Blue St. Andrew’s crosses, some of them new, marked buildings and suggested the Confederate battle flag. Two horizontal red stripes with a white one between similarly suggested the Confederate national flag. Some of those were new, too. The diehards hadn’t given up, not by a long chalk.
I AIN’T NO YANKEE
, someone had written beside one of those not-quite-flags.
New posters marred walls, too, some of them slapped over the pro-Confederate graffiti. The posters were solid red, with broken chains in black stretched across them. The Red uprising had not got so far among the Negroes of Kentucky as among their brethren still in Confederate-owned territory at its outbreak. But it had not been brutally suppressed here, either. Being a Red wasn’t illegal in the USA, even if it was hazardous to a black man’s health.
Red posters and blue crosses were both thick around the waterfront. Cincinnatus wondered if the diehards and the Reds had bumped into each other on their clandestine rounds of pasting and painting. Down in the CSA, they would have been deadly foes. Here in Kentucky, they sometimes reckoned the U.S. government a common enemy. Cincinnatus whistled softly. They sometimes didn’t, too.
Both soldiers and police patrolled the wharves. Confederate policemen had commonly worn gray, like soldiers from the War of Secession. Now that Kentucky belonged to the USA, policemen—sometimes the same policemen—wore dark blue, as their grandfathers might have done had they fought for the Stars and Stripes.
And some policemen wore no uniforms at all. Some of the idlers, some of the roustabouts who strode up and down the piers and along the waterfront, were sure to belong to Luther Bliss’ Kentucky State Police, an outfit that made Kentucky the only U.S. state with its own secret police force. Cincinnatus knew Luther Bliss better than he wanted to. Knowing Bliss at all was knowing him better than Cincinnatus wanted to; the chief of the State Police made a formidable foe.
Roustabouts were hauling crates and barrels off a barge. Cincinnatus braked to a halt: cautiously, as the Duryea didn’t like to stop any more than it liked to start. He hopped out of the cab and hurried over to a discontented-looking fellow holding a clipboard. “Mornin’, Mr. Simmons,” he said. “What you got, where’s it got to get to, and how fast does it got to be there?”
“Hello, Cincinnatus,” the steamboat clerk answered, pointing to some of the barrels. “Got oatmeal here: five for Twitchell’s general store, and another five for Dalyrimple’s, and three for Conroy’s. You fit all of them in there?” He pointed to Cincinnatus’ truck. “Damn tight squeeze, if you do.”
“Mr. Simmons, they’ll go in there if I got to make one of ’em drive,” Cincinnatus said, at which the white man laughed. Cincinnatus went on, “Half a dollar a barrel for haulage, like usual?”
Simmons looked more discontented than ever. At last, he said, “Wouldn’t pay it to any other nigger driving a raggedy old truck, that’s for damn sure. But yeah, fifty cents a barrel. Bring me your receipts and I’ll pay you off.”
“Got yourself a deal, suh.” Cincinnatus beamed. That was good money, and he might have the chance to pick up another load, or maybe even two, before the day ended. Then he hesitated, really hearing the third name Simmons had given him. “That Joe Conroy?” he asked. “Fat man, used to have hisself a store before it burned down?”
“Let me check.” Simmons flipped papers. “Joseph Conroy, that’s what it says. I don’t know about the other part. How come?”
“Didn’t know he was back in business, is all,” Cincinnatus replied. It wasn’t all, not even close, but he kept that to himself. “Where’s his new store at?”
Simmons checked his papers again. “Corner of Emma and Bakewell, it says here. You know where that is? This ain’t my town, you know.”
“I know where it’s at, yeah,” Cincinnatus said. “Over on the west side, gettin’ out towards the park. Twitchell’s over here on Third, and Dalyrimple’s on Washington, so I reckon I’ll deliver theirs first and then head over to Conroy’s.” He held out his hand. “Give me the papers I got to get signed.”
“Here you go.” The steamboat clerk handed them to him. “That’s the other reason I pay you like I would a white man, or almost: you read and write good, so things get done proper.”
“Thank you,” Cincinnatus said, pretending not to hear that
or almost
. He couldn’t do anything about it. Stowing the papers in his shirt pocket, he started crowding barrels of oatmeal into the back of the truck. He did end up with one of them on the seat beside him; Simmons was a keen judge of how much space merchandise took up.
The truck rode heavy, the weight in back smoothing out its motion and making it laugh at bumps that would have jolted Cincinnatus had it been empty. He appreciated that. The ponderous cornering and the greater likelihood of a blowout were something else again. He drove carefully, avoiding the potholes that pocked the street. A puncture would cost him precious time.
His first two stops went smoothly, as he’d thought they would. He’d delivered to both Hank Twitchell and Calvin Dalyrimple before. Twitchell, a big, brawny fellow, even helped him lug barrels of oatmeal into his general store. Calvin Dalyrimple didn’t; a strong breeze would have blown him away. They both signed their receipts and sent Cincinnatus on his way in jig time.
He drove out to the west side of town with much more trepidation. That didn’t shrink when he discovered Conroy’s new general store sat between a saloon and a pawnshop. None of the looks he got from passersby as he stopped the truck in front of the store was friendly, or anything close. Most of them translated to,
What the hell you doing here, nigger?
He hoped the truck would still be there when he got done with his business with Conroy.
He also hoped the storekeeper wouldn’t recognize him. When he brought the first barrel into the store, all he said was, “Here’s your oatmeal, suh, straight off the docks. Got two more barrels in the truck; fetch ’em right in for you. All you got to do is sign the receipt shows you got ’em, and I be on my way.”
Joe Conroy grunted. He was a round, middle-aged white man with narrow, suspicious eyes. He was also a Confederate diehard, and a friend of Cincinnatus’ former boss, Tom Kennedy. Kennedy had involved Cincinnatus with the diehards, too, having him plant firebombs on cargoes heading down to U.S. forces. Eventually, Cincinnatus had planted one in Conroy’s old store, but the white man had never figured that out.
Cincinnatus had never decided how smart Conroy was. Smarter than he let on, was the Negro’s guess. He proved smart enough to recognize Cincinnatus, whom he hadn’t seen in a year, and who would have been glad never to see him again. “Well, well,” he said slowly, the unlit cigar in his mouth jerking up and down. “Look what the cat drug in.”
“Mornin’, Mistuh Conroy.” Cincinnatus hurried out to the truck to haul in the second barrel of oatmeal. As long as he was working, he didn’t have to talk. He wished a customer would come into the cramped, dark general store. Conroy couldn’t afford to talk, not where anyone could hear him.
But nobody came in except Cincinnatus. Conroy gave him an appraising stare. “Hear tell it was that damnyankee you was workin’ for who shot Tom Kennedy,” he said.
“Yes, suh, that’s a fact. Hear him say so my ownself,” Cincinnatus agreed. He got in a dig of his own: “Wasn’t the Reds, like you told me in the park last year.”
“No, it wasn’t the Reds,” the storekeeper said. “But it was a friend of yours, just the same. We don’t forget things like that, no indeed, we don’t.”
“I saved Tom Kennedy’s bacon from the Yankees back when the war was new,” Cincinnatus said angrily. “I hadn’t done that, I never would’ve met you—and believe you me, that would’ve suited me fine.”
“We know where you’re at.” Conroy put menace in his voice.
“And I know where you’re at, too,” Cincinnatus said. “I get into trouble from you and your pals, Luther Bliss’ll know where you’re at and what you’ve been doin’. Don’t want no trouble, Conroy.” He used the white man’s unadorned surname with relish, to shock. “But I get trouble, I give it right back.”
“Damn uppity nigger,” Conroy growled.
“Yes,
sir
.” Cincinnatus went outside and manhandled the last barrel of oatmeal into the store. He thrust the receipt at Joe Conroy. “You want to sign right here, so I can go on about my business.”
“Why do I give a damn about that?” Conroy said.
“On account of if you don’t sign, I take this here oatmeal back to the docks and you don’t get no more shipments.” Cincinnatus wondered how much Conroy cared. If the store was nothing but a front for the diehards, he might not care at all. That would make Cincinnatus’ life more difficult.
But Conroy grabbed a pencil, scrawled his signature, and all but hurled the paper back at Cincinnatus. “Here, God damn you.”
“Much obliged, Mistuh Conroy.” Cincinnatus headed for the door. “Got me a lot of work left to do.”
“Come on,” Sylvia Enos said to her children. “Get moving. I’ve got to take you over to Mrs. Dooley’s so I can go to work.”
“I like it better when you’re not working, Ma,” Mary Jane said. She would be five soon, which Sylvia found hard to believe. “I like it when you stay home with us.”
“When she stays home with us, though, it’s because she’s out of work again, silly.” George, Jr., spoke with the world-weary wisdom of his seven years—and wasn’t shy about scoring points off his sister, either. “We have to have money.”
He had a hard streak of pragmatism in him. His father had been the same way. George, Jr., looked very much like his father, though he was missing the brown Kaiser Bill mustache Sylvia’s husband had worn. Seeing her son, Sylvia again cursed the fate that had put a submersible in the way of the USS
Ericsson
the night after the Confederate States yielded to the USA.
With the CSA out of the war,
she thought,
it had to be a British boat.
George hadn’t worried about the Royal Navy. A Confederate submarine had almost sunk his destroyer earlier in the war. He’d fought Rebel boats all the way up to the end. To have his ship sunk by the limeys after that…even now, it was hard to take. George hadn’t deserved that much bad luck.
“Come on,” Sylvia said again. “I can’t be late on account of you. I can’t be late at all.”
That was nothing less than the gospel truth. With men home from the war in droves, jobs for women were harder and harder to come by. She didn’t know how long the work at the galoshes factory would last, and she couldn’t afford to anger the people over her in any way. She was the sole support for her family as much as any man was for his, but nobody looked at things that way. Men came first. Women had been fine during the war. Now…
Now she couldn’t even vote for anyone who might better her plight. Massachusetts had no women’s suffrage. Had she been able to cast a ballot, she would have voted Socialist in a heartbeat. The Democrats had been fine when it came to winning the war. What were they good for in peacetime? Only counting their profits, as far as she could see.
She hurried the children out of the apartment and down to the clamorous streets of Boston. With a sigh of regret, she walked past a newsboy hawking the
Globe
. She couldn’t justify laying out a couple of cents on it, not when she didn’t know if she’d have work next week.
“England signs treaty!” the newsboys shouted, trying to persuade others to part with pennies. “Limeys give up all claim to Sandwich Islands and Canada! England signs treaty! Recognizes Ireland and Quebec!”
It was, she supposed, good news. The best news, though, as far as she was concerned, would have been for the ocean to swallow England and all her works. And while the ocean was at it, it could swallow the CSA, too.
Mrs. Dooley was an aging widow with wavy hair defiantly hennaed, and with bright spots of rouge on her cheeks. To Sylvia, it looked more like clown makeup than anything alluring, but she would never have said so. The woman took good care of her children and did not charge too much.
After kissing George, Jr., and Mary Jane good-bye, Sylvia went back to the trolley stop, tossed another nickel in the fare box (and soon she would have to start paying Mary Jane’s fare, too: one more expense), and headed to the galoshes factory. To her relief, she got there on time.
The place stank of rubber from which the rubber overshoes were made. Sylvia’s post came just after the galoshes emerged from the mold. She painted a red ring around the top of each one. Had the firm been able to train a dog to do the job, it would have. That failing, it grudgingly paid her.
When she’d worked in a mackerel-canning plant, she’d been able to operate the machine that glued gaudy labels to cans almost without thinking about it; sometimes, when she was lucky, she would hardly notice the time going by between getting to the factory and dinner or between dinner and going home. She hadn’t had that luxury at the shoe factory where she’d been working when George was killed. If she didn’t pay attention to what she was doing there, the powerful needle on the electric sewing machine would tear up her hand. She’d seen it happen to operators who’d been at the place longer than she’d been alive. A moment’s lapse was all it took.
All that could happen with a moment’s lapse here was her ending up with red paint on her hand, not red blood. Still, she couldn’t let her mind wander, as she’d been able to do in the canning plant. What she did here wasn’t simple repetitive motion, the way that had been. She had to pay attention to painting the rings precisely. If she didn’t, the foreman started barking at her.
Frank Best wasn’t a hardened old Tartar like Gustav Krafft, the foreman at the shoe factory where she’d worked, who gave a walking demonstration of why the limeys and frogs thought of Germans as Huns. Best’s style was more the sly dig: “Thought you were going to slip that one by me, did you?” was a favorite remark.
The other difference between the two men was that Krafft had been too old to serve in the Army. Frank Best wore a Soldiers’ Circle pin with the year 1904 on it. That being his conscription class, he was only a handful of years older than Sylvia. He was also single, and convinced he was the greatest gift to women God had ever set on the planet.