American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 50

As Hosea Blackford did whenever he came up to the Lower East Side of New York City, he looked around in astonishment. Turning to his wife, he said, "I can't imagine what growing up here would have been like, with the buildings blocking out the sky and with swarms of people everywhere."

Flora Blackford-after being married for a year, she hardly ever signed her name Flora Hamburger Flora Hamburger any more-shrugged. "It's all what you're used to," she answered. "I couldn't imagine there was so much open s.p.a.ce in the whole world, let alone the USA, till I took that train trip out to Dakota with you this past summer. I felt like a little tiny bug on a great big plate." any more-shrugged. "It's all what you're used to," she answered. "I couldn't imagine there was so much open s.p.a.ce in the whole world, let alone the USA, till I took that train trip out to Dakota with you this past summer. I felt like a little tiny bug on a great big plate."

Up till 1917, New York City was all she'd ever known. Up till the train trip to Dakota, all she'd known were New York City, Philadelphia, and the ninety-odd built-up miles between them. Endless expanses of gra.s.s waving gently in the breeze all the way out to the horizon had not been part of her mental landscape. They were now, and she felt richer for it.

A boy in short pants ran by carrying a stack of the Daily Forward Daily Forward. "Buy my paper!" he yelled in Yiddish. "Buy my paper!"

"I understood that." Blackford looked pleased with himself. "The German I took in college isn't quite fossilized after all-and being around your family is an education in any number of ways."

"I'll tell my father you said so," Flora said. She walked up the stairs of the apartment house that seemed so familiar and so strange at the same time.

Following her, Blackford said, "Go ahead. He'll take it the right way. He has better sense than half the people in the Cabinet, believe you me he does."

"Considering what goes on in the Cabinet, that's not saying so much," Flora answered. Her husband rewarded her with a gust of laughter. She laughed, too, but a little ruefully: the scent of cooking cabbage was very strong. "I don't think this building is ready for the vice president of the United States."

"Don't worry about it," he said, laughing again. "Compared to the farm I grew up on, it's paradise-a crowded paradise, but paradise. It's got running water and flush toilets and electricity. The farm I grew up on sure didn't, not that anybody had electricity back then."

"This building had gas lamps up until a few years ago," Flora said. It did not have an elevator; she and Blackford walked upstairs hand in hand.

Knocking at the door to the flat where she'd lived so long seemed strange, too, but it also seemed right: she didn't live here any more, and never would again. When the door swung open, David Hamburger was the one with his hand on the latch. His other hand held the cane that helped him get around.

Flora embraced her brother carefully, not wanting to make him topple over. David shook hands with Hosea Blackford, then shuffled through a turn and walked back to the kitchen table. Each slow, rolling step on his artificial leg was a separate effort, each a silent reproach against the war that, though more than six years over, would echo through shattered lives for most of the rest of the century.

Blackford shed his coat; the October evening might have had a nip to it, but the inside of the flat was warm enough and to spare. "Here, I'll take that," Flora's younger sister Esther said, and she did.

"Chess?" David asked. He pulled out the board and pieces even before Blackford could nod.

"I'll take on the winner," Isaac said. The younger of Flora's brothers wore in his lapel a silver Soldiers' Circle pin inscribed 1918 1918-the year of his conscription cla.s.s. She thanked heaven that he, unlike David, hadn't had to go to war...and wished to heaven he wouldn't wear that pin. Soldiers' Circle men could be almost as goonish as the Freedom Party's ruffians down in the Confederate States. But he did as he pleased in such things. He was a man now, and let everyone know it on any excuse or none.

"h.e.l.lo, Aunt Flora!" Yossel Reisen said. Coming home so seldom, Flora was amazed at how much her older sister's son grew in between times. He'd been a baby when she went off to Congress, but he was in school now. He added, "h.e.l.lo, Uncle Hosea!"

"h.e.l.lo, Yossel," Hosea Blackford answered absently, most of his attention on the board in front of him. He played well enough to beat David some of the time, but not too often. He'd already gone down a p.a.w.n, which meant he probably wouldn't win this game.

Abraham Hamburger came in from the bedroom, puffing on his pipe. He hugged Flora, then glanced at the chess board. Setting a hand on Blackford's shoulder, he said, "You're in trouble. But you knew that when you decided to marry my daughter, eh? If you didn't, you should have."

"Papa!" Flora said, indignation mostly but not altogether feigned.

"He's not kidding, dear," Blackford said. "You know he's not." Since Flora did, she subsided. Her husband started a series of trades that wiped the board clear like machine-gun fire smas.h.i.+ng a frontal a.s.sault. By the time the dust settled, though, he was down two p.a.w.ns, not one. Stopping David from promoting one of them cost him his bishop, his last piece other than p.a.w.ns. He tipped over his king and stood up. "You got me again."

David only grunted. He grunted again when Isaac took Blackford's place. Before he and his brother could start playing, Sophie stuck her head out of the kitchen and announced, "Supper in a couple of minutes."

"We'd better wait," David said then.

"Ha!" Isaac said. "You're just afraid I'd beat you." But he scooped his pieces off the board and put them in the box. He and David had been giving each other a hard time as long as they'd been alive.

Sophie came out with plates and silverware. Behind her came Sarah Hamburger with a platter on which rested two big boiled beef tongues. While Sophie and Esther and Flora set the table, their mother went back into the kitchen, returning with another platter piled high with boiled potatoes and onions and carrots.

"Looks wonderful," Hosea Blackford said enthusiastically. "Smells wonderful, too."

Isaac gave him a quizzical look. "When I was in the Army, a lot of...fellows who weren't Jews"-he'd caught himself before saying goyim goyim to his brother-in-law-"turned up their noses at the idea of eating tongue." to his brother-in-law-"turned up their noses at the idea of eating tongue."

"All what you're used to, I suppose," Blackford said. "When I was growing up on a farm, we'd have it whenever we butchered a cow-or a lamb, for that matter, though a lamb's tongue has a skin that's tough to peel and so little meat, it's almost more trouble than it's worth. I hadn't eaten tongue for years before I first came here."

"I knew then you liked," Sarah Hamburger said, "so I make." Her English was the least certain of anyone's there, but she made a special effort for Blackford.

Over supper, Esther said, "What is it like, being vice president?" She laughed at herself. "I've been asking Flora what it's like being in Congress ever since she got elected, and I still don't really understand it, so I don't know why I should ask you now."

"Being in Congress is complicated, or it can be," Blackford answered. "Being vice president is simple. Imagine you're in a factory, and you have a machine with one very expensive part. If that part breaks, the whole machine shuts down till you can replace it."

"And you're that part?" Esther asked, her eyes wide.

Blackford laughed and shook his head. "I'm the spare for that part. I sit in the warehouse and gather dust. President Sinclair is the part that's hooked up to the machine, and I hope to heaven that he doesn't break."

"You're joking," David said. He studied Blackford's face. "No, I take it back. You're not."

"No, I'm not," Blackford said. "Flora has heard me complain about this for as long as I've had the job. I have the potential to be a very important man-but the only way the potential turns real is if something horrible happens, the way something horrible happened to the Confederate president last year. Otherwise, I haven't got much to do."

Abraham Hamburger said, "This Mitchel, down in the Confederate States, seems to be doing a good job."

"He does indeed," Blackford said. "I'm not telling any secrets when I say President Sinclair is glad, too. If the regular politicians in the Confederate States do a good job, the reactionaries don't get the chance to grab the reins."

"A kholeriyeh kholeriyeh on everybody in the Confederate States," David muttered in Yiddish. Blackford glanced at Flora, but she didn't translate. She didn't blame her brother for feeling that way. Because of what the Confederates had done to him, she could hardly keep from feeling that way herself. on everybody in the Confederate States," David muttered in Yiddish. Blackford glanced at Flora, but she didn't translate. She didn't blame her brother for feeling that way. Because of what the Confederates had done to him, she could hardly keep from feeling that way herself.

Her father nodded at what Blackford had said. "These Freedom Party mamzrim mamzrim remind me of the Black Hundreds in Russia, except they go after Negroes instead of Jews." remind me of the Black Hundreds in Russia, except they go after Negroes instead of Jews."

"Not enough Jews in the Confederate States for them to go after," Isaac said. "If there were more, they would."

"That's probably true," Flora said, and Blackford nodded. Flora's laugh sounded a little shaky. "Funny to think of anybody going after anyone instead of Jews."

"It is, isn't it?" Isaac said. "People do it here, too, even though there are more Jews than Negroes in the USA. It makes life easier for us than it would be otherwise."

Hosea Blackford looked around the crowded apartment. Flora knew what was in his mind: with so many people in so small a s.p.a.ce, Jews still didn't have it easy. She hadn't been able to see how crowded the flat was, how crowded the whole Lower East Side was, till she moved away. Before, they'd been like water to a fish. Only going to Philadelphia had given her a standard for comparison.

But that standard for comparison didn't mean her brother was wrong. Easier Easier and and easy easy weren't the same thing. She said, "Wherever we end up, no matter how hard things are for us, we manage to get by." weren't the same thing. She said, "Wherever we end up, no matter how hard things are for us, we manage to get by."

"That spirit is what made this country what it is today, no matter who has it," Hosea Blackford said. He stopped with a bite of tongue halfway to his mouth and an astonished look on his face. "Will you listen to me. Will you listen listen to me? If you didn't know better, wouldn't you swear that was Teddy Roosevelt talking?" to me? If you didn't know better, wouldn't you swear that was Teddy Roosevelt talking?"

"He's set his mark on the country for a long time to come," David said. He rapped his own artificial leg, which sounded of wood and metal. "He's set his mark on me for the rest of my life. Having the Socialists running the country has turned out better for the country and better for us"-he grinned at Flora and at Hosea Blackford-"than I thought it would. I admit it. But I still think TR deserved a third term in 1920."

Flora knew her brother's opinion. She had never understood it, and still didn't. But she refused to let him get her goat. "Now we'll see how many terms President Sinclair deserves," she said, which seemed to satisfy everyone. As her husband had, she heard what she'd said with some surprise. Will you listen to me? Will you Will you listen to me? Will you listen listen to me? If you didn't know better, wouldn't you swear that was a politician talking? to me? If you didn't know better, wouldn't you swear that was a politician talking?

Someone had plastered two-word posters-VOTE FREEDOM!-on every telegraph pole and blank wall in the Terry. As Scipio walked from his roominghouse to Erasmus' fish store and restaurant, he wondered if all the Freedom Party men had gone round the bend. Only a handful of Negroes in Augusta, Georgia, were eligible to vote. Even if they'd all been eligible, the Freedom Party wouldn't have picked up more than a handful of their votes.

When Scipio came up to the fish store, Erasmus was scrubbing a Freedom Party poster off his door. "Mornin', Xerxes," he said. "I don't need me no extra work so early in the mornin'."

"Crazy d.a.m.nfool buckra," Scipio said. "Ain't n.o.body here got no use for no Freedom Party."

"Freedom Party?" Erasmus exclaimed. "That whose poster this here is?" He was a clever man, and sharp with figures, but could hardly read or write. At Scipio's nod, he scrubbed and sc.r.a.ped harder than ever. "Mus' be tryin' to make us afraid of 'em."

"Mebbe so," Scipio said; that hadn't occurred to him. "I was feared o' they befo', but I ain't now. They shoots theyselves when they shoots de president."

Erasmus didn't answer for a moment; he was busy getting rid of the last bits of the offending poster. "There-that's better." He kicked shreds of wadded-up paper across the sidewalk and into the gutter, then glanced over at Scipio. "Them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds ain't even collectin' 'taxes' no more. You reckon they's goin' anywheres now?"

"Pray to Jesus they ain't," Scipio answered with all his heart. He still didn't believe prayer helped, but the phrase came automatically to his lips.

"Amen," Erasmus said. Then he reached into a pocket of his dungarees and pulled out a one-dollar banknote. "And I reckon this here hammers some nails in the coffin lid, too. Give 'em one big thing less to bellyache about."

"Yeah." Again, Scipio spoke enthusiastically. The Freedom Party hadn't been alone in bellyaching about the inflation that had squeezed the CSA since the end of the Great War. He'd done plenty of that himself. "Been a year now, near enough, an' the money still worth what it say. Almost done got to where I starts to trust it."

"Wasn't all bad." Erasmus chuckled. "Still recollect the look on the white-folks banker's face when I paid off what I owed. Thought he was gonna p.i.s.s his pants. Money was still worth a little somethin' then, so they couldn't pretend it weren't, like they done later. An'now I got my house free an'clear. Wish more n.i.g.g.e.rs woulda did the same."

Scipio shared that wish. Most of the Negroes in Augusta hadn't been alert enough to the opportunity that had briefly glittered for them. "Reckon mos' of the buckra don' think of it till too late, neither," he said.

"You right about that," Erasmus answered. "Some folks is jus' stupid, an' it don't matter none whether they's black or white." Before Scipio could say anything about that, his boss went on, "We done spent enough time chinnin'. Got work to do, an' it don't never go away."

Once inside the fish store and restaurant, Scipio fell to with a will. Erasmus had told a couple of important secrets there. Fools weren't the only ones who came in all colors. So did people who worked hard. One way or another, they got ahead. The ones with black skins didn't get so far ahead and didn't get ahead so fast, but they did better than their brethren who were content to take it easy.

After the lunch crowd thinned out, Scipio said, "You let me go downtown for a little bit, boss? Bathsheba want some fancy b.u.t.tons for a s.h.i.+rtwaist she makin', an' she can't find they nowhere in the Terry. Don't reckon no buckra too proud to take my money."

Erasmus waved him away. "Yeah, go on, go on. Be back quick, though, you hear?" Scipio nodded and left. He could take advantage of his boss' good nature every once in a while because he did work hard-and because he didn't try taking advantage very often.

Fewer Negroes were on the streets of downtown Augusta nowadays than had been there right after the war, when Scipio first came to town. The factory jobs that had brought blacks into town from the fields were gone now, gone or back in white hands. Two cops in the s.p.a.ce of a couple of blocks demanded to see Scipio's pa.s.sbook. He pa.s.sed both inspections.

"Don't want no trouble from n.o.body, boy, you hear?" the second policeman said, handing the book back to him.

"Yes, suh," Scipio answered. He might have pointed out that the policeman wasn't stopping any whites to see if they meant trouble. He might have, but he didn't. Had he, it would have meant trouble for him. The cop wouldn't have needed to belong to the Freedom Party to come down hard on an uppity n.i.g.g.e.r.

The Freedom Party itself wasn't lying down and playing dead. Posters shouting VOTE FREEDOM VOTE FREEDOM! covered walls and poles and fences here, as they did over in the Terry. Here, though, they competed with others touting the Whigs and the Radical Liberals. The more of those Scipio saw, the happier he was.

He also grew happier when he saw exactly the kind of b.u.t.tons Bathsheba wanted on a white cardboard card in the front window of a store that called itself Susanna's Notions. When he went inside, the salesgirl-or possibly it was Susanna herself-ignored him till he asked about the b.u.t.tons. Even then, she made no move to get them, but snapped, "Show me your money."

He displayed a dollar banknote. That got her moving from behind the counter. She took the b.u.t.tons back there, rang up twenty cents on the cash register, and gave him a quarter, a tiny silver half-dime, and a roll of pennies. By the look on her face, he suspected it would prove two or three cents short of the full fifty it should have held. A black man risked his life if he presumed to complain about anything a white woman did. The charges she could level in return...Reckoning his own life worth more than two or three cents, he nodded brusquely and left Susanna's Notions. He wouldn't be back. The woman might have profited from this sale, but she'd never get another one from him.

No sooner had he got out onto the sidewalk than he heard a cacophony of motorcar horns and a cry that still made his blood run cold: "Freedom!" Down the street, blocking traffic, came a column of Freedom Party marchers in white s.h.i.+rts and b.u.t.ternut trousers, men in the front ranks carrying flags, as arrogant as if it were 1921 all over again.

Scipio wanted to duck back into Susanna's Notions once more; he felt as if every Freedom Party ruffian were shouting right at him, and glaring right at him, too. But the woman in there had been as unfriendly in her own way as were the ruffians. He stayed where he was, doing his best to blend into the brickwork like a chameleon on a green leaf.

"Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" The shout was as loud and, in Scipio's ears, as hateful as it had been during the presidential campaign two years before.

But more white men shouted back from the sidewalks and from their automobiles: "Murderers!" "Shut up, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" "Get out of the road before I run you over!" "Liars!" "Sons of b.i.t.c.hes!" Scipio had never heard shouts like that during Jake Featherston's run for the Confederate presidency.

And, as if from nowhere, a phalanx of policemen, some with pistols, some carrying rifles, came off a side street to block the marchers' path. "Disperse or face the consequences," one of them growled. n.o.body had ever spoken like that to a Freedom Party column during the 1921 campaign, either.

"We have the right to-" one of the men in white and b.u.t.ternut began.

"You haven't got the right to block traffic, and if you don't get the h.e.l.l out of the way, you can see how you like the city jail," the cop said. He and his men looked ready-more than ready-to arrest any Freedom Party stalwart who started to give them a hard time, and to shoot him if he kept it up.

The Freedom Party men saw that, too. By ones and twos, they began melting out of the column and heading back to whatever they'd been doing before they started marching. A couple of the men up front kept arguing with the police. They didn't seem to notice they had fewer and fewer followers. Then one of them looked around. He did a double take that would have drawn applause on the vaudeville stage. The argument stopped. So did the march.

Scipio's feet hardly seemed to touch the ground as he walked back to the Terry. When he told Erasmus what he'd seen, his boss said, "'Bout time them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds gits what's coming to 'em. Way past time, anybody wants to know. But better late than never, like they say."

"Didn't never reckon I live to see the day when the police clamps down on the buckra marchin' 'long the street," Scipio said.

"You never lose your s.h.i.+rt bettin' on white folks to hate n.i.g.g.e.rs," Erasmus said. "You bet on white folks to be stupid all the time, you one broke n.i.g.g.e.r. They knows they needs us-the smart ones knows, anyways. An' the Freedom Party done come close enough to winnin' to scare the smart ones. Don't reckon they gets free rein no more."

"Here's hopin' you is right," Scipio said. "Do Jesus, here's hopin' you is right."

When he got home, Bathsheba examined the b.u.t.tons with a critical eye, then nodded. "Them's right nice," she said.

"You's right nice," Scipio said, which made his wife smile. He went on, "I gots somethin' else right nice to tell you," and again described the ignominious end to the Freedom Party march.

That made Bathsheba jump out of her chair and kiss him. "Them white-and-b.u.t.ternut fellers used to scare me to death," she said. "Tell the truth, them white-and-b.u.t.ternut fellers still scare me. But maybe, if you is right, maybe one fine day even us n.i.g.g.e.rs can spit in their eye."

"Mebbe so," Scipio said dreamily. He'd already spit in the white man's eye as a not altogether willing member of the ruling council of the Congaree Socialist Republic. This would be different. Echoing Erasmus, he said, "Even some o' the buckra like to see we spit in the Freedom Party's eye."

"I got somethin' else we can do about the Freedom Party," Bathsheba said. Scipio raised a questioning eyebrow. His wife condescended to explain: "Forget there ever was such a thing as that there party."

Now Scipio kissed her. "Amen!" he said. "Best thing is they disappears like a stretch o' bad weather. After the bad weather gone, you comes out in the suns.h.i.+ne an' you forgets about the rain. We done have more rain than we needs. Mebbe now, though, the sun come out to stay." And, in the hope the good weather would last, he kissed Bathsheba again.

Tom Colleton dumped afternoon papers from Charleston and Columbia down on the kitchen table in front of Anne, who was eating a slice of bread spread with orange marmalade and drinking coffee fortified with brandy. Headlines on all the newspapers proclaimed thumping Whig victories in the election the day before.

"Got to give you credit, Sis," Tom said. "Looks like you got out of the Freedom Party just in time."

"If you think the bottom is going to fall out of a stock, you sell it right then," Anne answered. "You don't wait for it to go any lower, not unless you want to lose even more."

Her brother had been content to look at the headlines. She studied the stories line by line, knowing headline writers often turned news in the direction their editors said they should. That hadn't happened here; the Whigs would own a larger majority in both the House and Senate of the Thirty-second Confederate Congress than they had in the Thirty-first.

And the Freedom Party had lost enough seats to make Anne's lips skin back from her teeth in a savage smile. They hadn't lost quite so many as she'd hoped, but they'd been hurt. Nine Congressmen...how did Jake Featherston propose doing anything with nine Congressmen? He couldn't possibly do anything but bellow and paw the air. People weren't so inclined to pay attention to bellowing and pawing the air as they had been before Grady Calkins killed Wade Hampton V.

"Yes, I think he is finished," Anne murmured.

"By G.o.d, I hope so," Tom said. "Do you know what he reminded me of?" He waited for Anne to shake her head before continuing, "A wizard, that's what. One of the wicked ones straight out of a fairy tale, I mean. When he started talking, you had to listen: that was part of the spell. He's still talking, but the spell is broken now, so it doesn't matter."

Anne stared at her brother in astonishment, then got up and set the palm of her hand on his forehead. His oath should have left the smell of lightning in the air. "Oh, hush," Anne said absently. "I was wondering if you had a fever-fancies like that aren't like you. But you don't, and it was a very good figure indeed, even if you won't come up with another one like it any time soon."

"Thanks a heap, Sis." Tom's grin made him look for a moment like the irresponsible young man who'd gone gaily off to war in 1914 rather than the quenched and tempered veteran who'd returned. "He wasn't a wizard, of course, only a man too d.a.m.n good at making everyone else angry when he was."

"He was angry all the time. He still is. He always will be, I think," Anne said. She'd just spoken of Featherston as finished. Even so, hearing Tom use the past tense in talking about him brought a small jolt with it.

Her brother said, "He sure had you going for a while."

Past tense again, and another jolt with it. But Anne could hardly disagree. "Yes, I reckon he did," she said, her accent less refined than usual. "Looking back on it, maybe he was a wizard. For a while there, I would have done anything he wanted."

Had President Hampton not been a.s.sa.s.sinated, Anne knew she would have gone on doing whatever Featherston wanted, too. She was honest enough to admit it to herself, if to no one else, not even her brother. Perhaps especially not to Tom, who'd always shown more resistance to Featherston's spell than she had.