The Victorious Opposition (63 page)

It pulled into Covington at eleven that night. The neighbor, Menander Pershing, stood on the platform with his father. Cincinnatus’ father looked older and smaller and wearier than Cincinnatus had dreamt he would. After embracing him, Cincinnatus looked nervously across the brightly lit platform.

“Ain’t none o’ them Kentucky State
Po
lice this time,” Seneca Driver said. He’d been born a slave, and still talked like it. After so long hearing the accents of the white Midwest, Cincinnatus found his father’s way of speaking strange and ignorant-sounding, even though he’d sounded like that himself when he was a boy. His father hadn’t even had a surname (and neither had he) till they’d all taken the same one after Kentucky returned to the USA in the Great War.

Cincinnatus couldn’t help looking around some more. As far as he could tell, nobody was paying any attention to him. Little by little, he began to relax. “Freedom Party don’t give you no trouble?” he asked.

“Don’t want trouble from nobody,” his father said. “I minds my business, an’ I don’t git none.”

“Ain’t too bad,” Menander Pershing added. He was about Cincinnatus’ age, lean, with a few threads of gray in his close-cropped hair. He fixed autos for a living, and wore a mechanic’s greasy overalls. “They reckon they win come January, so they bein’ quiet till then.” He jerked a thumb toward the exit. “Come on. I got my motorcar out in the lot.”

U.S. soldiers were searching some passengers’ bags as they left the station. The men in green-gray waved Seneca and his companions through without bothering. It might have been the first time in his life when being colored made things easier for him. The soldiers didn’t think Negroes would back the Freedom Party no matter what. They were likely to be right, too.

Menander Pershing’s auto was an elderly Oldsmobile, but its motor purred when he started it. Getting in, Cincinnatus asked, “How’s Ma?”

“Well, she sleepin’ now. That’s how I come away,” his father answered. “You see in the mornin’, that’s all.” He wouldn’t say anything more.

Even by moonlight, the house where Cincinnatus’ parents lived was smaller and shabbier than he remembered. He lay down on the rickety sofa in the front room and got what sleep he could.

In the morning, heartbreak began. His father had to introduce him to his mother; she didn’t recognize him on her own. After she came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand, she looked at him and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Cincinnatus, Ma,” he said quietly, and felt the sting of tears.

As long as they stayed in the room together, she seemed to know who he was. When she left to go to the outhouse, though, she came back and looked at him as if she’d never seen him before in her life. As far as she knew, she hadn’t. Fighting the stab at his heart, he introduced himself again.

“She like that,” Cincinnatus’ father said sadly. “She still know me all the time. She better, after all these years. But she don’t know nobody else, not so it stick.”

Cincinnatus pounded a fist into his thigh. “Damn!”

“Don’t you talk like that, young man! I switch you if you cuss in the house!” For two sentences, his mother sounded just the way she had when he was thirteen. Hearing that
damn
might have flipped a switch in her head. Old things seemed more familiar to her than new ones. But then her eyes went vague again. She forgot her own annoyance. Seeing her forget might have been harder to bear than anything.

Or so Cincinnatus thought, till he too went out back to use the outhouse—a fixture he hadn’t had to worry about for many years—and returned to find his father rushing out to get him. “She run off!” Seneca cried. “I go back in the kitchen for a minute, and she run off!”

“Do Jesus!” Cincinnatus exclaimed. “We got to find her.” He and his father hurried out to the front yard. Cincinnatus looked left and right. No sign of her. “You go this way,” he told his father. “I’ll go that way. She ain’t gone real far.”

Off he went, quick as he could. When he got to a corner, he hesitated. Up or down? Either way might prove a dreadful mistake—and he had the chance for another one at every corner he came to. Swearing under his breath, he dog-trotted along the street. Each time he came to a corner, his curses got louder.

But luck was with him. He rounded one last corner and there she was, on the far side of the street, strolling along as if she knew just where she was going. “Ma!” Cincinnatus yelled. “Ma!” She paid no attention to him. Maybe she didn’t hear. Maybe she’d forgotten a grown man could call her his mother.

Cincinnatus ran out into the street after her—and his luck abruptly changed. He remembered a squeal of brakes, a shout, and an impact . . . and then, nothing.

When he woke, he wanted that nothing back. One leg was on fire. Someone was taking a sledgehammer to his head. He opened his eyes a crack. Everything was white. For a moment, he thought it was heaven. Then, blearily, he realized it had to be a hospital.

He made a noise. A nurse appeared, as if by magic. He tried to talk. At last, after some effort, he succeeded: “Wha’ happen?”

“Fractured tibia and fibula,” she said briskly. “Fractured skull, too. When they brought you in a week ago, they didn’t think you’d make it. You must have a hard head. You had to be nuts, running out there like that. The guy in the auto never had a chance to stop. And how are you going to pay your bills?”

That was the least of his worries. His wits didn’t want to work. The injury? Drugs? Whatever it was, he tried to fight it. “Ma?” he asked. The nurse only shrugged. “Got to get out of here,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not till you’re better. And you aren’t going anywhere for quite a while, believe you me you’re not.”

“Plebiscite,” he said in dismay. The nurse shrugged again. Cincinnatus drifted back into unconsciousness. If he whimpered, it might have been pain and not fear. Pain was what the nurse took it for, anyhow. She gave him another shot of morphine.

W
inter in Covington, Kentucky, was of positively Yankee fury. Anne Colleton didn’t care for it a bit. But she didn’t complain, either. She’d pulled every wire she could reach to get to be a Confederate election inspector. Now that she was here, she intended to make the most of it.

Disapproval stuck out like spines from the fat brigadier general who commanded the local U.S. garrison. He knew what was going to happen when the votes were cast on Tuesday. He knew, but he couldn’t do one damned thing about it.

Anne disliked the idea of Negroes voting in the plebiscite as much as Brigadier General Rowling (she thought that was his name, but wasn’t quite sure—he wasn’t worth remembering, anyhow) disliked the idea of the plebiscite itself. She had grumbled about that.

Brigadier General—Rowling?—wouldn’t listen. He said, “Your president agreed to it, so you’re stuck with it.”

She had no answer for that. What Jake Featherston said, went. “Let them enjoy it while they can, then,” she said, “because they sure won’t be doing any voting after Kentucky comes back where it belongs.”

The U.S. officer scowled. She’d hoped he would. He said, “Maybe you’d like to go into the colored district yourself on Tuesday so you can see everything is on the up and up?”

“I’m not afraid, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“Bully for you,” said the fat man from the United States. Anne couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard anyone say
bully
, even sardonically.

January 7, 1941, dawned clear and cold. Anne Colleton got up to see the sun rise to make sure she missed none of the plebiscite. Polls opened at seven. Polling places were officially marked by the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars flying in front of them—and unofficially by the armed U.S. soldiers who stood outside each one to make sure there was no trouble. Jake Featherston had offered to send Confederate soldiers into Kentucky and Houston and Sequoyah to help with that, but President Smith had told him no, and he hadn’t pushed it. For the moment, they remained U.S. territory.

For the moment,
Anne thought with a ferocious smile.

Both the USA and the CSA had poll watchers at every polling place. They checked the men and women who came in to vote against the lists of those who were eligible. Every now and then, they would argue. Both sides kept lists of contested voters. If the plebiscite turned out to be close, those lists would turn into weapons. In Kentucky and Houston, at least, Anne didn’t think the vote would be close.

She did go into the colored part of Covington. Her motorcar flew the Stars and Bars from the wireless aerial. In most of Covington, people had cheered when they saw it. In the colored district . . . Anne wished she’d thought to take down the flag.

Some of the U.S. poll watchers in the colored part of town were Negroes: young men who’d grown up and got an education while Kentucky belonged to the USA. Because the voting rolls for Negroes were new and imperfect, they bickered constantly with their C.S. counterparts, and argued with them as if they believed they were just as good as whites. In the Confederate States, that would have been a death sentence.

One of the Confederate poll watchers said as much: “When this here state goes back where it belongs, you better recollect what happens to uppity niggers, Lucullus.”

The Negro—Lucullus—looked steadily back at him. “You better recollect what happens when you push folks too far,” he answered. “You push ’em so far they don’t care if they lives or dies, why should they care if
you
lives or dies?”

“Talk is cheap,” the white man fleered. Lucullus said not a word. Anne feared he’d won the exchange.

When she came out of the polling place—a little storefront church—she discovered her auto had a smashed windscreen (though they said
windshield
in the USA). Her driver was out of the motorcar, hopping mad and yelling at a U.S. soldier: “Why the hell didn’t you stop that goddamn nigger? He flung a brick right in front of your nose, and you just stood there.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The green-gray-clad soldier sounded anything but sorry. By his accent, he was from nowhere near Kentucky. “I didn’t see a thing.”

“What is your name?” Anne demanded. “I’m going to report you to your commanding officer.”

“Jenkins, ma’am. Rudy Jenkins,” the soldier answered. “And you can report as much as you please, but I won’t lose any sleep over it.”

She thought about telling him where to go and how to get there in the sort of language he would use himself—thought about it and decided it would do no good. Oh, she intended to give his name to that stuffed pork chop in a brigadier general’s uniform, but she was sure that would do her no good, either. Jenkins might get a public slap on the wrist, but he was bound to get some private congratulations along with it.

She turned to the driver. “Just take us on to the next stop. This fellow can laugh as much as he pleases, but he’ll be leaving soon, and we’re going to stay.”

The driver fumed. But Rudy Jenkins fumed even more. Anne nodded to herself. She’d done that right.

Before she left the colored district, the auto picked up a couple of more dents. The driver plainly wanted to curse some more; her presence in the motorcar inhibited him. “To hell with these goddamn bastards,” she said, her voice crisp. “From now on, no one will give a shit what they think. Right?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am.” He sounded scandalized. She smiled; she’d heard a lot of men sound that way. On they went, to a new polling place in the white part of town. There, Freedom Party stalwarts waving Party flags paraded just outside the hundred-foot electioneering limit. The U.S. soldiers by the polling place looked as if they wanted to shoot the men in white shirts and butternut trousers. The stalwarts were careful not to give them an excuse.

Anne went from one polling place to another till the polls closed at eight o’clock. Then the driver took her to the Covington city hall, where the votes would be counted. As at the polling places, both the USA and the CSA had observers present to make sure the count went straight.

Watching it progress, Anne found more people in Covington voting to stay in the United States than she would have liked: certainly more than the Negro vote—and what a mad notion that was!—accounted for. Some of the whites who’d grown up in the USA must have been too lazy to want a change. Even so, returning to the Confederacy took an early lead in Covington, and never lost it.

Wireless sets blared in the white-painted, windowless, smoke-filled room where the ballots were tallied. They let the counters and the observers keep track of what was going on in the rest of Kentucky and in the other states where there were plebiscites. Return to the CSA held the same sort of lead in Kentucky as a whole as it did in Covington—less than Anne would have liked, but plenty to win. Houston was going for the CSA in a rout: better than three to one. Sequoyah . . . Sequoyah gave the damnyankees something to smile about, because the people there seemed to be choosing to stay in the United States.

The tally in Covington finished about half past one. By then, Anne’s driver had fallen asleep in a folding chair. She eyed him in some admiration; she didn’t think she could have done that in a quiet room, let alone in the noisy chaos at city hall. He jerked and almost fell out of the chair when she shook him awake again. She was sorry about that, but not sorry enough to keep from doing it.

Noisy chaos roiled through the rest of Covington, too, as she saw on the short trip back to her hotel. Freedom Party stalwarts and others who backed the CSA danced in the streets, waving Party flags, the Stars and Bars, and the Confederate battle flag. A lot of them were drunk. They cheered the Confederate flag on the aerial of Anne’s battered auto. Somehow, the cheers turned into a rousing chorus of “Dixie.”

Anne wondered if the celebrants would go into the colored district and take their revenge on Covington’s Negroes for voting to stay in the USA—or for having the nerve to vote at all. Maybe the U.S. soldiers who still patrolled the town would keep them from doing that. But any Negroes who stayed in Covington after Kentucky changed hands wouldn’t have a happy time of it. Anne supposed a lot of them would go while the going was good.
The United States are welcome to them,
she thought.