"Thank you very much, sir," Jeff said, more than a little dazedly. He'd thought the same thing himself, but he'd never dreamt the warden would come out and say so. "Thank you very much. I've learned a hell of a lot here, too. Down in Mexico, I was making it up as I went along. You-all really know what you're doing."
"Some of the time, maybe," McDonald said. "But I like the way you prowl the cells. I like that a lot. Nothing's going to happen unless you know about it first, is it?"
"Well, I hope not," Pinkard answered. "You can never be sure, but I hope not."
"Long as you know you can never be sure, you won't do too bad." The warden pushed the bottle across the desk again. "Go ahead. You've earned it."
"Don't mind if I do." As Ewell McDonald had, Jeff took a long pull at the bottle. Smooth fire ran down his throat. "Ahh! That's mighty fine," he said, and then laughed. "Prisoners'll smell it on my breath and say I've been drinking on the job."
McDonald laughed, too. "They don't like it, you tell 'em they can take it up with the warden." He corked the whiskey bottle and stuck it back in his drawer. "However you did it, I'm glad you found your way here. You're goddamn good at this business, you hear what I'm telling you?"
"Thanks," Jeff said once more. Yes, he did feel dazed, and not just on account of unaccustomed morning slugs of whiskey. How long had he been at the Sloss Works without ever hearing anybody tell him anything like that? Too long, he thought as he got to his feet. Much too damn long.
I n the summertime, heat and humidity could make Augusta close to unbearable, especially for Negroes in the crowded quarters of the Terry. When Scipio got the chance, he liked to bring his family up to Allen Park and relax in the fresh air under the shade of the trees that grew thickly there. He and Bathsheba and the children would lie on the grass on a Sunday afternoon and watch people with more energy-and, he was convinced, less sense-play volleyball or throw around a football.
Allen Park was in the white part of town, but close enough to the Terry that Negroes often used it. Scipio would gladly have gone to a park inside the Terry, but nobody'd bothered leaving any open space for a park there. He wasn't surprised. How could he have been, when he'd lived in the Confederate States all his life? Whites got whatever they needed and whatever they wanted. If anything happened to be left over after that, Negroes got it. If nothing happened to be left over, well, too bad.
That was how whites saw things, anyhow. And then they'd been shocked when blacks rose up against them in Red revolt during the Great War. Scipio had thought that a damnfool idea, because he'd been all too sure the revolts would fail-as they had. Nothing made the whites fight hard like seeing their privileges threatened. But fearing failure didn't mean Scipio hadn't understood the impulse to hit back as hard as his own people could.
One lazy July Sunday, after finishing a picnic lunch, Bathsheba pointed to a sheet of paper stuck to the trunk of an oak not far away. "What's that say, Xerxes?" she asked.
Scipio took his alias for granted. He also took being asked such questions for granted: Bathsheba couldn't read or write. "I goes and looks," he answered, climbing to his feet. Full of fried chicken and yams, he ambled slowly over to the tree, read the paper, and came back to sit down on the grass again.
"Well?" his wife asked.
"Well?" Antoinette echoed. She was six now, which astounded Scipio every time he thought about it. And Cassius-named, though Scipio had never said so, for the Red rebel in the swamps of the Congaree River-was already three, which astonished him even more.
But he shook his head. "Ain't so well," he said; the thick patois of the Congaree made him sound more ignorant than Bathsheba, whose accent was milder. "Big Freedom Party rally here two weeks from now."
The corners of Bathsheba's wide, generous mouth turned down. "You're right," she said. "That ain't so good. That ain't no good at all. Thought them people was all over and done with, but now they're back."
"Now they's back," Scipio echoed somberly. "Times is hard. De buckra, dey's scared. When dey's scared, dey starts yellin', 'Freedom!' "
"If they want it so bad, how come they don't want to let us have none?" Bathsheba asked.
"Dey does dat, who dey gots to t'ink day's better'n?" Scipio didn't hide his bitterness.
"Ought to tear that sheet o' paper down," Bathsheba said.
"Do Jesus, no!" Scipio exclaimed. "Anybody see me do dat, my life ain't worth a penny. An' dey's bound to be plenty more o' they papers. Don't put up no notice like dat in jus' de one place. Tearin' it down don't do no good."
She didn't argue with him, but she didn't look as if she agreed with him, either. When they walked back to their flat, Scipio saw more Freedom Party notices. He wondered how he'd missed them coming up to Allen Park. Maybe he hadn't wanted to see them, and so had turned his eye aside.
He'd expected to pay no attention to the rally. What else was a Negro supposed to do with anything pertaining to Confederate politics, especially with a part of Confederate politics of which he disapproved? But this rally, very much in the frightening Freedom Party style of ten years before, refused to let Augusta's Negroes ignore it. For one thing, it was enormous. Scipio didn't know exactly how many white men thronged to it, but he could hear great roars of, "Freedom!" coming from the park again and again, though it was blocks away from his family's apartment building.
"Why they yellin' like that, Pa?" Antoinette asked.
Scipio wished he knew what he was supposed to tell her. "On account o' dey don't like what de gummint doin'," he answered at last.
She could have left it there. Scipio wished she would have left it there. Instead, with a child's persistence, she asked the inevitable child's question: "Why?"
"They're some o' the buckra what have it in for black folks," Bathsheba said when Scipio hesitated. That satisfied their daughter. No Negro, no matter how young, could help knowing plenty of whites in the Confederate States had it in for blacks.
If any Negro from Augusta hadn't known it, the ralliers did their best to drive it home. They swarmed out of the park and into the Terry, shouting, "Freedom!" all the while. A few policemen came with the long, sinewy column, but more to observe it than to check it. Had the Freedom Party men turned on the police, they could have got rid of them in moments and then rampaged through the Terry altogether out of control.
They could have, but they didn't. Scipio didn't even think they beat anybody up. They just marched and yelled and marched and yelled. In a way, that was a relief. In another way, it left Scipio all the more terrified, not least because of the discipline it showed. It was sending a message: this is what our people do when we tell them to do this. If we tell them to do something else… Scipio shivered at what the Freedom Party might do then. And would that handful of policemen try to stop them? Could they if they tried? Neither struck him as likely.
He made a point of getting to Erasmus' fish store and restaurant early the next morning. He still didn't get there as early as his boss. "Mornin', Xerxes," Erasmus said when Scipio came through the door. "How you is?"
"I been better," Scipio answered. "Buckra march underneath my window yesterday. Don't like that none, not even a li'l bit."
Erasmus nodded gloomily. "They go past my front door, too," he said. "No, I don't like that none, neither. They scared. When they scared, they do somethin' stupid."
"Do somethin' big an' stupid," Scipio agreed. "Burn down de Terry, maybe. De po lice, dey don't stop 'em if dey tries."
"Reckon not," Erasmus agreed. "Reckon the po lice do try-they ain't all bad men. Reckon they try, but I don't reckon they kin do much, neither."
"Where dat leave we?" Scipio answered his own question: "In trouble, dat where."