In at the Death (58 page)

Then he crossed into the USA. Another country! Not only that, a country where they just treated Negroes…not too well. His father had always been cynical about the United States. Compared to what Cassius had survived, though, being treated…not too well looked pretty goddamn good.

The United States didn’t look so good. The part he saw, the stretch between the Maryland-Virginia border and Philadelphia, looked almost as bomb-pocked and trampled as the land farther south had. He wondered how any part of this poor battered continent would ever climb back to its feet again.

He saw the edges of what the superbomb had done to Philadelphia. The edges were bad enough. What were things like at the center, where the bomb went off? Maybe not knowing was better.

They put him up in a hotel not far from Congressional Hall. “Anything you want—anything at all—you just telephone and ask for it,” a bright young lieutenant said. “They’ll bring it to you.”

“Thank you kindly,” Cassius said, and then, “Show me how to work the telephone, suh, please.”

“You never used one before?” The officer, who couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Cassius, blinked.

“No, suh,” Cassius answered. “Weren’t more than a couple in the Terry—where I come from—even before things got bad. After that, we didn’t have nothin’.”

“All right.” The white man—he was blond and blue-eyed and handsome; in the CSA, he might have become a Freedom Party Guard—showed him what to do. “You know about hot and cold water taps, right?”

“Well, we always had to heat our own, but I can cipher out what’s hot and what’s cold. An’ we had the bathroom down the hall. Mighty nice, puttin’ it right here.”

“I bet. My folks grew up in a place like that. I’m lucky I didn’t have to. They’ll be delivering a dress uniform for you tonight, too. You go up to Congress tomorrow, so they can thank you for getting rid of Featherston.”

“Oh, my,” Cassius said.

He tried the telephone, and ordered a steak and fried potatoes. Fifteen minutes later, somebody knocked on the door. A white man in a fancy getup a lot like what Cassius’ father had worn brought in a tray. “Here you are, sir,” he said in a funny foreign accent. Cassius understood tips. They’d given him pocket money, so he handed the waiter fifty cents. With a nod and a smile, the man left.
I did that right
, Cassius thought.

Again, the food reminded him Army cooks didn’t know everything there was to know. Was it as good as what the Huntsman’s Lodge made? Pretty close, if it wasn’t.

He’d just finished eating when the uniform arrived. It fit perfectly. How did they do that? Did they measure him while he wasn’t looking? The fabric was buttery soft. The only differences from a real U.S. Army uniform were plain brass buttons and no
U.S.
on his collar. He had an auxiliary’s armband instead. Well, he was one.

His visit to Congress passed in a blur. Dozens of people shook his hand. One of them, he realized just after it happened, was the President of the USA. Charlie La Follette didn’t look nearly so fierce as Jake Featherston. But he’d won.
And I helped
, Cassius thought dizzily.

He got dizzier a moment later. Along with a resolution expressing the Thanks of Congress, they gave him a reward—$100,000, tax-free. The Congresswoman who made a speech about that was Flora somebody. Afterwards, she told him, “If you like, I’ll find someone you can trust to help you look after the money. You don’t want to waste it.” Then she smiled. “Or maybe you do—I don’t know. But it would be a shame.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Reckon I take you up on that.” Cassius had never imagined so much money. But he remembered how his folks always squeezed every penny to get by. He didn’t think he wanted to waste this, not when it could set him up for life.
Maybe waste a little
, he thought.

He gave wireless interviews. He talked to Bill Shirer and Eric Sevareid and Walter Winchell. He could hardly understand Winchell’s rapid-fire, slang-filled New York accent. If he hadn’t heard a few soldiers talking that way, he probably wouldn’t have been able to follow at all.

Each broadcaster asked the question a different way, but they all wanted to know the same thing: what did killing Jake Featherston feel like? The more he told the story, the further from the reality of it he felt.

A few days later, as if remembering it had overlooked something, Congress voted Cassius a fresh honor: it declared him a citizen of the United States. He felt more excited than someone from, say, the Empire of Mexico might have. Up till now, he’d never been a citizen of any country. Negroes in the CSA were residents, but they didn’t have the rights citizens did.

The Congresswoman who’d offered to help him sent over an accountant: a thin, quiet man named Sheldon Klein. He always wore a glove on his left hand. Cassius watched it and saw only his index finger and thumb move, so he probably had some kind of war wound there.

“Yes, if we invest in bonds and some carefully chosen stocks, we can provide you with a very decent income without touching your principal at all,” he said.

“My what?” Cassius asked.

“Your principal. That means the basic amount of money you have now. It will still be there, and you can live off what it earns,” Klein answered. He didn’t say,
You dumb nigger
. He didn’t even act as if he thought it.

“Any chance I can make more money?” Cassius asked.

“I’m sure you will,” the accountant said. “There will probably be a book about you, and a film as well. The fees from those you can either spend as they come in or add to the nest egg and make your investment income larger. And nothing stands in the way of your pursuing an education and having a career like anyone else.”

Cassius hadn’t even thought about that. “What about—?” He brushed a couple of fingers across the black skin on the back of his other hand.

“A difficulty. Not an impossible difficulty, not in this country,” Sheldon Klein replied. “If you work hard, you can overcome it. And, if I may speak frankly, even people who dislike most Negroes will go out of their way for the man who rid the world of Jake Featherston.”

That wasn’t fair, which didn’t mean he was wrong. “Don’t like to take advantage,” Cassius said slowly.

“If you can, if you aren’t hurting anybody—why not?” Klein said. “You spent your whole life up till now disadvantaged, didn’t you? You were a Negro in the Confederate States, so of course you did. Do you even read and write?”

“Yes, suh. My pa, he learned me. He knew…all kinds of things.” Cassius realized he had no idea just how much his father knew. He’d never had the chance to find out. Even having his letters made him stand out in the Terry.

He also saw he’d surprised Klein. “All right. That will help you, then,” the white man said. “The stronger your foundation, the bigger the house you can build on it.”

“Reckon you’re right.” Something else occurred to Cassius. “What do you make out of this?”

“Off of you? Not a dime. Congresswoman Blackford would skin me if I charged you,” Klein answered. “I may get some extra business when people find out I work for you, but that’s a different story. Oh, and just so you know—it’s easy for an accountant to steal from you. Every so often, you should pay somebody else to check up on what I do.”

Cassius started to say he was sure he wouldn’t need to. Then he saw Klein was telling him he shouldn’t be sure of things like that. And the accountant wouldn’t be the only one who could screw him if he wasn’t careful. So he nodded back and said, “Thanks. Reckon I will.” By the way Sheldon Klein nodded, he’d passed a small test—or maybe not such a small one.

S
am Carsten remembered coming home after the last war. He’d been a petty officer on the
Dakota
then, and eager to learn more about the strange and exciting new world of naval aviation. He’d been on the
Remembrance
when the new airplane carrier launched. After some detours, he’d been aboard her when she got sunk, too.

Coming home with the
Josephus Daniels
was different. She was
his
. He wondered what the Navy would do with her after the war. She’d done everything they asked of her while the country needed ships. When you got right down to it, though, she couldn’t do any one thing very well.

And he wondered what the Navy would do with him after the war. A middle-aged lieutenant up through the hawse hole…He might have had a better chance of hanging on if he’d stayed a CPO. The Navy needed grizzled old chiefs. Grizzled old midgrade officers? That was a different story, too.

Since he couldn’t do anything about it, he tried not to worry. He steered the destroyer escort to her berth in the Boston Navy Yard himself. By God, he could get the job done. As sailors on the pier caught lines and made her fast, he nodded to Lon Menefee and said, “Well, we made it.”

“Yes, sir.” The exec nodded. “In style, too.”

“As much as the old beast has.” Was Sam talking about the ship or himself? Even he wasn’t sure.

Men who’d got leave happily hurried off the destroyer escort. A lot of them wouldn’t stay in the Navy much longer. They would pick up the threads of the lives they’d led before they put on the uniform. Sam couldn’t very well do that. He’d cut those threads thirty-five years before. But if they put him on the beach he’d have to find something else to do.

He wished he had any idea what.

“She’s in your hands for a bit, Lon,” he said. “I get to go talk to a board.”

“All things considered, I think I’d rather have a tooth pulled,” Menefee said judiciously. “Matter of fact, I’m sure of it.”

“Ha! Your time will come, and soon, too.” Sam wasn’t kidding. The exec was still in his twenties. He had plenty of time to climb the links in the chain of command. Carsten wished he did himself.

That was one wish he wouldn’t get. At least he had sense enough to know it. He set his cap at the proper angle, left the bridge, and then left the
Josephus Daniels
. A commander who couldn’t be much older than Lon Menefee started to salute him, then jerked his arm down. Without smiling, Sam did salute the younger man. That kind of thing happened all the time when you had more wrinkles than stripes.

Two younger but senior officers did salute him before he got to the meeting room where he supposed he would hear his fate. As was his habit when they did that, he returned the salutes with an admiral’s dignity. If one of his stripes were of thick gold…
If I had an admiral’s pay!
he thought. You couldn’t get rich in the service no matter what, not if you were honest, but if you won flag rank you did pretty well for yourself.

He laughed, which made a passing sailor give him a funny look. A lieutenant’s pay was nothing to speak of, but he had a fair bit of money sitting in one account or another. When had he had time to spend any of it?

When he walked in to face the board, one of the men on it was a rear admiral and two were captains, all about his age. The last fellow was also a four-striper, but of much more recent vintage, his handsome face unlined, his brown hair unfrosted with gray. He grinned, jumped to his feet, and held out a hand. “Hello, Sam!” he said. “How are you?”

“Mr. Cressy!” Sam exclaimed. “Good to see you!” He shook hands with the former exec of the
Remembrance
. “You’re going up as fast as I thought you would, sir. Is that the ribbon for a Navy Cross?”

Dan Cressy looked embarrassed. “I was lucky.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive. That’s one of the ways you get a Navy Cross,” the rear admiral said. He turned back to Sam. “Take a seat, Lieutenant Commander Carsten.”

“Lieut—” Sam blinked. “Thank you, sir!” Two and a half stripes! He’d made it at last! Wonder filled him as he sat down. He’d climbed about as high as a mustang could hope to get. But he couldn’t relax even now. The Navy might be giving him a pat on the back at the same time as it was giving him a kick in the ass. A promotion on the way out the door was anything but unheard of.

“You had yourself a busy war,” the rear admiral observed. “Captain Cressy’s told us part of the story, and your record since you got a ship of your own speaks for itself.”

“I took her where I got sent, sir,” Carsten answered. “I did what my orders told me to do. I’m just glad we didn’t get cut up too bad doing it.”

“Your attitude does you credit,” one of the senior captains said. “Captain Cressy predicted you would tell us something like that.”

“He should talk. ‘I was lucky’!” Sam glanced toward Cressy. “No offense, sir, but you sandbag like a son of a gun.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cressy said, deadpan. Everybody laughed.

The rear admiral returned to business. “You had a little trouble with your previous exec, Carsten. How does Lieutenant Menefee suit you?”

“He’s a fine officer, sir,” Sam said quickly—he didn’t want to screw Menefee. “I recommend him without reservation. That’s the short answer. Details are in his fitness reports, but it all boils down to the same thing.”

“Short answer will do for now.” The rear admiral nodded to one of the captains, who wrote something down. The admiral’s sea-gray eyes swung back to Sam. “Where do you see yourself going from here?”

“As long as it’s in the Navy, sir, I’ll take a shot at whatever you want to give me,” Sam replied.

“We’ve heard that before,” said the captain, who was taking notes.

“Haven’t we just?” the rear admiral agreed. “I don’t think the Navy’s going to shrink the way it did after the last war. We’ve got the Japs to keep an eye on, God only knows how friendly Germany will stay, and we really are going to sit on the Confederates—and the damn Canucks—this time around. We won’t leave you on the beach.”

“That’s mighty good to hear, sir,” Sam said. “Will Congress give us the money we need to do all that good stuff?”

The rear admiral glanced over to Captain Cressy. “Well, you were right. He’s plenty sharp.”

“I said so, didn’t I?” Cressy returned.

“You sure did.” The flag officer gave his attention back to Sam. “They will for this year, anyhow, because we’re still running on war appropriations. What happens after that…I’ve never believed in borrowing trouble. Have you?”