Sims took a big bite out of his sandwich. It wasn’t ham, but a pungent sausage Cincinnatus hadn’t seen much in Covington. Salami, people called it; it was pretty good. After chewing and swallowing, Sims said, “The stories you tell remind me of the ones I heard from my grandpa when I was growing up. I always thought he was making things out to be worse than they really were.”
“Only reason you reckoned that is on account of you was born here,” Cincinnatus said. “Nobody could make it out to be worse than it was—and it wasn’t even so bad in Covington, because we was right across the river from Ohio. But it was bad there, and it got worse the further south you went.”
“It ain’t so good here, either,” Sims said.
Negroes in Des Moines—Negroes in the USA generally—were fond of saying that. They weren’t even wrong; Cincinnatus had seen as much. Nevertheless…“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Cincinnatus said. “Get down on your knees and praise the Lord on account of you don’t, too. I seen both sides now. This here may not be heaven, but it ain’t hell, neither.”
“Yeah, you say that every chance you get.” Sims breathed pepper and garlic into Cincinnatus’ face. “I can’t argue with you. I never set foot inside the Confederate States. I do admit, I never heard of any colored fellow leaving the USA to go there.”
“It would happen,” Cincinnatus said. “About every other year, it would happen. The papers in the CSA would always bang the drum about it, too, to make the niggers there—and the white folks, heaven knows—happy about how things was.”
“Happy.” Joe Sims chewed on the word as he’d chewed on his salami. “How could you be happy, when you knew you were lying to each other down there?”
That was a better question than most of the ones about the Confederate States Cincinnatus heard up here. He had to think before he answered, “Well, the white folks were happy ’cause they were on top. And us niggers? We were happy some of the time. I don’t reckon you can get through life without bein’happy some of the time.” Cincinnatus crammed the rest of his own sandwich into his mouth. Indistinctly, he said, “Let’s see what they got for us to do. With a new young-un in the house any day now, I got to keep busy.”
“Got to stay out of there to get some rest once the baby comes,” Sims said with a reminiscent chuckle. “I know all about that, damned if I don’t. What are you and your missus going to call the kid?”
“Seneca if it’s a boy—that’s my pa’s name,” Cincinnatus said. “And Elizabeth’s ma was called Amanda, so we’ll name the baby that if it’s a girl.”
“Those are good names.” Sims shut his dinner pail and got to his feet. “Like you say, we have to keep busy. We don’t, everybody goes hungry.”
Cincinnatus found enough work to put money in his pocket all through the afternoon. He went back to his apartment well pleased with himself. Elizabeth greeted him at the door with a kiss. “Did you vote?” she demanded. “Did you really and truly vote?” She wouldn’t get her chance till the 1924 election, for Iowa women had only presidential suffrage.
“I really and truly voted,” Cincinnatus said, and his wife’s eyes shone. Joe Sims might not understand what the franchise meant to him, but Elizabeth did. She waddled back toward the kitchen, her legs so wide apart, the baby she carried might almost have fallen out between them.
Achilles was doing homework at the kitchen table. He had a sheet of paper turned upside down in front of him: his spelling words, which he was supposed to be committing to memory. “Orange,” he said. “O-R-A-N-G-E. Orange.”
“That’s good, son.” Cincinnatus made as if to clap his hands together. “The better you spell, the smarter folks’ll reckon you are. I don’t spell near as good as I wish I did, but I know you got that one right.”
“It ain’t…It’s not”—Achilles carefully corrected himself—“that hard once you get the hang of it.”
“You won’t get any wrong on your test, then, will you?” Cincinnatus said.
“Hardly ever do,” his son replied. Had that not been the truth, Cincinnatus would have clouted him for his uppity mouth. But Achilles was doing very well in school, which made Cincinnatus proud. The boy’s eyes went far away. “Month. M-O-N-T-H. Month.”
“Supper,” Elizabeth announced. “I ain’t gwine try an’ spell it, but I done cooked it an’ it’s ready.”
“Smells good,” Cincinnatus said. It tasted good, too: roast beef with buttery mashed potatoes and greens on the side. “Turnip greens, ain’t they?” Cincinnatus asked, lifting another forkful to his mouth.
“That’s right,” Elizabeth said. “Can’t hardly get no other kind round these parts. Even black folks don’t hardly seem to know about collard greens, an’ they’re better’n turnip greens any day of the week.” She paused, looked down at her swollen belly, and laughed. “Baby just kick me.”
“Pretty soon, the baby will be kicking Achilles,” Cincinnatus said. He and Elizabeth both laughed then, at their son’s expression. Having a new brother or sister still didn’t seem real to Achilles. It would before long.
Elizabeth returned to the earlier subject: “Wish I had me a mess o’ collard greens. You’d reckon everybody in the whole world’d know about collard greens, but it ain’t so.”
“Turnip greens are fine,” Cincinnatus said. Elizabeth shook her head, stubbornly unconvinced. He reached out and patted her hand. “Life ain’t perfect, sweetheart, but it’s pretty good right now.”
Where simple praise hadn’t, that reached her. Slowly, she nodded. The baby must have chosen that moment to kick again, because she smiled and put both hands on her belly. “Reckon you may be right.”
“Reckon I am,” Cincinnatus said. “Buy me a newspaper tomorrow, find out who won the elections. Anybody win by one vote or lose by one vote, I made the difference. Never would have gotten to vote down in Kentucky. Didn’t make no never mind whether the Stars and Bars or the Stars and Stripes was flyin’ over the Covington city hall, neither—white folks was on top, and aimin’ to stay there. Ain’t like that here. Ain’t quite like that here, anyway.”
“This here’s a better place,” Elizabeth said quietly. Cincinnatus nodded. It wasn’t a perfect place, but he didn’t imagine there was any such thing. And, since he’d come from a worse place, a better one would do just fine.
When Anne Colleton opened the door to her hotel room for him, Roger Kimball took her in his arms. She let him, but only for a moment, and then pushed him away. She was strong, and she’d caught him by surprise to boot. He had to take a quick step back, and knocked the door closed before catching himself. “What’s going on?” he asked in no small annoyance.
“I didn’t invite you up here for that,” Anne answered, her own voice sharp. He’d seen that grimly determined look in her eye before, but rarely with it aimed at him.
“Well, why did you ask me up, then?” he said: a serious question, seriously meant. Whatever else hadn’t always been smooth with them, their lovemaking was something special. It always had been, ever since he’d seduced her the first night they’d met, on a train rolling down to New Orleans when the war was young.
“Why?” she echoed. “To say good-bye, that’s why. I owe you that much, I think.”
“Good-bye?” He stared at her, hardly believing he’d heard the word. “Jesus! What did I do to deserve that?”
Now her eyes softened to sadness. “You still belong to the Freedom Party. You still believe in the Freedom Party,” she said, her voice sad, too, sad but firm, like that of a judge passing sentence on a likable rogue.
“Of course I do,” Kimball answered. “When I join something, I don’t quit when the going gets rough. The damnyankees found out about that.” He’d never thought he would be grateful to Tom Brearley for breaking the news of the Ericsson, but he was. Now he could talk about it. “And I still say Jake Featherston’s the only man who can get this country going again.”
“We are going again.” Anne walked over to the bed and picked up her handb
ag. Kimball was glad to watch her; her gray skirt, one of the new short ones, displayed most of the lower half of her calf—and her legs were worth displaying.
As she reached inside the handbag, he asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’ll show you.” She pulled out a banknote and held it up. “Do you see that?” After Kimball nodded, she drove the point home: “Take a good look at it. It’s a one-dollar banknote. You haven’t seen anything just like it since just after the war ended, not till this past fall you haven’t. And it’s still worth a real dollar, too.”
“That’s not all we need, dammit, not even close,” Kimball said furiously. “We’re naked to whatever the United States want to do to us.” He wished Anne were naked to whatever he wanted to do to her, but a different urgency filled him fuller. “We’ve got no submarines, we’ve got no battleships, we’ve got no barrels—Christ, they don’t even want us to have machine guns in case the niggers rise up again. You see the Whigs fixing any of that? I sure as hell don’t.”
Anne put the banknote back in her bag. “We will have all those things again,” she said. “It may take longer than I’d hoped, but we’ll have them. As long as the money stays good, we’ll have them. And”—she took a deep breath—“we’ll have them without murdering any more presidents to get them.”
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” Kimball said. “I’ve broken plenty of eggs myself—and you’ve set up plenty to be broken.” That got home. Anne bit her lip and looked down at the floor. Kimball laughed. “You know what you remind me of? Somebody who likes bacon but won’t butcher a hog.”
“You are a bastard,” Anne said. “I’ve known it for a long time, but—”
Roger Kimball loosed another loud, jeering laugh. “Takes one to know one, I reckon. That’s likely the only reason we’ve put up with each other as long as we have—well, that and the screwing, anyway.”
He’d hoped to anger her, but found he’d failed. She also laughed, and seemed to gain strength from it. “Yes, that and the screwing,” she said. “I’ll miss you. I’ll be damned if I won’t. But I won’t miss the Freedom Party. Since you’re staying in, I have to cut you loose. Grady Calkins showed me once and for all there’s no controlling those people.”
“I got into it thinking Jake Featherston needed controlling, too,” Kimball said. “He doesn’t. But the Yankees want to control him, and that’s a fact.”
“Featherston’s clever,” Anne admitted. “But he can’t do everything himself. And if he can’t control his people, he can’t do anything at all.” By the way she talked, controlling was the be-all and end-all.
Kimball supposed it was natural she thought that way. She’d spent her whole life till the Red uprising controlling a plantation, controlling money, controlling everyone around her. Her ancestors had done the same thing for a hundred years before her time. She was, in fact, one of the aristocrats against whom Jake Featherston had campaigned.
With a shrug, Kimball said, “Well, yeah, a bigger egg than Jake wanted got busted, but you can’t blame the whole Freedom Party for Calkins.”
“Why can’t I? Everyone else does,” Anne said. “And there’s a lot of truth in it. With all the brawling, with the stalwarts with the clubs, with the riots during the campaign in ’21, where else was the Freedom Party going but towards shooting a president?”
Uneasily, Kimball remembered keeping a stalwart in white and butternut from taking a shot at Ainsworth Layne when the Radical Liberal candidate spoke in Hampton Park. Even so, he said, “You’re making—the whole country’s making—it out to be bigger than it is. Sure, we’ve lost some folks for now on account of what happened down in Birmingham, but they’ll be back.”
Anne Colleton shook her head. “I don’t think so. And that’s the other reason I’ve gotten out of the Freedom Party—I never back a loser. Never. I think the Party’s name will stink all across the CSA for years to come, and I don’t want any of that stink sticking to me.”
“You’re wrong,” Kimball told her. “You’re dead wrong.”
Now she shrugged. “I’ll take the chance.”
“Nothing fazes you, does it?” he said, and she shook her head again. He stepped toward her. “Last kiss before I go?”
He watched her consider it. Mischief filled her eyes. “Why not?” she said, and held out her arms.
When their lips met, he wondered if she’d bite him instead of kissing. But her malice was subtler than that. She put everything she had into the kiss, reminding him of what he wouldn’t be getting any more. She held him tight as if no clothes separated them, grinding her crotch into his.
“Jesus!” he said, his voice hoarse, when he had to take his mouth away from Anne’s to breathe. She laughed, delighted with the effect she’d created. His hand cupped her breast. “Last lay before I go, too?”
“No,” Anne said deliberately, and knocked the hand away. “Good-bye, Roger.”
Rage ripped through him. “Why, you goddamn little tease,” he rasped, and shoved her against the bed. She let out a startled squeak as she landed on her back. “I’ll give you something to remember me by—see if I don’t.” He sprang on her.
Years before, he’d realized trying to take her by force wasn’t a good idea. Since then, he never had tried. He’d never needed or wanted to try. Now…If she thought he’d just walk away after that kiss, she could damn well think again. Whatever he’d realized years before was dead as the Ericsson, dead as Tom Brearley.
It shouldn’t have been, for his fury overpowered not only good sense but also caution. Anne might have been startled when he pushed her onto the bed, but she didn’t stay that way longer than a heartbeat. With exquisite timing, her knee came up between his legs and caught him exactly where it did her the most good.
He howled and doubled up and clutched at himself, as any wounded animal might have done. Anne twisted away from him. He couldn’t possibly have stopped her, not for the first few seconds there. “Now I think you’d better go,” she said coolly.
He didn’t want to take her any more. He wanted to kill her. But when he looked up, he discovered she’d had more in her handbag than a one-dollar banknote. She aimed a revolver straight at his head. He hadn’t the least doubt she would pull the trigger if he moved in any way that did not suit her.
“Get off the bed,” she said. He had to obey, though he still walked doubled over. The pistol tracked him. She’d killed before, helping to put down the Negro rebellion. No, she wouldn’t hesitate now. Iron in her voice, she went on, “Go to the door, get out, and never come back.”
At the door, he paused. “Can I wait till I can straighten up?” he asked, not wanting to publish his humiliation to the world.
He thought she’d send him out in anguish, but she nodded and let him have a couple of minutes. Then she gave a peremptory gesture with the pistol. Out he went. He still wasn’t moving well—he felt like bloody hell—but, if he walked like an old man, he didn’t walk like a wounded old man.
He made his slow, painful way back to his flat without meeting anyone he knew, for which he thanked God. “That would be just what I need,” he muttered as he walked spraddle-legged up the stairs, “to run into Potter and Delamotte again.” He grunted. Anne had hurt him worse than they had when he brawled with them—not in so many places, but worse.
He poured himself a tall whiskey, and then ran the bath half full of cold water. He shivered when he sat down in it, but the steam radiator made the apartment tolerably warm and the whiskey made him tolerably warm, so he didn’t think he’d come down with pneumonia or the Spanish influenza. And the cold water helped numb his poor, abused balls—or maybe that was the whiskey, too.
At last, he let the water run down the drain. After cautiously drying, he put on the loosest drawers and baggiest trousers he owned. Then he went back to the kitchen and poured out some more whiskey. He didn’t want food. The knee Anne had given him still left him faintly nauseated.
He drank from the second gla
ss of whiskey. “Stupid bitch,” he said, as if someone in the room might disagree. “Miserable stupid bitch.” He took another big sip from the glass. He wished he’d wrung her neck, back there at the hotel. But he hadn’t got the chance. Say what you would about her, Anne Colleton took a back seat to nobody when it came to nerve.
The glass was empty again. He refilled it. Might as well get drunk, he thought. What else have I got to do? Even if he never saw Anne again, he’d have no trouble getting laid. He knew that. He’d never had any trouble getting laid. Why, then, did he feel like a man whose tongue kept exploring the empty spot where a wisdom tooth had been before the dentist got his forceps on it?
“Dammit, we were two of a kind,” he muttered. “We are two of a kind. She’s just being stupid about the Party, that’s all. She’ll come around.” He nodded. “She gives me half a chance—hell, she gives me even a quarter of a chance—I’ll horn her into coming around.” With better than two glasses of whiskey in him, it not only sounded simple, it sounded inevitable.
Someone knocked on the door. Kimball hurried to open it. “There she is already, by God!” he said happily. Of course she wouldn’t stay away.
But the woman who stood in the hallway was darker and plainer and tireder than Anne Colleton. “You are Mr. Roger Kimball, the naval officer?” she asked.
“That’s right,” he answered. Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize she had a Yankee accent—she sounded a little like Clarence Potter.
“Oh, good,” she said. “I’m so glad I found you.” As Anne had before, she reached into her purse. And, as Anne had before, she pulled out a pistol. Two bullets had slammed into Roger Kimball’s chest before she said, “My husband was on the Ericsson.” She kept firing till the revolver was empty, but Kimball never heard the last few shots.
Blood and Iron Page 66
