The Center Cannot Hold ae-2 Read online

  "Some of the time, maybe," McDonald said. "But I like the way you prowl the cells. I like that a lot. Nothing's going to happen unless you know about it first, is it?"

  "Well, I hope not," Pinkard answered. "You can never be sure, but I hope not."

  "Long as you know you can never be sure, you won't do too bad." The warden pushed the bottle across the desk again. "Go ahead. You've earned it."

  "Don't mind if I do." As Ewell McDonald had, Jeff took a long pull at the bottle. Smooth fire ran down his throat. "Ahh! That's mighty fine," he said, and then laughed. "Prisoners'll smell it on my breath and say I've been drinking on the job."

  McDonald laughed, too. "They don't like it, you tell 'em they can take it up with the warden." He corked the whiskey bottle and stuck it back in his drawer. "However you did it, I'm glad you found your way here. You're goddamn good at this business, you hear what I'm telling you?"

  "Thanks," Jeff said once more. Yes, he did feel dazed, and not just on account of unaccustomed morning slugs of whiskey. How long had he been at the Sloss Works without ever hearing anybody tell him anything like that? Too long, he thought as he got to his feet. Much too damn long.

  I n the summertime, heat and humidity could make Augusta close to unbearable, especially for Negroes in the crowded quarters of the Terry. When Scipio got the chance, he liked to bring his family up to Allen Park and relax in the fresh air under the shade of the trees that grew thickly there. He and Bathsheba and the children would lie on the grass on a Sunday afternoon and watch people with more energy-and, he was convinced, less sense-play volleyball or throw around a football.

  Allen Park was in the white part of town, but close enough to the Terry that Negroes often used it. Scipio would gladly have gone to a park inside the Terry, but nobody'd bothered leaving any open space for a park there. He wasn't surprised. How could he have been, when he'd lived in the Confederate States all his life? Whites got whatever they needed and whatever they wanted. If anything happened to be left over after that, Negroes got it. If nothing happened to be left over, well, too bad.

  That was how whites saw things, anyhow. And then they'd been shocked when blacks rose up against them in Red revolt during the Great War. Scipio had thought that a damnfool idea, because he'd been all too sure the revolts would fail-as they had. Nothing made the whites fight hard like seeing their privileges threatened. But fearing failure didn't mean Scipio hadn't understood the impulse to hit back as hard as his own people could.

  One lazy July Sunday, after finishing a picnic lunch, Bathsheba pointed to a sheet of paper stuck to the trunk of an oak not far away. "What's that say, Xerxes?" she asked.

  Scipio took his alias for granted. He also took being asked such questions for granted: Bathsheba couldn't read or write. "I goes and looks," he answered, climbing to his feet. Full of fried chicken and yams, he ambled slowly over to the tree, read the paper, and came back to sit down on the grass again.

  "Well?" his wife asked.

  "Well?" Antoinette echoed. She was six now, which astounded Scipio every time he thought about it. And Cassius-named, though Scipio had never said so, for the Red rebel in the swamps of the Congaree River-was already three, which astonished him even more.

  But he shook his head. "Ain't so well," he said; the thick patois of the Congaree made him sound more ignorant than Bathsheba, whose accent was milder. "Big Freedom Party rally here two weeks from now."

  The corners of Bathsheba's wide, generous mouth turned down. "You're right," she said. "That ain't so good. That ain't no good at all. Thought them people was all over and done with, but now they're back."

  "Now they's back," Scipio echoed somberly. "Times is hard. De buckra, dey's scared. When dey's scared, dey starts yellin', 'Freedom!' "

  "If they want it so bad, how come they don't want to let us have none?" Bathsheba asked.

  "Dey does dat, who dey gots to t'ink day's better'n?" Scipio didn't hide his bitterness.

  "Ought to tear that sheet o' paper down," Bathsheba said.

  "Do Jesus, no!" Scipio exclaimed. "Anybody see me do dat, my life ain't worth a penny. An' dey's bound to be plenty more o' they papers. Don't put up no notice like dat in jus' de one place. Tearin' it down don't do no good."

  She didn't argue with him, but she didn't look as if she agreed with him, either. When they walked back to their flat, Scipio saw more Freedom Party notices. He wondered how he'd missed them coming up to Allen Park. Maybe he hadn't wanted to see them, and so had turned his eye aside.

  He'd expected to pay no attention to the rally. What else was a Negro supposed to do with anything pertaining to Confederate politics, especially with a part of Confederate politics of which he disapproved? But this rally, very much in the frightening Freedom Party style of ten years before, refused to let Augusta's Negroes ignore it. For one thing, it was enormous. Scipio didn't know exactly how many white men thronged to it, but he could hear great roars of, "Freedom!" coming from the park again and again, though it was blocks away from his family's apartment building.

  "Why they yellin' like that, Pa?" Antoinette asked.

  Scipio wished he knew what he was supposed to tell her. "On account o' dey don't like what de gummint doin'," he answered at last.

  She could have left it there. Scipio wished she would have left it there. Instead, with a child's persistence, she asked the inevitable child's question: "Why?"

  "They're some o' the buckra what have it in for black folks," Bathsheba said when Scipio hesitated. That satisfied their daughter. No Negro, no matter how young, could help knowing plenty of whites in the Confederate States had it in for blacks.

  If any Negro from Augusta hadn't known it, the ralliers did their best to drive it home. They swarmed out of the park and into the Terry, shouting, "Freedom!" all the while. A few policemen came with the long, sinewy column, but more to observe it than to check it. Had the Freedom Party men turned on the police, they could have got rid of them in moments and then rampaged through the Terry altogether out of control.

  They could have, but they didn't. Scipio didn't even think they beat anybody up. They just marched and yelled and marched and yelled. In a way, that was a relief. In another way, it left Scipio all the more terrified, not least because of the discipline it showed. It was sending a message: this is what our people do when we tell them to do this. If we tell them to do something else… Scipio shivered at what the Freedom Party might do then. And would that handful of policemen try to stop them? Could they if they tried? Neither struck him as likely.

  He made a point of getting to Erasmus' fish store and restaurant early the next morning. He still didn't get there as early as his boss. "Mornin', Xerxes," Erasmus said when Scipio came through the door. "How you is?"

  "I been better," Scipio answered. "Buckra march underneath my window yesterday. Don't like that none, not even a li'l bit."

  Erasmus nodded gloomily. "They go past my front door, too," he said. "No, I don't like that none, neither. They scared. When they scared, they do somethin' stupid."

  "Do somethin' big an' stupid," Scipio agreed. "Burn down de Terry, maybe. De po lice, dey don't stop 'em if dey tries."

  "Reckon not," Erasmus agreed. "Reckon the po lice do try-they ain't all bad men. Reckon they try, but I don't reckon they kin do much, neither."

  "Where dat leave we?" Scipio answered his own question: "In trouble, dat where."

  Erasmus looked at him. "You's a black man in the CSA," he said. "You think you ain't been in trouble since the day you was born?"

  "I was borned in slavery days, same as you," Scipio said. "I knows all about dat kind o' trouble. But de Freedom Party, dey worse'n usual."

  He waited to see whether Erasmus would try to argue with him. If his boss did, he intended to argue right back. But Erasmus slowly nodded. "Reckon you's right. Didn't used to think so. I reckoned them crazy buckra'd find somethin' new to git all hot an' bothered about. They been around for more'n ten years now, though. Don't reckon they's goin' noplace."r />
  "Wish they would-wish dey go far away an' never come back no more," Scipio said. "They gwine win plenty o' new seats in the 'lection come fall, too."

  "God's will," Erasmus said. "We is a sinful lot, and the good Lord, He make us pay."

  Before Scipio could think about it, he shook his head. "I don't care none how sinful we is," he said. "De Lord can't hate we enough to give we what de Freedom Party want to give we." Would he have had such thoughts before he got mixed up with the Red Negroes who'd led the uprising in 1915? He didn't know for certain, but had his doubts.

  "The Lord do what He want to do, not what we wants Him to do," Erasmus said. "Blessed be the name o' the Lord."

  "Lord help he what help hisself," Scipio replied. "De Freedom Party git stronger, I reckon maybe niggers gots to help theyselves." Was he really saying that? After watching from the inside the destruction of the Congaree Socialist Republic, could he really be saying that? He could. He was.

  "We rise up against the buckra again, we lose again. You knows it, too." Erasmus sounded very sure.

  And Scipio did know it, too. Blacks in the CSA couldn't hope to beat whites. He'd thought as much before the rising of 1915, and he'd proved right. On the other hand… "De Freedom Party git stronger, we lose if we don't rise up, too."

  Erasmus didn't answer him. Maybe that meant there was no answer. He hoped it didn't, but feared it did.

  Three days later, he got an answer of sorts. After finishing at Erasmus', he went into the white part of Augusta to visit a couple of toy stores that had a better selection-and better prices-than any in the Terry. Coming home with something new and amusing-it didn't have to be very big or very fancy-was a good way to delight his children. Having been childless for so long, Scipio found he took enormous delight in making them happy now that he had them.

  He found a doll for Antoinette, one that closed its eyes when it lay down. It was, of course, white, with golden hair and blue eyes. He'd never seen a doll with dark features like his own. He'd scarcely imagined there might be such a thing. Whites dominated the Confederate States in ways neither they nor the Negro minority quite understood.

  No matter what this doll looked like, Scipio knew his little girl would enjoy it. He set money on the counter before asking the clerk for it. To that extent, he did understand how things worked in the CSA. But the clerk, once he had the price, was polite enough, saying, "Here you are. Have a good evening."

  "Thank you, suh," Scipio answered. He started for the door, and had just set his hand on the knob when he heard a scuffle outside, and then a man's shout of pain.

  From behind him, the clerk said, "Maybe you don't want to go out there right now. Freedom Party hasn't always been nice to colored folks they catch out in the evening."

  Hasn't always been nice to seemed to translate into is beating the stuffing out of. Scipio's first emotion was raw fear. His next was shame that he couldn't help the luckless Negro the goons had found. He felt gratitude toward the clerk, gratitude mixed with resentment. "Ought to call the cops," he said: as close as he dared come to letting that resentment show.

  "I've done it before," the man answered. "They don't usually come for a call like that. I'm sorry, but they don't."

  Erasmus had insisted the Augusta police weren't all bad men. Maybe he was right. Scipio found it harder to believe now. He did nod to the clerk. "Thank you fo' tryin', suh," he said. Not all whites were bad. He was reasonably sure of that.

  A little while after the sounds of violence ended, Scipio left the toy store and hurried back to the Terry. He got home safe. His daughter did love the doll. Everything should have been fine. And it would have been, if only he could have forgotten what had happened in the white part of town. As things were, he got very little sleep that night.

  W hen the train pulled into Abilene, Texas, Jake Featherston knew he was in a different world from the one he'd left. The plains seemed to go on forever. Dust was in the air. This wasn't the narrow, confined landscape of Virginia. No wonder Texans had a reputation for thinking big.

  But Texas itself wasn't so big as it had been. Not far west of Abilene, Texas abruptly stopped. What the damnyankees called the state of Houston began. That was why Jake had come all the way out here: to make a speech as close to what he still called occupied territory as he could.

  The train stopped. His bodyguards got up, ready to precede him out onto the platform. Looking out there, one of them said, "It's all right. Willy Knight's there waitin' for us."

  "Hell it's all right, Pete," another guard said. "What if that Knight bastard's the one who wants to try and get rid o' the boss?"

  Pete, an innocent soul, looked shocked. Jake wasn't. Willy Knight's Redemption League might have swallowed up the Freedom Party instead of the other way round. It hadn't, though, and Knight couldn't be happy that he wasn't the biggest fish in the pond, the way he'd dreamt of being. Still… "If he wants to put me six feet under, reckon he can do it," Featherston said. "This is his part of the country; he can hire more guns than I can bring along. But if you stick your head in the lion's mouth and get away with it, after that the lion knows who's number one. That's what we're gonna do here."

  When Jake stepped out onto the platform, the band struck up a sprightly version of "Dixie." People cheered. Jake took off his hat and waved it. Willy Knight stepped forward to shake his hand. As the two Freedom Party leaders met, photographers took pictures. The flashes made Featherston's eyes water.

  "Welcome to Texas, Jake-what's left of it," Knight said, a broad smile on his handsome face.

  "Thank you kindly, my friend." Featherston lied through his teeth. "We'll see what we can do about getting back what the USA stole from us."

  "How are you going to do that?" a reporter shouted. "The Yankees won't pay any attention to us."

  "They don't have to pay any attention to the CSA, not as long as the Whigs hold on to Richmond," Jake answered. "The Whigs say we lost the war, and so we're stuck-stuck forever. And we are, too, long as we think that way. But even the Yankees knew better. After we whipped 'em, they set up Remembrance Day so they wouldn't forget what happened. The Whigs want to forget-they want to pretend all their mistakes never happened at all. And they want the country to forget. Me, I don't intend to."

  "That's right." Willy Knight nodded vigorously. "That's just exactly right. Here in Texas, we live with that every day when we look west and see what the United States did to us."

  The reporters scribbled. Jake sent Knight a sour look. The Texan wanted to be part of the story, too. If you wanted to horn in on this, why'd you invite me out here to the middle of nowhere? Featherston thought. But he knew the answer, knew it all too well. Because you still want to be top dog, that's why, you son of a bitch. Most ways, having ambitious men in the Party was wonderful. They worked hard, for their own good as well as its. But having them here meant Jake could never stop watching his back.

  "I'm making my main speech at a park west of town, isn't that right?" he asked Knight, though he also knew that answer. "Almost within spitting range of what they call Houston. Spitting's not half what they deserve, either."

  "Sure isn't," Knight said. "If the people in occupied Texas ever got the chance to vote, they'd come back to the Confederate States in a red-hot minute."

  "Same with Kentucky," Featherston agreed. "Same with Sequoyah." He had mixed feelings about Sequoyah-it was, after all, full of redskins, and he had little more use for them than he had for niggers. (The USA had even less use for Indians; Sequoyah remained occupied territory, while Houston and Kentucky were full-fledged U.S. states.) But Sequoyah was also full of oil and gas, and cars and trucks and aeroplanes meant the Confederate States needed all the oil and gas they could lay their hands on. If the redskins came along, too, then they did, that was all. At least they'd been loyal during the war, unlike the blacks in the Confederacy.

  "Take you to the hotel first, if that suits you," Knight said. "Give you a chance to freshen up, maybe rest a little bit, before you go ou
t and give your speech. You aren't set to start till six, you know."

  "Oh, yeah." Jake nodded as they left the platform together. "That way, it's eight o'clock back on the East Coast-a good time for folks on the wireless web to listen in." He laughed. "Who would've reckoned a few years back that we'd have to worry about such things? Times are changing-if we don't change with 'em, we're in trouble."

  "That's what's wrong with the Whigs," Knight said. "They're a bunch of damn dinosaurs, is what they are."

  Dinosaurs had been much in the news lately. A team of Japanese scientists in Mongolia had come back with not only spectacular skeletons but also some of the first dinosaur eggs ever seen. They'd sent some of their specimens to the Museum of Natural History in Richmond, where they'd drawn record crowds. Jake liked the phrase, too; it captured exactly what he felt about the Whigs.

  He slapped Willy Knight on the back. "They sure are," he said. "You took the words right out of my mouth, matter of fact-I'm aiming to call 'em that very thing tonight." And so he was, even if he hadn't been a moment before.

  "Good," Knight said, not suspecting Featherston was stealing his figure of speech.

  Driving through Abilene was depressing. The town had flourished in the years just before the Great War and, like so much of the Confederacy, languished since. Timber buildings looked sun-blasted; brick ones looked old before their time. As he did all over the CSA, Jake saw men sleeping on park benches and in bushes, and others prowling the streets looking for food or work.

  The hotel seemed as gloomy as the rest of the place. Ceiling fans spun lazily in the lobby, stirring the air without cooling it much. The carpet was shabby. The walls needed painting. The clerk behind the registration desk seemed pathetically glad to have anybody come in. "Welcome to Abilene, sir," he said as he gave Jake his key.

  "Thanks," Jake replied, in lieu of what he really thought. "Freedom!"