In at the Death (79 page)

Dewey stood behind the lectern and its undergrowth of microphones. All the wireless webs would be sending his words live across the country. “It is a privilege to be here,” Dewey said. “You have entrusted me with the great responsibility of winning the peace. I would like to congratulate my distinguished predecessor, President La Follette, for winning the desperate war Jake Featherston started.”

Cassius clapped along with everybody else. Now that Dewey had won, he could afford to be gracious to the man who’d gone before him.

The new President looked out at the crowd. He was young and smartly dressed. He looked eager to get on with things. He sounded the same way: “Now that peace has come, we will be prosperous. And we will stay strong. Some in what were the Confederate States may think they can drive us out. I stand before the people of the United States—I stand before the people of the reunited States—to tell them they are wrong.”

More applause rose. Cassius clapped harder this time than he had before. He wanted the Confederates to get everything that was coming to them and then some. People around him clapped again, too. He didn’t think most of them clapped as loud as they had before. He did think that was too bad.

“And I stand before the foreign powers of the world to remind them that the United States are strong, and to remind them that we shall protect ourselves come what may, and with whatever means seem necessary,” Dewey went on. “The superbomb is an awful, terrifying weapon. We shall not use it unless provoked. But those who might provoke us had better know they do so at their peril.”

This time, the hand he got was loud and long. Was he telling Japan to watch out? Or was he warning the Kaiser? Cassius had found out more about foreign countries since coming to the United States than he ever knew down in Georgia. The only foreign lands he’d ever thought of there were the USA—which wasn’t foreign any more—and the Empire of Mexico, because Mexicans had come to work in Augusta and Mexican soldiers had tried to kill him. The world seemed a wider, more complicated place than it had in the days before he shot Jake Featherston.

“My administration will seek to prevent nations that do not now possess the superbomb from acquiring it,” Dewey said. “We have seen at first hand the devastation it inflicts. The German Empire walks side by side with us in this effort. Both Germany and the United States recognize the danger to world peace if irresponsible governments gain the ability to split the atom.”

Japan, then
—
not the Kaiser after all
, Cassius thought. He also wondered how President Dewey knew the United States and Germany would be responsible. Cassius decided he probably didn’t. But they already had the superbomb, and they didn’t aim to let anyone else join their club.

Wasn’t Dewey whistling in the dark about his chances of succeeding? The thought had hardly crossed Cassius’ mind before the President said, “I know preventing others from building superbombs will be neither easy nor cheap. We do intend to try, however. The safety of the world is at stake.”

Behind Cassius, a general leaned over to his wife and murmured, “When it doesn’t work, he can say we gave it our best shot.” Cassius was sure he wasn’t supposed to hear that. He was also sure it made more sense than he wished it did.

Dewey continued, “We will cleanse the old Confederate States of the evil influence of the Freedom Party. We will ensure that the Negroes surviving there gain full rights as citizens, and that the atrocities of the past can never come again.”

As Cassius applauded that, a newsreel camera swung toward him. He was here not least as Dewey’s object lesson. He didn’t mind, or not very much. If the new President kept his pledge or even came close, the Negroes who remained south of the Mason-Dixon Line would be better off than they ever had before.

Dewey made more promises about all the wonderful things he would do within the United States. Cassius didn’t know whether they would be wonderful or not. He hoped so. What could you do but hope?

After the speech ended, Dewey turned to the crowd. People came up to congratulate him. He and Truman shook hands and smiled while photographers flashed away. Cassius went down with the rest of the people in his special grandstand.

“Good luck, suh,” he said when he worked his way up to Dewey.

“Thank you.” The new President gave his hand a quick, professional pump. “Thank you for everything. You’ve made my job much easier.”

“I was mighty glad to do it, suh,” Cassius replied. No, nobody would ever think of him without thinking of his one moment. He didn’t mind that very much, either. It was one moment more than most of his luckless people ever got.

A
tlanta again. Irving Morrell would rather have stayed home with his family, but even leave was welcome. The Atlantic Military District hadn’t come to pieces while he went back to the USA. (Well, he supposed that, technically, Atlanta was part of the USA again, too. The locals didn’t believe it for a minute. Morrell had trouble believing it himself.)

Things could have been worse. None of the morale officers—there were such things—in
his
command had had the brilliant idea of a soldiers-against-locals football game, the way that maniac in Alabama had. Why not issue any Confederates with a grudge an engraved invitation?
Plenty of damnyankees to shoot at right here!
The only lucky thing was that the mortar crew hurt their own people worse than the U.S. soldiers they were aiming at.

Morrell didn’t know what the CO of the Gulf Coast Military District had done with his intrepid football-planning officer. He knew what he would have done himself. If it were up to him, that major or whatever he was would be running the coast defenses of Colorado right now.

He had his own problems. Railroad sabotage just wouldn’t stop. There were too many miles of track, and not enough soldiers to keep an eye on all of them. The War Department didn’t think that kind of offense justified executing hostages, which was the only thing that might have ended it. Morrell supposed the military bureaucrats in Philadelphia had a point. If the U.S. Army murdered Confederates for any little thing, how did it differ from Jake Featherston’s regime except in choice of victims?

But not killing Confederates for any little thing sure made Morrell’s life harder.

Then there were the two dozen command cars in and around Rocky Mount, North Carolina, that somehow got sugar in their gas tanks: as good a way of wrecking an engine as any ever found. The local CO had dealt with that one on his own and sent Atlanta a report later. Morrell approved of officers with initiative. This one had commandeered motorcars from the locals to make up the lack and fined the whole town.

Even fines got tricky, though. Confederate silver and gold were still legal tender; weight for weight, those coins matched their U.S. counterparts. Confederate paper wasn’t, not for dealings with the occupying authorities. Brown banknotes stayed in circulation among the locals; there weren’t enough green bills to go around yet.

Pretty soon, all Confederate paper would be illegal. Then squeezing the occupied states would get easier, anyhow. Right now, the situation with money was the same as it was most ways. Wherever the U.S. authorities reached, they ruled. Where they didn’t, or where they turned their backs even for a moment, the old ways went on.

“Here’s an ugly one, sir.” A light colonel from the judge-advocate’s office set a manila folder on Morrell’s desk. “From Greenville, South Carolina. They strung up a Negro for coughing at a white woman.”

“Coughing?” Morrell said.

“That’s what they do a lot of the time down here instead of whistling like we would,” the younger officer explained.

“Do we know who did it?” Morrell asked. “Sounds like those people need stringing up themselves.”

“Yes, sir.” But the lieutenant colonel sounded unhappy.

“Want to tell me more, or do I need to go through all this stuff?” Morrell set a hand on the folder.

“Well, I can give you the short version,” the military attorney said.

“Good!” Morrell was drowning in paperwork. “Do that, then.”

“Right. For one thing, we know who did it, but we can’t prove anything. Everybody denies it. Everybody who was there swears he wasn’t and nobody else was, either. As far as they’re concerned, that colored guy hanged himself.”

“No U.S. witnesses?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. You said, ‘For one thing.’ That means there’s something else, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. That town will go off like a bomb if we arrest these people. Greenville does not want to put up with the idea that a Negro can get fresh with a white woman, no matter what. I don’t know if the dead guy really did or he didn’t. But the whites may have surrendered to us. They sure haven’t given up on the way things were before they did.”

“No, huh?” Morrell had heard that song too many times before. It made up his mind for him. “Send orders to the officer in charge there. Tell him to get his heavy weapons ready and make sure he has air support ready to fly. Then tell him to arrest those people and get them out of there. If Greenville rises, we’ll level the place.”

“Are you sure, sir?” the lieutenant colonel asked.

“If I had a superbomb handy, I’d drop it on those bastards. That’s how sure I am. Now let’s get cooking.”

“Uh, yes, sir.” The military attorney saluted and left his office in a hurry.

U.S. soldiers arrested seventeen men and two women in Greenville. The town didn’t rise. Morrell hadn’t thought it would. Diehards here bushwhacked and raided and made godawful nuisances of themselves. They showed no signs of being ready or able to fight pitched battles against U.S. troops.

He called in a couple of writers from
Stars and Stripes
, the Army newspaper. “I want you to draft a pamphlet for me,” he told them. “Aim it at whites in the former CSA. We can call it
Equality
. Tell these bastards they don’t have to like Negroes, but they can’t go pissing on them the way they did before the war.”

“Yes, sir,” the men chorused. One of them added, “When do you want it, sir?”

“Say, a week,” Morrell answered. “Then I’ll get War Department approval for it, and then I’ll issue it. I’ll issue it by the millions, by God. From now on, nobody’s going to be able to say, ‘Well, I didn’t know what the rules were.’ We’ll tell ’em just what the rules are. If they break ’em after that, it’s their own damn fault.”

He got the first draft six days later. He didn’t think it was strong enough, and suggested changes. When it came back, he sent the text to Philadelphia. He wondered how long things would take there. With the new administration coming in, the bureaucracy was even bumpier than usual.

But he not only got approval four days later, he also got a message saying that the powers that be had sent his text to the U.S. commandants in the Gulf Coast Military District, the Mid-South Military District, and the Republic of Texas. They had orders to print and distribute
Equality
, too. What the written word could do, it would.

As soon as the pamphlet hit the streets, complaints hit his desk. He might have known they would. Hell, he had known they would. The former mayor of Atlanta was in prison for aiding and abetting the removal of Negroes from the town. The new town commissioner was a fortyish lawyer named Clark Butler. He would have been handsome if his ears hadn’t stuck out.

He’d always cooperated with U.S. authorities before. He was hopping mad now. “You mean we have to put up with it if a, uh, colored fellow”—he’d learned it wasn’t a good idea to say
nigger
around Morrell—“makes advances to a white woman?”

“As long as he’s peaceable about it, yes,” Morrell asked. “Do you mean to tell me white men never make advances to colored women?”

Butler turned red. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“It just is.”

Morrell shook his head. “Sorry, no. I’m not going to budge on this one. Maybe it was different before the war, or you thought it was because you were on top and the Negroes were on the bottom. Things aren’t like that any more.”

Butler scratched the edge of his thin mustache. “Some of the states in the USA have miscegenation laws. Why are you tougher on us than you would be on them?”

“Because you abused things worse,” Morrell answered bluntly. “And I don’t think they’ll keep those laws much longer. You gave them such a horrible example, they’ll be too embarrassed to leave ’em on the books.”

“You’re going to cause a lot of trouble,” Butler predicted in doleful tones.

“I’ll take the chance.” Morrell, by contrast, sounded cheerful. “If people here start trouble, I promise we’ll finish it.”

“It’s not fair,” Butler said. “We’re only doing what we always did.”

“Yes, and look where that got you,” Morrell retorted. “Let’s take you in particular, for instance. I know you didn’t have anything to do with shipping Negroes to camps—we’ve checked. You wouldn’t be sitting there if you did. You’d be in jail with the old mayor. But you knew they were disappearing, didn’t you?”

“Well…” Butler looked as if he wished he could disappear. “Yes.”

“Good! Well done!” Morrell made clapping motions that were only slightly sardonic. “See? You can own up to things if you try. I would’ve thrown you out of my office if you said anything different.”

“But treating…colored folks like white people?
Equality
?” The city commissioner pronounced the name of the pamphlet with great distaste. “People—white people—won’t like that, not even a little bit.”

“Frankly, Butler, I don’t give a damn.” Morrell was getting sick of the whole sorry business. “Those are the rules you’ve got now. You’re going to play by them, and that’s flat. If you try to make some poor Negro sorry, we will make you sorrier. If you don’t think we can do it—or if you don’t think we will do it—go ahead and find out. You won’t like what happens next. I promise you that. Wake the town and tell the people. We mean it.”

“Colored folks in the same church? Colored kids in the same school?” Plainly, Butler was picking the most hideous examples he could think of.