He unbuttoned his coat long enough to grab a nickel. A bum came up to him while he waited for the trolley. The fellow whined for change. He stank of unwashed hide and stale beer. Martin knew he'd just buy another mug with a nickel, but tossed him the coin anyway. 'Merry Christmas, pal.' He dug another five cents out of his pocket.
'God bless you, mister,' the bum said. Martin waved impatiently, wanting him to get out of there before he regretted his own generosity. The bum had had practice at what he did. He faded away.
Up rattled the trolley, almost fifteen minutes late. Martin grumbled as he threw his nickel in the fare box. He grumbled some more when he saw he'd have to stand for a while: the car was full, with a lot of passengers festooned with packages. He did the best he could, positioning himself next to a pretty girl who also had no place to sit. She glanced over toward him once, a look colder than the weather outside. When she left a few blocks later, he was more relieved than anything else.
He eventually did land a seat for himself; more people got off than on as the trolley rolled up to Ottawa Hills. Not for the first time, he thought about renting a place of his own as he walked to the apartment he shared with his parents and sister. He could afford it-as long as the work stayed steady, he could afford it. But his paycheck helped his folks pay the rent here, and they'd carried him when he was out on strike, carried him even though they'd disagreed with his stand. He didn't have to do anything in a hurry.
When he walked in the front door, his father was draping the Christmas tree with tinsel. A fresh, piney scent fought the usual odors of tobacco smoke and cooking. 'That's a good one, Dad,' Martin said. 'You haven't found such a nice, round, plump one in a long time.'
'Haven't gone looking for nice, round, plump ones, not since I married your mother,' Stephen Douglas Martin answered. Ignoring his son's half-scandalized snort, he went on, 'I am pretty happy with it, though. Found it at a little lot round the corner; I jewed 'em down to four bits for it.'
'That's a good price,' Martin agreed. 'You recall where you hid the star and the other ornaments after last Christmas?'
'I didn't hide them,' his father said with dignity. 'I put them away safe.' About every other year, he had to turn the apartment upside down because he'd put the decorations away so securely, he hadn't the faintest idea where they were.
This time, though, he came up with them and gave his son a superior look that Chester did his best to ignore. They hung the ornaments together. 'Are we going to have candles on the tree this year?' Chester asked.
'Unless you really want 'em, I'd say no,' Stephen Douglas Martin answered. 'Every year, you read in the paper about some damn fool'-his eyes went toward the kitchen as he made sure Louisa Martin hadn't heard him swear-'who burns down his house and burns up his family on account of those things. I don't aim to be that kind of fool, thank you very much.'
'All right,' Martin said. After bombs and barrels and shell fragments in the trenches, after cops and goons with pistols and clubs, candles struck him as a silly thing to worry about. But his father wasn't wrong; people and houses did go up in flames every Christmas. Martin supposed that, absent big fears, small ones pushed their way to the fore.
Sue came in while they were still decorating. She scaled her broad-brimmed flowered hat across the room as if it were an aeroplane and said, 'I get to put the star on top. After the day I had today, I've earned it.'
'What happened today?' Chester asked.
'Everyone wanted everything typed at the same time, and it was all stupid,' his sister answered. 'And everyone yelled at me because I couldn't do sixteen different things at the same time. If half the people in the office would have thought for even a couple of seconds before they started piling stuff onto me, everything would have been fine. But throwing things at me and then yelling their heads off was easier, so they did that instead.'
She took the gilded glass star and impaled it on top of the Christmas tree. Then she glared at her brother and her father, defying them to tell her she had no business getting angry. Chester was not about to take his life in his hands. He said 'Why don't you go get a bottle of Schmidt's out of the icebox?'
Sue didn't usually drink beer. Tonight, she nodded briskly. 'I'll do that. Thank you, Chester.' Off toward the kitchen she went. Chester Martin grinned at Stephen Douglas Martin. He might have been trained as a soldier, but he'd just served the cause of peace.
Scipio seldom saw snow. Because he seldom saw it, he enjoyed it when he did. So did everyone else in Augusta. Pickaninnies made snow angels and threw snowballs. So did their parents. So did their grandparents, some of whom had hair as white as that snow.
Because of the clogged, slippery streets, he got to Erasmus' later than he should have, and with his hat askew on his head. More and more boys played football Yankee-style these days, which meant more of them threw the ball, which meant they had practice they used to good effect with snowballs.
Erasmus' eyes glinted with amusement, but all he said was, 'Mornin5, Xerxes. How you be today?'
'Cold,' Scipio answered. 'This here nothin' but damnyankee weather. Far as I is concerned, it kin stay up there wid they.'
'Fish keep longer,' Erasmus said. 'Don't got to buy so much ice from that thief of an ice man for a couple days. Outside o' dat, I ain't gwine argue with you.'
Scipio had just started his morning sweeping when the first breakfast customer came in. Erasmus had found he made money serving breakfast, so he'd started. The customer shouted for hot coffee. Scipio didn't blame him. He had to pry himself away from the nice, warm stove to bring the fellow the steaming cup, and then the fried eggs and grits that followed.
After pouring down several steaming cups and shoveling in his food, the black man got to his feet, stuck a hand in the pocket of his dungarees, and looked a question toward Scipio. Even if it was wordless, Scipio understood it. 'A million and a half,' he said.
'Was only a million last week,' the customer said with a sigh. He gave Scipio two crisp, new $1,000,000 banknotes, with Robert E. Lee's portrait on one side and a picture of Jefferson Davis taking the oath of office as provisional president in Montgomery on the other. Scipio handed him five $100,000 banknotes (older and more worn, because they'd been in circulation longer) for change. As he'd hoped, the customer left a couple of hundred thousand dollars' tip when he went on his way.
'When was the last time you seen silver or gold money?' Erasmus asked, his voice wistful. 'I ain't even seen no pennies in a hell of a long time.'
'Me neither,' Scipio said. 'Not since the war jus' over. Somebody put down a dime or a qua'ter, reckon I fall over. Somebody put down a Stonewall, I knows I fall over.'
'How much paper you reckon a Stonewall buy these days?' Erasmus' lips moved silently as he made his own calculation. 'Somewheres around twenty, twenty-five million, I reckon. What you think?'
'Sound about right,' Scipio agreed. Erasmus had no formal education, but he was shrewd with figures. Scipio added, 'Ain't bad fo'fi'dollars in gold.'
'Sure ain't,' Erasmus said, and said no more. Scipio wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to find out his boss had a nice pile of Stonewalls hidden away somewhere. If he needed them, they'd come out. If times ever got better, so that money stopped stretching like India rubber, they'd come out then, too. Scipio wished he had his own pile.
He wondered how many goldpieces Anne Colleton had these days. He was willing to bet she had a good many. She'd always been one to land on her feet. And, if the papers didn't lie, she'd been pumping money into the Freedom Party. That worried Scipio. His former boss didn't back losers. He'd seen as much, time and again. But if the Freedom Party was a winner, every black man and woman in the CSA lost. What the men in the white shirts and butternut trousers had already done in Augusta made that crystal clear.
If it hadn't been for Bathsheba, he wouldn't have worried so much. He'd always been able to take care of himself. Even after the Congaree Socialist Republic collapsed in blood and fire, he'd taken care of himself. Taking care of somebody else, though, somebody he loved-that was different. It was harder, too: he didn't dare take risks for Bathsheba that he would have cheerfully taken for himself.
Another Negro came in, asking for flapjacks and eggs. He wore a ribbon on his jacket. After a moment, Scipio recognized what it was: the ribbon for a Purple Heart. Pointing to it, he asked, 'Where you git that?'
'Up in Virginia,' the man answered. 'Some damnyankee shot me in the leg. I was damn lucky, let me tell you. All he did was blow off a chunk o' meat. Bullet didn't hit no bone or nothin', or I reckon I'd be walkin' around with a peg leg.'
