The Victorious Opposition Read online

  Robert Quinn came into the square, pushing a wheelbarrow full of shovels. “Hello, boys,” he said. “¡Libertad!”

  “¡Libertad!” they echoed raggedly. Some of them were still looking after the youngster who’d been sent away.

  “These are your spades,” Quinn said in his accented but fluent Spanish. “You will have the privilege of using them to make Sonora a better place.” Most of them smiled at that, liking the idea.

  “These are your spades,” Felipe Rojas echoed. “You will have the privilege of taking care of them, of keeping them sharp, of keeping them shiny, of keeping their handles polished. You will take them everywhere you go in the Freedom Youth Corps. You will sleep with them, por Dios. And you will enjoy sleeping with them, more than you would with a woman. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Answer when I talk to you!”

  “Sí, señor,” they chorused in alarm.

  Now Hipolito Rodriguez smiled, and he wasn’t the only man his age who did. Rojas’ rant sounded much like what sergeants had said at the training camp during the war, except they’d been talking about rifles, not spades. Rojas took a shovel from the wagon and tossed it, iron blade up, to the closest youth. The boy awkwardly caught it. Another shovel flew, and another, till every boy had one.

  “Attention!” Rojas shouted. They came to what they imagined attention to be. There were as many versions as there were boys. Rodriguez smiled again. So did the rest of the fathers and other men in the square. They’d been through the mill. They knew what attention was, even if their sons didn’t.

  Felipe Rojas took a shovel from a youngster and showed the boys of the Freedom Youth Corps how to stand at attention, the tool lightly gripped in his right hand. More or less clumsily, the boys imitated him. He tossed the shovel back to the youth, who also came to attention.

  Another sharp command (all of these were in English): “Shoulder—spades!” Again, the boys made a hash of it. One of them almost brained the youngster beside him. Hipolito Rodriguez didn’t laugh at that. He remembered what a deadly weapon an entrenching tool could be.

  Again, Rojas took the shovel from the boy. He stood at attention with it, then smoothly brought it up over his shoulder. After demonstrating once more, he returned it.

  “Now you try,” he told the youths. “Shoulder—spades!” They did their best. Rojas winced. “That was terrible,” he said. “I’ve seen burros that could do a better job. But you’ll improve. We’ll practice it till your right shoulders grow calluses. You’ll find out.” His voice, like the voice of any proper drill sergeant making a promise like that, was full of gloating anticipation.

  He showed them left face, right face, and about-face. He marched them, raggedly, across the square. No one hit anyone else with a shovel as they turned and countermarched. Why nobody hit anybody else Rodriguez couldn’t have said. He thought he ought to go light a candle in the church to show his gratitude to the Virgin for the miracle.

  “I have one last piece of advice for you,” Felipe Rojas said when the boys had got to their starting place without casualties. “Here it is. You’ve been fooling your fathers and talking back to your mothers ever since you found out you could get away with it. Don’t try it with me, or with any other Freedom Youth Corps man. You’ll be sorry if you do. You have no idea how sorry you’ll be. But some of you will find out. Boys your age are damn fools. We’ll get rid of some of that, though. You see if we don’t.”

  Some of them—most of them—didn’t believe him. No boys of that age believed they were fools. They thought they knew everything there was to know—certainly more than the idiot fathers they had the misfortune to be saddled with. They’d find out. And, in the Freedom Youth Corps, they wouldn’t have to bang heads with their fathers while they were finding out. That might make the Corps worthwhile all by itself.

  Robert Quinn drifted over to Rodriguez. “Two boys going in, eh, señor? Good for you, and good for them. They’re likely-looking young men.”

  “They aren’t young men yet,” Rodriguez said. “They just think they are. That’s why the Freedom Youth Corps will be good for them, I think.”

  “I think you are right, Señor Rodriguez,” the Freedom Party organizer said. “This will teach them many of the things they will need to know if, for example, they are called into the Army.”

  Rodriguez looked at the English-speaker who’d come from the north. “How can they be called into the Army, Señor Quinn? There has been no conscription in los Estados Confederados since the end of the Great War.”

  “This is true,” Quinn said. “Still, the Freedom Party aims to change many things. We want the country strong again. If we are not allowed to call up our own young men to serve the colors, are we strong or are we weak?”

  “Weak, señor, without a doubt,” Hipolito Rodriguez replied. “But los Estados Unidos are strong now. What will they do if we begin conscription once more?”

  “This is not for you to worry about. It is not for me to worry about, either,” Quinn said. “It is for Jake Featherston to take care of. And he will, Señor Rodriguez. You may rely on that.” He spoke as certainly as the priests did of Resurrection.

  And Rodriguez said, “Oh, I do.” He meant it, too. Like so many others in the CSA, he wouldn’t have joined the Freedom Party if he hadn’t.

  “Well, well,” Colonel Abner Dowling said, studying the Salt Lake City Bee. “Who would have thought it, Captain?”

  “What’s that, sir?” Angelo Toricelli asked.

  Dowling tapped the story on page three with his fingernail. “The riots in Houston,” he told his adjutant. “They just go on and on, now up, now down, world without end, amen.” He was not a man immune to the pleasure of watching someone else struggle through a tough time. Serving under General George Custer, he’d had plenty of tough times of his own. He’d come to savor those that happened to other people, not least because they sometimes ended up getting him off the hook.

  Captain Toricelli said, “Of course they go on and on. The Freedom Party in the CSA keeps stirring things up there. If we could seal off the border between Houston and Texas, we’d be able to put a lid on things there.”

  “I wish that were true, but I don’t think it is,” Dowling said. Toricelli looked miffed. Dowling remembered looking miffed plenty of times when General Custer said something particularly idiotic. Now the shoe was on the other foot. He’d been stuck then. His adjutant was now. And he didn’t think he was being an idiot. He explained why: “The way things are these days, Captain, don’t you believe the Confederates could pull strings just as well by wireless?”

  “Pretty hard to smuggle rifles in by wireless,” Toricelli remarked.

  “If not from Texas, Houston could get them from Chihuahua,” Dowling said. “To stop the traffic, we’d really need to seal our whole border with the Confederate States. I’d love to, but don’t hold your breath. There’s too much land, and not enough people to cover it. I wish things were different, but I don’t think they are.”

  Toricelli pondered that. At last, reluctantly, he nodded. “I suppose you’re right, sir,” he said with a sigh. “If we can’t seal off Utah, we probably won’t be able to seal off Houston, either.”

  That stung. Dowling wished the USA would have been able to keep contraband out of the state where he was stationed. While he was at it, he wished for the moon. The Mormons had their caches of rifles. The reason they didn’t use them was simple: enough soldiers held down Utah to make any uprising a slaughter. Even the locals understood that. However much they hated the U.S. Army, they knew what it could do.

  “May I see the story, sir?” Captain Toricelli asked, and Dowling passed him the Bee. He zipped through; he read very fast. When he was done, he looked up and said, “They’ve got plenty of barrels down there, and it sounds like they’re doing a good job. I wish we had some.”

  Dowling’s experience with barrels during the Great War had not been altogether happy. Wanting to mass them against War Department orders, Custer had had him falsify
reports that went in to Philadelphia. Custer had succeeded, and made himself into a hero and Dowling into a hero’s adjutant. Custer had never thought about the price of failure. Dowling had. If things had gone wrong, they’d have been court-martialed side by side.

  Maybe not thinking about the price of failure was what marked a hero. On the other hand, maybe it just marked a damn fool.

  Still, despite Dowling’s mixed feelings about barrels, Toricelli had a point. “We could use some here,” Dowling admitted. “I’ll take it up with Philadelphia. I wonder if they have any to spare, or if they’re using them all in Houston.”

  “They’d better not be!” his adjutant exclaimed. That didn’t mean they weren’t, and both Dowling and Toricelli knew it.

  That afternoon, Heber Young came to call on the commandant of Salt Lake City. The unofficial head of the proscribed Mormon church looked grave. “Colonel, have you provocateurs among the . . . believers of this state?” he asked, not naming the faith to which he couldn’t legally belong.

  “I have agents among them, certainly. I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t,” Dowling replied. “But provocateurs? No, sir. Why do you ask?”

  “Because . . . certain individuals . . . have been urging a . . . more assertive course on us in our efforts to . . . regain our freedom of conscience.” Young picked his words with enormous, and obvious, care. “It occurred to me that, if we become more assertive, the occupying authorities might use that as justification for more oppression.”

  If we get out of line even a little, you’ll squash us. That was what he meant. Being a scrupulously polite man, he didn’t quite come out and say it. Abner Dowling’s jowls wobbled as he shook his head. “No, sir. I give you my word of honor: I have not done any such thing. My desire—and it is also my government’s desire—is for peace and quiet in the state of Utah. I do not wish to do anything—anything at all—to disturb what peace and quiet we already have.”

  Heber Young eyed him. “I believe I believe you,” he said at last, and Dowling couldn’t help smiling at the scrupulous precision of his phrasing. Young continued, “One way to insure peace and quiet, of course, would be to grant us the liberties the citizens of the rest of the United States enjoy.”

  “There are certain difficulties involved with that, you know,” Dowling said. “Your people’s conduct during the Second Mexican War, the Mormon revolt of 1915, the assassination of General Pershing . . . How long do you suppose it would be, Mr. Young, before Utah made Houston seem a walk in the park by comparison?”

  “I recognize the possibility, Colonel,” Young replied, which was as much as he’d ever admitted. “But if you do not grant us our due liberties, would you not agree we will always be vulnerable to provocateurs? And I will take the liberty of asking you one other question before I go: if these men are not yours, who does give them their orders? For I am quite sure someone does. Good day.” He got to his feet, set his somber homburg on his head, and departed.

  Had Young been any other Mormon, Dowling would have called him back and demanded to know more. Dowling would have felt no compunctions about squeezing him if he’d denied knowing more, either. But Heber Young? No. His . . . goodwill was too strong a word. His tolerance toward the occupiers went a long way toward keeping the lid on Utah. Dowling didn’t want to squander it.

  And so Young left occupation headquarters in Salt Lake City undisturbed. But the question he’d asked before leaving lingered, and it disturbed Colonel Dowling more than a little. He hadn’t been lying to Young when he said he had agents among the Mormons. The best of them, a man almost completely invisible, was a dusty little bookkeeper named Winthrop W. Webb. He seemed to know everything in the Mormon community, sometimes before it happened. If a rumor or an answer was floating in the air, he would find it and contrive to get it back to Dowling.

  Getting hold of him, necessarily, was a roundabout business. Setting up a meeting was even more roundabout. Were Webb to be seen with Dowling, his usefulness—to say nothing of his life expectancy—would plummet. In due course, Dowling paid a discreet visit to a sporting house to which he was in the occasional habit of paying a discreet visit. Waiting for him in one of the upstairs bedrooms, instead of a perfumed blonde in frills and lace, was dusty little Winthrop W. Webb.

  After they shook hands, Dowling sighed. “The sacrifices I make for my country.”

  “Don’t worry, Colonel,” Webb said with a small smile. “It’ll be Betty again next time.”

  “Yes, I suppose—” Dowling broke off. How the devil did Webb know who his favorite was? Better not to ask, maybe. Maybe. Profoundly uneasy, Dowling told the spy what he’d heard from Heber Young.

  Winthrop Webb nodded. “Yes, I know the people he’s talking about—know of them, I should say. They’re good at standing up at gatherings and popping off, and even better at disappearing afterwards. He’s right. Somebody’s backing them. I don’t know who. No hard evidence. Like I say, they’re good.”

  “Any guesses?” Dowling asked.

  “I’m here to tell you the truth—I really don’t know,” Webb answered, deadpan.

  For a moment, Dowling took him literally. Then he snorted and scowled and pointed south. “You think the Confederates are behind them?”

  “Who gets helped if Utah goes up in smoke?” the agent said. “That’s what I asked myself. If it’s not Jake Featherston, I’ll be damned if I know who it is.”

  “You think these Mormon hotheads Heber Young was talking about are getting their orders from Richmond, then?” Dowling leaned forward in excitement. “If they are—if we can show they are and make it stick—that’ll make the president and the War Department move.”

  “Ha, says I,” Winthrop Webb told him. “Everybody knows the Freedom Party’s turned up the heat in Houston, and are we doing anything about it? Not that I can see.”

  “Houston’s different, though.” Dowling had played devil’s advocate for Custer many times. Now he was doing it for himself. “It used to be part of Texas, part of Confederate territory. You can see why the CSA would think it still belongs to them and want it back. Same with Kentucky and Sequoyah, especially for the redskins in Sequoyah. You may not like it, but you can see it. It makes sense. But the Confederates have no business meddling in Utah. None. Zero. Zip. Utah’s always belonged to the USA.”

  “Not the way the Mormons tell it,” Webb said dryly. “But anyway, it’s not that simple. These people who speak up and start trouble, they aren’t from Richmond. They don’t go back to some dingy sporting-house room”—he winked—“and report to somebody from Richmond. Whoever’s behind this knows what he’s doing. There are lots of links in the chain. The hotheads—hell, half of them never even heard of the goddamn Confederate States of America.”

  Dowling laughed, not that it was funny. “All right. I see what you’re saying. What can we do, then, if we can’t prove the Confederates are back of these fools?” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Not like there isn’t a new hothead born every minute here. Maybe more often than that—Mormons have big families.”

  “They aren’t supposed to drink, they aren’t supposed to smoke, they aren’t even supposed to have coffee. What the hell else have they got to do but screw?” Winthrop W. Webb said, which jerked more startled laughter from Dowling. The spy went on, “I don’t know what we can do except hold the lid down tight and hope the bastards on the other side make a mistake. Sooner or later, everybody does.”

  “Mm.” Dowling didn’t much care for that, but no better ideas occurred to him, either. And then, as he was getting up to leave, one did: “I’ll warn Heber Young some of the hotheads—provocateurs, he called them—are liable to be Confederate sympathizers.”

  “You think he’ll believe you?” Webb asked, real curiosity in his voice. “Or will he just think you’re looking for another excuse to sit on that church of his—you know, the one that officially doesn’t exist?”

  “I . . . don’t know,” Abner Dowling admitted after a pause. He
and Young had a certain mutual respect. He thought he could rely on Young’s honesty. But did the Mormon leader feel the same about him? Or was he, in Young’s eyes, just the local head of the government that had spent the past fifty years and more oppressing Utah? “I’ve got to try, though, any which way.”

  When he went downstairs, the madam smiled as if he’d spent his time with Betty. Why not? He’d paid her as if he had. The girls in the parlor looked up from their hands of poker and bridge and fluttered their fingers at him as he left. But he’d never gone out the door of the sporting house less satisfied.

  Everything in the white part of Augusta, Georgia, seemed normal. Autos and trucks chugged along the streets. A sign painter was putting a big SALE! sign in a shoe store’s front window. A man came out of a saloon, took two steps, and then turned around and went back in. A workman with a bucket of cement carefully smoothed a square of sidewalk.

  None of the white people on the sidewalk—or those who dodged into the street for a moment to avoid the wet cement—paid Scipio or the other Negroes among them any special attention. The riots that had leveled half the Terry were over, and the whites had put them out of their minds.

  Scipio wished he could. His family was still sleeping in a church, and he knew how lucky he was. He still had a family. Nobody’d been killed. Nobody’d been worse than scratched. They’d even got their money out of the apartment before the building burned.

  Luck.

  Scipio walked past a wall plastered with election posters. SNOW FOR CONGRESS! they said. VOTE FREEDOM! Still four months to November, but Ed Snow’s posters, featuring his plump, smiling face and a Freedom Party flag, were everywhere. A few Whig posters had gone up at about the same time. They’d come right down again, too. No new ones had gone up to take their place. Scipio had never seen any Radical Liberal posters this year.