“They’ve got the governor and they’ve got the numbers,” says Mr. Turpin. “The way they’ve got it fixed, it’ll take a revolution to push them out.” Mr. Turpin is thin on top, and Hoke is carefully spreading what’s left with his comb to cover the scalp.
“We must not bow to the tyranny of numbers,” says the Judge. “What if tomorrow the Sprunts decide to bring in five thousand Chinamen to bale their cotton? Should we be ruled then by Chinamen? I think not.”
Dorsey waits, razor in hand, for the Judge to stop moving his jaw.
“Humiliation, I tell you,” the Judge goes on. “Russell and his gang sold the farmers and the illiterate mountainfolk a bill of goods, they bought the colored vote with bribes and favors and white men’s positions, and now he means to rub our noses in his success. He means to ruin this city.”
Dorsey crosses to put a couple towels into the steamer. When the Judge gets going like this it’s best to wait him out. He’s been known to jump to his feet and pace, so you have to be careful with the cutting edges.
“The Redeemers have worked wonders in other states,” says Turpin, soothingly. “South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana—”
“Where they’ve looked the thing in the eye and dealt with it.”
“It could happen here, Judge. And very soon.” Hoke is whisking the back of the pharmacist’s neck. “Somebody’s just got to put the thing in motion.”
“We’ve got them on the police force now.” The Judge shakes his head violently, ignoring the lather on his face. Dorsey taps a couple drops of witch hazel into his palm, holds it under his nose. Mrs. Scott brews up a batch of it for him and he has Hoke pour it into the store-bought bottles when they get low. The Judge swivels his chair around to face Mr. Turpin, getting himself indignant. “Do you think they’ll arrest their own? Not on your life. And if they do, they’ve got the juries packed and the darky walks out free as daylight and twice as bold as he was before.”
It is the gentlemen’s right to choose their topic, of course, but Dorsey always prefers sport to politics. He’s one of the sponsors of the Mutuals, and can hold the floor on the relative merits of every ballplayer in New Hanover County, black and white. He can talk horses, he can talk Bible if there’s a man of God in the chair, he can even recite The Arrow and the Song if pressed into service. Politics, though, especially the Wilmington variety, make him sweat.
“Plato believed that men should be governed by philosopher kings,” Colonel Waddell observes. “I fear we have drifted away from that ideal.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” says the Judge, “that if it serves the interests of these Fusioneers or Repopulists or whatever they’re labeling themselves now, we’ll have women’s suffrage thrown into the mix.”
“Women, white women, have the sense to listen to their husbands’ counsel,” says Turpin. “Giving them the vote would be redundant.” There is still a separate entrance for ladies at the Orton. Dorsey cannot imagine them in politics — the harangues and heated confrontations, the spitting and swearing. Women are above all that, made to bind up what the men have broken.
The Judge snorts and lather flies. “Well I daresay they wouldn’t have given the city over to carpetbaggers and Hottentots.”
Mr. Turpin laughs. “That’s what the illustrious Mrs. Felton would have us believe.”
“A woman who writes,” Colonel Waddell muses behind his paper, “is like a singing dog. The fascination is not that she does it well, but that she does it at all.”
Dorsey always starts around the ears, tiny little strokes to outline the sideburns. The Judge has a large mole on the left side he has to be careful of.
“The key,” says the Judge, finger jabbing underneath the cloth to make a point, “is to have some sort of qualification as to who is allowed to vote. That’s what the Founders envisaged. Responsible government issues from informed voters.”
“You’re suggesting a literacy test.”
“That is one possibility, yes.”
“An awful lot of them can read now. I see them at my store with the — what’s it called, Dorsey? Your colored paper?”
“The Record, suh.” Dorsey advertises in the Manly brothers’ paper for his other shop, where they cut colored hair.
“Do you read it?”
“No, suh. Don’t have the time.”
“Well, there is a group over in Brooklyn got them a bit more leisure,” Turpin winks to the Judge in the mirror. “Unless it’s to wrap fish in, I see an awful lot of em look like they read it.”
“I would not propose that puzzling out the limited vocabulary displayed in a colored daily constitutes literacy,” says the Judge. Dorsey can do his neck if he’s steady. “If we were to take a section of the state constitution and have the voter demonstrate his competence by explaining its meaning—”
Mr. Turpin laughs. “We’re going to do that with every voter in the city?”
“Selectively, yes.”
“Selectively.” Hoke is bending close to clip out Turpin’s nose hairs.
“We administer the test to those whom we — we suspect of being illiterate, on a ward-by-ward basis.”
“I would suspect that half the poor whites in Dry Pond might fail that test, Judge. Including a goodly number of loyal Democrats.”
“Well, of course, if there is a tradition of voting in the family—”
“Record turnout in the last election, Judge—”
“Selling your vote for a glass of whiskey does not qualify as a tradition. What I’m suggesting is that if you can prove your grandfather was a registered voter—”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“—you would be passed unchallenged at the polling place.”
“The Louisiana clause,” adds Colonel Waddell. The old gentleman been in office himself, before Dorsey’s day, rumored to be a great one for the oratory. He is always very quiet in the shop, but well-spoken, using words like impecunious and recondite that Dorsey makes sure to look up in his dictionary when he gets home and then slip into his conversations at Lodge meetings.
“Of course, given the present infestation here and in Raleigh, such an amendment to our statutes would stand no chance.”
“I wouldn’t give it up so easily, Judge. When his back is pressed to the wall, the true white man is capable of—”
Dorsey catches the Judge’s look in the mirror, just a tiny nod of warning to Mr. Turpin. Hoke is rapidly snipping air with his scissors, made nervous by the turn of the conversation.
“What?” says Mr. Turpin. “Dorsey? Dorsey doesn’t mix in politics, do you, Dorsey?”
“I try to keep my nose out of em.”
Hoke shakes the cloth out and Mr. Turpin stands. “What I tell you? The good ones know enough to steer clear of it.”
“Almost all absurdity of conduct,” Colonel Waddell observes, “arises from the imitation of those we cannot resemble.”
Turpin steps a little closer. Dorsey can feel him over his shoulder, watching him do the Judge’s cheeks. “You planning to vote this coming election, Dorsey?”
The Judge cocks his head. Colonel Waddell lays the newspaper in his lap, waiting to hear the answer. Hoke retreats to get the broom. Dorsey always voted, ever since he was old enough, but nobody made any fuss about it till lately.
“No, suh,” he lies softly. “Don’t suppose I will.”
“If the rest of your people show that kind of good sense, it’ll stay peaceful in this city.” It sounds a bit like a threat, but he can see Mr. Turpin is smiling in the mirror, gently tapping the thin layer at the top of his head with his fingers. “Say, Dorsey, how come a good-looking young fellow like you isn’t hitched yet?”