James Henderson could, and did. He had a second cup of coffee to go with the pie a la mode, too, and doctored it as thoroughly as he had the first. With a sigh of regret, he pushed away the empty plate. 'Yeah, that hit the spot.'
'If we do as well in November as you did at the supper table here, the Whigs are in even more trouble than I thought,' Anne said.
He grinned. 'We'll clean 'em up and wash 'em down the drain. Just what they've got coming.' Anne nodded. She felt victory in the air, too.
When Scipio walked into Erasmus' fish store and cafe, he knew right away something was wrong. His boss looked like a man whose best friend had just died. Without preamble, Erasmus said, 'I gwine shut her down, Xerxes.'
'Do Jesus!' Scipio said. He'd spent a lot of time here; he'd thought the place would go on forever-or at least as long as Erasmus did, which had looked as if it might be the same thing. 'Why for you do dat?' he demanded.
'You recollect how once upon a time them Freedom Party bastards come by here?' Erasmus said. 'They was gonna take money from me so nothin' happen to the store.'
'I recollects, uh-huh,' Scipio said. 'Then the Freedom Party go down de drain, an' dey don't come back no mo'.'
'They's back.' All of a sudden, Erasmus looked old. He looked beaten. And he looked afraid. 'Can't rightly tell if they's the same bastards as all them years ago, but they's the same kind o' bastards, an' that's what counts. They say I don't pay 'em what they want, I git bad luck like you don't believe. I ain't no fool, Xerxes. You don't got to draw me no pictures. I know what that means.'
'How much they want?' Scipio asked.
'Too much,' his boss answered. 'Too damn much. Cut my profit down to nothin'. Down to less'n nothin'. I try an' tell 'em that. Way they look at me, it's That's your worry, nigger. We don't care, long as we gits ours. So I's shuttin' down, like I say. Sell this place, live off what I gits. I'm an old man now. Reckon the money'll last me.'
'This here's blackmail,' Scipio said. 'You ought to go to the po lice.'
Erasmus shook his head. 'Ain't no use. It's like it was back the las' time. Some o' these fuckers, they is the po lice.'
Scipio had never heard the older man use an obscenity like that. 'Got to be somebody kin he'p you.'
'If I was white…' But Erasmus shook his head. 'Mebbe even that don't do no good, not now. These Freedom Party buckra, it's like they got everything goin' their way, and nobody else got the nerve to stand up to 'em. They win the 'lection, they's top dogs for six years, an' everybody reckon they gwine win.'
'I knows it. I's scared, and dat de trut',' Scipio said. 'What kin a nigger do? Can't do nothin'. Can't even vote. Can't run, neither-ain't nowhere to run to. USA don't want nothin' to do wid we. An' if we fights-'
'We loses,' Erasmus finished for him. 'Dumb Reds done showed dat durin' the war. Never shoulda riz up then, on account of they shoulda knowed they lose.'
I thought the same thing. I told Cassius the same thing. He wouldn't listen to me. He was sure the revolution would carry everything before it. He was sure, and he was wrong, and now he's dead. Scipio couldn't say a word of that. He had a new name here. He had a new life here. Remembering things he'd done long ago, in another state and in another state of mind… What point to it? None he could see, especially since time-yellowed, creased wanted posters still proclaimed his other self fugitive from what South Carolina called justice.
Erasmus went on, 'Sorry I got to let you go like this here. I know it ain't right. Times is hard, an' you gots young 'uns. But I can't help it, Xerxes. Can't stay in business no more. You hook on somewheres else, mebbe.'
'Mebbe.' Scipio didn't really believe it. How many places were hiring waiters? Even asking the question of himself made him want to laugh.
But it wasn't funny. It was anything but funny, as a matter of fact. Bathsheba's housekeeping work brought in some money, but not enough. He would have to find something to do, and find it fast.
I could be the best butler Augusta, Georgia's, ever seen. If he'd passed muster for Anne Colleton, he could pass muster here. True, he had no references, but he was good enough to show what he could do even without them. And rich people always had money. People like that were always looking for good help. When he opened his mouth and showed he could talk like an educated white man…
He shook his head and shivered, as if coming down with the influenza. When I show that, I put a noose around my neck. He knew what a good servant he made. If he started playing the butler again, word would spread among the rich whites of Augusta. Old So-and-So's got himself a crackerjack new nigger, best damn butler you ever saw. Word wouldn't spread only in Augusta, either. St. Matthews, South Carolina, wasn't that far away. Anne Colleton would hear before too long. And when she did, he was dead.
She'd gone back to helping the Freedom Party. He'd seen that in the newspapers. She wouldn't have forgotten him. So far as he knew, she hadn't tried very hard to find him after he'd escaped South Carolina for Georgia. But if he did anything to bring himself to her notice, he deserved to die for stupidity's sake.
Erasmus reached into the cash box and took out two brown twenty-dollar banknotes. He thrust them at Scipio. 'Here you is,' he said. 'Wish it could be more, but I druther give it to you than to them Freedom Party trash.'
Pride told Scipio to refuse. He had no room in his life for pride. 'Thank you kindly,' he said, and took the money. 'God bless you.'
'He done bless me plenty,' Erasmus said. 'Hope He watch out for you, too.'
Someone else had pressed money on Scipio when he lost a job waiting tables. He snapped his fingers. 'Reckon I go see me Mistuh John Oglethorpe. Anybody in this here town got work, reckon he know 'bout it.'
'Good idea.' Erasmus nodded. 'Not all white folks is Freedom Party bastards.'
These days, Scipio ventured out of the Terry only with trepidation. He didn't like the way white men looked at him when he walked along the streets outside the colored district. They looked at him the way they had to look at possums and squirrels and raccoons when they hunted for the pot.
Freedom Party posters and banners and emblems were everywhere. He saw several white men with little enamelwork Freedom Party pins-those reversed-color Confederate battle flags-on their lapels. More than anybody else, they glared at him as if he had no right to exist. He kept his eyes down on the sidewalk. Giving back look for look was the worst thing he could do. If one of those pin-wearing fellows decided he was an uppity nigger, he might not get back to the Terry alive.
When he walked into Oglethorpe's restaurant, Aurelius was taking care of the breakfast crowd. Whites sat on one side of the room, Negroes on the other. They'd always done that. It wasn't law, but it was unbreakable custom. Scipio perched at a small table. Aurelius nodded when he recognized him.
'Ain't seen you in a long time,' he said. 'What kin I git you?'
'Bacon and eggs over easy and grits and a cup o' coffee,' Scipio answered. 'I see Mistuh Oglethorpe when things slows down?'
'I tell him you's here,' Aurelius said. 'How come you ain't at Erasmus' place?'
'He shuttin' down,' Scipio said, and the other man's eyes widened in astonishment. In a voice not much above a whisper, Scipio explained, 'They wants too much money for he to stay open.' He didn't explain who they were. Aurelius would know.
'Hey, Aurelius!' a white man called. 'I need some more coffee over here.'
'Comin', Mr. Benson.' Aurelius hurried off to take care of the customer, and then another one, and then another one after that.
He didn't get back to Scipio's table till he set plate and coffee cup in front of him. 'Thank you kindly,' Scipio said, and dug in. John Oglethorpe was in no way a fancy cook, but few of his kind could match him. The breakfast was easily as good as any Erasmus made: high praise indeed. Scipio hadn't eaten grits in his days as Anne Colleton's privileged servant; he'd thought of them as fieldhands' food. He'd remade their acquaintance since, and found he liked them.
With Aurelius filling his cup every time it got low, he hung around in the restaurant till the rush thinned out. John Oglethorpe emerged from the kitchen then. His hair had gone gray and pulled back at the temples. He wore thick bifocals he hadn't had before, and was thinner and more stooped than Scipio remembered.
'What's this nonsense I hear about Erasmus goin' out of business?' he demanded. 'He can't do that. He's been cooking even longer than I have.'
