"That might be nice." Flora sighed reminiscently. "When I was first elected to Congress and came down here to start my term, Hosea met me on the platform and took me to my flat. That was the first time we met. I had no idea it would go the way it did."
"He was a good man. A good man," Franklin Roosevelt said. "I've always thought it was horribly unfair to blame the business collapse on him. If it weren't for that, he would have made a fine President. No, that's not right-he did make a fine President. It's just that the times were against him."
"Thank you. I've always thought the same thing," Flora said. "And we elected Coolidge-and got Hoover. Coolidge wouldn't have made things better, and Hoover didn't. And the Confederates chose Jake Featherston, and the French got Action Francaise and a king, and the English got Mosley and Churchill. That's a lot to pin on an Austro-Hungarian bank failure, but it's the truth."
"If you toss a pebble into a snowbank, you can start an avalanche that will wipe out everything down below," Roosevelt said. "The first failure was a pebble, and the avalanche rolled downhill from there."
"Didn't it just!" Flora said mournfully.
When Roosevelt spoke again, it was after a paper-shuffling pause: "Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces get into town at the Broad Street station, Platform 27, at… let me see… at half past nine tomorrow night. That's when they're scheduled, I should say. Confederate bombers and Confederate saboteurs may change everyone's plans."
"Oh, yes, I know," Flora replied. "Well, I'll get there on time-unless an air raid changes my plans."
"Thank you very much." Franklin Roosevelt hung up.
To Flora's relief, the sirens didn't howl that night. The Confederates weren't coming over Philadelphia quite so much these days. More of their airplanes were staying home to attack the U.S. forces slogging forward through an ocean of blood in Virginia. She had no trouble getting a cab and going over to the Broad Street station.
Platform 27 wasn't the one where she'd got off the train from New York City all those years ago. Too bad, she thought. She'd wondered if Franklin Roosevelt would also be there to greet the escaped musicians. He wasn't, but several lesser War Department dignitaries were.
The train ran late. Some years before, there'd been an Italian politician who'd promised to make the trains run on time if he were elected. He hadn't been; nobody had believed he could do it. Flora tried to remember his name, but couldn't, which only went to show how unimportant he'd been. U.S. trains weren't so bad as their Italian counterparts were said to be, but they weren't all that good, either. And the war had done nothing to help.
At ten, Flora was resigned. At half past, she was annoyed. At eleven, she didn't know whether to be furious or worried. The train finally pulled into the station at ten minutes to twelve. That irked her all over again. She'd decided to give the laggard locomotive till midnight. After that, she could have gone home and gone to bed in good conscience. She wouldn't see bed at even a halfway reasonable hour now.
People who got off before Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces shook their heads and grumbled, often profanely, about delays and detours. A few of them muttered apologies to Flora as they walked by. One of the foulest-mouthed passengers, though, was a woman, and she was in no mood to apologize to anybody for anything.
Flora had no trouble recognizing the men she was looking for. In the bright light under the platform, the Negroes seemed all eyeballs and teeth. They wore green-gray uniform tunics and trousers with the highly polished shoes that must have accompanied more formal wear. They stared every which way, plainly with no idea what to do next.
She stepped up to them, gave her name, and said, "Welcome to Philadelphia. I'd say welcome to freedom, but there's a party down in the CSA that's given the word a bad name."
All five of the black men grinned and nodded. "Ain't it the truth!" said the one who stood out a little from the rest. If he wasn't Satchmo, she would have been very surprised. He had a deep, raspy voice and an engagingly ugly face. "We're right pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Blackford. Ain't that right, boys?" The other Negroes nodded again, in unison.
The men from the War Department were a few paces behind Flora. Since they were the ones who were going to take charge of the newcomers, she stepped aside and let them introduce themselves. Then she asked, "What is it like for a Negro in the Confederate States these days?"
"Ma'am, I reckon you got a notion already that it's pretty bad," Satchmo said. Flora didn't need to nod to show she did. The musician went on, "All right. Well, for true, it's a hundred times that bad." The other Rhythm Aces murmured agreement, as if he were a lead singer and they his backup vocalists.
"Do most of the Negroes in the CSA know what the Freedom Party is doing to them-to you?" Flora asked.
One of the Aces spoke on his own for the first time: "If we didn't, ma'am, you reckon we take the chance o' doin' what we done?"
"But musicians like you travel all over the place. You hear things most people wouldn't," Flora persisted. "What about ordinary Negroes who stay in one spot? Do they know what's happening in those Freedom Party camps?"
A major asked, "Do they hear our wireless broadcasts? We try to let them know what's going on." He had to be in Intelligence or Propaganda. Nobody who wasn't could have made that sound so smooth.
"They hear some, I reckon, but the Freedom Party jams you pretty good, suh," Satchmo replied. "Don't want nobody, white or colored, listenin' to the damnyankee wireless."
Flora had heard white Confederates say damnyankee as if it were one word. She hadn't expected a black man to do the same. "How do they know, then?-the black people in the CSA, I mean."
The musicians looked at her. One of them said, "Everybody know somebody done got sucked into a camp. Ain't nobody know nobody who ever come out again. We ain't educated. White folks in the CSA always been afraid o' what'd happen if we git educated. But we ain't stupid, neither. Don't gotta be no sly, sneaky Jew to figure out what folks goin'in an' not comin' out means."
He knew as little of Jews as Flora did of Negroes, probably less. She had to remind herself of that. And he'd made his point. She said, "Well, you're safe here-as long as a bomb doesn't fall on your head. We all take that chance."
"Thank you, ma'am. God bless you, ma'am," Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces chorused together.
"You're welcome," Flora said. "And I'll do whatever I can to stop those Freedom Party goons from massacring your people. I don't know how much that will be, but I'll do my damnedest." She hardly ever swore, but it seemed fitting now.
"God bless you," Satchmo repeated. "Nice to know somebody here cares a little, anyways. Ain't nobody south of the border cares at all."
How many people north of the border cared at all? Too few, too few. Flora didn't care to tell Satchmo that. He and his friends had just escaped from worse. Let them find out a little at a time that they hadn't come to paradise. That way-maybe-their hearts wouldn't break.
Cincinnatus Driver couldn't believe he'd been stuck in Covington more than a year. He knew he was lucky his father hadn't had to bury him here, but he wasn't always sure his luck in surviving had been good.
Just the same, he had made progress. He still used a cane, and feared he would for the rest of his life. He was fairly spry with it now, where he had been an arthritic tortoise. He didn't get headaches as often as he had not long after the accident, either, and the ones that did come weren't so blinding. Progress. He laughed. It was either that or cry. He'd gone from worse to bad. Huzzah!
His mother, now, his mother went from bad to worse. She still knew who Seneca was, and sometimes Cincinnatus, but that was almost her only hold on the real world. She made messes like a toddler. The first time Cincinnatus cleaned her, he burst into tears as soon as he got out of the room. He had to harden himself to do it over and over again. He never cried after that once, but it tore at his heart every time. It wasn't right. It wasn't natural. She'd done this for him when he was little. That he should have to do it for her…