ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened?

by Harvey Ardman

  Bourque scanned the audience, looking into faces, the faces of day laborers and accountants, housewives and hairdressers, fifth graders with bowl-cuts, and little girls in gingham. He knew what their lives would be like if Garcia annexed the Confederacy and he could not let that happen.

  “That’s why I went north. That’s why I asked for hep. That’s why I was willing to talk about reunion. Now I know your next question. Y’all want to know how reunion can solve our problems. Well, I’m gonna tell y’all. First, our money worries. In reunion, those of you on Social Security or Medicare won’t need to anymore. The system will be solvent and your payments will be higher. The paralyzing foreign debt? Gone forever. Money to repair our roads, fix up our old schools, pay our fire fighters and our cops.”

  He could see them nodding, a few of them, or whispering to their spouses. He’d moved them a little, but only a little.

  “Now lemme talk about the military threat, the threat from Mexico. He tried once, y’know. El Presidente, I mean. At New Orleans. I’ve still got the scars to show for it, gonna carry them with me til the day I die. We beat him off, just barely. And it cost us. Not just men and money, but Texas.”

  They were nodding again, he noted.

  “Garcia is getting ready to attack us again, and maybe he learned from last time. Maybe we’re not as strong as we were. Maybe he sees us as low-hanging fruit, just awaiting to be plucked. Well, ask yourself this: would we look like low-hanging fruit if we were part of the NAU? The NAU has a modern army, y’know, and a modern navy, and airplanes and tanks, everything you would expect of a highly industrialized country. If you were Miguel Garcia, would that be an invitin’ target? Would you wanna take on the NAU? ‘Cause after reunion, we’d be the NAU and the NAU would be us. I don’t know about you, but I’d feel a hellova lot safer.”

  Bourque grinned and glanced around at his audience. Got some more nods, he told himself, and a few grins too. This was the easy part—appealing to their self interest, showing them what they had to lose and what they had to gain.

  The hard part, the 100 foot hurdle with the razor wire on top, well, that was still ahead and coming up soon. Somewhere in the upper rows, center, Bourque saw a hand waving. Perhaps even sooner than I expected, he thought. “Friend? You have a question? Darrend up and ask it, by all means. Please.”

  The man stood. He was a tall fellow in his late 50s, with a weather-beaten face and pale blue eyes, wearing a threadbare business suit, no doubt the best clothing he owned. “Your honor,” he began.

  Bourque put up a hand in modesty. “Please,” he said, declining the honor.

  “Mr. President,” the man said, starting again.

  “My friends call me Buddy,” Bourque suggested, smiling.

  The man swallowed hard and took another breath. “Buddy,” he said, hesitantly. “You been sayin’ what reunion is gonna do for us, and it all sounds good, but the NAU ain’t gonna take us in just outta the goodness of its heart. What do we gotta do to get all this hep?” The man sat down.

  “Did y’all hear that, folks?” Bourque asked, grinning broadly, as though this was exactly the question he’d been hoping for. “Lemme repeat it so everyone can hear. My friend asked, ‘What do we gotta do to get all this hlp?’ He means, what’s it gonna cost us, this reunion deal? And it’s a good question. It’s the best question he coulda asked and I admire him.”

  “So stop pussy-footing around and answer it,” someone shouted from the right side of the room.

  Bourque laughed. “Okay,” he said. “The NAU wants two things from us. First, the NAU, being a democracy n’ all, has’ta follow democratic procedures if they’re gonna let us back in. We gotta ask their Congress and their Congress has’ta vote yes. And no one’s holding a gun to their head—they can do whatever they think best. But Callaway’s standing right beside us.”

  “Get to the point, Buddy!” a woman shouted from the left side of the sanctuary.

  Bourque smiled and held up both hands. “I’m getting’ there fast as I can,” he said. “But I’m not as swift as I used to be.”

  That got laughter, which he joined.

  “Now here’s what y’all been waitin’ for. The second condition’s gonna be the hardest for us. It has to do with our way of life. To rejoin the union, each of our ten states has’ta vote in a new Constitution, one that doesn’t argue with the NAU Constitution and their laws.”

  Bourque stopped for a moment. They were whispering among themselves and he let them. They had to let off some steam. When they began to wonder why he’d stopped, he spoke again.

  “Yes,” he said, “that means what you think it means. Our two Constitutions are mighty similar, except for one thing: racial equality. They got it, we don’t, and we all know that. But if we want to be part of this great new country, if we want to be accepted by the other states, we’all are goin’ to have to stop fightin’ that battle.”

  Bourque glanced back at Delphine, then at Pickett. Now he up to his eyebrows in the hard part. He was either gonna win ‘em or lose ‘em right here, right now. He stepped back from the podium for a moment and folded his arms over his chest. He was getting tired, but he’d have to rest some other time.

  “My friends,” he said, leaning on the lectern and looking out into the audience, “for more than 150 years, we’all, the citizens of the South, have indulged ourselves in a delusion—even worse, we’ve always known, somewhere inside of ourselves, that it is a delusion. We’ve convinced ourselves that we’re the better ones, the smarter, the prettier, the more capable, the more deserving, the more blessed ones.

  “We’ve accepted the benefits of this delusion as though they are our God-given rights. At the same time, we have grievously and unjustly shortchanged those who, in our arrogance and our fear, we have deluded ourselves into believing are our inferiors.

  “We feel superior to them and we tell ourselves we occupy a higher rung on the ladder of human development. But we believe that only because we’ve used our greater wealth and power to perpetuate the illusion, to stop them from gaining a truly equal education, from pursuing truly equal opportunity and truly equal lives. Our higher standin’ is not a measure of our merit. It is an accident of history that could easily have happened in the reverse.”

  A bit short of breath, Bourque broke off the speech for a moment. He studied the people in front of them, the sullen young men, the worn older women, the open-eyed children. He looked at their faces, trying to see into their hearts. They were quiet, serious, attentive, weighing his words, teetering between yes and no. He decided to push a little harder, because what else could he do?

  “The time has come time,” he said, “for us to surrender our illusion of superiority. We haven’t done anything to earn it. We don’t really deserve it. And they don’t deserve the position we’all have put them in. Come on. Y’all know that. Y’all don’t need me to tell you that, do y’all?”

  He smiled at the audience, as though he were the uncle who’d caught his nephew robbing the cookie jar, but wasn’t going to tattle on him, and he was rewarded by a few embarrassed smiles in the audience. Then he turned serious.

  “My friends, my neighbors, my fellow Southerners, the time has come to abandon this delusion. It has hog-tied us almost as much as it has the people we’ve shut out.

  We’ve lost the grace of their friendship, their energy, their wisdom, their creativity and their humanity. How do I know? Because of the stubborn coal of conscience.”

  He stopped and let that sink in. He’d done his best to arouse their self-interest. Now, he was trying to reach that stubborn coal of conscience he was sure was within them, trying to awaken it and empower it.

  “We have crippled ourselves—and them—for more than 200 years, and for every year that has passed, a little bit of our humanity has leaked away, so that today, it is not just our treasury, but our spirit that is tragically impoverished.

  “We must end this while there is still something left of us. We cannot wait any long
er. We can no longer comfort ourselves with half measures. The time for that is long over, if there ever was a time for it.

  “If you doubt that, even for a moment,” Bourque said, his voice strong and compelling, “I ask y’all to look at the role Blacks play in the North. They are doctors and lawyers and businessmen. They are musicians and policemen and clerks. They live right next door to whites and go to the same schools. They are taxpayers, productive citizens who contribute to their society in equal measure.”

  He stopped and looked back at Rev. Hurbuckle, who smiled and gave him a thumbs up.

  “Recently, the NAU elected a Black man President. Do you know why? Well, I’ve spent a fair amount of time jawin’ with him, so I can tell y’all: he was the best man for the job. He’s a big man, with a big mind and a big heart. He understands the world. He understands his own country. He even understands us, God help him. Yes he does. And his support for reunion demonstrates the depth and breadth of his generosity. Yes, generosity. We’re not bringin’ much of a dowry to this shindig, you know.”

  Bourque chuckled and the audience laughed a bit as well. He felt like a defense lawyer, trying to guess if he’d said enough, and said it well enough, to persuade the jury. They weren’t against him. He’d be able to feel it if they were. But they needed some more convincing, at least as far as he could tell.

  “I know it won’t be easy for us to change,” he said. “Tain’t easy to conquer a delusion. It’s hard to give up a privilege, even if you haven’t done anything to deserve it. It takes courage, especially when it’s been passed down for generations, especially when you’ve shared it with your friends and neighbors, especially when it’s woven into the very fabric of our society. We’re going to have to show great courage and great determination, and by ‘we,’ I mean y’all and me too. Because I’m at least as guilty of believing in it as anyone who can hear me now. Feels like it’s in my genes.” He looked at the television cameras and grinned. “Don’t none of y’all ever forget that. Everything I’m askin’ of y’all, I’m also asking of myself.”

  He stood there and let them look at him, let them remember his grandfather, the man who had turned a disconnected collection of rebel states into a real country. He let them remember his father, who had ended slavery and won the Confederacy membership in the League of Nations, as well as a seat at the table among its fellow countries. He let them remember New Orleans and the wounds he received in his victory against Miguel Garcia. He let them remind themselves who they were listening to. Then he continued.

  “Maybe y’all think reunion will be a sacrifice, perhaps a great and painful sacrifice. But I am convinced, my friends, to the very depths of my soul, that the benefit will be far greater than the sacrifice—so great, in fact, that y’all will soon see that y’all are making no sacrifice at all, that ridding yourselves of this delusion is the route toward freedom, toward a greater humanity and a common brotherhood. ”

  Bourque leaned forward, both hands on the lectern, waiting for a wave of pain to pass. And it did, but it left him feeling weak. He swallowed hard.

  “I am speaking from my heart now,” he said softly, because he didn’t have the breath for full volume. “This is what I truly and deeply believe—and what y’all believe as well, if y’all will only listen to what your heart tells you…we’re the same, you and me. We both have to see—at long last—the true nature of human bein’s. We have to see the world as it really is. I know how difficult that is, believe me. It’s as hard for me as it is for y’all. But we don’t have any choice at all. The moment has arrived. The very instant is here. And if y’all can’t see that, go sit in the truck and let the rest of us get on with it.”

  Bourque took one hand from the lectern and reached into his pocket, seeking the roll of Tums he’d planted there earlier, and he found it and used his fingernail to detach one of the little pink lozenges. He pulled his hand out of his pocket, concealing the Tum, coughed a couple of times and snuck it into his mouth, where it began to dissolve.

  “Tomorrow,” the President said, a little more forcefully, “your state legislators will cast their votes on whether or not to petition the NAU on reunion. By speakin’ out—or remainin’ silent—y’all will have the single chance in y’alls’ lifetime to embrace the future or cling to a past that’s dissolvin’ beneath our feet. What should y’all be thinkin’ as you consider that vote?

  “Y’all should be thinking of Reunion,” he said. “I want to repeat that word: reunion. I want y’all to get used to it. Reunion. I want it to be music to your ears. Its a short word, but it’s packed with meaning. It means safety. It means growth. It means prosperity. It means strength and power. It means a great future. Reunion. E Pluribus Unum, ‘from many, one,’ and that one can include us. It means a new world for all of us.”

  The President could feel the sweat dripping down his body. His legs were trembling slightly. But he was almost there. They were on the verge. He could feel it.

  “I wanna remind y’all that we face a dual threat,” he said, “and we don’t have the resources to fend them off, not by ourselves. So we got two choices: Either we slip into penury and find ourselves invaded by a country fulla foreigners, a country just itching to hitch us up to the yoke and squeeze the last of our energy and our resources out of us, or we take a chance on a country with whom we share a common heritage and which would welcome us with open arms and help us with great generosity. That makes me as nervous as a pig in a packin’ plant. But there is no third choice—we simply can’t go on as we are. That possibility no longer exists. This is a reality we must face, every one of us, however much we wish it were not so.”

  Bourque hung his head, in what seemed like a dramatic gesture, but was actually the result of weariness and pain. After a moment, he looked up and scanned the audience slowly again. A single drop of sweat rolled down his nose, hung there, then fell on the lectern. He took a breath and resumed.

  “I have been your President for 17 years now, following the death of my father. I have dedicated myself to the safety and prosperity of our nation, no matter what the difficulties, or what the obstacles. Today is no different. I am speaking out of my love for our country. And I am asking for your help to preserve the best part of us.

  “We’ve been offered the opportunity to join with our northern neighbor, to once more become one with them, not as junior partners, mind you, but as equals. We have been invited to become Americans, to let the trees of our two histories intertwine again and become a single nation, to share in their military power and their prosperity. We must accept this remarkable offer with grace, with courage, with trust and with hope. May God bless you. May God bless the Confederacy.”

  Bourque stood at the podium, trembling, exhausted, hurting. That was it. He’d given it everything he had. He was empty.

  For a moment, there was no response from the audience. And then, from a distant corner, from the back of the vast glass sanctuary, the applause begin. It picked up in the opposite corner, getting louder, and it spread, gathering speed, and soon the entire congregation was on its feet, young and old, men and women, not just applauding, but cheering.

  The President looked out at them, moved to the point of tears. He had asked—he had begged—and they had granted him his wish. He’d been sure, well almost sure, it would turn out this way—how else could this end? But the reality of it was staggering. It was no longer something he imagined. It was something that had happened.

  He nodded, first to one side, then to another, forgetting the television cameras. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” But the applause persisted, unrelenting. He nodded again and waved, then turned to go back to his seat.

  At that moment, his left leg gave way. He would have fallen, except that Pickett, who hadn’t once taken his eyes away from him instantaneously moved up and grabbed Bourque’s arm, helping him to his seat. To the audience, it seemed as though he were congratulating the President.

  The Rev. Hurbuckle knew Bourque was in tr
ouble, but gave no sign of it. Instead, he smiled and shook his hand, and then returned to the podium. He let the applause slowly die. He looked out at the audience, his audience, the worshippers he had assembled and taught and captivated.

  “Today,” he said, “y’all have made me very proud to be a citizen of the Confederacy. With all of my heart, I join you in your support for President Bourque. He saved us once and now he is saving us once again.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Roy Pickett and Delphine Bourque sat in the darkened hallway outside of Buddy Bourque’s bedroom, on either side of his closed door, trying not to look at each other, waiting impatiently for Dr. Cohen to emerge.

  “I can’t believe how fast this is happening,” Delphine said.

  “That’s the way he wanted it,” Pickett replied. “Said the longer we wait, the more people will find reason to be against it.’

  “I just want him around to see it.”

  After what seemed like the better part of an hour, the door opened and Dr. Cohen stepped out, snapping his big black doctor’s bag closed and shutting the door behind him. He looked pale and concerned.

  It was Delphine who worked up the courage to ask. “How is he, Dr. Cohen?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Better. For now. I gave him something.”

  “Is he asleep?” Delphine asked.

  Cohen removed his wire-rim glasses and stuffed them into a pocket. “Drousy,” he said. “Comfortable. But not asleep.”

  “He’s going to want to know the results of the state votes,” Pickett said.

  “Yes, he was pestering me about that,” Cohen said. “Tell him what he wants to know, but don’t let him get excited. His energy reserves are very low.”

  “The speech was too much for him,” Pickett said.

  “We couldn’t have stopped him from making it,” said Delphine, exchanging a significant glance with Pickett.