Marie, as far as he could tell, hadn’t aged a day. He marveled at how she’d managed that. She’d lived with him for thirty years now. If that wasn’t enough to give her gray hair, nothing ever would.
She said, “The Romans in our Lord’s day didn’t use their power for good, did they?”
“I don’t know these things,” Lucien exclaimed. “If you wanted someone who knows about Romans, you shouldn’t have married a farmer.” He raised a sly eyebrow. “Maybe you should have married Bishop Pascal.”
“You’re trying to make me angry,” Marie said. “You’re doing a good job of it, too. It’s not so much that Bishop Pascal can’t marry. It’s thinking I might want to marry him if he could. You could squeeze enough oil out of that man to light a house for a year.”
“But it would be sweet oil,” Galtier said. His wife made a face at him.
Before they could start up again, Georges, their younger son, came into the farmhouse with a newspaper from Rivière-du-Loup in his hand. “They’ve gone and done it!” he said, waving the paper at Lucien and Marie.
“Who has gone and done what?” Lucien Galtier asked. With Georges with newspaper in hand, he might settle on anything. Charles, his older brother, was much more like the elder Galtier, both in looks and character. Georges towered over his father—and also, as he had since he was a boy, delighted in whimsy for its own sake. Had someone gone and hauled a cow onto a roof? Georges might well make a story like that out to be the end of the world.
Not this time, though. “The Canadians have risen against the United States!” he said, and held the paper still long enough to let his father and mother see the big black headline.
“Calisse!” Galtier muttered. “Mauvais tabernac!” Marie clucked at his swearing, but he didn’t care. He reached for the newspaper. “Oh, the fools! The stupid fools!” He crossed himself.
“They’ll get what’s coming to them,” Georges said. He took the Republic of Quebec for granted. He’d lived the last third of his life in it. To him, as his words showed, Canada was a foreign country.
Things were different for Lucien. Back in the 1890s, he’d been conscripted into the Canadian Army. He’d soldiered side by side with men who spoke English. He’d learned some himself; its remembered fragments had come in handy in ways he hadn’t expected. He’d also been told, “Talk white!” when he spouted French at the wrong time. Despite that, though, he’d seen that English-speaking Canadians weren’t so very different from their Quebecois counterparts. And memories of when Quebec had been part of something stretching from Atlantic to Pacific remained strong in him.
“Give me the paper,” he said. “I want to see what they say about this.”
Something in his tone warned Georges this would not be a good time to argue or joke. “Here, Papa,” he said, and handed him the newspaper without another word.
Galtier had to hold it out at arm’s length to read it. His sight had lengthened over the past ten years, too. “Shall I get your reading glasses?” Marie asked. “I know where you left them—on the nightstand by the bed.”
“Never mind,” he answered. “I can manage well enough. . . . Uprisings in Toronto and Ottawa and Winnipeg, in Calgary and Edmonton and Vancouver.”
“The Americans say they are putting them down,” Georges said.
“Of course they say that. What else would you expect them to say?” Galtier replied. “During the war, both sides told lies as fast as they could. The Americans must have captured Quebec City and Montreal and Toronto half a dozen times each—and they must have been chased south over the border just as often.”
Georges pointed to a paragraph Lucien was about to read on his own. “The premier of the Republic is sending soldiers to help his American allies—that’s what he calls it, anyhow.”
“ ‘Osti,” Galtier muttered. He wasn’t surprised so much as disgusted. He’d been thinking of the Bible. The Americans were saying Come!—and the Quebecois were duly coming. Or was that fair? Didn’t allies help allies? Weren’t Quebec and the USA allies? Why wouldn’t French-speaking troops in blue-gray help Americans in green-gray?
“Can the Canadians win, do you think?” Georges asked. He certainly thought of his former countrymen as foreigners.
“No.” Galtier shook his head. “The Americans are soft in certain things—they have certainly been softer here in Quebec than they might have been.” Yes, he had to admit that. “But think even of your brother-in-law. Remember what he thinks of the British. The United States will not be kind in Canada. They will crucify the whole country, and they will laugh while they are doing it.”
“The Canadians are brave,” his son said.
“They’re foolish,” Galtier replied.
“Haven’t we seen enough war? Haven’t we seen too much war?” Marie said. Actually, this part of Quebec had fallen to the Americans fairly fast. It had seen occupation, but not too much true combat. Near Montreal, near Quebec City, the story was different.
“They don’t think so.” Georges sounded excited. He knows no better, Galtier thought. War around here hadn’t seemed too bad.
“Listen to this, son,” Galtier said after turning the paper to an inside page so he could see the rest of the story. “Listen carefully. ‘American occupying authorities vow that these uprisings will be put down, and all rebels punished under martial law. This is a rebellion against duly constituted authority, not a war; captured rebels do not have the privileges granted to legitimate prisoners of war.’ Do you know what that means? Do you understand it?”
“I think so, Father.” Georges, for once, sounded serious. He didn’t try to make a joke of it.
Lucien Galtier spelled things out anyhow: “It means the Americans will hang or shoot anyone they catch who rose up against them. They won’t waste time with a lot of questions before they do it, either.”
“And we take money from the Americans for the hospital they built on our patrimony,” Georges said. “We even have an American in our family.”
“You have a half-American nephew,” Galtier replied. “You have an American brother-in-law, as I have an American son-in-law. And Leonard O’Doull is a good fellow and a good doctor, and you cannot say otherwise.”
“Nooo,” Georges admitted reluctantly. “But if they’re doing these things in Canada—”
“They’re doing them because the Canadians have risen up,” Galtier said. “If the Canadians had stayed quiet, none of this would have happened. None of it has happened here in Quebec, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui, tu as raison, Papa,” Georges said. “But even if you are right, is it not that we have made a deal with the Devil, you might say?”
That same thought had crossed Galtier’s mind, too. He did his best to fight it down whenever it did. Now he said, “No. We are a small man. The United States, they are a large, strong man who carries a gun. Are we foolish because we do not go out of our way to step on his toes? I think not.”
“Maybe,” his son said, more reluctantly still. Then he asked, “What time is it?”
“Am I a clock?” Galtier said. “You can look at one as easily as I.”
Georges did, and then exclaimed in dismay. “Is it half past four already? Tabernac! I thought it was earlier.”
“And why does the hour matter so much?” Galtier inquired with a certain ironic curiosity, part of which was about whether his guess was right.
Sure enough, his younger son shuffled his feet a couple of times before answering, “When I was in town, I heard there would be a dance tonight. I thought I might go.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I did.” Georges attempted defiance. He didn’t do a good job of it. His older brother, Charles, or any of his four sisters could have given him lessons.
Lucien and Marie shared amused looks. They’d met at a dance, somewhere a little more than thirty years before. Nor were they the only couple in the neighborhood who had—far from it. Galtier said, “All right, son. Have a good time.”
Geor
ges started to argue, to protest. Then he really heard what his father had said. He blinked. “It’s all right?” he asked suspiciously.
“I said so, didn’t I?”
Marie added, “There’s plenty of hot water on the stove, if you have time to bathe and shave before you go.”
“Merci, chère Maman. I’ll do that quick as a wink.” Georges still looked as if he didn’t trust his ears. He went off to the kitchen to take the hot water to the bathroom, still scratching his head.
When he was, or at least might have been, out of earshot, Marie said, “High time he got married. I began to worry about Charles when he waited so long.”
“Madeleine Boileau is a nice girl, and she made him a good match this past winter,” Galtier said. His wife nodded. He went on, “She is a better match than we could have got without our American doctor son-in-law, or without the money from the Americans for the property on which the hospital stands.”
“I know that,” Marie said. “You must know it, too. Why bring it up now? We’ve had these things for some time.”
“Why bring it up now?” Galtier echoed. “To convince myself what we’ve done is worthwhile, that’s why. Because there are times when I feel our money is like Judas’ thirty pieces of silver, that’s why. Because I almost envy the Canadians for rising, that’s why.”
Marie eyed him. “Would you disown your grandson?”
“No. Never.” Lucien didn’t hesitate. He did laugh. “All right. You have me.”
“I should hope so,” Marie said.
III
A cold, nasty rain poured down on Augusta, Georgia. Had the town been up in the USA, Scipio suspected it would have got snow, even though this was only the end of October. He’d seen snow a few times, here and in South Carolina, where he’d lived most of his life. He didn’t like it a bit.
The rain drummed on his cheap black umbrella. Some of the Negroes in the Terry, Augusta’s black quarter, had no umbrellas. They dashed through the streets on the way to work, water splashing up under their galoshes—when they had galoshes. Scipio did. He was fastidious about his person. Part of that was personal inclination, part habit ingrained in him by more than half a lifetime spent as Anne Colleton’s butler. She’d always insisted on perfection in everything, and she’d known how to get what she wanted.
His foot slipped out from under him. He had to make a mad grab for a lamppost with his free hand. That kept him from falling on his backside, but the desperate embrace left his arm and one side of his chest almost as wet as if he had fallen.
He muttered under his breath all the way to Erasmus’ fish market and restaurant. YOU BUY—WE FRY! was painted on the window in big letters. The front door was unlocked. Scipio gladly ducked inside, closing the umbrella as he did so.
Erasmus, as always, had got there before him. The gray-haired black man was sipping on a steaming cup of coffee almost white with cream—he’d already been to the fish market alongside the Savannah River to get the best of the day’s catch and put it on ice here.
“Mornin’,” he said to Scipio, and then, “Wet out.” He got the most mileage from every word he used.
“Do Jesus, sho’ is!” Scipio exclaimed. “I’s soaked clean through.” His accent was that of the Congaree, thicker and more ignorant-sounding than Erasmus’. He could also use the English of an educated white man—again, Anne Colleton’s doing—but he had nothing between the one and the other.
“Can’t be helped.” Erasmus took another sip of coffee. He pointed to the pot. “Pour yourself some if you got a mind to, Xerxes.”
“I do dat,” Scipio said. No one in Augusta, not even Bathsheba, his wife, knew his rightful name. He’d used several aliases since escaping from the wreckage of the Congaree Socialist Republic. His passbook said he was Xerxes, and he wasn’t about to argue with it. Xerxes was as free as a black man in the Confederate States could be. Scipio still had a large price on his head back in South Carolina.
He poured less cream—the pitcher sat on ice next to some catfish—into his coffee than Erasmus used, but added a couple of teaspoons of sugar. His boss’ eyes were on him. Erasmus didn’t approve of anyone standing around idle, especially not someone he was paying. Getting a cup of coffee didn’t mean lollygagging around for half an hour till Scipio finished it. He took the cup out in front of the display full of ice and fish, grabbed a push broom, and started sweeping up under and around the restaurant tables.
Erasmus said, “You’s a pretty good fellow, Xerxes.”
“I thanks you,” Scipio answered, chivvying small specks of dust to destruction.
“Yes, suh, you’s a pretty good fellow,” Erasmus said again. “You works.” By the way he spoke, those two traits were intimately connected. He watched Scipio sweep a little longer, then added, “You know what I say? I say you ought to git your own place, work for your own self. I hates to lose you, but you smart if you go.”
Scipio stopped sweeping. Erasmus must have been serious, for he didn’t give his employee a put-upon stare. Slowly, Scipio said, “Ain’t never thought about that none.”
He told the truth. Never in his life had he contemplated being his own master. He’d been born a slave, before the Confederate States manumitted their Negroes in the aftermath of the Second Mexican War. Even after manumission, he’d always been a house nigger, first in the kitchens at Marshlands, then as butler there. He’d done factory labor and worked as a waiter since. Every single place, he’d had somebody telling him what to do. (Whenever he thought of Anne Colleton, he shivered, even now. Getting out of South Carolina had put some distance between them, the state border being more important than the miles. Was it enough? He hoped so.)
“Ought to do some thinkin’, then, I reckon,” Erasmus said. “You ain’t stupid. You kin read’n write’n cipher—more’n I kin do my ownself. You works hard, an’ you saves your money. What else you need?”
Maybe he didn’t expect an answer, but Scipio gave him one: “Dunno dat I wants to boss other niggers around. You hear what I sayin’?”
“Yeah, I hears it. But you ain’t real likely to hire no white folks.” Erasmus bared his teeth to show that was meant for a joke. Scipio dutifully smiled back. His boss went on, “I hear what you say. But you gots to have people working’ fo’ you. Job gits too big fo’ one man to do it all by hisself.”
“Don’ want to play de buckra.” Scipio made as if to crack a whip. He might have been driving along a slave coffle in the days before manumission.
“I hear black folks say that every now and again,” Erasmus admitted. “But you tell me true, now—I treat you like white folks treats niggers?”
“No,” Scipio admitted. “Had one fella, he weren’t too bad, but de rest—” He shook his head.
“Oglethorpe,” Erasmus said. Scipio nodded in surprise; he hadn’t mentioned his earlier boss for quite a while. Erasmus owned a stubborn memory. He continued, “I knows Aurelius a bit. He been waitin’ tables for John Oglethorpe since dirt. He says that there buckra a lot like me, you work for him, he don’t give you no trouble. He could do that, too.”
“Could,” Scipio said. “Mebbe could. Dunno dat I gots it in me to give no orders, though, not no way.” He hadn’t even liked giving orders as a butler, when Anne Colleton was the ultimate authority behind them. Doing it on his own hook? No, he wasn’t sure about that at all.
“Well, you don’t want to do what you kin do, that’s your business,” Erasmus said. “Like I told you, I ain’t sorry you works for me. But you is wastin’ yourself, you wants to know what I think.”
How many Negroes in the Confederate States aren’t wasting themselves? Scipio wondered. He’d got himself an education as good as any white man’s. What could he do with it? Sound impressive as the butler at Marshlands during the war. Now, wait tables. If he’d tried to set up as a businessman—not in the sense Erasmus meant, but as an investor, a capitalist—he would have been lucky if whites here only laughed at him. More likely, they would have lynched him.
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br /> And most blacks? Besides having whites hate them, most blacks never got the education that would have let them make the most of their abilities—that would have let them discover what abilities they had. And then whites called them stupid and inferior because they didn’t succeed.
“Sometimes I reckons dem Red niggers, dey knew what dey was doin’,” he said. He’d never dared say anything like that to Erasmus before.
The older man studied him, then slowly shook his head. “Them Reds, they was about tearin’ down, not buildin’ up. Tearin’ down don’t do no good. Never has, never will.” He sounded very certain.
Before Scipio could answer, the day’s first customer came in: a fat black man dripping rain from the brim of his homburg and from the hem of his rubberized-cotton raincoat. “Bacon an’ a couple eggs over medium an’ grits an’ coffee,” he called to Erasmus.
Erasmus already had the eggs and bacon on the stove. “Like I don’t know what you has for breakfast, Sophocles,” he said reproachfully.
Scipio poured coffee for Sophocles and brought it to him. As soon as Erasmus had the rest of the man’s breakfast ready, he carried that over, too. “Half a dollar, all told,” he said.
“Here y’are.” Sophocles slapped down sixty cents. “Things is up a little from last year,” he remarked.
“But only a little,” Scipio said. “Do Jesus, when dey was playin’ games wid de money, breakfas’ cost you fifty million dollars, maybe fifty billion dollars. I’s powerful glad dey fix it—dey pretty much fix it, anyways.”
Sophocles and Erasmus both nodded. Inflation had almost destroyed the CSA. How could anybody do business when money might lose half its value between the morning when you got it and the afternoon when you found a chance to spend it? Prices were higher now than they had been when the currency was restored; the C.S. dollar didn’t trade at par with its U.S. counterpart. But it was still close, and didn’t seem to be sinking very fast.
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