"I don't know," Chester said dazedly. "So help me God, I don't know." In a few weeks, they'd gone from having two paychecks to having three-quarters of one. That was bad enough-was worse than bad enough. But what was worse yet, what was really terrifying, was that, compared to an awful lot of people, they were still well off.
I n the Terry, times hadn't been good since the last hectic days of the Great War. Back then, with every white man possible at the front, Augusta's Negroes had filled factory jobs galore. They'd made less money than the whites they were displacing, but even that added up to more money than they'd ever seen in their lives till that time. Then the whites, those who'd lived, came back, and the factory jobs dried up. People began living hand-to-mouth again.
Erasmus' place was a case in point. Scipio would have thought a fish market and cafe in a poor part of town immune from anything so remote as a stock-market panic. After all, the worst had happened in the Terry a dozen years earlier… hadn't it?
He would have thought that, but he would have been wrong. Erasmus' wrinkled face got longer with each passing day. His grizzled hair got grayer, too, or so it seemed to Scipio.
One morning, while Scipio washed the pile of breakfast dishes, Erasmus put his discontent into words: "They ain't comin' in."
"Ain't that bad, boss," Scipio said. "They ain't comin', where we get all these here dishes?"
"They ain't comin'," Erasmus repeated. " 'Fore all this panic happen, woulda been twice the dishes. Woulda been twice the money, too."
He was right, of course. Scipio's denial meant very little. Erasmus' place remained busy. It wasn't packed, not the way it had been before the market plunged. Scipio put the best face on things he could: "People's bein' careful wid dey money."
Erasmus shook his head. "A month ago, say, people was bein' careful with their money. Ain't like that no more. Now what it's like is, folks who come here, they ain't hardly got no money to be careful with."
"Lotta white folks outta work," Scipio admitted. "Bathsheba, she done lost fo', five cleanin' jobs las' few weeks. De buckra ain't got the money to give her."
"Here in the Terry, ain't many of us works for our ownselves," Erasmus said. "We mostly works for the buckra, almost like it was still slavery days. If the buckra outta work, we outta work, on account of they can't afford to pay us no more. How is I supposed to make money when there ain't no money to make?"
"Dunno," Scipio said. He waved. "Doin' pretty good so far."
"Ain't broke yet," Erasmus said. "Dunno why not, 'specially the way you eats." He wagged a finger at Scipio.
Had Scipio been white, he would have turned red. But taking meals at Erasmus' place was as much a part of what his boss paid him as the banknotes he got every Friday. It saved him money. The way things were going, the way Bathsheba's cleaning jobs were drying up, he needed to save all the money he could.
And Erasmus said not a word when he fixed himself a fried-egg sandwich and a big plate of grits for lunch. He'd just finished when the first lunch customer came in: a cleaning woman whose latest job had been close by the edge of the Terry. "Don't know how long I kin keep comin' here," she said as she took a bite out of a bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich. "White folks is lettin' people go. Ain't got no money their ownselves, sure ain't got none to spend on cleanin' their houses."
"I seen that, too," Scipio said. "My wife, she done los' half she people."
"World's a crazy place nowadays," the woman said. "Lady at the house I was at jus' now, her husband, he been a Whig forever, an' his daddy before him, an' his daddy before him. She say he talkin' 'bout votin' Freedom when the 'lections come round this fall. I didn't say nothin'. You don't like to tell the lady what's payin' you her husband ain't got no brains." She took another bite.
From his station in front of the stove, Erasmus said, "When the white folks see their money goin' away, some of 'em liable to do some crazy things."
"How many of 'em do dem crazy things?" Scipio wondered as he fetched the cleaning lady a cup of coffee. "We gwine have buckra in de streets yellin', 'Freedom!' again? Reckoned we was done wid dat."
"God do what He want to do, not what we wants Him to do," the cleaning woman said. "Thank you kindly, Xerxes," she added when Scipio set the coffee on the table.
"You's welcome," he answered absently.
How many whites were losing their jobs or losing money? He had no way of knowing, not for sure. More than a few, though; the stories in the Constitutionalist made that very clear. So did what was happening to the jobs of Negroes who depended on whites for work. How many of the whites who lost their jobs would start voting for Jake Featherston and his party?
Scipio had no way of knowing that, either, not for sure. But he'd just heard of one, and that was one more than he wanted to know about.
The cleaning lady gulped the coffee and got to her feet. She left money on the tabletop and hurried away. Over her shoulder, she said, "Can't be late gittin' back. Miz Hutton, I reckon she grab the first excuse she find to put me on the street. Don't aim to give her none." Out the door she went, in a hurry because her tip was small.
A man who sold secondhand furniture across the street came in for some fried catfish. As he ate, he remarked, "Had me a couple-three buckra come in the last few days. Ain't seen none in a hell of a long time 'fore that."
"Buy anything?" Scipio asked.
"Sure enough did," the furniture dealer answered. "Sold me a couple beds and a good chest o' drawers."
"Good for you, Athenaeus," Erasmus said. " 'Bout time I hear of somebody doin' good right now."
"Fellas sellin' new furniture, they's the ones wouldn't be happy if they knowed," Athenaeus said. "White folks all say they look at the new stuff first, but they can't afford it, no way, nohow. So they come to me."
"Good to hear it," Scipio echoed; as Erasmus had said, any news of success was welcome. But Athenaeus wasn't wrong. What would the white furniture dealers whose goods hadn't sold think?
And it wasn't just what they would think. What would they do? What could any man do, when he stared at bills and had no money to pay them? Would they put on white shirts and butternut trousers and start shouting, "Freedom!" at the top of their lungs? If they did, could anybody blame them?
Scipio nodded. I can blame them, he thought, hearing inside himself the precise English he no longer dared speak loud. I can blame them, for the Freedom Party will not make their troubles disappear, even if they think it will. And what the Freedom Party will do to me and mine if ever it should come to power…
That fear had spread all through the colored communities of the CSA in the early 1920s, and then receded as the Party's fortunes ebbed. Now white men were seeing the Confederate States could still know hard times. What would that discovery, that rediscovery, mean for Negroes here? Scipio didn't know. He feared finding out. Try as he would, though, he saw no escape.
"What kin we do?" he said aloud, hoping one of the other men in the place would have a better idea than he did. "Can't go nowheres."
"Ain't noplace else wants us," Erasmus said. "Not the USA."
"That's for sure," Athenaeus agreed. "They don't like the niggers they got. Ain't got very many, an' sure don't want no more."
"Stock market in de USA down de sewer, too," Scipio said. "They ain't got no money, no spirit, to help nobody else, not when they got trouble helpin' they ownselves."
"Good things they's down, too, you wants to know what I thinks," Athenaeus said. "If they was up, they be lordin' it over us. They do that, jus' git more buckra listenin' to Jake Featherston on the wireless and gittin' all hot and bothered afterwards."
For a long time before the world finally went mad in 1914, respect for each other's strength had kept the United States and Confederate States from going to war. Scipio had never imagined mutual weakness could do the same, but he couldn't deny Athenaeus had a point. It wasn't one he'd thought of, either.
"Empire of Mexico, mebbe," he said. But neither Erasmus nor Athenaeus paid much attent
ion to that. Scipio couldn't take it seriously himself. To a Negro in eastern Georgia, the Empire of Mexico might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. Besides, what were the odds that Mexicans had any more use for Negroes than white men did?
Erasmus asked a more immediately relevant question: " 'Fore long, some black folks gwine start runnin' out o' money. What happen to 'em?"
"They git hungry," Athenaeus said.
"Church help some," Scipio said.
"Church be swamped," Erasmus said. Scipio nodded. By all the signs, that would come true, and soon. His boss went on, "Ain't no use waitin' fo' the gummint to do somethin'. Wait till Judgment Day, gummint won't do nothin' fo' no niggers."
" 'Fore long, some white folks starts runnin' out o' money and gettin' hungry, too," Athenaeus said. "Plenty po' buckra, they ain't hardly better off'n niggers. Gummint worry 'bout the buckra first, you wait an' see."
"What's a po' nigger gwine do?" Erasmus asked. "Starve?"
The word hung in the air. Scipio had known a lot of hungry people; during the war, he'd been hungry himself after the Confederates destroyed the Congaree Socialist Republic. But there was a difference between being hungry and starving. He tried to imagine thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Negroes (and whites, too) going without because they had no money with which to buy food.
Outside, the sun shone brightly. The day was hot and muggy. It would stay hot and muggy from now all the way till fall. Even so, Scipio felt a chill. This was liable to be a disaster of Biblical proportions.
"What kin we do?" Athenaeus asked mournfully. "What kin anybody do?"
"Pray," Erasmus answered. "God done made this happen. He kin make us come through it, too, so long as He take it in His mind He want to do dat."
"Amen," Athenaeus said. Scipio made himself nod. He didn't want to seem out of place-seeming out of place was one of his greatest fears, because it was deadly dangerous. But if God had really wanted to do something about this disaster, couldn't He have stopped it in the first place?
"More we pray, more He gonna know how much we loves Him," Erasmus said. Along with being a believer, though, he was a relentlessly practical man. He went on, " 'Course, we gots to work hard, too. God ain't never gonna pay no heed to nobody who don't work hard."
Scipio would have bet he'd say that. Erasmus not only believed in the virtues of hard work, he practiced what he preached. Scipio himself was sure it couldn't hurt. What he wasn't sure of was how much it could help.
S omething was wrong in Salt Lake City. Colonel Abner Dowling shook his head. Something was always wrong in Salt Lake City. It wouldn't have been the place, or the sort of place, it was if something hadn't been wrong all the time. But something now was different. Anything different in Salt Lake City automatically roused Dowling's suspicions. As far as he could tell, different and dangerous were two sides of the same coin.
"I'll tell you what it is, sir," Captain Angelo Toricelli said.
"Go ahead, Angelo," Dowling urged. "Tell."
"Nobody's building anything, that's what," his adjutant said. "It's quieter than it ought to be."
Slowly, Dowling nodded. "You're right. I'll be damned if you're not right. It isn't on account of they've got everything rebuilt, either. Still plenty of wreckage lying around."
"Yes, sir," Captain Toricelli agreed. "But an awful lot of money that would have paid for more construction all of a sudden isn't there-it's gone."
Dowling nodded again. He gave Toricelli a sidelong glance. Fortunately, his adjutant didn't notice. The way the younger man watched every penny, he might have been a Jew, not an Italian. Dowling didn't want Toricelli to know he was thinking that. He didn't want to insult his adjutant. And everybody had to pay special attention to money these days, because it was so very thin on the ground.
With a sigh, Dowling said, "Not much we can do about it. At least we've got the Army paying our salaries."
"Yes, sir, and I'm damn glad of it, too," Toricelli answered. "I just got a letter from New York, from home. My brother-in-law's out of a job."
"What's he do?" Dowling asked.
"He reads X rays, sir-went to night school to learn the trade," Toricelli said, not without pride. "My sister and he've got five children, and another one on the way. I don't know what they'll do if he doesn't find something quick."
"I hope he does," Dowling said, on the whole sincerely. "Who would have thought the bottom could drop out of things so fast?"
"Nobody," Captain Toricelli answered. "But it has."
He was right about that, too. The Army censored Salt Lake City papers pretty hard. Pain came through their pages even so. Stories of half-done buildings abandoned, of banks going under, of people losing jobs, couldn't very well be prettied up. And the only way to leave those stories out of the newspapers would have been to have no papers at all.
Captain Toricelli touched a fat document on his desk. "Don't tell me what that is," Dowling said. "Let me guess: another normalization petition."
"Right the first time," his adjutant said.
"It's not as though I haven't seen enough of them," Dowling said. Every few months, the Mormons of Salt Lake City-and the occasional gentile, too-would circulate petitions asking that Utah finally be treated like any other state in the USA. Dowling had got a couple of dozen since coming to the state capital. With a sigh, he went on, "They still haven't figured out I'm not the one they ought to send these to, because I have no authority to grant them. They should go to General Pershing-he's supreme commander of the military district."
A thoroughly precise man, Toricelli said, "He hasn't got authority to grant them, either. Only the president and Congress can do that."
"What do you think the chances are?" Dowling asked.
"Better than decent, if the Mormons can keep their noses clean," Captain Toricelli answered. "The Socialists seem to want to do it."
"I know." Dowling packed a world of meaning into two words. "They think a zebra can change its stripes, the way the one in that Englishman's fable did. I think…" He shook his head. "What I think doesn't matter. I don't make policy. I just get stuck with carrying it out." He picked up the petition. It was a hefty one; it had to weigh a couple of pounds. "I'll take this to General Pershing's office, if you like."
"Oh, you don't need to do that, sir," Toricelli said. "It's not important. I can fetch it next time I go over there."
"I'm on my way," Dowling said. "Better Pershing's adjutant should have it on his desk than you on yours."
He caught Toricelli's eye. They shared a slightly conspiratorial chuckle. "Thank you very much, sir," the young captain said.
"You're welcome," Abner Dowling answered. "I've got to go over there and talk with the general about his scheme for mounting better guard on Temple Square. We need to do it; every broken rock from the Temple and the Tabernacle counts for a sacred relic with the more radical Mormons these days."
"Yes, sir," Toricelli said. "But there's a certain problem in shooting anybody who bends to pick up a pebble in the square, too."
"A certain problem, yes," Dowling agreed. "And that's what I've got to talk to General Pershing about. How do we keep the Mormons from getting symbols of revolt without provoking them and ruining what ever bits of goodwill we've managed to build up since the war ended?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir," his adjutant replied. "I hope you and the commanding general can find a way."
"So do I. Can't hope for much in the way of normalization if they're still picking up broken rocks and dreaming of treason." Dowling tucked the petition under his arm and strode down the hall to his superior's office. He took no small pleasure in dropping the document on Pershing's adjutant's desk, and in watching the papers already there jump as it thudded home.
"Thank you so much, sir," Pershing's adjutant, a major named Fred Corson, said with a sickly smile. "The general is waiting for you." He sounded reluctant to admit even that much to Dowling.
"Hello, Colonel," General Pershing said when Dowling
walked in. A grin spread across his bulldog features. "Was that the thump of a normalization petition I heard just then?"
"It certainly was, sir," Dowling answered.
"Well, I'll forward it to Philadelphia," the commandant said. "That's my duty. And there that petition will sit till the end of time, along with all the others."
"Unless the Socialists decide to grant them all, that is," Dowling said.
"Yes. Unless. In that case, Colonel, you and I will both need new assignments, because normal states don't have soldiers occupying them. Part of me won't be sorry to get away." Pershing rose from behind his desk and went over to the window not far away. He looked at his fortified headquarters, and at Salt Lake City beyond. "Part of me, though, will regret leaving this state, because I'm convinced that, no matter what this administration may believe, Utah isn't ready for normalization. As a matter of fact, here we-"
Abner Dowling heard a distant pop! It might have been a motorcar backfiring, or a firecracker going off. It might have been, but it wasn't. At the same instant as he heard it, or perhaps even a split second before, the window in front of which General Pershing was standing shattered. Pershing made a surprised noise. That was the best way Dowling could have described it. It didn't hold much pain. Before Dowling fully realized what had happened, the military commandant of the state of Utah crumpled to the carpet in front of him.
"General Pershing?" Dowling whispered. He hurried over to the fallen man. He needed a moment to add two and two together. Only when he saw the neat hole and the spreading bloodstain in the middle of Pershing's chest did he fully understand what he was seeing. "General Pershing!" he said, sharply this time.
He grabbed for Pershing's wrist and felt for a pulse. He found none. Aside from that, the sudden sharp stink in the room told him what he needed to know. Pershing had fouled himself when the bullet struck home.
Thinking of a bullet made Dowling think of the man who'd fired it. He peered out through the shattered window. The U.S. perimeter around the headquarters ran out for several hundred yards. The gunman must have shot from well beyond it, which meant he had to be a brilliant sniper. In war-ravaged Utah, that was anything but impossible, as Colonel Dowling knew all too well.
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