President Semmes certainly received her with every sign of pleasure. “So very good of you to come up from South Carolina,” he said, and moved the chair across from his desk slightly to suggest that she sit in it. “Here, please—make yourself comfortable. Can I have the staff bring you anything?”
“No, thank you,” she answered. “Let’s get straight down to business, shall we?”
“However you like, of course,” he answered. He looked like a Confederate politician, or rather the apotheosis of a Confederate politician: in his early fifties, handsome, ruddy, a little beefy, with a mane of gray hair combed straight back from his forehead, a mustache, and a little chin beard that was almost pure white. The absence of tobacco stains from that beard was enough almost by itself to place him outside the common herd. He went on, “I won’t beat around the bush with you, Miss Colleton—I need your help on this bill to arm our Negroes and use them against the USA.”
Any time a politician said he wouldn’t beat around the bush, you were well advised to keep your hand on your wallet. “You’ll have to show me things are as bad as you said in your letter inviting me here,” she told him. “The press certainly does not make them out to be so desperate.”
“Have you ever heard of any war in the history of the world where the press did not make things out to be better than they were?” Gabriel Semmes returned. “If you look at papers in the USA during the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War, you will see they thought they were winning each time until almost the moment of their overthrow.”
“As may be,” she said. “I am not yet convinced.” She did not tell him what her brother Tom kept saying in his letters. Politicians were not the only ones who learned to hold their cards close—business taught the same lesson.
President Semmes said, “A glance at the map will show you much of the trouble. We have lost ground against the USA almost everywhere, and our remaining gains in Maryland are threatened. Our latest effort to reclaim western Texas failed—there is no other word. They hammer us on every front. We do have some counterstrokes in the offing, and we have thus far managed to avoid losing anything vital, but that cannot continue forever. We are under more pressure than our allies in Europe, and have little prospect of aid from them.”
“We hurt the Yankees worse than they hurt us in every fight, is that not so?” Anne said. “That’s one reason why we stand on the defensive so much.”
“Yes, we do, by a ratio of close to three to two,” Semmes answered. “Each U.S. conscription class, though, outnumbers our corresponding class of whites by about three to one. Add in the Negroes and the deficit shrinks to about two to one. Better, actually, for we would be calling up several conscription classes of blacks at once.”
Anne pursed her lips thoughtfully. “But not all the U.S. soldiers are used against us,” she pointed out. “Many of them go into the fight against Canada. That helps even the numbers somewhat.”
“Somewhat, yes, for now,” President Semmes agreed. “But, even with troops from Britain aiding them—they have the advantage of the northern route—the Canadians, I tell you in confidence, are in a bad way. How long we can rely on them to continue siphoning off Yankee resources, I cannot say.”
Beyond what he asserted, beyond what the papers asserted (which, thanks to censorship, was liable to be the same thing), she didn’t know how things stood with Canada. Would he lie for political advantage alone? Probably. But she could check what he said with her senators and the congressman from her district, the men he wanted her to influence. He would know that. Therefore, he was likely to be telling the truth, or most of it.
“The other question is,” she said, as much to herself as to him, “what will the Confederate States be like with Negroes as citi-zens? Is that better, or is losing as we are?”
“Miss Colleton, I always thought you were on the side of modernity, of progress, of change,” President Semmes said, a shrewd shot that proved he—or his advisors—knew her views well. “And if we lose, can we stay as we are? Or would we face another round of Red upheaval?”
That was another good question. The answer seemed only too obvious, too. Try to freeze in the mold of the past, or take a chance on the future? If you didn’t gamble, how were you going to win? But when she thought about what blacks had done to Marshlands and to her brother—“I hate this,” she said quietly.
“So do I,” the president of the Confederate States replied.
“I’ll do what I can,” Anne said, trying not to see the disapproving look on dead Jacob’s face. Well, better the damnyankees should have gassed a Negro than poor Jacob. If you looked at it the right way, they’d killed him before the Negro uprising could finish the job.
“From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, and your country thanks you as well,” President Semmes said. He rose and bowed to her, then went on, “Now that we know ourselves to be in agreement, perhaps you will accompany me to a ceremony where your presence will surely serve as an inspiration to the brave men we honor.”
Roger Kimball was bored. The ceremony should have started at half past ten. He drew out his pocket watch. It was closer to eleven. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. Civilians could get away with nonsense like that. For a naval officer, it would have meant trouble at least, maybe a court-martial.
Not only was he bored, he was hot, too. They’d run up an awning so he didn’t have to stand in direct sunshine, but it didn’t cut the heat much or the humidity at all. He felt as if he were melting down into his socks. The only advantage he found to sweating so much was that he wouldn’t have enough water left in him to need to take a leak—probably for the next three days.
Out on the lawn, old people sat in folding chairs and looked at him and the other hunks of uniformed beef on display under the awning. Ladies fanned themselves. Some of their male companions used straw hats to make the air move. By the way the old folks were turning red in the vicious sunshine, they needed the awning worse than he and his companions did.
Off to one side of the awning, a band struck up “Dixie.” Kim-ball came to attention; maybe that meant things really would get rolling now. The Negro musicians were in black cutaway coats and black trousers. They didn’t have an awning, either. He wondered how they could play without keeling over. He shrugged. They were just niggers, after all.
A woman walked quickly forward to take a seat near the front. Roger’s eyebrows came to attention, as the rest of him had at the national anthem. Unlike most of the audience, she was anything but superannuated. Her maroon silk dress clung tightly to her rounded hips and, daringly short, revealed trim ankles. Under her hat, her hair shone in the sun, but it shone gold, not silver.
Next to Kimball, an Army sergeant murmured through unmoving lips, “The president ought to pin her on my chest instead of a medal.”
“Yeah,” he whispered back. Then he stiffened far beyond the requirements of attention. “Christ on a crutch, that’s Anne Colleton!”
“You know her?” the sergeant said. Microscopically, Roger nodded. The Army man sighed. “Either you’re a liar, Navy, or you’re one lucky bastard, I’ll tell you that.” And then, recognizing him, too, Anne waved, not too obviously but unmistakably. The sergeant sighed again. “You are a lucky bastard.”
Here came President Gabriel Semmes, all sleek and clever, to present their decorations. Kimball noticed him only peripherally. He’d had a note from Anne when she was stuck in that refugee camp, but nothing since. He hadn’t been a hundred percent sure she was still alive, and found himself damn glad to discover she was.
President Semmes made a speech, of which he heard perhaps one word in three. The gist of it was, with bravery like that which these heroes had displayed, the Confederate States were surely invincible. Roger Kimball didn’t believe that for a minute. Semmes didn’t believe it, either, or why was he pushing that bill to put guns in the hands of black men?
A flunky brought the president a silver tray with dark blue velvet boxes stacked on it. Report
ers scribbled as Semmes read out the deeds of the heroes he was honoring. One of the awards was posthumous: a Confederate Cross for a private who’d leaped on a grenade to save his pals.
Kimball wasn’t up for a C.C. himself; Semmes would pin an Order of the Virginia on him, the next highest award a Navy man could get. To earn the Confederate Cross and live through it, you had to be brave, lucky, and crazy, all at the same time. Without false modesty, he knew he was brave and he’d been lucky, but he hadn’t—quite—been crazy up there in Chesapeake Bay.
The sergeant standing there next to him had won a Confederate Cross. “P.G.T.B. Austin, without concern for his own safety, climbed onto the top of a U.S. traveling fort,” President Semmes said, not calling it a barrel, “and threw grenades into the machine through its hatches until fire forced the crew to flee, whereupon he killed three with his rifle, wounded two more, and accepted the surrender of the rest. Sergeant Austin!” The audience applauded. Photographers snapped away as Austin went up to get his medal. Kimball nodded to himself. Brave, lucky, and crazy, sure enough.
His own turn came a moment later. After hearing what the Army man had done, he felt embarrassed to accept even a lesser decoration. The president shook his hand and told him what a splendid fellow he was. He already knew what a splendid fellow he was, so he didn’t argue. The medal, a tiny gold replica of the Confederacy’s first ironclad hanging from a red, white, and blue ribbon, did look impressive on his chest.
He went back to his place under the awning and waited for the rest of the medals to be awarded. Then, as he’d expected, the men who’d won them got the chance to mingle with guests and reporters.
He wondered if Anne Colleton would still give him the time of day. He wasn’t a big fish, not in this pond. If she wanted heroes, she had her pick here. But she came straight up to him. Maybe she wants an ornery so-and-so, he thought. Takes one to know one.
“Congratulations,” she said, and shook his hand man-fashion. “I’m glad to see you here and well.”
“Same to you,” he answered. The feel of her flesh against his sent a charge through him, as if he’d touched a bare wire. He watched her face. Her pupils got bigger; her nostrils flared, ever so slightly. She wanted to be alone with him, too. Heat different from that of Richmond August filled him. “Last I got a look at you, you were seeing how fast you could get away from the Charleston docks.”
“I did fine, halfway to Marshlands.” Her voice turned bitter. “Then my car got stolen.”
“Rebels? Reds?” Kimball said. “You’re lucky they didn’t kill—”
“Not Reds,” Anne broke in. “Soldiers. Our soldiers. Oh, I suppose they needed it against the uprising, but—” She didn’t go on.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw men gathering around them, drawn to Anne Colleton like moths to a flame. He knew how good a comparison that was, too. But he was no moth; he had fire of his own. So he told himself, anyhow. Quickly, while he still had the chance, he asked, “Where are you staying?”
“Ford’s,” she answered. “Would you like to celebrate your medal by having supper with me there tonight?”
“Can’t think of anything I’d like better,” he said. He could, in fact, think of several things, but those were things you did, not things you talked about. “Half past six?” he asked, and, when she nodded, he drifted away as if she were just someone in the crowd he happened to know.
He showed up at the hotel a couple of minutes early. She was waiting in the lobby and, again, had drawn a crowd. Some of the officers were of considerably higher rank than lieutenant commander; all the civilians looked more than prosperous. Everyone stared after Kimball and Anne when they went off to the dining room, her hand on his arm.
He grinned over at her. “I could get used to this,” he said.
A tiny vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows. “Don’t,” she said, more seriously than he’d expected. “If people think of you because of whoever’s with you—so what? Make them remember you for yourself.”
He thought about that, then nodded. “I started on a little farm. I’ve come this far on my own. I’ll go farther, if I can.”
“That’s the way to look at it,” she agreed. “Any one of those fat lawyers back there would love to take care of my affairs—and you can take that any way you like. I won’t let them. I run my life, no one else.” That had the sound of hard experience behind it, and also, perhaps, a note of warning.
Ford’s Hotel did right by its dinner spread. “Wouldn’t hardly know there’s a war on,” Kimball said happily, digging into almost fork-tender leg of lamb.
Anne Colleton stayed serious. “What do you think of President Semmes’bill?” she asked. She didn’t need to say which bill. Only one mattered now.
“I’m against it,” he answered firmly. “As long as we’re holding our own, or even anything close, we should go on doing what we’ve been doing. Far as I can see, we’re giving the darkies a kiss on the cheek, right after they tried to up and knock our heads off.”
She nodded, slowly. “Is that how most Navy men feel?”
Kimball knocked back the whiskey in his glass. “It’s not even the way my exec feels. All you hear these days is arguments.”
“What if we can’t win the war, can’t hope to win the war, if things keep on going as they have been?” Anne said. “Would you want to arm Negroes then?”
“Hung for a sheep or hung for a lamb, you mean?” He shrugged, unable to come up with a better answer. “If we’re that bad off, putting rifles in niggers’ hands won’t help us, far as I can see. And if we do that, and we lose anyhow, what will the country look like afterwards? Be a hell of a mess, begging your pardon—not that it isn’t already.”
“A point,” she said. “It may be the most serious point in opposition I’ve heard yet.” A colored waiter came up and cleared away plates. After a tutti-frutti ice, brandy, a cigar for Kimball and a couple of cigarettes for Anne, the waiter came back. “Charge this to my room,” she told him, and he dipped his head with practiced obsequiousness.
Roger Kimball’s hand had been going to his wallet. He scowled, angry that she’d accepted the bill before he had the chance. “I’m not broke—” he began.
“I know,” she answered, “but, for one thing, I invited you to supper, not the other way round, and, for another, I promise I have more money than you do; I know what naval officers make. It’s my pleasure, believe me.”
“Weren’t you the one talking about making your own way when we came in here?” he asked, unhappy still.
“I didn’t suggest annoying your friends by being stubborn when that’s plainly foolish,” she said, a touch of sharpness in her voice.
He subsided, looking for a word he’d heard a few times but had had little occasion to use. Gigolo, he thought. She’s made me her gigolo tonight. He seemed to have no choice but to accept that. Well, all right. Gigolos had privileges of their own. He remembered how she looked under that maroon silk, and how she felt, and how she tasted, too.
If the Ford Hotel boasted a house detective, he was good at making himself invisible. Kimball and Anne went up to her floor and walked down the richly carpeted hallway to her room without interference. She opened the door with her key, leaned forward to brush his lips with hers…and then said, “Good night, Roger. I hope you sleep well.”
It was not an invitation to come in. “What the devil—?” he said roughly. “We’ve been—”
“I know what we’ve been,” she answered. “We won’t be, not tonight. The very first time we met, you did a splendid job of seducing me.” Her eyes glinted, half amusement, half remembered anger of her own. “And so, tonight, no. Call it a lesson: never, ever take me for granted. Maybe another time, probably another time—but not tonight.”
He wasn’t that much bigger than she, but he knew he was stronger. With a lot of other women, he would have picked them up, thrown them on the bed, and taken what he wanted. If he tried that with her—even if he succeeded, because h
e knew she’d fight like a wildcat—he figured she was liable to stab him or shoot him as he left.
“You are a bitch,” he said, reluctantly admiring.
“I know.” She knew, all right, and she was proud of it.
He seized her, jerked her chin up, and kissed her, hard. He figured she’d fight that, too, but she didn’t. Her body molded itself against him. When the kiss broke, though, she pushed him away. She was laughing—and panting a little. So was he. “Thanks for supper,” he said, and tipped his hat. He strode down the hall toward the elevator without a backward glance.
Out on the sidewalk, a drunken artillery sergeant walked right into him. “Watch where you’re going, you goddamn medal-wearing son of a bitch,” the fellow snarled. By the way his mouth twisted, he was looking for a fight wherever he could find one.
Kimball didn’t feel like fighting, which, since he hadn’t got laid, surprised him. “I’m an officer,” he warned, meaning the sergeant would catch special hell if he fought with him.
“Watch where you’re going, you goddamn medal-wearing son of a bitch, sir,” the sergeant said.
Laughing, Kimball peeled off a five-dollar note he hadn’t spent at supper and pressed it into the noncom’s hand before that hand could close into a fist. The sergeant stared. “Go on, get drunker on me,” Kimball said. He slapped him on the back, then headed off to his barracks close by the James.
Jake Featherston gaped in owlish disbelief at the banknote that had magically appeared in his hand. Even if the fellow who’d given it to him was a Navy man, he had, until the grayback pressed it on him, wanted to smash his face: not only was he an officer, he was a decorated officer. Jake knew damn well he deserved to be an officer. He also knew he deserved several medals, not just one.
“And am I gonna get ’em?” he asked the empty air around him. “Sure I am—same time as I get promoted.” He laughed a loud, raucous, bitter laugh. He wasn’t holding his breath.
Walk in Hell Page 49
