Roosevelt did not seem to have expected such a tribute. He doffed his stovepipe hat several times. Once, he took off his spectacles for a moment and rubbed at his eyes. Had he got a cinder in them, or was he wiping away a tear? Flora had trouble believing that of an old Tartar like TR. Then, spotting her among the crowd of nearly identical-looking men, the outgoing president waved and blew her a kiss. He could hardly have astonished her more if he’d turned a cartwheel.
She stayed on her feet after he passed, as did all the other Socialists, most of the Midwestern corporal’s guard of Republicans, and the more courteous Democrats—about half. Here came Hosea Blackford, about to make the change from vice president–elect to vice president. He too wore formal attire. He didn’t look like a penguin, not to Flora. He looked splendid.
Flora called his name while she was applauding. He smiled at her, but he was smiling at everybody. He hurried after Roosevelt toward the platform.
And behind him—in front of another honor guard, this one of sailors and soldiers—walked the man of the hour, Upton Sinclair. Craning her neck to look back at him, Flora saw a sea of red flags waving in the crowd. Her heart slammed against her rib cage in excitement and delight. As the dialectic predicted, the people had at last turned to the party that stood for their class interests.
Up on the platform, Theodore Roosevelt shook Sinclair’s hand, a formal gesture, and then slapped him lightly on the back, one much less so. The president that was and the president that would be grinned at each other. Flora remembered how Senator Debs had stayed personally cordial toward TR even after losing two presidential elections to him.
Whatever Roosevelt and Sinclair said to each other, they were too far away from the microphone for it to pick up their words. Chief Justice Holmes stood by it, a Bible in his hand. He beckoned to Hosea Blackford. When Blackford took the vice-presidential oath, the electric marvel let the whole enormous crowd hear him do it.
Then Justice Holmes summoned the president-elect to the microphone. His amplified oath filled the vast, echoing silence in Franklin Square: “I, Upton Sinclair, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
“Congratulations, Mr. President,” Oliver Wendell Holmes said. As Roosevelt had done, he reached out to shake Sinclair’s hand. What had been quiet erupted into a vast roar of noise: the noise of almost forty years of Socialist struggle finally rewarded with victory.
Upton Sinclair lifted up his hands. As if he were a magician, silence returned. Into it, he said, “It’s time for a change!”—the same theme he’d used in Toledo, the theme the Socialists had used through the whole campaign. “We’ve been saying that for a long time, my friends, but now the change is here!”
More fervent applause followed, as did scattered shouts of, “Revolution!” Sinclair raised his hands again. This time, quiet was slower in coming.
At last, he got it. He said, “We are at peace, and I hope and expect we shall remain at peace throughout my term.” That drew more cheers, and a jaundiced look from Theodore Roosevelt. Sinclair went on, “And we shall have peace here at home as well, peace with honor, peace with justice, peace at last. We shall have not the peace of the exploiter who rules his laborers by force and fear, but the peace of the proletariat given its rightful place in the world.”
The crowd roared its approval. Theodore Roosevelt looked like a thunderstorm about to burst. But all he could do was frown impotently. Upton Sinclair had the microphone. Upton Sinclair had the country.
He said, “If the capitalists will not give the workers their due, this administration will see to it that the rights and aspirations of the laboring classes are respected. If the capitalists will not heed our warnings, this administration will see to it that they heed our new laws. If the capitalists go on thinking that the means of production are theirs and theirs alone, this administration will prove to them that those means of production belong in the hands of the people, which is to say, the hands of the government. For too long, the trusts have had friends in high places. Now the people have friends in high places.”
The red flags dipped and waved. The crowd in Franklin Square screeched itself hoarse. The Democratic minority in the House and Senate listened to President Sinclair in stony silence. So did Chief Justice Holmes. Flora noticed that, even if Sinclair did not. Sinclair might propose laws, Congress might pass them…and the Supreme Court might strike them down.
But that would be later. Now there was only the headiness of victory. Flora felt it, too, and applauded loudly when President Sinclair made an eloquent call for equity among nations. If we’d had equity among nations all along, she thought, my brother would walk on two legs.
But even pain and bitterness could not last, not today. After President Sinclair’s speech ended, the celebrating began. Every saloon in Philadelphia had to be packed. So did every ballroom. Not every Socialist had proletarian tastes in amusement—far from it.
Flora went to a reception at Powel House for the Socialist Congressional delegation. She met the president and his wife, a vivacious redhead named Enid who was wearing an off-the-shoulder green velvet gown that would have caused multiple heart attacks on the Lower East Side; Flora’s district was radical politically but not when it came to women’s clothes.
Sinclair was also dashing in the clawhammer coat he still wore. “I want you to go right on being the conscience of the House,” he told Flora.
“I’ll do my best, Mr. President,” she said.
Senator Debs came up then, and shook the president’s hand. “Congratulations, Upton,” he said graciously. “You’ve done what I couldn’t do. And now that you have done it, I’ve got a question for you.” He waited till Sinclair nodded, then asked, “What do you propose to do about the claims this Confederate submarine sank one of our ships after the war was over?”
“Examine them. Study them,” the new president answered. “Not go off half-cocked, the way TR would. The Confederates are having their own political upheavals. The claims may have more to do with those than with the truth. Once I know what’s what, I’ll decide what I need to do.”
Debs nodded, but said, “That Freedom Party down there could do with some slapping down. It’s reaction on the march”—a sentiment with which Flora agreed completely.
“Once I know what’s what, I’ll decide what I need to do,” President Sinclair repeated. Flora had hoped for more, but had to be content with that.
The reception went on for a very long time. Flora had grown more used to late hours in Philadelphia than she’d ever been in New York City, but she was yawning by the time it got to be half past one. Hosea Blackford—Vice President Hosea Blackford—said, “I’m heading home, Flora. Can I give you a ride?” He grinned. “I get a housing allowance, but no house—shows where the vice president fits into the scheme of things. So why should I move?”
“That would be very kind, your Excellency,” Flora said with a smile that made Blackford snort. The vice president’s nondescript Ford seemed out of place among the fancy motorcars around Powel House. In companionable silence, he drove Flora back to the apartment house where they both lived.
No matter how tired she was, she invited Blackford into her flat. He cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am.” Flora stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear: “I’ve never done this with a vice president before.”
He laughed out loud, and was still laughing when he stepped inside. After Flora closed the door behind him, he said, “I should hope not! Walter McKenna would have squashed you flat.” Flora squeaked in outrage. Then she started to laugh, too. He took her in his arms. She forgot she was tired. She knew she’d be reminded in the morning, but for now—she forgot.
Cincinnatus Driver and his family had never lived in an apartment house before moving to Iowa. One thing he hadn’t been able to investigate at the Covington, Kentu
cky, public library was how much houses cost in Des Moines. It was a lot more than it had been down in Covington, either to buy or to rent. The two-bedroom flat he’d found was much more in his price range, even if none of the rooms was big enough to swing a cat. But the flat had electricity, which went some way toward making up for that. He’d never lived in a place with electricity before. He liked it. Elizabeth liked it even better.
The apartment house was in the near northwestern part of town, west of the Des Moines River and north of the Raccoon. It was as close as Des Moines came to having a colored district, although only a little more than a thousand Negroes were hardly enough to constitute a real district in a city of over a hundred thousand. The Drivers shared their floor with two other black families and one white; the proprietor of a Chinese laundry lived upstairs. Nobody was rich, not in that neighborhood. People got by, though. As far as Cincinnatus could tell, they got by rather better than they had in Covington.
“I want to go to school, Pa,” Achilles yelled to Cincinnatus when he came home worn from a day’s hauling one evening. “Some of my friends go to school. I want to go to school, too.”
“You’ll go to school in the fall,” his father told him. “You turn six then. We’ll put you in this kindergarten they have here.”
In Covington, white children had kindergartens. Black children hadn’t had any formal schooling till the USA took Kentucky away from the CSA. Cincinnatus was unusual in his generation of Negroes in the Confederate States in being able to read and write; he’d always had a restless itch to know. Having that kind of itch was dangerous in a country where, up until not long before he was born, it had been not merely difficult but illegal for blacks to learn their letters.
“What can I get for you, dear?” Elizabeth asked, coming out of the kitchen. “How did it go today?”
“Got plenty of hauling business,” Cincinnatus answered. “Folks was right—the Des Moines runs high in the springtime, even more so than the Ohio does, and boats get up here that can’t any other time of year. Won’t have so much to do in the summertime. Last summer, when we got here, I wondered for a while if we was goin’ to starve.”
“We made it.” Elizabeth’s voice was warm with pride.
“Sure enough did,” Cincinnatus agreed. “I want to see if we can get ourselves a little bit ahead of things while the river’s high. Always good to have some money socked away you don’t have to spend right now.”
“Amen,” Elizabeth said, as if he’d been a preacher making a point in the pulpit.
“Amen,” Achilles echoed; he liked going to church of a Sunday morning.
Cincinnatus smiled at his son. Then he looked back to his wife. “What I’d like me right now is a bottle of beer. I knew Iowa was a dry state, but I didn’t reckon folks here’d take it so serious. Down in Kentucky, folks always preached against the demon rum, but that didn’t stop ’em from drinkin’ whiskey. Didn’t even hardly slow ’em down none. People round these parts mean it.”
“Most of ’em do, uh-huh.” Elizabeth nodded. Her eyes sparkled—or maybe it was a trick of the sun-bright electric bulb above her head. She turned and went back into the kitchen. Her skirt swirled around her, giving Cincinnatus a glimpse of her trim ankles. Some of the white women in Des Moines were wearing skirts well above the ankle—scandalously short, as far as he was concerned. He would have something to say if Elizabeth ever wanted to try that style.
She opened the icebox, then came back into the living room. In her hand was a tall glass of golden liquid with a creamy white head, on her face a look of triumph. Cincinnatus stared at the beer. “Where’d you get that?”
“Chinaman upstairs makes it,” Elizabeth answered.
“I’ll be.” He shook his head in wonder. “I didn’t even know Chinamen drank beer, let alone made it.” He took the glass from Elizabeth, raised it to his mouth, and cautiously sipped. He smacked his lips, pondering, then nodded. “It ain’t great beer, but it’s beer, sure enough.”
“I know.” Now Elizabeth’s eyes definitely twinkled. “Had me some before I’d pay the Chinaman for it. Don’t drink that all up now—why don’t you bring it to the table with you? Beef stew’s just about ready.”
Spit jumped into Cincinnatus’ mouth. “I’ll do that.” Beef was cheap here, and plentiful, too, compared to what things were like in Kentucky. He ate his fill without worrying about whether he’d go broke on account of such lavish meals. He still ate a lot of pork, but now more because he liked it than because he couldn’t afford anything better.
After supper, while Elizabeth washed dishes, Cincinnatus got out a reader and went to work with Achilles. The boy had known for some time the alphabet and the sounds the letters made; up till just a couple of weeks before, he’d had trouble—trouble often to the point of tears—combining the sounds of the letters into words. Cincinnatus, who had learned to read a good many years later in life, vividly remembered that himself.
Now, though, Achilles had the key. “Ban,” he read. “Can. Dan. Fan. Man. Pan. Ran. Tan. Bat. Cat. Fat. Hat. Mat. Pat. Rat. Sat. Den. Fen…What’s a fen, Pa?”
“Dunno. Let’s find out.” Cincinnatus had a dictionary. Because of the catch-as-catch-can way he’d become literate, his vocabulary had holes. He used the dictionary to fill them. Riffling through it now, he answered, “A fen is like a swamp. Go on, Achilles. You’re doin’ swell.”
“Hen. Men. Pen. Ten. Wen.” That one made the dictionary open again, as did yen. Achilles beamed. “I can read, Pa!”
“You’re gettin’ there,” Cincinnatus agreed. “We’ll keep at it.” He figured Achilles would have to work twice as hard at school to get half the respect he deserved. That was what life handed you along with a black skin. People would call Achilles a damn nigger, sure as the sun would come up tomorrow. But nobody would call Achilles a damn dumb nigger, not if Cincinnatus had anything to do with it.
“I want to read stories like the ones you read to me,” Achilles said.
“You’re gettin’ there,” Cincinnatus said again. “Now let’s work on this a little while longer, and then you’ll get to bed.” Achilles liked learning to read any time. Faced with the choice between trying to read some more and going to bed, he would have read till four in the morning had his father let him. Cincinnatus didn’t let him, because he wanted—and needed—to get some sleep himself. Achilles squawked, but was soon breathing heavily; when he did yield to sleep, he yielded deeply and completely.
So did Cincinnatus, because he was very tired. He slept through the alarm clock; Elizabeth had to shake him awake. A couple of cups of coffee and some scrambled eggs got him moving. He jammed a cloth cap onto his head, kissed Elizabeth, and went downstairs to fire up the Duryea.
He felt more affection for the truck than he ever had down in Covington. It had run very well since the overhaul he’d given it before moving to Iowa. He wished he’d overhauled it sooner; it would have served him better in Kentucky. He climbed in and drove to the wharves along the Des Moines.
At the high-water season, steamboats were tied up at almost all the piers. Some of the haulers who took their goods to merchants and warehouses were black like him; most were white. Despite his color, he had no trouble getting work. The sheer volume of unloading had something to do with that. But he’d also established a reputation for dependability. He hoped that would give him a boost when the river went down and jobs grew scarcer.
After hauling dry goods to several general stores, a cargo of plates and bowls to a china shop, and a truckful of reams of paper to the State Capitol over on the east side of the Des Moines, he came back to the wharves to eat his dinner. A couple of other colored drivers, Joe Sims and Pete Dunnett, pulled their trucks up alongside of his within five minutes of each other. They carried their dinner pails over to the bench where he was eating.
“Business is bully,” said Sims, a stocky, very black man in his mid-forties. “Here’s hoping it lasts.”
Dunnett was thinner, young, and paler; he mig
ht have had a quarter portion of white blood in his veins. “That’s right,” he said. He and Sims both spoke with an accent Cincinnatus found peculiar. It had some of the rhythms of the black speech with which he was familiar, but only some. It was also heavily tinted by the sharp, nasal, almost braying speech of white Iowans. Because the Negroes of Des Moines were such a small minority, the white sea around them diluted their dialect.
Cincinnatus said, “Sure enough would be good if it did. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with money, nothin’ a-tall.”
Dunnett and Joe Sims looked at each other. After a moment, Sims said, “First time we heard you talk, Cincinnatus, we thought you were a dumb nigger, you lay on that ain’t stuff so thick. We know better now, but you still talk the way my great-grandpa did.”
“I talk like I talk. Can’t hardly help it,” Cincinnatus said with a shrug. In Covington, his accent had passed for a mild one among Negroes.
Pete Dunnett added, “That fancy handle you’ve got didn’t help, either.”
“What’s wrong with my name?” Now Cincinnatus really was peeved. “When I came up here and found out all the U.S. niggers had names like white folks, I reckoned that was like oatmeal without sugar or salt or butter or milk or nothin’.”
“I’d rather have me a boring name than sound like I was named after a city,” Dunnett retorted.
“The city’s named after me, not the other way round,” Cincinnatus said. “I mean, the city and me both got named for the same fellow from back in ancient days.”
“Still sounds funny,” Joe Sims said. “And what’s your kid’s name?”
“Achilles,” Cincinnatus said. “He was a hero.” He paused a little while in thought, then went on, “You niggers up here in the USA, they let you-all have last names. They let you have plenty of stuff, too—down in Covington, you-all’d be a couple of really rich niggers. When it was the Confederate States down there, most of us hardly had nothin’ but our one name. We had to pack everything we could into it.”
Blood and Iron Page 47
