Walk in Hell

Grimly, A

Julia was already busy in the cabin, feather duster in one hand, baby in the crook of her other elbow. She couldn't join the Army. A

"Mornin', ma'am," Julia said, unaware of the scrutiny or ignoring it. "It gwine be Christmastime any day now."

"So it will," A

"De tree sho' smell fine," Julia said. "Jus' a little feller dis yeah, not like in de old days."

In the old days, A

Julia cleaned at a glacial pace. A

At last, the mistress of Marshlands, such as there was of Marshlands these days, got down to her own work without anyone peering over her shoulder. She was gladder by the day that she'd been in fine financial shape before the war started. She wouldn't be in fine shape by the time it was done. If she survived, though, she knew she'd be able to get her own back once peace finally returned.

She picked up the telephone mouthpiece to call a broker down in Charleston. The line was dead. She said something pungently unladylike. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to, not any more. It was either write another letter or drive into St. Matthews to send a telegram. She wrote the letter. More and more these days, she felt nothing at Marshlands got done unless she stayed here to see it get done.

To add to her foul mood, the postman was late. When he finally did show, up, he rode toward her with a bigger armed escort than usual. "You want to watch yourself, ma'am," he said. "They say them Red niggers is feelin' fractious."

"They say all sorts of things," A

Once he was gone, she regretted snapping at him. The guards accompanying him argued that people in St. Matthews were taking seriously the threat from Cassius' diehards.

She checked her pistol. It lay under her pillow, where it was supposed to be. Wondering if Julia or one of the other Negroes had pulled its teeth, she checked that, too. No: it was fully loaded. That eased her mind somewhat, arguing as it did that the Marshlands Negroes didn't expect an imminent visit from their friends and comrades skulking in the swamps of the Congaree.

"Comrades." The word tasted bad in her mouth. Now that the Reds had degraded it, it wasn't a word decent people in the Confederate States could use comfortably any more. No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than she laughed at herself. Before the war, she'd had nothing but contempt for the stodgy, boring folk who counted for the Confederacy's decent people. Now she reckoned herself one of them.

She laughed again, though it wasn't fu

Julia brought in chicken and dumplings for supper. A

A couple of magazines told in great detail how the CSA might yet win the war. She would have had more faith in them if they hadn't contradicted each other in so many places. She also would have had more faith in them if either author had shown more signs he knew what he was talking about and wasn't whistling in the dark.

She poured herself a cup of coffee. The coffee remained good. As long as the Caribbean remained a Confederate lake, imports from Central and South America could still reach Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola.

However good it was, the coffee did nothing to keep her awake. She drank it so regularly, it had next to no effect on her. When she started yawning over a particularly abstruse piece on Russia's chances against the Germans and Austrians in 1917, she set down the magazine, blew out all the lamps but the one by her bed, and changed into a nightgown. Then she blew out the last lamp and went to bed.

She woke up sometime in the middle of the night. As she'd tossed and turned, her right hand had slipped under the pillow. It was resting on the revolver. That, though, wasn't what had wakened her. "Coffee," she muttered under her breath. She reached down for the chamber pot, only to discover it wasn't there and remember why. Off to the privy, then-no help for it.

Her lips twisted in frustrated anger as she started to get out of bed. Marshlands had had flush toilets longer than she'd been alive; it had been one of the first plantation houses in South Carolina to enjoy such an amenity. She'd taken indoor plumbing for granted. The refugee camp had taught her it was too precious, too wonderful, not to be properly admired-and, at the moment, she had not so much as a pot to call her own.

Even in the mild climate hereabouts, a nighttime trip to the privy was a chilly business. She shut the door behind her to keep the cold out of the cottage. Going to the privy was also a smelly, disgusting business. And spiders and bugs and occasional lizards and mice visited the place, too.

Almost absentmindedly, she scooped up the pistol and carried it along with her when she went out into the darkness. She was halfway to the outhouse before she consciously recalled the warning the postman had given her. When she got to the privy, she set the little handgun down beside her before she hiked up her gown.

She spent longer in the noisome place than she'd expected. She had just risen from the pierced wooden seat when she heard voices outside. They were all familiar voices, though she hadn't heard a couple of them in more than a year. "She in dere?" Cassius asked. The hunter-the Red revolutionary leader-wasn't talking loud, but he wasn't making any special effort to keep his voice down, either.

"She in dere," Julia answered more quietly. "You don' wan' to wake she up, Cass. She gots a gun. She come out shootin'."

"Den we shoots she, and dat de end o' one capitalist 'pressor," Cassius said. "We gots dis cottage surrounded. Ain't no way out we ain't got covered. I oughts to know-de place was mine."