'Fine,' Featherston said shortly. He pressed the cold glass to his cheek, sighed with pleasure, and then put the glass beside the one Stuart had set on the tray. With a low bow, Pompey took them away.
'He's all right, even if I do have to get down on him,' Stuart said, watching the Negro's retreat. 'You just have to know how to handle niggers, is all.'
'Yes, sir,' Featherston said once more, this time with the toneless voice noncommissioned officers used to agree with their superiors when in fact they weren't agreeing at all. Stuart didn't notice that, any more than he'd noticed Pompey laying the dumb-black act on with a trowel. He was a pretty fair officer, no doubt about it, but he wasn't as smart as he thought he was.
Of course, when you got right down to it, who was?
Cincinnatus stepped on the brake as he pulled the Duryea truck up behind the warehouse near the Covington docks. He muttered a curse when a policeman-worse, by the peacock feather in his cap a Kentucky state trooper- happened to walk past the alleyway and spy him.
The trooper cursed, too, and loudly: he didn't have to hide what he thought. He yanked his hogleg out of its holster and approached the Negro at a swag-bellied trot. Pointing the revolver at Cincinnatus' face, he growled, 'You better show me a pass, or you is one dead nigger.'
'Got it right here, boss.' Cincinnatus showed more respect than he felt. He pulled the precious paper out of his passbook and handed it to the state trooper.
The man's lips moved as he read: 'Cincinnatus works for Kennedy Shipping and has my leave to drive the Kennedy Shipping truck in pursuit of his normal business needs. Thomas Kennedy, proprietor.' He glowered at Cincinnatus. 'I don't much hold with niggers drivin', any more'n I do with women.' Then, grudgingly: 'But it ain't against the law-if you're really Tom Kennedy's nigger. What do you say if I call him on the tellyphone, hey?'
'Go ahead, boss,' Cincinnatus said. He was on safe ground there.
The trooper stuck the pistol back in its holster. 'Ahh, the hell with it,' he said. 'But I tell you somethin', an' you better listen good.' He pointed north toward the Ohio River. 'Just across there it's the You-nited States, right?' He waited for Cincinnatus to nod before going on, 'Any day now, all hell's gonna break loose between us and them. Some people, they see niggers like you down here by the docks or anywhere near, they ain't gonna ask to see your pass. They gonna figger you're a spy an' shoot first, then stop an' ask questions.'
'I got you, boss,' Cincinnatus assured him. The trooper nodded and went on his way. When his back was turned, Cincinnatus allowed himself the luxury of a long, silent sigh of relief. That hadn't turned out so bad as it might have, not anywhere near. He was resigned to playing the servant to every white man he saw; if you didn't want to end up swinging from a lamppost, you did what you had to do to get by. And the state trooper had even given him what the man meant as good advice. That didn't happen every day.
As far as Cincinnatus was concerned, the fellow was crazy, but that was another matter. Keep all the black folks away from the Covington docks?
'Good luck, Mr. Trooper, sir,' Cincinnatus said with a scornful laugh. Every longshoreman and roustabout on the docks was colored. White men dirty their hands with such work? Cincinnatus laughed again.
Then, all at once, he sobered. Maybe the state trooper wasn't so crazy after all. If war came, no riverboats would come down the Ohio from the United States or up it from the Mississippi and the heart of the Confederacy. Both sides had guns up and down the river trained at each other. Without that trade, what would the dockworkers do? For that matter, what would Cincinnatus do?
He looked toward the Ohio himself. One thing he wouldn't do, he figured, was try to run off to the United States, no matter how the trooper worried about that. In the Confederacy, there were more Negroes around than whites wanted (except when dirty work needed doing), so the whites gave them a hard time. In the United States, which had only a relative handful of Negroes, the whites didn't want any more-so they gave them a hard rime.
'Shit, even them big-nosed Jews got it better up there than we-uns do,' Cincinnatus muttered. Somebody could doubt whether you were a Jew. Wasn't any doubting about whether he was black.
Wasn't any doubt he'd spent too long daydreaming in the truck, either. A big-bellied white man in overalls and a slouch hat came out of the warehouse office and shouted, 'That you out there, Cincinnatus, or did Tom Kennedy get hisself a real for-true dummy for a driver this time?'
'Sorry, Mr. Goebel,' Cincinnatus said as he descended. For once, he more or less meant it. He knew he had been sitting when he should have been working.
'Sorry, he says.' Goebel mournfully shook his head. He pointed to a hand truck. 'Come on, get those typewriters loaded. Last things I got in this warehouse.' He sighed. 'Liable to be the last Yankee goods we see for a long time. I ain't old enough to remember the War of Secession, but the Second Mexican War, that was just a little feller. This one here, it's liable to be bad.'
Cincinnatus didn't remember the Second Mexican War, he was within a year either way of twenty-five. But the newspapers had been screaming war for the past week, troops in butternut had been moving through the streets, politicians were ranting on crates on every corner… 'Don't sound good,' Cincinnatus allowed.
'If I was you, I'd get out of town,' Goebel said. 'My cousin Morton, he called me from Lexington yesterday and said, Clem, he said, Clem, you shake your fanny down here where them cannons can't reach, and I reckon I'm gonna take him up on it, yes I do.'
White folks take so much for granted, Cincinnatus thought as he stacked crated typewriters on the dolly and wheeled it out toward the Duryea. If Clem Goebel wanted to get out of Covington, he just upped and went. If Cincinnatus wanted to get out of town and take his wife with him, he had to get written permission from the local commissioner of colored affairs, get his passbook stamped, wait till acknowledgment came back from the state capital-which could and usually did take weeks-then actually move, reregister with his new commissioner, and get the passbook stamped again. Any white man could demand to see that book at any time. If it was out of order- well, you didn't want to think what could happen then. Jail, a fine he couldn't afford to pay, anything a judge-bound to be a mean judge-wanted.
The typewriters were heavy. The stout crates in which they came just added to the weight. Cincinnatus wasn't sure he'd be able to fit them all into the bed of the truck, but he managed. By the time he was done, the rear sagged lower on its springs. Sweat soaked through the collarless, unbleached cotton shirt he wore.
Clem Goebel had stood around without lifting a finger to help: he took it for granted that that sort of labor was nigger work. But he wasn't the worst white man around, either. When Cincinnatus was done, he said, 'Here, wait a second,' and disappeared into his little office. He came back with a bottle of Dr Pepper, dripping water from the bucket that kept it, if not cold, cooler than the air.
'Thank you, sir. That's right kind,' Cincinnatus said when Goebel popped off the cap with a church key and handed him the bottle. He tilted back his head and gulped down the sweet, spicy soda water till bubbles went up his nose. When the bottle was empty, he handed it back to Goebel.
'Go on, keep it,' the warehouseman said. Cincinnatus stowed it in the truck after thanking him again. For once, he felt only half a hypocrite: he'd gladly pocket the penny deposit. He cranked the engine to start it, got the truck in gear, and headed south down Greenup Street toward Kennedy's storerooms.
A policeman in gray uniform and one of the tall British-style hats that always reminded Cincinnatus of fireplugs held up a hand to stop him at the corner of Fourth and Greenup: a squadron of cavalry, big, well-mounted white men with carbines on their shoulders, revolvers on their hips, and sabers mounted on their saddles, was riding west along Fourth. Probably going to camp in Devon Park, Cincinnatus thought.
People-white people-cheered and waved as the cavalry went by. Some of them waved Maltese-cross battle flags like the one that flapped at the head of the squadron, others Stars and Bars like the sixteen-star banner above the post office across the street from Cincinnatus. The cavalrymen smiled at the pretty girls they saw; a couple of them doffed their plumed hats, which looked much like the one the Kentucky state trooper had worn but were decorated with the yellow cord marking the mounted service.
After the last horse had clopped past, the Covington policeman, reveling in his small authority, graciously allowed north-south traffic to flow once more. Cincinnatus stepped on the gas, hoping his boss wouldn't cuss him for dawdling.
He'd just pulled up in front of Tom Kennedy's establishment when a buzzing in the air made him look up. 'God almighty, it's one o' them aeroplanes!' he said, craning his neck to follow it as it flew up toward the Ohio.
'What are you doing lollygagging around like that, goddamn it?' Kennedy shouted at him. But when he pointed up into the sky, his boss stared with him till the aeroplane was out of sight. The head of the shipping company
