That was a dangerous question, because the answer was yes. Since Luther Bliss was one of the worst enemies the Confederates had in Kentucky, Cincinnatus would be suspected for not reporting that he’d spotted him. Cautiously, he said, “I done heard tell he was in town, but I ain’t set eyes on him. Don’t want to set eyes on him, neither.” The last sentence, at least, was true.
If the Confederates asked the right questions of the right people, they could show the rest was a lie. The cop pointed a warning finger at Cincinnatus. “Don’t you go nowhere. I’m gonna check up on what you just told me. What happens next depends on whether you were tryin’ to blow smoke up my ass. You got me?”
“Oh, yes, suh. I surely do,” Cincinnatus said. “An’ I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” He almost laughed at the policeman. If the fellow thought he could just waltz out of the station, that didn’t say much for how alert the Covington police usually were.
He sat there in the little interrogation room and worried. After a while, he needed to use the toilet-the Jax he’d drunk was taking his revenge. He stuck his head out the door and asked another cop if he could. He was afraid the white man would say no, if only to pile more discomfort and indignity on him. But the cop took him down the hall, let him do his business, and then led him back.
Cincinnatus had almost started to doze when his interrogator came back. “Well, looks like you weren’t lying about your run-in with Bliss,” he said grudgingly. He pointed an accusing finger at Cincinnatus. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been living in Iowa? Why the hell didn’t you get your black ass back there when you had the chance? What have you been doin’ here since you came back?” He seemed sure Cincinnatus’ answer would have to be something incriminating.
“Suh, I been takin’ care o’ my mama, an’ my pa’s been taking care o’ me.” Cincinnatus explained how he’d returned to Kentucky to get his parents out, and what had gone wrong. He finished, “You don’t believe that, go check the hospital.”
“I seen you walk. I know you’re screwed up some kind of way,” the cop said.
“Do Jesus! That is the truth!” Cincinnatus said.
“I know what we ought to do with you,” the policeman told him. “We ought to send you over the damn border. If the Yankees want you, they’re welcome to you. Sounds like all you want to do is get the hell out, and take your ma and pa with you. The longer you stay here, the more likely you are to get in trouble.”
Hope flowered in Cincinnatus. He needed a moment to recognize it; he hadn’t felt it for a long time. He said, “Suh, you do that for me, I get down on my knees to thank you. You want me to kiss your foot to thank you, I do that. I was laid up when I could have taken my folks out of here. By the time I could get around even a little bit, the border with the USA was closed.”
“I’ll see what we can cook up,” the policeman said. “We deal with the damnyankees every now and then under flag of truce. If they want to let you cross the border, we’ll let you go.”
“Suh, when them guards grabbed me, I reckoned I was a dead man,” Cincinnatus said, which was also nothing but the truth. “But you are a Christian gentleman, an’ I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Don’t get yourself all hot and bothered yet,” the police captain said. “These things don’t move fast. When we’ve got to talk to the Yankees or they’ve got to talk to us, though, you’re on the list. For now, go on home and stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, suh. God bless you, suh!” Cincinnatus had dished out a lot of insincere flattery to white men in his time. He didn’t know any Negroes in the CSA-or, for that matter, in the USA-who hadn’t. It was part of life for blacks in both countries. Here, though, he meant every word of what he said. This Confederate cop hadn’t had to do anything for him. Cincinnatus had expected the man to do things to him. Maybe the policeman thought he would turn subversive if he stayed in the CSA. (Fortunately, the man didn’t know he’d already turned subversive.) Whatever his reasons, he wanted Cincinnatus out of the CSA and back in the USA. Since Cincinnatus wanted the same thing…
Since he wanted the same thing, he didn’t even complain about the long walk home. It didn’t hurt as much as it might have, either. When he got there, he found his father almost frantic. “What you doin’ here?” Seneca Driver exclaimed, eyes almost bugging out of his head in disbelief. “Some damnfool nigger done tol’ me them Freedom Party goons grab you.”
“They did, Pa,” Cincinnatus answered, and his father’s eyes got bigger yet. He went on, “An’ then they let me go.” He told what had happened at the station.
“You believe this here policeman?” His father didn’t sound as if he did.
But Cincinnatus nodded. “Uh-huh. I believe him, on account of he didn’t have no reason to lie to me. I was there. He had me. He coulda done whatever he pleased. Who’s gonna say boo if a cop roughs up a nigger? Who’s gonna say boo if a cop kills a nigger, even? Nobody, an’ you know it as well as I do.”
The older man thought it over. He screwed up his face in what was almost a parody of cogitation. “He don’t mean nothin’ good by it,” he said at last. He wouldn’t believe a Confederate cop could be decent, and Cincinnatus had a hard time blaming him.
Cincinnatus had a trump card, though. “I’m here,” he said, and his father couldn’t very well quarrel with that.
Congresswoman Flora Blackford clicked on the wireless set in her Philadelphia office. She usually left it off, turning it on at the hour and half hour to get what news she could. She had little-no, she had no-use for the music and advertising drivel that came out of the speaker most of the time.
Some people were saying television-wireless with moving pictures-was the next big thing. The war had put it on hold, and might have derailed it altogether. Flora wasn’t sure she was sorry. The idea of having to watch advertisements as well as listen to them turned her stomach.
She wasn’t listening to news now, though, or not directly. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was a quarter to five. What were they waiting for? The announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, live from New York City and newly escaped from the Confederate States of America, we are proud to present… Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces!”
Out of the wireless poured music the likes of which was almost unknown in the United States. Negroes in the Confederate States had been oppressed for hundreds of years, and had no hope of anything else, anything better. They poured their wish for a different life-and a jaunty defiance of the life they were forced to live-into their music. Those sly rhythms and strange syncopations had no parallel in the USA. Satchmo might almost have been playing his trumpet in Portuguese rather than English.
And yet, a great singer could make an audience feel what he felt even in a foreign language-would opera have been so popular if that weren’t true? Satchmo had the same gift. Nobody in the United States played his kind of music. But joy and despair and anger came through just the same.
When the Rhythm Aces finished their number, the announcer said, “You know folks will hear this program in the CSA as well as the USA. What do you have to say to the people of the country you chose to leave?”
“Ain’t got nothin’ much to say to the white folks there,” Satchmo answered, sounding like a gravelly bullfrog. “White folks down there don’t listen to the niggers anyways. If you is colored an’ you is in the Confederate States, I gots one thing to tell you-git out if you can. You stays dere, you gwine end up dead. I hates to say it, but it’s de Lawd’s truth.”
His English was almost as foreign to Flora’s ear as his music. White Confederates had their own accent, or group of accents; she was used to those. People from the USA, though, seldom got to hear how uneducated Confederate Negroes spoke.
“How did you get out of the CSA?” the announcer asked.