The Victorious Opposition (60 page)

“By God, Cookie, yesterday I’d’ve puked these up,” Johnny O’Shea said. “This morning, they’re goddamn good.” He shoveled another forkful into his face.

Hatton was a round, red-faced man with a barbed wit. “If somebody’d lit a match under your nose yesterday, he could’ve used your breath for a blowtorch,” he replied. “Today you’re on your way to remembering your name.”

“Fuck you,” Johnny said sweetly.

The cook nodded. “There—you see? I knew that was it.” The men in the crowded galley laughed. Even Johnny laughed—he knew he’d lost that round.

When the
Sweet Sue
finally got out to the Grand Bank, there was little more time for laughter. Boats from the USA, the CSA, the Republic of Quebec, occupied Canada and Newfoundland, Britain, Ireland, France, and Portugal bobbed here and there on the ocean. Captain Albert found a place at the edge of one pack of boats and started fishing.

George lost track of how many big hooks he baited with frozen squid. The process was as automatic as breathing for him. If he’d thought about it, he probably would have stuck himself. Every so often, somebody did. Then it was the nasty business of pushing the barb through and snipping it off, the even nastier business of iodine, and, if a man hadn’t had one in a while, a tetanus shot from the first-aid kit. And, with his hand bandaged, he’d go back to fixing hooks.

But when the lines came in . . . when the lines came in, work really started. Gaffing a wriggling tuna that weighed as much as a man, gutting it, kicking the offal over the side, and getting the fish into the ice in the hold went on hour after hour. Sometimes it wouldn’t be a tuna—it would be a tuna head, proof that a shark had found the fish first. Off the hook, over the side. Sometimes a shark would be on the hook. Gaff him, gut him so he stayed dead, and pitch him overboard.

The endless fishing went on for the next three weeks. By then, the
Sweet Sue
had more than twenty tons of tuna in her hold and rode noticeably lower in the water than she had when she set out from T Wharf. George still didn’t know how good a trip it was. He wouldn’t till the skipper sold the tuna. But he knew he was finally ready to head back to Boston. After all, he had to remind his kids who he was.

B
rigadier General Abner Dowling was not a happy man. He felt betrayed not only by the War Department—which would have been nothing tremendously unusual—but also by the entire government of the United States. Having the whole government gang up on him didn’t happen every day.

But Dowling certainly felt it had happened here. He’d come to Covington to help keep Kentucky in the United States. He’d got a good start on doing just that, too. And then Al Smith had jerked the rug out from under him by going to Richmond and agreeing to a plebiscite. The only way the USA could win that plebiscite would be for Jesus Christ to appear in Louisville and curse Jake Featherston with words that glowed like burning coals—and even then it would be close.

Now, ironically, what Dowling was watching over was the presidential election campaign. Up till Al Smith said there would be a plebiscite after all, he couldn’t have got elected dog catcher in Kentucky. Now Red Socialist posters were everywhere in Covington. They showed Smith’s face and the slogan,
THE HAPPY WARRIOR
—
HE’S KEPT US OUT OF WAR.
More went up all the time, too.

The Democrats were running Senator Bob Taft—son of longtime Congressman William Howard Taft—from across the river in Ohio. In a normal year, he would have scored well in conservative Kentucky. This wasn’t a normal year, nor was Kentucky a normal state. The Freedom Party had ambushed the local Democrats from the right, and the Freedom Party, taking its cue from Richmond, was loudly for Smith.

Besides, Taft had denounced the plebiscite. Like most Democrats, he remained in favor of holding on to the gains the USA had made in the Great War. That would have doomed him here anyway.

“Isn’t it grand?” Dowling said at supper one evening. “Kentucky will vote Socialist in February, and then it’ll vote Freedom in January. Tell me how that makes sense.”

All the officers with whom he was eating were junior to him, of course. None of them ventured to claim that it didn’t make sense, or that he was worrying too much. A major did say, “At least the Freedom Party is on its best behavior from now until January.”

“Bully!” Dowling exploded, which made the younger officers look at one another. He caught the looks, and knew why they made them. They didn’t say
bully
, and they thought only dinosaurs—anyone who remembered the nineteenth century certainly qualified—did. Dowling was too exercised to care. He went on, “Of course those bastards will be on their best behavior. They don’t have to blow things up any more to get what they want. All they have to do is wait. Wouldn’t you be on your best behavior, too?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” the major replied. “The only trouble is, their being quiet goes a long way toward making our presence here irrelevant, wouldn’t you say?”

“Like hell I would,” Dowling growled. “If we weren’t here, if we weren’t doing the job we’re supposed to do, how much worse would things be?”

The major, being only a major, did not presume to contradict. That helped ease Dowling’s mind—a little. He kept up a bold front not least for the sake of the men he commanded. He wasn’t about to admit he thought his presence in Kentucky was irrelevant. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone but himself, anyhow.

When he looked at the name of the man with whom he had his first appointment the next morning, it rang a bell. He went through some files and nodded to himself. The homework he’d done before taking command in Covington had paid off. “Good morning, Mr. Wood,” he said when the man strode into his office. “And what can I do for you today?”

Lucullus Wood held out his hand. Dowling reached out and shook it with, he hoped, no noticeable hesitation, even if he wasn’t used to treating a Negro as his social equal. Wood was in his early or mid-thirties: a wide-shouldered man, blocky rather than fat, with high cheekbones and an arched nose that argued he might have a little Indian blood in him. Without preamble, he said, “Kentucky got troubles, General.”

“Yes, indeed.” Dowling’s voice was dry. “Do you aim to stop them or cause more?”

Before answering, Wood sat down across from Dowling. Dowling hadn’t invited him to, but he didn’t say anything. When the black man smiled, he looked like a predatory beast. “Depends on for who you mean,” he answered, adding, “Reckon you know who I am, then.”

“When I got here, they told me you made the best barbecue in town,” Dowling said. “I’ve tried it. They were right.”

“Hell they was.” Lucullus Wood sounded affronted. “I make the best barbecue in the whole goddamn state. So did my old man.”

Dowling looked down at the notes he’d taken. “Your father was . . . Apicius Wood. I hope I’m saying that right.” He waited for the Negro to nod, then went on, “And one after the other, you and he have been the two biggest Reds in town. Or are you the two biggest Reds in the whole goddamn state?”

Woods blinked at that. After a moment, he decided to laugh. “Maybe he was. Maybe I is. Maybe we ain’t never been,” he said. “Folks who talk about that stuff, they don’t always do it. Folks who do it, they don’t always talk about it.”

“Well, if you don’t do it, if you’ve never done it, why am I wasting my time talking to you?” Dowling asked. “Tell me what you’ve got on your mind, and we’ll see if we can do some business.”

Lucullus Wood blinked again. “You ain’t what I reckoned you would be,” he said slowly.

Abner Dowling’s shrug made his chins quiver. “Life is full of surprises. Now come on, Mr. Wood. Piss or get off the pot.”

“Come January, a lot of colored folks is gonna want to git the hell out of Kentucky,” Wood said. “Reckon you got some notion why.”

“We won’t stop them,” Dowling answered. “They’re U.S. citizens. We will respect that. Some whites will want to leave the state, too.”

“Some. A few.” Wood spoke with dismissive scorn. “Some colored folks, though, some colored folks is gonna stay. Dunno how many, but some will. Some damn fools in every crowd, I suppose.”

“If I were a Negro, I wouldn’t stay in Kentucky,” Dowling said.

Wood’s eyes went to the shiny silver star on the right shoulderboard of Dowling’s green-gray uniform. “Don’t suppose they lets no damn fools turn into generals,” he remarked.

As far as Dowling was concerned, that only proved the colored man didn’t know as much about the U.S. Army as he thought he did. Custer, for instance, had worn four stars, not just one. But Custer, while doubtless often a fool, had been a very peculiar kind of fool, and so. . . . With an effort, Dowling tore his thoughts away from the man he’d served for so long. “Fair enough,” he said to Lucullus Wood. “I’m sure you’re right about what will happen. Some Negroes will stay here. Some people don’t know to get out of a burning building till too late, either. But if the U.S. Army has to leave Kentucky after the plebiscite, what concern to us are they?”

“If we was white folks, you wouldn’t talk like that about us.” Wood didn’t try to hide his scorn. Dowling wondered if a Negro had ever reproached him like that before. He didn’t think so. He hadn’t dealt with a whole lot of Negroes—not many people in the USA had—and the ones he had dealt with were all in subordinate positions. After a deep, angry exhalation, Wood went on, “You reckon the niggers in Kentucky gonna like all them damn white bastards runnin’ around yellin’, ‘Freedom!’ all the goddamn time?”

“I wouldn’t,” Dowling answered. If
he’d
called Negroes niggers, Lucullus Wood might have tried to murder him. Being one himself, Wood could use the label. But then that thought slipped away and another took its place: “What do you suppose they’ll want to do about it?”

Anger dropped away from Wood like a discarded cloak. “No, General, you ain’t no damn fool. You got to understand, I ain’t in love with the USA. Revolution comin’ to y’all, too. But we gots to make a popular front with whoever’s on our side even a little when it comes to them Freedom Party cocksuckers.”

“How much of a nuisance do you think your people can be, and how much help do you want from the United States?” Dowling asked. “The more we can set up before the plebiscite, the better off we’ll be.”

“More we kin set up before the plebiscite, better off the USA’ll be,” Wood said cynically. “Ain’t gonna be no more good times for the niggers here after that. But I figure we kin raise some kind of trouble for the Confederates when they comes marchin’ back in here.”

“It would be nice if you could arrange as much for them as the Freedom Party fanatics did for us here and in Houston,” Dowling said.

“Be nice for y’all, yeah, but don’t hold your breath, on account of it ain’t gonna happen,” Wood said. “Lots mo’ white folks here and down there than there is niggers. Revolutionary, he got to swim like a fish in the school of the people. Us blackfish, we is a smaller school.”

He didn’t sound like an educated man. But when it came to the business of revolution, he spoke with an expert’s authority. Abner Dowling found himself nodding. “I suppose you’re right,” he said regretfully. “But if you people just happened to find some wireless sets and rifles and explosives lying around, you might figure out what to do with them, eh?”

“We might.” Lucullus Wood nodded, too. “Yes, suh, General, we just might cipher out what they’s for.”

I ought to get War Department authorization for this,
Dowling thought. He rejected the notion the minute it occurred to him. The War Department might not want to get officially involved in resisting Confederate occupation. Then again, some of the people in the War Department might just get cold feet.
I’m here. They put me in charge. I’ll take care of things, God damn it.

“All right, then,” he said. “We’ll see to that. And I know you’re not doing us any special favors. But what works against the CSA works for the USA. That’s how things are.”

Wood nodded again. “That’s how things is,” he agreed. “We is fellow travelers on this here road for a while, even if we’s goin’ different places.”

“Fellow travelers.” Brigadier General Dowling tasted the phrase. “Yes, I can live with that.”

“You been fair to me, General, so I be fair to you,” Wood said. “Come the revolution, we go different ways. Come the revolution, I reckon I try an’ kill you. Nothin’ personal, you understand, but you is one o’ the ‘pressors, and you got to go to the wall.”

“Fair is fair,” Dowling said, “so I’ll tell you something, too. You want to be careful about threatening a man with a weapon in his hand. He has a nasty habit of shooting back.” With a sour smile, he too added, “Nothing personal.”

“Sure enough,” the Negro said imperturbably. “Them Freedom Party fellas, they done found that out down further south. Reckon mebbe we teach ’em some new lessons here in Kentucky. Is that a bargain?”

“That’s a bargain.” Dowling heaved himself to his feet and held out his right hand once more. Lucullus Wood took it. The Negro dipped his head and sauntered out of Dowling’s office. Dowling looked down at his own right palm. Had he ever shaken a colored man’s hand before today? He didn’t think so. Kentucky was proving educational in all sorts of ways.

“S
orry, kid.” The man who shook his head at Armstrong Grimes didn’t sound sorry at all. He sounded as if he’d said the same thing a million times before. He doubtless sounded that way because he had. “I can’t use you. I want somebody with experience.”

Armstrong had heard that a million times since finally escaping high school. His temper, which had never been long, snapped. “How the hell am I supposed to get experience if nobody’ll hire me on account of I don’t have any?”

“Life’s tough,” the man in the hiring office answered, which meant,
To hell with you, Jack. I’ve got mine.
He lit a cigarette, but didn’t quite blow smoke in Armstrong’s face. Maybe his first long drag made him feel a little more like a human being, because he unbent enough to say, “One way to do it is to odd-job for a while. Sometimes you can get hired by the day even if somebody doesn’t want you for keeps.”