Any time a politician said he wouldn’t beat around the bush, you were well advised to keep your hand on your wallet. “You’ll have to show me things are as bad as you said in your letter inviting me here,” she told him. “The press certainly does not make them out to be so desperate.”
“Have you ever heard of any war in the history of the world where the press did not make things out to be better than they were?” Gabriel Semmes returned. “If you look at papers in the USA during the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War, you will see they thought they were winning each time until almost the moment of their overthrow.”
“As may be,” she said. “I am not yet convinced.” She did not tell him what her brother Tom kept saying in his letters. Politicians were not the only ones who learned to hold their cards close-business taught the same lesson.
President Semmes said, “A glance at the map will show you much of the trouble. We have lost ground against the USA almost everywhere, and our remaining gains in Maryland are threatened. Our latest effort to reclaim western Texas failed-there is no other word. They hammer us on every front. We do have some counterstrokes in the offing, and we have thus far managed to avoid losing anything vital, but that cannot continue forever. We are under more pressure than our allies in Europe, and have little prospect of aid from them.”
“We hurt the Yankees worse than they hurt us in every fight, is that not so?” Anne said. “That’s one reason why we stand on the defensive so much.”
“Yes, we do, by a ratio of close to three to two,” Semmes answered. “Each U.S. conscription class, though, outnumbers our corresponding class of whites by about three to one. Add in the Negroes and the deficit shrinks to about two to one. Better, actually, for we would be calling up several conscription classes of blacks at once.”
Anne pursed her lips thoughtfully. “But not all the U.S. soldiers are used against us,” she pointed out. “Many of them go into the fight against Canada. That helps even the numbers somewhat.”
“Somewhat, yes, for now,” President Semmes agreed. “But, even with troops from Britain aiding them-they have the advantage of the northern route-the Canadians, I tell you in confidence, are in a bad way. How long we can rely on them to continue siphoning off Yankee resources, I cannot say.”
Beyond what he asserted, beyond what the papers asserted (which, thanks to censorship, was liable to be the same thing), she didn’t know how things stood with Canada. Would he lie for political advantage alone? Probably. But she could check what he said with her senators and the congressman from her district, the men he wanted her to influence. He would know that. Therefore, he was likely to be telling the truth, or most of it.
“The other question is,” she said, as much to herself as to him, “what will the Confederate States be like with Negroes as citi-zens? Is that better, or is losing as we are?”
“Miss Colleton, I always thought you were on the side of modernity, of progress, of change,” President Semmes said, a shrewd shot that proved he-or his advisors-knew her views well. “And if we lose, can we stay as we are? Or would we face another round of Red upheaval?”
That was another good question. The answer seemed only too obvious, too. Try to freeze in the mold of the past, or take a chance on the future? If you didn’t gamble, how were you going to win? But when she thought about what blacks had done to Marshlands and to her brother-“I hate this,” she said quietly.
“So do I,” the president of the Confederate States replied.
“I’ll do what I can,” Anne said, trying not to see the disapproving look on dead Jacob’s face. Well, better the damnyankees should have gassed a Negro than poor Jacob. If you looked at it the right way, they’d killed him before the Negro uprising could finish the job.
“From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, and your country thanks you as well,” President Semmes said. He rose and bowed to her, then went on, “Now that we know ourselves to be in agreement, perhaps you will accompany me to a ceremony where your presence will surely serve as an inspiration to the brave men we honor.”
Roger Kimball was bored. The ceremony should have started at half past ten. He drew out his pocket watch. It was closer to eleven. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. Civilians could get away with nonsense like that. For a naval officer, it would have meant trouble at least, maybe a court-martial.
Not only was he bored, he was hot, too. They’d run up an awning so he didn’t have to stand in direct sunshine, but it didn’t cut the heat much or the humidity at all. He felt as if he were melting down into his socks. The only advantage he found to sweating so much was that he wouldn’t have enough water left in him to need to take a leak-probably for the next three days.
Out on the lawn, old people sat in folding chairs and looked at him and the other hunks of uniformed beef on display under the awning. Ladies fanned themselves. Some of their male companions used straw hats to make the air move. By the way the old folks were turning red in the vicious sunshine, they needed the awning worse than he and his companions did.
Off to one side of the awning, a band struck up “Dixie.” Kim-ball came to attention; maybe that meant things really would get rolling now. The Negro musicians were in black cutaway coats and black trousers. They didn’t have an awning, either. He wondered how they could play without keeling over. He shrugged. They were just niggers, after all.
A woman walked quickly forward to take a seat near the front. Roger’s eyebrows came to attention, as the rest of him had at the national anthem. Unlike most of the audience, she was anything but superannuated. Her maroon silk dress clung tightly to her rounded hips and, daringly short, revealed trim ankles. Under her hat, her hair shone in the sun, but it shone gold, not silver.
Next to Kimball, an Army sergeant murmured through unmoving lips, “The president ought to pin her on my chest instead of a medal.”
“Yeah,” he whispered back. Then he stiffened far beyond the requirements of attention. “Christ on a crutch, that’s Anne Colleton!”
“You know her?” the sergeant said. Microscopically, Roger nodded. The Army man sighed. “Either you’re a liar, Navy, or you’re one lucky bastard, I’ll tell you that.” And then, recognizing him, too, Anne waved, not too obviously but unmistakably. The sergeant sighed again. “You are a lucky bastard.”
Here came President Gabriel Semmes, all sleek and clever, to present their decorations. Kimball noticed him only peripherally. He’d had a note from Anne when she was stuck in that refugee camp, but nothing since. He hadn’t been a hundred percent sure she was still alive, and found himself damn glad to discover she was.
President Semmes made a speech, of which he heard perhaps one word in three. The gist of it was, with bravery like that which these heroes had displayed, the Confederate States were surely invincible. Roger Kimball didn’t believe that for a minute. Semmes didn’t believe it, either, or why was he pushing that bill to put guns in the hands of black men?
A flunky brought the president a silver tray with dark blue velvet boxes stacked on it. Reporters scribbled as Semmes read out the deeds of the heroes he was honoring. One of the awards was posthumous: a Confederate Cross for a private who’d leaped on a grenade to save his pals.
Kimball wasn’t up for a C.C. himself; Semmes would pin an Order of the Virginia on him, the next highest award a Navy man could get. To earn the Confederate Cross and live through it, you had to be brave, lucky, and crazy, all at the same time. Without false modesty, he knew he was brave and he’d been lucky, but he hadn’t-quite-been crazy up there in Chesapeake Bay.