ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened?

by Harvey Ardman

  "Really?" Delphine replied. "Then why did they agree to meet with us? How do you explain that?"

  "Because of the secret deal," said a man in the back, waving a cigarette.

  "What secret deal?" Delphine asked. "There is no secret deal."

  "Either you're lying or Daddy didn't tell you." The man replied.

  Benny nodded to Mr. Clean's younger brother, who was standing by the club entrance, pointed to the man who'd called Delphine a liar and gave the thumb signal. The Bouncer padded over to the heckler and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. The man rose and left the club without further persuasion.

  "Getting rid of him doesn't change anything," said another fellow at the same table, a tall, blond man wearing an expensive suede jacket. "Everybody knows about the secret deal."

  "What secret deal?" Delphine persisted.

  The blond man sighed, as if being forced to repeat something obvious to everyone. "Well, it's not much of a secret," he said. "They're going to give us a trillion dollars and we're going to tear down the wall and give the niggers the vote. And pretty soon, we'll have a nigger President just like they do."

  "There isn't any such deal. There's no deal at all," Delphine said, asking herself how she had become the ambassador to the unwashed and hoping the duty would be over soon. "It's just a contemptible lie, put out by people who hate my father, who've always hated him, jealous and spiteful people."

  A man in a grey business suit stood up, near the middle of the room, drink in hand. "If there's no secret deal," he said, "why doesn't President Bourque just stay home and work on the problems we have here. There's just no call for him to go gallivanting around to foreign countries."

  "Even if it will help the Confederacy?" Delphine asked. "Maybe save it?"

  Benny stepped up to the mike again. "I think we've had enough questions and answers," he said. "Delphine Bourque didn't come here to hold a press conference or get questioned like a criminal. She came here to sing. I hope you came to hear her. If you did not, or you are unhappy with what she's said or what her father is doing, you got my permission to trot right over to the exit and leave."

  He paused, and half a dozen people, mostly young men, got up and headed out. Mr. Clean and his younger brother followed close on their heels, herding them toward the door. And that was fine with Delphine. She’d gotten a pretty good idea of the common people’s temperature. But enough was enough.

  "Now," Benny said, forcing a grin, "As I was saying…" He paused, and was rewarded by a few chuckles and titters. "As I was saying, I am pleased to introduce one of my very favorite singers, the songbird of the south, Delphine Bourque."

  The applause was genuine and prolonged. Delphine bent toward Benny and kissed him on the cheek, which caused him to wiggle his eyebrows lasciviously, Groucho Marx-style, at which the audience broke into laughter.

  Delphine smiled at the club-goers and let them simmer down. "Good evening, everyone." And they returned the greeting. "Tonight, I've decided to sing three different kinds of songs—some of them old, some of them new, some of them borrowed, some of the blue. And if any of you young men and young ladies happen to get any ideas from that—well, please don't blame me…"

  *

  Pickett decided to drive to Jackson. It was only three hours away, and taking a plane would make him too much of a target for some cracker looking to harass a Black man. He considered wearing a driver's uniform and taking one of the Packards, but in the end concluded that work clothing and the battered old Dodge pickup would be safer. Besides, the pickup bore the Acadia logo, which afforded some protection.

  When he'd first realized there might be a problem, he'd almost put in a telephone call to Reverend Baldwin. But he couldn't be sure who'd be listening in. The Reverend Frederick Langston Baldwin was the Confederacy's most prominent Negro clergyman, and in the eyes of many, the most dangerous. The AWCP—the Association of White Confederate Partisans—had almost certainly tapped Baldwin's telephone.

  So this was going to be a face-to-face conversation, which was just as well. Reverend Baldwin was a wonderful man, an inspiring leader, but very stubborn and more than a little deaf. Pickett had known him since his childhood and the old man had never stopped trying to lure him away from Acadia and the Bourque family and join the church. Well, that wasn't going to happen.

  But now Reverend Baldwin and his huge congregation posed a serious threat to Bourque's audacious maneuver. Somehow, Pickett had to make the old man understand that no matter how noble his motives were, he could very easily mess up everything.

  He drove at the speed limit during the entire trip, and he refueled at a gas station in a Negro neighborhood. Then he left the truck in a big discount store's parking lot, several blocks from the stately but decrepit Heritage Baptist Church, and walked the rest of the way. It was a brick building, complete with brick steeple, but the white wooden trim was peeling and it needed extensive dental work—bricks were missing here and there, leaving gaping cavities.

  Pickett walked up to the front door, a normal-sized portal in a huge, high-arched wooden entryway and was about to grab the handle when it suddenly opened, inward, and he found himself face-to-face with a very large black woman, probably about sixty, wearing a huge blue straw hat and dress decorated with bright, yellow, out-of-register sunflowers.

  "Well, hello," she said, with a broad, warm grin. "Dere's no one in dat church but de reverend, 'Corse, you're welcome t'go in and jes' sit ifn you want."

  "Thank you," Pickett said. "I think I'll do just that."

  He found Reverend Baldwin just off the nave, in a small office stuffed with books. Baldwin was sitting at his desk, an ancient fountain pen poised over a blank sheet of paper, snoring. He'd gained weight since Pickett saw him last, and lost hair. What remained was grey, going on white.

  Pickett laid a hand gently on the old man's shoulder. "Reverend Baldwin?"

  No response.

  Pickett raised his voice. "Reverend Baldwin?"

  The old man stirred, revealing a few unshaven white hairs beneath one ear. "What?" he said, "Who?"

  "It's me, Reverend Baldwin, Roy Pickett."

  Reverend Baldwin sat up and considered his visitor. A smile slowly lit up his face and he extended a hand, which Pickett shook. "Well, if it isn't Roy Pickett," he said. "It's sure been a long time. Pull up a chair and sit down."

  The only other chair in the room was an old wooden captain's chair, unsteady and missing a few rungs. But Pickett pulled it over and sat down. "You're looking good, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so," he said.

  "Well, young man, if you're going to flatter me, you can say anything," Baldwin said.

  They laughed.

  "So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your presence, Mr. Pickett? Have you decided to leave Arcadia and come here to work for me?"

  "Ah, not exactly."

  "No. I didn't think so. Anyway, it looks to me like you were right after all. Your master has apparently come to his senses at long last. When I heard he was going to see President Callaway, my first thought was that these old ears of mine were giving me some new kind of problem." The reverend smiled broadly. "But I guess it's actually happening."

  "Yes it is, sir. And that's why I'm here. I need to talk to you about that."

  "You don't have to say a word, young man. I've already started things in motion."

  "How so?" Pickett asked, fearing the worst.

  "Well, the moment I got the word," Baldwin said. "I called a meeting of all the important Negro pastors in the South, all of the ones with big congregations, I mean."

  "You did?" Pickett said, dismayed.

  "Yes, sir, I did. And they'll all be here on Tuesday, sixty or maybe even seventy of them. All I had to do was put out the call. They still listen to the old man."

  "That's no surprise," Pickett said. "You're the most respected preacher in the Black community. And you will be until the day you die. You know, decades from now."

  "You’re spreading the butter pretty
thick, Mr. Pickett,” Baldwin said. “I just got me a feeling you want something."

  Pickett took a deep breath, then exhaled. "I want you to cancel your meeting."

  Reverend Baldwin blinked a couple of times. "Say what?"

  "I want you to call it off."

  The reverend started laughing, chuckles quickly evolving into guffaws. "Roy Pickett," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, "you have a truly strange sense of humor."

  "I'm not joking," Pickett said.

  "Eh?"

  "I said I'm not joking."

  The laughter was replaced with a cold stare. "Did Bourque send you?"

  "Nope. Doesn't even know I'm here."

  "Then why do you want me to cancel the meeting?" Baldwin asked, truly puzzled. "I plan to tell all the preachers to take to their pulpits and raise their voices in support of President Bourque and his mission to the North American Union. I want to show him—and everyone else in the Confederacy—that the Negro community is 100% behind him."

  Pickett sighed deeply. "Do you want the Callaway meeting to be a success?"

  "Of course I do, Roy. Even if nothing comes of it, the whole Confederacy will see Buddy Bourque and Charles Callaway speaking to each other as equals. Treating each other as equals. It is a lesson that will not be lost, either on the Negro community here, or on the white community. It's a major step forward for us."

  "I understand where you're coming from," Pickett admitted.

  The old man smiled. "So, if you understand, why would you ask me to cancel my meeting?"

  "Not just the meeting, Reverend Baldwin," Pickett said. "I want you to forget about telling people to publicly support Bourque. I don't want to hear a word about the Callaway meeting from the Negro community, pro or con. And if someone should happen to ask, I want you to say, 'Well, we'll just have to see what happens.'"

  Baldwin's mouth fell open. "Why in the world would I do that, Roy?" he asked. Then his expression turned shrewd. "Are you trying to sabotage Bourque in some way?"

  "No!" Pickett said, recoiling. "No! Just the opposite. You have no idea how important this mission is, Reverend Baldwin, and how much it could benefit our community. And I can't tell you. But I will say this. I intend to do everything in my power to make sure Bourque succeeds. I'm willing to risk everything to make that happen."

  Reverend Baldwin gazed at Pickett without comprehension. "And yet you want me to call off my efforts to support him."

  Pickett thought a moment. "Reverend Baldwin, how do you think the white community would react if the Black community loudly and publicly came out in support of President Bourque? If you were a cracker, what would you make of that?"

  Baldwin thought a moment. "Hmmmm," he said, drawing it out, then exhaling. "Hmmmm. I begin to see your point."

  "Thank God."

  "God. Yes."

  "You see, if you came out in support of Bourque and the meeting, the whites would think the fix is in. They'd think you and Bourque made some kind of a deal and…"

  "You can stop with the explanations, Roy."

  "Sorry."

  "So what was it you wanted me to say, you know, instead?"

  "'Well, we'll just have to see what happens.'"

  "And if some hot-shot reporter keeps pushing it?"

  "You shrug, you say, 'It's not my business. I don't know anything about politics.'"

  "Lord won't like it if I lie." Baldwin said.

  "You're telling me now that you understand politics?"

  They laughed. Together.

  "You know you've given me a lot of work to do."

  "You mean calling it off? Notifying everyone?"

  "Yeah. Lotta telephone calls. You gonna help me, Roy?"

  "Sure," Pickett said.

  Baldwin rummaged around in a desk drawer, looking for something, failing to find it, searching another drawer, finally coming up with half a dozen sheets of rumpled paper.. He handed one to Pickett. "There's another phone behind the pulpit," he said.

  As Pickett was making his way out of Baldwin's little office, he came face-to-face—again—with the fat lady in the sunflower dress. She was carrying a little brown paper sack.

  "Hello again," she said. "You been talking to da reverend?"

  "We're old friends."

  Reverend Baldwin appeared at the office door. "Ah, Amelia."

  "Got your sandwich, and the root beer," she said.

  "No pie?"

  "Oh, don't you fret. I got your pie. They din have no apple so I got you cherry."

  "Cherry's good." Baldwin took the sack. "Amelia, I know I said you could take the afternoon off, but it turns out we got a little work to do."

  She inclined her head toward Pickett. "His fault?"

  "In a way."

  Chapter Twelve

  The announcement was accurate—as far as it went. It sounded so routine that the only paper to print it was the 'newspaper of record,' The New York Times. And even there, it got only a single paragraph on the 14th page of the second section.

  Dover, DE—The NAU Second Fleet today announced that units of the CTF-26 Expeditionary Task Force have departed Port Mahon, for the annual early Spring military exercises off the Atlantic Coast. Depending on the weather, the exercises are expected to last about a month.

  Rear Admiral Arthurert F. Broadwell, at 37 the youngest and perhaps the handsomest man ever to achieve the rank, sat in his plush chair on the bridge of the DDG-103, otherwise known as the SS Truxton, one of the NAU’s newest and most formidable destroyers. He read the announcement again and frowned.

  Bob Broadwell was annoyed. He was annoyed he would be missing Gracie's ballet recital. He was annoyed it might be six months before he could sleep with Echo again. He was annoyed he wouldn't be accompanying Todd to opening day at Fenway, and that his golf skills, acquired and maintained only with constant effort, were certain to fade away. He was annoyed his life had been upended.

  But he was also pleased—pleased the NAU Navy brass had singled him out to command the six-ship task force assigned to protect the CSA's Atlantic coast. He was pleased he had one more chance, an unexpected one, to rise to two-star admiral. And he was certainly pleased that his best friend, Drew Wasserman, had agreed to serve alongside him, as captain of the Truxton, the task force's flagship.

  Broadwell crumpled up the press release and tossed it, jumpshot-style, into a grey metal wastebasket under a control panel. Then, grabbing his cap, he walked outside. The ocean was fairly calm, but at 31 knots, the wind was stiff. Bending his 6'2" into it, he raised his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the horizon. All present and accounted for: The Preble, The Farragut, The Gridley, and The Decatur—the first shift, to be rotated out, like The Truxton, and replaced by five others after two months on duty.

  What could not be seen, but what Broadwell knew was there, far below the surface, was the SSN-753, the nuclear-powered attack submarine Albany, easily keeping up with the rest of the task force, brandishing a formidable complement of torpedoes, Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles and quite capable of killing anything that floated.

  "So, Bob," said Captain Drew Wasserman, coming down the deck and sidling up to his old friend, "surveying your forces?" Wasserman was a short, heavily muscled man with a startlingly deep voice and a gap-toothed grin.

  "Something like that, Drew." Broadwell said. A gust of wind grabbed his cap and he grabbed it back.

  "Like what you see?”

  "Yes, except for The Decatur. It's lagging by about 400 yards."

  "Trouble with the #3 gas turbine," Wasserman said. "Should be fixed soon."

  "So I've been told. So I was told yesterday, in fact."

  Wasserman nodded, accustomed to his friend's almost obsessive attention to detail. "They're keeping up pretty well, considering."

  "Umm-hmmm."

  "Anyhow, we should on station by 7 p.m."

  "Better be."

  Sometimes, Wasserman reflected, it was possible to get more than three words out of Bob Broadwell. And sometimes it
wasn't. He tried again. "What do you think of our mission, Bob? Think there's any real chance we'll see combat?"

  "Not really," Broadwell said. "We're just here to short-circuit Presidente Garcia if he's dumb enough to attack the CSA’s Atlantic Coast. Just being here ought to do that."

  "I agree. Which is why I'm confused about the secrecy," Wasserman said. "Could you explain it one more time?"

  Broadwell took a deep breath. "All I can do is repeat what CINCLANTFLT told me. The mission is a secret because Callaway's Congressional and media enemies would scream like banshees if they knew about it. And the people in the CSA would go crazy too, if they thought Bourque had invited us to save their bacon."

  "Okay," Wasserman said. "That I get. One last question, then I'll shut up: how the hell can we deter Garcia if he doesn't even know we're there?"

  "Oh, he'll know, Drew," Broadwell said. "One of his recon planes will spot us. And if it doesn't, we'll intercept one of his assault ships."

  Wasserman grinned. "I'd love to see the look on their commander's face when he realizes what's between him and his objective."

  That got a snort from Broadwell. "Yeah," he said, "just five fast, stealthy 500 foot-long destroyers, each one bulging with missiles, torpedoes and Phalanx Gatling guns and carrying two pesky and very well-armed helicopters. And then there’s the sub.”

  "Hah! That would certainly send me into full retreat," Wasserman said. "But this sounds like permanent duty to me, Bob. I know we’ll be rotating in other ships, but what’s the exit strategy?”

  "Good question." Broadwell put the binoculars to his eyes again and looked out to the Decatur, which was closing the gap. "I guess that depends on when and if Callaway and Bourque make a deal—and on what the deal is."

  A young petty officer, blond and gangly, popped through the bridge hatchway and exchanged salutes with his superiors. He turned to Captain Wasserman. "Sir," he said, "we've made radio contact with the Baton Rouge. They've been briefed and they're awaiting our arrival. They're faxing updated mine dispersal charts now."