American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (31 page)

  But, in spite of all this, maybe. In the Confederate States, Negroes who made trouble often just stopped living. However much Luther Bliss wanted Cincinnatus on ice, he hadn’t dug a hole and put his body in it.

  Sometimes Cincinnatus wondered why not.

  On a hot, muggy afternoon in what he reckoned was the middle of summer, three guards came to his cell door. Two of them drew pistols and pointed them at him, while the third turned a key in the lock and opened the cell. Then that fellow jumped back and yanked his pistol from its holster, too. “Come along with us,” one of the guards said.

  “Where?” Cincinnatus’ voice creaked with disuse, and with fear. This wasn’t exercise time or mealtime.

  Maybe that hole in the ground waited for him after all.

  “Don’t give us no back talk, boy, or you’ll be sorry for it,” the guard snapped. “Get moving.” Cincinnatus did, thinking,
They can kill me here as easy as anywhere else, and then take my body
wherever they need to.
 He wanted to run. His legs had that light-as-a-feather feel panic could bring. He was sure he could outrun these three big-bellied white men. But he was also sure it would do him no good. Nobody outran a bullet.

  They took him not to the room where they’d questioned him before but to an office in one of the prison’s corner towers. He supposed it was the warden’s office, but the man behind the desk was, inevitably, Luther Bliss. Bliss had light brown eyes, like a hound dog’s. At the moment, those eyes were as sad as a hound dog’s, too.

  When Cincinnatus came in, the chief of the Kentucky State Police turned to the other man in the room, an older fellow who sat in a chair off to one side. “See, Mr. Darrow? Here he is, sound as a dollar.”

  “Whose dollars are you talking about, Bliss?” the old man—Darrow?—demanded. “The Confederates’, after the war?”

 
  Oh, sweet Jesus,
 Cincinnatus thought.
Bliss is going to lock him up and throw away the key.
 But Bliss didn’t do anything except drum his fingers on the desktop. If he was angry, he didn’t show it past that—which made Cincinnatus take another long look at the man named Darrow.

  He had to be close to seventy. His skin was grandfather-pink. His jowls sagged. He combed thinning iron-gray hair over the top of his head to make it cover as much ground as it could. But his gray-blue eyes were some of the sharpest—and some of the nastiest—Cincinnatus had ever seen.

  After coughing a couple of times, he pulled his wallet from a vest pocket. He looked down at a photograph in it, then over to Cincinnatus. “You
are
Cincinnatus Driver,” he said, sounding surprised. “I wouldn’t’ve put it past this sneaky son of a bitch”—he pointed to Luther Bliss—“to try to sneak a ringer by me, but I guess he figured I’d spot it.”

  Again, the world didn’t end. All Bliss said was, “I resent that, Mr. Darrow.”

  “Go right ahead,” the other white man said cheerfully. “I intended that you should.” Plaintively, Cincinnatus said, “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

  “My pleasure,” said the old man with the ferocious eyes. “I’m Clarence Darrow. I’m a lawyer. I’ve got a writ of
habeas corpus
with your name on it. That means you get out of jail. If you’ve got any brains, it also means you get the hell out of Kentucky.”

  “My God.” Cincinnatus understood the words, but he wasn’t sure he believed them. He wasn’t sure he dared believe them. He said, “I didn’t think nobody could get me out of
here
.”

  “Sonny, there’s something you have to understand: I’m a
good
lawyer.” Darrow spoke with a calm certainty that compelled belief. “I’m a damn good lawyer, matter of fact. This petty tyrant here”—he pointed at Luther Bliss again, and again Bliss didn’t rise to it—“kept thinking I wasn’t, but he’s not so smart as he thinks he is.”

  “I know who’s my country’s friend and who ain’t,” Bliss said. “What do I need to know besides that?”

  “How to live by the rules you say you’re protecting,” Clarence Darrow answered. The head of the Kentucky State Police snapped his fingers to show how little he cared about them. Darrow had been blustery before. Now he got angry, really angry. “What’s the point of having a country with laws if you get around ’em any time you happen not to care for ’em, eh? Answer me that.” But Luther Bliss was not an easy man to quell. “This here’s Kentucky, Mr. Darrow. If we played by the rules all the time, the bastards who don’t would get the jump on us pretty damn quick, and you can bet on that. Half the people in this state are Confederate diehards, and the other half are Reds.” He exaggerated. From what Cincinnatus remembered of the days before he’d moved north, he didn’t exaggerate by much. Darrow said, “If nobody in this godforsaken place wants to live in the USA, why not give it back to the Confederates?”

  Cincinnatus gaped—he’d never heard anyone except a diehard say such a thing. Mildly, Bliss replied,

  “You know, Mr. Darrow, advocating return to the CSA is against the law here.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Darrow said. “Wouldn’t be one bit surprised. The law it’s against is unconstitutional, of course, not that you care about the Constitution of the United States.”

  “Here’s your nigger, Mr. Darrow.” Bliss’ air of calm frayed at last. “Take him and get the hell out of here. Or don’t you think I could fix up a cell with your name on it right next to his?”

  “I’m sure you could,” Darrow said. “And I’m sure you could make it very unpleasant for me. But I’m sure of something else, too—I’m sure I could make it even more unpleasant for you if you did.” By the sour look on Luther Bliss’ face, he was sure of the same thing. It didn’t make him very happy.

  “Get out,” he repeated.

  “Come along, Mr. Driver,” Clarence Darrow said. “Let’s get you back to civilization, or what passes for it in the United States these days.” He grunted with effort as he heaved himself to his feet. Cincinnatus needed a heartbeat to remember the surname belonged to him. He hadn’t grown up with it, and people didn’t use it very often. And nobody’d called him by it since he’d landed here. Dazedly, he followed the white lawyer.

  Not till they got into the motorcar that had brought Darrow to the prison and the driver was taking them away did Cincinnatus turn to the lawyer and say, “God bless you, suh, for what you done there.”

  “I don’t believe in God, any more than I believe in Mother Goose,” Darrow said. “Foolish notion. But I do believe in justice, and you deserve that. Everyone deserves that.” Cincinnatus had known some Reds who said they didn’t believe in God. With them, he’d always thought that was a pose, or that they substituted Marx for God. With Clarence Darrow, it was different. The man spoke as if he needed no substitute for the Deity. Cincinnatus sensed that, but couldn’t fully fathom it. He said, “Well, God believes in you, whether you believe in Him or not.” Darrow gave him an odd look. “You’ve got grit, son, if you can joke after you get out of that place.”

  “I wasn’t jokin’, suh,” Cincinnatus said. They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension.

  Cincinnatus asked, “How’d you even know I was stuck there, suh, to come and get me out?”

  “Your wife finally raised a stink that was big enough for me to notice it,” Darrow answered. “It took her a while, because people in the USA don’t want to notice a colored woman even when she’s screaming her head off. But she kept at it. Remarkable woman. Stubborn as a Missouri mule.”

  “Yes, suh,” Cincinnatus said happily. “God bless Elizabeth, too.” Clarence Darrow let out a long, rasping sigh. Cincinnatus took no notice of it. He went on, “But even if you knew I was in trouble, how’d you get Luther Bliss to turn loose o’ me? That’s one ornery man.”

  “That’s one first-class son of a bitch, is what that is,” Darrow said. “Even after I got the court order, he kept denying he’d ever heard of you. But I managed to persuade a judge otherwise—and here you are.”

  “Here I am,” Cincinnatus agreed. Seeing farms and woods out the window, not stone and concrete and barbed wire, made him feel like a new man. But the new man had old problems. “What do I owe you, suh?” Lawyers didn’t come cheap; he knew that. Even so . . . “Whatever it is, I pays it. May take me a while, you understand, but I pays it.”

  Darrow’s grin displayed crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. “Your wife told me you’d say that. You don’t owe me a dime—I did your case
pro bono publico
.” He saw the Latin meant nothing to Cincinnatus, and added, “For the public good.”

  “That’s mighty kind of you, suh, but it ain’t right,” Cincinnatus said. “I want to pay you back. I owe you.”

  “Your wife said you’d say that, too,” Clarence Darrow told him. “But there’s no need—I’ll make more from publicity than you could pay. If you must, pay the favor forward—do something good for someone else. Bargain?”

  “Yes, suh—so help me God,” Cincinnatus said.

  “More of that claptrap.” Darrow sighed. “Well, never mind. I hope you know better than to stick your nose back into Kentucky again?”

  “Long as my folks ain’t poorly for true, sure,” Cincinnatus answered. “That’s what got me here before. I be more careful ‘bout the message nowadays, but if I reckon it’s so, what choice have I got
but
to come?”

  Clarence Darrow gave him a long, measuring stare. The lawyer delivered his verdict in one word:

  “Fool.”

 
C
oal smoke pouring out the stack, the train hurried toward the Salt Lake City station. Sparks flew as the brakes ground its iron wheels against the iron rails that carried it. Colonel Abner Dowling would rather have been somewhere, anywhere, else than on the platform waiting for that train to pull in. By the expression on his mustachioed face, General Pershing felt the same way.

  “No help for it, though,” Dowling murmured, more than half to himself.

  He hadn’t been quiet enough. But Pershing only nodded and said, “He
has
earned the right to do as he pleases.”

  “I know that, sir,” Dowling answered. “I just wish he would have pleased to do something—anything—else.”

  “Yes.” Pershing nodded again. “There is that, isn’t there?” The train stopped right at the platform. Dowling had irrationally hoped against hope that it wouldn’t, but would keep right on going. The leader of the military band gathered on the platform caught Pershing’s eye. Pershing looked as if he wished the fellow hadn’t. At last, reluctantly, he nodded. The band leader either didn’t notice the reluctance or thought it wise to pretend he didn’t. With a proud flourish, he began to wave his baton. The band struck up “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” No sooner had the vaunting music begun to blare forth than the door to one of the Pullman cars opened.

  Out came a bent ancient whose mustache and what Dowling could see of his hair—he always wore a hat, to keep the world from knowing he was bald—were a peroxided gold, defying time. A woman of about the same years followed him onto the platform.

  “Well, Autie,” she sniffed, “they are giving you a proper welcome, anyhow.”

  “What’s that, Libbie?” The old man cupped a hand behind his ear.

  “I said, they’re giving you a proper welcome,” she repeated, louder this time.

  “Can’t hear a thing over that music. At least they’re giving me a proper welcome.” Colonel Dowling and General Pershing both stepped forward. They both saluted. They chorused,

  “Welcome to Utah, General Custer.” Dowling was lying in his teeth. He would have bet Pershing was doing the same.

  “Thank you. Thank you both,” Custer said. He stiffly returned the salute, even though, having at last retired from the U.S. Army after more than sixty years of service, he wore a somber black suit and homburg. Three years before, he’d been as vigorous as a man in his eighties could be. Now . . . Dowling found himself surprised, dismayed, and surprised at being dismayed. He’d always thought—sometimes despairingly—that George Armstrong Custer was the one unchanging man on the face of the earth.

  Here at last, he saw it wasn’t so. The retired general was visibly slower, visibly more feeble. Some spark had gone out of him since his retirement, and he seemed to know it.

  Libbie Custer, by contrast, remained as she always had. “Hello, Colonel Dowling,” she said with a smile that showed white false teeth. “It’s good to see you again. Now that Autie and I are civilians, may I call you Abner?”

  “Of course,” Dowling answered, though he’d always hated his Christian name.

  Meanwhile, General Pershing was shaking hands with Custer and exchanging polite and, no doubt, insincere compliments. During the Great War, Pershing’s command had been just to the east of Custer’s.

  Pershing’s Second Army had captured Louisville and generally pushed south faster than Custer’s First—till Custer decided he knew more about barrels than anyone in the War Department . . . and, against all odds, turned out to be right. From things Pershing had said since Abner Dowling came to Utah, he still couldn’t figure out how Custer had pulled that off.

  At the time, Dowling had been sure Custer’s lies to Philadelphia would get the general—and, not so incidentally, himself—court-martialed and sent to Leavenworth to do hard labor for the rest of their lives.

  Instead, his superior had ended up the USA’s greatest military hero since George Washington, and Dowling, by reflected glory, had ended up a minor hero himself.

  Custer said, “Are you keeping the Mormons here on a tight rein, General? I hope to heaven you are, because they
will
cause trouble if they get half a chance.”

  “Things have been tolerably quiet, anyway,” Pershing answered. “They don’t shoot at our men any more. Taking hostages worked pretty well for the Germans in Belgium, and for us in Canada and the CSA, and it works here, too. The Mormons may want us dead, but they don’t want their friends and neighbors and sweethearts going up against a wall with a blindfold.”