“Am I a clock?” Galtier said. “You can look at one as easily as I.” Georges did, and then exclaimed in dismay. “Is it half past four already?
Tabernac!
I thought it was earlier.”
“And why does the hour matter so much?” Galtier inquired with a certain ironic curiosity, part of which was about whether his guess was right.
Sure enough, his younger son shuffled his feet a couple of times before answering, “When I was in town, I heard there would be a dance tonight. I thought I might go.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I did.” Georges attempted defiance. He didn’t do a good job of it. His older brother, Charles, or any of his four sisters could have given him lessons.
Lucien and Marie shared amused looks. They’d met at a dance, somewhere a little more than thirty years before. Nor were they the only couple in the neighborhood who had—far from it. Galtier said, “All right, son. Have a good time.”
Georges started to argue, to protest. Then he really heard what his father had said. He blinked. “It’s all right?” he asked suspiciously.
“I said so, didn’t I?”
Marie added, “There’s plenty of hot water on the stove, if you have time to bathe and shave before you go.”
“Merci, chère Maman.
I’ll do that quick as a wink.” Georges still looked as if he didn’t trust his ears.
He went off to the kitchen to take the hot water to the bathroom, still scratching his head.
When he was, or at least might have been, out of earshot, Marie said, “High time he got married. I began to worry about Charles when he waited so long.”
“Madeleine Boileau is a nice girl, and she made him a good match this past winter,” Galtier said. His wife nodded. He went on, “She is a better match than we could have got without our American doctor son-in-law, or without the money from the Americans for the property on which the hospital stands.”
“I know that,” Marie said. “You must know it, too. Why bring it up now? We’ve had these things for some time.”
“Why bring it up now?” Galtier echoed. “To convince myself what we’ve done is worthwhile, that’s why. Because there are times when I feel our money is like Judas’ thirty pieces of silver, that’s why.
Because I almost envy the Canadians for rising,
that’s
why.” Marie eyed him. “Would you disown your grandson?”
“No. Never.” Lucien didn’t hesitate. He did laugh. “All right. You have me.”
“I should hope so,” Marie said.
III
A
cold, nasty rain poured down on Augusta, Georgia. Had the town been up in the USA, Scipio suspected it would have got snow, even though this was only the end of October. He’d seen snow a few times, here and in South Carolina, where he’d lived most of his life. He didn’t like it a bit.
The rain drummed on his cheap black umbrella. Some of the Negroes in the Terry, Augusta’s black quarter, had no umbrellas. They dashed through the streets on the way to work, water splashing up under their galoshes—when they had galoshes. Scipio did. He was fastidious about his person. Part of that was personal inclination, part habit ingrained in him by more than half a lifetime spent as Anne Colleton’s butler. She’d always insisted on perfection in everything, and she’d known how to get what she wanted.
His foot slipped out from under him. He had to make a mad grab for a lamppost with his free hand. That kept him from falling on his backside, but the desperate embrace left his arm and one side of his chest almost as wet as if he had fallen.
He muttered under his breath all the way to Erasmus’ fish market and restaurant. YOU BUY—WE FRY! was painted on the window in big letters. The front door was unlocked. Scipio gladly ducked inside, closing the umbrella as he did so.
Erasmus, as always, had got there before him. The gray-haired black man was sipping on a steaming cup of coffee almost white with cream—he’d already been to the fish market alongside the Savannah River to get the best of the day’s catch and put it on ice here.
“Mornin’,” he said to Scipio, and then, “Wet out.” He got the most mileage from every word he used.
“Do Jesus, sho’ is!” Scipio exclaimed. “I’s soaked clean through.” His accent was that of the Congaree, thicker and more ignorant-sounding than Erasmus’. He could also use the English of an educated white man—again, Anne Colleton’s doing—but he had nothing between the one and the other.
“Can’t be helped.” Erasmus took another sip of coffee. He pointed to the pot. “Pour yourself some if you got a mind to, Xerxes.”
“I do dat,” Scipio said. No one in Augusta, not even Bathsheba, his wife, knew his rightful name. He’d used several aliases since escaping from the wreckage of the Congaree Socialist Republic. His passbook said he was Xerxes, and he wasn’t about to argue with it. Xerxes was as free as a black man in the Confederate States could be. Scipio still had a large price on his head back in South Carolina.
He poured less cream —the pitcher sat on ice next to some catfish— into his coffee than Erasmus used, but added a couple of teaspoons of sugar. His boss’ eyes were on him. Erasmus didn’t approve of anyone standing around idle, especially not someone he was paying. Getting a cup of coffee didn’t mean lollygagging around for half an hour till Scipio finished it. He took the cup out in front of the display full of ice and fish, grabbed a push broom, and started sweeping up under and around the restaurant tables.
Erasmus said, “You’s a pretty good fellow, Xerxes.”
“I thanks you,” Scipio answered, chivvying small specks of dust to destruction.
“Yes, suh, you’s a pretty good fellow,” Erasmus said again. “You works.” By the way he spoke, those two traits were intimately connected. He watched Scipio sweep a little longer, then added, “You know what I say? I say you ought to git your own place, work for your own self. I hates to lose you, but you smart if you go.”
Scipio stopped sweeping. Erasmus must have been serious, for he didn’t give his employee a put-upon stare. Slowly, Scipio said, “Ain’t never thought about that none.” He told the truth. Never in his life had he contemplated being his own master. He’d been born a slave, before the Confederate States manumitted their Negroes in the aftermath of the Second Mexican War.
Even after manumission, he’d always been a house nigger, first in the kitchens at Marshlands, then as butler there. He’d done factory labor and worked as a waiter since. Every single place, he’d had somebody telling him what to do. (Whenever he thought of Anne Colleton, he shivered, even now.
Getting out of South Carolina had put some distance between them, the state border being more important than the miles. Was it enough? He hoped so.)
“Ought to do some thinkin’, then, I reckon,” Erasmus said. “You ain’t stupid. You kin read’n write’n cipher—more’n I kin do my ownself. You works hard, an’ you saves your money. What else you need?” Maybe he didn’t expect an answer, but Scipio gave him one: “Dunno dat I wants to boss other niggers around. You hear what I sayin’?”
“Yeah, I hears it. But you ain’t real likely to hire no white folks.” Erasmus bared his teeth to show that was meant for a joke. Scipio dutifully smiled back. His boss went on, “I hear what you say. But you gots to have people working’ fo’ you. Job gits too big fo’ one man to do it all by hisself.”
“Don’ want to play de buckra.” Scipio made as if to crack a whip. He might have been driving along a slave coffle in the days before manumission.
“I hear black folks say that every now and again,” Erasmus admitted. “But you tell me true, now—I treat you like white folks treats niggers?”
“No,” Scipio admitted. “Had one fella, he weren’t too bad, but de rest—” He shook his head.
“Oglethorpe,” Erasmus said. Scipio nodded in surprise; he hadn’t mentioned his earlier boss for quite a while. Erasmus owned a stubborn memory. He continued, “I knows Aurelius a bit. He been waitin’
tables for John Oglethorpe since dirt. He says that there buckra a lot like me, you work for him, he don’t give you no trouble. He could do that, too.”
“Could,” Scipio said. “Mebbe could. Dunno dat I gots it in me to give no orders, though, not no way.” He hadn’t even liked giving orders as a butler, when Anne Colleton was the ultimate authority behind them. Doing it on his own hook? No, he wasn’t sure about that at all.
“Well, you don’t want to do what you
kin
do, that’s your business,” Erasmus said. “Like I told you, I ain’t sorry you works for me. But you is wastin’ yourself, you wants to know what I think.”
How many Negroes in the Confederate States
aren’t
wasting themselves?
Scipio wondered. He’d got himself an education as good as any white man’s. What could he do with it? Sound impressive as the butler at Marshlands during the war. Now, wait tables. If he’d tried to set up as a businessman—not in the sense Erasmus meant, but as an investor, a capitalist—he would have been lucky if whites here only laughed at him. More likely, they would have lynched him.
And most blacks? Besides having whites hate them, most blacks never got the education that would have let them make the most of their abilities—that would have let them discover what abilities they had.
And then whites called them stupid and inferior because they didn’t succeed.
“Sometimes I reckons dem Red niggers, dey knew what dey was doin’,” he said. He’d never dared say anything like that to Erasmus before.
The older man studied him, then slowly shook his head. “Them Reds, they was about tearin’ down, not buildin’ up. Tearin’ down don’t do no good. Never has, never will.” He sounded very certain.
Before Scipio could answer, the day’s first customer came in: a fat black man dripping rain from the brim of his homburg and from the hem of his rubberized-cotton raincoat. “Bacon an’ a couple eggs over medium an’ grits an’ coffee,” he called to Erasmus.
Erasmus already had the eggs and bacon on the stove. “Like I don’t know what you has for breakfast, Sophocles,” he said reproachfully.
Scipio poured coffee for Sophocles and brought it to him. As soon as Erasmus had the rest of the man’s breakfast ready, he carried that over, too. “Half a dollar, all told,” he said.
“Here y’are.” Sophocles slapped down sixty cents. “Things is up a little from last year,” he remarked.
“But only a little,” Scipio said. “Do Jesus, when dey was playin’ games wid de money, breakfas’ cost you fifty million dollars, maybe fifty billion dollars. I’s powerful glad dey fix it—dey pretty much fix it, anyways.”
Sophocles and Erasmus both nodded. Inflation had almost destroyed the CSA. How could anybody do business when money might lose half its value between the morning when you got it and the afternoon when you found a chance to spend it? Prices
were
higher now than they had been when the currency was restored; the C.S. dollar didn’t trade at par with its U.S. counterpart. But it was still close, and didn’t seem to be sinking very fast.
Erasmus said, “The white folks don’t go runnin’ to the Freedom Party fast as their legs can take ’em when their money worth somethin’.”
Sophocles nodded again, chewing a mouthful of bacon. So did Scipio. “De Freedom Party buckra, dey scares me plenty,” he said. “Dey wish we was all dead. Dey he’ps we along, too, case we don’ feel like dyin’.” More nods.
More customers came in. On such a miserable morning, business was slower than usual. Scipio kept hopping even so. When he wasn’t carrying food out to hungry men and women, he was washing dirty dishes or making fresh coffee or stirring the big pot of grits. Erasmus didn’t let him do much real cooking, but did give him jobs like that. He also wrapped fish for people who didn’t come in to eat there.
However much he did, he would have felt like a fool complaining about it, for Erasmus did more.
Erasmus worked harder than anybody he’d ever seen, save possibly John Oglethorpe. Maybe their both owning their businesses had something to do with that.
Erasmus certainly worked harder than any other black man Scipio had ever seen. And he’d been born a slave; he’d spent more time in bondage than Scipio had. A lot of Negroes still held to the slave’s pace of labor, doing just enough to satisfy an overseer, even though they were free now. Erasmus worked to satisfy an overseer, too, but his lived inside his head. He had a harsher straw boss than any cursing, whip-wielding, tobacco-chewing white man. His boss whipped him on from within.
Could I do that?
Scipio wondered. He had his doubts. He
wanted
things done properly, yes; Anne Colleton had made sure to instill that into him. But did he have the driving
need
to get things done, even when he was the only one urging himself on? He’d rarely seen it in himself. He’d rarely had to look for it, either. If he ever got his own place, he’d have to.
After the breakfast rush, such as it was, eased, Erasmus put on a wide-brimmed hat of no known make and a rain slicker. “Mind the store a spell, Xerxes,” he said. “I gwine buy some more fish. One of the boats was late, and I reckon I kin git some prime deals, on account of most folks ain’t comin’ back.”
“I do dat,” Scipio said. Erasmus hurried out into the rain.
Would I do the same?
Scipio wondered. He was honest enough to admit to himself he didn’t know.
T
he closing whistle shrilled in the Toledo steel mill. Chester Martin pushed his helmet up onto the top of his head. He blinked against the glare as he hurried to clock out. He’d been looking at molten steel through smoked-glass rectangles all day. Now he saw all the light there was to see. It was almost too much to bear.
As he stuck his card in the time clock, he spoke up to anyone who’d listen: “Election day today. Don’t forget to vote, dammit. Only way you should forget to vote is if you want the Democrats back in Powel House.”