“You really think it will happen?”
“A foregone conclusion. The explosion in the harbor—”
Dr. Lunceford turns to Royal. “And what do you think?”
Royal is surprised by the sudden question. He glances to Junior, who smiles and nods to him to get on with it.
“I enlisted to follow the flag, sir.” He can’t quite see Jessie out of the corner of his eye. “If hostilities commence — China, Cuba, the red men straying from their agencies — we will do our duty.”
“People look up to the man in uniform,” says Junior. Junior has told him of the Doctor’s disapproval of his enlistment, shown him the letters full of underlined words. “If we are to take our rightful position in this nation, we must be ready to defend it.”
“As a private in the infantry.”
“You used to call it Mr. Lincoln’s Army.”
They are all still standing, all but Mrs. Lunceford, who sits in her chair by the silk-covered whatever it is called, a pleasant smile on her face.
“I think he looks splendid, Aaron,” she says. “We should be proud.”
“Mr. Lincoln,” the Doctor continues, seeming to ignore her, “gone these many years, turned to colored troops only as a desperate measure.”
Alma Moultrie steps in with a tray bearing wine and glasses, lays them on a small table that probably has a special name too.
“They both look splendid.”
Royal turns to smile at Mrs. Lunceford and sees that Jessie is looking at him, an unwavering gaze much like her father’s, but there is no challenge in it. Only what—? Admiration? He feels her in the room even when he can’t see her.
“We’re regulars, sir,” he says. “Professional soldiers. If war is declared, the volunteers, whoever they are, will have to wait their turn.”
“So you’re spoiling for a fight?” Again the gaze, challenging, unblinking. And what have you to do with my son’s reckless decision, young man?
“If a fight presents itself, we’ve been trained to handle it.”
The others, the veterans, give the rookies no end of razzing about how green they are, about their lack of experience, their lack of the true stuff, how they will turn tail and run at the first angry shot. Junior, immune to every hint that he should hide his breeding or at least not wave it around in public, is their special target. Royal hopes for a fight, if only to break up the boredom of drill and detail that makes up their days in the regiment.
“Put a little water in Jessie’s glass before you pour, Alma,” says Dr. Lun-ceford. “I suppose we have to drink a toast to these young fools.”
Junior is beaming. Royal can tell, no matter how stiff and strange these people are, that something has happened between his friend and Dr. Lunceford, an acceptance of some kind. There must be a word for it, a word that means only that thing that has happened and nothing else, but he doesn’t know what it is.
Niles remains tight and distant as the minstrels reappear and trade a few more jokes and then exit gaudily, cakewalking out to There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. He holds the pose, never once laughing or commenting during the olios, not when the soubrette reappears in front of the curtain to sing On the Banks of the Wabash or the equilibrist and his lovely assistant Rose who tosses Indian clubs for him to juggle while rolling precariously along the edge of the orchestra pit atop a huge medicine ball or the tenor back with a beautiful rendition of Silver Hairs Among the Gold that has Harry teary-eyed again or even Gerta Wetzel the Human Pretzel and her grotesque bar act that has the audience wincing and turning their heads away at the most extreme of the contortions or the little fellow in leather breeches and campaign hat who is introduced as the Great Teethadore who Harry supposes is meant to be Roosevelt of New York. The little man’s routine, high-stepping in place and singing If Uncle Sam Goes Marching into Cuba, is the only one that doesn’t draw even polite applause, the local folks not sure if it is meant to be funny or patriotic. Niles is still stewing when Perfessor Scipio Africanus steps out for his lecture.
It is Brother Bones again, only now he is wearing the Interlocutor’s frock coat, gripping on to the lapels and striking an orator’s pose. “Ladies and gennlemens, extinguished guests,” he begins, “the tropic of my discoursation tonight is entitled ‘The Enfranchisement of the Lower Orders,’ or ‘How come we gots to let them Irish vote?’ ”
Niles snorts a little laugh through his nose.
“It has come to my retention,” the Perfessor continues, “that this fair city—” and here he pauses to look up at the sports in the balcony, “—aint near as fair as it might be.”
The colored sports thinks this is funny, slapping hands on the railing and on each other’s backs. “Doesn’t nobody but trash go to those shows,” Alma used to say when she was still with the family, before the incident with Niles. But maybe she only meant among her own people, for nobody in Wilmington would think of Judge Manigault’s boys or the Lassiters or the Bellamys or the de Rossets, all well represented here tonight by their younger generations, as trash. Harry misses Alma — the new one Judge has hired can’t cook much and is painful to look at, with some sort of goiter sticking out on her neck.
“Leastways it don’t look so fair if you is hangin roun City Hall waitin fo a handout or one a them gummint jobs what used to go to members of the Caucasian Persuasion.”
It is maybe too uncomfortably true to get much of a laugh, thinks Harry, but somebody has clearly done their advance work.
“But what I caint unnerstan is how this great big ole city, the largest metropopulist in the Old North State, has got itself one hunnid an sixty-nine saloons and houses of ill dispute — an I been to em all, fokes — but only five mayors.”
This breaks the house up. There are, in fact, at least five distinct slates of mayor and aldermen claiming the reins of the city, including the one the Judge is backing that just suffered defeat in a Raleigh courtroom. The Judge has no use for the bunch declared winners by the governor, and can rant for hours about the hell there will be to pay if they are allowed to serve out the full two years left in their term.
“This yere is a sorrowful state of affairs,” says the Perfessor, “an I intends to correctify it by thowin my own hat into the ring — as soon as I pawns it back fum Mist’ Miller.”
Niles starts to giggle. He owes money to Miller, quite a bit, and has made Harry swear never to reveal to the Judge that his son is in debt to a colored man.
“As the sixth or seventh mayor of this fine city, I promises to do my nutmost to put a chicken in every pot — and for them what aint got no pot, we’s passin em out down to Repubikin Hindquarters tomorrow mo’nin.”
“Ten dollars, then,” says Niles, affably, and holds his hand out without taking his eyes off the stage, as if ten dollars is nothing, as if the hundreds before, yes, it must be hundreds now, have been a passing trifle. Harry feels strange, exchanging money in a public place like a carnival tout, but digs out the bill and lays it in his brother’s hand.
“An since the Consternation of the United States says how it’s the perjority of the people what gets to call the shots, I promises to insinuate Negro Abomination here in Wimminton!”
Boos and hisses now, not all of them good-natured. The Perfessor holds his ground.
“The white fokes has abominated the political spear here in Wimminton long enough, and all they done so far has been to run the jint down to its present state of putrification, their gummint caricatured by pecuniary misfeasances and gross incontinence. Now it’s our toin!”