American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 19

"If you say so," Kimball replied.

"I do say so," she answered seriously. "I know what I want, and I aim to get just that, nothing less." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Some ways, we're very much alike, you and I."

"That's a fact," he said. With a scowl, he went on, "If you're going to tease me, pick another time. I've got a little too much whiskey in me to take kindly to it tonight."

"That's frank enough." She appraised him as frankly. "But I'd already made up my mind that I wasn't gong to tease you if I found you tonight: I was going to invite you up to my room. I just told you, I know what I want, and I aim to get it."

He thought about turning her down to prove she couldn't take him for granted. It might make her respect him more. It might also make her furious. And he didn't want to turn her down. He wanted to throw her down on a big soft bed and take her while she clawed his back to ribbons. If she had something like that in mind, he was ready, willing, and able-he hadn't drunk so much as to leave him in any doubts on that score.

"We're ahead in the Seventh in Tennessee," a man at the telegraph tickers announced, which produced a new roar of applause. Through it, the fellow went on, "That's around Nashville. They had the d.a.m.nyankees occupying them-they got themselves some debts to pay."

Another Freedom Party man was keeping an eye on a different telegraphic instrument. "The Redemption League looks like they're gonna win themselves a seat in Texas," he said. "Ain't as good as if we did it, but it's the next best thing."

"How long do you want to stay here?" Anne asked.

"Up to you," Kimball answered. "We've already done about as much as I reckoned we could, and there's a lot of votes out there waiting to be counted. Maybe we really will get ten seats, the way Featherston said we would."

"That would be remarkable," Anne said. She echoed his own thought: "Most brags before an election turn to wind the second the voting's done." She slipped her arm into his. "Shall we go celebrate, then? My motorcar's a couple of doors down."

She was still driving the spavined Ford she'd got after the C.S. Army commandeered her Vauxhall. That told Kimball she hadn't come all the way back from the financial reverses she'd taken during the war. But then, who in the Confederate States had? He wondered what would have become of him had he not had more than usual skill with a deck of cards.

The Charleston Hotel was a large building of white stucco with a colonnaded entranceway. An attendant took charge of the Ford as if it had been a Vauxhall. The house detective didn't blink an eye as Kimball got into the elevator with Anne.

Their joining was fierce as usual, as much a struggle for dominance as what a lot of people thought of as lovemaking. When it was good, as it was tonight, they both won. Afterwards, they lay side by side, lazily caressing each other and talking...politics.

"You were right, Roger," Anne said, the sort of admission she seldom made. "The Freedom Party is is on the way up, and Jake Featherston on the way up, and Jake Featherston is is someone to reckon with." someone to reckon with."

"I want to meet him myself," Kimball said. He tweaked her nipple, gently enough to be another caress, sharply enough to be a demand and a warning. "You owe me that, seeing as I was right."

She knocked his hand away and answered with more than a hint of malice: "What makes you think he'd want to meet you you? You were an officer, after all, and he's not what you'd call keen on officers."

"He's not keen on rich rich officers," Kimball retorted. "You ever saw the farm I grew up on, you'd know I'm not one of those. He'll know it, too." officers," Kimball retorted. "You ever saw the farm I grew up on, you'd know I'm not one of those. He'll know it, too."

He saw he'd surprised her by answering seriously. He also saw his answer wasn't something she'd thought of herself. "All right," she said. "I'll see what I can do." She rolled toward him on the broad bed. "And now-"

He took her in his arms. "Now I'll see what I can do."

Cincinnatus Driver wished he didn't keep getting s.h.i.+pments for Joe Conroy's general store. He wished he could stay away from Conroy for the rest of his life. Like so many wishes, that one wasn't granted. He couldn't turn down deliveries to Conroy's. If he started turning down deliveries to one storekeeper, he'd stop getting deliveries to any storekeepers.

He also wished his rattletrap truck had winds.h.i.+eld wipers. Since it didn't-he counted himself lucky it had a motor, let alone any fripperies-he drove from the Ohio to the corner of Emma and Blackwell as slowly and carefully as he could, doing his best to peer between the raindrops spattering his winds.h.i.+eld. His best was good enough to keep him from hitting anybody, but he clucked to himself at how long he was taking to drive across Covington.

"And when I finally get there, I get to deal with Joe Conroy," he said. He talked to himself a lot while driving, for lack of anyone else with whom to talk. "Won't that just make my day? Sour old-"

But, when he hauled the first keg of mola.s.ses into the general store, he found Conroy in a mood not merely good but jubilant. He stared suspiciously at the fat storekeeper; Conroy wasn't supposed to act like that. Conroy didn't usually sign the s.h.i.+pping receipt till Cincinnatus had fetched in everything, but he did today. "Ain't it a beautiful mornin'?" he said.

Cincinnatus looked outside, in case the sun had come out and a rainbow appeared in the sky while his back was turned. No: everything remained as gray and dark as it had been a moment before. Nasty cold drizzle was building toward nasty cold rain; he didn't relish the upcoming drive back to the wharves.

"Tell you straight out, Mistuh Conroy, I've seen me a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of days I liked the looks of better," he answered, and went back out into the wet to fetch some more of what Conroy had ordered. The sooner he got it all into the store, the sooner he could get away.

When he came inside again, Joe Conroy said, "Didn't say it was pretty out. I said it was a beautiful mornin', and it d.a.m.n well is."

"I ain't got the time to play silly games." Cincinnatus spoke more rudely to Conroy than to any other white man he knew, and enjoyed every minute of it. "Tell me what you're talkin' about or let it go."

Conroy was in the habit of making noises about what an uppity n.i.g.g.e.r Cincinnatus was. He didn't even bother with those today. "I'll tell you, by Jesus," he answered. "I sure as h.e.l.l will tell you. It's a beautiful mornin' on account of the Freedom Party won eleven seats in the Congress down in Richmond, and the Redemption League took four more."

That didn't make it a beautiful morning for Cincinnatus-but then, Cincinnatus, though he'd had to work with the Confederate diehards in Kentucky, wasn't one himself. His considered opinion was that a black man would have to be crazy to want the Stars and Bars flying here again. The Stars and Stripes weren't an enormous improvement, but any improvement, no matter how modest, seemed the next thing to a miracle to him.

Then he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. He might not be crazy, but maybe he was stupid. "That's how come I've seen 'Freedom!' painted on about every other wall this past couple weeks," he said. how come I've seen 'Freedom!' painted on about every other wall this past couple weeks," he said.

"Sure as h.e.l.l is," Conroy said. "Those folks is gonna do great things for the country-for my my country." His narrow little eyes probed at Cincinnatus. Cincinnatus stared back impa.s.sively. He didn't want Conroy to know what he was thinking. The storekeeper grunted and went on, "Reckon there'll be a Freedom Party startin' up in Kentucky any day now." country." His narrow little eyes probed at Cincinnatus. Cincinnatus stared back impa.s.sively. He didn't want Conroy to know what he was thinking. The storekeeper grunted and went on, "Reckon there'll be a Freedom Party startin' up in Kentucky any day now."

"How do you figure the USA's gonna let you get away with that?" Cincinnatus asked in surprise. "They ain't gonna let there be no party that don't really belong to the United States at all."

Joe Conroy looked sly. He might not have been all that smart, but he was one crafty devil: that much Cincinnatus could not help but recognize. "They let Reds operate in the USA, don't they?" he said. "It's a free country, ain't it? Says it is, anyways-says it out loud, bangin' on a big drum. If the Freedom Party, say, wants to try and get the votes to take Kentucky back into the CSA, how can they stop us from doin' that?"

He looked smug, as if certain Cincinnatus could have no answer. But Cincinnatus did have an answer, and gave it in two words: "Luther Bliss."

"Huh," Conroy said. "We'll handle him, too, when the time comes."

Cincinnatus didn't argue, not any more. Arguing with a fool had always struck him as a waste of time. And Conroy sure as h.e.l.l wasn't all that smart if he thought he could handle Luther Bliss. Cincinnatus had his doubts about whether Apicius Wood could handle Bliss if he had to. Apicius, he judged, had the sense not to try, but then Apicius really was pretty smart.

"Let me get the rest of your stuff," Cincinnatus said. If he wasn't face-to-face with Conroy, he couldn't possibly argue with him.

The storekeeper wanted to keep on jawing, but Cincinnatus didn't have to play, not today he didn't. With Conroy's receipt in his pocket, all he had to do was finish the delivery and get out. He did exactly that.

As he drove back up toward the river, he really noticed how many walls and fences had FREEDOM FREEDOM! painted on them. The word had replaced the blue crosses and red-white-red horizontal stripes as the diehards' chosen scribble.

He didn't like what he'd heard about the Freedom Party. That put it mildly. The local papers said little about the outfit; these days, they did their best to ignore what went on in the Confederate States. But word drifted up out of the CSA even so, word spread on the black grapevine that ran alongside and occasionally overlapped the one the diehards used. None of that word was good. And now the Freedom Party had done better in the elections than anyone expected. That was not good news, either.

When he got home that evening, he told Elizabeth what he'd heard from Conroy. She nodded. "White lady I clean house for, she was talkin''bout the same thing on the telephone. She sound happy as a pig in a strawberry patch."

"I believe it," Cincinnatus said. Kentucky had been taken out of the USA by main force at the end of the War of Secession. It had been dragged back into the United States the same way during the course of the Great War. A lot of Kentuckians-a lot of white Kentuckians-wished the return had never happened. Cincinnatus went on, "The government ever lets people here vote for the Freedom Party, they ain't gonna like the votes they see."

Elizabeth sighed. Part of the sigh was weariness after a long day. Part of it was weariness after living among and having to work for people who despised her the second they set eyes on her. She said, "Reckon you're right. Wish it wasn't so, but it is."

"Pa's right," Achilles said cheerfully. "Pa's right." He didn't know what Cincinnatus was right about. He didn't care, either. He had confidence that his father was and always would be right.

Cincinnatus wished he had that same confidence. He knew all too well how many mistakes he'd made over the years, how lucky he was to have come through some of them, and how one more could ruin not only his life but those of his wife and little son. Slowly, he said, "Maybe we ought to talk some more about pullin' up stakes, Elizabeth. We can do it. Don't need no pa.s.sbook, not any more."

"We got us a lifetime of roots in this place," Elizabeth said. She'd said the same thing when Cincinnatus brought up the idea of leaving Covington earlier in the year.

He hadn't pressed her very hard then. Now he said, "Sometimes the only thing roots is good for is gettin' pulled out of the ground. Sometimes, if you don't pull 'em out, they hold you there till somethin' cuts you down."

Instead of answering directly, Elizabeth retreated to the kitchen. Over her shoulder, she said, "Go set yourself down. Smells like the ham is just about ready."

Sit himself down Cincinnatus did, but he didn't abandon the subject, as his wife plainly hoped he would. "I been thinkin' about this," he said. "Been thinkin' about it a lot, even if I ain't said much. If we leave, I know where I'd like us to go. I been lookin' things up, best I can."

"And where's that?" Elizabeth asked, resignation and fear mingling in her voice.

"Des Moines, Iowa," he answered. "It's on a river-the Des Moines runs into the Mississippi-so there'll be haulin' business off the docks. Iowa lets black folks vote. They let women vote for president, too."

"I reckon they got women there," Elizabeth allowed. "They got any black folks there at all?"

"A few, I reckon," he answered. "There's a few black folks in just about every good-sized town in the USA. Ain't any more than a few very many places, though." He held up a hand before his wife could say anything. "Maybe that's even for the best. When there ain't very many of us, can't be enough for the white folks to hate us."

"Who says there can't?" Elizabeth spoke with the acc.u.mulated bitter wisdom of her race. "And Jesus, how far away is this Des Moines place? It'd be like fallin' off the edge of the world."

"About six hundred miles," Cincinnatus said, as casually as he could. Elizabeth's eyes filled with horror. He went on, "Reckon the truck'll make it. They got a lot o' paved roads in the USA." He pursed his lips. "Have to pick the time to leave, make sure everything's all good and dry."

"You aim on bringin' your ma an' pa along?" Elizabeth asked. Her own parents were both dead.

"They want to come, we'll fit 'em in some kind of way," Cincinnatus answered. "They don't-" He shrugged. "They're all grown up. Can't make 'em do nothin'they don't take a s.h.i.+ne to."

"I don't take no s.h.i.+ne to this myself." Elizabeth stuck out her chin and looked stubborn.

"You take a s.h.i.+ne to livin' here in Kentucky if that Freedom Party starts winnin' elections?" Cincinnatus asked. "Somethin' like that happen, you'll be glad we got somewheres else to go."

That hit home. "Maybe," Elizabeth said in a small voice.

Something else occurred to Cincinnatus: if the Freedom Party started winning elections in the Confederate States, what would the Negroes there do? They couldn't run away to Iowa. They'd already tried rising up, tried and failed. What did that leave? For the life of him, Cincinnatus couldn't see anything.

Stephen Douglas Martin's eyes went from his daughter to his son and back again in something that looked like pleased bemus.e.m.e.nt. "You don't have to do this on account of me, you know," he said. "If you want to go out and paint the town red, go right on out and do it."

Chester Martin grinned at his father. "You already say I'm too much of a Red. I don't even want to go out and paint the town green."

"We just want to spend New Year's Eve with you and Mother, that's all," Sue Martin said, nodding vigorously. Chester's kid sister looked a lot like him, with sharp nose, green eyes, and sandy hair. She thought a lot like him, too, on labor matters and on a lot of other things as well.

"Besides, Pa," he added, "where the devil could I go in Toledo to paint the town red even if I wanted to? This isn't exactly Philadelphia or New York City." Toledo also didn't boast the mult.i.tude of saloons and brothels that sprang up behind an army's lines to cater to the needs-or at least the desires-of soldiers briefly free from the trenches.

"Well, you've got me there," his father answered. "Yes, sir, you've got me there. Once upon a time, I used to know where all the hot joints were, but that was a while ago now. Don't look so much to go out and get rowdy, like I used to before I hooked up with your mother and settled down."

From the kitchen, Louisa Martin called, "What are you blaming me for now, Stephen?" Dishes rattled as she put them back into the cabinet. "I'm almost finished in here. Whatever you're trying to pin on me, in a minute I'll be out there and you won't be able to do it."

She was as good as her word. Her husband said, "What I was trying to pin on you, dear, was settling me down. If you don't think you've done it, I'll go out and get drunk and leave you home with the kids." His eyes twinkled. "I'll probably beat you when I get back, too, the way I always do."

"I don't know why you haven't quit yet," Louisa Martin said with a pretty good martyred sigh. "I'm all over bruises, and the police keep dragging you down to the station every other day."

They both started laughing. Sue looked from one of them to the other, as if astonished her parents could act so absurd, and about something that would have been very serious had they been serious themselves. Chester said, "Well, Ma, that's better work for the cops than most of what they do, believe me."

"Hold on there." His father held out his hand like a cop halting traffic. "If we're going to have a happy New Year's Eve, let's see if we can manage not to talk politics. Otherwise, we'll just start arguing."

"I'll try," Chester said, knowing his father was likely to be right. He let out a wry chuckle before going on, "Doesn't leave me much to talk about but my football team, though."

"I wish you wouldn't talk about that, either," his mother said. "It's just as dangerous as going out there on the picket line."

"Not even close." Chester shook his head. "The fellows on the teams we play hardly ever carry guns, the way the cops and the company goons do."

"What did I say a minute ago?" Stephen Douglas Martin asked rhetorically. "If you want to turn out editorials, son, go work for a newspaper."

"All right," Chester said.

His father looked at him in some surprise, evidently not having expected such an easy victory. The older male Martin arose with a grunt from the chair in which he'd been ensconced since suppertime. He went into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of whiskey and two gla.s.ses.

"Well, I like that," Sue said with annoyance only partly affected. "Are you going to leave Mother and me thirsty?"

"I only have two hands." Her father set the whiskey and the gla.s.ses on the side table by his chair, then held up the members in question. "Count 'em-two." He returned to the kitchen and brought out two more tumblers.

Chester wondered if his father had intended to include Sue and his mother in the drinking. If he hadn't, n.o.body could prove it now. Whiskey gurgled into four gla.s.ses. Chester raised his. "To 1920!" he said.

"To 1920!" his sister and his parents echoed. They all drank. Chester sighed as the whiskey ran down his throat. It wasn't the smoothest he'd ever drunk, but it wasn't bad, either. Some of the rotgut he'd had in back of the lines-and, every once in a while, in a canteen or jug smuggled up to the forward trenches-had been like drinking liquid barbed wire.

His father stood to propose a toast. "To the 1920s-may they be a better ten years than the ten we've just gone through." Everyone drank to that, too. Stephen Douglas Martin said, "Now we ought to all pitch our gla.s.ses into the fireplace. Only trouble with that is, you go through a lot of gla.s.ses."

Sue looked at the clock on the mantel over the fireplace. "Three hours till midnight, less a couple of minutes. Will starting a new calendar really make a difference? It'd be nice to think it would."

"We always hope it will," her mother said wistfully. She sighed. "And we usually end up looking back and saying, 'Well, that's another year down.'"

"This wasn't too bad a year," Chester said. "I've had work through most of it, anyway, and that's more than I can say for the rest of the time since I got out of the Army."

He left it at that. Had he said more, he and his father would have got to arguing politics. He was convinced the factory owners had settled with the steelworkers because of the 1918 election returns. Whatever else you might say about them, big capitalists weren't stupid. When handwriting went up on the wall, they could read it. If they didn't come to terms with the people who worked for them, Congress would start pa.s.sing laws they didn't fancy.

His mother sat down at the tired old upright piano and began to play. Her choice of tunes made him smile. After a little while, he said, "I'm not in the Army any more. You don't have to give me one Sousa march after another." He stomped up and down the room as if on parade.

"I like playing them, Chester," Louisa Martin said. "They make me want to go marching-except I can't, not while I'm playing." She swung into a spirited if not technically perfect rendition of "Remembrance and Defiance."

"She'll do as she pleases, son," Stephen Douglas Martin said. "If you haven't learned that about her by now, how long is it going to take you?"

"If she's playing them for herself, that's fine," Chester said. "If she's doing them for me, though, she's wasting her time. I never was so glad as the last time I took that uniform off."

"You went through a lot," Sue said. "I remember the hard time you gave that military policeman in the park when you were home on convalescent leave. It was like you'd seen a lot of things he never had, so you didn't think he had any business bothering you."

"That's just what I was thinking, Sis," he answered. "He behaved like he thought G.o.d had sent him down in a puff of smoke. The people who really went through the mill don't act that way."

"I've seen that with the younger fellows I work with," his father said. "One of 'em won the Medal of Honor, but you'd never hear it from him."

"That's the way it ought to be," Martin said. "We didn't go out there to blow our own horns or to have a good time-not that there were any good times to have in the trenches. We went out there to win the war, and we did that." He tossed down the rest of his whiskey. "And you know what? I wonder if what we bought is worth what we paid for it."

"We licked the Rebs," his father said. "Along with Kaiser Bill, we licked everybody. We've paid people back for everything they ever did to us."

"That's so," Chester said, "but there are-what? a million? something like that-say a million men who won't ever see it. And Lord only knows how many there are on crutches and in wheelchairs and wearing a hook instead of a hand." He touched his own left arm. "I'm one of the lucky ones. All I got was a Purple Heart and some leave time-a hometowner, we called a wound like that. But it was just luck. It wasn't anything else. A few inches to one side and I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't be anyplace. I was a good soldier, but that's not why I came out in one piece. Nothing but luck."

The Sousa march Louisa Martin was playing came to a ragged halt. "You've upset your mother," Stephen Douglas Martin said, and then, to his wife, "It's all right, dear. He is is here. He's fine. If he weren't here and fine, he wouldn't be spouting such nonsense, would he?" here. He's fine. If he weren't here and fine, he wouldn't be spouting such nonsense, would he?"

"No," Chester's mother said in a small voice. "But I don't like to think about...about things that might have been."