"Yeah, that's true." Moss conceded the point. Why not? They weren't in court now. "All right-suppose we elected a guy who wanted to get rid of our Negroes, or our Jews. Could he get help?" Was Goodman Jewish? With a name like that, maybe yes, maybe no. His looks didn't say for sure, either.

Whatever he was, he answered, "I'd like to tell you no, but I bet he could. Too damn many people will do whatever the guy in charge tells 'em to. They figure he knows what he's doing, and they figure they'll get in trouble if they don't go along. So yeah, our Featherston could get his helpers. Or do you think I'm wrong?"

"Christ, I wish I did," Moss answered. "But the Turks did it to the Armenians way back when, and the Russians have been giving it to the Jews forever. So it's not just the Confederates going off the deep end. They were more efficient about it than anybody else has been, but we could do that, too."

"Now we've got this big, ugly, bad example staring us in the face," Goodman said. "Maybe it'll make everybody too ashamed to do anything like it again. I sure want to think so, anyhow. It'd give me hope for the goddamn human race."

"I'll drink to that. To the goddamn human race!" Moss raised his glass. Goodman clinked with him. They drank together.

U.S. authorities in Hugo, Alabama, took their own sweet time about trying the Negro accused of raping a white woman there. They wanted to let things calm down. Armstrong Grimes approved of that. He'd managed to stave off one riot in front of the jail. He knew he might not be so lucky the second time around.

He'd lost his enthusiasm for the uniform he wore. He'd gone through the whole war from start to finish. All right, fine. He'd seen the elephant. He'd got shot. He'd paid all the dues anybody needed to pay. As far as he was concerned, somebody else could come down and occupy the CSA.

The government cared for his opinion as much as it usually did. It already had him down at the ass end of Alabama, and it would keep him here as long as it wanted to. If he didn't like it, what could he do about it? Not much, not when his only friends for hundreds of miles were other U.S. soldiers in the same boat he was.

So all right. He was stuck here. But he was damned if he'd give the U.S. Army a dime's worth more than he had to. Sitting quiet and not stirring up the locals looked mighty good to him.

To his surprise, Squidface stayed all eager-beaver. "You outa your mind?" Armstrong asked the Italian kid. "The more you piss these people off, the more likely it is somebody'll shoot at you."

"Somebody's gonna shoot at us. You can bet your ass on that," Squidface answered. "But if we keep these shitheads off balance, like, it'll be penny-ante stuff. We let 'em start plotting, then half the fuckin' state rises up, and we have to level everything between here and the ocean to shut it down. You know what I'm sayin', man?"

Armstrong grunted. He knew, and didn't like knowing. He wanted to think like a short-timer, somebody who'd escape from the Army soon. To Squidface, who wanted to be a lifer, the problem looked different. Squidface wanted long-term answers, ones that would keep this part of Alabama not quiet but quieter for years to come. Armstrong didn't give a damn what happened in 1946 if he'd be out of here by 1945.

If. That was the question. The Army seemed anything but eager to turn soldiers loose. Despite taking hostages, despite shooting lots of them, it hadn't clamped down on the diehards in the CSA. No matter what the surrender orders said, everybody knew Confederate soldiers hadn't turned in all their weapons or all their explosives. And they were still using what they'd squirreled away.

"You think they can make us sick enough of occupying them, we give it up and go home?" he asked Squidface.

The PFC's mouth twisted. "Fuck, I hope not. We'll just have another war down the line if we do. And they gotta have more guys down here who know how to make superbombs. Genie's out of the bottle, like. So if it's another war, it's a bad one."

"Yeah." Armstrong agreed unenthusiastically, but he agreed. "But if they hate us forever and shoot at us from behind bushes forever, how are we better off? It's like a sore that won't scab up."

"Maybe if we kill enough of 'em, the rest'll figure keeping that shit up is more trouble than it's worth." Squidface had an odd kind of pragmatism, but Armstrong nodded-he thought the same way.

Two days later, a sniper killed a U.S. soldier. When that happened these days, people in Hugo tried to get out of town before anybody could grab them as hostages. The occupying authorities discouraged that by shooting at them when they saw them sneaking off.

Armstrong ended up leading a firing squad. The rifles issued to the men doing the shooting had one blank round per squad per victim. If you wanted to, you could think that maybe you hadn't really killed anybody. You could also think you could draw four to a king and end up with a royal flush. By the time you'd pulled the trigger twenty times, your odds of innocence were about that low.

After the shootings, a U.S. officer spoke to the people left in Hugo: "Get it through your heads-we will punish you. If you know beforehand that somebody's going to shoot at us, you'd better let us know. If you don't, we'll keep shooting people till we run out of people to shoot."

Armstrong got drunk that night. He wasn't the only one from the firing squad who did. He hated the duty. Shooting people who could shoot back was one thing. Shooting blindfolded people up against a wall? That was a different business, and a much nastier one.

"No wonder those Confederate assholes invented all those fancy ways to kill niggers," he said, very far in his cups. "You shoot people day after day, you gotta start going bugfuck, don't you?"

"Don't sweat it, Sarge," said Squidface, who'd also poured down a lot of bad whiskey. "You're already bugfuck."

"You say the sweetest things." Armstrong made kissing noises.

For some reason-no doubt because they were smashed-they both thought that was the funniest thing in the world. So did the other drinkers. Pretty soon everybody was pretending to kiss everybody else. Then somebody really did it, and got slapped. That was even funnier-if you were drunk enough.

Nothing seemed funny to Armstrong the next morning. Strong coffee and lots of aspirins soothed his aching head and gave him a sour stomach instead. He got a different kind of headache when he went into Hugo to buy a ham sandwich for lunch instead of enduring rations.

"I don't want your money," said the man who ran the local diner. "I don't want to serve you. I don't aim to serve any Yankee soldier from here on out, but especially not you."

"What did I do?" Armstrong was still hung over enough to be extra grouchy. I don't need this shit, he thought unhappily.

"You told those bastards to shoot my brother-in-law yesterday, that's what. Your damn captain made me watch you do it, too. I ought to feed you, by God, and put rat poison in your sandwich. I'd do it, too, if you bastards wouldn't murder more folks who never done you no harm."

"You're gonna get your ass in a sling," Armstrong warned. All he wanted was a sandwich, not an argument.

"I ain't hurting nobody," the local said. "I don't aim to hurt nobody, neither. But I don't want Yankee money any more. I don't reckon anybody in this here town wants Yankee money any more."

If he hadn't said that last, Armstrong might have walked out in disgust. As things were, he growled, "Conspiracy, huh? You are gonna get your ass in a sling." He didn't just walk out; he stomped out.

And he reported the conversation to the first officer he found. "A boycott, eh?" the captain said. "Well, we'll see about that, by God!"

They did, in short order. By the end of the week, nobody in Hugo would sell U.S. soldiers anything. On Friday, an edict came down from the military governor in Birmingham. It banned "failure to cooperate with U.S. authorities." If you tried going on with the boycott, you'd go to jail instead.