Blood and Iron (77 page)

“Nobody did,” Stephen Douglas Martin broke in.

“Nobody had helmets,” Martin repeated, “and the ball was solid steel, and the field was a mile and a half long and half a mile wide and uphill both ways, too, and everybody on the other side was always ten feet tall and weighed seven hundred pounds, and even dead men had to stay in the game—and run the ball, too. That’s how they played it in the old days.”

“And you are a heartless whippersnapper, and I ought to turn you over my knee and whip you black and blue,” his father said, rolling his eyes. “But you’re already black and blue, I expect. And you’re wrong—dead men didn’t have to stay in. They changed that rule in
my
father’s day.”

Laughing, they helped Sue and Louisa Martin spread out the picnic feast that had come along in a wicker basket. Steelworkers and policemen wandered back and forth, talking about the game and sharing food and beer and other potables. It was as if the two groups had never clashed anywhere save in a friendly game of football.

Chester gnawed a drumstick. When Matt, the fast halfback on the policemen’s team, walked by, Martin held up a bottle of beer to get him to stop. The lure worked as well as a worm would have with a trout. “Thanks,” Matt said, and sat down beside him. “I’d sure as the devil sooner drink with you than have you jump on my kidneys like you were doing all day long.”

“Like heck I was.” Martin had finally got used to watching his language again when his mother and sister were around. “Most of the time, I was flat on my fanny watching you run by.”

They bantered back and forth, each making the other out to be a better football player than he really was. Then Matt got up and headed off to chin with somebody else, just as if he’d never clubbed a striking steelworker in all his born days. And Martin waved when he went, just as if he’d never kicked a cop. Everything in the park was peaceful and friendly. Chester Martin liked that fine.

It couldn’t be plainer that no Negro ever born has got what it takes to be a true citizen of the Confederate States of America.
Jake Featherston’s pen raced across the page. One of those days,
Over Open Sights
would be done, and everyone in the country would realize he’d been telling the truth all along.

Anyone with half an eye to see can understand the reasons for this. They are—
Before Jake could set down what they were, his secretary came back into his inner office. “What do you want, Lulu?” he growled; like any writer, he hated interruptions.

“Someone to see you, Mr. Featherston,” she said.

“Who is it?” he asked. “I don’t want to see any reporters right now.” Fewer reporters wanted to see him these days, too. That worried him, but not enough to make him feel friendly right this second.

“It’s not a reporter, sir,” Lulu answered. “It’s General Jeb Stuart, Jr.”

“What?” Jake had trouble believing his ears. As far as he was concerned, Jeb Stuart, Jr., was the author of all his troubles. Who else had made sure he would stay a sergeant as long as he stayed in the Army? Jeb Stuart, Jr., blamed him for the death of Jeb Stuart III. Jake blamed Jeb Stuart, Jr., for suppressing an investigation that might have given warning of the great Red uprising. And now the general wanted to see him? Slowly, Jake said, “Well, I reckon you can bring him on in.”

Jeb Stuart, Jr., was in his late fifties. He looked very much like an older version of his handsome son, save that he wore a neat gray chin beard rather than the little strip of hair under the lower lip Jeb Stuart III had affected. After cautious greetings, Stuart said, “You’re probably wondering why I’ve called on you now, after pretending for so long that you and the Freedom Party and all the insults you’ve thrown at me don’t exist.”

Jake did his best to sound dry: “I’d be a liar if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind—and I’m no liar.”

“You say that. I wonder if even you believe it.” Stuart looked at him. No—Stuart looked through him. He’d had upper-crust Confederate officers give him that look a great many times. It showed without words that they relegated him to the outer darkness: he wasn’t quite a nigger in their eyes, but he might as well have been.

It also made Featherston want to punch those upper-crust Confederates right in the face. “You’ve got anything to say, say it and then get the hell out,” he snapped. “Otherwise, just get the hell out.”

“I intend to say it. You needn’t worry about that,” Jeb Stuart, Jr., replied. “I came to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” Jake echoed. “Why? Are you leaving? If you are, it’s about ten years too late, but good riddance anyway. I’m sure as the devil not going anywhere.”

To his surprise, Stuart smiled. “I know you’re not. You’re not going anywhere at all in the Confederate States of America, not in politics, not any more you’re not. And so, Sergeant Featherston”—he laced the title with contempt—“good-bye.” He waved, a delicate fluttering of the fingers.

Jake laughed in his face. “Go ahead and dream, General.” He showed what he thought of Stuart’s title, too. “You fancy-pants boys won’t be rid of me that easy.” He couldn’t help a nasty stab of fear, though. Nothing had gone right for him or the Freedom Party since Grady Calkins took a Tredegar out to the Alabama State Fairgrounds and shot down Wade Hampton V.

Stuart might have picked his pocket for that very thought. “People know what the Freedom Party is now, Featherston: a pack of murdering ruffians. They’ll run your henchmen out of Congress in a few months, and you’ll never, ever be president of the Confederate States. And for that, believe me, I get down on my knees and thank God.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” Featherston said. “The fellow who laughs last laughs best, or that’s what they say. I fought the damnyankees till I couldn’t fight any more, and I reckon I’ll keep on fighting the traitors here the same way.” Not for the life of him would he let Jeb Stuart, Jr., see how closely his words reflected Jake’s own nightmares.

“There are no traitors, damn you,” Stuart said.

“Hell there aren’t,” Featherston returned. “I’m sitting across the desk from one. God damn you, that nigger Pompey, your son’s body servant, was as Red as he was black. They were going to take him away and grill him, but your precious brat didn’t want ’em to, and they didn’t. Who stopped ’em? You stopped ’em, that’s who. If that doesn’t make you a traitor, what the hell are you?”

“A man who made a mistake,” Stuart answered. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever made a mistake, Featherston?”

“Not one that big, by Jesus,” Jake said.

Stuart startled him again, this time by nodding. “It couldn’t have been much bigger, could it? It ended up costing me the life of my only son.”

“It cost a lot more than that,” Featherston said. “It cost thousands dead, by God. If any one thing cost us the war, that was it. And all you do is think about yourself. I reckon I ought to be surprised, but I ain’t.”

“You don’t know what I think, so don’t put words in my mouth,” Jeb Stuart, Jr., said. Slowly, sadly, he shook his head. “I blamed you for my son’s death, you know.”

“I never would have guessed,” Jake said with a fine sardonic sneer. “That’s why I spent the next year and however long commanding a battery and staying a sergeant. I could have been in the Army for the next five wars—hell, the next ten wars—and I never would’ve had more than three stripes. Thank you very kindly, General goddamn Stuart, sir.”

He wanted to fight with Stuart. He would have loved to spring out of his chair, smash the general to the floor, and stomp him. Every muscle quivered.
Give me an excuse,
he said silently.
Come on, you son of a bitch. Give me even a piece of an excuse.

But Stuart only looked sad. “And that was the other half of my mistake. Yes, I blocked your promotion. It seemed the right thing to do at the time, but it turned out wrong, so wrong. If you’d ended the war a lieutenant or a captain, would you ever have done what you did with—and to—the Freedom Party?”

Featherston stared at him. That question had never crossed his mind. He tried to imagine himself without the smoldering resentment he’d carried since 1916. For the life of him, he couldn’t. That endless burning inside was as much a part of him as his fingers.

He said, “It’s a little fucking late to worry about that now, don’t you reckon?”

“I do. I certainly do.” Stuart got to his feet. “And it’s a little fucking late to worry about you, Featherston. You’re yesterday’s news, and you won’t be tomorrow’s. You don’t need to get up for me.” Jake hadn’t been about to get up for him, as he must have known. “I can find my own way out.”

“Don’t come back, either,” Jake snarled.

Leaving the inner office, Jeb Stuart, Jr., got the last word: “I wish you the same.” He closed the door behind him.

With another snarl, this one wordless, Jake snatched up his pen and began to write furiously. He filled two pages in
Over Open Sights
in something less than half an hour. But even venting his anger through the growing book was not enough to satisfy him. He slammed his pad shut, threw it into his desk, and locked the drawer that held it. Until he was ready for it to see the light of day, it wouldn’t.

He sprang up and paced the inner office like a caged wolf. The Party
would
lose ground when elections came, and they were only four months away. He saw no way around it. The trick was going to be holding as much as he could—and making people think the Freedom Party would be a force to reckon with in elections after 1923. He’d known it wouldn’t be easy long before General Stuart stopped by to gloat.

He wished he could talk with Roger Kimball. But Kimball was dead, and the damnyankee woman who’d murdered him had got off scot-free. That was one more on the list he’d already started compiling against President Mitchel. “Go ahead, kiss the USA’s ass,” he muttered.

He wished he could talk with Anne Colleton, too. He valued her money, he valued her sense of theatrics, and he valued her brains. But she didn’t value him or the Freedom Party any more. Of all the defections he’d had to endure over the past year, hers might have hurt most.

Since he couldn’t talk with either of them, he telephoned Ferdinand Koenig. “Jeb Stuart, Jr.?” his former running mate exclaimed. “Well, isn’t that a kick in the head? Stopped by to gloat, you say?”

“That’s just what he did,” Jake answered. “Said the Party was as good as dead and buried, God damn him to hell.”

“Don’t take it too much to heart,” Koenig said. “If he’s as right about that as he was during the war, we’re in fine shape.”

“Yeah!” Featherston said gratefully; he hadn’t thought of it like that. “You’ve got a good way of looking at things, Ferd.”

“Don’t reckon you’ll let us down, Sarge,” Koenig answered. “I remember where we were back in 1917, and I can see where we are now. Maybe we haven’t climbed all the way to the top of the mountain, but we’ll get there.”

Thousands of Party stalwarts might—would—have said the same thing. But Jake set no special stock in what stalwarts said. They weren’t stalwarts because they were long on brains. They were stalwarts because they were long on muscle and short on temper. Ferdinand Koenig was different. He not only had good sense, he wasn’t embarrassed about showing it.

“Of course we’ll get there,” Jake said, sounding more confident than he felt. “Just have to come through this November without getting skinned.”

“Figure we will?” Koenig asked.

“That’s the question, all right,” Jake allowed. He let out a long, slow sigh. “We’ll get hurt some. We’ll have to put the best face on it we can, and then we’ll have to start building toward 1925. We can’t afford to waste a minute there. I only hope to God we don’t lose so much, people won’t take us serious any more.” With Kimball dead and Anne Colleton gone, Ferdinand Koenig was the only one to whom he would have said even so much.

Koenig answered, “You never can tell, Sarge. Folks don’t think we matter so much now that money doesn’t burn a hole in their pockets if they leave it in there more than a minute and a half, but who knows how long that’ll last? Who knows what all’s liable to go wrong between now and 1925?”

“That’s right,” Jake said, smiling for the first time since Jeb Stuart, Jr., had left. “That’s just right. With the Whigs running things, they
will
go wrong, sure as the sun comes up tomorrow.” He hung up feeling better, but only for a little while. Would anything be left of the Freedom Party when a chance to rule came round at last?

“Mama!” Clara Jacobs screeched from what had been the storeroom. “Little Armstrong just tore up the picture I was drawing!”

She was almost four, more than twice the age of her little nephew. But Armstrong Grimes, even as a toddler, gave every sign of being hell on wheels.
He takes after Edna,
Nellie thought.
I bet Merle Grimes was a nice man even when he was a little boy.
She had such a good opinion of almost no one else in the male half of the human race; the more she got to know her son-in-law, the more he impressed her.

Fortunately, the coffeehouse was almost empty. She could hurry back to the old storeroom and mete out punishment. Armstrong hadn’t just torn up Clara’s picture; he’d made a snowstorm of pieces out of it. He was happily sticking one of those pieces in his mouth when Nellie yanked it away from him, upended him over her knee, and walloped his backside. “No, no!” she shouted. “Mustn’t tear up things that don’t belong to you!”

Her grandson howled. Since he was wearing a diaper that shielded his bottom, Nellie knew she wasn’t hurting him much. The spanking made an impressive amount of noise, though, as did her yelling.

“Now,” she said, “are you going to do that any more?”

“No,” little Armstrong answered. Nellie wiped his nose, which was dripping yellowish snot. She didn’t believe him. For one thing, he was heading toward the age where he said
no
every other time he opened his mouth. For another, a toddler’s promise lasted only till he forgot he’d made it, which meant anywhere from two minutes to, in extraordinary circumstances, an hour or so.

“You be good, you hear me?” Nellie said.

“No,” Armstrong Grimes answered. That was neither defiance nor ignorance, only the first thing that came out of his mouth.