Return Engagement (21 page)

“Amen to that,” Chester said. “I think we could have settled earlier—the union hasn’t made any secret about the terms it was after—but I’m awfully glad we’ve got an agreement at last.”

A man from the
Pasadena Star-News
asked, “With so many workers going into defense plants, how much will this deal really mean? Can the union keep its members? Except for war work, how much building will be going on?”

“You want to take that one?” Martin and Casson both said at the same time. They laughed. So did everybody else at the press conference. With a shrug, Chester went on, “Steve, to tell you the truth, I just don’t know. We’ll have to play it by ear and see what happens. The war’s turned everything topsy-turvy.”

“That about sums it up,” Harry T. Casson agreed. “We’re doing the best we can. That’s all anybody can do, especially in times like these.” He held up a well-manicured hand. “Thank you very much, gentlemen.”

Some of them still scribbling, the reporters got up from their folding chairs and headed off toward typewriters in their offices or towards other stories. “Well, Mr. Casson, we’ve gone and done it,” Chester said. “Now we see how it works.”

“Yes.” The building magnate nodded. “That’s what we have to do.” He took out a monogrammed gold cigarette case that probably cost at least as much as Martin had made in the best three months of his life put together. “Smoke?”

“Thanks.” Martin got out a book of matches that advertised a garage near his place. He lit Casson’s cigarette, then his own. The tobacco was pretty good, but no better than pretty good. He’d wondered if capitalists could get their hands on superfancy cigarettes, the way they could with superfancy motorcars. That they couldn’t—or at least that Casson hadn’t—came as something of a relief.

Casson eyed him. “And where do you go from here, Mr. Martin?”

“Me? Back to work,” Chester answered. “Where else? It’s been way too long since I picked up a hammer and started working with my hands again.”

“I wonder if you’ll get the satisfaction from it that you expect,” Casson said.

“What do you mean?”

“You said it yourself: you haven’t worked with your hands for a long time,” Casson answered. “You’ve worked with your head instead. You’ve got used to doing that, I’d say, and you’ve done it well. You’re not just a worker any more. For better or worse, you’re a leader of men.”

“I was a sergeant in the last war. I commanded a company for a while, till they found an officer who could cover it,” Chester said.

Harry T. Casson nodded. “Oh, yes. Those things happened. I was a captain, and I had a regiment for a couple of weeks. If you lived, you rose.”

“Yeah.” Chester nodded, too. He wasn’t surprised at what Casson said; the other man had the air of one who’d been through the mill. “Point is, though, I didn’t miss it when the shooting stopped. I don’t much like people telling me what to do, either.”

Casson tapped his ash into a cheap glass ashtray on the table. “Maybe not, but you’ve done it, and done it well. You’re in command of more than a regiment these days. Will the people you’re in charge of let you walk away? Will the lady who’s in charge of you let you do it?”

“Rita’s my worry,” Chester said, and Casson nodded politely. Rita hadn’t wanted him to start a union here. He remembered that. Why would she care if he went back to what he’d done before? If
local president
sounded grander than
carpenter,
so what? As for the other members of the union . . . “There’s bound to be somebody who can do a better job than I can.”

“You may be surprised,” Harry T. Casson said. “You may be very surprised indeed. You’ve been stubborn, you haven’t been vicious, and you’ve been honest. The combination is rarer than you’d think. I made a bargain with you in half an hour, once I decided I needed to. I wouldn’t even have dickered with some of your, ah, colleagues.”

“That’s flattering, but I don’t believe it for a minute,” Martin said.

“Believe it,” the magnate told him. “I don’t waste time on flattery, especially not after we’ve made our deal. What’s the point? We’ve already settled things.”

“I’m glad we have, too,” Chester said.

“Yes, well, this poor miserable old country of ours is going to take plenty more knocks from the damned Confederates. I don’t see much point in hurting it ourselves,” Casson said.

“Makes sense,” Chester said, and then, “Is Columbus really surrounded?”

“All I know is what I read in the newspapers and hear on the wireless,” Casson answered. “The Confederates say it is, we say it isn’t. But both sides say there’s fighting north of there. Draw your own conclusions.”

Martin already had. He liked none of them. He said, “I’m from Toledo. I know what holding on to Ohio means to the country.”

“I hope people back East do,” Casson said. “If they don’t, I think the Confederates’d be happy to teach them.” He grimaced, then tried a smile on for size. “Not much either one of us can do about that.”

“No, not unless we want to put on the uniform again,” Chester said. Harry T. Casson grimaced again, in a different way. Chester laughed, but not for long. “If Ohio goes down the drain, it could come to that. If Ohio goes down the drain, we’ll need everything and everybody we can get our hands on.”

He hoped Casson would tell him he was wrong, tell him that he was flabbling over nothing. He wouldn’t have agreed with the building magnate, but he hoped so anyhow. Casson didn’t even try. He just said, “You’re right. We’re a little long in the tooth, but only a little, and we’ve been through it. They’d put green-gray on us pretty damn quick if we gave ’em the chance.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Martin said.

“Have you?” Casson pointed a finger at him. “You’re mine now. I can blackmail you forever. If you don’t do what I say, I’ll tell
that
to your wife.”

“Rita already knows,” Chester said. That was true. He didn’t say anything about how horrified she’d been when she found out. He didn’t suppose he could blame her. Her dismay was probably the biggest single thing that had kept him from visiting a recruiting station. He didn’t say anything about that, either; it was none of Harry T. Casson’s business. He just took his copies of the agreement they’d signed. “I’d better get home.”

“You don’t have an auto, do you?” Casson asked.

“Nope.” Chester shook his head.

“That’s hard here,” the magnate said. “Los Angeles is too spread out to make getting around by trolley very easy.” Chester only shrugged. Casson went on, “I’d be happy to give you a lift, if you like.”

“No, thanks,” Chester said. “I took the trolley here. I can take it back. If you give me a ride, half the people in the union will think I’ve sold ’em down the river. And that’s liable to be what you’ve got in mind.”

The other man looked pained. “Times are pretty grim when a friendly gesture can get misunderstood like that.”

“You’re right. Time
are
pretty grim when something like that can happen,” Chester said. “But these are the times we’ve got. We’ve made a deal. I’m glad we’ve made a deal—don’t get me wrong. We’re class enemies just the same, and pretending we’re not isn’t going to change things even a dime’s worth.”

“I’m surprised you’d rather fight Featherston than me,” Casson said.

“Up yours, Mr. Casson,” Chester said evenly. “He’s a class enemy, too, and he’s a national enemy.” Before the Great War, Socialists hadn’t realized how nationalism could trump the international solidarity of the proletariat. They had no excuse for not seeing that now.

Harry T. Casson snorted. “Have it your way. I still think the whole notion of class warfare is a bunch of crap.”

“Of course you do. You can afford to.” Chester walked out with the agreement and the last word.

VI

E
arly one stiflingly hot and sticky July morning, Cincinnatus Driver watched colored men lining up at the edge of Covington, Kentucky’s, Negro district. A sign said,
WAR WORK HERE
. Three or four policemen—whites, of course—hung around just to make sure nobody got out of line literally or metaphorically.

Half a dozen buses rolled up. They were old and rickety. The nasty black diesel fumes that belched from their tailpipes made Cincinnatus cough. It wasn’t the poison gas the Confederates and Yankees were shooting at each other on the far side of the Ohio, but it was bad enough.

Doors wheezed open on the buses. The blacks filed aboard. They filled each bus to overflowing, taking all the seats and packing the aisles. More fumes poured from tailpipes as the buses rolled away. Disappointed blacks who hadn’t managed to get aboard milled around on the sidewalk.

“Form a new line!” one of the cops bawled. “Form a new line, goddammit! Next buses come along in fifteen minutes!”

The Negroes obeyed. They might have been so many sheep.
Lambs to the slaughter,
Cincinnatus thought. He got moving again, putting weight on his cane so he didn’t have to put it on his bad leg. He couldn’t go fast enough to get out of his own way. By now, the policemen were used to seeing him around. They hardly ever asked for his passbook any more, at least as long as he stayed in the colored district.

He couldn’t have worked in a war plant even if he’d wanted to, not unless they found him a job that involved sitting down all the time. Such jobs undoubtedly existed. Did blacks have any of them? Cincinnatus doubted that. It would have been unlikely in the USA. In the CSA, it was inconceivable, or as close as made no difference.

But these Negroes, swarms of them, lined up for the chance to work at whatever kind of jobs their white rulers deigned to give them. Kentucky hadn’t been back in the Confederate States for very long. Blacks here had already learned the difference between bad and worse, though. This was bad: long hours, lousy pay, hard work, no choice, no possible complaint.

Worse? Worse was drawing the notice of Confederate authorities—in practice, of any suspicious white. If that happened, you didn’t go on a ride to a war plant. You went for a ride, all right, but you didn’t come back. People talked about camps. People talked about worse things than camps. A strange phrase had crept into the language since Cincinnatus found himself stuck in Covington.
You gonna git your population reduced,
one Negro would say to another when he meant the other man would end up in trouble. Cincinnatus hadn’t heard that one before. He knew endless variations on
git your tit in a wringer
and
git your ass in a sling,
but
git your population reduced
was new—and more than a little ominous. The next person he heard of who’d come out of a camp would be the first.

He shuffled on. His father was sprier than he was these days. He hated that. With his mother slipping deeper into her second childhood every day, his father needed someone who could help keep an eye on her and take care of her. Cincinnatus had come down from Des Moines so he could take them both back to the USA before Kentucky returned to the Confederate fold. Thanks to the man who’d run him down, Seneca now had two to take care of.

Somebody’d pasted a crudely printed flyer to a brick wall. sabotage! it said in bold black letters, and underneath,
Don’t make things the Freedom Party can use against the USA! If the Confederacy wins, Negroes lose!
Below that was a set of broken chains.

Cincinnatus read the flyer out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t turn his head towards it. Someone could have been watching him. Besides, he’d seen that particular flyer before. During the Great War, he’d become something of a connoisseur of propaganda posters. This one, he judged, was . . . fair.

Nothing wrong with the message. If the CSA and the Freedom Party beat the USA, things would only get worse for blacks here. But calling for sabotage was calling for a worker to take his life in his hands. Those who got caught paid. Oh, how they paid.

He also saw lots of places where a flyer—probably the same one—had been torn down. Not many people would want that message on their wall or fence or tree. It would land them in trouble with the Confederate authorities, and trouble with the Confederate authorities was the last thing any black man in Covington needed.

Not entirely by coincidence, Cincinnatus’ amble took him past Lucullus Wood’s barbecue place. He started to go inside, but he was still reaching for the knob when the door opened—and out strode a gray-uniformed policeman gnawing on a beef rib as long as a billy club.

“You comin’ in, uncle?” the cop said around a mouthful of beef. Grease shone on his lips and chin. He held the door open for Cincinnatus.

“Thank you kindly, suh,” Cincinnatus said, looking down at the ground so the policeman wouldn’t see his face. The man had done something perfectly decent: not the sort of thing one necessarily expected from a cop in Covington at all. But then he’d gone and spoiled it with one word.
Uncle.
Like
boy,
it denied a black male his fundamental equality, his fundamental humanity. And, worse, the policeman seemed to have no idea that it did.

Lucullus’ place did a brisk breakfast business, mostly on scraps and shreds of barbecued beef and pork cooked with eggs and with fried potatoes or grits. Cincinnatus sat down at a bench and ordered eggs and pork and grits and a cup of coffee. Everything came fast as lightning; Lucullus ran a tight ship. Cincinnatus’ eyes widened when he took his first sip of the coffee. He sent the waitress an accusing stare. “You reckon I don’t know chicory when I taste it? There any real coffee in this here cup at all?”

“There’s some,” she answered. “But we havin’ trouble gettin’ the real bean. Everybody havin’ trouble gettin’ the real bean, even white folks. We got to stretch best way we know how.”

Cincinnatus took another sip. Some people in the CSA—especially blacks—had a taste for coffee laced with chicory. Some even liked it better than the real bean. He hadn’t even tasted it since he moved up to Iowa. It did help pry his eyes open. He couldn’t deny that. “You go on, girl,” he told the waitress. “It’ll do. But you let Lucullus know he got somebody out front who wants a word with him.”

“I do that,” she said, and hurried off.

Lucullus didn’t come out right away. Cincinnatus would have been astonished if he had. When he did, he planted his massive form across the table from Cincinnatus and said, “So you ain’t much for chicory, eh?”

“It’s all right. It’s tolerable, anyways,” Cincinnatus answered. “What it says that you can’t get no coffee . . . that’s another story.”

“There’s some. There’s always some, you wanna pay the price for it,” Lucullus said. “But it ain’t cheap no more, like it was before the war. I charge my customers a quarter a cup, pretty damn quick I ain’t got no customers no more.”

With his barbecue, he would always have customers. Cincinnatus took his point just the same. After another forkful of grits, he spoke in a low voice: “I seen six buses first pickup this mornin’. More comin’ in fifteen minutes,
po
lice say.”

“Six, with more comin’,” Lucullus echoed quietly. Cincinnatus nodded. Lucullus clicked his tongue between his teeth. “They got a lot o’ niggers workin’ for ’em.”

“You don’t work for ’em, somethin’ worse happen,” Cincinnatus said. “You don’t work
hard
for ’em, somethin’ worse happen. You seen that sabotage flyer?”

“Yeah, I seen it,” Lucullus answered. His smile was broad and genuinely amused. Cincinnatus hadn’t asked him if he’d had anything to do with putting it up. Seeing it was safe enough. The other wasn’t.

“Lots o’ colored folks try that, they end up dead,” Cincinnatus said.

“Colored folks don’t try somethin’ like that, we all liable to end up dead,” Lucullus said. Cincinnatus made a face. That was going too far . . . wasn’t it? But Lucullus nodded. “You reckon Jake Featherston don’t want us dead?”

“Well, no,” Cincinnatus said; nobody in his right mind could believe that. But he went on, “There’s a difference between wantin’ us dead an’ makin’ us dead.”

“You go on thinkin’ that way, you gonna git your population reduced.” Lucullus pointed at Cincinnatus with a thick, stubby forefinger. “You hear that before?”

“I heard it,” Cincinnatus said unwillingly.

“You suppose the folks who say it, they jokin’?” Lucullus persisted.

“How the hell do I know?” Cincinnatus spoke with more than a little irritation. “I ain’t been in the goddamn Confederate States for a hell of a long time. Never wanted to be in the Confederate States again, neither. How do I know how you crazy niggers talk down here?”

That made Lucullus laugh, but not for long. He said, “We talks that way on account o’ what goes on at them camps in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana. You don’t believe they reduces their population there? You don’t believe they kills people so they don’t got to worry ’bout feedin’ ’em no more? You don’t believe that?”

Cincinnatus didn’t know what he believed. “Don’t want to believe it,” he said at last. “Even Featherston ain’t that much of a son of a bitch.”

“Hell he ain’t.” Lucullus had no doubts. “Mebbe they kills us whether we fights back or no. We sits quiet, though, they kills us for sure.”

“He’s fightin’ the damnyankees,” Cincinnatus said. “How’s he gonna do that if he’s doin’ all this other shit, too? USA’s bigger’n the CSA. Featherston’s a bastard, but he ain’t no fool. He got to see he can’t waste his men and waste his trains and waste all his other stuff goin’after niggers who ain’t doin’ him no harm.”

“You been up in Ioway. You ain’t been payin’ enough attention to the CSA. Even when Kentucky was in the USA, I had to,” Lucullus said. “Why you reckon Confederate factories make about nine million tractors and harvesters and combines a few years back?”

“I seen that when it happened. Don’t tell me I don’t pay no attention,” Cincinnatus said angrily. “Any damn fool can tell you why they done it: on account of any factory that can make tractors can make barrels, too, that’s why.”

Lucullus looked surprised, and not just at his vehemence. “That’s part o’ why, I reckon,” he admitted. “But they’s more to it than that. They put all them machines in the fields. Just one of ’em do the work of a hell of a lot o’ nigger farmhands. Niggers want to work, they got to go to town. Mister Jake Featherston got hisself a whole new proletariat to exploit . . . an’ the niggers who fights back, or the niggers who can’t find no work no way, nohow, he goes an’ he reduces their population.”

Cincinnatus stared at him. That had to be the most cynical assessment he’d ever heard in his life, and he’d heard a lot of them. But, along with the cynicism, it made a lot more sense than he wished it did. Then Lucullus went back to his office. He returned a minute or so later. Cincinnatus wouldn’t have minded if the barbecue king had brought back a bottle. Even though it was early, he could have used a drink after the talk they were having. But Lucullus wasn’t carrying a bottle. Instead, he set a book on the table between them.

“
Over Open Sights,
” Cincinnatus read aloud.

“It’s all in here,” Lucullus said. “Featherston ain’t just a bastard, like you say. He’s a bastard who knows what he wants to do. An’ he wrote some of this shit back during the Great War. He
say
so, for Chrissake. He’s knowed what he wants to do for
years.
”

S
cipio watched a plump, prosperous white businessman eat his venison at the Huntsman’s Lodge. The man’s supper companion was a very pretty blonde half his age—not his wife, as Scipio knew. He was saying, “Have you had a look at
Over Open Sights,
sweetcakes?”

That wasn’t, to put it mildly, the approach Scipio would have taken. The girl said, “I’ve seen it, but I haven’t read it—yet.” She added the last word in a hurry.

“Oh, baby, you have to.” The man paused to take a big gulp from a glass of burgundy whose rich bouquet Scipio savored from ten feet away. He’d ordered it because it was expensive. Treating a vintage like that was a disgrace, to say nothing of a waste. Scipio couldn’t do a thing about it, though. Nor could he do anything but stare impassively as the man went on, “He’s sound on the nigger question. He’s very, very sound. He knows just what he wants to do about coons.”

Did he even remember Scipio was standing close by? Remember or not, he didn’t care. What was a black waiter but part of the furniture? The man’s companion said, “Good. That’s good. They’re a pack of troublemakers.” She had no trouble forgetting about Scipio’s existence, either.

They remembered him when they ordered peach cobbler for dessert, but gave no sign of knowing he’d been around while they were eating. Scipio was tempted to spit in the desserts. With something gooey like peach cobbler, they’d never know. He finally didn’t, though he had trouble saying why.
Life is too short,
was all that really occurred to him.

The white man tipped well. He left the money where the girl could see it. He aimed to impress her, not to make Scipio happy. Scipio didn’t care. Money was money.

Jerry Dover saw him pocket the brown banknotes. The manager missed next to nothing. He would have said—he did say—his job was to miss next to nothing. “Got yourself a high roller, did you?” he said as Scipio came back toward the kitchen.

“Not too bad,” Scipio allowed.

“How come you don’t look happy, then?” Dover asked.

“I’s happy enough,” Scipio said. His face became the expressionless mask he used to shield his feelings from the outside world, the white man’s world. Even Jerry Dover had trouble penetrating that reserve.

He had trouble most of the time. Not tonight. “Sidney goin’on about niggers again?” he asked.

“Well . . . yeah, he do dat some,” Scipio said unwillingly.

“Can’t be a whole lot of fun for you to listen to,” Dover said. Scipio only shrugged. His boss asked, “You want to go home early? All right by me.”

“An’ leave you shorthanded? Nah. I be fine,” Scipio said, angry at himself for letting the white man see he was upset.