American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (84 page)

  “No mo’,” Scipio said. “Freedom Party fellas, they wants too much money from he.”

  “Oh. Those people.” The white man’s voice went flat and hard. “I’ve always been a Whig, and so was my pappy, and so was
his
pappy—well, he was a Democrat before the War of Secession, but that doesn’t count. Some people, though—some people think yelling something loud enough makes it so.”

  “Free
dom
!” Aurelius didn’t yell it, but the scorn in his voice ran deep.

  Scipio blinked. The cook and the waiter had worked together for God only knew how many years.

  Even so . . . As far as Scipio could remember, this was the first time—outside the brief, chaotic madness of the Congaree Socialist Republic—he’d ever heard a Negro mock a Confederate political party where a white could hear.

  “Yellin’ ain’t all them Freedom Party fellas does,” Scipio said. “Erasmus reckon somethin’ bad happen to he if he don’t pay, so he done quit.”

  “That’s a shame and a disgrace,” Oglethorpe said. “That is nothing but a shame and a disgrace. This town needs hardworking folks like Erasmus a hell of a lot more than it needs blowhards like those Freedom Party yahoos.”

  Did he know
Gulliver’s Travels
? Or was he using the word as a general term of contempt? Scipio didn’t see how he could ask. That might involve trying to explain how
he
knew
Gulliver’s Travels
. He kept trying to bury his past, but it lived on inside him.

  All he said was, “Yes, suh.” And then he got down to the business that had brought him out of the Terry:

  “Mistuh Oglethorpe, I gots me a family to feed. I been workin’ fo’ Erasmus a good long time now. Ain’t like you an’ Aurelius, but a long time. You know somebody lookin’ for a waiter? I does janitor work, too, an’ I cooks some. Ain’t as good as you an’ Erasmus, but I ain’t bad, neither.” Oglethorpe frowned. “I was afraid you were gonna ask me that. Why else would you come up here?” Scipio’s face heated. The restaurant owner only shrugged. “I don’t mind. If you know somebody, you better ask him. Only trouble is, I can’t think of anyone who’s short of help right now. What about you, Aurelius? You know the Terry a damn sight better than I do.”

  “I ought to, boss, don’t you reckon?” But Aurelius’ smile didn’t stick on his face. “No, I don’t know nobody, neither. Wish to heaven I did.”

 
“Damn.”
 Scipio spoke quietly, but with great feeling.

  “May not be so bad,” Oglethorpe said. “This isn’t like some businesses—slots do open up now and again. You pound the pavement—you’ll find something. You can use my name, too. Don’t reckon you’ll need to, though. You tell people you worked for Erasmus all these years, they’ll know you’re the straight goods.”

  “Hope so. Do Jesus, I hope so.” Scipio drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Hope somethin’ come up pretty damn quick. Don’t wanna end up in no Mitcheltown.” As soon as he said the word, he wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel that fear. He did. But the shantytowns named after the Confederate president were a judgment on the Whigs. Calling them by that name—even thinking of them by that name—only helped the Freedom Party. Trouble was, everyone in the Confederate States called them Mitcheltowns, just as they were Blackfordburghs in the United States. Whoever chanced to be in power when the disaster struck got the blame.

  “Good luck, Xerxes,” John Oglethorpe said. “Wish to God I could do something more for you.”

  “Thank you kindly, suh,” Scipio answered. “I thanks you very kindly. An’ I wishes you could, too.”
 A
s Hipolito Rodriguez had seen when he went up north to fight in Texas, spring could be a wonderful time of year, a time when the land renewed itself after the chill and gloom of winter. It wasn’t like that in Sonora. Here, it was the time when the rains petered out. The weather got warmer, yes, but it had never really turned cold. He’d seen snow in the trenches of Texas. The memory still appalled him.

  He eyed the streams coming down from the mountains. If they dried up, his crops would dry up with them. They seemed all right. He worried anyhow. He’d never known a farmer who didn’t worry. Even the white men beside whom he’d fought had worried about what was happening to their farms while they went to war.

  He’d plowed. He’d planted his corn and beans and squashes. Now he and the rest of his family watched them grow—and weeded to make sure they
would
grow. Work on a farm was never done.

  Even so, he sent his children into Baroyeca for schooling as often as they could go. He wanted them to have a chance at a life that wasn’t work, work, work every minute of every day. He didn’t know how much of a chance they would have, but any chance was better than none.

  Teachers taught in English, of course. Rodriguez worried about that only every now and again—would the children forget their heritage? More often, he thought it good that they learn as much of the dominant language of the CSA as they could.

  Magdalena knew very little English. With his wife, Rodriguez stuck to Spanish. Because of that, his sons and daughters—especially his sons—thought he understood less English than he really did. They started using it among themselves to say things they didn’t want him to follow.

  “Silly old fool,” Miguel called him one day, smiling as if it were a compliment.

  Rodriguez boxed his son’s ears. He smiled, too, though he doubted whether Miguel appreciated it. “Silly young fool,” he said, also in English.

  After that, his children were a lot more careful when they had something to say either to him or about him. He went on about his business, more amused than otherwise. Life taught all sorts of lessons, and only some of them came from school.

  No matter how tired he was at the end of a day, he tried to go into Baroyeca one evening a week for the Freedom Party meeting. Magdalena had given up complaining about that when she saw he came back neither drunk nor smelling of a
puta
’s cheap perfume.

  As far as Rodriguez was concerned, the scent of victory in the air was headier than liquor, sweeter than the dubious charms of Baroyeca’s handful of women of easy virtue. (With the closing of the silver mines, a lot of the whores had moved to other towns, towns where they hoped to do better for themselves. The business collapse had had all sorts of unexpected, unfortunate consequences.) Robert Quinn did his best to fan that scent all over the countryside. Baroyeca still had no electricity.

  Quinn couldn’t call people together to listen to Jake Featherston’s weekly speeches on the wireless. He did the next best thing: he got the text of the speeches by telegram and translated them into Spanish himself. Even though it wasn’t his native tongue, he spoke well, and plainly believed every word he said.

  Those speeches gave Hipolito Rodriguez a window on a wider world, a world beyond Baroyeca. After one of them, he said, “
Señor
Quinn, you are a traveled man. Is it true what
Señor
Featherston says, that these politicians in Richmond are nothing but criminals?”

  “If Jake Featherston says it, you can take it to the bank,” Quinn answered—he would sometimes translate English idioms literally into Spanish. Considering the sad state of banking in the CSA these days, this one lost something in the translation. Even so, Rodriguez understood it. Quinn went on, “How can you trust the Party if you don’t trust what Jake Featherston says? You can’t. It’s as simple as that. You
do
trust the Party, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” Rodriguez answered quickly; he knew a dangerous question when he heard one. That didn’t mean he wasn’t telling the truth, though. “Without the Party, what would we be?”

  “Bad off, that’s what,” Quinn replied. “But as long as we follow what Jake says, we’ll be fine. He’s the leader. He knows what’s what. All we have to do is back him up. That’s our job.
Comprende?
”

 
  “Sí, señor,”
 Rodriguez said as the other men at the meeting nodded.

 
  “Bueno.”
 Quinn grinned. “If Jake was wrong, he couldn’t have come as far as he has, now could he?

  He couldn’t see what all was wrong with
los Estados Confederados
, either, eh? We’ve got a lot of work to do to win this election, and we’ll have even more to do
after
we win it.” Carlos Ruiz asked a question that had also been in Rodriguez’s mind: “After
Señor
Featherston wins the election, what will the Confederate States be like?”

  “That’s easy, Carlos,” Robert Quinn answered. “That’s real easy, to tell you the truth. Once Jake Featherston gets to be president, we will fix everything that’s wrong with the Confederate States of America. Everything, by God. And once we fix everything that’s wrong inside the country, then we start thinking about getting even with
los Estados
Unidos
, too. How does that sound?”

  “I like it,” Ruiz said simply. Rodriguez nodded. So did the rest of the local men at the Freedom Party headquarters. How could anyone not like such a program? The United States were a long way off, yes, but they deserved vengeance. The room was full of veterans. They’d all fought the USA during the war.

  Someone behind Rodriguez said, “I don’t want to go back into the Army, but I will if I have to.” That drew more nods. To his own surprise, Rodriguez found himself contributing one. He’d had all the war he wanted, and then some. But if it was a matter of turning the tables on the USA, he knew he would redon the color the Confederates called butternut.

  “You are all good, patriotic men. I knew you were,” Quinn said in his deliberate Spanish. “But I have a question for you. I know your
patrón
is not such a big man as he was in your grandfather’s day. How many of you, though, have a
patrón
who tries to keep you from voting for the Freedom Party?” Two or three men raised their hands. Carlos Ruiz was one of them. He said, “Don Joaquin says the Freedom Party is nothing but a pack of
bandidos
, and must be stopped.”

  “Does he? Well, well, well.” Robert Quinn grinned again, a grin that was all sharp teeth. “We have a saying in English: who will bell the cat? Does Don Joaquin think he can put the bell on the
Partido de la
Libertad
?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,
Señor
Quinn,” Ruiz answered. “He thinks he can tell people how to vote.

  Of that I am certain.”

  “And you do not think he ought to?” Quinn asked. Ruiz shook his head. The local Freedom Party leader said, “Perhaps he should change his mind.”

  “Don Joaquin is a stubborn man,” Ruiz warned. Quinn showed his teeth again, but didn’t say a word, not then.

  As the meeting was breaking up, he asked Ruiz and Rodriguez and three or four other men to stay behind. “It would be a shame if anything happened to Don Joaquin’s barn,” he remarked. “It would be an even bigger shame if anything happened to his house.”

  “He has guards,” Carlos said. “They carry pistols.”

  Quinn opened a closet. Inside were neatly stacked Tredegar rifles. “Do you think the guards would listen to reason?” he asked. “If they decide not to listen to reason, do you think you could persuade them?” The locals looked at one another. No, a
patrón
wasn’t what his grandfather had been. Still, the idea of attacking his grounds, of attacking his buildings, hadn’t crossed their minds up till now. “If we do this,” Hipolito Rodriguez said slowly, “we have to win, and
Señor
Featherston has to win in November. If either of those things fails, we are dead men. You understand this, I hope.”

  “Oh, yes.” Quinn nodded. “This is not the Army. This is not even the way it is in some of the other Confederate states. I am not going to give you orders. But if you want to teach this fellow a lesson, I can help you.” He pointed to the Tredegars. “The question is, how badly do you want to be free?” A few nights later, Rodriguez slid quietly through the darkness, a military rifle in his hands. He hadn’t carried a Tredegar since 1917, but the weight felt familiar. So did the crouch in which he moved.

  A dog barked. Somebody called, “Who’s there?” Silence, except for the barking. A moment later, a yelp punctuated it, along with the sound of a kick. “Stupid dog,” Don Joaquin’s sentry muttered.

  Rodriguez waited. One of his friends was going forward.

  The brief sound of a scuffle. No shouts—only bodies thrashing. A fresh voice called, “Come on.” The Freedom Party men hurried past a body.

  There stood Don Joaquin’s house. The grandee had only two sons and a daughter, but his dwelling was four or five times the size of Hipolito Rodriguez’s. And the stable and barn not far away were even bigger. How much livestock did he have? How much did any one man need? A guard paced around the barn. He paced, yes, but he wasn’t looking for trouble. It found him all the same. Silent as a serpent, a raider sneaked up behind him and clapped a hand over his mouth. He let out only a brief, horrified gurgle as the knife went home.

  When the raider let the body sag to the ground, another man ran forward with gasoline. He splashed it on the wooden doors and the wall of the barn, then stepped back, lit a cigarette, and flipped it into the pool of gas that had run down from the doors. Yet another Freedom Party man gave the stables the same treatment.

  Flames leaped and roared. Through their growing din, Rodriguez heard horses and mules and cattle and sheep neighing and braying and bellowing in terror. He also heard Don Joaquin’s guards shouting in alarm. Their booted feet pounded on gravel and dirt as they ran to see what they could do.

  He’d been waiting for that, waiting behind a boulder that gave him splendid cover. Almost of itself, the Tredegar leaped to his shoulder. He hadn’t fired one in a long time, but he still knew what to do. The range was ridiculously short, and the flames lit up his targets for him.
If only
things were so easy during
the Great War,
 he thought, and squeezed the trigger.