American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (36 page)

  “Yes, but they did, and so we do.” Anne slapped at something. The mosquitoes were coming out early this afternoon. It wasn’t quite so muggy as it would have been back home, but it would do.

  J.B.H. Norris said, “Don’t quite know what to tell you about that, except I don’t think a war’s coming any time soon.”

  “No,” Anne said bleakly. “I don’t, either. We’re too weak.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Norris agreed. “At least President Mitchel has the sense to see it. That Featherston maniac would get us into a fight we can’t hope to win.”

  “I used to like him better than I do now, but he hasn’t got any real chance of getting elected, anyway,” Anne said. “So I’m a Whig again. Some people don’t much like that, but I’ve never much cared for what people like or don’t like.” She changed the subject, but only a little: “What do you think of the Supreme Court ruling that lets Mitchel run again?”

  “Well, the Constitution says a president serves the six-year term he’s elected for, and then he’s done.” Norris shrugged. “President Mitchel didn’t run for the job—he got it when that Calkins bastard—pardon me, ma’am—killed President Hampton. So I suppose it’s only fair to let him try and win it again on his own. And Calkins was one of those Freedom Party fools, so I’m not surprised the Supreme Court gave it to Featherston right between the eyes.”

  “Yes, that occurred to me, too. Featherston frightened people—powerful people—a few years ago.

  Now they’re going to make him pay for it.” Anne Colleton’s smile had a certain predatory quality, enough so that J.B.H. Norris flinched when she turned it on him rather than the world at large. She went on, “I do thank you for showing me around. You’ve given me a lot to think about—more than I expected when I came out to Texas, in fact. I may well put some of my money here once I get home.” Norris beamed. “That’d be wonderful. We can use the capital, and I’m not lyin’ when I tell you so.” He scratched his cheek with his left hand. Only then did Anne notice his ring finger was just a stump. A war wound? Probably. A lot of men had such small mutilations. He added, “If you’re heading back East, you’d better not waste a lot of time. From what the papers say, the flood in the Mississippi Valley just keeps gettin’ worse and worse.”

  “I know.” Anne had been reading the papers, too. Anger roiled her voice: “And it’s hurt us so much worse than it hit the damnyankees. If they hadn’t stolen Kentucky and that piece of Arkansas from us, it wouldn’t have hurt them much at all. Cairo, Illinois, got flooded.” She rolled her eyes. “Cairo, Illinois, never was any sort of a place to begin with. But we’ve had Memphis and Little Rock just drowned, and the levees in New Orleans were holding by this much”—she held thumb and forefinger close together—“when I went through Louisiana on my way here.”

  “May not be so easy gettin’ back,” Norris warned.

  “Why not?” Anne said. “Most of the bridges over the Mississippi are still standing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The oil man nodded again. “The bridges over the Mississippi are still good. They’re the big, strong ones, and they were built to take whatever the river could throw at ’em. But what about the bridges
on the way to
the Mississippi? An awful lot of them’ll go down, I bet. I may be wrong, but that’s sure enough how it looks to me.”

  Anne muttered something under her breath. It wasn’t quite far enough under, for J.B.H. Norris’ gingery eyebrows leapt upwards.
He’ll never think of me as a lady again,
 Anne thought, and did her best not to giggle.
Well, fair enough, because I’m damn well not.
 Worry wiped out the temptation to laugh.

  “You’re dead right, Mr. Norris, and I wish I’d thought of that myself. Please take me back to my hotel. I can’t afford to waste much time, can I?”

  “No, I don’t reckon you can,” Norris said. “Wish I could see more of you, but I know how things are.

  Car’s right over there.” He pointed to a middle-aged Birmingham outside the shack that did duty for an office.

 
  How does he mean that?
 Anne wondered.
Spend more time with me, or see me with my clothes off?

  Ten years, even five years, before, she would have had no doubt. But she wasn’t so young as she had been.
I’m just as picky as I ever was, though, maybe pickier. That’s
likely why I haven’t got a
husband yet. Nobody suits me. Maybe Tom was right. I’ve been on my own too long.

  The ride back to Fort Worth took close to three hours. A blowout halfway there didn’t help. J.B.H.

  Norris fixed it with the aplomb of one who’d done it many times before—and what driver hadn’t?—but it still cost a half hour Anne wished she could have got back. She checked out of the Dandridge as soon as Norris stopped the motorcar in front of the hotel. Then she hurled her luggage into a cab and made for the train station across town.

  Before the war, she would have had a colored servant, or more than one, taking care of her. No more.

  And she didn’t miss them, either. She’d discovered she was more efficient than anyone whose main aim was to do as little as possible. That had proved oddly liberating, where she would have expected losing servants to do just the opposite.

  But the time lost to the blowout rose up to haunt her at the station. “Sorry, ma’am, but the eastbound express pulled out of here about twenty minutes ago,” the clerk in the ticket window said. “Next one doesn’t leave till ten tonight.”

  “Damnation,” Anne said. “Can I take a local and connect with another express east of here sooner than that? I do want to beat the flood if I can; I have to get back to South Carolina.”

  “I understand, ma’am. Let’s see what I can do.” The clerk flipped through schedules so complex, God would have had trouble understanding them. People in line behind Anne surely fumed at the delay. She would have, had she been back there and not at the front. At last, with an unhappy half smile, he shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am, but no. And I’ve got to tell you, there’s no Pullman berths left on the ten o’clock train. You’ll have to take an ordinary seat. I’ll refund the difference, of course.”

  “Damnation,” Anne said again, this time with more feeling. She’d be a frazzled wreck by the time she finally got back to St. Matthews. But if she didn’t leave as soon as she could, heaven only knew when she
would
get back. “Give me whatever you can, then.”

  “Sure will.” The clerk handed her a ticket and several brown Confederate banknotes. “Your train will be leaving from Platform W. It’s over that way.” He pointed. “Follow the signs—they’ll take you straight to it. Hope everything turns out all right for you.”

  “Thanks.” Anne waved for a porter to handle her suitcases. The colored man put them on a wheeled cart and followed her to Platform W. She bought food there, and a cheap novel to while away the time till the train got in.

  It was late. By then, Anne had stopped expecting anything else. It didn’t arrive till half past one. She’d put the novel aside an hour earlier, and was trying without much luck to doze in a chair. The car to which she was assigned didn’t even have compartments, only row after row of seats bolted to the floor. The man who sat down next to her was so fat, he encroached on her without meaning to. He hadn’t had a bath any time recently. She gritted her teeth. Nothing she could do about it, though. As soon as the train pulled out of Fort Worth, the fat man threw back his head, fell asleep, and began snoring like a thunderstorm. That added insult to injury. Anne felt like jabbing him with a pin.

  Unable to sleep herself, she stared glumly out the window at the night. Only blackness met her eye, blackness and an occasional handful of lights burning in the small towns at which the express didn’t stop.

  She almost resented the lights, which put her in mind of fireflies. Blackness suited her mood much better.

  The express did stop at Dallas. Anne understood the need, but hated the delay. The fat man beside her scarcely stirred. He didn’t wake up. After what seemed forever but was by her watch forty-five minutes, the train rumbled east again. Presently, Anne had to use the toilet. She took more than a little pleasure in waking her seatmate to get by, though she sounded polite. By the time she returned, he was snoring again. She woke him once more. It did no good to speak of. He fell back to sleep, while she stayed awake.

  Marshall was the next stop, near the Louisiana border. By the time the train left, the sky ahead was getting light. Morning had come by the time the express got into Shreveport, on the Red River. The Red was flooding, too, but not enough to delay the train any worse.

  Monroe, Louisiana, on the Ouachita, was the next scheduled stop—by then, Anne had the schedule all but memorized. But the express didn’t make it to Monroe. First, Anne saw tent cities on high ground, where people who’d escaped the floodwaters were staying till someone did something more for them.

  Then, as the ground got lower, mud and water covered more and more of it. The air was thick and humid and full of the stink of decay. At last, the train had to stop, for the simple reason that going forward would have meant going underwater. The tracks were laid on an embankment that raised them above the surrounding countryside, but that finally stopped helping.

  “What do we do now?” Anne asked the conductor.

  “Don’t rightly know, ma’am,” he answered. “I reckon we’ll back up and try and find a way around—if there is one. Don’t rightly know about that, either. Only other thing we can do is wait for the water to go down, and Lord only knows how long that’d take.”

  Trying to hold in her anger, she snapped, “Why didn’t you find out in Shreveport that the way would be flooded?”

  “On account of it wasn’t when we left Shreveport,” the conductor said. “Ma’am, this here is a . . . heck of a bad flood, worst anybody’s seen since Hector was a pup. An’ it just keeps gettin’ worser an’ worser.”

  He’d fought not to swear in her presence. Now she fought not to swear in his. After what seemed a very long time, the train shuddered into motion—backwards. It crawled that way till at last it came to a cross track. Anne felt like cheering when it started moving ahead once more.

  But it didn’t go far. Before long, the encroaching floodwaters blocked its path again. This time, Anne did curse, and didn’t care who sent her shocked looks. By the time the train had made three or four false starts, everyone in the car was swearing. It didn’t help.

  Yet another tent city sprouted like a forest of giant toadstools outside the whistlestop hamlet of Anabell, Louisiana, where the express was balked again. “How are those people going to eat?” someone asked.

  “If trains have trouble getting through . . .”

  It was a good question. It got an answer even as Anne watched. An aeroplane landed in a field only a couple of hundred yards from the train. The pilot started throwing out sacks of flour and flitches of bacon. A great light blazed in Anne’s mind. “Let me off the train!” she told the conductor. “This instant, do you hear me?”

  “What about your luggage?” he asked, blinking.

  “To hell with my luggage,” she said. The conductor tapped the side of his head with his index finger, but did as she asked. She ran over to the aeroplane, waving and calling, “Can you fly me over the Mississippi and past the floods to where I can catch another train east?”

  “Maybe I can, lady,” the pilot answered, shifting a plug of tobacco in his cheek. “Why the devil should I?”

  “I’ll pay you three hundred dollars,” she said. “Half now, half when we land.” That wad of tobacco shifted again. She wondered if he’d swallow it, but he didn’t. “Lemme finish unloading,” he said around it. “Then you got yourself a deal.” Half an hour later, the biplane bumped across the soggy field and threw itself into the air. Anne Colleton whooped with delight. She’d never flown before, and wondered why not. Three hundred dollars was a small price to pay for this kind of fun—and for the money she hoped to make when she got home.

 
F
loodlights glared into Jake Featherston’s face, so that he couldn’t see the crowd in the New Orleans auditorium. He didn’t care; he’d made enough speeches so that he didn’t need to see the people out there to know what they were thinking. “Good to be back here,” he said. “This is the town where I was nominated six years ago. We did pretty good then, we did. And we’ll do better this time, you just wait and see if we don’t!”

  “Freedom!” The roar came from over a thousand throats. Featherston grinned fiercely. That sound hit him harder than a big slug of hooch. Its absence was the one thing he hated most about making speeches on the wireless—it felt as if he were shouting at a bunch of deaf men, and he couldn’t tell if he was getting through or not.
This
speech was going out over the wireless, too, and it would go complete with shouts of approval and excitement from the crowd.

 
  This is the way it ought to be,
 he thought, and resumed: “People say we’re gonna have trouble electing me. People say that, but they don’t always know what the devil they’re talking about. And you tell me, friends—haven’t the Confederate States got themselves enough trouble already?”

  “Yes!” people shouted, and, “Hell, yes!” and, “You bet!” One woman cried, “Oh, Jake!” as if they were in bed together and he’d just given her the best time she’d ever had in her life.

  His grin got wider. Maybe he’d have a flunky look for her after the speech was done. And maybe he wouldn’t, too; he couldn’t afford to get too much of a reputation as a tomcatting man, not when so many people who went to church every Sunday were likely to vote Freedom. He hated compromise, but that was one he’d had to make.

  “Haven’t we got ourselves enough trouble?” he said again. “Folks, I tell you, the Whigs have been carrying the ball too long. They’ve been carrying it too long, and now they’ve gone and dropped it.” He slammed his fist down on the podium.