"Alevai, omayn!" Flora drank. The bubbles tickled her nose.
Bruck had a glass, too. "Did you ever imagine, when we first started here, we would win Powel House, lose it, and win it back?" he asked. "Did you ever imagine you would be First Lady?"
"Don't be silly." She shook her head. "How could I? How could anyone?"
He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. People all around them cheered. Flora laughed. She wasn't so sure Herman had done it just to congratulate her. He'd been sweet on her before she won her first election and went to Philadelphia, even if she hadn't been sweet on him. Now they'd both been married to other people for years. But he just smiled when she wagged a finger at him, and everyone else laughed and cheered some more. On a night full of victory, she didn't push it.
VIII
"Happy New Year, darlin'!" Scipio said to Bathsheba. "Do Jesus! I was borned in slavery days, I don't never reckon I lives to see 1937."
His wife sighed. "Better be a happy year," she said darkly. "Last couple-three sure ain't."
"We is on our feets," Scipio said. "We gots a place again." The flat wasn't much worse than the one they'd lived in before white rioters torched so much of the Terry, and they weren't paying much more for it. Compared to so many people who were still living in churches or in tents, they were amazingly lucky. That they'd managed to bring their money out with them had helped a lot. Money usually did.
Bathsheba refused to look on the bright side of things. "What happens the next time the buckra decide they gots to go after all the niggers in town? Where we stay then?"
"Ain't been bad"-Scipio correct himself-"ain't been too bad since."
"Bully!" In Bathsheba's mouth, the old-fashioned white man's slang sounded poisonously sarcastic.
"We gots to go on. We gots to do what we kin." Scipio knew he was trying to convince himself as well as her.
"Wish we could go somewheres else," his wife said.
"Like where?" Scipio asked. She had no answer. He knew she wouldn't. The United States had made it very plain they didn't want any Negroes from the Confederate States, no matter what happened to blacks in the CSA. The Empire of Mexico was farther away and even less welcoming. "We is stuck where we's at."
"Gots to be some way." Like most people, Bathsheba saw what she wanted to see, regardless of whether it was really there.
He didn't try to argue with her. They'd argued too much lately. She still hadn't stopped nagging him about who he was and who and what he had been. He gave short answers, knowing that the more he said, the more dangerous it was for him. Short answers didn't satisfy her. She wanted to know- she was convinced she had the right to know-where and how and why and when he'd learned to talk like an educated white man. As far as he was concerned, the less said, the better. Secrecy had become deeply ingrained in him since he came to Augusta. Only by keeping his past secret did he, could he, survive.
Neither of them stayed up long after midnight. They had planned to get out with the children on New Year's Day, but a cold, nasty rainstorm rolling down from the north put paid to that. Instead, they spent the day cooped up in the flat. They were all on edge, Scipio's son and daughter from disappointment at an outing spoiled, himself and his wife over worry about what the new year might bring.
It was still raining the next day: the sort of steady, sullen rain that promised to hang around for days. January second was a Saturday. The Huntsman's Lodge, which had been closed for New Year's, reopened. Scipio put on his formal clothes, then put a raincoat of rubberized cloth on over them. With that and an umbrella, he left the block of flats full of a relief he dared not show.
He had no trouble getting to the Lodge. Because of the rain, only people who had to be out and about were, and no one seemed in the mood to harass a Negro. Also, the raincoat concealed the fancy jacket, wing-collared boiled shirt, and satin-striped trousers he wore beneath it. Not standing out in the crowd undoubtedly helped.
Jerry Dover greeted him when he came in the door: "How are you, Xerxes? Happy New Year!"
"I thanks you, suh. De same to you," Scipio answered. With Dover, the work came first. If you could do it well, nothing else mattered. If you couldn't, nothing else mattered, either, and he would send you packing. But if you could do it, he would stand by you. Scipio respected that, and responded to it.
Today, though, Dover didn't seem happy. "Got a few words to say when the whole crew comes in," he told Scipio. "Won't take long."
Anything that broke routine was worrisome. "What de trouble be?" Scipio asked.
His boss shook his head. "I'll tell you soon. I don't want to have to do this more than once. You'll hear, I promise."
That convinced Scipio the news, whatever it was, wouldn't be good. He couldn't do anything about it but wait. Naturally, one of the other waiters chose that day to show up late. When he finally did come in, he was so hung over, he could barely see. "New Year's Eve night befo' last," somebody told him. He managed a sheepish grin, then took two aspirins from his pocket and dry-swallowed them.
"Listen, people, anybody see a paper the past couple days or listen to news on the wireless?" Jerry Dover asked.
None of the waiters and assistant cooks and dishwashers and janitors said anything. Scipio might have bought a Constitutionalist if rain hadn't kept newsboys off the street. He wasn't sure how many of the other Negroes in the crew could read. Wireless? Sets were cheap these days, but nobody here got rich at his job.
"No?" Dover shrugged. "All right. I suppose you heard about the colored fellow who took a shot at President Featherston at the Olympics." Again, nobody said anything. Too bad he missed, was what Scipio was thinking. His boss went on, "There's an order from the president that colored folks-all colored folks-have got to pay a fine to the government on account of that. And there's an order that anybody who's got colored folks working for him has to take twenty dollars out of their pay and send it to Richmond to make sure that fine gets paid. So that's what'll happen. I'm sorry, but I can't do a thing about it."
"Twenty dollars?" The pained echo rose from the throats of all the men there. Twenty dollars was a lot of money-a week's wages for the ones who made the most, two weeks' for the rest. Scipio cursed softly under his breath. A twenty-dollar hole in his budget wouldn't be easy to fill. Somebody asked, "How is we supposed to git by without that money?"
Jerry Dover spread his hands. "I can't answer that. All I can tell you is, I don't dare try to duck this, not with what they'll do to me if I get caught."
From a lot of men, that would have been a polite lie. Scipio believed the manager of the Hunstman's Lodge; Dover treated the black men who worked for him like human beings. "Mistuh Dover, suh!" he called.
"What is it, Xerxes?"
"Kin you dock we a dollar, two dollars, a week, so it don't hurt so bad?"
"Yeah!" Several other men spoke up. Others nodded. One of the assistant cooks said, "I buys everything on the installment plan. I should oughta pay this here fine the same way."
But Dover shook his head. "I would if I could, but I can't. The order says it's got to come out of your next pay. It's supposed to hurt. That's why they're doing it. I'm sorry, Xerxes. It was a good idea."
Dully, Scipio nodded. It's supposed to hurt. He'd known that from the minute the Freedom Party won in 1933. No, he'd known it from the moment he first heard Jake Featherston speak in a park here in Augusta, back when the Party was young and small. He asked, "Mistuh Dover, suh, what keep de gum-mint from takin' away anudder twenty dollar from we whenever dey please?"
Jerry Dover looked startled. He was, within his limits, a decent man. Plainly, that hadn't occurred to him. It hadn't occurred to some of Scipio's fellow workers, either, not by their horrified exclamations. And Dover proved his honesty, for he answered, "I'll be damned if I know."