“Now, why would I do that?”
“You know,” Waddell said, still pacing, the legs unstiffening a little with the circulation, “I’ve often thought what a good mayor you made. In those days, business was good. Things proceeded with a certain order. You could count on the police, the magistrates. Now, it has all unraveled into chaos.”
“King Numbers,” Fishblate agreed ruefully. “You are suggesting what?”
“MacRae has his own ideas about who ought to be mayor. So does Walker Taylor. So does George Rountree. So do a lot of people.”
“And you don’t have ideas?”
Waddell finished his brandy and put the glass on his desk. “Certainly, I’ve got ideas.” He looked Fishblate square in the eye.
“Me?” He didn’t quite believe it could be so easy.
“Why not? I sure as blazes don’t want the job—got my hands full. But I need a man I can count on.”
“And you can count on me? Why?” Fishblate was still skeptical. He’d been in politics too long to take anything at face value. Nothing came free. If he could only determine what Waddell stood to gain, then he could rest easy. The first rule of politics: find out the stakes.
“Because you’re a known quantity,” Waddell said. “Because you don’t trust Hugh MacRae. Because you’ve already got people you can call on to make a government. Because you can keep the streetcars running and the electricity on and the fire companies sober.”
“Keep going.”
“That’s all there is.”
Fishblate shook his head and stood up, as if to go. He wasn’t buying. “I mean, what’s in it for you? What’s your end?”
Waddell sat on the edge of his desk and struck a pose. “Simple. Next year, support me for governor.”
Fishblate nodded. Of course—why hadn’t he seen it? Waddell still had influential friends all over the state from his congressional days. But he would need Wilmington. And the mayor would control the party here. Whoever wound up mayor could make or break a campaign. “I could double-cross you.”
“You won’t.”
Fishblate smiled, nodding. “No, you’re right. A deal’s a deal.” Everybody knew that when Solly Fishblate made a bargain, he stuck to it.
“Then you agree?”
“How do I know you can do it? Just because I let you address the meeting? You’ve made plenty of speeches already.”
Waddell laughed from his belly. When he finished, he leaned over Fishblate, circled an arm around his neck, and whispered, “Timing.”
“Timing,” Fishblate repeated, now himself on the verge of laughter, recognizing the truth when he heard it.
For in the hearts of all true Southerners there exists an affection that is almost akin to love or devotion for the “old fashioned darkies,” many of whom possessed “white hearts” in black bodies.
Gunner Jesse Blake, quoted by Harry Hayden
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Wednesday, November 9
THEY WERE HEADED OUT Seventh Street toward Castle Hayne Road, Alex and Frank Manly. They wore their Sunday suits for traveling. Alex huddled into the turned-up collar of his Prince Albert, his brushed gray derby pulled low on his forehead. Frank wore a charcoal greatcoat and scarf against the damp chill. His slouch hat was pulled down over the tops of his ears. Both men wore gloves.
Out of sight under the buggy seat, each had stowed his single portmanteau, packed with all he would take from the city. Frank kept insisting they could come back in a few weeks or months, when things had calmed down, but Alex didn’t believe it. The buggy was open to the air, but the top was raised, giving the illusion of protection from the cold.
Far off, the carillon at St. James Church sounded one o’clock. There was no hurry—they had four hours to make the train at Castle Hayne. They must not seem to be running away, or else they would excite the suspicion of one of the vigilante groups that systematically patrolled the streets.
Alex was brooding. He understood that he was at the end of something, but he could not imagine a future. The night lay ahead, black and formless. Exile. He mused out loud, “Lately, we always seem to be doing one thing and pretending we’re doing another.”
Frank said, “Well, ain’t that all the fashion?”
“All the same, I don’t care for sneaking around in the dead of night, just to be able to do what I’ve got a perfect right to do already. That’s nigger stuff. That’s the kind of life we’ve been trying to outgrow for a hundred and fifty years. I want a life out in the daylight. I want to look people in the eye, say what’s on my mind.”
“You’ve done plenty of that, little brother. Why do you think we’re out here in the open on a bone-cold night dodging white men with guns that want to lynch us?”
“Proves my point exactly. You can go so far, then they pull back on the leash.”
“If I ever catch up with that boy Jeffries,” Frank said, “I’m gonna yank his leash but good.”
“He was just speaking his mind.” If it was Jeffries who wrote it, Alex thought. It had been such a guaranteed provocation.
“Somebody put him up to it,” Frank said. “I’d like to know who.”
“Doesn’t matter now.” That was the sort of thing nobody ever found out. The why of a thing was always just smoke. The facts were all you had. “By the time the white men get done writing the history of this election, you won’t even know there ever was an Afro-American newspaper in this town.”
“The office is all locked up, pastor has the only key,” Frank said. “You’ve made your record. Nobody can pretend different.”
“Oh, you might be surprised what people can pretend.”
They were crossing Market now. Here, the patrols were frequent.
Alex said, “The Hoe press will be gone. Tom Clawson will collect it first thing.”
“Ain’t the only printing press on the planet. We’ll find another one.”
Alex didn’t think so. He didn’t think he had the zeal to start it all again. For six years now, he’d been pushing, and he felt suddenly weary. For six years, he’d pushed his rock uphill, and now it was rolling pell-mell right back down the hill. If he didn’t get out of the way, it would roll right over him. Some community leader—slinking out of town in the dead of night.
A party of five riders appeared from the direction of the river. They spurred their horses to a trot when they spotted the buggy.
“Uh-oh,” Frank said. “Trouble coming in a crowd.”
“Pull up your scarf,” Alex said. “Relax. And whatever happens, don’t open your mouth.”
Frank cursed and pulled back on the reins, stopping the buggy in the middle of the intersection. The horsemen slowed to a walk. When they got near enough, the lead rider called out, “Where you boys traveling so late?”
Alex waited till he was closer. He didn’t feel like shouting. He wanted this thing to be as calm as possible. “Heard there might be some excitement down in Brooklyn tonight,” he said, looking the rider in the eye. The rider had no lantern, and the buggy top shielded the brothers from the gaslight on the corner.
The lead rider, joined now by the other four, laughed. “Niggers don’t much like the cold. I don’t reckon they’ll make trouble tonight.”
“We’re on the lookout for the Manlys,” Alex said. “We only have one horse between us, or we’d go mounted, like you. That’s the proper way to hunt blackbirds.”
The riders laughed and blew out clouds of breath. The horses snorted, impatient to be moving.
“We heard they might try to slip out tonight or tomorrow,” the leader said. “We’re on the lookout ourselves.” He peered into the buggy. In the shadows, Frank sat very still. “Hey, you boys don’t have no rifles.”
Alex said, “We heard they wasn’t armed.”
“Just the same, you’ll need more than a buggy whip,” the leader said. “Piner—let me have that Winchester.”
One of the riders drew a carbine out of his saddle sheath and passed it to the leader. “Pi
ner’d rather use his pistol anyway. He’s a gentleman.” They all laughed. The leader passed the Winchester, stock first, to Alex Manly. “Y’all know how to shoot a rifle?”
Alex took the Winchester and, pointing it toward the stars, jacked a round into the chamber, then carefully let down the hammer.
The leader nodded in approval. “That goes back to Tom Clawson down at the Messenger when you’re through with it. Property of the Businessmen’s Committee.”
“We’ll take good care of it.” Alex laid the rifle across his knees.
“Good hunting, boys.”
The horsemen trotted off, and Frank clucked the mare forward. He didn’t speak for a long block as the carriage wheels hissed through the oyster-shell paving. Then he said, “Passing for white. Tonight, of all nights. Goddamnit, Alex—I’ve got to climb down and piss.” The tension broke, and the brothers hooted and giggled for six more blocks.
They struck Castle Hayne Road and in twenty minutes were crossing Smith’s Creek Bridge. “Hold up, Frank,” Alex said. He peered down into the darkness below the bridge and cocked his ear to the sound of running water. Then he flung the rifle from the carriage and listened until he heard the splash. “Drive on, brother. We’ve got a train to catch.”
Nobody had told George Rountree about the meeting. He found out about it when his wife, Meta, woke him at nine, waving a copy of the Messenger in his face. He’d been at the club till after three, and he was groggy and disoriented. “What?” he said automatically. “Mrs. Rountree?”
“I hated to wake you, George, but the meeting’s in an hour.”
“Meeting?” he said. “There’s no meeting today.” He sat up and rubbed his fatigue-burned eyes.
She handed him the newspaper. “See? All white citizens are requested to assemble at ten o’clock.” She bit her lip. “You told me that part was over.”
“I thought it was. Lay out a suit and a fresh collar.” He sat in bed for a moment longer, rubbing his temples and the bald dome of his head. Hugh MacRae, you son of a bitch, he thought. Or was it Waddell? There were just too goddamn many chiefs and too goddamn few good Indians.
He splashed cold water on his face, shaved quickly, dressed, and hurried out to find somebody who knew something. On Front Street, he fell in with a knot of white men headed for the meeting. They knew only what they’d read in the paper. He quickened his stride and broke away from them, cutting across a vacant lot on Mulberry behind Colonel Roger Moore’s house. Moore had already gone to the meeting. It was ten minutes till ten. Rountree practically ran the remaining two blocks and arrived at the courthouse in a sweat, breathing hard. He took a minute to collect himself, carefully mopped his brow, neck, and pate with his handkerchief, then strode up the stairs to the main courtroom.
There was not an empty seat. A thousand white men and women jammed the seats, the aisles, the hallway, the stairs.
In the jury box sat a dozen leading citizens, including Congressman-elect John D. Bellamy, Solomon Fishblate, and Tom Clawson, along with Hugh MacRae and every other member of the Secret Nine. Conspicuously absent was Alfred Moore Waddell.
Rountree took in the scene at a glance. MacRae. He was operating outside the party now, outside the legitimate Businessmen’s Committee. And what in the world was Solly Fishblate doing in the foreman’s seat? A machine boss from the old days. Didn’t have any principles, didn’t believe in the Cause. He had no standing at all. Yet there he was, seated next to Congressman Bellamy, and here he, George Rountree, was—in the back of the courtroom, practically out the door.
Without hesitation, Rountree shouldered his way down the aisle, stepped over the wooden railing, grabbed a chair from behind the court reporter’s desk, and sat down at the far end of the jury box, next to Hugh MacRae. The courtroom resounded with the murmur of the crowd. Babel, Rountree thought—an utter nonsense of voices, five hundred different conversations, words overlapping words, the chirping laughter of women and the raucous braying of men, the creak of wooden seats and the scrape of feet, whispers and shouts, men calling out to their cohorts across the aisle and women giggling and arguing fiercely among themselves, pimply Red Shirt hooligans chanting “White Is Right!” and old soldiers singing off-key the marching songs of bygone days best forgotten.
MacRae leaned over, smiling without showing any teeth. “Glad you could join us, George.”
“Like hell,” Rountree said. “Why wasn’t I consulted about this?”
MacRae turned up his pink palms. “There was no need.”
“I’m on the Executive Committee of the Democratic—”
“It’s gone beyond that now, George. This is phase two.”
“You can’t just—”
“It’s done, George.” MacRae stared at him, practically nose to nose. Rountree was the larger man, but he backed off. “Now, you can either go along, or you can just plain go,” MacRae said. “Your choice.”
Rountree was confused. They had won—what more was there to gain? “We got what we wanted already.”
“You got what you wanted. There’s still some unfinished business.”
“Don’t give me that shit!” Rountree was talking too loud, trying to be heard above the rising din of the unruly crowd. While he was talking to MacRae, Solly Fishblate had left his seat and mounted the judge’s bench. He raised his hands for silence. All at once, the crowd hushed, and in the sudden instant of silence, the tail end of Rountree’s last remark rang out over the house: shit!
The audience erupted in laughter. Even Fishblate broke up—it was always a treat to see a blue blood make an ass of himself in public. Rountree was puzzled at first, then, realizing his voice had carried to every corner of the courtroom, he ducked his head and massaged his temples with his fingers. Now, he had a headache to go with his burning eyes.
Solly Fishblate stood behind the bench, gripping it hard, as if to keep himself from falling. He slouched, apparently overwhelmed by the weight of the crowd, and in a reedy voice made a few opening remarks. Fishblate yielded the floor to Congressman-elect Bellamy, who opened with a standard acceptance speech full of purple sentiment and hyperbole. Striding back and forth in front of the bench like a prosecuting attorney, he expressed his gratitude in as many words as possible. He reminded them that he would not soon forget who had sent him to Washington: the Anglo-Saxon race.
The crowd gave him a thunderous standing ovation. They were in a jubilant mood this morning. Bellamy bowed and soaked up the applause till it began to peter out into sporadic clapping. Then he sat down.
Hugh MacRae was on the edge of his chair, holding a sheaf of white pages in his hand, when Fishblate, still on the bench, blurted out, “And now, a special treat. I direct your attention to that champion of our Cause—”
Hugh MacRae smiled and winked sideways at Rountree.
“—that sterling citizen of the world and the Old North State—”
MacRae straightened his cuffs and adjusted his tie.
“—that paragon of Southern chivalry, who has sacrificed so much to bring about the victory we now enjoy—”
MacRae leaned forward in his chair, ready to stand.
“Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell!”
MacRae stood up, startled. Waddell, who had been waiting in the judge’s chambers, marched out of thin air and crossed in front of Rountree and MacRae. Seeing the papers still held out in MacRae’s right hand, he bowed slightly from the waist, snatched them with the precise gesture of a fencing master, and carried them to the center of the courtroom.
MacRae climbed out of the jury box, two steps behind him. Before he could take back his papers, Waddell was already addressing the crowd, waving the papers over his head. “I have just been handed some urgent resolutions,” he said in his ringing baritone, “of which I heartily approve!” He riffled through them quickly, nodding, his quick eyes taking in the gist of the document.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began again in a serious tone. “I have been called upon to deliver a declaration that w
ill gladden your civic hearts.” He nodded toward MacRae, and the crowd responded with cheers and applause. MacRae bowed and stepped back.
“It is a declaration every bit as momentous as that sacred declaration which inspired a revolution of free men to wrest their destiny from a foreign colonial power.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the White Man’s Declaration of Independence!”
Theatrically, he held up the crisp, shining white pages and slowly waved them from right to left, like a magician proving the reality of an illusion.
When the crowd quieted, he began to read: “‘Believing that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a government to be carried on by enlightened people …’”
As Waddell read the preamble, Rountree turned to MacRae, whose face was crimson. “Those are exactly my words, Hugh.”
“So what?” MacRae said, so angry he could hardly speak. “They belong to everybody now.”
“So be it.”
Rountree, like the rest of those present, was entranced by the reading of principles he had long believed. Unlike the others, though, he was already calculating what part he would play in the rest of this meeting. He’d been ambushed in this court before. He was no amateur.
MacRae sat rigid, arms folded tight across his chest.
Waddell was in his glory. Fishblate had not known about this declaration—Waddell had counted on that. Waddell had heard about it by accident, a stray remark from a lady newspaper reporter in a crimson jacket. He hadn’t laid eyes on it until a few minutes ago, when he’d stolen it right out of MacRae’s hand in front of a full house. No matter. His eyes always read ahead of his voice—an orator’s trick—and he would win their loyalty forever by telling them what they had waited all these months to hear. This declaration was not just another rousing call to action, but an official, codified pronouncement, blessed by every man they had just elected, about the new state of the world.
The prose was delicious. From Hugh MacRae’s mouth, Waddell thought, it would have been just a litany of familiar phrases, no more emotionally riveting than a grocery list. But Waddell listened to the words, their rhythms and sounds, the resonances of ideas, and delivered the declaration with all the passion in his actor’s heart. He wound up the preamble: “‘While we recognize the authority of the United States, and will yield to it if exerted, we would not for a moment believe that it is the purpose of more than sixty millions of our own race to subject us permanently to a fate to which no Anglo-Saxon has ever been forced to submit.’”
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