Part 24 (1/2)

”See what you get for starting without me?” Martin said, drawing up a chair.

”Dad wants to throw in this game because he's losing,” his sister said. But Sue's grin said she didn't mind throwing it in, either.

”My own flesh and blood insult me,” Stephen Douglas Martin said. ”If I'd told my my father anything like that-” father anything like that-”

”Gramps would have laughed his head off, and you know it,” Martin said. He gathered the cards and fanned them in his hand. ”Draw for first deal.” He ended up dealing himself. After generously donating the ace of spades and a couple of hearts to his mother, who sat on his left (and receiving a similar load of trash from his sister, who sat on his right), he called, ”All right, where's the deuce?”

Out came the two of clubs. As the hand was played, his father asked, ”Did you get the whole world settled, there at the Socialist meeting hall?”

”Sure as heck did,” Martin said cheerfully. ”The revolution of the proletariat starts next Wednesday, seven o'clock in the morning sharp. You'd better step lively, Pop-you don't want to be late.” He took a trick with the ace of diamonds, then led the ten of spades. ”Let's see where the queen's hiding.”

”Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer,” his father said. As Chester's mother had done, he ducked the spade. So did Sue. Stephen Douglas Martin went on, ”Do people want it to be that rabblerousing fool of a Debs again?”

”Some people do,” Martin answered. ”I think we'd have a better chance with somebody else.” Since the ten of spades had failed to flush out the queen, he led the nine. ”Maybe this'll make her show up.”

His mother pained and set out the ace of spades. His father grinned and tucked the king under it. His sister grinned even wider and dropped the queen, sticking his mother with thirteen points she didn't want. ”There you go, Ma,” Sue said sweetly.

”Thank you so much,” Louisa Martin said. She turned to her son. ”When the revolution comes, will the queen only be worth one point, to make her equal with all the hearts in the deck?”

”Don't know about that one, Ma,” Chester said. ”I don't think there's a plank that talks about it in the Socialist Party platform.”

”Is there a plank that explains why they think we need anybody but bully old Teddy?” Stephen Douglas Martin inquired.

”I can think of two,” his son replied. ”First one is, n.o.body's ever had three terms. If TR decides to run again, he shouldn't, either. And even if the Democrats run somebody else, they have to explain what we got for all the men who got killed and maimed during the war, and why they've been in the trusts' pocket ever since.”

When he was around Albert Bauer, he sounded like a reactionary. When he was around his parents-who were, in his view of things, reactionaries-he sounded as radical as Bauer did. The more he thought about that, the funnier it seemed.

The quitting whistle's scream cut through the din on the floor of the Sloss Works like a wedge splitting a stump. Jefferson Pinkard leaned on his crowbar. ”Another day done,” he said. ”Another million dollars.”

He wasn't making a million dollars a day, but he was making better than a million a week. Next month, probably, he'd be up over a million a day. It didn't matter. What the CSA called money was only a joke, one that kept getting funnier as the banknotes sprouted more and more zeros. The bottom line was, he'd lived better before the war than he did now. That was so for almost everybody in the Confederate States.

”See you in the mornin', Mistuh Pinkard,” Vespasian said.

”Yeah,” Jeff answered. ”See you.” He didn't make his voice cold on purpose; it just came out that way. The more he went to Freedom Party meetings, the less he cared to work alongside a black man. Vespasian turned away and headed for the time clock to punch out without another word. Pinkard wasn't in the habit of bragging about going out on Freedom Party a.s.sault squadrons, but he wouldn't have been surprised had Vespasian known about it. Blacks had funny ways of finding out things like that.

Too d.a.m.n bad, Jeff thought. Tired and sweaty, he headed toward the time clock himself. Jeff thought. Tired and sweaty, he headed toward the time clock himself.

Going into and out of the Sloss foundry, whites had always hung with whites and Negroes with Negroes. That hadn't changed. What had changed, lately, was how men from one group eyed those from the other. Blacks seemed warier than they had been during the war. Whites seemed less happy about having so many colored men around, doing jobs they wouldn't have been allowed to do before the war started. Pinkard understood that down to the ground. It was how he felt himself.

He didn't stop sweating just because he'd stopped working for the day. Spring had come to Birmingham full of promises about what the summer would be like. If those promises weren't so many lies, summer would be hotter than h.e.l.l, and twice as muggy. Summer in Birmingham was usually like that, so the promises probably held truth.

When he got close to home, Bedford Cunningham waved to him. Bedford was sitting on his own front porch, with a gla.s.s of something unlikely to be water on the rail in front of him. ”Come on over after supper, Jeff,” he called. ”We'll hoist a few.” He hoisted the one sitting on the rail.

”Can't tonight,” Pinkard answered. ”Got a meeting.”

”Man alive.” Cunningham shook his head, back and forth, back and forth. By the way he did it, that one on the rail wasn't the first he'd hoisted. ”Never reckoned you'd dive into the Freedom Party like a turtle diving off a rock into a creek.”

It was, when you got down to it, a pretty fair figure of speech. Jeff felt a lot happier swimming in the river of the Party than he did out on a rock by his lonesome. He said, ”Maybe you ought to come along, give yourself somethin' to do besides gettin' lit up.”

”I like getting lit up,” Cunningham said. ”What the h.e.l.l better have I got to do, anyhow? Can't hardly work, not shy an arm. I'll vote Freedom, sure as h.e.l.l I will, but I don't fancy sitting around and listening to people making speeches.”

”It's not like that,” Jeff protested, but Bedford Cunningham was hoisting his gla.s.s again. With a shrug, Pinkard went up the walk and into his own house.

”h.e.l.lo, dear,” Emily said. She tilted up her face for a kiss. He gave her one, rather a perfunctory job. She didn't try to improve it. ”I know you got your meeting tonight,” she went on when he let her go, ”so supper'll be on the table for you in two shakes of a lamb's tail.” She went back into the kitchen to dish it out. She didn't shake her own tail, as she would have not so long before.

Jeff paid no attention to the change. ”Good thing you remembered,” he told her. ”Barney Stevens is back in town from Richmond, and he's going to let us know what those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in Congress are up to. I don't want to be late, not for that.”

”You won't be,” Emily promised, her voice floating out through the hall. ”Come on and set yourself down.”

He did, then shoveled chicken and dumplings into his face with the single-minded dedication a stoker might have shown in shoveling coal into a steam engine's firebox. Then, after bestowing another absentminded kiss on his wife, he headed over to the closest trolley stop for the ride to the livery stable where the Freedom Party still met.

He felt at home there, more even than he did in the cottage he'd shared with Emily since the days before the war. Almost all the men who'd joined the Party were veterans, as he was; they'd fought the d.a.m.nyankees in Virginia, in Kentucky, in Arkansas, in Sequoyah, in Texas, in Sonora. And most of them had put on white s.h.i.+rts and b.u.t.ternut pants these past few months and gone charging forth to break up rival parties' rallies and to remind the blacks of Birmingham where in the scheme of things they belonged.

”Freedom!” he said every time he shook somebody's hand or slapped somebody else on the back. And men also reached out to clasp his hand and slap his back and hailed him with the one-word greeting that was also a battle cry. He might have been a Freemason or an Odd Fellow: everyone in the livery stable with him was his brother.

Along with everyone else, he stamped and whistled and clapped when Barney Stevens, ma.s.sive and impressive in a black suit, strode to the front of the open area. ”Freedom!” Stevens-now Congressman Stevens-called.

”Freedom!” his audience roared back. Jefferson Pinkard felt different when he used the slogan along with his comrades. It took on a power then that it lacked when it was simply a greeting. It became a promise, and at the same time a warning: anyone who didn't care for the Freedom Party's ideas needed to get out of the way, and in a hurry, too.

”Boys, we've got a power of work to do, and that's a fact,” Barney Stevens said. ”n.o.body's mucked out that big barn they call the Capitol in a h.e.l.l of a long time. Most of the folks, they've been there since dirt, or else their pappies were there since dirt, and they're taking over after the old man finally upped and dropped dead. d.a.m.n fancy-pants bluebloods.” Stevens fluttered his hand on a limp wrist. The Freedom Party men howled laughter. He went on, ”But we're starting to get things moving, to h.e.l.l with me if we're not. This business with pa.s.sbooks was just the first sh.e.l.l in the bombardment. Let me tell you some of what I mean...”

After a while, Jeff found himself yawning. Stevens wasn't a bad speaker-far from it. But Jeff hadn't joined the Freedom Party to pay close attention to the nuts and bolts of policy. He'd joined because he'd felt down in his bones that something had gone dreadfully wrong with his country and he thought Jake Featherston could fix it.

Exactly how it got fixed didn't matter so much to him as getting together every week with other people who followed Featherston and going out with them every so often to bust the heads of people who didn't. That brought back the sense of camaraderie he'd known in the trenches: about the only good thing he'd known in the war.

And so, when Barney Stevens went on and on about hearings and taxes and tariffs and labor legislation, Jeff slipped from the middle of the open area in the livery stable toward the back. ”Sorry, Grady,” he whispered after stepping on another man's toes. He noticed he wasn't the only fellow moving toward the back of the stable, either. Everybody was glad to have Stevens in Congress, but he'd lost part of his audience tonight. He'd been elected to take care of the details, not to bore everybody with them.

Pinkard wasn't the first one to slide out the door. ”My wife's a bit poorly,” he whispered to the two burly guards as he left. They nodded. Odds were, they knew he was lying. He shrugged. He'd been polite-and he'd thrown half a million dollars into the big bowl by the door. As long as he was both polite and paid up, the guards didn't care if he left early.

Since he was leaving early, Emily would probably still be awake. Maybe they'd make the mattress creak when he got home. For some reason, she'd acted kind of standoffish toward him lately. He'd take care of that, by G.o.d. Horning it out of her was the best way he knew-he'd enjoy it, too.

He took the trolley to the edge of Sloss company housing, then walked to his cottage. A few people still sat on their front porches, enjoying the fine night air. He wondered if he'd see Bedford Cunningham on his, drunk or pa.s.sed out. But Bedford must have gone inside to bed, because he wasn't there.

Pinkard's own house was also dark, so he figured Emily had gone to bed, too. Well, if she had, he'd d.a.m.n well wake her up. He turned his key in the lock. The door didn't squeak as it swung on its hinges. He'd oiled them after he came home from the war, and quietly kept them oiled ever since. He'd caught Emily cheating on him once, and wanted a fair chance to do it again if she stepped out of line. She hadn't, not that he knew of, but....

The hinges didn't squeak, but something in the house was squeaking, squeaking rhythmically. He knew what that noise was. It came from the bedroom. Rage filled him, the same rage he knew when he put on white and b.u.t.ternut and went off to break heads, but focused now, as if with a burning gla.s.s.

”G.o.d d.a.m.n you, Emily, you little wh.o.r.e!” he bellowed, and stomped down the hall toward the bedroom.

Twin cries of horror greeted him, one Emily's, the other a man's. They were closely followed by scrabbling noises, a thump, and the sound of running feet. Whoever'd been in there with Emily hadn't wanted to face Jeff. As Jeff stormed in, his feet caught on something, then kicked something else: a man's tangled trousers and his shoe. Whoever the fellow was, he'd departed too quickly to bother retrieving his clothes.

”Jeff, honey, listen to me-” Emily spoke in a quick, high, desperate voice.

”Shut up,” he said, and she did. She hugged the blanket to herself. The moonlight sliding in through the window-the window through which her lover had fled-showed her arms pale and bare against the dark blue wool.

He yanked the blanket off her. She was naked under it. He'd known she would be. Breathing hard, he lashed out and slapped her twice, forehand and backhand, fast as a striking snake. She gasped, but made no other sound. If he killed her on the spot, no jury would convict him. She had to know as much.