American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 46

Bartlett left the drugstore. Light was draining out of the sky. At this season of the year, nightfall came earlier, perceptibly earlier, every day. Street lamps threw little puddles of light down at the feet of the poles they surmounted. With dusk, people hurried wherever they were going, wanting to get there before full darkness if they could.

A man Reggie recognized pa.s.sed him under one of those street lamps. The fellow came into Harmon's drugstore every so often, and was an outspoken Freedom Party backer. Reggie didn't know whether he was a Freedom Party goon, but he looked as if he might have been.

To stay on the safe side, Reggie stuck his hand in the pocket in which he still carried a pistol. The Freedom Party man knew he didn't have any use for Jake Featherston. If the fellow also knew he'd been the one who helped aim Tom Brearley at Roger Kimball, all sorts of fireworks might go off.

Whatever the Freedom Party man knew, he kept walking. His head was down, his face somber and, Reggie thought, a little confused. Was he looking for the certainty he'd known before Grady Calkins shot the president of the Confederate States, the certainty that Jake Featherston was on the way up and he himself would rise with his leader from whatever miserable job he held now? If he was, he wouldn't find it on the dark, dirty sidewalks of Richmond.

Posters on a board fence shouted HANG FEATHERSTON HIGHER THAN HAMAN HANG FEATHERSTON HIGHER THAN HAMAN! in big letters. Underneath, in much smaller type, they added, Radical Liberal Party of the Confederate States. Radical Liberal Party of the Confederate States. They'd gone up less than a week after Wade Hampton V got shot, and no one, not even the men of the Freedom Party, had had the nerve to deface them or tear them down. Even the goons in white and b.u.t.ternut might have known some shame at being goons. They'd gone up less than a week after Wade Hampton V got shot, and no one, not even the men of the Freedom Party, had had the nerve to deface them or tear them down. Even the goons in white and b.u.t.ternut might have known some shame at being goons.

Back at his flat, Reggie took a chunk of leftover fried chicken out of the icebox and ate it cold with a couple of slices of bread and a bottle of beer to wash everything down. It was, he knew, a lazy man's supper, but he figured he had the right to be lazy once in a while if he felt like it.

After was.h.i.+ng the dishes, he took out the new banknotes he'd got and looked at them. The one-dollar notes bore the image of Jefferson Davis, the five-dollar notes that of Stonewall Jackson: no doubt to remind people of the Stonewall, the five-dollar goldpiece hardly seen since the end of the war. Maybe, now that specie wasn't flowing out of the CSA as reparations, the government would start minting Stonewalls again.

Reggie walked into the bedroom and got out a banknote he'd kept from the last days before the currency reform: a $1,000,000,000 banknote. It might have been the equivalent of twenty-five or thirty cents of real money. It showed Jeb Stuart licking the Yankees during the Second Mexican War, and was every bit as well printed as the new banknotes, even if all the zeros necessarily made the design look crowded.

"A billion dollars," Reggie said softly. If only it had been worth more than a supper at a greasy spoon or a couple of shots of whiskey at a saloon with sawdust on the floor. But it hadn't; it was nothing more than a symbol of a whole country busy going down the drain. Reggie set it on the table by the sofa. "If I ever have kids," he said, "I'll show this to them. Maybe it will help them understand how hard times were after the war."

He shook his head. They wouldn't understand no matter what, any more than they would understand what life in the trenches was like. Experience brought understanding. Nothing else came close.

When he got to work the next morning, he glanced affectionately at the cash register. All of a sudden, its keys corresponded to prices once more. He didn't mentally have to multiply by thousands or millions or billions any more.

A customer came in and bought some aspirins. "That'll be fifteen cents," Bartlett said. The man pulled from his pocket a $1,000,000,000 banknote like the one Reggie had contemplated the night before. Reggie shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't take this."

"Why not?" the man said. "It's still worth more'n fifteen cents, I reckon."

"Yes, sir," Bartlett said, "but all these old banknotes have been-what's the word?-demonetized, that's it. You can't spend 'em for anything. Suppose you took one to a bank and tried to get a billion real dollars for it?"

"I wouldn't do that," the fellow said. He no doubt meant it: he was just a petty chiseler, not a big one. There couldn't be anybody in the Confederate States who didn't know you couldn't use the old money any more, not even for small purchases. Grumbling, the customer put the preposterously inflated banknote back in his pocket and handed Reggie a real dollar instead.

Reggie rang up the sale and then anxiously checked the till; coins were coming back into circulation more slowly than notes. But he was able to make change, even if he had to use ten pennies to do it. "Here you are, sir."

"Thanks." The man put the little flat tin of tablets in his pocket along with the change. Jingling, he turned away. "See you again sometime. Freedom!"

No one had said that to Reggie for quite a while. He would happily have gone another fifty or a hundred years without hearing it again, too. He had to make himself hold still and not go after the customer to beat h.e.l.l out of him. "Freedom to butcher anybody you don't like, you mean," he ground out, "even if it's the president of the CSA."

He waited for the man to come back hotly at him, whether with words or with fists. That was the Freedom Party's style, and had been since its beginnings in the black days after the war. But the man only tucked his chin down against his chest, as if he were walking into a cold, rainy wind, and hurried out of the drugstore.

At the back of the store, Jeremiah Harmon coughed. "Yeah, I know, boss: I'm not supposed to do things like that," Bartlett said. "I know it's bad for business. But when those white-and-b.u.t.ternut boys come in, I see red. I can't help it. And this one had his nerve, going 'Freedom!' after what that Grady Calkins son of a b.i.t.c.h went and did."

"I didn't say anything, Reggie," Harmon answered. "As a matter of fact, I think I'm coming down with a cold." He coughed again. "I don't like to lose business, mind you, but I don't seek business from imbeciles, either. And any man who will call out 'Freedom!' with President Hampton still new in his grave is either an imbecile or whatever's one step down from there."

"A half-witted cur dog-a son of a b.i.t.c.h, like I said," Reggie suggested.

"It could be so," his boss said.

"When I was in the hospital after the d.a.m.nyankees shot me and caught me, one of the other people in there was one of our n.i.g.g.e.r soldiers who'd lost a foot," Reggie said. "You ask me, he had more brains in that missing foot than the whole Freedom Party does in all its heads." He wondered how Rehoboam was doing down in Mississippi. Even if the black man had been a Red, he'd been a pretty good fellow, too.

Harmon chuckled. "Something to that, I shouldn't wonder. But now, if G.o.d is kind to us, the Freedom Party dealt itself a blow no one else could have given it, and one it won't get over."

"Amen," Reggie said with all his heart.

Cincinnatus Driver worked like a man possessed, unloading a truckload of filing cabinets he'd brought from the Des Moines railroad yards to the State Capitol on the other side of the river. It was, he admitted to himself, easier to work hard in Iowa in November than it had been in Kentucky in, say, July. But he would have put extra effort into things today even if it had been hotter and muggier than Kentucky ever got.

He finished faster than anyone would have imagined he could. Instead of racing back to the yard to see what other hauling work he could pick up-which was what he usually did when he finished a job-he used the time he'd saved to hurry back to the near northwest, to an Odd Fellows hall not far from his flat. He parked the truck on the street and hurried inside.

Four white men sat behind a long table in the middle of the hall. "Let me have your name, please, and your street address," the one at the end nearest Cincinnatus said to him.

He gave the fellow his particulars. The second man behind the table checked a list. Cincinnatus had a moment's fear his name would not appear there. But the gray-haired white man ticked it off and pointed to a register in front of him. "If you'll just sign here, Mr. Driver," he said.

"I surely will, suh." Cincinnatus grinned from ear to ear. White men didn't call Negroes mister mister down in Kentucky. They didn't always do it here, either, but he liked it better every time he heard it. He wrote his name in a fine round hand. down in Kentucky. They didn't always do it here, either, but he liked it better every time he heard it. He wrote his name in a fine round hand.

The third man at the table handed him a folded sheet of paper. "Choose any voting booth you please, Mr. Driver," he said.

"Yes, suh. Thank you kindly, suh," Cincinnatus said, and then, because he couldn't hold it in any more, "You know somethin', suh? This here is the first time in my whole life I ever got to vote. Used to live in Kentucky, and I never reckoned I'd get me the chance."

"Well, you've got it," the polling official said. "I'm glad it means something to you, and I hope you use it wisely."

"Thank you," Cincinnatus said. He went to a voting booth-it was before the dinner hour, and he had plenty from which to choose-and pulled the curtain shut after himself. Then he unfolded the ballot, inked the little X-stamper in the booth with great care, and began to vote.

He voted for Democrats for Congress, for the State House of Representatives, and for the State Senate. That would, no doubt, have startled Luther Bliss; the boss of the Kentucky State Police had been convinced he was a Red. Apicius-Apicius Wood, now-had known better. A Red himself, Apicius could tell Cincinnatus wasn't...quite.

Cincinnatus finished marking the ballot, folded it again, and left the voting booth. He handed the folded sheet of paper to the fourth white man at the table. That worthy pushed it through the slot of the locked ballot box beside him. "Mr. Driver has voted," he said in a loud voice.

Mr. Driver has voted. As far as Cincinnatus was concerned, the words might have been accompanied by music from a marching band: they sounded in horns and drums in his ears. He felt ten feet tall as he strode out to the old Duryea truck, and marveled that he still fit inside the cab. But he did, and, having voted, he went off to eat a quick dinner and hunt up more work. As far as Cincinnatus was concerned, the words might have been accompanied by music from a marching band: they sounded in horns and drums in his ears. He felt ten feet tall as he strode out to the old Duryea truck, and marveled that he still fit inside the cab. But he did, and, having voted, he went off to eat a quick dinner and hunt up more work.

He was still eating on a bench down by the train tracks when Joe Sims sat beside him. "Why are you grinnin' like a fool?" the older black man asked. "You look like you just tore off a piece your wife doesn't know about."

"I'm happy," Cincinnatus said, "but I ain't happy like that. I went down and voted-first time ever-is what I did."

Sims scratched his head. "I was happy when I voted the first time, too. It meant I was twenty-one. It meant I could buy whiskey, too, back when whiskey was still legal here. But I can't recollect looking like I just tripped over a steamer trunk full of double eagles because I made some X's."

Cincinnatus studied the other Negro, who hadn't the faintest idea how much he took for granted. "You was born here," Cincinnatus said at last. Sims nodded. Cincinnatus went on, "You knew from the time you was a little fellow you'd be able to vote when you got big."

"Well, sure I did," Joe Sims said, and then, belatedly, got the point. "Wasn't like that for you, was it?"

"Not hardly." Cincinnatus'voice was dry. "My ma and pa was slaves up till a few years before I was born. Before the USA took Kentucky away from the CSA, wasn't a legal school for n.i.g.g.e.rs in the whole state. I learned my letters anyways, but I was lucky. I wasn't a citizen of the CSA; I was just somebody who lived there, and all the white folks told me what to do. Now, when I vote, I get to tell white folks what to do, and it ain't even against the law. Anybody reckons I ain't wild about that, he's crazy."

Sims took a big bite out of his sandwich. It wasn't ham, but a pungent sausage Cincinnatus hadn't seen much in Covington. Salami, people called it; it was pretty good. After chewing and swallowing, Sims said, "The stories you tell remind me of the ones I heard from my grandpa when I was growing up. I always thought he was making things out to be worse than they really were."

"Only reason you reckoned that is on account of you was born here," Cincinnatus said. "n.o.body could make it out to be worse than it was-and it wasn't even so bad in Covington, because we was right across the river from Ohio. But it was bad there, and it got worse the further south you went."

"It ain't so good here, either," Sims said.

Negroes in Des Moines-Negroes in the USA generally-were fond of saying that. They weren't even wrong; Cincinnatus had seen as much. Nevertheless..."You don't know what you're talkin' about," Cincinnatus said. "Get down on your knees and praise the Lord on account of you don't, too. I seen both sides now. This here may not be heaven, but it ain't h.e.l.l, neither."

"Yeah, you say that every chance you get." Sims breathed pepper and garlic into Cincinnatus' face. "I can't argue with you. I never set foot inside the Confederate States. I do admit, I never heard of any colored fellow leaving the USA to go there."

"It would happen," Cincinnatus said. "About every other year, it would happen. The papers in the CSA would always bang the drum about it, too, to make the n.i.g.g.e.rs there-and the white folks, heaven knows-happy about how things was."

"Happy." Joe Sims chewed on the word as he'd chewed on his salami. "How could you be happy, when you knew you were lying to each other down there?"

That was a better question than most of the ones about the Confederate States Cincinnatus heard up here. He had to think before he answered, "Well, the white folks were happy 'cause they were on top. And us n.i.g.g.e.rs? We were were happy some of the time. I don't reckon you can get through life without bein'happy some of the time." Cincinnatus crammed the rest of his own sandwich into his mouth. Indistinctly, he said, "Let's see what they got for us to do. With a new young-un in the house any day now, I got to keep busy." happy some of the time. I don't reckon you can get through life without bein'happy some of the time." Cincinnatus crammed the rest of his own sandwich into his mouth. Indistinctly, he said, "Let's see what they got for us to do. With a new young-un in the house any day now, I got to keep busy."

"Got to stay out of there to get some rest once the baby comes," Sims said with a reminiscent chuckle. "I know all about that, d.a.m.ned if I don't. What are you and your missus going to call the kid?"

"Seneca if it's a boy-that's my pa's name," Cincinnatus said. "And Elizabeth's ma was called Amanda, so we'll name the baby that if it's a girl."

"Those are good names." Sims shut his dinner pail and got to his feet. "Like you say, we have to keep busy. We don't, everybody goes hungry."

Cincinnatus found enough work to put money in his pocket all through the afternoon. He went back to his apartment well pleased with himself. Elizabeth greeted him at the door with a kiss. "Did you vote?" she demanded. "Did you really and truly vote?" She wouldn't get her chance till the 1924 election, for Iowa women had only presidential suffrage.

"I really and truly voted," Cincinnatus said, and his wife's eyes shone. Joe Sims might not understand what the franchise meant to him, but Elizabeth did. She waddled back toward the kitchen, her legs so wide apart, the baby she carried might almost have fallen out between them.

Achilles was doing homework at the kitchen table. He had a sheet of paper turned upside down in front of him: his spelling words, which he was supposed to be committing to memory. "Orange," he said. "O-R-A-N-G-E. Orange."

"That's good, son." Cincinnatus made as if to clap his hands together. "The better you spell, the smarter folks'll reckon you are. I don't spell near as good as I wish I did, but I know you got that one right."

"It ain't...It's not"-Achilles carefully corrected himself-"that hard once you get the hang of it."

"You won't get any wrong on your test, then, will you?" Cincinnatus said.

"Hardly ever do," his son replied. Had that not been the truth, Cincinnatus would have clouted him for his uppity mouth. But Achilles was doing very well in school, which made Cincinnatus proud. The boy's eyes went far away. "Month. M-O-N-T-H. Month."

"Supper," Elizabeth announced. "I ain't gwine try an' spell it, but I done cooked it an' it's ready."

"Smells good," Cincinnatus said. It tasted good, too: roast beef with b.u.t.tery mashed potatoes and greens on the side. "Turnip greens, ain't they?" Cincinnatus asked, lifting another forkful to his mouth.

"That's right," Elizabeth said. "Can't hardly get no other kind round these parts. Even black folks don't hardly seem to know about collard greens, an' they're better'n turnip greens any day of the week." She paused, looked down at her swollen belly, and laughed. "Baby just kick me."

"Pretty soon, the baby will be kicking Achilles," Cincinnatus said. He and Elizabeth both laughed then, at their son's expression. Having a new brother or sister still didn't seem real to Achilles. It would before long.

Elizabeth returned to the earlier subject: "Wish I had me a mess o' collard greens. You'd reckon everybody in the whole world'd know about collard greens, but it ain't so."

"Turnip greens are fine," Cincinnatus said. Elizabeth shook her head, stubbornly unconvinced. He reached out and patted her hand. "Life ain't perfect, sweetheart, but it's pretty good right now."

Where simple praise hadn't, that reached her. Slowly, she nodded. The baby must have chosen that moment to kick again, because she smiled and put both hands on her belly. "Reckon you may be right."

"Reckon I am," Cincinnatus said. "Buy me a newspaper tomorrow, find out who won the elections. Anybody win by one vote or lose by one vote, I I made the difference. Never would have gotten to vote down in Kentucky. Didn't make no never mind whether the Stars and Bars or the Stars and Stripes was flyin' over the Covington city hall, neither-white folks was on top, and aimin' to stay there. Ain't like that here. Ain't quite like that here, anyway." made the difference. Never would have gotten to vote down in Kentucky. Didn't make no never mind whether the Stars and Bars or the Stars and Stripes was flyin' over the Covington city hall, neither-white folks was on top, and aimin' to stay there. Ain't like that here. Ain't quite like that here, anyway."

"This here's a better place," Elizabeth said quietly. Cincinnatus nodded. It wasn't a perfect place, but he didn't imagine there was any such thing. And, since he'd come from a worse place, a better one would do just fine.

When Anne Colleton opened the door to her hotel room for him, Roger Kimball took her in his arms. She let him, but only for a moment, and then pushed him away. She was strong, and she'd caught him by surprise to boot. He had to take a quick step back, and knocked the door closed before catching himself. "What's going on?" he asked in no small annoyance.

"I didn't invite you up here for that," Anne answered, her own voice sharp. He'd seen that grimly determined look in her eye before, but rarely with it aimed at him.

"Well, why did you ask me up, then?" he said: a serious question, seriously meant. Whatever else hadn't always been smooth with them, their lovemaking was something special. It always had been, ever since he'd seduced her the first night they'd met, on a train rolling down to New Orleans when the war was young.

"Why?" she echoed. "To say good-bye, that's why. I owe you that much, I think."

"Good-bye?" He stared at her, hardly believing he'd heard the word. "Jesus! What did I do to deserve that?"

Now her eyes softened to sadness. "You still belong to the Freedom Party. You still believe in the Freedom Party," she said, her voice sad, too, sad but firm, like that of a judge pa.s.sing sentence on a likable rogue.

"Of course I do," Kimball answered. "When I join something, I don't quit when the going gets rough. The d.a.m.nyankees found out about that." He'd never thought he would be grateful to Tom Brearley for breaking the news of the Ericsson Ericsson, but he was. Now he could talk about it. "And I still say Jake Featherston's the only man who can get this country going again."

"We are going again." Anne walked over to the bed and picked up her handbag. Kimball was glad to watch her; her gray skirt, one of the new short ones, displayed most of the lower half of her calf-and her legs were worth displaying.

As she reached inside the handbag, he asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'll show you." She pulled out a banknote and held it up. "Do you see that?" After Kimball nodded, she drove the point home: "Take a good look at it. It's a one-dollar banknote. You haven't seen anything just like it since just after the war ended, not till this past fall you haven't. And it's still worth a real dollar, too."

"That's not all we need, dammit, not even close," Kimball said furiously. "We're naked to whatever the United States want to do to us." He wished Anne were naked to whatever he wanted to do to her, but a different urgency filled him fuller. "We've got no submarines, we've got no battles.h.i.+ps, we've got no barrels-Christ, they don't even want us to have machine guns in case the n.i.g.g.e.rs rise up again. You see the Whigs fixing any of that? I sure as h.e.l.l don't."

Anne put the banknote back in her bag. "We will have all those things again," she said. "It may take longer than I'd hoped, but we'll have them. As long as the money stays good, we'll have them. And"-she took a deep breath-"we'll have them without murdering any more presidents to get them."

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs," Kimball said. "I've broken plenty of eggs myself-and you've set up plenty to be broken." That got home. Anne bit her lip and looked down at the floor. Kimball laughed. "You know what you remind me of? Somebody who likes bacon but won't butcher a hog."

"You are are a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Anne said. "I've known it for a long time, but-" a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Anne said. "I've known it for a long time, but-"

Roger Kimball loosed another loud, jeering laugh. "Takes one to know one, I reckon. That's likely the only reason we've put up with each other as long as we have-well, that and the s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, anyway."

He'd hoped to anger her, but found he'd failed. She also laughed, and seemed to gain strength from it. "Yes, that and the s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g," she said. "I'll miss you. I'll be d.a.m.ned if I won't. But I won't miss the Freedom Party. Since you're staying in, I have to cut you loose. Grady Calkins showed me once and for all there's no controlling those people."

"I got into it thinking Jake Featherston needed controlling, too," Kimball said. "He doesn't. But the Yankees want to control him, and that's a fact."

"Featherston's clever," Anne admitted. "But he can't do everything himself. And if he can't control his people, he can't do anything at all." By the way she talked, controlling was the be-all and end-all.

Kimball supposed it was natural she thought that way. She'd spent her whole life till the Red uprising controlling a plantation, controlling money, controlling everyone around her. Her ancestors had done the same thing for a hundred years before her time. She was, in fact, one of the aristocrats against whom Jake Featherston had campaigned.

With a shrug, Kimball said, "Well, yeah, a bigger egg than Jake wanted got busted, but you can't blame the whole Freedom Party for Calkins."

"Why can't I? Everyone else does," Anne said. "And there's a lot of truth in it. With all the brawling, with the stalwarts with the clubs, with the riots during the campaign in '21, where else was the Freedom Party going but towards shooting a president?"

Uneasily, Kimball remembered keeping a stalwart in white and b.u.t.ternut from taking a shot at Ainsworth Layne when the Radical Liberal candidate spoke in Hampton Park. Even so, he said, "You're making-the whole country's making-it out to be bigger than it is. Sure, we've lost some folks for now on account of what happened down in Birmingham, but they'll be back."

Anne Colleton shook her head. "I don't think so. And that's the other reason I've gotten out of the Freedom Party-I never back a loser. Never. I think the Party's name will stink all across the CSA for years to come, and I don't want any of that stink sticking to me."

"You're wrong," Kimball told her. "You're dead wrong."

Now she shrugged. "I'll take the chance."

"Nothing fazes you, does it?" he said, and she shook her head again. He stepped toward her. "Last kiss before I go?"

He watched her consider it. Mischief filled her eyes. "Why not?" she said, and held out her arms.