“Uh, yes, sir,” the major replied. “The only trouble is, their being quiet goes a long way toward making our presence here irrelevant, wouldn’t you say?”
“Like hell I would,” Dowling growled. “If we weren’t here, if we weren’t doing the job we’re supposed to do, how much worse would things be?”
The major, being only a major, did not presume to contradict. That helped ease Dowling’s mind—a little. He kept up a bold front not least for the sake of the men he commanded. He wasn’t about to admit he thought his presence in Kentucky was irrelevant. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone but himself, anyhow.
When he looked at the name of the man with whom he had his first appointment the next morning, it rang a bell. He went through some files and nodded to himself. The homework he’d done before taking command in Covington had paid off. “Good morning, Mr. Wood,” he said when the man strode into his office. “And what can I do for you today?”
Lucullus Wood held out his hand. Dowling reached out and shook it with, he hoped, no noticeable hesitation, even if he wasn’t used to treating a Negro as his social equal. Wood was in his early or mid-thirties: a wide-shouldered man, blocky rather than fat, with high cheekbones and an arched nose that argued he might have a little Indian blood in him. Without preamble, he said, “Kentucky got troubles, General.”
“Yes, indeed.” Dowling’s voice was dry. “Do you aim to stop them or cause more?”
Before answering, Wood sat down across from Dowling. Dowling hadn’t invited him to, but he didn’t say anything. When the black man smiled, he looked like a predatory beast. “Depends on for who you mean,” he answered, adding, “Reckon you know who I am, then.”
“When I got here, they told me you made the best barbecue in town,” Dowling said. “I’ve tried it. They were right.”
“Hell they was.” Lucullus Wood sounded affronted. “I make the best barbecue in the whole goddamn state. So did my old man.”
Dowling looked down at the notes he’d taken. “Your father was . . . Apicius Wood. I hope I’m saying that right.” He waited for the Negro to nod, then went on, “And one after the other, you and he have been the two biggest Reds in town. Or are you the two biggest Reds in the whole goddamn state?”
Woods blinked at that. After a moment, he decided to laugh. “Maybe he was. Maybe I is. Maybe we ain’t never been,” he said. “Folks who talk about that stuff, they don’t always do it. Folks who do it, they don’t always talk about it.”
“Well, if you don’t do it, if you’ve never done it, why am I wasting my time talking to you?” Dowling asked. “Tell me what you’ve got on your mind, and we’ll see if we can do some business.”
Lucullus Wood blinked again. “You ain’t what I reckoned you would be,” he said slowly.
Abner Dowling’s shrug made his chins quiver. “Life is full of surprises. Now come on, Mr. Wood. Piss or get off the pot.”
“Come January, a lot of colored folks is gonna want to git the hell out of Kentucky,” Wood said. “Reckon you got some notion why.”
“We won’t stop them,” Dowling answered. “They’re U.S. citizens. We will respect that. Some whites will want to leave the state, too.”
“Some. A few.” Wood spoke with dismissive scorn. “Some colored folks, though, some colored folks is gonna stay. Dunno how many, but some will. Some damn fools in every crowd, I suppose.”
“If I were a Negro, I wouldn’t stay in Kentucky,” Dowling said.
Wood’s eyes went to the shiny silver star on the right shoulderboard of Dowling’s green-gray uniform. “Don’t suppose they lets no damn fools turn into generals,” he remarked.
As far as Dowling was concerned, that only proved the colored man didn’t know as much about the U.S. Army as he thought he did. Custer, for instance, had worn four stars, not just one. But Custer, while doubtless often a fool, had been a very peculiar kind of fool, and so. . . . With an effort, Dowling tore his thoughts away from the man he’d served for so long. “Fair enough,” he said to Lucullus Wood. “I’m sure you’re right about what will happen. Some Negroes will stay here. Some people don’t know to get out of a burning building till too late, either. But if the U.S. Army has to leave Kentucky after the plebiscite, what concern to us are they?”
“If we was white folks, you wouldn’t talk like that about us.” Wood didn’t try to hide his scorn. Dowling wondered if a Negro had ever reproached him like that before. He didn’t think so. He hadn’t dealt with a whole lot of Negroes—not many people in the USA had—and the ones he had dealt with were all in subordinate positions. After a deep, angry exhalation, Wood went on, “You reckon the niggers in Kentucky gonna like all them damn white bastards runnin’ around yellin’, ‘Freedom!’ all the goddamn time?”
“I wouldn’t,” Dowling answered. If he’d called Negroes niggers, Lucullus Wood might have tried to murder him. Being one himself, Wood could use the label. But then that thought slipped away and another took its place: “What do you suppose they’ll want to do about it?”
Anger dropped away from Wood like a discarded cloak. “No, General, you ain’t no damn fool. You got to understand, I ain’t in love with the USA. Revolution comin’ to y’all, too. But we gots to make a popular front with whoever’s on our side even a little when it comes to them Freedom Party cocksuckers.”
“How much of a nuisance do you think your people can be, and how much help do you want from the United States?” Dowling asked. “The more we can set up before the plebiscite, the better off we’ll be.”
“More we kin set up before the plebiscite, better off the USA’ll be,” Wood said cynically. “Ain’t gonna be no more good times for the niggers here after that. But I figure we kin raise some kind of trouble for the Confederates when they comes marchin’ back in here.”
“It would be nice if you could arrange as much for them as the Freedom Party fanatics did for us here and in Houston,” Dowling said.
“Be nice for y’all, yeah, but don’t hold your breath, on account of it ain’t gonna happen,” Wood said. “Lots mo’ white folks here and down there than there is niggers. Revolutionary, he got to swim like a fish in the school of the people. Us blackfish, we is a smaller school.”
He didn’t sound like an educated man. But when it came to the business of revolution, he spoke with an expert’s authority. Abner Dowling found himself nodding. “I suppose you’re right,” he said regretfully. “But if you people just happened to find some wireless sets and rifles and explosives lying around, you might figure out what to do with them, eh?”
“We might.” Lucullus Wood nodded, too. “Yes, suh, General, we just might cipher out what they’s for.”
I ought to get War Department authorization for this, Dowling thought. He rejected the notion the minute it occurred to him. The War Department might not want to get officially involved in resisting Confederate occupation. Then again, some of the people in the War Department might just get cold feet. I’m here. They put me in charge. I’ll take care of things, God damn it.
“All right, then,” he said. “We’ll see to that. And I know you’re not doing us any special favors. But what works against the CSA works for the USA. That’s how things are.”
Wood nodded again. “That’s how things is,” he agreed. “We is fellow travelers on this here road for a while, even if we’s goin’ different places.”
“Fellow travelers.” Brigadier General Dowling tasted the phrase. “Yes, I can live with that.”
“You been fair to me, General, so I be fair to you,” Wood said. “Come the revolution, we go different ways. Come the revolution, I reckon I try an’ kill you. Nothin’ personal, you understand, but you is one o’ the ‘pressors, and you got to go to the wall.”
“Fair is fair,” Dowling said, “so I’ll tell you something, too. You want to be careful about threatening a man with a weapon in his hand. He has a nasty habit of shooting back.” With a sour smile, he too added, “Nothing personal.”
“Sure eno
ugh,” the Negro said imperturbably. “Them Freedom Party fellas, they done found that out down further south. Reckon mebbe we teach ’em some new lessons here in Kentucky. Is that a bargain?”
“That’s a bargain.” Dowling heaved himself to his feet and held out his right hand once more. Lucullus Wood took it. The Negro dipped his head and sauntered out of Dowling’s office. Dowling looked down at his own right palm. Had he ever shaken a colored man’s hand before today? He didn’t think so. Kentucky was proving educational in all sorts of ways.
“Sorry, kid.” The man who shook his head at Armstrong Grimes didn’t sound sorry at all. He sounded as if he’d said the same thing a million times before. He doubtless sounded that way because he had. “I can’t use you. I want somebody with experience.”
Armstrong had heard that a million times since finally escaping high school. His temper, which had never been long, snapped. “How the hell am I supposed to get experience if nobody’ll hire me on account of I don’t have any?”
“Life’s tough,” the man in the hiring office answered, which meant, To hell with you, Jack. I’ve got mine. He lit a cigarette, but didn’t quite blow smoke in Armstrong’s face. Maybe his first long drag made him feel a little more like a human being, because he unbent enough to say, “One way to do it is to odd-job for a while. Sometimes you can get hired by the day even if somebody doesn’t want you for keeps.”
“Yeah, I’ve tried some of that,” Armstrong said. “But it’s a day on and a week off. It’ll take me forever to do enough of anything to get the experience to make anybody want to take me on for good, and I’ll starve to death in the meantime.”
The man looked him over. “Other thing you could do is join the Army. You’re a big, strong fellow. They’ll take you unless you just got out of jail—maybe even if you just got out of jail, the way things are nowadays. You can sure as hell learn a trade in there.”
“Maybe,” Armstrong said. His father had made the same suggestion—made it loudly and pointedly, in fact. That would have prejudiced him against the idea even if he’d liked it to begin with. “They don’t pay you anything much in the Army, and you’re stuck there for three years if you volunteer.”
“Have it your way, pal. You think I give a rat’s ass about what you do, you’ve got another think coming.” The clerk behind the desk looked up at the line of poor, hungry men desperate for work. “Next!”
Seething, Armstrong stormed out of the hiring office. If he hadn’t thought the clerk would sic the cops on him, he would have whaled the stuffing out of the bastard. Sitting there like a little tin Jesus, who the hell did he think he was? But the answer to that was mournfully obvious. He thinks he’s a man who’s got a job, and the son of a bitch is right.
Armstrong inquired at a furniture factory, a trucking company, and a joint that made Polish sausages before heading for home. No luck anywhere. His old man wanted him out there trying—insisted on it, as a matter of fact. If he didn’t pound the pavement, he wouldn’t get fed. Merle Grimes had been most painfully clear about that. Armstrong wished he thought his father were bluffing. Since he didn’t . . .
When he got home, he found his mother in tears. He hadn’t seen that since Granny died. “What happened?” he exclaimed.
Without a word, she held out an envelope to him. His name was typed on it. The return address was printed in an old-fashioned, hard-to-read typeface:
Another, smaller line below that said:
“Oh,” he said. It felt like a punch in the breadbasket. He’d known it was possible, of course, but he hadn’t thought it was likely. “Oh, shit.”
Edna Grimes nodded. “That’s what I said, too, Armstrong, when I saw the damn thing. But there’s nothing you can do about it. If they conscript you and you pass the physical, you’ve got to go.”
“Yeah.” Armstrong nodded glumly. From some of the things he’d heard, the only way to flunk the physical was not to have a pulse, too. He did his best to look on the bright side of things: “If they conscript me, it’s only for two years. That’s a year less than I’d spend if I joined up on my own.”
“I know. But still . . .” His mother gave him a hug of the sort he hadn’t had from her in years. “You’re my baby, Armstrong. I don’t want you going off to be a soldier. What if we have another war?”
Being his mother’s baby didn’t appeal to Armstrong. Fighting a war did—if you were going to be a soldier, what point was there to being one when nothing was happening? None he could see. That he might get hurt or killed never crossed his mind. He was, after all, only eighteen. But he was smart enough to know that, if he told his mother what he really thought, she’d pitch a fit. So, as soothingly as he could, he said, “There won’t be any war, Ma. We’re giving the Confederates those pleb-whatchamacallits, so they’ve got nothing left to fight about.”
“Jesus, I hope you’re right,” his mother said. “Some people, though, if you give ’em an inch, they’ll want to take a mile. The way the Freedom Party carries on, I’m afraid they’re like that.”
Armstrong’s little sister met the news that he was going to go off and be a soldier with complete equanimity. “So long,” Annie said. “When do you leave?”
“Not tonight, you little brat,” he said. She stuck out her tongue at him. He wanted to belt her a good one, but he knew he couldn’t. She’d just go yelling to their mother, and then he’d end up in trouble. Annie was almost as big a pest as Aunt Clara, who would no doubt hope he never came back when he went off to wherever they’d ship him for training.
When his father got home and found out, though, he slapped Armstrong on the back and poured him a good-sized slug of whiskey, something he’d never done before. “Congratulations, son!” Merle Grimes said. “They’ll make a man out of you.”
Since Armstrong was already convinced he was a man, that impressed him less than it might have. To show what tough stuff he was, he took a big gulp of the whiskey. He hadn’t done a lot of drinking. The hooch felt like battery acid going down the pipe, and exploded like a bomb in his stomach. “That’s good,” he wheezed in a voice that sounded like a ghost of its former self.
“Glad you like it,” his father answered gravely. If he knew that Armstrong had just injured himself, he was polite enough not to let on. That was more discretion than he was in the habit of showing. He took a smaller sip from his own glass and asked, “When do you go in for your preinduction physical?”
“Next Wednesday,” Armstrong said. “I can hardly wait.”
He meant that ironically, but Merle Grimes took it seriously. “Good,” he said. “That’s real good. You ought to be eager to do something for your country. It’s been taking care of you all along.”
“Right,” Armstrong said tightly. He could have done without his father sounding like a goddamn recruiting poster.
Next Wednesday, naturally, rain poured down in buckets. Armstrong had to walk three blocks from the trolley stop to the building where the government doctors waited to get their hands on him. He was half soaked by the time he made it inside. Seeing several other guys his own age who were just as bedraggled as he was made him feel a little better. More fellows with wet hair and pimples came in the door after him, too.
A pair of clerks marched into the room. At the same time as one was saying, “Line up in alphabetical order by last name,” the other declared, “Line up according to height.”
After some confusion, alphabetical order won. Armstrong would have ended up about the same place either way. As a G, he was fairly close to the head of the line but not right at it. He was also taller than most of the young men there for their physicals, but not a real beanpole, either. He had a chance to look things over before the system got to work on him.
First came the paperwork. He would have bet money on that. His old man made a living pushing papers around for the government, and had plenty to do. Armstrong filled out about a million forms and carried them with him to the eye chart, which came next. The fellow in front of him had
some trouble. “I can see the little bastards just fine,” he told the guy in the white coat in charge of the test. “Only thing is, I can’t no way read ’em.”
“Let me see your paperwork,” the man in the white coat said. Armstrong got a glimpse of a couple of pages, too. Just about everything was blank. The man in charge of the test frowned. “You’re illiterate?” Seeing the puzzled look on the young man’s face, he tried again: “You can’t read and write?”
“ ‘Fraid not,” the youth said. “I can sign my name. That’s about the size of it.”
“Didn’t you go to school?”
“A couple years. I never was much good, though. I been workin’ ever since.”
“Well, uh, Slaughter, no matter how good a name you’ve got for a soldier, you need to be able to read and write to enter the Army. You’re not even in the right place in line. You’ll be excused from conscription. I don’t know if your exclusion will be permanent or if they’ll class you as fit for service in an emergency. But we won’t take you now.” He glanced towards Armstrong Grimes. “Next!”
Armstrong thought about pretending he couldn’t read, too. Too late, though—he’d already filled out his paperwork and done it right. He stepped up to the line and went down the chart as far as he could, switching eyes when the man in the white coat told him to.
“Give me your papers,” the man said, then nodded. “You’ve passed here. Proceed to the next station.”
He saw even more guys in white coats than he had at the Polish sausage works where he’d tried to get a job. They measured and weighed him. One of them listened to his heart. Another one took his blood pressure. Another one—this one with a brand new pair of rubber gloves—told him to drop his pants, turn his head to one side, and cough. As he did, the man grabbed him in some highly intimate places. “No rupture,” he said, and wrote on Armstrong’s papers. “Now bend over and grab your ankles.”
The Victorious Opposition Page 55