Return Engagement (75 page)

“That’s right. Goddamn stinking ungrateful coons,” the soldier said. “We catch their black asses, we’ll make ’em sorry they was ever born.”

“They’re probably already sorry,” Tom said. “And if they aren’t now, they will be pretty damn quick. Even if they do make it through our lines, they’ll find out the damnyankees don’t like niggers a hell of a lot more than we do.”

The soldier—a sergeant who needed a shave—nodded. “That’s a fact, sir. But I want to make ’em as sorry as they can be. They got themselves a nerve, playin’ like that last night and then runnin’ away. Like I said, ungrateful bastards.”

“Which way did they go?” Tom asked. “In this snow, they should have left a trail a mile wide.”

“What it looks like they done is, it looks like they stole themselves a command car,” the noncom said. “Once they got on the eastbound road, their goddamn tire tracks look like everybody else’s.”

He was right about that. Command cars often mounted machine guns, too. Whoever tried to stop the blacks might get a nasty surprise. “Did you send a wireless message on ahead, warning people the niggers are liable to be on the way?” Tom asked.

“Sure did, sir,” the unshaven sergeant answered, “but Christ only knows how much good it’ll do. We only just found out they was gone—reckon the ruction’s what rousted you out of the sack—and they have hours of start. They could’ve gone a hell of a long ways before we knew they took off.”

He was right about that, too. Tom said, “God help their sorry necks if we do catch ’em. They’ll get their population reduced faster than you can whistle, ‘Dixie.” “

“Just goes to show you can’t trust a nigger no matter what,” the noncom said. “Somebody down in the CSA figured those spooks wouldn’t make a break for it if he let ’em get close to the damnyankees. That’s what he figured, but it sure looks like he was full of shit.”

Another soldier came running out of regimental headquarters. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. “Just got word back from the east. They found a picket post, looks like it was all shot to hell. Shot to hell from
this
side, mind you, not like the Yankees done it. Hell with me if those coons didn’t get away.”

Tom and the sergeant both swore. Evidently the stolen command car had carried a machine gun. Had one of the Rhythm Aces, or maybe even Satchmo himself, served a weapon like that in the uprisings of 1915 and 1916? Or—worse thought yet—had one of them served in the C.S. Army during the Great War and learned to use a machine gun there? So much for gratitude: if he had, he’d just bitten the hand that fed him.

And the Confederate pickets would have been paying attention to the U.S. troops in front of them, not to a command car coming up from behind. They would have figured an officer was coming up to look things over. It would have been the last mistake they ever made.

“How far from there to the Yankees’ positions?” Tom asked.

“Not very far, sir,” answered the soldier who’d heard the report.

“Any sign of dead niggers between the outpost and the U.S. lines?”

“No, sir.”

“They got away, then, sure as hell.” Tom cussed some more. So did the sergeant. After a moment, so did the man who’d brought the news. Tom went on, “The real pisser is, odds are they won’t let any more niggers come up and perform after this. I bet they ship the other colored acts in this troupe back home, too. It’s a damn shame for soldiers, is what it is. We aren’t using niggers to fight. If we can’t use ’em to entertain, what are they good for?”

“Who says niggers are good for anything?” the sergeant growled. “It’d be a better country if we didn’t have to worry about ’em no more.”

The other soldier standing there in the snow nodded. Tom didn’t argue. He wouldn’t have been sorry to see all the blacks in the CSA disappear, either. He didn’t have the stomach for killing them all himself, but he wouldn’t shed a tear if the Freedom Party found men who did. As for Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces . . . “I can think of some we don’t have to worry about any more—unless the Yankees use ’em to mock us.” That could be a nuisance. But, as long as he stood here by Lake Erie, it couldn’t be much more than a nuisance.

F
lora Blackford picked up the telephone in her office. “Yes? What is it?” she said.

“Mr. Roosevelt wants to speak to you, Congresswoman,” her secretary answered.

“Thank you, Bertha. Of course I’ll talk to him,” Flora said. When the Assistant Secretary of War came on the line, she continued, “Good morning, Mr. Roosevelt. What can I do for you today?”

“Hello, Congresswoman.” As always, Franklin Roosevelt sounded jaunty in spite of his paralysis. “I’ve just run into something that I thought might interest you.”

“What is it?” Flora asked.

“Seems some colored musical ensemble that was up in Ohio to entertain Confederate soldiers decided the grass was greener on our side of the fence. They got away. I gather they shot up some Confederates doing it, too.”

“Good for them!” Flora exclaimed. “They didn’t get shot when they walked into our lines?”

“They drove in, as a matter of fact—they stole a command car. That’s what gave them their firepower,” Roosevelt answered. “No, they didn’t get shot. I’m not sure they know how lucky they are.”

“What are we going to do with them? We can’t very well send them back—that would be murder,” Flora said.

“No, we’ll keep them. We can use their testimony about Confederate atrocities. And they’re supposed to be pretty good musicians, if you like that kind of thing.” Roosevelt’s laugh was a little self-conscious. “Not really to my taste, I’m afraid: too wild. But some people are excited that they’ve made it over the border. Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces, they’re called.”

“Satchmo?” Flora wasn’t sure she’d heard straight.

“That’s right.” Franklin Roosevelt laughed again. “I gather he was named, er, Sennacherib, but nobody who knew him could pronounce it. I believe that—I can’t pronounce it myself.”

“Sennacherib is a fancy handle even for a Negro from the Confederate States,” Flora agreed. “Will we be bringing, uh, Satchmo and the—the Rhythm Aces, did you say?—to Philadelphia? This is where the wireless networks have their headquarters.”

“Yes, I think we’ll do that. I don’t know how much broadcasting we’ll have them do, though. What we call English and what they call English are almost two different languages, I’m afraid.”

“I’d like to see them when they get here,” Flora said.

“Actually, I was hoping you’d say that.” The Assistant Secretary of War sounded pleased. “You’ve taken the lead in telling the world about what the Confederates are doing to their colored population.”

“It’s worse than what the Ottomans did to the Armenians during and after the Great War,” Flora said. “If the Russians started killing off their Jews, that might come close, but even it wouldn’t be the same.”

“The Russians or the Germans,” Roosevelt said. “With the Kingdom of Poland a German puppet, the Kaiser rules over as many Jews as the Tsar does.”

“Yes, but the Russians have pogroms for the fun of it, and to distract people from what a mess the Tsar’s government is,” Flora answered. “The Germans are too civilized for that kind of thing, thank God.”

“Half their brain trust are Jews, too. They can’t afford to do without them,” Roosevelt said. “But that’s beside the point. Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces have heard about you, too. So I’m doubly glad you want to meet them, because they’ve already said they want to meet you.”

“How have they heard about me? Do you know?” Flora asked.

“From the wireless, mostly, I think,” Roosevelt told her. “That’s good to hear; it shows some of our propaganda is getting through. Would you like to be there on the platform when they come in?”

“That might be nice.” Flora sighed reminiscently. “When I was first elected to Congress and came down here to start my term, Hosea met me on the platform and took me to my flat. That was the first time we met. I had no idea it would go the way it did.”

“He was a good man. A
good
man,” Franklin Roosevelt said. “I’ve always thought it was horribly unfair to blame the business collapse on him. If it weren’t for that, he would have made a fine President. No, that’s not right—he
did
make a fine President. It’s just that the times were against him.”

“Thank you. I’ve always thought the same thing,” Flora said. “And we elected Coolidge—and got Hoover. Coolidge wouldn’t have made things better, and Hoover didn’t. And the Confederates chose Jake Featherston, and the French got
Action Française
and a king, and the English got Mosley and Churchill. That’s a lot to pin on an Austro-Hungarian bank failure, but it’s the truth.”

“If you toss a pebble into a snowbank, you can start an avalanche that will wipe out everything down below,” Roosevelt said. “The first failure was a pebble, and the avalanche rolled downhill from there.”

“Didn’t it just!” Flora said mournfully.

When Roosevelt spoke again, it was after a paper-shuffling pause: “Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces get into town at the Broad Street station, Platform 27, at . . . let me see . . . at half past nine tomorrow night. That’s when they’re scheduled, I should say. Confederate bombers and Confederate saboteurs may change everyone’s plans.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” Flora replied. “Well, I’ll get there on time—unless an air raid changes
my
plans.”

“Thank you very much.” Franklin Roosevelt hung up.

To Flora’s relief, the sirens didn’t howl that night. The Confederates weren’t coming over Philadelphia quite so much these days. More of their airplanes were staying home to attack the U.S. forces slogging forward through an ocean of blood in Virginia. She had no trouble getting a cab and going over to the Broad Street station.

Platform 27 wasn’t the one where she’d got off the train from New York City all those years ago.
Too bad,
she thought. She’d wondered if Franklin Roosevelt would also be there to greet the escaped musicians. He wasn’t, but several lesser War Department dignitaries were.

The train ran late. Some years before, there’d been an Italian politician who’d promised to make the trains run on time if he were elected. He hadn’t been; nobody had believed he could do it. Flora tried to remember his name, but couldn’t, which only went to show how unimportant he’d been. U.S. trains weren’t so bad as their Italian counterparts were said to be, but they weren’t all that good, either. And the war had done nothing to help.

At ten, Flora was resigned. At half past, she was annoyed. At eleven, she didn’t know whether to be furious or worried. The train finally pulled into the station at ten minutes to twelve. That irked her all over again. She’d decided to give the laggard locomotive till midnight. After that, she could have gone home and gone to bed in good conscience. She wouldn’t see bed at even a halfway reasonable hour now.

People who got off before Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces shook their heads and grumbled, often profanely, about delays and detours. A few of them muttered apologies to Flora as they walked by. One of the foulest-mouthed passengers, though, was a woman, and she was in no mood to apologize to anybody for anything.

Flora had no trouble recognizing the men she was looking for. In the bright light under the platform, the Negroes seemed all eyeballs and teeth. They wore green-gray uniform tunics and trousers with the highly polished shoes that must have accompanied more formal wear. They stared every which way, plainly with no idea what to do next.

She stepped up to them, gave her name, and said, “Welcome to Philadelphia. I’d say welcome to freedom, but there’s a party down in the CSA that’s given the word a bad name.”

All five of the black men grinned and nodded. “Ain’t it the truth!” said the one who stood out a little from the rest. If he wasn’t Satchmo, she would have been very surprised. He had a deep, raspy voice and an engagingly ugly face. “We’re right pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Blackford. Ain’t that right, boys?” The other Negroes nodded again, in unison.

The men from the War Department were a few paces behind Flora. Since they were the ones who were going to take charge of the newcomers, she stepped aside and let them introduce themselves. Then she asked, “What is it
like
for a Negro in the Confederate States these days?”

“Ma’am, I reckon you got a notion already that it’s pretty bad,” Satchmo said. Flora didn’t need to nod to show she did. The musician went on, “All right. Well, for true, it’s a hundred times that bad.” The other Rhythm Aces murmured agreement, as if he were a lead singer and they his backup vocalists.

“Do most of the Negroes in the CSA know what the Freedom Party is doing to them—to you?” Flora asked.

One of the Aces spoke on his own for the first time: “If we didn’t, ma’am, you reckon we take the chance o’ doin’ what we done?”

“But musicians like you travel all over the place. You hear things most people wouldn’t,” Flora persisted. “What about ordinary Negroes who stay in one spot? Do they know what’s happening in those Freedom Party camps?”

A major asked, “Do they hear our wireless broadcasts? We try to let them know what’s going on.” He had to be in Intelligence or Propaganda. Nobody who wasn’t could have made that sound so smooth.

“They hear some, I reckon, but the Freedom Party jams you pretty good, suh,” Satchmo replied. “Don’t want nobody, white or colored, listenin’ to the damnyankee wireless.”

Flora had heard white Confederates say
damnyankee
as if it were one word. She hadn’t expected a black man to do the same. “How do they know, then?—the black people in the CSA, I mean.”

The musicians looked at her. One of them said, “Everybody know somebody done got sucked into a camp. Ain’t nobody know nobody who ever come out again. We ain’t educated. White folks in the CSA always been afraid o’ what’d happen if we git educated. But we ain’t stupid, neither. Don’t gotta be no sly, sneaky Jew to figure out what folks goin’in an’ not comin’ out means.”

He knew as little of Jews as Flora did of Negroes, probably less. She had to remind herself of that. And he’d made his point. She said, “Well, you’re safe here—as long as a bomb doesn’t fall on your head. We all take that chance.”