American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (83 page)

  Henderson looked around to make sure he was out of earshot before resuming. “Can’t trust ’em,” the Freedom Party man said. Anne couldn’t quarrel with him there. Henderson continued, “Anything they hear, the Rad Libs know tomorrow and the Whigs the day after.” Anne wasn’t so sure about that, but didn’t care to argue with it, either. All she said was, “They know they have to try to stop us any way they can. They know, but I don’t think they can do it.”

  “Have to make sure they don’t. We have to make sure any way we need to.” Henderson let her draw her own pictures.

  She had no trouble doing just that. “We don’t want to go too far,” she said. “If we do, it’ll only hurt us, cost us votes. The average law-abiding Confederate has to think we’re the right answer, not the wrong one. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot before when we pushed too hard. We need to pick our spots.” The skeletal man across the table from her nodded. “See who’s really dangerous,” he said, and bared a lot of teeth in a grin. “Won’t be so dangerous once we run over ’em with barrels a few times.” Anne thought that was a figure of speech. She wasn’t quite sure, though, and didn’t care to ask.

  Theoretically, the armistice with the USA banned barrels from the CSA. The government had never admitted to having any—nor could it, without risking Yankee wrath. If a couple of them should suddenly clatter down a street with Freedom Party men inside . . . If that happened, Anne wouldn’t have been astonished.

  She said, “Looks to me like we’re thinking along the same lines, Mr. Henderson . . . Do you want to get some more chicken?” He’d reduced half a bird to bones in nothing flat.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Henderson waved for the waiter. As the Negro took the request back to the kitchen, Henderson gave a half apologetic smile. “Always been scrawny, no matter how much I eat.”

  “I wish I could say that.” Corsets had been out of fashion for a good many years now, but Anne was tempted to get back into one to help her remind the world she did still have a waist. She wished she could wear a corset under her jaw, too, to fight the sagging flesh there. In fact, there were such things, intended to be put on at night. Three different doctors, though, had assured her they did no good.

  The waiter returned with another whole chicken leg. Henderson devoured it. He patted his pale lips with his napkin. “Hit the spot.”

  “Good.” Even if she envied him at the same time, Anne couldn’t help liking a man who put away his food like that. She went on, “We have to hit the spot in November, too. We
have
to. If we lose this time, I don’t think we’ll ever get another chance.”

  After Grady Calkins assassinated President Hampton, after the Confederate currency stabilized when the USA eased back on reparations, the Freedom Party had sunk like a stone, and had stayed down though almost all the 1920s. If it failed again, she was sure it wouldn’t revive. She couldn’t stand the idea of trying to make peace with the Whigs once more. This run had to reach the top.

  “Don’t you worry about that, ma’am,” James Henderson said. “Jake Featherston, he isn’t about to lose.” So, four hundred years before, a Spanish soldier seeing the might and wealth of the Inca Empire might have spoken of Pizarro. The Spaniard would have been right. Anne thought the Freedom Party man was, too, even if that
ma’am
rankled. Henderson wasn’t so very much younger than she was.

  She said, “It’s not just Jake, remember. We want to grab with both hands.”

  “Think you’re right,” Henderson said. “Legislators, Congressmen—every place where we can win, we’ll fight like the devil.”

  “That’s right. Mayors and county commissioners and sheriffs, too. Some of those people can appoint judges, and the more judges on our side, the better. Same with sheriffs. A lot of them—and city policemen, too—have been on our side for a long time.”

  “Better be,” Henderson said, nodding. The waiter came up with a coffeepot. After he’d filled cups for Anne and Henderson, he retreated once more. Henderson waited, poured in lots of cream and sugar, tasted, added more sugar yet, and then continued, “By the time we’re done, we’ll have this state sewed up tight, you bet.”

  “Oh, yes,” Anne said softly. “And not just South Carolina, either. By the time we’re done, we’ll have the whole country sewn up tight.”

  “That’s the idea,” Henderson said.

  Anne wondered if Jake Featherston had thought he could come within arm’s reach of ruling the Confederate States when he first joined the Freedom Party. What would he say if she asked him? And would what he said be true? Would he really recall here in 1933 what he’d thought and hoped and dreamt back in 1917? Even if he did, would he admit it? She had her doubts.

  The waiter returned again. “Dessert, folks? Apple pie is mighty fine today, or we’ve got cherry or lemon meringue or pecan, too.”

  “Apple,” Henderson said at once. “Slap some ice cream on top, too.”

  “Yes, suh.” The waiter looked to Anne. “Anything for you, ma’am?” She shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly.”

  James Henderson could, and did. He had a second cup of coffee to go with the pie à la mode, too, and doctored it as thoroughly as he had the first. With a sigh of regret, he pushed away the empty plate.

  “Yeah, that hit the spot.”

  “If we do as well in November as you did at the supper table here, the Whigs are in even more trouble than I thought,” Anne said.

  He grinned. “We’ll clean ’em up and wash ’em down the drain. Just what they’ve got coming.” Anne nodded. She felt victory in the air, too.

* * *

 
 W
hen Scipio walked into Erasmus’ fish store and café, he knew right away something was wrong. His boss looked like a man whose best friend had just died. Without preamble, Erasmus said, “I gwine shut her down, Xerxes.”

  “Do Jesus!” Scipio said. He’d spent a lot of time here; he’d thought the place would go on forever—or at least as long as Erasmus did, which had looked as if it might be the same thing. “Why for you do dat?” he demanded.

  “You recollect how once upon a time them Freedom Party bastards come by here?” Erasmus said.

  “They was gonna take money from me so nothin’ happen to the store.”

  “I recollects, uh-huh,” Scipio said. “Then the Freedom Party go down de drain, an’ dey don’t come back no mo’.”

  “They’s back.” All of a sudden, Erasmus looked old. He looked beaten. And he looked afraid. “Can’t rightly tell if they’s the same bastards as all them years ago, but they’s the same
kind
o’ bastards, an’

  that’s what counts. They say I don’t pay ’em what they want, I git bad luck like you don’t believe. I ain’t no fool, Xerxes. You don’t got to draw me no pictures. I know what that means.”

  “How much they want?” Scipio asked.

  “Too much,” his boss answered. “Too damn much. Cut my profit down to nothin’. Down to less’n nothin’. I try an’ tell ’em that. Way they look at me, it’s
That’s your worry, nigger. We don’t care, long
as we gits ours.
 So I’s shuttin’ down, like I say. Sell this place, live off what I gits. I’m an old man now.

  Reckon the money’ll last me.”

  “This here’s blackmail,” Scipio said. “You ought to go to the
po
lice.” Erasmus shook his head. “Ain’t no use. It’s like it was back the las’ time. Some o’ these fuckers, they
is
the
po
lice.”

  Scipio had never heard the older man use an obscenity like that. “Got to be somebody kin he’p you.”

  “If I was white . . .” But Erasmus shook his head. “Mebbe even that don’t do no good, not now. These Freedom Party buckra, it’s like they got everything goin’ their way, and nobody else got the nerve to stand up to ’em. They win the ‘lection, they’s top dogs for six years, an’ everybody reckon they gwine win.”

  “I knows it. I’s scared, and dat de trut’,” Scipio said. “What kin a nigger do? Can’t do nothin’. Can’t even vote. Can’t run, neither—ain’t nowhere to run to. USA don’t want nothin’ to do wid we. An’ if we fights—”

  “We loses,” Erasmus finished for him. “Dumb Reds done showed dat durin’ the war. Never shoulda riz up then, on account of they shoulda knowed they lose.”

 
  I thought the same thing. I told Cassius the same thing. He wouldn’t listen to me. He was sure the
revolution would carry everything before it. He was sure, and he was wrong, and now he’s dead.

  Scipio couldn’t say a word of that. He had a new name here. He had a new life here. Remembering things he’d done long ago, in another state and in another state of mind . . . What point to it? None he could see, especially since time-yellowed, creased wanted posters still proclaimed his other self fugitive from what South Carolina called justice.

  Erasmus went on, “Sorry I got to let you go like this here. I know it ain’t right. Times is hard, an’ you gots young ‘uns. But I can’t help it, Xerxes. Can’t stay in business no more. You hook on somewheres else, mebbe.”

  “Mebbe.” Scipio didn’t really believe it. How many places were hiring waiters? Even asking the question of himself made him want to laugh.

  But it wasn’t funny. It was anything but funny, as a matter of fact. Bathsheba’s housekeeping work brought in some money, but not enough. He would have to find something to do, and find it fast.

 
  I could be the best butler Augusta, Georgia’s, ever
seen.
 If he’d passed muster for Anne Colleton, he could pass muster here. True, he had no references, but he was good enough to show what he could do even without them. And rich people always had money. People like that were always looking for good help. When he opened his mouth and showed he could talk like an educated white man . . .

  He shook his head and shivered, as if coming down with the influenza.
When I show that, I put a noose
around my neck.
 He knew what a good servant he made. If he started playing the butler again, word would spread among the rich whites of Augusta.
Old So-and-So’s got himself a crackerjack new
nigger, best damn butler you ever saw.
 Word wouldn’t spread only in Augusta, either. St. Matthews, South Carolina, wasn’t that far away. Anne Colleton would hear before too long. And when she did, he was dead.

  She’d gone back to helping the Freedom Party. He’d seen that in the newspapers. She wouldn’t have forgotten him. So far as he knew, she hadn’t tried very hard to find him after he’d escaped South Carolina for Georgia. But if he did anything to bring himself to her notice, he deserved to die for stupidity’s sake.

  Erasmus reached into the cash box and took out two brown twenty-dollar banknotes. He thrust them at Scipio. “Here you is,” he said. “Wish it could be more, but I druther give it to you than to them Freedom Party trash.”

  Pride told Scipio to refuse. He had no room in his life for pride. “Thank you kindly,” he said, and took the money. “God bless you.”

  “He done bless me plenty,” Erasmus said. “Hope He watch out for you, too.” Someone else had pressed money on Scipio when he lost a job waiting tables. He snapped his fingers.

  “Reckon I go see me Mistuh John Oglethorpe. Anybody in this here town got work, reckon he know ‘bout it.”

  “Good idea.” Erasmus nodded. “Not all white folks is Freedom Party bastards.” These days, Scipio ventured out of the Terry only with trepidation. He didn’t like the way white men looked at him when he walked along the streets outside the colored district. They looked at him the way they had to look at possums and squirrels and raccoons when they hunted for the pot.

  Freedom Party posters and banners and emblems were everywhere. He saw several white men with little enamelwork Freedom Party pins—those reversed-color Confederate battle flags—on their lapels.

  More than anybody else, they glared at him as if he had no right to exist. He kept his eyes down on the sidewalk. Giving back look for look was the worst thing he could do. If one of those pin-wearing fellows decided he was an uppity nigger, he might not get back to the Terry alive.

  When he walked into Oglethorpe’s restaurant, Aurelius was taking care of the breakfast crowd. Whites sat on one side of the room, Negroes on the other. They’d always done that. It wasn’t law, but it was unbreakable custom. Scipio perched at a small table. Aurelius nodded when he recognized him.

  “Ain’t seen you in a long time,” he said. “What kin I git you?”

  “Bacon and eggs over easy and grits and a cup o’ coffee,” Scipio answered. “I see Mistuh Oglethorpe when things slows down?”

  “I tell him you’s here,” Aurelius said. “How come you ain’t at Erasmus’ place?”

  “He shuttin’ down,” Scipio said, and the other man’s eyes widened in astonishment. In a voice not much above a whisper, Scipio explained, “They wants too much money for he to stay open.” He didn’t explain who
they
were. Aurelius would know.

  “Hey, Aurelius!” a white man called. “I need some more coffee over here.”

  “Comin’, Mr. Benson.” Aurelius hurried off to take care of the customer, and then another one, and then another one after that.

  He didn’t get back to Scipio’s table till he set plate and coffee cup in front of him. “Thank you kindly,” Scipio said, and dug in. John Oglethorpe was in no way a fancy cook, but few of his kind could match him. The breakfast was easily as good as any Erasmus made: high praise indeed. Scipio hadn’t eaten grits in his days as Anne Colleton’s privileged servant; he’d thought of them as fieldhands’ food. He’d remade their acquaintance since, and found he liked them.

  With Aurelius filling his cup every time it got low, he hung around in the restaurant till the rush thinned out. John Oglethorpe emerged from the kitchen then. His hair had gone gray and pulled back at the temples. He wore thick bifocals he hadn’t had before, and was thinner and more stooped than Scipio remembered.

  “What’s this nonsense I hear about Erasmus goin’ out of business?” he demanded. “He can’t do that. He’s been cooking even longer than I have.”