'What's wrong, sir?' Roosevelt demanded.
'Wrong? I'll show you what's wrong!' Custer waved a sheet of paper. 'What's wrong is, a cease-fire with the English sons of bitches went into effect yesterday, only we didn't know it. We just licked the boots off the shitty limeys, we just got my brother killed, in a battle we never should have fought, and now we have to let what's left of the bastards go home. I haven't had a drink of liquor, save for medicinal purposes, in almost twenty years-not since before I married Libbie. Do you wonder, Roosevelt, do you wonder that I got myself lit up riding after you?'
'No, sir,' Roosevelt said, and then, 'Hell, no, sir.' After a moment, he added, 'Is anything left in your bottle, sir?'
'Not a drop,' Custer answered. 'Not a single fucking drop.' 'Too bad,' Roosevelt said. 'In that case, I'll just have to find my own.'
Frederick Douglass got off the train in Rochester. His wife and son were the only black faces on the platform. Anna Douglass burst into tears when she saw him. Lewis folded him into a hard, muscular embrace. 'Good to have you home, Father,' he said. 'Let me take your bag there.'
'Thank you, my boy,' Douglass said. 'Believe you me, it is very, very good to be home again.' He gave Anna a gentle kiss, then stood up tall and straight before her. 'As you see, my dear, I have come through all of it unscathed.'
'Don't sound so proud of yourself,' she said sharply. 'I reckon that was the Lord's doin', a whole lot more'n it was yours.'
He looked down at the planks of the platform floor. 'Since I cannot possibly argue with you, I shall not even try. The Lord took me through the valley of the shadow of death, but He chose to let me walk out the other side safe. For that, I can only praise His name.'
Anna nodded, satisfied. Lewis Douglass asked the question his father had known he would ask: 'What was it like, sir, coming up before Stonewall Jackson?' A frown twisted his strong features; he laughed ruefully. 'If working with you on the newspaper hasn't yet taught me the futility of asking what something is like and then expecting to feel the answer as did the man who had the experience, I don't suppose it ever will.'
'If it hasn't yet taught me that futility, why should it have done so with you?' Douglass returned. 'What was it like? It was frightening.' He held up a hand before his son or wife could speak. 'Not in the way you think, either. It was frightening because I found myself in the presence of a man both formidable and, I judge, good, but one who believes deep in his heart in things utterly antithetical to those in which I believe, and who reasons with unfailing logic from his false premises.' He shivered. 'It was, in every sense of the word, alarming.'
They all walked out toward the carriage, Anna on Frederick 's arm. As Lewis put the last suitcase behind the seat, he remarked, 'You have said before that it is possible for a slaveholder to be a good man.'
'Yes.' Douglass helped his wife up, then climbed aboard himself and sat beside her. 'It is possible,' he went on as Lewis took the reins. 'It is possible, but it is not easy. Jackson… surprised me.'
'1 reckon you surprised him, too.' Anna patted her husband's arm.
'I hope I did. I rather think I did,' Douglass said. 'And I have what may be great news: in Chicago, I heard that the Confederates are-no, may be-planning to manumit their bondsmen once the war, now suspended, is truly ended, this being a quid pro quo in return for their allies' assistance against the United States.'
'Wonderful news, if true,' Lewis said. 'We've heard the like now and again down through the years, though, and nothing ever came of it. Who told you this time, Father? Lincoln?'
'No, John Hay,' Douglass answered. 'Since he was minister to the Confederate States, he should know whereof he speaks. Lincoln had other concerns.' He let out a bitter sigh. ' Lincoln has had other concerns than the Negro before, which I say though he is and has always been my friend. In the summer of 1862, he drafted a proclamation emancipating all slaves within the territory of the Confederate States, then waited for a U.S. victory to issue it, lest it be seen as a measure of desperation rather than one of policy. The victory never came, and, when our straits indeed grew desperate, he let that paper languish, having been convinced it was by then too late to do any good. I shall go to my grave convinced he was mistaken.'
'Of course he was, Father,' Lewis said angrily. He looked back over his shoulder. 'In all the years since, you have never spoken of this, nor has anyone else I ever heard.'
'The proclamation was never widely known, for obvious reasons,' Douglass answered. 'Once the Confederate States succeeded in breaking away, it became moot, and what would have been the point to mentioning it? As you'll remember, the fight to emancipate the Negro slaves remaining within U.S. territory after the War of Secession was quite hard enough.'
'That is so, and you may be right about the rest, too,' Lewis said, 'but it galls me to think the United States went down to defeat when we still had a weapon we could loose against the enemy.'
Frederick Douglass let out a hoarse whoop of laughter. 'You say that, after the ignominious cease-fire to which President Blaine has agreed? We have an army's worth-no, a nation's worth-of weapons we have not loosed against our enemies in this fight, and now we shall not loose them.'
'And that's a right good thing, too,' Anna Douglass said, 'on account of the only thing we would do with 'cm is shoot our own selves in the leg.'
Lewis pointed north, toward Lake Ontario. 'Two ironclads flying the Union Jack steam back and forth out there. We arc under their guns, as we have been since they first bombarded us. We are helpless against them. The problem is not only poor use of the weapons we have, but also weapons we lack.'
'We have now twice gone unprepared to war,' Douglass said. 'May God grant that, where we did not learn our lesson the first time, we shall do so the second. I hope that, in years to come, smoke will billow from the stacks of the factories producing every manner of gun and munition so that, should another war ever come, we shall at last be ready for it.'
When the carriage reached the street on which Douglass lived, Lewis had to rein in sharply to keep the horses from running down Daniel, who was pedaling his bicycle along without the slightest care for where he was going. The boy handled the high-wheeled ordinary with far more confidence than he'd shown before Douglass left for Louisville: too much confidence, perhaps.
Seeing Douglass, he whizzed close to the carriage. 'Welcome back!' he shouted. 'Welcome home!'
'Thank you, son,' Douglass answered. By then, Daniel was speeding away again. Douglass wondered whether he heard. Even so, the journalist softly repeated the words: 'Thank you.' To Daniel, he wasn't a Negro, or, at least, wasn't first and foremost a Negro. Before that, he was a neighbor and a man. To Douglass, that was as it should be.
Lewis reined in again, in front of the house where Douglass and Anna had lived so long. 'Here we are, Father.' He grinned and tipped his cap. 'Cab fare, fifty cents.'
Douglass gave him two quarters, and a dime tip to boot. He would not let Lewis return the money, either, saying, 'It's the best ride I've had since I left home, and one of the cheaper ones, too.'
'All right, since you put it that way.' Lewis shoved the coins into his pocket. 'Good to know I have a trade I can fall back on at need. Heaven knows the newspaper business isn't so steady as I wish it were.'
'See what you get for not pandering to the most popular opinions?' Frederick Douglass kept his tone light, but the words were serious, and he and his son both knew it. He got down, then helped Anna. She felt fragile, bony, in his arms. Anxious, he asked, 'My dear, how are you?'
'As the good Lord meant me to be,' she answered, to which he found no response. She went on, 'Pretty soon I'll see Him face-to-face, and I intend to have a good long talk with Him about the way things do go on in this here world.'
'Good,' Douglass said. 'I'm sure He could have made a much better job of things had He had you to advise Him.'
Anna glared, then poked him in the ribs. They both laughed. Together, they walked into the house. Douglass stopped in the front hall. The feel of the throw rug under his feet, the rows of framed pictures on the walls, the infinitely familiar view of the parlor on one side and the dining room on the other, the faint smell of paper and tobacco and food-all told him he was home, and nowhere else. A long, happy sigh escaped him.
'Are you glad to be back?' Anna asked slyly.
'Oh, maybe just a bit,' he answered. They laughed again.
Lewis came downstairs, brisk and quick and sure of himself. 'I've put your bags in the bedroom, Father. That's settled for you.' He was a young man still, and certain that things were easily settled. A small problem
