Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

“Thank you, dear. I don’t mean to carry on like this.” She mopped her face till the handkerchief was limp and filthy. She sipped from her cup and smacked her lips. “Nothing like a nice cup of tea when you’re feeling low.”

  Across the fence, her two boys were yelping like wild dogs. “Come see the parade!” they shouted. “Come see the parade!”

  The Red Shirts, Mike Dowling at their head, rode down Castle Street in a column of four, twenty deep. In the November light, their shirts looked crisp and military. The stocks of their Winchesters gleamed with linseed oil—Dowling had ordered them to spruce up their rigs for today’s gala. Most of them wore jaunty slouch hats, like Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

  Dowling had borrowed a cavalry saber for the occasion, but he was unused to it, and it clanked against his boot as he rode, bruising his ankle.

  As they passed knots of staring Negroes, they drew pistols and Winchesters and fired them into the air. The Negroes disappeared in a hurry. The mood in the ranks was jovial, lots of laughter. Men joshing, smelling the gun smoke in the autumn air.

  They turned onto Third Street. “Coming into the finer neighborhoods,” Dowling warned over his shoulder. “Holster them guns.”

  The two women seated on the porch at Third and Ann streets didn’t wave. Dowling didn’t care. Today, everybody would see who really ran this city. From a tall horse, a man could see a long way. He could listen to the good creak of leather, feel the muscled rhythm of the horse that carried him above the shit of the street, feel the power of mounted men eager to be commanded into action. He could see his own future as a golden glow at the end of a hard, fast ride.

  Well behind the Red Shirts marched Colonel Walker Taylor and his Boys Brigade, uniformed in khaki, white wooden drill rifles on their shoulders. Taylor deliberately put as much distance as he could between his boys and Dowling’s riders.

  As the Red Shirts and the Boys Brigade proceeded through town, the crowd lining the streets fell in behind them and followed. At Chestnut Street, in back of the post office, the Red Shirts reined up in a park where tents had once been erected to house returning Confederate veterans. Today, those same old tents, flaps tied up, housed trestle tables and a brass band. At a brick barbecue pit, half a dozen men turned beef ribs and stirred pork barbecue in iron pots. Under the white canvas tents, ladies dished out coleslaw, cornbread, potatoes, okra, greens, and pecan pie.

  From a solid silver tureen, two Daughters of the Confederacy ladled lemon punch.

  The band was playing “The Battleship of Maine,” a popular marching song from the Cuban war. The Red Shirts picketed their mounts military fashion along a rope. The Boys Brigade milled around, admiring the horses, then stacked their toy rifles and formed up for barbecue.

  By the time Sam arrived at the park, the party was well under way. White supremacy banners flew on ropes suspended between the ridgepoles. Boys waved American and Confederate flags. Colonel Waddell, Pastor Hoge, George Rountree, Walker and J. Allan Taylor, and Hugh MacRae were seated at a special reserved table at the head of the biggest tent, like a wedding party. Clawson was standing nearby, talking over Walker Taylor’s shoulder.

  “Well, at last—the press!” Colonel Waddell joked when Sam walked up.

  “Big turnout,” Sam said.

  Over the music of the band and the clamor of shouted conversations, Rountree was talking seriously. He had been to see Governor Russell two weeks ago, along with Hoge.

  Sam knew that, after a lot of leaning, Governor Russell had backed down, canceling last week’s scheduled speech in Wilmington and promising to keep the Republicans from fielding a slate of candidates. He hedged, same as when he had let the Democrats take a majority on the Board of Audit and Finance. He was running scared. In 1870, when the Democrats swept the state ballot, they had impeached the Republican governor. Russell was too cagey to expose himself like that.

  He laid down a condition: the two Democratic candidates most likely to impeach him must be taken off the ballot in favor of more moderate candidates. The delegation had agreed.

  One of the new “moderate” nominees was George Rountree.

  Meantime, the Republican slate had collapsed. Ben Keith, drafted to run for the state senate, had announced in a letter to the Messenger and other newspapers in town, “I cannot afford to sacrifice my business interests for political considerations.” Twice, he’d been ambushed by thugs from the White Government Union, and the Red Shirts had enforced a boycott of his store. He was going broke and feared for his life. The daily mail brought anonymous threats to his family. Rountree visited him late one night and wrote the letter for him.

  Dan Gore, candidate for the state house of representatives, and like Keith an alderman, had also gotten scared off. He was easier than Keith—a single brick through his front window, wrapped in a sheet of paper on which was scrawled a crude skull and crossbones. He vowed publicly to vote the white supremacy ticket. He gave Rountree fifty dollars for the campaign war chest.

  Other champions of Fusionism and Negro suffrage—acting Sheriff George Z. French and Flavell Foster prominent among them—had quit the fight. Foster had been the Yankee commissar during the occupation of Wilmington at the end of the Civil War. Despite the fact that he’d doled out food and blankets generously to paroled Confederate prisoners, they’d never forgotten he was a Yankee.

  The field was open. The ballot would include no Republican candidates for county commissioner, sheriff, coroner, clerk of superior court, or state house of representatives. The only black man slated to run in the first place, for register of deeds, had quietly withdrawn.

  Oliver Dockery would still stand for the United States Congress against John D. Bellamy, and everybody already knew how that would turn out.

  “Congratulations, George,” Colonel Waddell said. “You’re going to come out of this a state representative.”

  “We haven’t won anything yet,” Rountree said, put off by Waddell’s tone. “Nobody votes till Tuesday.”

  “Still,” Clawson, the editor, said, “it’s all in place. We’re ready to move anytime.”

  “That’s enough,” Rountree said, looking around at the crowd, who were mostly ignoring the men at the table. “The less said, the better.”

  Waddell smiled, made a sweeping gesture with his hand to include the gang of Brigade boys in khaki uniforms, the Red Shirts filtering past in twos and threes with full platters of barbecue, the other men and women making a noisy holiday. “‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.’ The handwriting is on the wall.”

  “Still, a little discretion, gentlemen. Things can change at any moment.”

  Pastor Hoge said, “I hear the nigrahs are going to put up their own slate of candidates.”

  Walker Taylor agreed. “I’ve heard that, too.”

  “They’ll mob the polling places,” Hugh MacRae said, fidgeting, twisting his hands together. He alone was neither eating nor drinking. “They’ve got the numbers.”

  Sam said, “Come on, you don’t believe—”

  The look in their eyes stopped him. Clawson squinted at him across the table. Everybody stopped eating. Walker Taylor held his glass to his lips but did not drink.

  MacRae said mildly, “We’ve got more experience than you in these matters. You just pay attention and write it up.” Sam heard the threat in his voice. It was a voice that could say anything and make it come true.

  Mike Dowling entered the tent and shuffled toward them between the rows of tables, a Red Shirt flanking him left and right—bodyguards. Dismounted, he was a short man with a heavy torso, apish arms, and bandy legs. The rusty cavalry saber bounced against his leg.

  “Well, if it ain’t Himself,” Clawson said.

  “Delusions of grandeur,” Walker Taylor said.

  Waddell added, “Somebody ought to show the gentleman the proper way to wear a sword.”

  Walker Taylor said, “He’s got almost a hundred rifles behind him now.”

  Dowling and his men nodded as they passed. Sam saw the bulg
e of a flask in his back pocket. Dowling commandeered an empty table, stood at the head, and waited until his Red Shirts were lined up along both sides. Then, when he nodded, they all sat down together.

  “Thinks he’s in the officers’ mess,” Waddell observed.

  “Never mind him,” Rountree said. “I know how to handle that kind.”

  Sam said, “How’s that?”

  Rountree struck a match to a cigar. “Give him a job. Something with a uniform and gold braid that doesn’t carry a gun.” He tossed away the match.

  MacRae laughed and said, “George, you’ve got a way of cutting right to the heart of things.”

  From the other direction appeared Solly Fishblate. “Look what’s coming,” MacRae observed.

  Waddell said, “It’s getting so a gentleman can’t enjoy his dinner in peace.”

  The Reverend Hoge said, “Did the old Jew ever ante up for the campaign war chest?”

  Rountree nodded. “Took me three visits. Finally squeezed fifty dollars out of him.”

  “Blood from a stone,” MacRae observed.

  Fishblate wasn’t carrying any food. He stood before them, arms crossed, mouth and cheek jumping in a nervous tic. “Gentlemen,” he said, face flushed, out of breath, as if he’d run all the way from his shop on Front Street. “I had no idea you were planning such a show.” He stood rocking on his heels, holding his left arm as if it were broken, waiting for somebody to invite him to sit down. No one did.

  “Rumors,” Fishblate blurted out. “To my ears come these rumors.” His arms uncrossed and boxed his own ears, then flailed the air. “Secret plans, secret committees, things to happen after the election.”

  “Let’s control ourselves,” Walker Taylor said.

  “Town’s full of rumors,” Rountree observed, drawing on his cigar. “What else is new?”

  “I have met with my people. It was not easy, on such short notice, but they listen to Sol Fishblate. They are willing to go along.” He collected himself and caught his breath. “I want you to know,” he continued in a lower voice, and paused, studying their faces, “that I am willing to serve again.”

  Rountree looked puzzled. “How’s that?” He held his cigar casually, his index finger hooked over it.

  Fishblate grabbed the handkerchief out of his front pocket and mopped his brow and neck. “To serve again. As your mayor.”

  MacRae said quietly, “You’re jumping the gun.”

  “But the secret committee, the plan.”

  Walker Taylor said, “There’s no secret committee—get that out of your head.”

  Rountree said, “There’s no secret plan. We’re going to win back the county and the legislature. That’s as far as it goes.”

  “But I contributed money. I was given to understand—”

  “We all kicked in,” Walker Taylor said. “Put this town back on a stable footing.”

  “Make it safe again for decent white women to walk the streets,” Waddell said. This was the first he’d heard anybody mention this mayoral business. Suddenly, he was very sure he’d been left out of some important conversations. He’d have to ask a few discreet questions in the right quarters. But there was no need to include Solly Fishblate, not yet—if Fishblate’s administration hadn’t been so incompetent, they wouldn’t be in this mess. He might talk to him later, though, in private.

  “But as long as Dr. Wright and his crowd—”

  “Let it be, Solly,” MacRae advised. “Now, run along out of here—we’ve got business.”

  Fishblate, too, found an empty table, across the aisle from Dowling’s, and it soon filled with his old Dry Pond cronies. They bent their heads over the table and talked with their bodies.

  When Fishblate had gone, Sam asked his cousin directly, “What about it? Is there a secret committee?” He expected wild anger, maybe even a fist.

  MacRae only sighed and said, “You’ve been reading too many romances,” and patted him on the back.

  “Secret plan, that’s rich,” Walker Taylor said.

  George Rountree said, “Sam, there’s not a thing going on here that we’re not proud to do in the light of day, out in the open, with the whole town watching. That’s why it’s called democracy.”

  Outside the tent, the breeze had freshened into a wind, snapping the flags. The white supremacy banner bellied like a sail, and under it Walker Taylor’s Boys Brigade performed close-order drill with their wooden toy rifles. Their mothers and fathers shouted “Bravo!” and clapped till their hands warmed with blood. Other boys looked on, envy shining in their eyes.

  Walker Taylor looked on proudly. These were the boys everybody else had given up on, the bad boys, the truants and shoplifters and little gangsters, and he’d drilled them into a corps of proud soldiers for progress. It was only the beginning of what he could do for this town.

  Bring it to order, then all things were possible.

  Behind the drilling boys, the Red Shirts mounted their horses, sleeved their Winchesters, and quietly headed for Brooklyn.

  In his first-floor library half a block from Market Street and just around the corner from Hugh MacRae’s mansion, J. Allan Taylor sipped brandy, waiting for the Pinkertons. He wondered how much Walker knew. They’d need Walker when the trouble came—a first-rate military man like him was hard to find. But Walker was naive about politics. He actually believed he was going to be mayor when this was all over.

  The Pinkertons were half an hour late. It was going on one. The grandfather clock ticked away the minutes. He’d left the kitchen door open for them, but he’d left no outside lights burning—couldn’t risk their being seen. After the demonstration today, the speeches and the marching music, then the Red Shirts’ rampage through Brooklyn all evening—smashing up shops, shooting rifles—he wasn’t sure they’d dare venture into this part of town at all after dark.

  He was just pouring another short brandy when they darkened the door of his library. He was startled. He had expected to hear them at the back door—door thunking shut, feet shuffling across the kitchen floorboards, voices muttering. But they had simply materialized without warning.

  “Don’t just stand around,” he said softly, so as not to wake his family. “Come in.”

  The two Negro men entered warily and sat on the edge of the chairs he had arranged in front of his desk. He got up heavily—realizing all at once how very tired he was, how late it was, how curiously old he was feeling tonight—and drew closed the French doors.

  Both men wore rumpled city suits without ties—one blue, one brown. They held their slouch hats on their knees and fidgeted nervously. The one in the brown suit was smaller-framed, wore a moustache, and did all the talking. His name was Albert Tully.

  “We’ve been up and down this town,” he said. “We’ve peeked into windows, listened at bedroom doors, praised the Lord in seven churches, got our hair cut eleven times, treated every brother in Brooklyn to free beer.” He cleared his throat. “We got the story, boss.”

  Taylor briefly wondered whether to offer the Pinkertons brandy, but thought better of the idea. Still, he felt awkward sipping his own, so he let the snifter sit untouched on the desk. “Keep your voice down, please,” he said.

  “Beg pardon, boss.”

  “So tell me a story.”

  Albert looked at the quiet one, who nodded and fingered his hat, turning it endlessly across his knee.

  “It’s a bad story, boss. Raining sticks and stones out there tonight.”

  “Go on.”

  “There’s a high-yellow rabble-rouser behind it all,” he said.

  Taylor nodded. “Manly.”

  He shook his head. “Not Manly, boss. Another man. Stranger in town. Preacher fellow, goes by the name of Grant. Ivanhoe Grant.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You will.”

  “What about him?”

  “Stirring ’em up plenty.”

  “They got guns?”

  “More than you’d care to know.”

&
nbsp; Taylor wondered what could persuade a man to inform on his own people. Surely, there was more to it than money. “Hasn’t your friend got anything to say for himself?”

  The Negro in the blue suit stopped twirling his hat and smiled. “I be the quiet type, boss,” he said with a certain pride. He narrowed his eyes. “I walk through walls. I slide down chimbleys. Invisible man, that’s me.” He touched his vest with a delicate finger. “Slip into bed between man and wife and listen to sweet nothings all night long.” He didn’t smile.

  “Lester here is a ghost,” Albert Tully explained.

  Taylor looked unnerved.

  Albert Tully chuckled. “That’s a word we use in the trade for a pure spy. Man can find out things without getting found out. Get inside all the right places—and get out again.”

  “Get inside your head,” Lester said.

  “Do they have a plan?”

  “Wouldn’t call it no plan, perzactly,” Lester said.

  “Going to be a surprise,” Albert Tully said. “On Election Day, they’re going to mob the precincts, vote their own men in by hook or crook.”

  “We’ve got that covered,” Taylor said, thinking of all the armies at their disposal—the Red Shirts, the Light Infantry, the Naval Reserves, the State Guards. All the good men he could count on to lead them—Donald MacRae, Buck Kenan, Roger Moore, Tom James. “What else?”

  “Servants,” Albert Tully went on. “On election night, they will rise up against their masters. Burn their houses to the ground.”

  “What? Burn their houses?”

  Albert Tully leaned so far forward he was practically sitting on thin air. “They’ve been bragging, boss—every child in Brooklyn has a can of kerosene and knows how to strike a match.”

  “My God, I hadn’t realized—”

  “It’s the truth, boss,” Albert Tully said, and Lester nodded. “That’s how they’re talking. Burn the sin out of this town. Like some Bible story. Tom Miller, the loan man, he says he’s going to wash his hands in white man’s blood.”

  “Tom Miller?” Taylor dipped his pen in the inkwell and started taking notes. “Tell me everything,” he said. “Give me names and places. Especially names.” MacRae would want chapter and verse. Now, there could be no doubt—they must act. With this new intelligence, they would have to strike even harder. Shoot to kill. The lesson would have to be even more thorough.