American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 38

"Children?" Blackford started, then laughed wryly. "I'm getting a little long in the tooth to worry about children. But you're not; of course you'll want to have children." Much more to himself than to Flora, he muttered, "I won't be sorry not to wear a sheath any more, that's for sure." After a few seconds' thought, he spoke to her again: "Your faith has a stronger hold on you than mine does on me; I've been a pretty pallid excuse for an Episcopalian for a long time now. If I'm not shooting blanks after all these years, I suppose it's only fair we bring up the children your way."

That was as rational an approach to the irrational business of religion as Flora could imagine. She'd seen in Congress that Blackford approached problems in a commonsense way. She'd seen he did the same in his private life, too, but this was an important proof. She said, "I think my father and mother will get along with you just fine."

"Does that mean you'll marry me, then?"

"I think it does." Flora knew she shouldn't sound surprised at a moment like that, but couldn't help herself.

"Bully!" Blackford said softly. He took her in his arms. She felt his manhood stir a little against her flank, and tried her best to revive him. Her best turned out not to be good enough. He made a joke of it, saying, "See? This is what's liable to happen when you have an old man for a husband." Under that light tone, though, she could tell he was worried.

"It's all right," she said, but it plainly wasn't all right. She cast about for a way to rea.s.sure him, and finally found one, even if it meant coming out with the most risque thing she'd ever said in her life: "Your tongue never gets tired." She was glad the only light came from a single lamp in the front room; he couldn't possibly see her blush.

"Yes, some parts do still work better than others," Blackford said, doing his best not to sound as if he were taking things too seriously. But, however hard saying that had been, Flora was glad she'd done it. She knew she'd eased his mind.

"I didn't really expect-this," she said, and then, "I didn't expect any of this, not when I first came down from New York City. I was green as paint."

"I didn't know what to expect, either, when I met you at the Broad Street station," Blackford answered. "Lord knows I didn't expect this-but then, I didn't expect any of the wonderful things you turned out to be, in Congress or out of it."

n.o.body else said things like that about Flora. She didn't know how to take them. "Thank you," she whispered. She said it again, on a slightly different note: "Thank you." The day had been long and boring. The night had been even longer, and lonely. Going to sleep was the most she'd had to look forward to. Now, in the s.p.a.ce of an hour, her whole world had changed. That had happened once before, when she was elected to Congress. She looked forward to these changes even more.

Judge Mahlon Pitney slammed down the gavel. He looked every inch a jurist: a spare, erect, handsome gray-haired man in his early sixties, his gray eyes clear and alert. "Here is my verdict in the action Smith Smith v. v. Heusinger Heusinger," he said, with a glance toward the court clerk to make sure that worthy was ready to record the verdict. "It is the decision of this court that t.i.tle to the property at issue in the above-ent.i.tled action does rightfully rest with the plaintiff, John Smith, who has shown right of possession sufficient to satisfy the court."

Letting out a whoop would have been undignified, unprofessional. That very nearly didn't stop Jonathan Moss, who instead reached out and shook hands with his client. John Smith looked more nearly amazed than delighted.

On the other side of the courtroom in Berlin, Ontario, Paul Heusinger stared daggers at Moss. Well he might have: Moss had just shown Judge Pitney he did not have good t.i.tle to the land on which he'd built his office building-the building in which Moss had his law office. "You're gone," Heusinger mouthed. Moss nodded. He'd known he was gone whichever way the case went. At least he was going out a winner.

John Smith tugged at Moss' sleeve. "Will he appeal?" the mousy little Canadian whispered.

"Can't say for sure now," Moss whispered back. "I'd guess not, though. I think we have a solid case here-and appeals are expensive."

Back in the spectators' seats, a couple of reporters scribbled furiously. They'd been covering the case since it first showed up on the docket; occasional man-bites-dog stories appeared in the Berlin Bulletin Berlin Bulletin and, Moss supposed, some other papers as well. He didn't mind-on the contrary. The stories had already brought him three or four clients much more able to pay his usual fees than John Smith was. and, Moss supposed, some other papers as well. He didn't mind-on the contrary. The stories had already brought him three or four clients much more able to pay his usual fees than John Smith was.

But for the reporters, the spectators'gallery was empty. As far as Moss could tell, Heusinger had not a friend in town. Smith probably had had friends here, but those who weren't dead were scattered. The war had been hard on Berlin.

One of the reporters asked, "Now that you have your property back, Mr. Smith, what do you aim to do with it?"

Smith looked amazed all over again. "I don't really know. I haven't really thought about it, because I didn't believe the Yanks would play fair and give it back to me. I don't suppose they would have without Mr. Moss here."

"No, that's not true, and I don't want anyone printing it," Moss said. "Americans respect the law as much as Canadians do. It wasn't a judge who said Mr. Smith has good t.i.tle to that land. It was the law. And the law would have said the same thing regardless of whether Mr. Smith's attorney came from the United States or Canada."

The reporters took down what he said. If they didn't believe him, they were too businesslike to show it on their faces. John Smith, less disciplined, looked highly dubious. Moss felt dubious himself. One of the things he'd already discovered in his brief practice was that judges were not animate law books in black robes. They were human, sometimes alarmingly so.

After a little more back-and-forth with the reporters, Moss reclaimed his overcoat, hat, and galoshes from the cloakroom. In a pocket of the overcoat were mittens and earm.u.f.fs. He put them on before venturing outside. Even so, the cold tore at him. The coat that had been better than good enough for winter in Chicago was just barely good enough for winter in Ontario. He wished for a nosem.u.f.f to go with the earm.u.f.fs.

He also wished for taller rubber overshoes. As he kicked his way through the new-fallen snow toward his apartment, some of the freezing stuff got over the red-ringed tops of the galoshes and did its best to turn his ankles into icicles. He wished he would have driven his motorcar over to the courthouse. If he had, though, it was only about even money the Bucephalus would have started after sitting so long unprotected in the snow.

The people of Berlin took the weather in stride in a way even Chicagoans didn't. When it stayed this cold this long, people in Chicago complained. Complaining about the weather was as much Chicago's sport as football was America's. People up here simply went about their business. Moss didn't know whether to admire them for that or to conclude they hadn't the brains to grumble.

He hurled coal into the stove when he got into his flat, then stood in front of the black iron monstrosity till he was evenly done on all sides. He didn't have a whole lot of room to stand anywhere in the apartment. Ever since he'd started the action against his landlord, he'd been moving crates of books out of his office, antic.i.p.ating that Paul Heusinger or his own client would give him the b.u.m's rush.

"Tomorrow," he said, having picked up the habit of talking to himself down in Chicago, "tomorrow I get to find myself some new digs. Then maybe I'll be able to turn around in this place again."

He took some pork chops out of the icebox, dipped them in egg and then in flour, and fried them in a pan on the hot stove. He fried potatoes in another pan at the same time. Practice had made him a halfway decent cook-or maybe he just thought so because he'd got used to eating what he turned out.

He didn't go office hunting the next day, nor the several days after that, either. The blizzard that roared through Berlin kept even the locals off the streets. It was the sort of blizzard that sent Americans running back over the border. Moss didn't think of leaving-not more than a couple of times, anyhow-but he was d.a.m.n glad he had plenty of coal in the scuttle.

"Have to start burning books if I run out," he said. He had enough books in the flat for...He looked around. "Eight or ten years, is my guess."

Despite the dreadful weather, he did get some work done. He'd already seen that the Canadians were good at keeping telegraph and telephone lines up and functioning in the teeth of the worst winter could do. The telephone in his flat rang several times a day. Somehow, the newspapers had gone out, and with them word of his victory for John Smith. Other Canadians with similar problems wanted him to give them a hand, too.

He had just headed for the bathroom to dispose of some used coffee when the telephone jangled yet again. He thought about ignoring it-anyone who really wanted him would call back-but duty defeated his bladder. Stepping over a crate, he went back to the telephone. "Jonathan Moss, attorney at law."

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Moss. I called to congratulate you for getting Mr. Smith what belongs to him."

"Thank you, ma'am." He wondered where the woman was calling from. The line had more clicks and pops on it than he would have expected from a call placed inside Berlin, but the storm might have had something to do with that, too. He waited for the woman to say more. When she didn't, he asked, "Can I do anything else for you?"

"I don't think so," she answered. "I've already found out that you aren't what I thought you were during the war. No-you may be what I thought you were, but you're more than that, too."

Moss almost dropped the telephone earpiece. "Laura," he whispered.

He didn't know if Laura Secord would hear him, but she did. "Yes, that's right," she said. "When I found out what you had done, I knew I had to come into Arthur to ring you up and say thank you."

He hadn't stirred out of doors since coming home from winning the case. Did that say she was hardier than he, or just that she was out of her tree? Moss couldn't make up his mind. Whatever else it said, it said she'd very badly wanted to telephone him. "How are you?" he asked.

"Well enough," she said. "As well as I can be with my country occupied. I'd heard you'd set up in Empire"-she would be one not to call it Berlin-"but I didn't know what sort of practice you had, and so I didn't think it right to speak to you. From the way you lent me money, I thought you were a decent man, and I am glad to see you proved me right when you had nothing else on your mind."

"Ah," he said. Then he shrugged. She could hardly have helped knowing what he'd felt about her. He'd gone up to Arthur in weather almost this bad-Christ, had it been three years ago?-to tell her so. And she'd told him to get lost.

He noticed how he thought about that as if it were in the past tense. And, he realized, some of it was. He'd been surprised-h.e.l.l, he'd been flabbergasted-to have her call, but some of what he'd felt, or thought he'd felt, was missing. That flabbergasted him, too. Where did it go? Into the place where everything that doesn't work out goes, Into the place where everything that doesn't work out goes, he thought. he thought.

Now she'd been waiting for him to say something more, and seemed nonplussed when he didn't. "When the weather gets better, maybe you could come up for a picnic, if you care to," she said. "We haven't seen each other in a long time."

Moss didn't know whether to laugh or to weep. Had she said that in 1919, he would have driven his Bucephalus through fire, never mind ice, to go to her side. But it was 1922. He'd got over some of his infatuation without quite noticing he was doing it. While he was doing that, had she grown interested in him? So it seemed.

"I'll see what I can do," he said, which was polite, even friendly sounding, and committed him to nothing.

"All right," Laura Secord said. "I hope to see you. I'd better go now. Good-bye." She hung up. The line went dead.

Slowly, Moss set the earpiece back on its cradle. He stood staring at the telephone for a long moment before his body reminded him of what he'd been about to do before the phone rang. He took care of that, then went into the kitchen, which wasn't so overrun with books and crates as the rest of the apartment. To make up for that, it did contain several bottles of whiskey. He picked one, yanked out the cork, and looked around for a gla.s.s.

He didn't see one. "h.e.l.l with it," he said, and took a long pull straight from the bottle. He coughed a couple of times, drank again-not so much-and set the bottle down. He started to pick it up once more, but changed his mind. Instead, he shoved in the cork and put it back in the cupboard, where it would be out of sight.

"Laura Secord," he said. "My G.o.d." He started to giggle, which was surely the whiskey working. "That telephone call would shut Fred Sandburg up forever all by itself."

He didn't need Fred to tell him he'd been foolish to fall so hard. He'd figured it out all by himself. And now, if he wanted to, he had the chance to make his dreams turn real. To how many men was that given? Of them, how many would have the sense to steer clear?

He laughed out of the side of his mouth. He wasn't nearly sure he would have the sense to steer clear, or even that it was sense. As the snowstorm howling through Berlin attested, picnic weather was a long way away. Now his mind would start coming back to Laura Secord, the way his tongue kept coming back to a chipped front tooth. It hardly seemed fair. Just when he'd thought he was over her at last...

He'd known Arthur wasn't that far from Berlin when he started his practice here. He'd figured the John Smith case would draw wide notice. Had he hoped Laura Secord would be one of the people who noticed it? Maybe he had. He shook his head. He knew d.a.m.n well he had, even if he hadn't admitted it to himself.

She'd been in his mind for five years. Now he was in hers. "What the h.e.l.l am I going to do?" he muttered. "What the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l am I going to do?" His tongue found that chipped tooth again. He got very little work done the rest of the day. am I going to do?" His tongue found that chipped tooth again. He got very little work done the rest of the day.

Scipio hardly thought of himself by the name he'd been born with these days. His pa.s.sbook called him Xerxes. His boss called him Xerxes. His friends called him Xerxes. Most important of all, his wife called him Xerxes. Bathsheba had no idea he'd ever owned another name.

Bathsheba knew very little about his life before he'd come to Augusta. One day, she asked him point-blank: "Why don't you never come out an' say where you was from and what you was doin' when you was there?"

He wondered how she'd react if he answered her in the accent of an educated white, the accent he'd had to use while serving Anne Colleton at Marshlands. He didn't dare find out. He didn't dare tell her of his days on the plantation, or of the blood-soaked time in the Congaree Socialist Republic that had followed. As long as only he knew, he was safe. If anyone else found out-anyone-he was in trouble.

And so he answered as he usually did: "I done what I done, is all. Never done nothin' much." He tried to soften her with a smile. "You is the best thing I ever done."

It worked-to a degree. Eyes glinting, Bathsheba said, "I bet you done ran away from a wife an' about six children."

Solemnly, Scipio shook his head. "No, ma'am. Done run away from three wives an' fo' teen chilluns."

Bathsheba stared. For a moment, she believed him. Then, when he started to laugh, she stuck out her tongue. "You are the most aggravatin' man in the whole world. Why won't you never give me no straight answers?"

Because if I did, I might end up standing against a wall with a blindfold on my face. I wonder if they would waste a cigarette on a n.i.g.g.e.r before they shot him. As usual, he heard his thoughts in the educated dialect he'd been made to learn. He sighed. That was a straight answer, but not one he could give Bathsheba. He tried jollying her once more instead. Batting his eyes, he said, "I gots to have some secrets." As usual, he heard his thoughts in the educated dialect he'd been made to learn. He sighed. That was a straight answer, but not one he could give Bathsheba. He tried jollying her once more instead. Batting his eyes, he said, "I gots to have some secrets."

His wife snorted and threw her hands in the air. "All right," she said. "All right. I give up. Maybe you done crawled out from under a cabbage leaf, like folks tell the pickaninnies when they're too little to know about screwin'."

"Mebbe so," Scipio said with a chuckle. "My mama never tol' me no different, anyways. Don't matter where I comes from, though. Where I's goin' is what count."

Bathsheba snorted again. "And where you goin'?"

"Right now, sweet thing, I believe I's goin' to bed." Scipio yawned.

In bed, in the darkness, Bathsheba grew serious again. "When the Reds rose up, what did you do then?" She asked the question in a tiny whisper. Unlike so many she'd asked earlier in the evening, she knew that one was dangerous.

But she didn't know how dangerous it was. Scipio answered it seriously without going into much detail: "Same as mos' folks, I reckons. I done my bes' to hide a lot o' the time. When de buckra come with the guns, I make like I was a good n.i.g.g.e.r for they, an' they don' shoot me. Wish the whole ruction never happen. Do Jesus! I wish the whole ruction never happen." There he told the complete truth. He set a hand on her shoulder. "What you do?" If she was talking about herself, she couldn't ask about him.

He felt her shrug. "Wasn't so much to do here. A couple-three days when folks done rioted and stole whatever they could git away with, but then the white folks brung so many police and sojers into the Terry, n.o.body dared stick a nose out the door for a while, or they'd shoot it off you."

"d.a.m.n foolishness. Nothin' but d.a.m.n foolishness," Scipio said. "Shouldn't never've riz up. The buckra, they's stronger'n we. I hates it, but I ain't blind. If we makes they hate we, we's sunk."

Bathsheba didn't say anything for a while. Then she spoke two words: "Jake Featherston." She s.h.i.+vered, though the February night was mild.

Scipio took her in his arms, as much to keep himself from being afraid as to make her less so. "Jake Featherston," he echoed quietly. "All the buckra in the Freedom Party hates we. They hates we bad. An'one white man out o' every three, near 'nough, vote fo' Jake Featherston las' year. Six year down de road, he be president o' de Confederate States?"

"Pray to Jesus he ain't," Bathsheba said. Scipio nodded. He'd been able to pray when he was a child; he remembered as much. He wished he still could. Most of the ability had leached out of him during the years he'd served Anne Colleton. The Marxist rhetoric of the Reds with whom he'd a.s.sociated during the war had taken the rest. Marx's words weren't gospel to him, as they had been to Ca.s.sius and Cherry and Island and the rest. Still, the philosopher had some strong arguments on his side.

Outside, rain started tapping against the bedroom window. That was a good sound, one Scipio heard several times a week. He wished he hadn't been thinking about the Red rebellion and the Freedom Party tonight. He couldn't find any other reason why the raindrops sounded like distant machine-gun fire.

"The Freedom Party ever elect themselves a president, what we do?" Bathsheba asked. Maybe she was having trouble praying, too.

"Dunno," Scipio answered. "Maybe we gots to rise up again." That was a forlorn hope, and he knew it. All the reasons he'd spelled out for the failure of the last black revolt would hold in the next one, too. "Maybe we gots to run away instead."

"Where we run to?" his wife asked.

"Ain't got but two choices," Scipio said: "the USA an' Mexico." He laughed, not that he'd said anything funny. "An'the Mexicans don't want we, an' the d.a.m.nyankees really really don't want we." don't want we."

"You know all kinds of things," Bathsheba said. "How come you know so many different kinds of things?"

It wasn't what he'd said, which was a commonplace, but the way he'd said it; he had, sometimes, a manner that brooked no contradiction. Butlers were supposed to be infallible. That he could sound infallible even using the Congaree dialect, a dialect of ignorance if ever there was one, spoke well of his own force of character.

"I knows what's so," he said, "an' I knows what ain't." He slid his hand under the hem of Bathsheba's nightgown, which had ridden up a good deal after she got into bed. His palm glided along the soft cotton of her drawers, heading upwards. "An' I knows what I likes, too."

"What's that?" Bathsheba asked, but her legs drifted apart to make it easier for his hand to reach their joining, so she must have had some idea.

Afterwards, lazy and sated and drifting toward sleep, Scipio realized he'd found the best way to keep her from asking too many questions. He wished he were ten years younger, so he might use it more often. Chuckling at the conceit, he dozed off. Bathsheba was already snoring beside him.

The alarm clock gave them both a rude awakening. Scipio made coffee while Bathsheba cooked breakfast. Erasmus trusted Scipio with the coffeepot, but not with anything more. Scipio occasionally resented that; he could cook, in a rough and ready way. But both Erasmus and Bathsheba were better at it than he was.

When he got to Erasmus' fish market and fry joint, he found the gray-haired proprietor uncharacteristically subdued. Erasmus was never a raucous man; now he seemed to have pulled into himself almost like a turtle pulling its head back into its sh.e.l.l. Not until Scipio pulled out the broom and dustpan for his usual morning sweep-up did his boss speak, and then only to say, "Don't bother."

Scipio blinked. Erasmus had never encouraged him to keep the place tidy, but he'd never told him not to do it, either. "Somethin' troublin' you?" Scipio asked, expecting Erasmus to shake his head or come back with one of the wry gibes that proved him clever despite a lack of education.

But the cook and fish dealer nodded instead. "You might say so. Yeah, you just might say so."

"Kin I do anything to he'p?" Scipio asked. He wondered if his boss had been to a doctor and got bad news.

Now Erasmus shook his head. "Ain't nothin' you can do," he answered, which made Scipio think he'd made a good guess. Erasmus continued, "You might want to start sniffin' around for a new place to work. I be G.o.dd.a.m.ned if I know how much longer I can keep this here place open."

"Do Jesus!" Scipio exclaimed. "Ain't nothin' a a-tall the doctor kin do?"

"What you say?" Erasmus looked puzzled. Then his face cleared. "I ain't sick, Xerxes. Sick an' tired, oh yes. Sick an' disgusted, oh my yes. But I ain't sick, not like you mean." He hesitated, then added, "Sick o'white folks, is what I is."

"All o'we is sick o' the buckra," Scipio said. "What they do, make you sick this time?"

"After you go home las'night, these four-five white men come in here," Erasmus said. "They tell me they's puttin' a special tax on all the n.i.g.g.e.rs what owns business in the Terry here. Now I know the laws. I got to know the laws, else I find even more trouble'n a n.i.g.g.e.r's supposed to have. An' I tell these fellers, ain't no such thing as no special tax on n.i.g.g.e.r businesses."

Scipio had the bad feeling he knew what was coming. He asked, "These here buckra, they Freedom Party men?"

"I don't know yes and I don't know no, not to swear," Erasmus answered. "But I bet they is. One of 'em smile this mean, chilly smile, an' he say, 'There is now.' Any n.i.g.g.e.r don't pay this tax, bad things gwine happen to where he work. He still don't pay, bad things gwine happen to him. I seen a deal o' men in my day, Xerxes. Don't reckon this here feller was lyin'."

"What you do?" Scipio said.

Erasmus looked old and beaten. "Can't hardly go to the police, now can I? n.i.g.g.e.r complain about white folks, they lock him in jail an' lose the key. Likely tell they beat him up, too, long as he there. Can't hardly pay this here tax, neither. I ain't gettin' rich here. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds want to squeeze a million dollars out of every three million I make. That don't leave no money for me, an' it sure as h.e.l.l don't leave no money to pay no help. You work good, Lord knows. But I don't reckon I can keep you."

"Maybe you kin go to the police," Scipio said slowly. "Freedom Party done lose the election."

"Came too close to winning," Erasmus said, the first time he'd ever said anything like that. "An' besides, you know same as I do, half the police, maybe better'n half, spend their days off yellin' 'Freedom!' loud as they can."

It was true. Every word of it was true. Scipio wished he could deny it. He'd been comfortable for a while, comfortable and happy. As long as he had Bathsheba, he figured he could stay happy. If he lost this job, how long would he need to get comfortable again? He hoped he wouldn't have to find out.