eyebrows. Then the delicious aroma of the ribs distracted him. He dug in, and promptly got a stain on his shirt to match the one on Luther Bliss' sweater.

"How'd you like to help us give the Confederate States of America one right in the nuts?" Lucullus asked.

He might have asked, How'd you like to buy a pig in a poke? Or he might have asked, How'd you like to get killed? Cincinnatus suspected all three questions boiled down to the same thing. "Depends," he said. "What do I gotta do?"

"I knew he didn't have the balls for it," Luther Bliss said scornfully.

Cincinnatus didn't raise his voice as he said, "Fuck your mother, Luther."

Bliss' mahogany eyes opened very wide, perhaps at the obscenity, perhaps because a black man had presumed to call him by his first name. Before he could say anything, Lucullus beat him to it: "That'll be enough outa both o' you." He glowered at white man and black in turn, as if to say they'd have to quarrel with him before they could go at each other.

If Luther Bliss wanted a fight, Cincinnatus was ready. He didn't even worry about being a cripple. He intended to use his cane to knock the white man ass over elbow. He didn't figure Bliss would fight fair, so why should he?

"You reckon you can drive a truck?" Lucullus asked him.

"Can I? Hell, yes," Cincinnatus answered. "Why do I want anything to do with this ofay bastard, though?" He pointed across the table at Bliss.

"Because it'll heap coals of fire on Jake Featherston's head." Lucullus could quote Scripture for his purpose, too. "Next to that, what else matters?"

That was a potent argument with any Negro, but not necessarily potent enough with Cincinnatus. "Jake Featherston never lured me down here so he could throw me in jail," he snarled. "This here asshole did."

Bliss didn't deny it. How could he, when it was true? He said, "Featherston's killing spades by the tens of thousands-hell, maybe by the hundreds of thousands now. You gonna piss and moan about a jail cell next to that?"

He had an odd way of arguing, which didn't mean it wasn't effective. He didn't care what Cincinnatus thought of him. He just worried about what the black man did. Cincinnatus didn't look at him or speak to him. Instead, he turned to Lucullus. "Where's this truck at? Where do I got to drive it to?"

"It's by the train station," Lucullus answered. "You got to bring it over to the river."

"The Ohio?" Cincinnatus asked. You could almost spit from the station to the Ohio.

Lucullus shook his head. The soft flesh under his chin wobbled. That made Cincinnatus think of the barbecue chef's father. Apicius Wood's flesh had been the only soft thing about him. Lucullus said, "No, not the Ohio. The Licking, here in the colored part o' town."

That made sense. Cincinnatus wasn't sure a colored truck driver could get near the Ohio without challenge. The tributary was bound to be a different story. "What's the truck got in it?" Cincinnatus asked.

"Something I arranged," Luther Bliss said. "You don't need to know what."

Cincinnatus started to get to his feet. "Obliged for the ribs," he told Lucullus. "Reckon you don't need me for no driver."

"Git down off your high horse. You are the proudest damn nigger," Lucullus said querulously. Cincinnatus didn't deny it. He didn't leave, either. He waited. If he got an answer, that was one thing. If he didn't… He could always leave then. Lucullus muttered under his breath. Then he stopped muttering and spoke in that same low, breathy voice: "Got us some mines to dump in the river."

"Do Jesus!" Cincinnatus said. Luther Bliss doubtless had connections with the U.S. War Department. Even so, smuggling infernal devices like that across the border couldn't have been easy. Since Bliss had managed to do it, or somebody had managed to do it for him… "When you want me there?" Cincinnatus asked.

Two days later, wearing a pair of overalls and a cloth cap furnished by Lucullus, he made his way toward the truck. A gray-uniformed cop checked his passbook and let him go on without asking exactly where he was going and why. The Confederates thought everything in Covington was under control. Cincinnatus' carnivorous smile said otherwise.

He found the truck right where Lucullus said it would be. One of the keys in his pocket opened the door. Another fit the ignition. The motor roared to life when he turned that key and stamped the starter.

Releasing the hand brake and putting the truck in gear felt good. He'd been driving for more than thirty years. He'd taken his surname because of what he did. Driving was a big part of his life, and he hadn't been able to do it since coming down to Covington. Now he could.

He shook his head and clucked sadly as he went through the colored quarter. A lot of houses stood empty; their owners had been sensible enough to get across the Ohio to the USA when the CSA won the plebiscite. Cincinnatus sighed. He'd been sensible himself. Fat lot of good it had done him.

The derelict garage where Lucullus had told him to pull in was hard by the river. The building faced away from the Licking, but had a back door that opened on it. Even before Cincinnatus killed the engine, half a dozen black men stepped out from the gloom and darkness inside the garage.

"You brung 'em?" one of them asked.

"Yeah," Cincinnatus answered. The men took half a dozen crates out of the back of the truck. They pried up the tops and carefully removed the mines, one after another. Two men on each mine, they carried them down to the river. Cincinnatus didn't see how they placed them: whether they dropped them in, had a rowboat waiting, or what. As soon as the last mine was gone, he fired up the truck again and drove off. Lucullus' crew of men with strong backs also broke up in a hurry.

The truck went back where he'd found it. He returned the keys to Lucullus. The barbecue chef gave him a conspiratorial wink. He returned it, then limped out of the barbecue shack and headed home.

Jake Featherston scowled as he read the report from Kentucky. A Confederate gunboat on the Licking River had blown sky-high when it hit a mine. Two dozen men dead, another eight or ten badly hurt, an expensive piece of machinery gone to hell… He cursed under his breath, and then out loud.

After he'd thought for a few seconds, his curses got nastier. The Licking ran into the Ohio. You couldn't drop a mine into the Ohio and expect it to go up the Licking. Sure as hell, the damnyankees had sneaked people and at least one mine from the USA into the CSA. Either that or they'd sneaked in the explosives and then used white traitors or niggers to do their dirty work for them.