"Oh, hell." He pivoted away.
"You want the treaty to fail." She was losing control, something unusual for her; he heard it in the unsteadiness of her voice.
"Willa, I told you what I want. As for the rest of it, you're still on stage. Dreaming! The Cheyennes won't quit until they're penned up or killed. That may not be pretty, that may not please you or your Quaker friends who bleed their hearts out for a bunch of savages they never have to deal with, but that's how it is, and you ought to wake up."
"I'm awake, thank you. I thought you might have changed a little. You won't give the treaty a chance."
"Because that's useless, goddamn it. Henry Stanley said it. General Sherman has been saying it for two years."
"And what all of you prophesy eventually comes true? Why don't you prophesy peace for a change?"
"By God, you're the most blind, unrealistic —"
"You're the one who's blind, Charles. Blind to what you're becoming. Some sort of — of hate-filled creature who lives to kill. I don't want a man like that."
"Don't worry, you haven't got one — even though you chase damn hard."
He was shouting. She cried out, "Bastard!" and struck at him with her open hand. He deflected it and stepped back. He was altogether stunned when he realized that even as she cursed him, she was crying.
He stood like a dolt under the autumn stars, watching her flying figure race back toward the lamps of the Addition. "Willa, wait. It isn't safe for a woman to be by herself —"
"You be quiet!" she yelled over her shoulder. She stopped and faced him. "You don't know how to behave like a decent human being. You drive everyone away. The war did it, Duncan says. The war, the war — I'm sick of the war and I'm sick of you."
She turned and ran on. He heard her weeping. The sound faded slowly, and then he lost her running figure against the black shapes of the flimsy buildings of the new town.
He walked slowly along the side of the Drovertown Hotel to the rail in front where he'd tied his mount. He was lifting his boot to the stirrup when someone lurched out of the heavy shadow. The man had been concealed there, waiting. Charles jumped back, panicky because he'd left his sidearm at the fort. The moment the attacker stepped into the light from a saloon next door, Charles saw the chrysanthemum on his lapel, and smelled the gin.
"You damned, base cad!" Sam Trump's face was blotched by anger. His temples were stained by hair dye that had run. He raised his fist, intending to strike Charles's head. Charles took hold of his forearm and with no trouble kept it away. Trump twisted and struggled.
"Let go, damn you, Main. I'm going to give you what I promised you for hurting that fine young woman."
"I didn't hurt her. We just had an argument."
"You did more than argue. She ran in sobbing. She has iron courage, and I have never seen her so devastated." He tried to lift a knee and kick Charles's groin through the furry overcoat. Charles easily threw him off balance. The actor cried out and landed on his rump.
Trump's breathing was strident. He moved tentatively on the ground, as if he'd twisted something. "It must give you satisfaction to injure persons weaker than yourself. You're no better than those savages you purport to hate. Take yourself out of my sight."
Charles hauled his boot back, ready to kick the old fool. Then reason took hold. He mounted the troop horse and quickly trotted away up the street, shaking with anger and self-loathing. If there had been anything at all left between him and Willa Parker, it was gone now.
MADELINE'S JOURNAL
November, 1867. Impossible to do business at the Gettys store. His rates remain a usurious 70%, and a share of the crop. Those are his terms for whites. Black men are turned away.
... People somewhat mollified by appointment of Gen. Edw. Canby to command the military district. A Kentuckian; not as harsh as old Sickles. Gen. Scott, in charge of the state Bureau, is said to have ambitions to be the next gov. Very odd for a man who first arrived in Carolina as a war prisoner. Opinion of him is divided. Some say he is a trimmer. Does he want to govern the state in order to loot it? ...
We continue to flirt with ruin. A late-season storm brought salt tides flooding far up the Ashley. Our rice crop was killed. The old stream-driven saw I saved so hard to buy for the mill broke during the second day of operation. Repairs are dear. To pay, I will have to short Dawkins's next bank installment. He will not be happy.
But there are crumbs of good news. Brett wrote at last. Her little boy, G. W., grows and thrives in the San Francisco climate. After a year's hardship, Billy's engineering firm has won a contract for the water, gas, and elevator systems in a new hotel.
Hearing of successes like theirs, I am sometimes tempted to abandon this place and start over myself. Only what I promised you, Orry — the dream of rebuilding — keeps me here. But every day seems to push the realization of the dream further into the distance ...
... Special election soon, to decide whether we shall have a constitutional convention. The Army continues to register males to vote. If they are black, the new U. L. club instructs them on how to exercise that right ...
In the autumn dusk, Andy Sherman hurried through the hamlet of Summerton. A soldier, one of the registrars, was hauling down the American flag hung outside the abandoned cabin taken over by the military. Nearby, a corporal chatted with a barefoot white girl winding a strand of her hair round and round her finger. Andy marveled. In some ways, the war might never have happened at all.
In other ways it remained a hard reality. On the dark porch of the store, someone in a rocker watched him go by, following his progress by turning his head. Dying light flashed off the glass ovals of spectacles. Andy could fairly smell the hostility.
After walking a mile more, he turned off the river road onto a narrow track fringed by palmetto and prickly pear. The moon hung above the trees now, a brilliant white circle. A black boy with bad teeth guarded the road with an old squirrel rifle. Andy nodded and started by. The boy barred him with the rifle, sheepishly. "Passwords, Sherman."
Passwords, a secret grip — Andy found it childish and insulting. Unfortunately most of the club members enjoyed such things.
"Liberty," he said. "Lincoln. League."
"God bless General Grant. Pass on, brother."
He entered the cabin after being inspected by Wesley, a bullet-headed black man with a pistol in his belt. Wesley assisted the club's organizer and was suited to the task; he was a bully.
A look of dislike passed between them. Andy slipped to a back bench, noting about twenty others present, young and old. The organizer nodded a greeting from the end of the cabin where he stood before a framed portrait of Lincoln swagged with a piece of dirty bunting.
Nothing about Lyman Klawdell impressed Andy. Not his shabby clothes and jutting teeth, not his whining Yankee voice or tied-down Colt revolver. Klawdell called for a lantern to be blown out, which left a single candle burning on a crate near the portrait. The candle lighted Klawdell's chin and long nose from beneath. His eyes gleamed in the black hollows of the sockets. The eerie effect produced some nervous shivers and grins.
Klawdell rapped a gavel on the crate. "Meeting of the Union League Club, Ashley River District, now in session. Praise God, praise freedom, praise the Republican Party."
"Amen," the listeners responded in unison. Andy remained silent. To be a free man did you have to recite on cue?
"Boys —" If any of the others took Klawdell's word as an insult, Andy saw no sign. "We are approaching a momentous day for South Carolina. I refer to the special election to call the constitutional convention that will set this state on the right path at last. We must have a convention in order to thwart His Accidency, Mr. Johnson" — groans, jeers — "who has proved no friend of the colored man. He continues to work against the Congress as it seeks to guarantee your rights —"