Part 21 (1/2)

”Give me some of the salve, and a bottle of that stuff, too,” the sufferer said. He coughed some more and shook his head. ”This is killing me. I can't even enjoy my smokes any more.”

”Another thing you can do is, you can set a pot of water on the stove to boil, put in some of the salve, and breathe in the steam,” Bartlett said. ”That'll help clear out your lungs, too.”

”Good idea,” the fat man answered. His face took on a kind of apprehension that had nothing to do with his ailment. ”Now-what do I owe you?”

”Two thousand for the salve,” Reggie said. The customer nodded in some relief. Reggie continued, ”The elixir, though, it's new stuff, like I said, and it's expensive: $25,000.”

”Could be worse,” the fat man said. He took three $10,000 banknotes from his wallet and shoved them across the counter at Bartlett. Reggie gave him three $1,000 banknotes in change. As the fat man tucked them away, he shook his head in wonder. ”It's like play money, ain't it? Reckon I'm a millionaire, and a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of good it's doing me.” He coughed again, then picked up the squat blue bottle of salve and the taller one of the elixir. ”Much obliged to you, young fellow, and I hope these here give me some relief.” As he headed for the door, he called a last word over his shoulder: ”Freedom!”

Bartlett started violently. He had all he could do to hold his tongue, and indeed to keep from running after the fat man and screaming curses at him. ”Christ!” he said. His hands were trembling.

Jeremiah Harmon looked up from the tablets he was compounding. ”Something troubling you, Reggie?” He was in his late forties, with a brown mustache beginning to go gray, and so quiet Bartlett was always straining to hear him. That wasn't bad, not so far as Reggie was concerned. He'd walked out on McNally, his previous employer, because the man wouldn't stop riding him.

”Yes, sir,” he answered. ”That fellow who just left used the Freedom Party salute when he went out the door. I don't fancy those people, not even a little I don't.”

”Can't say I do, either,” Harmon said, ”but I doubt they're worth getting very excited about.” As far as he was concerned, nothing was worth getting very excited about.

”Lord, I hope you're right, but I just don't know,” Bartlett said. ”I watched their goons bust up a rally. They almost busted me up, too. That's not the only brawl they've gotten into-not even close. And now Richmond's got a Freedom Party Congressman. Makes me sick to my stomach.”

”Bicarbonate of soda will do the trick there,” Harmon remarked; he was a druggist down to the tips of his toes. After a moment, though, he realized Reggie had used a figure of speech. With a shrug, he went on, ”My guess is, they're a flash in the pan. Having a few of them in Congress is probably a good thing. Once they show they're nothing but a pack of noisy windbags, people will wise up to them pretty fast.”

Bartlett grunted. ”I hadn't thought about it like that. Maybe you've got something there.” He didn't take the Freedom Party seriously even now. When more people had a chance to see it in action, how could they take it seriously, either? ”Sometimes the best thing you can do is let a fool prove he is one.”

”That's right,” Jeremiah Harmon said. A customer came into the store. Harmon bent to his work again. ”Why don't you see to Mrs. Dinwiddie there?”

”All right. h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Dinwiddie,” Reggie said. ”What can I get for you today?” He thought he knew, but he might have been wrong.

He was right: Mrs. Dinwiddie answered, ”I need a bottle of castor oil. My bowels have been in a terrible state lately, just a terrible state, and if I don't get something to loosen them up, well, I swear to Jesus, I don't know what I'll do. Explode, I reckon.”

She went on in that vein for some time. She bought castor oil every other week; the purchases were regular as clockwork, even if her bowels weren't. Every time she bought it, she gave the same speech. Bartlett was sick of listening to it. So, no doubt, was Jeremiah Harmon. Since Harmon was the boss, he had the privilege of avoiding Mrs. Dinwiddie. Reggie didn't.

By the time she ran down, he was on much more intimate terms with her lower bowel than he'd ever wanted to be. ”Well, I won't keep you any more,” she said, having already kept him too long. She opened her handbag. ”What do I owe you?”

”That's $15,000, ma'am,” Reggie answered.

”It was only ten the last time I came in,” she said sharply. He shrugged. If she didn't like the way prices jumped, she could take that up with Harmon. He figured out how much to charge. But, after grumbling under her breath, Mrs. Dinwiddie gave Bartlett a pair of $10,000 banknotes. He returned her change and the bottle of castor oil.

So the day went. It was something less than exciting, but it put money in his pockets. It put tens of thousands of dollars in his pockets. Those tens of thousands of dollars left him somewhat worse off than he had been before the war started, when he'd been making two dollars a day. Inflation made a bitter joke of everything he'd thought he knew about money.

He supposed that was one reason people voted for the Freedom Party and other outfits like it. They loudly proclaimed they had the answers to all the problems bedeviling the Confederate States. Proclaiming they had the answers was the easy part. Really having them, and making them work-that looked harder. That looked a h.e.l.l of a lot harder to him. But some people would buy castles in the air because they were short of beans on the ground.

When six o'clock rolled around, he said, ”See you tomorrow, Mr. Harmon.”

The druggist looked up in vague surprise. ”Oh, yes, that will be fine.” He made no move to leave himself. Reggie was just hired help, and could come and go as he pleased-so long as he pleased to be on time most of the time. The drugstore belonged to Harmon. He worked as long as he thought he had to.

Reggie put on his overcoat and went out into the cold. It wasn't too bad-no snow lay on the ground-but it wasn't anything he enjoyed, either. He walked quickly, his feet clicking along the sidewalk. As long as he kept moving, he didn't feel the chill too badly. And Bill Foster's flat, where he had a supper invitation, lay only a few blocks away.

Sally Foster opened the door. ”h.e.l.lo, Reggie,” she said. ”Come in, get warm, make yourself at home. How are you today?”

”I've been worse,” he answered, and heaven only knew that was true.

”Bill, hon,” Sally called, ”Reggie's here.” She was a short, slightly pudgy blonde in her mid-twenties. For reasons Bartlett couldn't quite fathom, she thought well of him. He'd wondered if he would keep Bill Foster as a friend after Bill and Sally got married; a lot of men gave up their bachelor friends after they stopped being bachelors themselves. But Sally had gone out of her way to be cordial, and so the friends.h.i.+p stayed warm.

”h.e.l.lo, Reggie,” Bill Foster said. Married life plainly agreed with him; he'd put on ten pounds, easy, since Sally started cooking for him. ”Can I get you a little something to light a fire inside?”

”Thanks. I wouldn't mind,” Reggie answered.

Foster took down a whiskey bottle and a couple of gla.s.ses. ”Do you want water with that?” he asked. Sometimes Reggie did, sometimes he didn't.

Tonight, he didn't. ”Pipes are rusty enough already,” he said. Sally laughed. Maybe she hadn't heard it before. It was an old joke in the trenches, though, as Foster's resigned chuckle showed. When Reggie had the gla.s.s in his hand, he raised it and said, ”Here's to a long walk off a short pier for Jake Featherston.”

”Lord knows I'll drink to that,” Bill said, and he did. So did Bartlett. Sure enough, the whiskey warmed him nicely. Foster said, ”I'll drink to that any day, and twice on Sunday, as a matter of fact. But what made you come out with it just then?”

Reggie told him about the fat man with the cough who'd called out the Freedom Party's one-word slogan, and finished, ”When he walked out, I was standing there wis.h.i.+ng I'd given him rat poison instead of his cough elixir.”

”I've heard it, too,” Bill Foster said. ”It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, same as the noise of a sh.e.l.l coming in. You'd reckon people had better sense, but a lot of 'em don't.”

”The other thing I wondered was whether he was just somebody who voted for the Freedom Party, or if he was one of the tough guys who put on white and b.u.t.ternut and go out looking for heads to break,” Bartlett said. ”He didn't look like the type, but you never can tell.”

”They don't need very many ruffians,” Foster said. ”As long as folks think the fellows with the clubs are doing the right thing, they won't try and stop 'em. And that worries me more than anything.”

It gave Reggie something new to worry about, too: ”We can't even write our Congressman and complain. He'd likely send goons right to our door.”

”What you can do,” Sally said, ”is come and sit down and have supper. Once you get some food in your bellies to go along with the whiskey you're pouring down, the world won't seem like such a rotten place.”

Ham and applesauce and canned corn and string beans cooked with a little salt pork might not have changed the world, but Sally was right: they did improve Reggie's opinion of it. Peach pie improved it even more. He patted his stomach. He had no trouble understanding how Bill had put on weight. ”You don't happen to have a sister, do you?” he asked Sally, knowing she didn't.

He'd pleased her, though; he saw it in her eyes. ”You should have got married a long time ago,” she told him.

He shrugged. ”My mother says the same thing. She wants grandchildren. I never met a girl I felt like marrying.” He shook his head. ”No. That's not so. Before the war, I was sweet on a girl. But she wasn't sweet on me. She wasn't sweet on anybody, not back then she wasn't. I heard she finally married some Navy man after the war. Now, what was his name? I heard it. It's going to bother me if I can't remember.” He paused, thinking hard. ”Brantley? Buckley? No, but something like that...Brearley! That's what it was, Brearley. I knew I'd come up with it.”

”Now, if you could just come up with a girl,” Sally said.

”If I wanted to listen to my mother, I'd have gone to visit my mother,” Reggie said. Everybody laughed. He held out his gla.s.s to Bill Foster. ”You want to get me another drink? I know good and well my mother wouldn't.” Everyone laughed again.

Sylvia Enos smoked in short, savage puffs. ”That man!” she said.

Neither Sarah Wyckoff nor May Cavendish needed to ask about whom she was talking. ”What did Frank do now?” Sarah asked.

”Felt me up,” Sylvia snarled. ”He hadn't bothered me for weeks, but this morning, all of a sudden, he grew more arms than an octopus. He came back to where I was working and he felt me up like I was a squash he was buying off a pushcart. I almost hauled off and belted him.”

”You should have,” Sarah said. ”I would. I'd have knocked him into the middle of next week, too.” With her formidable build, she could have done it.

May said, ”He's been sniffing around Lillian for a while. He's probably been doing more than sniffing, too; she's a little chippy if I ever saw one.” She sniffed herself, then went on, ”But I haven't seen Lillian for the past couple days, and-”

”She quit,” Sylvia said. ”I heard one of the bookkeepers talking about it. She's moving out to California. It's good for your lungs out there.”

”Well, if she quit, then Frank is going to be on the prowl for somebody new,” May said. ”We've watched it happen often enough now.”