burned down last year, too-hell of a fire. Conroy hasn’t been seen much since. Folks saw you goin’ into that store.”
“Yes, suh, I did that, every now and then,” Cincinnatus said-no point denying something where the denial could be proved a lie. “It was on the way home from the riverside. But I didn’t do it a lot-he had high prices, an’ he didn’t fancy black folks much.”
“Black folks,” Bliss said musingly. “It’ll be different for niggers now that Kentucky’s back in the USA. Not so hard like it was before.”
“Hope so, suh,” Cincinnatus said. The law probably would be different. But, from what he’d seen, most whites in the USA had little more use for Negroes than did most whites in the CSA. And he didn’t see white Kentuckians changing their ways because a new flag flew over them.
Bliss clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Won’t be illegal for niggers to be Socialists, even, long as they’re peaceable about it.” He paused. “Of course, niggers likely won’t get to vote right away. It’s not like this was New England or somewhere like that.”
“No, suh,” Cincinnatus said with a sigh. Black Kentuckians wouldn’t get to vote till a majority of white Kentuckians decided they should. Cincinnatus didn’t plan on holding his breath.
He just hoped that oblique reference meant Luther Bliss was still tiptoeing around his connections with the Reds, too, and not seeing it plain. Bliss glared at him with those disconcerting eyes, as a coon dog might look at a raccoon it had treed in a crowded part of the woods, suddenly realizing the quarry might escape from tree to tree. The secret policeman looked intent. Cincinnatus didn’t like his expression. He’d come up with something nasty.
Before he could ask it, the door to the room in which he was questioning Cincinnatus opened. Bliss whirled angrily. “Dammit, I said I wasn’t to be disturbed in here,” he said.
“Sir,” said the man who’d bearded him in his den, “the president is outside, and he wants to talk with you.”
Bliss’ pale brown eyes widened. Before he could say anything, Theodore Roosevelt strode into the interrogation chamber. That made Cincinnatus’ eyes go wide, too. “I don’t have time for shilly-shallying and foolishness, Bliss,” Roosevelt snapped. “We need to purge this state of Rebs.”
“Get the trains, Mr. President,” Bliss answered. “Get the trains and ship about two people out of three somewhere else, because that’s the only way you’re going to purge Kentucky. If we’re lucky, we can keep most of the Rebs from raising too much Cain behind our lines till we’ve won the war. I think I can do that much. The other? Go talk to a preacher, because I’m not in the miracles game.”
Cincinnatus knew a certain reluctant respect for Luther Bliss. Telling Teddy Roosevelt he couldn’t have all he wanted seemed much the same as telling a tornado it couldn’t go where it wanted. The president of the United States glared at Bliss, who looked back imperturbably.
Roosevelt seemed to respect him, too. “It will have to do,” he said, “though I hate half measures.” He paid attention to Cincinnatus for the first time. “What’s this Negro here gone and done?”
Cincinnatus spoke for himself: “I haven’t done anything, sir.” Where he’d wanted to impress Bliss as being ignorant and shiftless, he wanted Roosevelt to see him as a bright, intelligent innocent wronged.
The only trouble with that stratagem was Bliss’ noticing his shifting style. The secret policeman’s hunting-dog eyes widened, just for a moment. To Roosevelt, he said, “Hard to say, your Excellency. Fugitive Confederate underground man named Kennedy got his head blown off on this boy’s front porch. Cincinnatus here drove for Kennedy before the war. Been a fair number of suspicious fires clustered around him, too.”
Thinking fast, Cincinnatus said, “Mr. President, sir, one of these suspicious fires he’s talking about was to Conroy’s general store. Mr. Bliss told me Conroy was one of Mr. Kennedy’s friends. If I was workin’ for Mr. Kennedy, why would I burn out one of his friends?”
“That strikes me as a fair question,” Roosevelt said. “How about it, Bliss?”
Bliss had not an ounce of retreat in him. “Mr. President, we’re also looking at his connections with the Reds.”
“Have you found any?” Roosevelt demanded.
“Not yet,” the secret policeman said stolidly.
“And I’m not a bit surprised, either,” Roosevelt said. “How in the blue blazes do you expect a man to be simultaneously aiding the Confederate resistance and the Marxist resistance, when the Marxists came as close to overthrowing the CSA as we’ve managed ourselves?”
“Sir, this is Kentucky,” Bliss said. “Everything’s topsy-turvy here.”
“Poppycock!” Roosevelt snorted. “Drivel! Things either make logical sense or they don’t, and that’s as true in Kentucky as it is in New Hampshire. If you’re trying to make out that this Negro is a Reb and a Red at the same time, and if you haven’t got any solid evidence he’s either one, I suggest-no, I don’t suggest, I order-that you let him go on about his lawful occasions.”
It wasn’t poppycock. It wasn’t drivel. Cincinnatus knew it wasn’t poppycock or drivel. So did Luther Bliss, who, being a Kentuckian, understood his home state better than Theodore Roosevelt could ever hope to do. But the president of the United States had just given Bliss a direct order. With a sigh, he said, “All right, Cincinnatus, you are free to go. You keep your nose clean and you won’t have any more trouble from me.”
“Thank you kindly, suh.” Cincinnatus didn’t think Bliss meant that, but he had said it and could be reminded of it at need. “Suh, could you give me a letter to Lieutenant Straubing, to let him know I’m in the clear so as I can go back to makin’ an honest livin’?”
Bliss plainly didn’t want to, but had no choice. “I’ll see to it,” he said.
“Back pay!” Roosevelt exploded, so vehemently, Cincinnatus jumped. “Pay for all the days this man has not been able to work. What’s your daily rate, Cincinnatus?”
“Two and a half dollars, sir,” Cincinnatus answered.
“If that’s all you make, and you’ve missed considerable work because of this folderol, you must be feeling the pinch,” Roosevelt said. “Bliss, pay this man one hundred dollars, and pay it out of your own pocket, for harassing someone who’s done nothing wrong.”
Cincinnatus expected the chief of the Kentucky State Police to do some exploding of his own at that, but Bliss, after another moment of surprise, nodded. He said, “I’ll have that and the letter ready for him when he goes. Now if we can send him out so we can talk about a couple of things without him listening-”
To Cincinnatus’ disappointment, Roosevelt didn’t object to that. A couple of hard-faced guards led Cincinnatus away and put him in what had probably been a small meeting room before the war but now served as a holding cell. They didn’t do anything but sit him down. He knew how easily that might have been otherwise.
He waited for what had to be a couple of hours. He wondered what Roosevelt and Luther Bliss were talking about. He wondered if Bliss would wait till Roosevelt was gone and then go back to sweating him. Finally, a guard said, “Come along, you,” and led him out to the city-hall steps.
There stood Luther Bliss. “Here’s your letter,” he said. Cincinnatus checked it. It was what it was supposed to be. “And here’s your money.” Bliss took his wallet from his hip pocket and peeled off five twenty-dollar bills. Only after Cincinnatus had the money in his own pocket did he wonder who was watching and why they thought he was getting it. And only after that did he realize how clever and dangerous Luther Bliss really was.
V
Flora Hamburger wished she were somewhere, anywhere, else than at Theodore Roosevelt’s second inauguration. She wished, most particularly, that she were at the inauguration of President Eugene V. Debs. But Socialist Senator Eugene V. Debs of Indiana felt no qualms about attending the inauguration of the man who had defeated him, so Flora supposed she could get through it, too.
The ceremony was held in an enormous briefing room in one of the many War Department buildings that sprawled through downtown Philadelphia. In a normal year, it would have been outdoors. (In a normal year, of course, it would have been in Washington, D.C., but that was another story.) To keep Confederate bombers from disrupting it now, it was not only indoors but also secret; Flora had found out where to come only the day before.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned. Sitting behind her was Hosea Blackford of Dakota. “Tell me
