He grumbled about it during the waiters' hasty supper at the Huntsman's Lodge. Now that Aurelius was also working there, he had someone to talk to, someone who'd been through a lot of the things he had. Two gray heads, he thought.
"Ain't nothin' to be done about it," Aurelius said. "Things is what they is. Ain't for the likes of us to change 'em. We just got to git through 'em."
"I knows it," Scipio said. "Don't mean I likes it."
"Tell you what the difference is, 'tween niggers and ofays," Aurelius said.
"Go on," Scipio urged him. "Say your say, so's I kin tell you what a damn fool you is." He smiled to show he didn't intend to be taken seriously.
Aurelius ignored the gibe altogether, which showed how seriously he took it. Before he went on, though, he looked around to make sure neither Jerry Dover nor any other white was in earshot. That was serious business. Satisfied, he said, "Difference is, when niggers kill whites, they does it one at a time. When the ofays decide they gonna kill niggers, they does it by city blocks an' by carloads. If I was forty years younger…" He didn't finish that.
What would you do? But Scipio didn't wonder for long. What could the other man have meant but that he would pick up a gun and use it against the whites? Scipio said, "We tries dat, we loses. They gots more guns, an' they gots bigger guns, too. Done seen dat in de las' war."
"Yeah." Aurelius didn't deny it. He couldn't very well; it was self-evident truth. But he did say, "We don't try it, we loses, too. Can't very well turn the other cheek when the ofay jus' hit you there soon as you do."
Scipio grunted. That also held more truth than he wished it did. Before he could say anything, Jerry Dover stuck his head into the room and said, "Eat up, people. We've got customers coming in, and the floor has to be covered." He disappeared again.
The floor has to be covered whether you're done eating or not, he meant. Waiters and busboys could eat, as long as they did it in a way that didn't interfere with their work. If it came to a choice between work and food, work always won.
Gulping down a last bite of chicken breast cooked with brandy, Scipio went out onto the floor. He stood straighter. He walked with dignity. He put on some of the airs he'd shown as Anne Colleton's butler at Marshlands. Assuming all of them would have been laying it on too thick, but customers here expected a certain amount of well-trained servility. Giving them what they wanted put a little extra money in his pocket.
As he took orders and recommended specials, he thought about Marshlands, now a ruined ghost of its former self. Anne Colleton dead… That still amazed him. One of her brothers had died-bravely-at the very start of the black revolt in 1915. The other one, as far as Scipio knew, was still alive.
After the war, Tom Colleton had turned out to be more dangerous and more capable than he'd expected. The white man had crushed what was left of the Congaree Socialist Republic. Till then, Scipio hadn't thought of him as anything but a lightweight. It only went to show, you never could tell.
That was probably true for almost all white men. Scipio laughed, not that it was funny. Whites in the CSA probably said the same thing about blacks. No, they certainly said the same thing about blacks. Hadn't he overheard them often enough, at Marshlands and here at the Huntsman's Lodge and plenty of places between the one and the other whenever they didn't think blacks could listen?
Of course, when whites talked among themselves, they often didn't pay enough attention to whether blacks were in earshot. Why should they, when blacks were hewers of wood and drawers of water? Blacks talking about whites? That was a different story. Blacks had known for hundreds of years that a white man overhearing them could spell disaster or death.
A white man at one of Scipio's tables waved to him. "Hey, uncle, come on over here!" the man called.
"What you need, suh?" Scipio asked, obsequious as usual.
"How long do they need to do up a steak in the kitchen? Have they all died in there? Of old age, maybe?" He was playing to the rest of the whites at the table. His friends or business associates or whatever they were laughed at what passed for his wit.
"It come soon, suh. Dey needs a little extra time, git it well-done de way you wants it."
"Oh. All right. Thanks, uncle. Make sure you bring it out the minute they get it finished." The white man, mollified, forgot about Scipio, even though he was still standing right there.
"Yes, suh. I do dat." Scipio could have laughed in the man's face. He could have, but he didn't. It wouldn't have been polite. But he knew the kitchen was glad to get well-done orders. They let it dispose of meat too nasty to serve before searing it thoroughly enough to destroy all the flavor. They also let it get rid of meat too tough to be worth eating; once cooked well-done, almost all meat was too tough to be worth eating. If the customer couldn't tell the difference-and the customer never could-the kitchen only smiled.
After Scipio brought that dinner and the rest of the food to that table, he got a better tip than he'd expected. He thought that was pretty funny, too. No matter what he thought, his face never showed a thing.
It had looked like rain when he came to work, but the clouds had blown through by the time he left the restaurant. A big yellow moon hung in the sky; its mellow light went a long way toward making up for the street lamps that shone no more. Farther north, they would have called it a bombers' moon, but no bombers had come to Augusta.
Scipio and Aurelius walked along side by side. Scipio was glad to have company on the way back to the Terry. Neither of them said much. They just walked in companionable silence, both of them puffing on cigarettes. Then, about a block and a half from the edge of the colored part of town, Aurelius stopped. So did Scipio, half a step later. Aurelius pointed ahead. "Somethin' goin'on up there, Xerxes."
"I sees it." Scipio squinted. The moonlight wasn't enough to let him make out what it was. It seemed as if it ought to be that bright, but it wasn't. Moonlight had a way of letting you down when you needed it most. Suddenly, absurdly, Scipio remembered a girl from more than fifty years before, not long after he was manumitted. She'd seemed pretty enough by moonlight. Come the day… Come the day, he wondered what he'd been thinking the night before. He hadn't been thinking the night before, which was exactly the point.
Aurelius had similar doubts. "Reckon we ought to find out what it is?" he asked.
"Can't stay here," Scipio said. "The buckra find we here in de mornin', we gwine wish we was dead."
"Uh-huh." Aurelius took a couple of steps forward, then stopped again. "We go on, maybe we be dead."
"We gots to go on," Scipio said. "They catches we in de white folks' part o' town, we be dead then, too. Either that or they puts we in jail, and only one place a nigger go from jail dese days-to one o' dem camps."
Aurelius plainly wanted to argue. No matter what he wanted to do, he couldn't. With dragging feet, he and Scipio approached. "Halt! Who goes there?" a white man barked at them, and then, "Advance and be recognized."
Even more hesitantly, the two Negroes obeyed. As Scipio drew near, he saw that uniformed white men were surrounding the Terry with barbed wire. There were gateways; he and Aurelius were coming up to one. Trying to keep his voice from shaking, he asked, "What you do?"
"Too many troublemakers getting in and out," the white man answered briskly. "High time we kept a closer eye on things, by God. And what the hell are you coons doing out after curfew anyways?"
"We works at the Huntsman's Lodge, suh. Dey closes late," Scipio answered.
"Yeah? If that's so, you'll have fancy dress on under those topcoats. Let's have a look," the white-a Freedom Party stalwart-said. Scipio and Aurelius hastily unbuttoned their coats to display the tuxedos beneath.
"I know them two niggers, Jerry," an Augusta cop told the stalwart. "They are what they say they are. They don't give anybody trouble." He pointed at Scipio and Aurelius with his nightstick. "Ain't that right, boys?"