Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

  Kenan finished the verse: “‘The blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard.’”

  “Hear, hear.”

  “The limeys didn’t have Gatling guns, did they? Maybe they’d have done better,” one of the young men said, and the others laughed.

  Kenan glared at him. Sam was impressed by how suddenly, by his mere presence, he could take command.

  “I just meant—”

  “Never mind, son,” Kenan said, back to his avuncular self. Turning that meat grinder on men, he thought. He said, “In the old days, it was different. Man to man. When you aimed your gun at a man, well, it was different.”

  Sam recalled the story he’d heard—Kenan taking a potshot at President Lincoln. Had any president ever died in battle? A lone man, the man sitting at the head of this table, had come within inches of ending the greatest American war in history. With a single shot. He might have been the most famous man in the world.

  “Times are changing,” Walker Taylor observed. “The twentieth century will be the golden age of American technology. I can remember when we didn’t even have telephones in this town.”

  “Pretty soon, we’ll have flying machines,” said one of the young men. “There was an article in Collier’s.”

  “We already have balloons.”

  “Not balloons—actual machines,” the young man persisted. “Winged aeroplanes. Can you imagine a machine that can soar over the heads of troops? Can you imagine if you mounted a Gatling gun on that? My God, one crew could command a whole battlefield.” His eyes shone with the glimmer of a true believer who had never been under fire.

  “You’re dreaming,” Captain James said. “We’re years away from that. Decades away. Maybe another whole century. And machines are just machines. It still comes down to the man. His integrity. What he’s able to do. What he’s willing to do.”

  Kenan pondered that. In his dream, his will had not been able to command the machine. The machine had taken on a will of its own. This twentieth century was frightening. He wasn’t sure it would have any use for a man like him. His son, he was the man of the future—a man who could control the machines.

  For the next hour, they refought the great battles of the War of Secession: Lee should not have ordered Pickett to charge suicidally at Gettysburg, wiping out all those North Carolina boys; Grant could have been outflanked in the swamps of Vicksburg, if anybody had suspected he’d advance from that direction; Fort Fisher could have held out forever, even against ten thousand Yankees, if only General Braxton Bragg had acted decisively in the early, crucial hours of battle.

  Sam listened intently, hoping to hear the secret of what made men courageous. And then he told them all about San Juan Hill, where he had never been.

  After dinner, they went out into the backyard and arm-wrestled across a plank table. Kenan rolled up his sleeves and beat five of the young men in succession.

  “Old Iron Buck,” Sergeant Alton Lockamy said.

  “Indestructible,” agreed the young men, grinning.

  Sam wondered what Kenan was trying to prove.

  They took turns pissing into the oleanders along the board fence. Kenan woke the puppies and showed them off. The Reverend Hoge got very drunk and left quite suddenly. Walker Taylor drank very little and kept pulling out his gold watch.

  Sam wondered what Gray Ellen was doing. He checked his own watch—almost ten o’clock. He wanted to stay, but he felt he should go. Just a few minutes longer. He wasn’t drinking. This was good company. She would understand.

  Inside again, they all smoked cigars. Sam took one from Kenan. A couple of the young men drifted away. At eleven, Walker Taylor went out as if he had somewhere else to go. At midnight, Captain James left. Realizing he was the only one still sitting in the parlor, Sam got up to leave also.

  “Stay a minute,” Kenan said, putting a firm hand on his arm.

  “I should get home. It’s already much later—”

  “Yes, I know. But tell me, what was your reason for going out on the river?”

  “Reason? I didn’t have any reason.” Hugh dragged me over there and gave me a pistol, he thought. “It was an assignment. I had no idea.”

  Kenan nodded, his face florid with liquor. His moustache bristled silver. “Yes, of course. I should have realized.”

  Sam recalled Frank Manly’s livid face glaring up at him.

  “It’s a strange thing,” Kenan went on. “People—civilians—think of military men as bloodthirsty killers. Craving battle, mayhem. Can’t wait for it all to start, they think.”

  He stopped talking and focused his red eyes on Sam. Sam felt trapped: what was he expected to say? What did Kenan want to hear?

  Kenan had drunk quite a lot, more than he had intended. It was Mary’s being away, rattling around this empty house all day. The dream. “But we know better. We’ve been there, eh?”

  “Right,” Sam said.

  Kenan smiled, realizing how drunk he must be to be badgering the poor fellow like this. Thing was, Jenks reminded him of his own boy. Not in his appearance—Bill Junior was far more handsome—but in his manner, how he paid attention to things. How he looked awhile, saw what was what and who was who, before he made up his mind. Most men nowadays didn’t pay any damned attention. They were born with all the right answers. Never bothered to ask the questions. As the century came to a close, it seemed to Kenan, the world was spinning faster and faster. It was hard to keep up. Hard not to lose your head. Hard not to go along with the machine men.

  When the century turned—what would happen then? Would it just spin out of control and unravel? The tombstone in his dream had read 1903. Not possible.

  He needed his own boy with him now. His time was running out. He didn’t believe in dreams. Hysterical women with too-tight corsets were the ones who had morbid dreams, fretting over the melodrama. But he believed in this dream. The next century didn’t belong to him. He wanted to do things right from now on, not make any more mistakes. He wanted to hand things over to his boy in good order, but he was afraid the order was coming apart. Gettysburg didn’t matter anymore. Whether Pickett did or didn’t charge. In the next war, it would just be machines anyway.

  Why hadn’t he made that shot at Fort Stevens? Of all the shots of his life—the turkeys he had won, the deer he had dropped, the pickets and artillery spotters he had picked off—why had he missed that single shot?

  The most famous shot of his life—a miss.

  But it wasn’t a miss, not exactly. His heart hadn’t been in the shot. President Lincoln was unarmed. He wore no uniform. His stovepipe hat stuck up above the parapet, an unmistakable target. He stood still as a post, staring straight toward the Confederate position. The man next to him squinted over the sights of a musket, and Kenan’s shot killed him. He had felt the arc of his bullet flying into the soldier’s face as if it were on a string. The president had never even ducked.

  If only Lincoln had borrowed a rifle, taken a sporting potshot at the advancing skirmishers.

  There was a lot to remember about those days, a lot to keep track of. Memories accumulated weight with the years. Things kept adding on. A man had to be careful to keep his center, remember what he stood for. He had missed, but he had not dishonored himself. Leave that to assassins like John Wilkes Booth. A man should face his enemy, take his chances.

  Kenan didn’t want to be alone tonight. What if the dream came back? If Jenks could stay awhile, they could have another cigar.

  “Got to be going, Captain,” Sam said. “It’s been a pleasure.”

  Kenan nodded and shuffled toward the door. When he opened it to let Sam out, the night rushed in cool and full of sound. Things were happening out there, he knew. Men were meddling with the order. His boy was in Mexico building a dam. In the barn behind the armory, the gun was waiting, cool and silent, the ugliest open secret in town.

  He poured himself another whiskey and sat up till the windows went light, listening to the clamor of the empty house, waiting for his
wife to come home. At dawn, he slept and dreamed of Mexico, a chatter of voices in Spanish, an ocean breeze, horses cantering in the surf, the tropical sun warm on his weary face.

  Walker Taylor took the block and a half to Third Street in long strides. He turned north another two blocks to First Presbyterian Church. With a key, he let himself in a back door, leaving it unlocked behind him. When he lectured Sunday school in the community hall of this church, as many as a hundred people would gather to listen. Boys and girls, but also full-grown men. Rough men. He could talk to them all.

  Here was the place he had started his Boys Brigade—saving bad boys from falling into the gutter. Every July, he took them to Camp George, at the mouth of the river, near Southport. Only the boys who attended four weeks of lessons in a row were allowed to go. The boys adored him. They slept in tents and fished off the beach and told stories around driftwood campfires. They came home lean and brown, their little souls sturdier. He did it for them. They were his mission.

  In the sacristy, Walker Taylor waited in the dark.

  Within minutes, the other men drifted in: Fennell, Beery, Meares, Robertson, Smith. Walker Taylor lit a beeswax candle. It smelled sweet in the musty air.

  “Rountree did a fine job procuring the thing,” Beery said. “Quite a show on the river.”

  “It stays at the armory,” Walker Taylor said. “The Wilmington Light Infantry have charge of it.”

  “But as commander of the State Guard—”

  Walker Taylor nodded. “Right. In a crisis, they answer to me.”

  Fennell said, “I don’t like Dan Russell coming down here to give a goddamn speech.” Nobody said anything, but they all were embarrassed by cursing in the sacristy. “Nor Dockery, nor Pritchard.”

  “I don’t see what we can do,” Walker Taylor said. “It’s a free country.”

  Fennell persisted. “But it will stir everybody up before it’s time.”

  “Maybe we should just give our own speech,” Smith said.

  “Who could set the right tone?” Beery said. “It would have to be the right tone.”

  “Get ’em riled up, but keep the lid on.”

  “Right,” Walker Taylor said. “Let me talk to George. He mentioned someone.”

  “Waddell,” Beery said. “That old warhorse. That’s who he wants.”

  Walker Taylor said, “We’ll see. We’ll just see.”

  “I like it,” Smith said. “He can put fire in their bellies.”

  “He’ll give us a stemwinder,” Robertson said, “if anybody can do it.”

  “Man can hold a crowd,” Beery said. “You better believe it.”

  Meares, who had not yet spoken, said, “You’re playing with fire.”

  Beery said, “You want Colonel Taylor to be mayor, don’t you? Isn’t that what we want?”

  The men all agreed that this was so.

  “We’ve got to push,” Beery said. “Not too hard, but not too soft, either.”

  Walker Taylor thought about being mayor. A man could accomplish a lot of good for people. In this town, a lot of things needed doing. He could do them—he and his army of good boys. “We’ve got to keep the Red Shirts in line,” he said.

  Fennell said, “They’ll come in damned useful on Election Day.”

  Walker Taylor said, “Now, you listen to me. We’re not vigilantes. We are defenders of the civil order.”

  “Men in this town want to work,” Beery said. “White men. Mike Dowling is their hero.”

  “He’s an out-of-work house painter.”

  “Nobody’s hiring nigrahs anymore,” Meares said.

  Fennell said, “Nobody’s firing ’em fast enough, either. This thing’s going to go off.”

  Walker Taylor said, “Don’t spoil the larger plan.”

  “Less than a month,” somebody said.

  “Can we rely on Kenan, when the time comes?” Beery said.

  Walker Taylor gave him a look that made him sorry he’d asked.

  “Will Colonel Davis interfere?” someone said. Charles Davis was acting adjutant general of the State Guard—Colonel Taylor’s superior.

  Walker Taylor said, “I have assurances that he will authorize a local solution.”

  The men nodded.

  Walker Taylor said, “George will be around to collect money from each of you for the Businessmen’s Committee. We have certain debts. He estimates we will need to raise about thirty thousand dollars. Encourage your colleagues to be generous.”

  They nodded and murmured. Things were getting accomplished. They’d already seen what they were getting for their money.

  Beery said, “Solly Fishblate keeps sniffing around.”

  “Absolutely not,” Walker Taylor said.

  “What do I tell him?”

  “Tell him he had his chance. He’s permanently retired from politics.”

  “He’ll keep his people from—”

  “The people we need are sitting in this room. The people we need are on the Businessmen’s Committee. We’re trying to form a government, not a mob.”

  Fennell said, “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is law,” Walker Taylor said, his voice too big for the sacristy. “The difference is order. The difference is that we must be able to feel morally proud when it’s over. We must be able to answer with a clear conscience those who will judge our actions a hundred years from now.”

  Fennell said, “Like I said, what’s the difference?”

  The race question, which might be possibly soluble without great trouble were all negroes all negro, becomes a sociological problem of awful possibility when we consider that miscegenation has made and is making inroads into the Caucasian race in this country to an extent little realized by the masses of people.

  New York Times, August 18, 1900

  CHAPTER NINE

  Saturday, October 15

  THE WORD WAS OUT: no Negroes need apply.

  The White Government Union had appointed a Labor Bureau to find jobs for white men only. All employers had to hire through the bureau or face the consequences. Hugh MacRae, the Businessmen’s Committee, and the Wilmington Light Infantry stood behind the bureau with all their guns and law.

  On the street corners of Brooklyn, boys passed out handbills. “Mind your jobs, Negro workingmen,” the handbills said in part. “Stay out of politics. Don’t vote, or else.”

  Or else what? Alex Manly wondered. How far would they go? Frank Manly said they’d go as far as they had to: guns, shooting, vigilantes in the streets. Alex wasn’t convinced—he’d heard the rhetoric before. If they meant to act, they wouldn’t be talking so much. They were clearly bluffing. This wasn’t the era of the Ku Klux Klan, with midnight rides and lynchings at every country crossroads. This was a new day. Alex Manly had watched it come in. He’d written words that had coaxed it along. He was the daily voice of a whole people who had been silent far too long. It was a station worth guarding.

  And the Record was finally beginning to turn a profit. That—not political rhetoric—was the true measure of the sea change, in this town and in cities all over the South. Negroes were at last becoming an economic force. The value of their skilled labor and the power of their pocketbooks would guarantee them greater and greater freedom. Bigotry didn’t have a chance against the dollar.

  Carrie had written him from London—all good news and gushing success. He reread the letter three times, not for the words but for the fair curve of her hand, the elegant, looping signature of an irresistible woman. He carried it in his pocket all day. If he closed his eyes, he could hear her full, throaty voice, see the broad Tuscarora Indian features that made her face so beautiful to him. Feeling confident again, he ventured out-of-doors alone to attend a meeting called by the Reverend Kirk to calm the jitters of the Negro community.

  Six blocks straight uphill from the train station, five blocks north of Hugh MacRae’s mansion, gaslights were burning at Central Baptist Church. The Reverend J. Allen Kirk, D.D., was vainly trying
to bring his boisterous congregation under control. It wasn’t his usual congregation. The church was packed with more men than he had ever seen—men whose wives and daughters and mothers were his usual flock, other men he had never seen before, rough men from the cotton mills, occasional laborers, brothers and cousins from the country, even a few troublemakers up from Charleston and Atlanta. The walls shuddered with the sheer press of human muscle. The heated air wavered over their heads, holding the mutter of troubled voices.

  The floorboards flexed under the weight. The whole building seemed to expand and contract with the great collective breathing of the congregation. The building was alive, moving, the flimsy container of a great frightened soul. In all his years of preaching the gospel of the Lord, he had never seen anything like it. Here was the active presence of grace in the world, the physical yearning for salvation, thundering hearts and sweating palms, tearful eyes and a hollow ache in the stomach.

  They all felt it. He felt it. God was hovering over his congregation tonight. The Holy Ghost sheltered them under his brilliant wings. He smiled and took a deep breath, then another. The Holy Ghost would give him the words. He would trust to faith to tell them what they needed to hear.

  The Reverend Kirk stood in the center of the chancel and listened, holding up one hand for silence. The noise went on.

  The Reverend Kirk looped the stole over his high collar and marched to the pulpit with it fluttering as a crimson stripe against his brushed black suit. The pulpit was a little platform raised three steps above the level of the congregation. He solemnly climbed the steps and bowed his head, then lifted his arms in a stiff V, palms out to signify, once again, silence. The murmuring continued longer than he liked. “Brothers and sisters,” he began. There was still some muttering in the back. A boot banged against a wooden pew. “Brothers and sisters, let us pray to Jesus.”

  But before he could say anything more, a tall figure in gray swooped into the chancel from a side door and began to speak. “We can talk to Jesus by and by!” the gray preacher, Ivanhoe Grant, shouted. His voice had a high melody to it. The shout soared over their heads and hung there, resonating against the pulse of the congregation.