Nor did he now. He drank the coffee quickly, savoring the warmth she'd had to work so hard to get him. Then he remarked, 'If you look over there, you'll see they are building the Washington Monument a little higher now.'
She looked out the window. Before the war, she would have been able to see only the tip of the monument over the buildings between it and the shop. Rebel bombardment and U.S. counterattacks had truncated the white stone obelisk. She could still see more of it now than she'd seen before the war, because the fighting had also leveled most of the buildings formerly in the way.
Hal said, 'I hear they're starting to rebuild the White House and the Capitol, too '
'They'll be pretty,' Nellie said. 'Past that, I don't know why anybody would bother. They'll just get blown up again when the next war comes, and I can't see the president and Congress coming down from Philadelphia, can you?'
'To spend all their time here, the way they used to do?' Hal Jacobs shook his head. 'No. Not when we are still so close to Virginia, even though the USA will hold the land down to the Rappahannock. But maybe to come down for ceremonial sessions: that, yes. That I could see.'
'I suppose you may be right,' Nellie said after a little thought. 'Teddy Roosevelt is the sort to enjoy ruffles and flourishes, no doubt about that. He'd love to make the Rebs grind their teeth, too. They were going on about how Washington would be theirs forever. Reckon they didn't know everything there is to know.'
'They were wrong,' her husband agreed. 'They will pay the price for being wrong. But we have paid a great price because they were wrong, too. I hope that will never happen again.'
'Oh, I hope so, too,' Nellie said. 'I hope so with all my heart. But when I said people wouldn't come back to the White House and the Capitol on account of they'd get blown up in the next war, I didn't hear you telling me I was wrong.'
'We have fought three wars against the Confederate States,' Hal said. 'I hope we do not fight a fourth one. I pray we do not fight a fourth one. A man should plan by what he has seen, though, not by what he hopes and prays. The older I get, the more certain I am this is true.'
Nellie studied him. No, he wasn't handsome. No, he didn't make her heart flutter. And yet, as she had seen during the war and as she saw even more strongly now, he had a core of solid good sense that was altogether admirable. She did admire it, and him.
She hadn't been looking for anyone to make her heart flutter. That was for people Edna's age. Good sense, though-good sense lasted. The older Nellie got herself, the plainer that became.
She smiled at her new husband. It was the most wifely smile she'd ever given him. It was also the smile of someone beginning to realize she'd made a good bargain after all.
John Oglethorpe came up to Scipio as the Negro was clearing dishes off a table a customer had just left. The restaurant owner coughed. Scipio knew what that sort of cough meant: Oglethorpe was about to say something he only half wanted to say. Scipio could make a good guess about what it was, too.
His guess wasn't just good. It turned out to be right. After clearing his throat a couple more times, Oglethorpe said, 'You've done a right good job for me here, Xerxes. I want you to know I mean that.'
'I thanks you very much, suh,' Scipio answered. Xerxes was the name he'd used since escaping the collapsing Congaree Socialist Republic and making his way across South Carolina to Augusta, Georgia. In his proper persona, he had a hefty price on his head, though Georgia worried more about its own black Reds on the loose than about those from other states.
'You've been just about as good a waiter as Aurelius, matter of fact,' Oglethorpe went on. The other Negro had conveniently put himself out of sight and earshot. Oglethorpe coughed yet again. 'But him and me, we go back years, and I ain't got enough business to keep two waiters busy any more, not with so much of the war work closed down, I ain't.'
'You's lettin' me go,' Scipio said. The dialect of the Congaree was slow and thick as molasses. Scipio could speak far better formal English than his boss-years of training to be the perfect butler at Marshlands had forced him to learn-but that wouldn't help now. It was likely to make things worse, in fact.
Oglethorpe nodded. 'Hate to do it, like I say, but I've got to keep my own head above water first. You on the trail of another job waitin' tables, you tell whoever's thinking about hiring you to talk to me. You're a brick, and I'll say so.'
'That right kind o' you, Mistuh Oglethorpe,' Scipio said. 'You been a good boss.' He was, on the whole, sincere. Oglethorpe expected his help to work like mules, but he worked like a mule himself. Scipio had no complaints about that. Fair was fair.
Digging in his wallet, Oglethorpe peeled off brown banknotes. 'It's Wednesday today, but I'm pay in' you till the end of the week. Couple extra days of money never did anybody any harm.'
That was more than fair. 'Thank you kindly, suh,' Scipio said. He counted the money, frowned, and counted it again. He took out a banknote and thrust it at the man who ran the restaurant. 'Even if you is payin' till the end o' the week, you done give me twenty dollars too much.'
'Keep it.' Oglethorpe looked annoyed that he'd noticed. 'Ain't like it was twenty dollars before the war. Money was worth somethin' in those days. Now-hell, look at you. You got all that money in your hand there, and you ain't rich. What kind of world is it when you can be standin' there with all that cash, and you got to worry about-' He checked himself. 'No, you don't have to worry about where your next meal is comin' from. You get on back here with me.'
Scipio got. His boss hacked off a couple of slices of egg bread, yellow as the sun, then put them around a slab of ham that would have choked a boa constrictor. He added pickles and mustard, gave Scipio the monster sandwich, and stood there with hands on hips till he'd eaten it.
'I gets me a new job, I comes back here to eat,' Scipio declared.
'Want another one?' Oglethorpe asked, reaching for the bread again. Scipio shook his head and, belly bulging, managed to make his escape. Only when he was out on the streets of Augusta did he wish he'd taken the restaurant owner up on his generosity. A sandwich like that kept a man's belly from complaining for most of a day
Augusta had a shabby, run-down look to it these days. From things he'd heard, Scipio suspected the whole Confederacy had a shabby, run-down look to it these days. A lot of men, white and black, were walking along not quite aimlessly, looking for anything that might be work. As Oglethorpe had said, the factories that had boomed during the war-cotton mills, brickworks, fertilizer plants, canneries-were booming no more.
More than a few men remained in their uniforms, though the war had been over since the summer before and spring wasn't far away. Most of the whites who still wore draggled butternut looked to be wearing it because they had nothing better to put on. The Negroes in uniform, though, might have been in business suits. They were advertising that they had served their country, as plainly as if they carried sandwich boards, and were hoping that would help them land work. What sort of place the Confederate States were going to give their black veterans remained to be seen.
Scipio headed east along Telfair toward the Terry, the colored district in Augusta. Somebody was holding a rally in May Park. a couple of blocks south of Telfair; he saw waving flags from the corner of Telfair and Elbert. He didn't really need to go back to his room: he was, at the moment, a gentleman of leisure. He wandered down toward the park to find out what was going on.
The flags were Confederate flags. They flew at the edge of the street to draw people toward the rally-as they'd succeeded in drawing Scipio-and fluttered in a mild breeze on and beside the platform on which the speaker stood. Behind the fellow was a sign that did not look to have been painted by a professional. It read, FREEDOM PARTY.
What was the Freedom Party? Whatever it was, Scipio had never heard of it before. No one at Anne Colleton's elegant dinner parties had ever mentioned it, so far as he recalled. Of course, he hadn't paid that much attention to politics, at least till he'd been dragooned into the leadership of the Congaree Socialist Republic. Why should he have? He couldn't vote; the Confederate States didn't recognize him as a citizen. Maybe this new outfit would help make things better.
And maybe it wouldn't, too. The skinny fellow up there on the platform was long on complaints: 'Aren't our generals pretty in their fancy uniforms? Wouldn't you have liked it better if they'd had any notion how to fight the goddamn war? Wouldn't you have liked 'em better if they weren't in the damnyankees' pockets?'
Scipio blinked at that. Generals had occasionally visited Marshlands. He knew good and well they'd done
