A chilly, nasty rain fell on Augusta, Georgia. Scipio didn't like the rain. He had to put on a long coat and rubber overshoes and to carry an umbrella to protect the tuxedo he had to wear at the Huntsman's Lodge. Newsboys hawking their papers doubtless liked the rain even less. They got their copies of the Constitutionalist wrapped in yellow wax paper, but it didn't always keep them dry. Customers who bought a newspaper with the consistency of bread soaked in milk were apt to say unkind things-and to demand a fresh copy without forking over another five cents.
'Election today!' the newsboys shouted from under their umbrellas. 'President Featherston seeking second term!'
Scipio didn't buy a paper. Why would he want a Constitutionalist when Jake Featherston was violating everything the Confederate Constitution had stood for since before the first shot was fired in the War of Secession? Oh, Featherston had rammed through the amendment that let him run again, but so what? Even a blind man could see that was a put-up job.
And even a blind man could see the election was a put-up job, too. Yes, the Whigs and the Radical Liberals had nominated candidates, but they had only a slightly better chance of winning than Scipio would have if he'd run against the incumbent president. The Freedom Party dominated the wireless web and the newspapers; the other candidates got only brief and unflattering mention. Despite the rain, Freedom Party stalwarts prowled outside polling places. Freedom Party officials would count most of the votes. Jake Featherston wouldn't lose.
With a snort, Scipio walked past another newsboy. As if elections applied to him or the likes of him anyway! He'd never had any choice in who ruled the Confederate States, and he never would. He wondered how many of the black men who'd earned the franchise fighting for the CSA in the Great War still had the nerve to try to use it. He also wondered how many of those who tried succeeded.
Not many and even fewer, unless he missed his guess.
As usual, he got to the Huntsman's Lodge in good time. He shed the coat and galoshes with sighs of relief, and hung the umbrella on a peg so it dripped down onto the rug in a hallway. Then he went into the kitchen to remind himself of the day's specials. At least this was Tuesday, not Monday. They wouldn't be making specials out of whatever hadn't moved over the weekend.
'Evening, Xerxes,' Jerry Dover said. 'How are you?'
'Tolerable, suh,' Scipio told the manager. 'I's tolerable. How you is?'
'Not bad,' Dover answered. 'Can we talk a little?'
'Yes, suh. What you want?' Scipio did his best not to sound too alarmed. Whenever a boss said something like that, it usually meant trouble.
Dover said, 'You're a hell of a good worker, Xerxes, don't get me wrong. You read and write and cipher better than most white men I know. What I want to ask you is, do you have to talk the way you do?'
'This heah onliest way I knows how to talk,' Scipio answered. That, of course, wasn't true, as Bathsheba could have testified. If he hadn't been able to sound like an educated white man, they and their children would have died in the riots after the Freedom Party took power.
But if he talked that way without direst need, some white man or other who heard him would connect his voice with the Marshlands plantation and Anne Colleton-whereupon, very shortly, he would be dead.
'Would you be willing to take lessons?' Jerry Dover asked, not knowing he could have given them instead.
'Once upon a time, I try dat,' Scipio lied. 'It don't do no good. I still sounds like dis.'
'I could make it worth your while,' Dover said. 'Menander the head-waiter's going to retire before too long- he's been sickly for a while now, you know. You'd be the perfect fellow to take his place-if you didn't talk like such a nigger. Everything else? I know you can do it. But you got to sound better.'
Scipio wondered if he could fake the lessons and end up sounding a little better than he did now, but not a lot. He had his doubts. Dover wasn't wrong: unless he sounded like a college-trained white (which the restaurant manager didn't know he could do at all), he sounded like someone who'd come straight from the swamps by the Congaree. That wouldn't do for a headwaiter. Compromise between the two dialects? He saw none. He also saw danger in sounding even a little like the way he had at Marshlands. He couldn't afford to be recognized, not after he'd been a spokesman for the Congaree Socialist Republic. He'd been coerced into playing that role, but who would care? No one at all.
And so, not without regret, he said, 'Reckon I better stay where I is.'
Dover exhaled angrily. 'Dammit, where's your get-up-and-go? And if you tell me it got up and went, I'll kick your ass, so help me Hannah.'
He might have meant it literally. Scipio shrugged. 'Sorry, Mistuh Dover, suh. You is a good boss.' He meant that. 'But you gots to see, I never want to be nobody's boss a-tall.'
'All right. All right, dammit. Why didn't you say that sooner?' Jerry Dover remained disgusted, but he wasn't furious any more-now he faced something he understood, or at any rate something he thought he did. 'I've seen it before. You don't want to play the white man over your own people, is that it?'
'Yes, suh,' Scipio said gratefully. 'Dat just it.' There was even some truth in what he said. He hadn't wanted to open up his own cafe in the Terry for exactly that reason. He'd told other Negroes what to do for years in his role as butler at Marshlands, and hadn't cared for it a bit. It was less important to him than his other reason for turning the manager down, but it was there.
Dover said, 'If you want to know what I think, I think you're a damn fool. Somebody's got to do it. Why not you instead of somebody else? Especially why not you if you feel that way? Wouldn't you make a better boss than some other buck who did it just to show what a slave driver he could be?'
He was shrewd. He was very shrewd, in fact, to use that last argument and to contrast Scipio, who remembered slave drivers, with one. If not wanting to boss other blacks had been the only thing troubling Scipio, the restaurant manager might have persuaded him. As it was, he shrugged again and said, 'Mebbe'-disagreeing too openly with a white man wasn't smart, either.
His boss knew what that mebbe meant. Dover waved him away. 'Go on. Go to work, then. I'd fire some people for telling me no, but you're too good to lose. If you don't want the extra money, I won't pay you.'
With a sigh of relief, Scipio went into the dining room. Tonight, he felt much better about dealing with customers than with his own boss. The Huntsman's Lodge was not the sort of place that kept a wireless set blaring away while people ate, but he got his share of the news anyway. Sure enough, Jake Featherston was easily winning a second term. All the whites in the restaurant seemed happy about it. Every so often, somebody at one table or another would call out, 'Freedom!' and glasses would go high in salute. No one asked Scipio's opinion. He didn't offer it, and wouldn't have if asked. He did pocket some larger tips than usual, as often happened when people were happy.
The rain had stopped by the time he headed for home: a little past twelve. He'd gone about half a block from the restaurant when a rattling, wheezing Birmingham pulled up to the curb alongside of him. A young black man got out. He and Scipio eyed each other for a moment. Scipio's heart thudded in his chest. All too often, Negroes stole from other Negroes, not least because whites cared little about that kind of crime.
But then the youngster grinned disarmingly. 'You ain't never seen me, grandpa. You know what I'm sayin'? You ain't never seen this here motorcar, neither.'
Was he fooling around with someone else's woman? That was the first thing that occurred to Scipio: no, the second, for that grandpa rankled. Still, if the required price was no higher, he could meet it. 'Ain't never seen who?' he said, peering around as if someone invisible had spoken.
He got another grin for that. 'In the groove, grandpa.'
'Somebody talkin' to me?' Again, Scipio pretended not to see the man right in front of him. Then he started back down the street toward the Terry. Behind him, the young Negro laughed. He walked warily even so, ready to run in case the other fellow came after him. But nothing happened. The man who'd parked the Birmingham might have forgotten all about him.
By the time he woke up the next morning, he'd just about forgotten the young man. Bathsheba, who had to go to her cleaning job much earlier than he needed to leave for the Huntsman's Lodge, was heading out the door when an explosion tore through the morning air.
'Do Jesus!' Scipio exclaimed. The windows rattled and shook. He thought they might break, but they didn't.
'What was that?' Antoinette asked.
