American Empire : The Center Cannot Hold

by Harry Turtledove

  “But will President Hoover do anything?” Dowling said. “He certainly hasn’t done much since he landed in Powel House six months ago.”

  Toricelli gave him a sly smile. “Would you rather we still had President Blackford?”

  “Good God, no!” Dowling exclaimed; he’d always been a solid Democrat. “But I would like to see Hoover doing a little more. If things are any better than they were when Blackford went home to Dakota, I haven’t seen it.”

  “It won’t happen overnight, sir.” His adjutant was a Democrat, too. Most officers were.

  “Obviously,” Dowling said. “I do wish it would show some signs of happening at all, though.”

  “The whole world has troubles,” Toricelli said, and Dowling nodded, for that was obviously true.

  “Utah probably has more troubles than the rest of the world.” Abner Dowling corrected himself: “Utah certainly has worse troubles than the rest of the world. Maybe that’s why we’re not seeing things looking better here.” He spoke as if trying to convince himself, hoping he could convince himself. But he remained incompletely convinced. He said, “If more people here had jobs, we wouldn’t need to worry . . . quite . . . so much about this place going up in smoke.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Toricelli agreed; his adjutant was nothing if not polite. But Toricelli was also stubborn. He went on, “If you know how to arrange that, sir, you should have run for president last year.”

  General Custer had always claimed he’d had a shot at the presidency in 1884. There were any number of ways in which Dowling didn’t want to imitate the officer under whom he’d served for so long. He couldn’t imagine any job he wanted less than that of the president, especially in these thankless times.

  And yet . . . He snapped his fingers. “You know, Captain, we could put a lot of people to work if we cleared Temple Square of the rubble that’s been sitting there for almost twenty years now.”

  Toricelli frowned. “Yes, sir, we could. But isn’t the point of keeping the rubble there to remind the Mormons we gave them a licking? There’s not going to be a new Temple in Salt Lake City, any more than there’s going to be one in Jerusalem.”

  Dowling muttered under his breath. Not only was Captain Toricelli polite and stubborn, he was also smart. But Dowling still liked the idea, or part of it. “All right, suppose we cordon off the part of the square that held the Temple and get rid of the rest of the rubbish?” he said. “The Tabernacle and the other buildings weren’t holy ground.”

  He waited, wondering what his adjutant would make of that. Toricelli spent close to a minute thinking it over. Then he said, “Shall I draft a telegram for you to send to the War Department?”

  “Yes, Captain, if you’d be so kind.” Dowling beamed. He suspected Captain Toricelli made a tougher audience than any he’d face back in Philadelphia.

  The wire went out two days later. The afternoon it did, Dowling got a wire from the War Department: WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS IN UTAH DESIRABLE. YOUR IDEA FORWARDED TO SECRETARY OF WAR FOR APPROVAL. The printed signature on the sheet of yellow paper belonged to Lieutenant General Sam Sturgis, chief of the General Staff.

  He heard from the Secretary of War the next day. PRESIDENT HOOVER PERSONALLY CONTROLS ALL DECISIONS ON UTAH, the wire said. I HAVE PASSED THIS PROPOSAL TO HIM RECOMMENDING APPROVAL, WHICH IS EXPECTED. Dowling understood that this Cabinet official, a distant relative of the last Democratic president before Hoover, remained in the service of his country despite being confined to a wheelchair by some rare, debilitating disease.

  Though Captain Toricelli already knew what was in the telegram, Dowling set it on his desk anyhow. “If the chief of the General Staff says yes, and if the Secretary of War says yes, how can the president say no?” he exulted.

  “I don’t know, sir,” his adjutant replied. “I hope we don’t find out.”

  But they did. The very next day, the telephone in Dowling’s office rang. He picked it up. “Abner Dowling speaking.”

  “Colonel Dowling, this is Herbert Hoover.” And it was. Dowling had heard his voice on the wireless and in newsreels too many times to have any doubt.

  He stiffened to attention in his chair. “It’s a privilege to speak with you, sir.”

  “Maybe you won’t think so when I’m done,” the president said. “Your proposal for makework for the people of Utah is not to go forward. Do you understand me?”

  “It is not to go forward,” Dowling repeated. “I hear you, and I will obey, of course, but I have to say I do not understand.”

  “We have had too much of Socialist-style, individualism-sapping false nostrums the past twelve years,” Hoover said. “Paternalism and state socialism have done a great deal of harm to the country. They stifle initiative. They cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of the people. And I will not have them under my administration.”

  Well, that’s that, Dowling thought. But he couldn’t help asking, “Sir, don’t you think Utah is a special case?”

  “Every case has partisans who insist it is special,” Hoover answered. “I recognize none of them. I believe none of them. The same principles must apply throughout the United States.”

  Quickly, Dowling said, “I meant no harm, Mr. President.” He’d never heard Hoover sound so vehement, not in any of his speeches. He hadn’t imagined the new president could sound so vehement.

  “I believe you, Colonel. I am not angry at you,” President Hoover said, which made Dowling feel a little—though only a little—better. Hoover went on, “I’m sure the Socialists meant no harm, either. But you know which road is paved with good intentions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dowling said.

  “All right, then,” the president said. “We’ll say no more about it. But my decision is final. I do not want this issue raised again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dowling repeated.

  “Good.” Hoover hung up.

  Dowling emerged from his office feeling like a man who’d survived a bomb going off much too close. Thanks to the Confederates during the war and that damned Canuck afterwards, he knew more about bombs going off too close than he’d ever wanted to learn. What he felt must not have shown on his face, though, for Captain Toricelli said, “I heard you talking to the president, sir. May we go ahead?”

  His voice said he was confident of the answer. Well, Abner Dowling had been confident of the answer, too. Much good his confidence had done him. He shook his head. His jowls wobbled back and forth. “No, Captain. In fact, we’re ordered not to go ahead, and so we won’t.”

  Toricelli gaped. “But . . . why, sir?”

  “The president feels the scheme smacks of socialism. He says we’ve had enough government programs trying to get us over the hump, and he doesn’t want another one.”

  “But . . .” his adjutant said again.

  “He’s the president. What he says goes,” Dowling said. “And he and Coolidge did campaign against government interference, and they did get elected. If I look at it that way, maybe I’m not so surprised.”

  “But . . .” Toricelli said once more. After a moment, he gathered himself and managed something else: “We’re not competing against any private firm clearing Temple Square. There is no private firm clearing Temple Square.”

  “If you care to call Powel House, Captain, go right ahead,” Dowling said. “As for me, I’m sure I know what the president wants done and what he doesn’t. And he doesn’t want us giving the Mormons even a dime to haul rocks out of Temple Square.”

  “A few days ago, we were saying he didn’t seem to want to do much of anything,” his adjutant observed. “Don’t you think this goes too far, though?”

  “What I think is, he’s the president of the United States. If you set my opinion next to his, I know whose comes out on top. We’ve been ordered not to proceed. That being so, we won’t proceed.”

  “I can’t argue with you there, sir,” Toricelli said.

  “Good,” Dowling said. “I’m glad. For your sake, I’m glad.
It’s a free country. You can disagree with the president. Nobody will say a word. But when he gives an order, we follow it.”

  “Of course, sir,” Captain Toricelli replied, as any officer in the Army would have done.

  A few days later, Dowling received Heber Young in his office. Young, a handsome man in his early thirties, was a grandson of Brigham Young. Given the number of wives and children Brigham had had, that was hardly a unique distinction in Utah these days. This particular Young came as close to being an official leader as the Mormons had. Since, under martial law, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was proscribed, he couldn’t be very official. But he wasn’t exactly unofficial, either.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Young?” Dowling asked after greetings that were what diplomats called “correct”: polite and chilly.

  “People here need work, Colonel,” Heber Young replied.

  “People all over the country need work, sir,” Dowling said.

  “Will you tell me the problem is not worse here?” Young asked.

  “If it is, whose fault is that?” Dowling said. “I was with General Pershing when a Mormon fanatic murdered him—a Mormon fanatic we’ve never caught, for other Mormon fanatics have sheltered him for all the years since.”

  “I don’t know how you can say that, Colonel, when the U.S. government insists again and again that there is no such thing as the Mormon Church in Utah these days.” Young spoke with surprisingly mild irony.

  It was still enough to raise a flush on Dowling’s plump cheeks. “Funny, Mr. Young. Very funny. Come to the point, if you’d be so kind.”

  “All right. I will.” Young looked serious to the point of solemnity. “We could use—we desperately need—a public-works program to give men jobs, help them support their families, and, most important of all, give them hope.”

  Dowling sighed. “As it happens, I have discussed that very notion with President Hoover in the past few days. He opposes such programs not only here but anywhere in the USA. Don’t expect them. Don’t hope for them. You will be disappointed.”

  Heber Young proved he could quote the Old Testament as well as the Book of Mormon, murmuring, “ ‘Mene, mene, tekel upharsin. Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting.’ As God said to Belshazzar, so I say to Hoover.” And he walked out of Abner Dowling’s office without a backward glance.

  Scipio hadn’t got so dressed up since his days as Anne Colleton’s butler. The Huntsman’s Lodge was as fine a restaurant as Augusta boasted, and expected its waiters to look the part. (It paid no better than any other restaurant, and worse than some. It expected the men who served food to make most of their money from tips. The customers tipped no better there than anywhere else. One reason they’d got rich enough to afford to eat at the Huntsman’s Lodge was their reluctance to part unnecessarily with even a penny.)

  Walking to the restaurant in boiled shirt, black tie, and tails was torture for Scipio in the sodden heat of late August. If he hadn’t needed work of any sort so badly . . . But he did, and he was glad to have any at all. So many men in Augusta, Negro and white, didn’t.

  Walking to the Huntsman’s Lodge in formal attire was, or could be, torture in more ways than one. It exposed him to the wit, such as that was, of the white citizens of Augusta. He could usually see trouble coming before it struck. That did him no good what ever, of course.

  “Looky what we got here!” a fellow in straw hat and bib overalls whooped, pointing at Scipio. “We got us a nigger all tricked out like a penguin! Ain’t that somethin’?”

  Other whites coming down Marbury Street smiled. One or two laughed. Three or four stopped to see what would happen next. Scipio hoped nothing would happen next. Sometimes one joke was enough to get the meanness out of a white man’s system. Smiling what was probably a sickly smile, Scipio tried to walk on by.

  As he came closer to the man in overalls, he saw a Freedom Party pin glittering on one overalls strap. His heart sank. That was likely to mean worse trouble than he would have got from somebody else. And, sure as hell, the white man stepped into his path and said, “What the hell’s a nigger doin’ dressed up like he’s King Shit?”

  When Scipio tried to walk around him, the man blocked his way again. He had to answer. He did, as meekly as he could: “I’s a waiter, suh. I gots to wear dis git-up.”

  He should have known—he had known—nothing he said would do him any good. Scowling, the white man demanded, “How come you got a job when I ain’t, God damn you? Where’s the justice in that?” Scipio tried to escape with a shrug. It didn’t work. The man shouted, “Answer me, you goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch!”

  Because I have a brain, and you haven’t. Because my mouth isn’t hooked up to the toilet. Because I’ve had more baths this week than you have this year. If Scipio said any of that, he was a dead man. He looked down at the sidewalk, the picture of a submissive Negro. Softly, he said, “Suh, I been waitin’ table forty year now. I’s right good at it.” What are you good at, besides causing trouble? Not much, I’ll bet. One more thing he dared not say.

  “You know how many white folks is hungry, and you’re marchin’ off to work in your goddamn fancy penguin suit?” the man in overalls snarled. “I ought to kick your black ass around the block a few times, teach you respect for your betters.”

  He drew back his foot as if to do just that. All Scipio could do was take it or try to run. He intended to run—he didn’t want his outfit damaged. Getting it repaired or, worse, having to buy a new one would cost him money he didn’t have. But then one of the other white men said, “Hell, let him go. Ain’t his fault he has to dress up like a damn fool to go to work.”

  “Thank you, suh,” Scipio whispered. “I thanks you from de bottom of my heart.”

  The white man with the Freedom Party pin glanced around at the little crowd. Most people nodded at what the other fellow had said. Scowling, the Freedom Party man said, “All right. All right for now, goddammit. But when Jake Featherston gets elected, we’ll put every damn nigger in his place, not just the ones in the fancy suits.” He strutted down the street as if he were a mover and shaker, not a man with no more than a fifty-fifty chance of being able to write his own name.

  “Thank you,” Scipio said once more.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” said the man who’d urged he be left alone. “I did it on account of I purely can’t stand the Freedom Party.” He laughed bitterly. “And I wonder how long I’ll be allowed to say that in public if Featherston does win.”

  Somebody’s not blind, anyhow, Scipio thought as he hurried up the street toward the Huntsman’s Lodge. But if Featherston wins, this fellow can change his mind. He can say he was for the Freedom Party all along, and he’ll get on fine. I’m black. I didn’t choose that, and I can’t change it.

  As far as he could see, he had no choices at all if the Freedom Party won.

  Getting to the restaurant was a relief. For one thing, he did make it on time. If he got in trouble for any reason, he could be back pounding the pavement looking for work. He knew that all too well—how could he help knowing? For another, the rhythms and rituals of work kept him too busy to worry . . . much.

  He was obsequious to the prosperous white men and their sleek female companions who dined at the Lodge, but that bothered him much less than having to be obsequious to whites on the street. A white waiter in New York City would act subservient on the job. Acting subservient was part of a waiter’s job—which went a long way towards explaining why there were so few white waiters in the Confederate States, where whites thought subservience the province of blacks alone. But that waiter in New York City became his customers’ equal as soon as he left his job. Scipio didn’t, and never would.

  A portly, middle-aged man eating pheasant looked up from his meal and said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  With a small thrill of horror, Scipio realized the man had danced attendance upon Anne Colleton at Marshlands before the war. Had his own past come
back to haunt him after all these years? He shook his head and put on his thickest accent to answer, “Ah don’ reckon so, suh.”

  The customer shrugged. “You must be right. The boy I knew spoke better than I do myself.”

  Boy. Even then, Scipio had been in his thirties. Whites in the CSA refused to take Negroes seriously. He supposed that was why the Red uprising during the war had got as far as it had. Not even clever whites like Miss Anne had imagined Negroes could conceive of grievances serious enough to make them take up arms for redress.

  All that went through his head in a flash. To reassure the white man—he was Tony Somebody, and Anne Colleton had thought him a pompous ass—he said, “Ah talks lahk I talks, suh. Dis heah de onliest way Ah knows how.” He wondered if he could speak like an educated white man any more. Or would that dialect of English have disappeared from his tongue like a foreign language seldom used?

  “All right. Never mind,” the customer said, and went back to his pheasant. When he walked out, he left a fifty-cent tip, as if to apologize for bothering Scipio. Noblesse oblige, Scipio thought, and made the silver coin disappear. These days, there were men desperate enough to kill for half a dollar.

  It was after ten when the Huntsman’s Lodge closed. Scipio worried less about being on the street in black tie and tails than he had during the day. Fewer whites would be out there to see him than during the day—and, with Augusta’s bad street lighting, whoever was there wouldn’t be able to get that good a look at him anyhow.

  But as soon as he opened the door, he closed it again in a hurry and ducked back into the restaurant. “What’s the matter with you, Xerxes?” demanded his manager, a skinny, energetic young white man named Jerry Dover. “Go on home. Get the hell out of here.”

  “Marse Jerry, I reckons I waits a while,” Scipio answered. “Dem Freedom Party white folks”—he almost said buckra, but caught himself before using that word in front of a white—“is marchin’ down de street. Don’t want them seein’ me, you don’t mind too much.”