American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 15

Only two people got off the train in St. Matthews. Since one of them was a fat colored woman, figuring out who the other one was did not require brilliance. The lanky white man dressed in b.u.t.ternut trousers, a clean white s.h.i.+rt, and a straw hat looked around for people to greet him, as any traveler might have done.

"Mr. Featherston!" Anne called, and the newcomer alertly swung toward her. His features were pinched and not particularly handsome, but when his eyes met hers, she had to brace herself for an instant. Roger Kimball had been right: whatever else he was, Jake Featherston was not a man to take lightly. She stepped toward him. "I'm Anne Colleton, Mr. Featherston. Pleased to meet you, and thank you for coming down. This is my brother, Tom."

"Right pleased to meet you both," Featherston said, his Virginia accent not bespeaking any great education. When he shook hands with Anne, his grip was so businesslike, it revealed nothing. He turned to her brother. "You were an officer on the Roanoke front, isn't that right?"

"Yes, that's so," Tom said. I wasn't the only one doing some checking, I wasn't the only one doing some checking, Anne thought. No, Featherston was not a man to be taken lightly, not even a little bit. Anne thought. No, Featherston was not a man to be taken lightly, not even a little bit.

He said, "I'll try not to hold it against you." From the lips of most former noncoms, it would have been a joke. Anne and Tom both started to smile. Neither let the smile get very big. Anne wasn't at all sure Featherston was kidding. He asked, "You have a motorcar here, to take us wherever we're going?"

Anne shook her head. "I didn't bother. We're only a couple of blocks from my apartment. This isn't a big town-you can see that. It's an easy walk."

"I'll take your carpetbag there, if you like," Tom added, reaching out for it.

"Don't bother," Featherston said, and did not hand it over. "I've been taking care of myself a long time now. I can go right on doing it." He nodded to Anne. "Lead the way, Miss Colleton. Sooner we're there, sooner we can get down to business."

He was mostly silent as they walked along: not a man with a large store of small talk. As he walked, he studied St. Matthews with military alertness. He studied Anne the same way. His eyes kept coming back to her, but not in the way of a man who looks on a woman with desire. Anne had seen that often enough to be most familiar with it. No, he was trying to size her up. That was interesting. Usually, till they realized she had a brain, men were more interested in trying to feel her up.

Back at the apartment, Featherston accepted coffee and a slice of peach pie. He ate like a man stoking a boiler, emptying his plate very fast. Then he said, "What can I do for you, Miss Colleton?"

"I don't quite know," Anne answered. "What I do know is that I don't like the way the Confederate States have been drifting since the end of the war. I'd like the country to start moving forward again. If the Freedom Party can help us do that, maybe I'd like to help the Freedom Party."

"I can tell you what I want for the CSA," Featherston said. "I want revenge. I want revenge on the d.a.m.nyankees for licking us. I want revenge on the d.a.m.nfool politicians who got us into the war. I want revenge on the d.a.m.nfool generals in the War Department who botched it. I want revenge on the n.i.g.g.e.rs who rose up and stabbed us in the back. And I aim to get it."

Revenge was a word that struck a chord with Anne. She'd spent most of two years getting even with the blacks of the Congaree Socialist Republic after they'd torched Marshlands, killed her brother Jacob, and almost killed her. She dearly wanted to get even with the United States, though she didn't see how the Confederate States would be able to manage it any time soon. Still... was a word that struck a chord with Anne. She'd spent most of two years getting even with the blacks of the Congaree Socialist Republic after they'd torched Marshlands, killed her brother Jacob, and almost killed her. She dearly wanted to get even with the United States, though she didn't see how the Confederate States would be able to manage it any time soon. Still...

"How do you propose to do all that?" she asked.

"You said it yourself: everything in the country seems dead right now," Featherston replied. "The Freedom Party is alive and growing. People see that. They're starting to come over to us. We'll elect Congressmen this year-you just wait and see if we don't. Before too long, we'll elect a president."

He had all the confidence in the world, that was certain. Tom remarked, "You're not running for Congress yourself, are you?"

Featherston shook his head. "That's right-I'm not. Don't want to sit there, for one thing, on account of I can't stand too many who're already in. And for another, I want to be able to go where I want to go when I want to go there. If I had to stay in Richmond too much of the time, I wouldn't be able to do that. So, no, I'm not going to the dance."

"You're going to stay on the sidelines and call the tune," Anne said.

"You might put it that way," Jake Featherston agreed. He had a pretty good poker face, but it wasn't perfect. Anne saw his attention focus on her. It still wasn't the look a man gave an attractive woman: more like the look a sniper gave a target. Now he's realized I'm no fool, Now he's realized I'm no fool, she thought. she thought. I wonder if I should have let him know so soon. I wonder if I should have let him know at all. I wonder if I should have let him know so soon. I wonder if I should have let him know at all.

She also realized Featherston was no fool. Not running for Congress let him pick and choose his issues and what he did about them. It also protected him from the risk of running and losing. She had no feel yet for how smart he was, but he was plenty shrewd.

"What tune are you going to call?" she asked.

"I already told you," he answered. "I don't hide anything I aim to do; I just come right out and say it." An alarm whistle went off in Anne's head: any man who said something like that was almost bound to be lying. She kept her face quite still. Featherston continued, "Platform's pretty simple, like I said. Pay back the USA as soon as we can. Clean out the House and Senate. Clean out the War Department. Put the n.i.g.g.e.rs back in their place. Best place for 'em, you ask me, is six feet under, but I'll settle for less for now. Still and all, this is a white man's country, and I aim to keep it that way."

"What do you propose to do about the black men who got the vote by fighting in the Army?" Tom Colleton asked.

"Most of 'em don't deserve it," Featherston said at once. "Most of 'em ran instead of fighting. I was there. I saw 'em do it. I fired into 'em, too, to make 'em more afraid of me than they were of the d.a.m.nyankees."

"Some did run," Tom agreed. "I saw that myself. Toward the end of the war, I saw white troops break and run, too." He waited. Slowly, Featherston nodded, looking unhappy about having to do it. Tom went on, "I saw some n.i.g.g.e.rs fight pretty well. They're the ones I'm talking about. How do you take their vote away?"

"Wouldn't be hard, once we got around to it," Featherston replied with breathtaking and, Anne thought, accurate cynicism. "Most decent white folks can't stand 'em anyway. Besides, chances are the ones who fought hard against the USA learned how by fighting against the Confederate States. Pin that on 'em, call it treason, and hang the lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"What do we do if the United States try to stop us from getting strong again?" Anne asked. "That's my biggest worry."

"We walk small as long as we have to," Featherston said. "I hate it, but I don't know what else to tell you. We build up our strength every chance we get, though, and before too long we get to tell the d.a.m.nyankees to leave us alone unless they want a sock in the nose."

That made sense to Anne. She couldn't see what else the CSA could do, in fact, except become a supine U.S. puppet. She said, "So you want to get the Negroes out of the towns and factories and back to the fields, do you?" Would keeping Marshlands be worthwhile? No, she judged. Featherston had more on the ball than she'd expected, but the Freedom Party remained very new and raw. It sought power; it wasn't about to lay claim to much yet.

Featherston answered, "That's about right, Miss Colleton." He eyed her again. Did he guess the calculation she was making? She wouldn't have been surprised.

Her gaze flicked over to Tom. That did surprise her; she rarely relied on anyone to help her decide. Her brother shrugged, ever so slightly. He was leaving it up to her. He did that more often than not. She wished he wouldn't have, not here. Featherston waited. He had more patience than she would have thought.

He had more of quite a few things than she'd thought. She wasn't easy to impress, but he'd impressed her. She said, "I think we're traveling in the same direction, Mr. Featherston. I suspect you could use some help along the road, too."

"We sure could," he said. "We sure could. When I joined the Freedom Party, it operated out of a cigar box. We're better off than that now, but not a whole lot." Contempt washed over him, as if poured from a bucket. "Most rich folks don't dare change what made 'em rich. They'll go on sucking up to the Whigs and the Radical Liberals while the country goes down the drain. Always good to find somebody who zigs when most folks zag."

He couldn't have paid her a compliment she appreciated more if he'd tried for a week. "I think I may be able to help some," she said. "How much depends on any number of things."

Featherston got to his feet, as if getting up on the stump. "Put those n.i.g.g.e.rs back in the fields where they belong!" His voice filled the apartment with a raspy thunder that didn't enter it when he was speaking in ordinary tones. That took Anne by surprise again, and for a moment almost took her breath away. She nodded, recognizing the good bargain she'd made. She held out her hand. Jake Featherston shook it. You give the speeches, You give the speeches, she thought. she thought. Yes, you call the tune-after I whistle it to you. Yes, you call the tune-after I whistle it to you.

Lieutenant Colonel Abner Dowling stared out across the prairie from General Custer's third-story offices in Winnipeg. He'd been there with the general since winter, and the view on a clear day never ceased to astonish him. Today, he managed to put that astonishment into words: "My G.o.d, sir, it's flatter than Kansas!"

"It is, isn't it?" Custer agreed. "You can see forever, or if you can't, it certainly seems as though you can. Makes you think G.o.d pressed an iron to the countryside hereabouts, doesn't it?"

"Yes, sir." Dowling nodded. "Although, from what I've read, it wasn't an iron at all. It was a great whacking sheet of ice that pressed the land down flat and didn't pull back or melt or whatever it did till not so very long ago."

"I can believe that that." Custer s.h.i.+vered melodramatically. "By the way the weather felt when we got to this place, I'd say the glacier had been gone about a day and a half-two days, tops."

Dowling laughed. Custer rarely joked. Here, he might well have been kidding on the square. During several days that winter, the temperature never had managed to creep above zero, nor even get very close to it. There was a word for a place more than three hundred miles north of Minneapolis: Siberia.

But people lived here. Before the war, something like 150,000 of them had lived here. In Abner Dowling's considered opinion, they'd been out of their minds. Oh, from May to September the weather was good enough, but that left a lot of time out of the bargain.

Nowhere near so many people were left in Winnipeg now. A lot had fled during the two and a half years in which Canadian and British forces had held the U.S. Army away from the critical rail junctions here. A lot more had fled when they realized the Canucks and limeys could hold the Americans no more. And a lot had died when the city finally fell.

One of the reasons Dowling could see so far was that the building housing Custer's headquarters was one of the few in town to come through the war intact. Had it ever had any taller neighbors, they were rubble now. Nothing got in the way of the view.

A lot of the new houses that were starting to go up in Winnipeg these days were made from the wreckage of older structures. One construction outfit even advertised itself as BEST BEST REBUILDERS IN TOWN REBUILDERS IN TOWN. The company had plenty of material with which to work.

Custer said, "I feel as though I can see all the way to the Rockies."

"I wish we could see all the way to the Rockies from here, sir," Dowling said. "It would make our jobs a lot easier-and that's where a lot of our problems lie, anyhow."

"The broom didn't sweep clean," Custer said. "That's what the problem is. That's why they sent me up here to set things to rights."

For as long as Dowling had known him, Custer had had a remarkable gift for revising events so they fit neatly into a scheme of things sometimes existing only in his own mind. The first part of his statement, though, was objectively true. The U.S. broom had not not swept clean, nor even come close. The USA had conquered Ontario and Quebec, severed eastern Canada from the vast West by-finally-seizing Winnipeg, and struck north into the Rockies to break the rail links with the Pacific. That had been enough to win the war. But it had also left a couple of million square miles unvisited by U.S. troops. swept clean, nor even come close. The USA had conquered Ontario and Quebec, severed eastern Canada from the vast West by-finally-seizing Winnipeg, and struck north into the Rockies to break the rail links with the Pacific. That had been enough to win the war. But it had also left a couple of million square miles unvisited by U.S. troops.

A lot of those square miles, especially in the far north, didn't have enough people on them to make anyone worry. But the cities of the Canadian prairie-Regina and Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton-resented having been handed over to the United States when no soldier in green-gray had got anywhere near them during the war. They seethed with rebellion. So did the farms for which they gave markets. So did the logging and mining towns of British Columbia. So did the fishermen of Newfoundland. So, for that matter, did a great many people in the areas the United States had taken by force.

"Confound it, Lieutenant Colonel, how am I supposed to control half a continent without the soldiers I should have lost during one medium-sized battle in the Great War?" Custer demanded. "Every time there's a new little uprising somewhere, I have to rob Peter of troops to pay Paul so Paul can put it down. And then twenty minutes later Peter needs the men back again."

"We have kept the railroads hopping, haven't we, sir?" Dowling shook his head at the understatement. "The way the budget's going in Congress, we ought to count ourselves lucky that we still have as many soldiers up here as we do. It won't get any better next year, either."

"Socialists!" As Custer usually did, he turned it into a swearword. "I tell you, Dowling, the machine gun's most proper use is for shooting down the Socialist blockheads who want to cut our country off at the knees. Blow enough of them to kingdom come and the rest might come to their senses-if they have any sense to come to, which I am inclined to doubt."

"Yes, sir," Dowling said resignedly. He was a rock-solid Democrat himself, but not, he thought with a certain amount of pride, a political fossil like his superior.

Custer said, "If things get any worse, we'll have to start borrowing soldiers from the Republic of Quebec, d.a.m.n me to h.e.l.l if I lie."

Dowling started to laugh: for Custer to make two jokes in one day was well-nigh unprecedented. Then he realized Custer wasn't joking. For a moment, he was inclined to scorn. Then, all at once, he didn't feel scornful any more. Every so often, Custer came up with an interesting notion, sometimes without even realizing he'd done it.

"Do you know, sir, I'd bet the Frenchies over there would lend them to us," Dowling said. "And do you know what else? I'd bet the soldiers from Quebec'd have a high old time clamping down on the Englishmen who sat on them for so long. That really might be worth looking into."

"Take care of it, then," Custer said indifferently. No, he hadn't known that was a good idea. He'd just been talking to hear himself talk, something he was fond of doing.

Dowling scribbled a note to himself. "Have to make Quebec pay for the troops they send, too," he said. "That will make Congress happy. It might not make Quebec happy, but I won't lose any sleep over that. If we can't twist Quebec's arm, whose can we twist? If it weren't for the United States, that wouldn't even be a country today." As far as he was concerned, it wasn't much of a country, but n.o.body in Quebec had gone out looking for his opinion.

"Who cares whether Quebec likes it or not?" Custer said, which meant he'd thought along with Dowling, and which almost set Dowling wondering if he hadn't miscalculated. If Custer agreed with him, he had a good chance of being wrong.

He said, "I think we have managed to put down the latest flare-up outside of Edmonton. That's something, anyhow."

"Putting down flare-ups doesn't get the job done, Lieutenant Colonel," Custer said. "I want to put them down so they don't start again. One of these days, I expect we'll have to raze one of these prairie towns to the ground. It'd serve the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds right. And after we do that, the other Canucks will get the idea that we mean business."

"Maybe, sir," Dowling said, his tone plainly making that maybe maybe a a no no. Sometimes you couldn't be too plain for Custer, so he went on, "If we do that without good reason, the rest of the world will raise a big stink."

"To h.e.l.l with the rest of the world," Custer said grandly: the philosophy of a lifetime, boiled down to eight words. Through the whole of his long span, Custer had done very much as he pleased. He'd had a good many breaks along the way, but no one could deny he'd made the most of them.

"Will there be anything more, General?" Dowling asked.

"As a matter of fact, there is one other thing." Custer hesitated, which was most unlike him. At last, he resumed: "I'm afraid Libbie and I have had to let our housekeeper go. Could you arrange for the hiring of another one?"

"Wouldn't your wife sooner take care of that for you, sir?" Dowling asked warily. When Elizabeth Custer joined her husband at a posting, she ran their household with a whim of iron.

Custer coughed a couple of times. "This once, Lieutenant Colonel, I'd like you to take care of it. Libbie is a marvelous woman-G.o.d never made a finer-but she does have a habit of hiring sour, dried-up sticks with whom I have a certain amount of trouble getting on well. I was hoping you might find a capable woman of cheerier disposition."

"I see." And Dowling did. Libbie Custer hired housekeepers in whom her husband could have no possible interest. That was only common sense on her part, for Custer did have an eye for a pretty woman. Whether anything more than an eye still functioned at his age, Dowling did not know. He didn't want to find out, either. Now that Custer had a real command again, he didn't need some pretty young popsy distracting him.

And Dowling didn't want to anger Custer's wife. Libbie made a far more vindictive, far more implacable foe than her husband ever dreamt of being. If Dowling hired Custer a popsy, she would not be pleased with him.

He had his own coughing fit. "Sir," he said, "I really do think that's something best left to Mrs. Custer's judgment."

"Fiddlesticks!" Custer said. "You handled such arrangements for me plenty of times during the war. Once more won't hurt you a bit."

"Whenever your wife was with you, though, sir, she did prefer to keep such matters in her own hands," Dowling said. "I wouldn't care for her to think I was encroaching on her privileges."

"You're not helping, Lieutenant Colonel," Custer said irritably.

Dowling stood mute. If Custer ordered him to choose a housekeeper, he resolved to find the general the homeliest old crone he could. Let's see you ask me to do something like that again, Let's see you ask me to do something like that again, he thought. he thought.

But Custer gave no such order. Instead, he let out a long, wheezy sigh. "Here I am, in command of all of Canada," he said, "and I find I'm not even in command of my own household." Dowling wondered how many other famous generals had been defeated by their wives. A good many, was his guess, and he did not think that guess likely to be far wrong.

Scipio was in love, and wondered why in G.o.d's name he'd never been in love before. The best answer he could come up with-and he knew it was nowhere near good enough-was that he'd always been too busy. First, he'd had an education forcibly crammed down his throat. Then he'd been butler at Marshlands, which under Anne Colleton was a job to keep any four men hopping. And after that, he'd been swept up into the affairs of the Congaree Socialist Republic.

Now...Now, as far as anybody in Augusta, Georgia, knew, he was Xerxes the waiter, an ordinary fellow who did his job and didn't give anybody any trouble. And Bathsheba, he was sure, was the most marvelous creature G.o.d had seen fit to set on the face of the earth.

He'd never had any trouble finding a woman to bed when he wanted one. But he'd never understood the difference between making love and being in love, not till now. He stroked Bathsheba's cheek as they lay side by side on the narrow bed in his furnished room. "I is the most luckiest man in the whole wide world," he said-no originality, but great sincerity.

She leaned over and kissed him. "And you are the kindliest man," she said. No one had ever called Scipio anything like that before. He hadn't had many chances to be kindly, either. Now that he did, he was doing his best to make the most of them.

Bathsheba got out of bed and started to dress for the trip back across the hall to her room. "Don't want you to go," Scipio said.

"I got to," she answered. "Got to go clean for the white folks tomorrow mornin'. The work don't never go away."

He knew that. Among the reasons he loved Bathsheba was the solid core of sense he'd found in her. It wasn't that he wanted to make love with her again that made him want her to stay. Since he'd reached his forties, second rounds didn't seem so urgent as they once had. But he enjoyed talking with her more than with anyone else he'd ever met.

He wished he could recite some of the love poetry he'd learned. The only way he knew it, though, was in the educated white man's accent he'd been made to acquire. Using that accent might-no, would-make her ask questions he couldn't afford to answer.

That was the one fly in the ointment of his happiness: everything he said about his past had to be either vague or a lie. Even the name by which she knew him was false. He counted himself lucky that he quickly got used to the aliases under which he protected his real ident.i.ty. Back in South Carolina, reward posters with his true name on them still hung in post offices and police and sheriff's stations. Some might even have come into Georgia, though he'd never seen one in Augusta.

As if to flick him on that wound of secrecy, Bathsheba said, "One of these days, I'm gonna know all about you-everything there is to know. And do you know what else? I'm gonna like every bit of it, too."

"I already likes everything there is to know 'bout you," Scipio said, and her eyes glowed. As for him, he was glad of the butler's training that let him think one thing and say another without giving any hint of what was going on behind the expressions he donned like convenient masks.

Bathsheba leaned down over the bed and gave him another kiss. "See you tomorrow night," she said, her voice rich with promise. Then she was gone, gently closing the door behind her.

Scipio rose and put on a light cotton nights.h.i.+rt. In Augusta in early summer, no one wanted anything more. He picked up a fan of woven straw. He wished the roominghouse had electricity: he would have bought an electric fan and aimed it at the bed as he slept. It got every bit as hot and oppressive here as it did over by the Congaree. He'd heard it got even worse down in Savannah. He found that hard to believe, but you never could tell.

His cheap alarm clock jangled him awake the next morning. He yawned, got out of bed, and started getting dressed. He had his white s.h.i.+rt halfway b.u.t.toned before his eyes really came open. Bathsheba's door was closed when he left his room, and everything quiet within her place. She got up earlier than he did, to cram the most work she could into a day.

The fry joint where he worked didn't serve breakfast. He got eggs and grits and coffee at a place that did, and paid for them with a $500 banknote. "Need another hundred on top o' that," the black man behind the counter said.

With a grimace, Scipio peeled off another banknote and gave it to him. "Be a thousand tomorrow, I reckons," he said.

After considering, the counterman shook his head. "Not till next week, I don't think," he answered seriously.

Despite those serious tones, it was funny in a macabre way. Every day, Confederate paper dollars bought less and less. Scipio had just put down six hundred of them on a cheap breakfast. If it was a thousand tomorrow, or a thousand next week at the latest, so what? The printing presses would run off more banknotes with more zeros on them, and another cycle would begin.

The good, sweet smell of baking cornbread filled Scipio's nostrils when he went into Erasmus' fish store and restaurant. The grizzled Negro who ran the place nodded to him and said, "Mornin'."

"Mornin'," Scipio answered. He grabbed a broom and dustpan and started sweeping the floor. He kept his furnished room as neat as he could, and he did the same here, even though Erasmus had given him no such duty.

Erasmus watched him now as he plied the broom. The cook rarely said anything about it. Maybe he didn't know what to make of it. Maybe he was afraid that, if he said anything, Scipio would quit doing it.

A couple of minutes later, Erasmus took the pan of cornbread out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool. Then he said, "Make sure n.o.body steal the store, Xerxes. I'm gonna git us fish fo' today. The ice man come before I git back, put it in the trays there like you know how to do."