The Scribe

by Matthew Guinn

  “Can a Negro even sit down in the Citizen’s Bank to make an application? Who is the black man in Atlanta who could afford to leave so much money behind?”

  “These are new times for all of us in Atlanta, Thomas. There are more opportunities than ever before, for black and white. But we are now short two such affluent black men.”

  “Black and white? That’s your political side talking. I know you better. I remember the walkout you led when the Republicans tried to integrate the force back in Reconstruction.”

  “That was a long time ago. This is a different era. Just this week, in fact, we added our first Negro officer to the force.”

  Canby turned to look at his companion. “Under your watch? I can hardly believe it.”

  Vernon kept his eyes on the road out front. “I change with the times.”

  In spite of himself, Canby began to smile. “Vernon, you are always a step ahead of me. When would I begin working with this man?”

  Vernon reached for another cigar. “Tomorrow.”

  “And you called me down from Ringgold because no one on the force will—”

  “I sent for you because no one else will work with him,” Vernon said, lighting his cigar.

  “Did you hire this man of your own volition, or was there pressure from elsewhere?”

  “Does that make any material difference?”

  “No, it does not. I just wish you’d done it at my urging, years ago.”

  Vernon continued to look straight ahead, his eyes narrowing. Canby studied the older man’s profile.

  “I wonder from whence it came, this pressure,” Canby said.

  “These days, most any question you ask, the answer is, the exposition. That’s all I’ll say on it.”

  Canby nodded. He knew Vernon would not be pushed any further. “If there is a Negro murderer, it makes sense to track him with one of his own, doesn’t it? For public perception among the blacks, at least.”

  “This man is no common Negro,” Vernon said. “I do not like him. He operates on some other kind of currency. Never been in a lick of trouble. Doesn’t even drink, so far as I can tell. I’d not have known of him at all except he’s been the janitor at the station nearly two years.”

  “A model citizen.”

  “He would be, but he’s got these notions. Never just pushing a broom, without his ear is cocked for police business. Always listening in. And now, first week with a badge, he turns out to be the first of us on the scene at Dempsey’s murder. Tell me that is not suspicious?”

  “A good detective would have been there.”

  Vernon grunted, then turned and looked Canby in the eye. “Who do you think was the boy out front of the Markham?”

  Canby felt the skin of his neck tightening.

  “Atlanta ain’t that small of a town, Thomas,” Vernon said.

  THE DECATUR INN was aglow with light as the hansom pulled up to it, the horses’ shoes ringing on the cobblestones of the drive as Maddox guided them under the inn’s porte cochere. Vernon stepped out of the cab quickly and held a hand out to Canby.

  “Do we have an understanding? Can I tell the men inside that you’re on the case?” Vernon smiled.

  Canby thought he could sense another shift in the temperature of the night air, but he quickly dismissed it as the sensation of his own blood rising, perhaps his old ambition stirring again. “I suppose you can,” he said. “Anything to help an old friend.”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose I’m much of a friend, Thomas,” he said as he dusted off the shoulders of Canby’s coat, his smile fading, “or I wouldn’t have brought you into this vile business.” He put an arm around Canby and guided him toward the door.

  Vernon made his way deftly through the crowd of cooks and waiters in the kitchen, propelling Canby through the white uniforms and black faces, past steaming pots and blazing cookstoves, toward the sound of dozens of men’s voices in the dining room.

  “Who’s in there, Vernon?”

  “Atlanta’s first citizens. Prominent businessmen, mostly. A few others.”

  “What kind of others?”

  “First we enjoy a fine dinner with these good men of the city, then an after-dinner drink with the Ring.”

  Canby stopped short. “You told me no politics.”

  “You have to navigate a city like Atlanta, Thomas. And that means politicians.”

  Canby looked out one of the kitchen windows toward the portico. Maddox was gone. He could just make out his own mare, trailing the hansom on its tether, moving out of the light of the drive.

  “Shall we?” Vernon said.

  The inn’s banquet hall was packed with bearded and flushfaced men bent close to one another to be heard over the din. Vernon pointed out two senators—John B. Gordon and Joseph Brown—both of them stern-looking and huddled cabalistic in one corner of the room, their beards nearly touching. Canby saw that the governor, Alfred Colquitt, was here, too, holding a glass of champagne and talking with a man Canby recognized after a moment as Samuel Inman, the cotton broker. The men had hardly aged since Canby had last seen them on the streets of the city. If anything, they looked more vigorous, Brown’s white beard excepted, and more prosperous than before, as if time stood still for men of such means and allowed them to gather more power to themselves.

  A Negro waiter offered Canby a flute of champagne on a silver tray, but he declined and requested whiskey instead.

  “Whiskeys to be served after supper, sir, with coffee and liqueurs.”

  “Fine, then. Nothing, thanks.”

  “You are on the job, after all,” Vernon said, taking a flute from the tray and raising it to his mouth.

  Canby did not reply. His attention was fixed on a man standing nearby, just the profile of his roundish, clean-shaven face visible. The man was holding forth theatrically, moving his arms as he told a story Canby could just hear over the babble of voices.

  “So there I was, down in Tallahassee, waiting for the results of the recount. Everyone thought the election would go to Tilden, of course, but we were waiting for the announcement from the Florida canvassing board to be sure. Well, by the time they’d announced Hayes as the winner I was already in my buggy hightailing it to the telegraph office. We were there first and the Constitution had the news as soon as the New York Herald, by gracious.”

  “Go on, Henry. Tell them the best part.”

  Henry Grady smiled. “Well, we’d scooped the others, all right, but I wanted to be certain the Constitution got her due. I spent the next half hour transmitting pages from a spelling book.”

  “He did it to tie up the line, you see!”

  Grady sipped from a glass of iced tea while he waited for the laughter to subside. “The boys from the Chicago Tribune have never forgiven me.”

  But the smile faded from his lips when he turned to see Canby glaring at him from across the room.

  Canby was starting toward Grady, pulling against Vernon’s hand on his arm, when a tall man in a white suit began tapping a butter knife against a glass. The sound carried over the din clearly and the men began to quiet.

  “Gentlemen!” the man said. “May we take our seats? Bishop Drew will convene with a prayer.”

  Vernon led Canby to the table, taking seats for them next to the tall man.

  “Robert,” Vernon said, “may I introduce Thomas Canby, who has agreed to help us?”

  Canby took the man’s hand and found his handshake as strong as a country man’s. As they sat and the bishop began his prayer, the man leaned in to Canby’s ear and whispered: “This could take a while. Drew is the head of the Georgia Diocese. One only attains such a position by praying ardently and at great length.”

  Canby smiled and looked up at the bishop’s smooth face, his eyes shut tightly, like those of every man around the table save his new acquaintance.

  “What is it that you do, Robert?” he whispered.

  “Oh, I own a couple of cotton gins. But my heart is in the new industries. My chief concern is Dixie
Light.”

  “Dixie Light? Then you are Colonel Robert Billingsley. I should have known your face. I beg your pardon.”

  Billingsley smiled. “Think nothing of it. I try to stay out of the papers as much as I can. I’m certain you understand that.”

  Canby looked over at the man sharply, but his smile was kind enough to make Canby see that the comment was not intended as a barb. As the bishop continued his prayer, Billingsley leaned close to Canby’s ear.

  “I’ve talked with Vernon about you at length. He and I both see this case as an opportunity for your vindication. What happened in ’77 was inevitable. The Radicals had to go. But it was unfortunate that you got swept out with the trash. It must have been extremely difficult for you to endure.”

  Canby looked into the man’s clear blue eyes. “They ruined my name.”

  Billingsley nodded slowly, his eyes sad. “Perhaps with this case you shall get it back.”

  “Amen,” Bishop Drew said.

  “Amen,” Billingsley echoed.

  A half dozen waiters stepped forward from their places against the walls and began removing the covers from the tureens at each man’s place. The scent of turtle soup filled the room as the men fell to their food, and Henry Grady rose and began to speak.

  “Let me begin my remarks by saying good evening to all of you collectively,” Grady said. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I go on at some length tonight. I would not talk so much, gentlemen, except that my father was an Irishman, and my mother was a woman.”

  Grady smiled at the laughter around the table.

  “I have been asked to discuss the prospects for our International Cotton Exposition tonight, and I do so with an energy and optimism greater than I have felt in years.”

  A man near the head of the table snorted. “Tell that to the exhibitors. A third of the buildings aren’t even framed up yet.”

  Grady shook his head, still smiling. “Let us not forget what that entity we call the Atlanta Spirit can accomplish. And what it can accomplish in a short time. Our story begins with the Atlanta Spirit, which lifted us, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a devastated city and brought us to this point, whence we will stage an exhibition fit to astonish the nations.

  “I remind you that after General Sherman left our fair city in ruins, Atlanta’s treasury had in it the grand sum of a dollar sixty-five,” Grady said, nodding to the rueful chuckles around the room for a moment before smiling and adding, “and that was in Confederate currency, gentlemen.”

  Grady held his hands out for quiet.

  “Our city was then overrun by Reconstruction. You know the story well: scalawags, carpetbaggers, and Radical Republicans dictated the lives and fortunes of white southerners anxious for peace and the return to prosperity. When the earnest Atlantan sought an honest government and the opportunity to regain his fortunes, his beseeching was answered with an upstart government riddled with corruption. Graft and embezzlement, even outright extortion, became the rule of the day. Alongside the Radicals, Negroes came to hold high office, woefully unprepared for such office in the best of cases, illiterate to the point of imbecility in the worst.”

  And the old guard of the Ring, Canby thought, found itself on the outside for the first time. He studied the faces around the table, how they followed Grady’s account of their ouster. They must have felt like they’d been gelded.

  “The siege of Atlanta had been terrible, the burning of our city the most trying of tribulations,” Grady went on. “But we soon learned that the worst was not over. Our darkest hour stretched out into a day, then into a night.

  “But as we know that every night has its dawn, so came a new era for Atlanta. The men we came to call the Redeemers roused themselves to collective action and accomplished in a few short months what would have taken years had they not been moved, together, by the Atlanta Spirit. And the new constitution of 1877 set things right once again.”

  Canby grimaced at the mention of ’77. He couldn’t help himself.

  “The Negro, the scalawag, the Radical, were swept out of office and white southerners once again claimed their birthright. Many of those good Atlantans are gathered here, in this room, tonight.”

  Grady paused long enough to take a sip of tea. The waiters came forward again, removing the tureens and replacing them with plates of oysters. They handled the china almost silently and Canby wondered what they were making of the speech.

  “And now we face a new challenge that promises further glorious results,” Grady resumed. “Our International Cotton Exposition was conceived on a scale unseen thus far in the United States, and particularly in the South. It is the South’s first world fair. We have set aside nineteen acres in Oglethorpe Park for the site. We are completing twenty-seven buildings on those acres, including a model cotton factory that is to be thoroughly modern, down to the latest items of technology—the newest gins, the freshest patents. We have sold nearly two hundred thousand dollars of stock in the exposition, including a pledge of two thousand dollars from our friend William Tecumseh Sherman. There is even talk—this should not leave this room, gentlemen—that General Sherman might make a personal appearance at the exposition. All of this accomplished in one hundred working days. Gentlemen, that number alone speaks volumes about Atlanta. One hundred days.

  “So I urge you not to despair over the state of the I.C.E. at this early hour of the exposition. Though we are on the eve of our debut, and our hopes have thus far exceeded our returns, we have no cause for despair. I say it is time once again to summon the Atlanta Spirit and save the hour.”

  There was only the sound of silverware for a moment after Grady sat down. Canby pushed his dish of oysters away. Slowly, a small man with spectacles and a black mustache rose and gently placed his folded napkin on the table.

  “I cannot match Mister Grady’s oratory, so I will try to stick with simple facts,” he said in an accent too clipped and swift to be local. “The exposition opens in two days. We expected crowds of thousands for our preview days; our total attendance has been just over one hundred. Our subscription of stock has been excellent, but our revenues may never earn out that money. We will need to keep the exposition open for a year at this rate if we hope to break even. We are at present nearly a quarter of a million dollars in debt.”

  There were murmurs of assent mixed with a general grumbling of disagreement. Grady rolled his eyes. “A year!” someone cried. “Sit down, Greenberg.”

  Greenberg nodded and looked down at his plate as it was replaced, silently, by one of the waiters.

  “I will sit down. But first may I remind you of the Greek myth of Atalanta, one of our city’s namesakes?”

  Someone groaned, but Greenberg pressed on. “Do you remember it, gentlemen? As the Greeks tell it, she was known for her speed. But she was defeated in a race when three golden apples were thrown at her feet and she stopped to gather them up. Three golden apples—a distraction that drew her from her main purpose. Have we committed our Atlanta to a similar fate?”

  Greenburg seemed shocked by the sudden silence that greeted his question. Canby knew then that the man must indeed be a late arrival to Atlanta, for since his own childhood he had been raised among a tacit but bedrock understanding that disparaging capital in Atlanta was anathema. He saw that Vernon was looking at Greenberg almost sadly. Billingsley’s expression was inscrutable.

  Greenberg pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “What I mean to say, gentlemen, is that we have perhaps overreached with this project. Think of the terrible toll if our venture fails. Why must we insist on competing with older and more established cities? Do we aim to become the next Boston, the next New York?”

  But Greenberg’s voice was drowned out as the room burst into violent debate, with Grady trying in vain to quiet the men. The uproar continued through the main course of venison and pheasant, diminished only slightly over the cheeses and ices, and then carried on through the last of the desserts. Nothing was resolved.

  “WE SHOULD HAV
E given that Jew the bum’s rush,” Senator Gordon said as he cut the end off a cigar. “Who invited him, anyway?”

  “I did,” Grady said, looking for once a bit sheepish. “Greenberg opened the new pencil factory on South Forsyth Street, John. The Georgia Pencil Company. He’s going to be a prominent citizen, like it or not.”

  Canby studied the faces of the men seated about the small round table. In the long minutes since the parlor’s paneled pocket doors had been pulled shut by the last of the waiters the room had begun to fill with clouds of cigarette and cigar smoke—and worse, with the backroom talk of men accustomed to making decisions by secret quorums such as this one that would effect thousands. Canby decided he had sat among the members of the Ring for as long as he could without speaking.

  “Where’s he from?” he asked.

  Grady looked at him directly for the first time. “Brooklyn, New York, originally. He spent the last few years in England learning the manufacturing trade.”

  “Another fairly recent arrival, then. Like yourself.”

  “I’ve always said that if a man has ability, Atlantans do not care if he was hatched in a stump. But no, Mister Canby, Leon Greenberg cannot claim an Atlanta raising, like you. He is, rather, someone who has come and stayed.”

  “I would have stayed,” Canby said, hearing his voice trail off. “Perhaps you’ll drive him off, too, in time.”

  “Gentlemen,” Billingsley said, his voice conciliatory, “what’s past is past. Our interest is in the present, and the future.” He leaned over his crossed leg to snub his cigarette out in an ashtray on the table and nodded to Hannibal Kimball.

  “Mister Canby, as director general of the Cotton Exposition, I thank you for accepting this assignment,” Kimball said, “and I give you my personal assurance that the members of the Ring will compensate you generously for your time and expenses.” He slid a key across the table to Canby. “That is for your suite at the Kimball House, sir. A sixth-floor penthouse. All expenses will be handled by me personally.”

  Canby looked to Vernon. “Will I not be back on the city’s force?”

  “None of this is on the city,” Vernon said. “You’re off the books.”