Behind the wagon, sixty Naval Reserves, bayonets fixed, stood ready to deploy as skirmishers.
Dowling twisted his neck, taking it all in. “How did you know—?”
MacRae said, “The telephone, Mike. New invention. Why don’t you have your men dismount and water their horses?”
Dowling glared at him. All along the block, people were leaning out open windows to see what was happening. Dowling gave a signal. His men dismounted and shielded themselves behind their horses. It was unthinkable that the infantry would fire on them. But they were dealing with MacRae.
“Let’s just talk awhile, you and me,” MacRae said.
Dowling followed him into L. B. Sasser’s drugstore, where Sasser, a member of MacRae’s Secret Nine, joined them at a table in the back room.
“I don’t have to tell you,” MacRae began, “that we face a delicate situation here.”
“Don’t pussyfoot around,” Dowling said too loudly. With enough bravado, he could reassure himself. “Delicate, hell. Me and my boys, we try to set things right. Well, we sure know who our friends are.”
“We’re all on the same side,” MacRae said coolly. Sasser’s clerk brought them all coffee.
“Funny way to show it, then—drawing down on my boys.”
Sasser said, “Shut up, you goddamn mackerel-snapper. Listen to your betters.”
Dowling shoved back from the table and jumped up, spilling his coffee. “That’s it! I’ve taken about all I’m going to take! You goddamn high-hats have it all worked out! Well, Mike Dowling wants in on the action, see? I want of piece of this thing. Me and my boys—”
“What do you want, Mike?” MacRae said gently. “Sit down.” He said to the clerk, “Bring the boy more coffee.” MacRae was younger than Dowling, but nobody remarked the irony.
The clerk obliged, then mopped up the spill with a towel.
Dowling tried to get his rage under control. He was all jacked up this morning. His hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t bring the cup to his lips. His mouth was full of the sour taste of adrenaline. He couldn’t get his spit. He had worked himself up to what they must do today, and this was no time to lose his nerve. He steadied the cup. Finally, he managed a sip. “We want to work. We want jobs. Them niggers got all the good jobs locked up.”
“We can do that,” MacRae said amiably. “Honest white men ought to work.”
“Right,” Sasser said. “Bring a little dignity back to the working classes.”
Dowling scowled, but before he could say anything else, MacRae said, “Would you like to be a fireman, Mike?”
It had never crossed his mind. “A fireman, huh?” He rolled his eyes toward the pressed-tin ceiling, as if imagining himself driving the big hook-and-ladder wagon. “Sure, that would be a fine thing. One of them city jobs. They can’t fire you over every pizzlin’ thing.”
“You can lead men, Mike. You’ve got the makings of an officer.”
“I got a hundred rifles waiting out front,” Dowling agreed. He was slurping freely now from his coffee cup, his hands no longer trembling.
Seventy-five at most, MacRae thought. Get the numbers right—don’t fool yourself. A man fools himself with numbers, he loses track of the world.
“My boys. They listen to me,” Dowling said. He looked warily at Sasser, then MacRae. “Them fireman’s coats, they got fine brass buttons.”
“They do that,” MacRae said. “Coat like that, it would look good on—”
“And the chief—”
“There can be only one chief,” MacRae said quietly.
Dowling looked uncertain. He said, tentatively, “Assistant chief?”
MacRae stared at his coffee.
Dowling cleared his throat. “Mighty proud thing to be a captain.” MacRae smiled and nodded. “You’d make a fine captain, Mike. Truly.”
Dowling relaxed and smacked his lips, as if waiting to be offered something stronger than coffee. When nobody offered any whiskey, he pulled out his own flask and dumped a slug into his coffee.
“You can appreciate our position, can’t you?” MacRae said.
Dowling frowned. With the whiskey hot on his tongue, he was feeling a bit cocky now. They understood he was a man to be reckoned with. They were taking him into their confidence—they had no choice—so he might as well speak his mind. “Mr. MacRae, I got to say I just don’t get it. Me and my boys, we could have this whole business settled within the hour.”
Sasser was losing patience. “You dumb Mick.”
“L. B., please! Look, Mike, here’s the thing. We move now, there’s a chance the federal court will declare the election invalid. Troops come in, it’s the Yankee occupation all over again. Reconstruction, and the niggers in charge. We lose everything. The election’s got to happen first, see?”
Dowling slurped the rest of his whiskey-laced coffee. He was one of the mucky-mucks now. He had opinions. “Hang the election, I say. We’ll run things the way we want to run ’em.”
Suddenly, MacRae banged his fist on the table so forcefully that Dowling fell backward in his chair and had to grab the edge of the table to keep from sprawling on the floor. MacRae stood and planted one fist on the table. He poked an index finger into Dowling’s face. “Now, you listen to me. You’re going to take your men and ride home. You’re going to do nothing else until you hear from me. Got it?”
Dowling nodded. “Yes, sir.” He should have known better than to trust the damned high-hats.
“Good. This thing is way too big for you, Mike. Way too big. You’re pissing with the big dogs now—be careful you don’t get pissed on.”
Dowling recovered himself enough to be angry again. “Just what makes you think you can tell me what to do? My men and me ride out of here, who’s going to follow us? The Light Infantry can’t stand around all day.”
“You are a piece of goddamn work,” MacRae said, almost amused. What would it take to get through to this blockhead? “L. B., have your clerk call my house. Tell them to bring it over.”
They waited in silence for several minutes for MacRae’s man to arrive from up the street. Donald MacRae, Hugh’s brother, smartly turned out in the gray-and-red tunic of the Wilmington Light Infantry, clomped in carrying a portfolio. MacRae drew out a document and tossed it offhandedly onto the table.
L. B. Sasser said, “Thought we were keeping that under wraps.”
Dowling picked it up and read the first paragraph with great difficulty. He scrutinized it for a few minutes, then gave up. “What is it?”
Sasser grabbed the document with a sigh of disgust and read, “‘Believing that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people—’”
“There’s going to be a mass meeting tomorrow,” Hugh MacRae explained.
“‘—believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of African origin—’”
MacRae said, “We’ll read the whole proclamation then.”
“‘—and did not contemplate for their descendants subjection to an inferior race, we the undersigned—’”
“They’re all going to sign it, every businessman in town.”
“‘—citizens of the City of Wilmington and County of New Hanover, do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled, by men of African origin.’”
“There are seven articles, altogether,” MacRae explained. “I wrote it myself.”
Dowling was still puzzled. “What is it?”
MacRae said, “We call it the White Man’s Declaration of Independence.”
“What good will it do?”
MacRae rose from his chair. The interview was over. “Go home, Mike. You’re twenty-four hours early.”
Sam Jenks had spent a restless night.
He’d stayed out late at Polson’s Saloon watching Harry get drunk and listening to stories from the old days, when the Klan rode in gangs along country lanes and pregnant slaves were whipped l
ying belly-down in depressions scooped into the earth, to protect their unborn babies—the masters’ property. Harry was full of grisly plantation tales.
Sam experienced an attack of clarity at Polson’s, and he craved a long whiskey to sluice away his guilt and blur the outlines of the life he could see forming itself out of his present actions. But he didn’t drink. He watched other men drink themselves stuporous and patiently waited for Harry to run out of stories.
Sometime after midnight, in between thundershowers, Sam had managed to get him home. “Thought you’d dried yourself out,” he said, knowing Harry couldn’t hear him. Harry looked ridiculously old in the dim lamplight, face creased and drawn around the eyes, yet slack around the mouth and jowly from whiskey fat. He was just an old ghost now, fading away. And nobody was even watching, except Sam, who didn’t want to look.
When Sam had arrived home, Gray Ellen was already asleep. He climbed into bed next to her. Her scent was overpowering—perspiration and perfume.
He had needed to talk to her, to caress her and feel her settle the world back into balance. He wanted to tell her everything he’d seen, explain to her all his conflicting instincts. She was his one fixed point.
Instead, he stared at the ceiling shadows. During the night, the thunder came and went, brooding over the town. Before dawn, it rained hard. He listened to it drumming on the roof. From time to time, the wind flung the rain against the window like handfuls of bird shot. His dreams were like broken glass—jumbled shards of images with edges that cut.
He woke up exhausted.
Gray Ellen was already downstairs sipping hot tea. He stole up behind her as she stared out the window, seeming as distant as if they had never met. He stood for almost a minute, unable to make himself speak to her.
“Don’t stand there all morning,” she said quietly, still looking out the window. “Come sit down. There’s biscuits on the stove. I can fry up some eggs.”
“I’m not very hungry.” His stomach was full of acid.
“Suit yourself.”
“No school today?”
“Of course there isn’t.” She, too, had slept badly, and she didn’t have the strength to talk about the things that, sooner or later, they must talk about. Sam was sober—that was a good thing. She refused to be the one to give him the excuse to take a drink.
“There was another rally last night,” Sam said.
“Your friend the Colonel? How I detest that strutting cock.”
“He’s a man of principle. He has a duty—”
“‘When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares it is his duty’—Bernard Shaw.”
What right had she to run down a man of such stature? “‘Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.’” She wasn’t the only one who could quote literary truth. Anybody could find an eloquent epigram for any kind of shrill philosophy. It was the first thing you learned on newspapers.
“At least you haven’t forgotten everything you studied.”
Sam backed off. His head was splitting. “Look, I don’t want to fight today.”
“Neither do I.” Gray Ellen sighed. She knew she was making it hard for him. She couldn’t help herself. Until yesterday, she’d had no idea how much he owed her. Ivanhoe Grant had opened her eyes. In his room, she had wept for hours, grieving for her lost life. She knew it was only a matter of his being there at the right time, but still there was something mystical about the man. He existed outside right and wrong—blessed and evil all at once.
She would have her life back, with or without Sam. She knew that now. A single, strange encounter had clarified things. She wished she could talk about it with him, make him understand what she needed. But how could she tell him that selfless devotion to a husband wasn’t enough, had never been enough? As for Ivanhoe Grant, Gray Ellen never wanted to see him again. A man like that belonged in memory, not in real life.
Sam slumped into a chair at the table and rested his chin on steepled hands. His cheeks were sallow. His eyes had no clarity.
“After breakfast,” she said matter-of-factly, ignoring the fact that he was eating no breakfast, “why don’t you come out with me to vote?”
“What’s the point? It’s all fixed. That much I’ve figured out.” He wasn’t even sure he objected to the fix. The men who were going in were competent, serious, and experienced. Maybe, in a city like this, democracy was overrated. What had the Negroes ever contributed to the place besides a lot of Holy Roller churches and gang labor?
“The point is to vote. That’s the point.”
There she was again, stuck on principle. “What do you want to go out for?” Sam said. “You can’t vote.”
Right, she thought: a woman isn’t even trusted that far. “You vote for me.”
“How do you know who I’ll vote for?”
“I’ll know.”
“Maybe it won’t be anybody you like.”
“I just want to see you do it.”
He didn’t say anything. She wasn’t fooling.
She said quietly, “It starts with this. Today.”
He nodded, slowly. His stomach was settling down. He had a long day ahead. What time was he supposed to meet Harry? No matter—Harry would be late. Harry was always late. Sam might as well be late for a change. “Ready when you are.”
She sipped her tea, taking her time.
Sam attempted to vote in the community hall of First Presbyterian Church, the place where Colonel Walker Taylor drilled his Boys Brigade. Half a dozen armed men in rough clothes milled around the entrance. He waited in line behind other men in coats and ties.
Inside, the elections officer—a grocer Sam saw at least twice a week—asked his name, then checked it against the rolls in a ledger-sized book. “You’re not in here, Jenks.”
“I live at Third and Ann.”
“Property owner?”
“No.”
“Got a birth certificate?”
“Of course not. You know who I am.”
“How about a deed to your house?”
“I just told you, I’m not a property owner.”
“Been here long?”
“Since August. You ought to know.”
“That’s not long enough.”
“Listen, I can be vouched for. My cousin, Hugh MacRae—”
“You’re holding up the line, Jenks. Next time.”
“What is this?” Sam said.
“Special registration. Too many transients and undesirables trying to influence things.”
“By whose order?”
The clerk shrugged. “By order of the people who order such things. How the hell should I know?”
“So you’re not going to let me vote.”
“Ain’t up to me.”
“But all the same, I can’t vote.”
“Move along, or I’ll call the sheriff.”
“I don’t believe this.” Sam cast about for somebody he knew, some face he could count on. He recognized nobody.
“You don’t have to believe it. You just have to vamoose.”
Outside, Gray Ellen was waiting, hands tucked into her shawl against the wind. Sam said nothing, just took her arm and started walking toward home.
She said, “So, are you going to tell me who you voted for?”
He laughed tiredly.
“I can sure tell you who I didn’t vote for.”
Sam spent the day with Harry Calabash riding the streetcars from precinct to precinct, gauging the mood of the city. Few Negroes were out. The ones they saw in Brooklyn moved furtively in nervous clusters, heads down, mouths shut.
Downtown, white women promenaded alone or in pairs, accompanied by armed husbands and brothers. The Red Shirts patrolled in squadrons, sullen men who had been ordered not to shoot, not today. Their Winchesters rode in saddle boots. From time to time, they slapped the oiled stocks to reassure themselves that they were still there.
Eventually, bor
ed and hungry, Sam and Harry wound up at the Cape Fear Club, which was holding an open house for reporters from all over the East. At the door, two uniformed privates from the Wilmington Light Infantry—hardly out of their teens—looked them over closely and then, recognizing Harry, let them pass. Inside the foyer, four more soldiers sat cross-legged on the floor, dealing poker. Their rifles were stacked carefully against a maroon leather reading chair. A Negro waiter set down a tray of sandwiches and beer on the floor beside them.
“Sentries,” Harry explained, shaking his head.
Sam entertained a sudden ridiculous vision of a Negro mob storming the old club. Or maybe not so ridiculous. It was known to be the de facto headquarters of the Democratic party and the white supremacy campaign. And the club building, like most of the older structures in the city, was built of clapboards over heart-pine frames, loaded with flammable pitch. A little kerosene, the flicker of a match …
He sat at the bar with Harry and sipped his coffee. Next to every window in the place sat an armed soldier. No doubt, there were more upstairs, laying out their fields of fire.
Maybe they had a right to protect themselves, Sam figured. MacRae, Rountree, the Taylors. After all, men like them had built this town. They were the engine of its progress from a sleepy little colonial port to a major export center that shipped out a quarter of a million bales of cotton a year onto the world’s markets. Ships from all over the world called here. Every railroad in the South converged here. Men like MacRae, Rountree, and the Taylors created employment for thousands, white and black. They were family men, decent men, men who pulled together for the common good. They founded charities, looked after orphans, supported the feeble-minded and the poor with their taxes.
These men—not a few colored ministers, lawyers, and barbers—had done that. They had made Wilmington the political and economic center of the state. They had a stake here. They weren’t drifters or seasonal laborers, but men who had put down roots, men whose families had fought the Indians and the British and, yes, even the Yankees to stay here. Their ancestors were in Oakdale Cemetery, their children attended the schools, their taxes had built City-County Hospital. They were on for the long haul.
Cape Fear Rising Page 27