The Victorious Opposition (19 page)

Hoover hadn’t said yes and hadn’t said no. A Powel House spokesman had said the president of the United States would give the request serious consideration. Flora wondered what he would do. As a Democrat, he would normally favor a hard line against the CSA. But, as a Democrat, he would also normally favor putting down uprisings of the proletariat, no matter how justified they might be.

Flora wondered how she ought to feel about the request herself. Up till Jake Featherston became president of the Confederate States, the Socialists had favored a softer line with the CSA, easing the country’s return to the family of nations. Some still did. How could the Confederacy become a normal country with a rebellion sputtering in its heartland? But how could one keep from sympathizing with the rebels, considering what they’d been through before picking up rifles (or, as Featherston claimed, cleaning the grease off the ones they’d hidden away in 1916)?

That last made up her mind. She dialed Powel House, wondering how long it would be before these newfangled telephones sent operators into extinction along with the passenger pigeon and the American bison. She worked her way through three secretaries before finally securing an appointment with President Hoover.

When she told her husband that evening what she’d done, Hosea Blackford made a sour face. “He won’t listen to you. You’re my wife. That’s plenty of reason right there for him not to listen to you.”

“This is foreign policy,” Flora answered. “Foreign policy should be bipartisan. You said so yourself, often enough.”

“This is Hoover.” To put it mildly, Blackford did not care for his successor. “You’d do better to recommend the opposite of what you really want. You might have some chance of getting it then.”

Powel House, on Third Street, was a three-story structure of red brick, with wide steps leading up to the broad porch and its wrought-iron railings. Philadelphia’s last pre-Revolutionary mayor had lived there. Since the Second Mexican War, it had also replaced the White House in Washington as the chief presidential residence.

The reception hall onto which the street door opened was large and impressive, with highly polished mahogany wainscoting gleaming a mellow red-brown. The banister leading up to President Hoover’s second-floor office was also of mahogany, the spindles fine examples of fancy lathework. When she’d lived here, Flora had often admired them. Now, worried as she was, she hardly gave them a glance.

Hoover’s bulldog features twisted into a smile when she came in. “Good to see you, Mrs. Blackford,” He waved her to a chair. “Please sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He didn’t say,
Make yourself at home.
She’d been at home here. Had the election of 1932 turned out differently, she and Hosea would still be at home here. Hoover went on, “What can I do for you, Congresswoman?”

“Thank you for your time.” Perhaps because she didn’t like President Hoover, Flora took care to be especially polite. “I’ve come to ask you to tell President Featherston you do
not
approve of his proposed expansion of the Confederate Army. He will use it for nothing but the oppression of his own people.”

“I agree. That is how he will use it,” Hoover said, and astonished hope flamed in Flora. The president continued, “That is why I am disposed to permit the expansion.”

Flora stared. “I don’t understand . . . Mr. President.”

“If I thought President Featherston intended to use his increased Army against the United States, I would oppose his enlargement of it with every fiber of my being. But I do believe he will use it only for the purpose he says he intends: putting down the Negro uprisings troubling several of his states. Any nation, whether friendly to the United States or not, is entitled to internal peace, stability, and security. If some ill-advised individuals disturb its tranquility, it has the right to use force to put them down.”

“But, Mr. President, one of the reasons the Negroes are in arms against the CSA is that the white majority will not give them—how did you phrase it?—peace, stability, and tranquility,” Flora answered. “The Confederate States made their bed through oppression. Shouldn’t they have to lie in it?”

“Radical elements have controlled blacks in the Confederate States for too long,” Hoover said. “This is not their first rising, if you recall.”

“Oh, yes. Their last one went a long way toward winning us the war,” Flora replied. “Don’t we owe them a debt of gratitude for that?”

The president thrust out his chin. “We owe no foreigners any debts,” he said proudly. “We are at peace with the world. Even the Japanese.” That was a dig at her husband, in whose presidency the war with Japan had broken out.

It was also an infallible sign she wouldn’t get what she wanted. “I hope you will not regret this decision, Mr. President,” she said, rising to her feet.

“My conscience is clear,” Hoover said.

“Which is not the same as being right.” Since she wouldn’t get what she wanted, she did take the last word.

G
runting, Cincinnatus Driver eased the last sofa off his dolly and down to the floor of the furniture shop’s storeroom. “Here you go, Mr. Averill. It’s pretty furniture. I hope it sells good.”

“Oh, Lord, so do I,” the shopowner replied. He signed off on the paperwork Cincinnatus had given him, then handed back the clipboard.

“Obliged.” Cincinnatus wheeled the dolly outside. Even though he’d been taking sofas and chairs and hassocks and chests of drawers off the truck for the past half hour and so was good and warm, the cold air flayed his face. Breathing it was like breathing knives. Snow crunched under his shoes. The winter looked to be as nasty as any he’d known since moving to Iowa.

He hoped the Ford would start, and breathed a sigh of relief when it did. He let the engine warm up before putting it in gear. That gave him a chance to pick up the folded copy of the
Des Moines Herald-Express
that lay on the seat.
CONFEDERATE STALWARTS FLOCK TO ARMY,
the headline read.

Cincinnatus muttered under his breath. That had nothing to do with Kentucky, but it had everything to do with blacks in the CSA. The new recruits would land on the Negro revolt with both feet. That would surely make more Negroes try to flee north. He wondered how many would make it into the USA.

Not many,
he thought, throwing the paper down in disgust.
Not near enough.
A Jew or an Irishman could be welcome here. Even a Chinaman could, sometimes. But a Negro? Only the conquest of Kentucky had made Cincinnatus a U.S. citizen. And a Jew or an Irishman (though not a Chinaman) could easily pretend to be something he wasn’t. A Negro? Cincinnatus shook his head. A black man
was
black, and nothing he could do would make him anything else.

Back in Kentucky, of course, Cincinnatus had known men called black who had blue eyes, and girls called black with freckles. They hadn’t bought their features from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue or any of its smaller Confederate competitors. Nobody talked much about how they
had
come by them, but everybody knew.

Another story read,
HOOVER PLANS REELECTION BID.
Cincinnatus didn’t bother reading that one. He’d voted Democratic ever since he’d been able to vote. He wanted the USA to keep the CSA down. As far as he was concerned, everything else ran second to that. And now Hoover had gone and betrayed his trust. Did that make it worth his while to vote Socialist later this year? He shrugged. He still had months and months to go before he needed to make up his mind.

He drove up to the railroad yards, got out of the truck and sat down on a bench with his pail to eat lunch. A couple of railroad dicks nodded to him as they went by; he was an accepted part of the landscape. One of the white men even tipped his cap. Cincinnatus made haste to return the gesture. No white in Kentucky would have done that with a black.

Half a dozen white truck drivers ate about fifty yards away. They didn’t invite Cincinnatus over, and he didn’t presume to join them without an invitation, though another white man did. Some things worked differently here from the way they did down in Kentucky, but others hadn’t changed a bit.

Cincinnatus wasn’t the only colored driver picking up cargo at the Des Moines yards, but the others seemed to be out hauling. It happened. He’d eaten a lot of lunches by himself. He took a big bite of his ham sandwich.

Shoeleather scrunched on gravel only a few feet away. Cincinnatus looked up. The black man coming toward him wasn’t one of the usual drivers. That was the first thing Cincinnatus realized. The second thing was that he knew him anyway, though he hadn’t seen him since moving away from Covington. “Lucullus!” he said in amazement. “What the hell you doin’ here?”

“I been lookin’ for you. Done found you now, too.” Lucullus Wood stuck out his hand. Automatically, Cincinnatus shook it. When he’d come to Iowa, Lucullus had been on the cusp between boy and man: where Achilles was now. Today, Lucullus had a man’s full and formidable presence. He’d also grown into a good deal of his father Apicius’ heft.

“Lookin’ for
me
? What for? I been gone from Covington a long time now. Don’t want to go back, neither,” Cincinnatus said.

The railroad dicks ambled past again, coming the other way. They gave Lucullus a hard stare. But, seeing that Cincinnatus knew him, they let him alone.

“Ain’t just me. It’s my old man,” Lucullus said.

“What’s Apicius want with me?” Cincinnatus asked in surprise and more than a little alarm. Lucullus’ father wasn’t just the best barbecue man between the Carolinas and Kansas City. He was also one of the leading Reds in Kentucky. During and after the war, he’d played a dangerous game with Confederate diehards and with Luther Bliss, the head of the Kentucky State Police. Having spent more time than he cared to in one of Luther Bliss’ jails, Cincinnatus wanted nothing to do with him now. He pointed a finger at Lucullus. “Why’d old Apicius send you, anyways? Why don’t he wire or write hisself a letter to me?”

“You know Pa ain’t got his letters,” Lucullus said, which was true but not fully responsive. Seeing Cincinnatus’ impatience, the younger man went on, “He send me so I kin talk you into doin’ what needs doin’.”

“So you kin talk me into doin’ what Apicius wants, you mean,” Cincinnatus said, and Lucullus didn’t deny it. “Well?” Cincinnatus asked. “Tell me what he wants an’ why he wants
me
. Tell me quick, so I kin say no an’ go on about my business.”

“He wants you on account of you’s a nigger with balls, and you’s a nigger with a truck,” Lucullus said. “Plenty o’ black folks, they tryin’ to get up to the USA from the CSA. You hear tell ‘bout dat?”

“I hear tell,” Cincinnatus admitted.

“You know ‘bout the Underground Railroad back before the War o’ Secession?” Lucullus asked. “Run slaves up into free country so they turn free themselves. That’s what we do now. We run niggers up into the USA. An’ we needs your help.”

“You want me to go down there an’ sneak black folks from the CSA up into the USA?” Cincinnatus asked.

Lucullus nodded. “That’s right. What you say?”

Cincinnatus looked at him. He knew what Lucullus and Apicius were counting on: his urge to protect his own. But he had his own right here—Elizabeth, Achilles, and Amanda. He looked Lucullus straight in the eye and said, “No.”

Lucullus’ jaw dropped. “What?”

“No,” Cincinnatus repeated. “That means I ain’t gonna do it. Sorry you come all this way, but no anyhow. Tell your pa he should find hisself another nigger, one with rocks where his brains ought to be.”

Now Lucullus started to get angry. “Why not?” he demanded.

“On account of whoever does this, he gonna get caught,” Cincinnatus replied. “On account of I already been in Luther Bliss’ jail once, and ain’t nothin’ or nobody make me mess with that man again. On account of I do anything you goddamn Reds don’t like, I end up dead an’ wishin’ I was in Luther Bliss’ goddamn jail. No.
Hell,
no.”

He waited for Lucullus to remind him his mother and father still lived in Covington and bad things might happen to them if he didn’t go along. He waited, but Lucullus said nothing of the kind. Maybe he knew it would do no good. He did say, “My pa, he ain’t gonna be real happy with you.”

“I ain’t real happy with him, or with you, neither,” Cincinnatus said. “You got a lot o’ goddamn nerve, comin’ up here an’ tryin’ to drag me back into that shit. I done gone away a long time ago, an’ I ain’t
never
goin’ back.” He was almost shouting. If he’d been any angrier, he would have hurled himself at Lucullus.

The younger man held out both hands, pale palms up, in a placating gesture. “All right. All right. I hears you. I tells my pa what you say.” He left the railroad yard in a hurry.

“Who was that colored fella?” one of the railroad dicks asked Cincinnatus after Lucullus went away. Not
that other colored fella
, Cincinnatus noticed: they took him so much for granted, they almost forgot what color he was.
That
never would have happened in Kentucky, either. People there always paid attention to who was who. They were sometimes less overt about noticing than they were here in Iowa, but they always did.

“I used to know him when I was livin’ down in Kentucky,” Cincinnatus answered. “Ain’t seen him for years till now.”

“What did he want?”

“Tryin’ to talk me into goin’ back there. He had some kind o’ business deal.” Cincinnatus shrugged. “I ain’t goin’. He’s a fly-by-night.”

“You must be rich, if he came all this way from Kentucky to try and take your money,” the dick said. “He’ll have a long, empty time going back. Thought he could play you for a sucker, did he?”

“Anybody reckon’s I’m rich, he ain’t never seen all the moths fly outa my wallet when I open it.” Cincinnatus hesitated to admit even to himself that he was doing well.

Both railroad dicks laughed. “Yeah, well, I know that song,” said the one who did most of the talking. “Don’t I just, goddammit.” He and his partner both strode off to prowl around trains.

Cincinnatus bolted the rest of his lunch. Then he went after work for the rest of the day. He got less than he wanted; wasting time with Lucullus had put him behind the other drivers. He muttered and fumed all afternoon. Not only had Lucullus bothered him, he’d cost him money. That hurt more.