Sims and Dunnett glanced at each other again. “We’ve had hard times, too,” Dunnett said. He sounded a little defensive. Cincinnatus didn’t answer. Dunnett had reason to sound defensive. White men had patrolled the Ohio to keep blacks from the Confederate States out of the USA. Nobody had ever needed to patrol the Ohio to keep blacks from the United States out of the CSA. Blacks in the USA knew perfectly well the distance between the frying pan and the fire.
Sam Carsten would sooner not have had the new stripe on his sleeve that showed he was a petty officer second class. He hadn’t lost his ambition—far from it. But he’d earned that stripe by doing a good job as head of his gun crew after Willie Moore got killed. It had blood on it, as far as he was concerned.
The USS Remembrance steamed west across the Atlantic toward Boston harbor. Sam didn’t have to worry about taking shellfire here. He didn’t have to worry about renegade Confederate submersibles, either. What he’d learned about the C.S. boat that had sunk the U.S. destroyer after the war was over filled him with rage. Under that rage lay terror. A Rebel boat could have stalked his old battleship, the USS Dakota, just as readily.
A deck hand jerked the prop on a Wright fighting scout. The two-decker’s engine thundered to life. The prop blurred into invisibility. The Remembrance’s steam catapult hurled the fighting scout into the sky.
“Bully,” Sam said softly. Launching aeroplanes had fascinated him even aboard the Dakota. The fascination had changed to urgency when land-based aeroplanes bombed his battleship off the Argentine coast. He’d imagined air power on the sea then. He lived it now, and still found it awe-inspiring.
Behind him, a dry voice spoke: “I wonder how long we’ll be able to keep them in the air.”
Sam turned. If Commander Grady had wanted to stick a KICK ME sign on him, he stood close enough to do it. “What do you mean, sir?” Sam asked, thinking he knew and hoping he was wrong.
“How much longer will we be able to keep them in the air?” the gunnery officer repeated. “You’re not stupid, Carsten. You understand what I mean. Will the Socialists put enough money into the Navy to keep this ship operating? Right now, your guess is as good as mine.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said dully. His guess was that the Socialists would shut down as much as they could. Except when the war dragged some into the Navy, Socialists were thinly scattered aboard warships: almost as thinly scattered as colored people in the USA. He didn’t know a great deal about what Socialist politicians thought, except that they didn’t think much of the Navy or the Army.
He looked at Commander Grady. Grady had always been as proud of the Remembrance as if he’d designed her himself. Now, looking from the flight deck to the conning tower, his eyes were dull, all but hopeless: the eyes of a man who expected a loved one to die. Sighing, he said, “It was a good idea, anyhow. It still is a good idea.”
“It sure as hell is, sir,” Carsten said hotly. “It’s a swell idea, and anybody who can’t see that is a damn fool.”
“Lot of damn fools running around loose in the world,” Grady said. “Some of them wear fancy uniforms. Some of them wear expensive suits and get elected to Congress or elected president. Those fools get to tell the ones in the fancy uniforms what to do.”
“And the ones in the fancy uniforms get to tell us what to do.” Sam’s laugh was harsh as salt spray. “It’s the Navy way.” He couldn’t think of another officer to whom he would have said such a thing. Grady and he had been through a lot together.
“Damn it,” Grady said in a low, furious voice, “we proved what this ship can do. We proved it, but will we get any credit for it?”
“No way to tell about that, sir,” Carsten answered, “but I wouldn’t bet anything I cared to lose on it.”
“Neither would I,” Grady said. “But I tell you this: we did show what the Remembrance can do. Congress may not be watching. President Upton goddamn Sinclair may not be watching. You can bet, though, the German High Seas Fleet was watching. The Royal Navy was watching. And if the Japs weren’t watching, too, I’d be amazed. Plenty of countries are going to have squadrons of aeroplane carriers ten years from now. I hope to God we’re one of them.” Before Sam could say anything to that, Grady wheeled and rapidly strode away.
Carsten tried to figure out where he’d be ten years down the line. Likeliest, he supposed, was chief petty officer in charge of a gun crew. He could easily see himself turning into Hiram Kidde or Willie Moore. He’d just have to follow the path of least resistance.
If he wanted anything more, he’d have to work harder for it. Mustangs didn’t grow on trees. And, if he aimed at becoming an officer, he’d have to get lucky, too. He wondered how much he really wanted that kind of luck. What was good for him might turn out to be anything but good for other people. He thought of Moore again, Moore writhing on the floor with his belly torn open.
The steam catapult hissed like a million snakes, hurling another fighting scout into the air. The crew of the Remembrance kept honing their skills. They were, at the moment, the best in the world at what they did, whether Congress appreciated it or not. They were also, at the moment, the only ones in the world who did what they did. Sam wondered how long that would last. He remembered the German sailors in Dublin harbor staring and staring at the aeroplane carrier. Kaiser Bill’s boys built better aeroplanes than the USA did; the Wright two-deckers were Albatros copies. Could the Germans build better aeroplane carriers, too?
One of the Wright machines roared low over the flight deck. Had it shot up the deck, Sam would not have cared to be standing there. On the other hand, the flight deck bristled with machine guns and one-pounders. Had that fighting scout been painted with the Stars and Bars instead of the U.S. eagle in front of crossed swords, it would have got a warm welcome.
It zoomed above the Remembrance again, this time even lower and upside down. A couple of the sailors on deck saluted the pilot with upraised middle fingers. Sam didn’t, but he felt like it. He hadn’t had a whole lot to do with the pilots aboard the aeroplane carrier: they were officers, and pretty much kept to themselves. But what he had seen made him wonder if their marbles had spilled out of their ears as they flew, because they didn’t seem to give two whoops in hell whether they lived or died.
Staring after the fighting scout after it finally rolled back to right side up, Sam decided that made a certain amount of sense. The rickety contraptions the pilots flew had a habit of falling out of the sky by themselves. The pilots had to take them into harm’s way, and had to land them on the rolling, pitching deck of a warship. You probably needed to be crazy to want to do any of that. And, if you weren’t crazy when you started doing it, you’d get that way after a while.
As if to prove the point, the pilot of the other fighting scout dove out of the sky on the Remembrance like a sparrowhawk swooping on a field mouse. In an impossibly short time, the aeroplane swelled from buzzing speck to roaring monster. It seemed to be heading straight for Sam. He wanted to dig a hole in the deck, dive in, and then pull the planking and steel over himself: an armored blanket to keep him safe and warm. A couple of sailors started to run. Their comrades screamed curses at them. He understood why, but had to work to hold his own feet still.
At the last possible instant, the Wright two-decker pulled out of the dive. Sam couldn’t help ducking; he thought one wheel of the landing gear would clip him. It wasn’t quite so close as that, but he did have to snatch at his cap to keep it from blowing off his head and perhaps into the sea. Had it gone into the drink, the price of a new one would have come out of his pay.
The two-decker almost went into the drink, too, off to port of the Remembrance. Carsten would have sworn its lowest point was lower than the aeroplane carrier’s deck. The landing gear didn’t quite touch the wavetops, but a flying fish might have leaped into the cockpit. Then the Wright started to gain altitude again, much more slowly than it had shed it.
“That bastard’s nuts,” somebody said, shaken respect in his voice.
&nb
sp; “That bastard’s nuts almost got cut off him,” somebody else said, which was also true, and made everybody who heard it laugh to boot.
A fellow with bright-colored semaphore paddles strode out near the edge of the deck to guide the aeroplanes in to the controlled crash that constituted a landing aboard ship. His wigwagged signals urged the pilot of the first fighting scout up a little, to starboard, up a little more…Sam had learned to read the wigwags, just as he’d picked up Morse as a kid.
Smoke spurted from the solid rubber tires as they slammed against the deck. The hook under the fuselage caught a cable. The aeroplane jerked to a halt. Watching it, Carsten understood why the fighting scouts had needed strengthening before they came aboard the Remembrance.
As the pilot took off his goggles and climbed out of the aeroplane, his face bore an enormous grin. What was he thinking? Lived through it again, probably. Sailors hauled the two-decker out of the way so the other fighting scout could land.
Here he came, chasing the aeroplane carrier from astern. As before, the semaphore man stepped out and signaled to the approaching flying machine. Sam wondered why he bothered. That fellow had pulled out of his dive without help. If he couldn’t land the same way…
Up, the man with the paddles signaled, and then Up again, more emphatically. The bow of the Remembrance slid down into a trough; the stern rose. Sam kept his balance as automatically as he breathed. So did the signalman. He had the paddle raised, urging more altitude, when the aeroplane slammed into the carrier.
The pilot almost got it onto the ship. That made things worse, not better. He still killed himself, and debris from the aeroplane scythed along the deck, cutting down the fellow with the semaphore paddles and half the crew waiting to take the aeroplane to the hydraulic lift and stow it belowdecks.
Sam sprinted forward, dodging blazing fuel and oil like a halfback dodging tacklers in the open field. He skidded to a stop beside a sailor who was down and moaning and clutching his thigh. Blood was soaking his trouser leg and puddling on the deck under him. He couldn’t keep losing it that fast for long. Sam unhooked his belt, yanked it off, and doubled it around the man’s leg above the wound for a tourniquet.
“It hurts!” the sailor moaned. “Christ, it hurts!”
“Hang on, pal,” Sam said. More sailors came running across the deck, some with stretchers. Sam waved to draw their eyes. The sailor might live. As for the pilot…His head lay about ten feet away, still wearing goggles. Carsten looked down at the planking. Yeah, flyboys earned the right to be crazy.
Jake Featherston liked riding the train. When he rode the train, he was getting somewhere. He associated travel on foot with the long, grinding retreat through Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia. Then he’d been going where the damnyankees made him go. Now he was—mostly—on his own.
The train rattled through the Mississippi cotton country, bound for New Orleans. Featherston smiled to see Negroes working in the fields. Their hoes rose and fell as they weeded. The red and blue bandannas the women wore added splashes of color to the green, green fields. Jake nodded to himself in his Pullman car. That was where Negroes belonged.
The splendid car was where he belonged. He hadn’t known luxury till lately. He figured he was entitled to a little, after so long without. He did wish he weren’t going to New Orleans. He brought a fist down on his knee. Even the leader of the Freedom Party couldn’t get everything he wanted, not yet.
Amos Mizell of the Tin Hats had strongly urged him to hold the Party’s national convention on the banks of the Mississippi, to show it was a party for all the Confederate States. Willy Knight, who headed the Redemption League, said the same thing. Their arguments made sense, especially since Jake wanted to draw the League all the way into the Freedom Party.
He hadn’t particularly wanted to hold a convention at all; he knew, and everybody else knew, who the Party’s candidate would be. But the notion of having him simply declare his candidacy and point a finger at a running mate had horrified everyone around him. So here he was, on his way to a convention, on his way to New Orleans. He slammed his fist down again, this time hard enough to make himself jump and curse.
“Well, where the hell else could I go?” he demanded of the empty air around him. If he brought the convention to the Mississippi, New Orleans was the only logical choice. Little Rock was the middle of nowhere. Going to Dallas would have been asking for trouble from Willy Knight, who wanted to run for vice president; the Redemption League was stronger than the Party in Texas. Chihuahua? Featherston laughed without humor. “The greasers down there would love me, wouldn’t they?”
And so, to prove the Freedom Party’s national appeal, he’d had to bring the convention to the one Confederate city least friendly to him and his message. New Orleans not only had rich niggers with their own high society, it had a whole great raft of white men who didn’t care. The latter offended Jake even more than the former.
He felt better when the train pulled into the station. A company of men in white shirts and butternut trousers stood waiting for him on the platform. Some carried Freedom Party flags, others the Confederate battle flag with reversed colors that the Party also used. “Sarge!” they shouted when he left his car. “Sarge! Sarge! Sarge!”
“Good to be here,” Jake lied. “Now, on to victory!” The Freedom Party stalwarts cheered lustily. Some of the other people on the platform, New Orleans natives by the look of them, raised eyebrows and curled lips in Gallic disdain at the raucous display. Featherston hardly noticed. He was among his own again—the dispossessed, the rootless, the angry—and so back where he belonged.
When he got to the hotel, he felt as if part of Richmond had been transplanted to this alien soil. He might have been back at Party headquarters, to judge by the deference he got. That from Party members was genuine, that from the hotel staff—both white and black—professionally perfect. Whores, he thought. Nothing but whores. But, like whores, they made him feel good.
He spotted Roger Kimball across the gorgeously rococo lobby. Kimball spotted him, too, and hurried over. He could have done without that. “Good to see you, Sarge,” Kimball said, shaking his hand. “Say, are they going to try those fellows they arrested for burning down Tom Brearley’s house?”
Brearley and his wife had burned, too; Jake was wryly amused Kimball hadn’t mentioned that. He answered, “Reckon they are, yeah.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Don’t reckon any jury’s gonna convict ’em, though. That’s how it looks from here, anyway.”
“Bully,” Kimball said, and then, “I won’t keep you. You’ve got to get settled in, I reckon.” He drifted away. That was a smoother performance than Featherston had looked for from him. Thoughtfully, Jake rubbed his chin. If Kimball could be smooth as well as ferocious, he might end up making himself very valuable indeed.
After unpacking, Jake walked the couple of blocks to the convention hall, a huge marble wedding cake of a building that had gone up on Esplanade, just outside the French Quarter, a few years before the Great War. He was standing on the rostrum, looking out over the great hall, when Amos Mizell walked down the center aisle toward him. Willy Knight came in a couple of minutes later, before Jake and Mizell could do much more than say hello. Featherston was irked, but only a little; both men would have had spies in the hotel, and maybe back at the train station, too.
All the greetings were warier than they would have sounded to anyone who didn’t know the men involved. At last, Mizell said, “The Tin Hats will throw their weight behind you, Jake. You’re what this country needs this year, no two ways about it.”
Suddenly, Featherston was awfully damn glad he’d come to New Orleans. He’d met Mizell halfway, and now the head of the veterans’ organization was coming through for him in a big way. Willy Knight looked as if he’d just bitten down hard on the sourest lemon ever picked. He’d been threatening that if Jake didn’t tap him for vice president, he’d run for the top spot himself on an independent Redemption League ticket. That would
have hurt, and hurt bad, especially in the West. He could still do it. But if the Tin Hats were loudly backing the Freedom Party, his bid would look like nothing but an exercise in spite.
Now, still sour, he asked, “You think you have any real chance of winning, Featherston?”
“Don’t know for certain,” Jake said easily. “The Party would have a better shot if TR had won up in the USA. Everybody down here hates him just as much as he hates us. Those Red bastards they’ve got up there now are bending over backwards so far, it’s hard to get people riled up at ’em the way they ought to be.”
“You ought to count your blessings, Jake,” Mizell said. “If Roosevelt had been president of the United States for longer than a couple of days after the news about your fellow down there in South Carolina broke, he’d have had his head on a plate—either that or he’d have blown Richmond to hell and gone.”
“Yeah, I was lucky there,” Featherston admitted. Knight sent him another hooded glance, as if to say, If I were a little luckier, I’d be wearing your shoes now. He was probably right. It did him no good.
“Picked a running mate yet?” Mizell asked, casual as if wondering about what Jake intended to have for supper. Maybe he was just idly curious, the way he sounded. And maybe Jake would flap his arms and fly to the moon, too.
“Yeah,” he answered, and let it go at that.
“It isn’t me.” Knight’s voice was flat, uninflected.
“No, Willy, it isn’t you.” Jake looked him over. “And if you want to raise a stink, go right ahead. You can run your own little outfit, do whatever you want. Would you sooner be a general in a little tinpot army or a colonel in a real one?”
Blood and Iron Page 48
