Flora Blackford didn’t realize how much she’d missed the floor of Congress till she came back to Philadelphia. “Is it any wonder there is armed struggle against the Freedom Party in the Confederate States?” she demanded. “Is it any wonder at all, after the farce that went by the name of an election in that country two weeks ago?”
A Congressman—a Freedom Party Congressman—from Houston sprang to his feet. “How is that there election different from most of the ones y’all put on in what you call my state?”
He didn’t want to be in the U.S. Congress at all. He would sooner have served in Richmond. “Excuse me, Mr. Mahon, but I have the floor,” Flora said with icy courtesy. “May I go on?”
“That’s right. Ride roughshod over me. You’ve been riding roughshod over my state—what you call my state—ever since you tore us bleeding from Texas and made us join the USA.”
“Tell the lady, George!” That was another Freedom Party man from Houston. Two more Congressmen, these from Kentucky, began singing “Dixie.” Neither they nor their constituents wanted to belong to the United States, either.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Congressman La Follette of Wisconsin, the speaker of the House, plied his gavel with gusto. “The gentlemen are out of order,” he declared. “The gentlemen will observe the rules of the House. Mrs. Blackford has the floor.”
“This body is out of order!” George Mahon shouted. “This whole damn country is out of order!” The Kentucky Congressmen sang louder than ever.
Bang! Bang! Bang! “That will be quite enough!” Charles La Follette declared. “The sergeant-at-arms will eject from this chamber any individual flouting the rules of the House. Is that clear?”
“It’s clear, all right,” Mahon said. “It’s clear that even though our own people elected us, you don’t want to let us tell you what they want.” But he sat down after that, and the rowdy singing stopped. The Freedom Party Congressmen knew La Follette meant what he said. He’d ejected them before. Flora wasn’t sure how much good that did, though. Getting thrown out of Congress only made them bigger heroes back home.
“You may continue, Mrs. Blackford,” La Follette said wearily. “Without further interruption, I very much hope.”
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Flora said. “I rose to call upon the administration to take stronger action against the Confederate States than it has done up until this time. President Hoover stayed silent in the wake of the riots—I might even say, the pogrom—aimed against the black residents of the CSA and does not appear to recognize their legitimate right to rise against oppression and brutality. He—”
“The distinguished Congresswoman from New York worries more about the Negroes of the Confederate States not because they are black but because they are Red,” another Congressman broke in. “Most people in the United States worry very little about them for any reason.”
He wasn’t a Freedom Party man. He was a rock-ribbed Democrat from Maine. Speaker La Follette gaveled him to silence, too, but not with the vehemence he’d used against the Freedom Party buffoons. And, to her dismay, Flora saw heads nodding in agreement with what the New Englander had said. The United States had only a handful of Negroes. Border patrols stayed busy keeping would-be colored refugees out. The USA wanted no more blacks; if anything, most people would have been happier with none at all.
Stubbornly, she said, “They are human beings, too, Congressman, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among those being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“Jefferson was a damned Virginian,” the man from Maine sneered. “Give me Adams and Hamilton any day.” More nods, these from all around the big room. Founding Fathers from states no longer in the USA had a low reputation north of the Mason-Dixon line these days, and had ever since the War of Secession.
“Do you deny, sir, that they are human beings?” Flora asked. “Do you deny that they possess those rights I named?”
“They are in a foreign country,” the Congressman from Maine replied. “I deny that they are any business of the USA.”
He got more nods, from fellow Democrats, from the handful of Republicans and Freedom Party men, and even from a few Socialists. To her dismay, Flora had seen that before. Socialists spoke on behalf of racial equality, but couldn’t get too far ahead of the people who voted them into office. That was how they rationalized it, anyhow.
“Congressman Moran, would you say the same if these persecuted people were Irish?” Flora asked sweetly.
“Since they aren’t Irish, the question does not apply.” Moran was too smart to answer that one the way she asked it.
Because he was, she waited for Speaker La Follette to gavel down his interruption and then introduced her motion of censure against the Confederate States. She knew it would fail; the next motion passed censuring the Confederate States for the way they treated their Negroes would be the first. But she had to make the effort. It wasn’t as if Jews didn’t know pogroms, too. News out of Russia and the Kingdom of Poland (which bore about the same relationship to Germany as the Republic of Quebec did to the USA) wasn’t good.
After the House adjourned, she went across the street to her office. A newsboy waving the Philadelphia Inquirer shouted, “Confederates ask to enlarge their army! Read all about it!”
“I certainly do want to read about that!” Flora exclaimed, and gave him a nickel. He handed her a paper, and smiled broadly when she didn’t wait for change.
She spread the Inquirer out on her desk. That was the lead headline, all right. She zoomed through the story. President Featherston, apparently, had requested permission to boost the Confederate Army to a size significantly larger than that allowed by the treaty ending the Great War. Featherston was quoted as saying, “These soldiers will be used only for internal defense. We have uprisings against the lawful authority of our government in several states, and need the extra manpower to put them down.”
Hoover hadn’t said yes and hadn’t said no. A Powel House spokesman had said the president of the United States would give the request serious consideration. Flora wondered what he would do. As a Democrat, he would normally favor a hard line against the CSA. But, as a Democrat, he would also normally favor putting down uprisings of the proletariat, no matter how justified they might be.
Flora wondered how she ought to feel about the request herself. Up till Jake Featherston became president of the Confederate States, the Socialists had favored a softer line with the CSA, easing the country’s return to the family of nations. Some still did. How could the Confederacy become a normal country with a rebellion sputtering in its heartland? But how could one keep from sympathizing with the rebels, considering what they’d been through before picking up rifles (or, as Featherston claimed, cleaning the grease off the ones they’d hidden away in 1916)?
That last made up her mind. She dialed Powel House, wondering how long it would be before these newfangled telephones sent operators into extinction along with the passenger pigeon and the American bison. She worked her way through three secretaries before finally securing an appointment with President Hoover.
When she told her husband that evening what she’d done, Hosea Blackford made a sour face. “He won’t listen to you. You’re my wife. That’s plenty of reason right there for him not to listen to you.”
“This is foreign policy,” Flora answered. “Foreign policy should be bipartisan. You said so yourself, often enough.”
“This is Hoover.” To put it mildly, Blackford did not care for his successor. “You’d do better to recommend the opposite of what you really want. You might have some chance of getting it then.”
Powel House, on Third Street, was a three-story structure of red brick, with wide steps leading up to the broad porch and its wrought-iron railings. Philadelphia’s last pre-Revolutionary mayor had lived there. Since the Second Mexican War, it had also replaced the White House in Washington as the chief presidential residence.
The reception hall onto which the street door o
pened was large and impressive, with highly polished mahogany wainscoting gleaming a mellow red-brown. The banister leading up to President Hoover’s second-floor office was also of mahogany, the spindles fine examples of fancy lathework. When she’d lived here, Flora had often admired them. Now, worried as she was, she hardly gave them a glance.
Hoover’s bulldog features twisted into a smile when she came in. “Good to see you, Mrs. Blackford,” He waved her to a chair. “Please sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He didn’t say, Make yourself at home. She’d been at home here. Had the election of 1932 turned out differently, she and Hosea would still be at home here. Hoover went on, “What can I do for you, Congresswoman?”
“Thank you for your time.” Perhaps because she didn’t like President Hoover, Flora took care to be especially polite. “I’ve come to ask you to tell President Featherston you do not approve of his proposed expansion of the Confederate Army. He will use it for nothing but the oppression of his own people.”
“I agree. That is how he will use it,” Hoover said, and astonished hope flamed in Flora. The president continued, “That is why I am disposed to permit the expansion.”
Flora stared. “I don’t understand . . . Mr. President.”
“If I thought President Featherston intended to use his increased Army against the United States, I would oppose his enlargement of it with every fiber of my being. But I do believe he will use it only for the purpose he says he intends: putting down the Negro uprisings troubling several of his states. Any nation, whether friendly to the United States or not, is entitled to internal peace, stability, and security. If some ill-advised individuals disturb its tranquility, it has the right to use force to put them down.”
“But, Mr. President, one of the reasons the Negroes are in arms against the CSA is that the white majority will not give them—how did you phrase it?—peace, stability, and tranquility,” Flora answered. “The Confederate States made their bed through oppression. Shouldn’t they have to lie in it?”
“Radical elements have controlled blacks in the Confederate States for too long,” Hoover said. “This is not their first rising, if you recall.”
“Oh, yes. Their last one went a long way toward winning us the war,” Flora replied. “Don’t we owe them a debt of gratitude for that?”
The president thrust out his chin. “We owe no foreigners any debts,” he said proudly. “We are at peace with the world. Even the Japanese.” That was a dig at her husband, in whose presidency the war with Japan had broken out.
It was also an infallible sign she wouldn’t get what she wanted. “I hope you will not regret this decision, Mr. President,” she said, rising to her feet.
“My conscience is clear,” Hoover said.
“Which is not the same as being right.” Since she wouldn’t get what she wanted, she did take the last word.
Grunting, Cincinnatus Driver eased the last sofa off his dolly and down to the floor of the furniture shop’s storeroom. “Here you go, Mr. Averill. It’s pretty furniture. I hope it sells good.”
“Oh, Lord, so do I,” the shopowner replied. He signed off on the paperwork Cincinnatus had given him, then handed back the clipboard.
“Obliged.” Cincinnatus wheeled the dolly outside. Even though he’d been taking sofas and chairs and hassocks and chests of drawers off the truck for the past half hour and so was good and warm, the cold air flayed his face. Breathing it was like breathing knives. Snow crunched under his shoes. The winter looked to be as nasty as any he’d known since moving to Iowa.
He hoped the Ford would start, and breathed a sigh of relief when it did. He let the engine warm up before putting it in gear. That gave him a chance to pick up the folded copy of the Des Moines Herald-Express that lay on the seat. CONFEDERATE STALWARTS FLOCK TO ARMY, the headline read.
Cincinnatus muttered under his breath. That had nothing to do with Kentucky, but it had everything to do with blacks in the CSA. The new recruits would land on the Negro revolt with both feet. That would surely make more Negroes try to flee north. He wondered how many would make it into the USA.
Not many, he thought, throwing the paper down in disgust. Not near enough. A Jew or an Irishman could be welcome here. Even a Chinaman could, sometimes. But a Negro? Only the conquest of Kentucky had made Cincinnatus a U.S. citizen. And a Jew or an Irishman (though not a Chinaman) could easily pretend to be something he wasn’t. A Negro? Cincinnatus shook his head. A black man was black, and nothing he could do would make him anything else.
Back in Kentucky, of course, Cincinnatus had known men called black who had blue eyes, and girls called black with freckles. They hadn’t bought their features from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue or any of its smaller Confederate competitors. Nobody talked much about how they had come by them, but everybody knew.
Another story read, HOOVER PLANS REELECTION BID. Cincinnatus didn’t bother reading that one. He’d voted Democratic ever since he’d been able to vote. He wanted the USA to keep the CSA down. As far as he was concerned, everything else ran second to that. And now Hoover had gone and betrayed his trust. Did that make it worth his while to vote Socialist later this year? He shrugged. He still had months and months to go before he needed to make up his mind.
He drove up to the railroad yards, got out of the truck and sat down on a bench with his pail to eat lunch. A couple of railroad dicks nodded to him as they went by; he was an accepted part of the landscape. One of the white men even tipped his cap. Cincinnatus made haste to return the gesture. No white in Kentucky would have done that with a black.
Half a dozen white truck drivers ate about fifty yards away. They didn’t invite Cincinnatus over, and he didn’t presume to join them without an invitation, though another white man did. Some things worked differently here from the way they did down in Kentucky, but others hadn’t changed a bit.
Cincinnatus wasn’t the only colored driver picking up cargo at the Des Moines yards, but the others seemed to be out hauling. It happened. He’d eaten a lot of lunches by himself. He took a big bite of his ham sandwich.
Shoeleather scrunched on gravel only a few feet away. Cincinnatus looked up. The black man coming toward him wasn’t one of the usual drivers. That was the first thing Cincinnatus realized. The second thing was that he knew him anyway, though he hadn’t seen him since moving away from Covington. “Lucullus!” he said in amazement. “What the hell you doin’ here?”
“I been lookin’ for you. Done found you now, too.” Lucullus Wood stuck out his hand. Automatically, Cincinnatus shook it. When he’d come to Iowa, Lucullus had been on the cusp between boy and man: where Achilles was now. Today, Lucullus had a man’s full and formidable presence. He’d also grown into a good deal of his father Apicius’ heft.
“Lookin’ for me? What for? I been gone from Covington a long time now. Don’t want to go back, neither,” Cincinnatus said.
The railroad dicks ambled past again, coming the other way. They gave Lucullus a hard stare. But, seeing that Cincinnatus knew him, they let him alone.
“Ain’t just me. It’s my old man,” Lucullus said.
“What’s Apicius want with me?” Cincinnatus asked in surprise and more than a little alarm. Lucullus’ father wasn’t just the best barbecue man between the Carolinas and Kansas City. He was also one of the leading Reds in Kentucky. During and after the war, he’d played a dangerous game with Confederate diehards and with Luther Bliss, the head of the Kentucky State Police. Having spent more time than he cared to in one of Luther Bliss’ jails, Cincinnatus wanted nothing to do with him now. He pointed a finger at Lucullus. “Why’d old Apicius send you, anyways? Why don’t he wire or write hisself a letter to me?”
“You know Pa ain’t got his letters,” Lucullus said, which was true but not fully responsive. Seeing Cincinnatus’ impatience, the younger man went on, “He send me so I kin talk you into doin’ what needs doin’.”
“So you kin talk me into doin’ what Apicius wants, you mean,” Cincinnatus said, and L
ucullus didn’t deny it. “Well?” Cincinnatus asked. “Tell me what he wants an’ why he wants me. Tell me quick, so I kin say no an’ go on about my business.”
“He wants you on account of you’s a nigger with balls, and you’s a nigger with a truck,” Lucullus said. “Plenty o’ black folks, they tryin’ to get up to the USA from the CSA. You hear tell ‘bout dat?”
“I hear tell,” Cincinnatus admitted.
“You know ‘bout the Underground Railroad back before the War o’ Secession?” Lucullus asked. “Run slaves up into free country so they turn free themselves. That’s what we do now. We run niggers up into the USA. An’ we needs your help.”
“You want me to go down there an’ sneak black folks from the CSA up into the USA?” Cincinnatus asked.
Lucullus nodded. “That’s right. What you say?”
Cincinnatus looked at him. He knew what Lucullus and Apicius were counting on: his urge to protect his own. But he had his own right here—Elizabeth, Achilles, and Amanda. He looked Lucullus straight in the eye and said, “No.”
Lucullus’ jaw dropped. “What?”
“No,” Cincinnatus repeated. “That means I ain’t gonna do it. Sorry you come all this way, but no anyhow. Tell your pa he should find hisself another nigger, one with rocks where his brains ought to be.”
Now Lucullus started to get angry. “Why not?” he demanded.
“On account of whoever does this, he gonna get caught,” Cincinnatus replied. “On account of I already been in Luther Bliss’ jail once, and ain’t nothin’ or nobody make me mess with that man again. On account of I do anything you goddamn Reds don’t like, I end up dead an’ wishin’ I was in Luther Bliss’ goddamn jail. No. Hell, no.”
He waited for Lucullus to remind him his mother and father still lived in Covington and bad things might happen to them if he didn’t go along. He waited, but Lucullus said nothing of the kind. Maybe he knew it would do no good. He did say, “My pa, he ain’t gonna be real happy with you.”
The Victorious Opposition Page 17