“One of the few decent things he ever did,” Nellie muttered. Then, softly, she repeated her new name to herself, over and over: “Nellie Jacobs. Nellie Jacobs. Nellie Jacobs.” She hadn’t had so much trouble the first time she was married. That lay a quarter of a century in the past, though. She was more set in her ways now. “Nellie Jacobs.”
Hal Jacobs grunted and rolled over toward her. His eyes opened. Did he look a little confused, too, as if wondering where he was? He’d been a widower for a long time, as she’d been a widow, and had grown used to fending for himself. The room in which he’d lived, above the cobbler’s shop across the street from her coffeehouse in Washington, D.C., was aridly neat.
Then, seeing her, he smiled. “Good morning, my dear Nellie,” he said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. He did that every morning they woke up together.
“Good morning, Hal,” Nellie said. Her husband, though far from young, remained very much the enchanted new bridegroom. Nellie wasn’t so young as she wished she were, either. For her part, she remained bemused she’d ever agreed to marry him.
His hand slid along under the covers and came to rest on the curve of her hip. “You have made me the happiest man in the world,” he declared.
He was sweet. Because he was sweet, Nellie had never told him how much she disliked having a man reach out and touch her like that. He wasn’t young. He didn’t seek his marital rights all that often. When he did, she had no trouble getting through it. She’d got through far worse back in her own younger days.
He wanted to please her. She let him think he did. Once or twice, he really had come close, which surprised her. She’d thought that part of her dead forever, not that it had ever had much life.
She threw off the wool blankets. She wore a thick flannel nightgown and long underwear beneath it, but she was still cold. She’d been cold for months. “When will this winter end?” she asked, though that was not a question her husband could answer.
Hal Jacobs got out of bed, too. He also had on long johns under a nightshirt, and he also looked cold. “It has been a hard one,” he agreed. “March and no sign of letup. And it has to be making the influenza epidemic worse.”
They both dressed rapidly. Nellie said, “I hate the influenza. It makes people afraid to go out in crowds, and that’s bad for business.”
“With so much snow on the street, they have trouble getting about anyhow,” Hal said. “This will not keep me from enjoying a cup of your wonderful coffee, though, or I hope not, Mrs. Jacobs.”
“I think we can probably take care of something like that, Mr. Jacobs,” Nellie said. She’d always liked his old-fashioned, almost Old World, sense of courtesy. Now that they were married, she found herself imitating it.
They went downstairs together. Edna, whose room was across the hall, joined them a few minutes later. They all stuck close to the stove, which heated the kitchen area as well as water for coffee.
Sipping at his steaming cup, Hal Jacobs let out a grateful sigh. He looked from Nellie to Edna and back again. “My beautiful wife and her beautiful daughter,” he said, beaming. “Yes, I am a lucky man.”
Edna glanced over to her mother. “You better keep him happy, Ma. He sure does talk pretty.”
“Foosh,” Nellie said. She and Edna did look alike, with long faces, brown hair, and very fair skin. She didn’t think she was particularly beautiful. Edna made a pretty young woman. She smiled more than Nellie did, which made her look more pleasant—but then, she was looking for a man. Nellie’s opinion was that the joys of having even a good one were overrated, but Edna paid as little attention to Nellie’s opinions as she could get away with.
A customer came in and ordered a fried-egg sandwich to go with his coffee. He was young and moderately handsome, with a brown Kaiser Bill mustache whose upthrust points were waxed to formidable perfection. Edna took care of him before Nellie could. That might have been funny, were it happening for the first time. Having seen it throughout the war, Nellie was sick and tired of it.
She made eggs for herself and her husband, too—after so many years as a widow, she found the idea of having a husband very strange. When Hal had eaten, he said, “I’m going to go across the street and get some things done.” He chuckled. “Can’t have folks say my wife does all the work in the family, now can I?”
“Not when it isn’t true,” Nellie said. “Go upstairs and get your overcoat, though, before you set foot outdoors.” Jacobs nodded and headed for the stairs.
Edna laughed. “There you go, Ma! You’re telling him what to do like you’ve been married twenty years.” Nellie made a face at her, and not a happy one. Jacobs laughed again going upstairs. That was luck, nothing else. He could as easily have grown angry at the idea of being ordered about.
Well bundled, he walked across the snowy street and opened the cobbler’s shop. He wouldn’t get much business today. He had to know it, too. The shop was part of his routine, though, as running the coffeehouse was part of Nellie’s. She was glad he kept his independence and let her keep hers.
A barrel with a bulldozer blade welded to the prow rumbled down the street, pushing snow aside—and up onto the sidewalk, making the drifts higher and making it even harder for people to come into the coffeehouse or the cobbler’s shop. The barrel driver cared nothing about that. Having been occupied by the Confederates for more than two and a half years and then devastated in the U.S. reconquest, Washington remained under martial law with the war months over.
Trucks roared by in the barrel’s wake: it was for them that the bigger, heavier machine had cleared a path. Rubble filled their beds. Had rubble been gold, Washington would have spawned a rush to make the stampede to California seem as nothing beside it. But it wasn’t gold. It was only rubble. It had to be disposed of, not sought out.
When Nellie opened the front door to take a cup of coffee to Hal, she found she couldn’t, not without shoveling her way to the street. By the time she and Edna did the shoveling, the coffee was cold. She poured it out, got a fresh one, and took it across the street. Then she discovered she had to shovel her way into her husband’s shop. That meant another trip back for coffee that was hot. Some of the things she said about the U.S. government were less than complimentary.
Her husband was fixing a soldier’s boot when she finally came in. The only difference between 1918 and 1916 was that it was a U.S., not a Confederate, boot. “Coffee? How nice. How thoughtful,” he said. His eyes twinkled. “And what do you hear in the coffeehouse that might interest an old shoemaker, eh?”
Nellie laughed. He hadn’t just been a shoemaker during the war. He’d been part of a spy ring keeping tabs on what the Confederates did in and around Washington. He’d helped Nellie get coffee and food when they were scarce and hard to come by. Since she had them, her place had been popular among Confederate officers and homegrown collaborators. In turn, she’d passed on what she overheard to him.
She had an Order of Remembrance, First Class, straight from the hands of Theodore Roosevelt because of that. Edna had an Order of Remembrance, Second Class, which was richly undeserved: she’d been on the point of marrying a Confederate officer when he died in a U.S. artillery barrage. So far as Nellie knew, Hal had no decorations of his own. That struck her as dreadfully unfair, but he’d never once said a word about it where she could hear.
Nor did he now. He drank the coffee quickly, savoring the warmth she’d had to work so hard to get him. Then he remarked, “If you look over there, you’ll see they are building the Washington Monument a little higher now.”
She looked out the window. Before the war, she would have been able to see only the tip of the monument over the buildings between it and the shop. Rebel bombardment and U.S. counterattacks had truncated the white stone obelisk. She could still see more of it now than she’d seen before the war, because the fighting had also leveled most of the buildings formerly in the way.
Hal said, “I hear they’re starting to rebuild the White House and the Capitol, to
o.”
“They’ll be pretty,” Nellie said. “Past that, I don’t know why anybody would bother. They’ll just get blown up again when the next war comes, and I can’t see the president and Congress coming down from Philadelphia, can you?”
“To spend all their time here, the way they used to do?” Hal Jacobs shook his head. “No. Not when we are still so close to Virginia, even though the USA will hold the land down to the Rappahannock. But maybe to come down for ceremonial sessions: that, yes. That I could see.”
“I suppose you may be right,” Nellie said after a little thought. “Teddy Roosevelt is the sort to enjoy ruffles and flourishes, no doubt about that. He’d love to make the Rebs grind their teeth, too. They were going on about how Washington would be theirs forever. Reckon they didn’t know everything there is to know.”
“They were wrong,” her husband agreed. “They will pay the price for being wrong. But we have paid a great price because they were wrong, too. I hope that will never happen again.”
“Oh, I hope so, too,” Nellie said. “I hope so with all my heart. But when I said people wouldn’t come back to the White House and the Capitol on account of they’d get blown up in the next war, I didn’t hear you telling me I was wrong.”
“We have fought three wars against the Confederate States,” Hal said. “I hope we do not fight a fourth one. I pray we do not fight a fourth one. A man should plan by what he has seen, though, not by what he hopes and prays. The older I get, the more certain I am this is true.”
Nellie studied him. No, he wasn’t handsome. No, he didn’t make her heart flutter. And yet, as she had seen during the war and as she saw even more strongly now, he had a core of solid good sense that was altogether admirable. She did admire it, and him.
She hadn’t been looking for anyone to make her heart flutter. That was for people Edna’s age. Good sense, though—good sense lasted. The older Nellie got herself, the plainer that became.
She smiled at her new husband. It was the most wifely smile she’d ever given him. It was also the smile of someone beginning to realize she’d made a good bargain after all.
John Oglethorpe came up to Scipio as the Negro was clearing dishes off a table a customer had just left. The restaurant owner coughed. Scipio knew what that sort of cough meant: Oglethorpe was about to say something he only half wanted to say. Scipio could make a good guess about what it was, too.
His guess wasn’t just good. It turned out to be right. After clearing his throat a couple more times, Oglethorpe said, “You’ve done a right good job for me here, Xerxes. I want you to know I mean that.”
“I thanks you very much, suh,” Scipio answered. Xerxes was the name he’d used since escaping the collapsing Congaree Socialist Republic and making his way across South Carolina to Augusta, Georgia. In his proper persona, he had a hefty price on his head, though Georgia worried more about its own black Reds on the loose than about those from other states.
“You’ve been just about as good a waiter as Aurelius, matter of fact,” Oglethorpe went on. The other Negro had conveniently put himself out of sight and earshot. Oglethorpe coughed yet again. “But him and me, we go back years, and I ain’t got enough business to keep two waiters busy any more, not with so much of the war work closed down, I ain’t.”
“You’s lettin’ me go,” Scipio said. The dialect of the Congaree was slow and thick as molasses. Scipio could speak far better formal English than his boss—years of training to be the perfect butler at Marshlands had forced him to learn—but that wouldn’t help now. It was likely to make things worse, in fact.
Oglethorpe nodded. “Hate to do it, like I say, but I’ve got to keep my own head above water first. You on the trail of another job waitin’ tables, you tell whoever’s thinking about hiring you to talk to me. You’re a brick, and I’ll say so.”
“That right kind o’ you, Mistuh Oglethorpe,” Scipio said. “You been a good boss.” He was, on the whole, sincere. Oglethorpe expected his help to work like mules, but he worked like a mule himself. Scipio had no complaints about that. Fair was fair.
Digging in his wallet, Oglethorpe peeled off brown banknotes. “It’s Wednesday today, but I’m payin’ you till the end of the week. Couple extra days of money never did anybody any harm.”
That was more than fair. “Thank you kindly, suh,” Scipio said. He counted the money, frowned, and counted it again. He took out a banknote and thrust it at the man who ran the restaurant. “Even if you is payin’ till the end o’ the week, you done give me twenty dollars too much.”
“Keep it.” Oglethorpe looked annoyed that he’d noticed. “Ain’t like it was twenty dollars before the war. Money was worth somethin’ in those days. Now—hell, look at you. You got all that money in your hand there, and you ain’t rich. What kind of world is it when you can be standin’ there with all that cash, and you got to worry about—” He checked himself. “No, you don’t have to worry about where your next meal is comin’ from. You get on back here with me.”
Scipio got. His boss hacked off a couple of slices of egg bread, yellow as the sun, then put them around a slab of ham that would have choked a boa constrictor. He added pickles and mustard, gave Scipio the monster sandwich, and stood there with hands on hips till he’d eaten it.
“I gets me a new job, I comes back here to eat,” Scipio declared.
“Want another one?” Oglethorpe asked, reaching for the bread again. Scipio shook his head and, belly bulging, managed to make his escape. Only when he was out on the streets of Augusta did he wish he’d taken the restaurant owner up on his generosity. A sandwich like that kept a man’s belly from complaining for most of a day.
Augusta had a shabby, run-down look to it these days. From things he’d heard, Scipio suspected the whole Confederacy had a shabby, run-down look to it these days. A lot of men, white and black, were walking along not quite aimlessly, looking for anything that might be work. As Oglethorpe had said, the factories that had boomed during the war—cotton mills, brickworks, fertilizer plants, canneries—were booming no more.
More than a few men remained in their uniforms, though the war had been over since the summer before and spring wasn’t far away. Most of the whites who still wore draggled butternut looked to be wearing it because they had nothing better to put on. The Negroes in uniform, though, might have been in business suits. They were advertising that they had served their country, as plainly as if they carried sandwich boards, and were hoping that would help them land work. What sort of place the Confederate States were going to give their black veterans remained to be seen.
Scipio headed east along Telfair toward the Terry, the colored district in Augusta. Somebody was holding a rally in May Park, a couple of blocks south of Telfair; he saw waving flags from the corner of Telfair and Elbert. He didn’t really need to go back to his room: he was, at the moment, a gentleman of leisure. He wandered down toward the park to find out what was going on.
The flags were Confederate flags. They flew at the edge of the street to draw people toward the rally—as they’d succeeded in drawing Scipio—and fluttered in a mild breeze on and beside the platform on which the speaker stood. Behind the fellow was a sign that did not look to have been painted by a professional. It read, FREEDOM PARTY.
What was the Freedom Party? Whatever it was, Scipio had never heard of it before. No one at Anne Colleton’s elegant dinner parties had ever mentioned it, so far as he recalled. Of course, he hadn’t paid that much attention to politics, at least till he’d been dragooned into the leadership of the Congaree Socialist Republic. Why should he have? He couldn’t vote; the Confederate States didn’t recognize him as a citizen. Maybe this new outfit would help make things better.
And maybe it wouldn’t, too. The skinny fellow up there on the platform was long on complaints: “Aren’t our generals pretty in their fancy uniforms? Wouldn’t you have liked it better if they’d had any notion how to fight the goddamn war? Wouldn’t you have liked ’em better if they weren’t
in the damnyankees’ pockets?”
Scipio blinked at that. Generals had occasionally visited Marshlands. He knew good and well they’d done everything they knew how to do to beat the United States. They hadn’t known enough, but they’d tried.
Most of the men in the crowd looked to be either white veterans or men who’d had wartime factory jobs and had no jobs now. They’d never seen any generals, except perhaps whizzing by in fancy motorcars. When this loudmouthed madman ranted about traitors in high places in Richmond, they ate it up and shouted for more.
And he gave them more, saying, “And if the goddamn generals weren’t traitors and fools, how come they sat there with their thumbs up their asses while the niggers plotted up the biggest goddamn rebellion in the history of the world? Were they blind, or did they shut their eyes on purpose? Either which way, throw ’em on the rubbish heap, every stinking one of ’em.”
“That’s right!” voices in the crowd said. “Tell it!” As far as they were concerned, the speaker might have been one of the colored preachers who went around the plantations testifying to the power of the Lord. These battered white men responded the way colored fieldhands, as oppressed a group as was ever born, did when the preacher started going strong.
“And we’d have whipped the damnyankees—whipped ’em, I tell you—if the niggers hadn’t risen up,” the man from the Freedom Party shouted. He believed every word he was saying; Scipio could hear conviction jangling in his voice. “They stabbed us—they stabbed our country—in the back. Get rid of the traitor niggers and the traitor generals and I’ll tell you, we’d have been past Philadelphia and heading for New York City!” He pumped his fist in the air.
His audience pumped their fists in the air, too. Scipio stood only on the outermost fringes of the audience. By the glares coming his way, he suddenly realized even that was much too close to the platform. He made himself scarce before anybody decided pounding him into the ground would be a good way to settle lunch.
Blood and Iron Page 7
