Ewell McDonald had all to himself more space than Jeff and the other assistant jailers put together. He was a beefy man in his early sixties, with his silver hair greased down and with a bushy gray mustache he'd probably worn since it was dark and stylish back in the 1890s. He heaved himself out of his swivel chair and stuck out a well-manicured hand for Jeff to shake. "Sit down, Pinkard, sit down," he boomed, sounding more like a politician on the stump than anything else. "Sit down and make yourself comfortable."
"Uh, thank you kindly, sir," Jeff replied, wondering when and how and why McDonald was going to lower the boom on him. "What can I do for you?" Might as well make it short and sweet, he thought.
Instead of answering right away, McDonald reached into his desk and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Pinkard's eyes widened slightly, or more than slightly. Alabama was a dry state, though there were ways around that. He knew as much. He didn't expect the warden of the Birmingham City Jail to know it, or at least to show he knew it to a man he was going to bawl out. But Ewell McDonald yanked out the cork, swigged, and then passed the bottle across the wide expanse of his desk to Jeff. "Here you go, Pinkard," he said. "Have a snort."
"Thank you kindly," Pinkard said again. He knew he sounded bewildered, but couldn't help it. After he drank, he whistled appreciatively. That was real whiskey, not something cooked up in a hurry over an illegal still. He hadn't drunk anything so tasty in quite a while. He passed the bottle back, more worried than ever. McDonald wouldn't waste that kind of whiskey on him if he were in only a little trouble.
But the warden beamed at him. "You know, Pinkard, when I hired you, I reckoned I was stuck with you on account of Freedom Party business," he said. "Happens sometimes; nothing you can do but make the best of it. But I'll be goddamned if you ain't pulled your weight and then some. You weren't lyin' 'bout that prison-camp business down in Mexico, were you?"
"Lying, sir?" Pinkard shook his head. "Hell, no. I did all that stuff."
"I guess maybe you did," McDonald said. "I wouldn't have bet on it when I took you on, I'll tell you that. But you've worked out fine. Hell, son, you're doing better than some of the fellows who've been here ten years." He grabbed the whiskey bottle and tilted it back for another knock.
"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.