Settling Accounts_ Drive To The East Part 5

The telephone rang, dropping a bomb on her train of thought. Not sorry to see it go, she picked up the handset and said, "Yes? What is it, Bertha?"

"Mr. Roosevelt is on the line, Congresswoman," her secretary answered.

"Is he?" Flora could hear the pleasure in her voice. "Put him through, of course."

"h.e.l.lo, Flora! How are you today?" the a.s.sistant Secretary of War said. Franklin Roosevelt always sounded jaunty, even though poliomyelitis left him paralyzed from the waist down. He was only a distant cousin to Theodore, and had always been a solid Socialist.

"I'm fine, Franklin. How are you? What can I do for you today?" Flora said.

"I'm about as well as can be expected," he replied. "I'd be better if the war were better, but I expect that's true of the whole country. Reason I called is, I wondered whether you'd listened to Satchmo and his pals on the wireless just now."

"I certainly did," Flora told him. "I don't think I ever heard the National Anthem sound like that that before." before."

Roosevelt had a big, booming laugh, a laugh that invited everyone who heard it to share the joke. "Neither did I, by G.o.d!" he said. "But it didn't sound bad, bad, you know-just different." you know-just different."

Had he been a Democrat like his late cousin, the two words would have meant the same thing to him. Flora said, "I liked the way he and the Rhythm Aces talked between numbers. They'll make some people think-here and in the CSA."

"That's the idea," Roosevelt said. "We made sure this broadcast went out over a big web. Featherston's boys could try till they were blue in the face, but they couldn't jam all our stations. People on the other side of the border will will have got the message." have got the message."

"Good. Excellent, in fact," Flora said. "Featherston says he tells the truth. His people-white and black-need to know better." She knew white Confederates wouldn't pay much attention to anything Negroes said. But plenty of blacks in the Confederate States had wireless sets, too.

"They sure do." Franklin Roosevelt paused. It seemed very casual. Then he went on, "President La Follette wanted me to pa.s.s on to you that, as far as he's concerned, the bargain you had with Al Smith still holds. He'll meet his end of it. He wants me to check and see that you will, too."

"If he does, I will." Flora hoped she hid her bemus.e.m.e.nt. Two presidents, now, had agreed to speak out against Confederate atrocities on Negroes if she didn't didn't speak out on a strange budget item she'd found. Stranger still, she didn't even know what the item was for. speak out on a strange budget item she'd found. Stranger still, she didn't even know what the item was for.

III.

When Scipio was Anne Colleton's butler, back in the days before and at the start of the Great War, he'd got an education less formal but more thorough than he would have had at most colleges. He knew the name for a group of people forced to live in a walled-off part of a town. They formed a ghetto. ghetto.

The Terry had been Augusta, Georgia's colored district for G.o.d only knew how long. Blacks lived there and nowhere else. Whites didn't live there, no matter what. But it hadn't been a ghetto. Negroes had worked all over Augusta, waiting tables, cleaning houses, cutting hair, and doing all sorts of backbreaking, low-paying jobs that were beneath whites' dignity.

But the Terry was a ghetto now. Barbed wire surrounded it. Armed guards-police and Freedom Party stalwarts-patrolled the perimeter. The only people who got out were the ones who showed their pa.s.sbooks at the gates and were approved. Reentering was controlled just as rigidly.

Even before the barbed wire went up, the authorities swept out-emptied-one big chunk of the Terry. Word was that the people removed had been resettled somewhere else. Scipio didn't know of anybody who'd heard from any of them, though. His guess was that they'd gone to a camp. Negroes went into camps. He didn't know of anybody who'd come out of one, either.

All he could do was live his life one day at a time, try to get through, try to get by. Every afternoon, he put on the tuxedo he wore to his job at the Huntsman's Lodge and headed for the nearest gate.

He'd been waiting tables there for a long time. The cops and the stalwarts knew him. They'd known him long enough that most of them had even stopped teasing him about the penguin suit he wore-and for a white man, or even a black, to abandon that particular joke required a forbearance not far from the superhuman. Better still, they'd even known him long enough to let him back into the Terry when he got off work after the usual curfew hour for Negroes.

That he worked at the Huntsman's Lodge in particular undoubtedly helped him and his fellow waiters and cooks and busboys acquire their immunity from the curfew. The place was the finest and fanciest restaurant in Augusta. It was where the town's most important whites gathered-and of course they had to be well served. Of course.

As usual, Scipio arrived for his shift about twenty minutes early. Showing up early and showing up all the time no matter what were two of a restaurant worker's chief virtues. Reliability counted for more than anything else he could think of.

He ducked into the staff entrance-customers had a much fancier one-and hung his ratty overcoat on a hook. He didn't think he'd need it much longer. Spring came early to Augusta, and summer followed hard on its heels. In the subtropical heat and humidity of a Georgia summer, his wing collar and tailcoat became a torture and a torment.

"h.e.l.lo, Xerxes." That was Jerry Dover, the manager at the Huntsman's Lodge. The sharp-faced white man made a pretty good boss.

"Good day to you, suh." Scipio responded to his alias more readily than he would have to his own name. As Scipio, he was still a wanted man in South Carolina. He hadn't thought the Red uprising during the Great War had a prayer of success, which hadn't kept him from becoming a prominent and visible part of the short-lived Congaree Socialist Republic. As far as he knew, the others who could say that were long dead; his son Ca.s.sius was named for one of them.

He expected Jerry Dover to go on his way after the greeting. The manager ran himself ragged making sure the Huntsman's Lodge stayed the best place in town. However much Dover's bosses paid him, it wasn't enough.

Instead, though, Dover said, "Grab yourself some grub and then come see me in my office. I've got something I want to talk to you about."

"I do dat, suh. What you need?"

"It'll keep till then." Jerry Dover did hurry off after that. Scipio scratched his head. Something was on Dover's mind. The manager hadn't seemed anxious or upset, so it probably wasn't anything too dreadful.

You couldn't get rich waiting tables. (If you were a Negro in the CSA, you were most unlikely to get rich any which way, but you sure wouldn't by waiting tables.) The job had its perquisites, though. The meals the cooks fixed for themselves and the rest of the help weren't so fancy as the ones they made for the paying customers, but they weren't bad, and they were free. Scipio ate fried chicken and string beans and b.u.t.tery mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, and washed them down with coffee with plenty of cream and sugar.

Thus fortified, he went to Jerry Dover's office, tapped on the open door, and said, "What kin I do fo' you, suh?"

"Come on in," Dover told him. "Close that thing, will you?"

"Yes, suh." As Scipio did, he began-oh, not to worry, but to wonder. What didn't Jerry Dover want anybody else hearing? The restaurant business had few secrets-fewer, most of the time, than the people who believed they were keeping them imagined.

Jerry Dover pointed to the battered chair in front of his battered desk. "Sit down, sit down," he said impatiently. "You don't need to stand there looking down at my bald spot. I've got something I want you to take care of for me."

"I do dat," Scipio said, a.s.suming it was something that had to do with the restaurant. "Ask you one mo' time-what you need?"

"Something a little special," Dover answered. Scipio still didn't worry. Later, he realized he should have started right then. But he just sat there politely and waited. His mama had raised him to be polite, going on seventy years ago now, and Anne Colleton's relentless training reinforced those early lessons. Dover went on, "I need you to take something to somebody down in Savannah for me."

"Savannah, suh?" Automatic deference tempered even the horror Scipio felt. "Do Jesus, suh! How I gonna git to Savannah, things like they is now? I is lucky I kin git outa de Terry."

"I'll get you authorized to leave town. Don't you fret about that," Jerry Dover said, which only made Scipio more alarmed than ever.

"What is this thing?" he demanded. "You can't go your ownself? You can't put it in de mail, let de postman bring it?"

"No and no," the manager answered. "If I go out of town, people will notice. Right now, I can't afford to have anybody notice me leaving town. And the mail's not as safe as it used to be. A lot of people are mighty snoopy these days." He doubtless meant people who worked for the Freedom Party. He doubtless meant that, but he didn't say it.

"You reckon n.o.body care about some raggedy-a.s.s n.i.g.g.e.r?" Scipio said. Quite calmly, Jerry Dover nodded. His very coolness infuriated the black man. "Suh, this here a.s.s o' mine may be raggedy, but it be the onliest one I got."

"Then you'll be careful of it, won't you . . . Scipio?"

There it was. He'd feared it was coming. Anne Colleton had known who he was, had known what his right name was. She'd eaten at the Huntsman's Lodge-was it really less than a year earlier?-and recognized him. Naturally, she'd wanted him arrested, brought back to South Carolina, and shot. Jerry Dover had forestalled her. He'd shown her that a colored waiter named Xerxes had worked at the Lodge before the Great War. It was, of course, a different Xerxes, but she couldn't prove that. Anne Colleton had always been a woman who got her own way. She couldn't have liked being thwarted here.

Maybe she would have done something about it had she lived. Thanks to the U.S. raid on Charleston, she hadn't. Scipio was free of her forever. But . . . She'd told Jerry Dover his right name. It was a gun in Dover's hands no less than it had been in hers.

Dover opened a desk drawer and reached inside. What did he have in there? A pistol? Probably. What had Scipio's face shown? What he was really thinking? A Negro in the CSA could do nothing more dangerous. Dover said, "You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

"I know what you talkin' 'bout, yes, suh," Scipio said. Then he let the accent he'd used only once or twice since the downfall of the Congaree Socialist Republic, the educated white man's accent Anne Colleton had made him learn, come out: "I know exactly what you are talking about, and I wish to heaven that I didn't."

Jerry Dover's eyes widened. "You are are a sandbagging son of a b.i.t.c.h. How many times did you tell me you could only talk like a swamp n.i.g.g.e.r?" a sandbagging son of a b.i.t.c.h. How many times did you tell me you could only talk like a swamp n.i.g.g.e.r?"

"As many times as I needed to, to keep myself safe," Scipio answered. Bitterly, he added, "But I see there is no safety anywhere. Now-suppose you eliminate the nonsense. What must I deliver, and to whom, and why?"

Accent was almost as important in the CSA as color. Scipio remained black. He couldn't do anything about that. But his skin said he was one thing. Now, suddenly, his voice said he was something else. His voice proclaimed that he was not just a white man, but someone to be reckoned with: a lawyer, a judge, a Senator. Jerry Dover shook his head, trying to drive out the illusion. Plainly, he wasn't having an easy time of it.

He had to gather himself before he answered, "You don't need to know that. You don't need to know why. The less you know, the better for everybody."

"So you say," Scipio replied.

"Yeah. I do. And I say something else, too: you don't want to mess with me. Anything happens to me, I got stuff written down. You'll wish you was dead by the time they get through with you-and with your family, too."

Bathsheba, whom he'd loved since they met at a boarding house in the Terry. Ca.s.sius, who had reached the age when every boy-almost a man-was as much a rebel as the Red he'd been named for. Ca.s.sius's older sister, Antoinette, old enough for a husband now-but in these mad times, how much sense did marrying make?

Scipio wasn't the only one whose life Jerry Dover held in the hollow of his hand. Everything in the world that mattered to him-and if Dover made a fist . . .

"All right, Mr. Dover," he said, still with those white men's tones. They helped him mask his feelings, and his feelings needed masking just then. "I shall do what you require of me."

"Figured you would," the restaurant manager said complacently. "Talkin' fancy like that may help you, too."

But Scipio held up a hand. "I had not finished. I shall do what you require-but you will pay my wife my usual wages and tips while I am away, and-"

"Wait a minute," Dover broke in. "You think you can d.i.c.ker with me?"

"Yes," Scipio answered. "I can bargain with you because I can read and write, too. You have a way to protect yourself against me. That knife cuts both ways, Mr. Dover. I shall do what you require, and I shall carefully note everything I have done, and I shall leave my notes in a safe place. I have those, and they have nothing to do with this restaurant."

Dover glared at him. "I ought to turn you in now."

"That is your privilege." Scipio masked terror with a butler's impenetrable calm. "But if you do, you will have to find someone else to do your service, someone on whom you do not have such a strong hold." He waited. Jerry Dover went on scowling, scowling fearsomely. But Dover nodded in the end. He hadn't intended to end up with a bargain-he'd intended just to impose his will, as whites usually intended and usually did with blacks-but he'd ended up with one after all.

Dr. Leonard O'Doull was a tall, thin man with a long jaw and a face as Irish as his name. He worked in a U.S. Army aid station a few hundred yards behind the line in Virginia. A few hundred yards, in this case, was enough to put him on the north side of the Rapidan when the front was on the south side, in the almost impenetrable second-growth country called the Wilderness. He didn't like that. Getting wounded men back over the river meant delay, and delay, sometimes, meant a death that faster treatment could have stopped.

But there was no help for it. The U.S. bridgehead over the Rapidan was small and under constant a.s.sault by air, armor, and artillery. The Confederates were no worse about respecting the Red Cross than their counterparts in green-gray, but there was nowhere in the bridgehead itself that an aid station could hope to escape the evil chances of war.

First Sergeant Granville McDougald waxed philosophical when O'Doull complained: "We do what we can do, Doc, not what we want to do."

"Yeah, Granny, I know." O'Doull had an M.D. He'd had a civilian practice up in Riviere-du-Loup, in the Republic of Quebec, where he'd settled after a stint as an army surgeon there in the Great War. McDougald had been a medic in the last go-round, and ever since. O'Doull wasn't at all sure which of them knew more about medicine. He went on, "Just 'cause I know it doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Well, no," McDougald allowed. "But there's not a h.e.l.l of a lot of point to flabbling about things you can't help."

O'Doull grunted. Like any doctor, he was an officer-he had a major's oak leaves on his shoulder straps. Like any long-service noncom, McDougald had ways of subverting the privileges rank gave to officers. Being right most of the time was not the least of them.

Before O'Doull could do anything more than grunt, a flight of northbound sh.e.l.ls roared by overhead. The sound put him in mind of a freight train rumbling down the track. Confederate artillery constantly tried to disrupt U.S. supply lines.

Disrupt supply lines. That was a nice, bloodless phrase. What the Confederates were really trying to do was blow up trucks and motorcars and trains, to turn the vehicles into fireb.a.l.l.s and the men inside them into burnt, mangled, screaming lumps of flesh. That was what it boiled down to. That was a nice, bloodless phrase. What the Confederates were really trying to do was blow up trucks and motorcars and trains, to turn the vehicles into fireb.a.l.l.s and the men inside them into burnt, mangled, screaming lumps of flesh. That was what it boiled down to.

Granville McDougald also listened to the sh.e.l.ls flying north. "Didn't hear any gurgles that time," he said.

"Happy day," O'Doull answered. And it was a happy day . . . of sorts. Rounds filled with poison gas made a distinctive glugging noise on their way through the air. Mustard gas hardly ever killed quickly. But the blisters it raised on the skin could keep a man out of action for weeks. And the blisters it raised on the lungs could keep him an invalid for years, strangling him half an inch at a time and making all his remaining days a h.e.l.l on earth.

Nerve agents, on the other hand . . . Get a whiff of those, or get even a little drop on your skin, and the world would go dark because your pupils contracted to tiny dots. Your lungs would lock up, and so would your heart, and so would your other muscles, too-but when your lungs and heart stopped working the rest of your muscles didn't matter a whole h.e.l.l of a lot.

Soldiers on both sides carried syringes full of atropine. Anyone who thought he was poisoned with a nerve agent was supposed to stab himself in the thigh and ram the plunger home. If he was right, the atropine would block the effects of the poison gas. If he was wrong, the antidote that would have saved him would poison him instead. That wasn't usually fatal, they claimed.

All the same, it made for one h.e.l.l of a war.

"You know," O'Doull said meditatively, "twenty-five years ago I thought we'd hit bottom. I thought we were doing the worst things to each other that human beings could think of to do." He laughed-in lieu of sobbing or screaming. "Only goes to show what I know, doesn't it?"

"Well, I don't suppose you were the only one with that idea," McDougald said. "Kind of makes you wonder where we go from here, doesn't it?"

"Tabernac!" O'Doull said, and Granny McDougald laughed at him. When he didn't watch himself, he swore in Quebecois French. Why not? He'd spoken it every day for a quarter of a century. English was the rusty language for him. He was surprised it had come back as well as it had. He'd read it all through his time in Riviere-du-Loup, to keep up with medical literature. That had probably helped. O'Doull said, and Granny McDougald laughed at him. When he didn't watch himself, he swore in Quebecois French. Why not? He'd spoken it every day for a quarter of a century. English was the rusty language for him. He was surprised it had come back as well as it had. He'd read it all through his time in Riviere-du-Loup, to keep up with medical literature. That had probably helped.

U.S. counterbattery fire answered the C.S. artillery. By the sound of things, the U.S. bombardment had plenty of poison gas in it. Intellectually, O'Doull understood why. The gas would either deny Confederate guns to their gunners or force the men to don masks and heavy, rubberized outfits that covered every inch of them. Those were unpleasant in cool weather. In the summer, there was some question whether gas or protection from it was more lethal.

As far as O'Doull was concerned, though, the intellect had little to do with gas. He loathed it, pure and simple. He'd never known a doctor or a medic who didn't. How could anyone not loathe stuff made to incapacitate and torment?

People on both sides of the front seemed to have no trouble at all.

Savagely, O'Doull said, "I wish to G.o.d they'd test that s.h.i.t"-he could swear in English, too-"on the people who invent it and the people who improve it and the people who make it. Then they'd be sure they've got it just right."

"Works for me," McDougald said. "Write up a memo and send it on to the Ordnance Bureau. See what they have to say about it."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'm not tempted to," O'Doull said. "What can they do? Court-martial me and throw me out of the Army? I'd thank 'em and go home, and they'd never see my a.s.s again."

"Do it," McDougald urged. "I'll sign it. They want to bust me down to private, I don't care. I'd be doing the same thing with a lot of stripes or without any, and I won't get rich on Army pay no matter what grade I'm in."

Before O'Doull could say anything to that, a shout from outside the aid station brought him back to the real and immediate world of war: "Doc! Hey, Doc! You there? We got a casualty for you!"

"No, I'm not here, Eddie," O'Doull yelled back. "I went to Los Angeles for the sun."

"Funny, Doc. Funny like a crutch." Eddie and another corpsman, a big, burly, taciturn fellow named Sam, carried a stretcher into the tent. Both medics wore smocks with Red Crosses fore and aft, Red Cross armbands, and Red Crosses painted on the fronts and backs of their helmets. Corpsmen on both sides sometimes got shot anyway.

The corporal on the stretcher wasn't at death's door. He was, in fact, swearing a blue streak. He had most of one trouser leg cut away, and a blood-soaked bandage on that thigh. His opinion of the Confederate who'd shot him wasn't far from Sophocles' of Oedipus.

"Round tore out a big old chunk of meat," Eddie said. "Missed the femoral artery, though."

"I guess it did," Granville McDougald said. "He'd be holding up a lily if the artery got cut."

O'Doull nodded. A man could bleed out in a hurry if anything happened to his femoral artery. "Let's get him on the table," O'Doull said. "I'll do what I can to patch him up, but he's going to be on the shelf for a while." He spoke to the noncom: "You've got yourself a hometowner, buddy."

"Oh, yeah, just what I f.u.c.kin' need," the corporal said as Eddie and Sam lifted him off the stretcher and onto the operating table. "Got a letter from my sis last week-my wife's f.u.c.kin' around with the f.u.c.kin' milkman. I go back to f.u.c.kin' St. Paul, I'll beat the f.u.c.k out of her."

A man of strong opinions but limited vocabulary, O'Doull thought. He nodded to McDougald: "Pa.s.s gas for me, Granny." Before the corporal could editorialize about that, McDougald stuck an ether cone over his face. He got out another couple of blurry four-letter words, then went limp. O'Doull thought. He nodded to McDougald: "Pa.s.s gas for me, Granny." Before the corporal could editorialize about that, McDougald stuck an ether cone over his face. He got out another couple of blurry four-letter words, then went limp.

"Watch what the f.u.c.k you're doin' with the f.u.c.kin' scalpel, Doc," Eddie said.

"Everybody's a funny man," O'Doull said mournfully. Eddie wasn't half so impa.s.sioned as the corporal. Of course, he hadn't just stopped a bullet, either. O'Doull cut away still more of the trouser leg and the wound dressing, too. Had Had the corporal stopped the bullet, or had it just taken a bite out of him and kept on going? O'Doull would have bet the round was long gone, but he did some probing all the same. You never could tell. the corporal stopped the bullet, or had it just taken a bite out of him and kept on going? O'Doull would have bet the round was long gone, but he did some probing all the same. You never could tell.

"Anything?" McDougald asked.

"Doesn't look like it," O'Doull answered. "They can X-ray him when they get him back to the division hospital, but it sure as h.e.l.l looks like a hometowner to me. I'm going to try to spread his skin over as much of the wound as it'll cover, tie off some of the bigger bleeders, dust him with sulfa and bandage him up, and then send him on his merry way."

"Make sure you don't tie off the artery when you're fooling around in there," McDougald warned.