Three doors this side of the office, he stopped, studying an odd little scene in progress. A trio of loutish men hovered around the hitch rail, between the recruiting office entrance and a broad-shouldered Negro boy in the street. One of the whites wore a soiled army uniform. Billy recognized Fessenden, the man who had once harassed Brett. The black youth had an apprehensive expression.
"Scat, coon," one of the men said. He picked up a good-sized pebble. Laughing, he lobbed it at the boy's old shoes. The stone landed an inch in front of a cracked leather toe. The soft plop was exaggerated by the silence.
"Yeh, get on back up to the mill and go to work," Fessenden said, equally amused. He relaxed and leaned back, resting his elbows on the rail and cocking one leg over the other like a standing stork. "Bob Lee's on the run. War's nearly over. We don't want colored boys fighting for us."
Billy stood quietly beside the brick wall of the cafe, which closed up during this part of the afternoon. The sloping wooden covering built over the sidewalk placed him in heavy shadow, but the Negro boy, facing the buildings, saw him. Fessenden and his cronies didn't. Watching the shabbily dressed boy, Billy began rubbing his thumb back and forth over the oiled strop leather.
The boy was clearly frightened, yet he swallowed hard and said, "I don't want trouble. I just want to join up while there's time." He stepped forward.
The young, pimply white man to Fessenden's left jerked something from a pocket in his checked pants. A snap — a flash — the boy held perfectly still at the sight of the long blade of the clasp knife.
"D'ja hear what the soldier said? No niggers from this town wanted in the You-nited States Army. Now you turn around and shuffle back to your shanty, boy, or they'll be pickin' pieces of your black balls outa this here dirt for weeks." A pause. "Boy? You hear me? Don't just stand there when a white man —"
"Let him pass."
The voice out of blue shadow spun all three of them. Billy stepped to the sunlit walk, halting just short of the recruiting office door. He couldn't see who was inside, but clearly they had no heart for intervening. Damn fool, Billy called himself, conscious of the absence of a side arm. A crawl of sweat reached his beard from under his left eye.
Fessenden was the only member of the trio to recognize him. "This is no damn affair of yours, Hazard."
"He has a right to present himself for enlistment if he wants."
"A right?" The knife carrier guffawed. "Since when's a coon got any —?"
Billy overlapped him, louder. "So let him pass."
"Tell him to go fuck, Lute," the third man said.
Fessenden scratched his stubbly chin, mumbling, "Shit, I dunno, boys. He's a wounded veteran like me."
"I've been told you were wounded in the tail," Billy said. "While you were running."
"You son of a bitch," Fessenden yelled, but it was the pimply one with the knife who took action, loping at Billy. Hastily, Billy backed against the building, broke the string on the strop, unrolled the leather, and laid it full force across the attacker's face.
"Oh, my God." Shrieking, he dropped the knife. A purpling welt striped him from brow to chin. The leather had drawn blood as well.
Under the heavy bandages, Billy's wound throbbed. Dizziness assailed him suddenly. Bending and watching Billy at the same time, the pimply young man groped for his knife. Billy kicked it off the wooden walk into the dust. Fessenden gave him an outraged look, heaved an aggrieved sigh.
"Shit," he said again. "Next thing, you'll be tellin' us this nigger oughta vote — just like white men."
"If he's allowed to die for the government, I guess he should be allowed to vote for it, wouldn't you say, Lute?"
Snickers of disbelief. "Jesus," Fessenden said, shaking his head. "What'd they do to you in the army? You've turned into one of them goddamn radicals."
It was nearly as surprising to Billy as to them. He had spoken out of conviction, one that had been growing without full awareness on his part until this contretemps demanded the translation of conviction to deed. He rippled the strop against his leg.
"Have I? Well — so be it."
He looked at the pimply lout and, summoning his best West Point upperclassman's voice, bellowed, "Get the hell away from me, you garbage." He raised the strop. "That's an order."
The pimply young man ran like a deer, nearly knocking Pinckney Herbert from his observation place in front of his store.
Billy glanced at the Negro boy. "You can go on inside."
The boy walked toward Lute Fessenden. He didn't hurry, but neither did he waste time while he was within Fessenden's reach. But Fessenden just watched him, turning as he passed, repeatedly shaking his head.
Before the boy entered the office, he gave Billy a smile. He said, "Thank you, sir," and was gone.
Billy raised the strop, intending to roll it up again. The sudden motion made Fessenden's other companion flinch visibly. Though Billy felt a mite guilty about it, he milked the moment, drawing the strop ever so slowly and provocatively across his open left palm. Fessenden's companion drew back.
"Good day, gentlemen," Billy barked. The frightened man jumped, grabbing Fessenden's arm.
"Let go of me, for Chrissake." Fessenden shook him off, and the two shamed whites quickly disappeared around the corner.
Shameless, Billy said to himself. Absolutely shameless, that last part. It relieved his guilt to recall that the two were deserving.
Pinckney Herbert ran down the sidewalk to shake his hand. Billy had all but forgotten about the painful wound. He felt fine: wickedly amused, unexpectedly proud, gloriously alive.
130
Rain fell on the low country that same afternoon. Charles sat at the foot of a great water oak, reasonably well protected from the drizzle as he read an old Baltimore paper that had somehow found its way to Summerville, the village where he and Andy had gone in search of food.
Charles had stayed at Mont Royal much longer than he should have, and much longer than he had planned. But every hand was needed to put up a new house — little more than an oversized cabin — on the site once occupied by the plantation summerhouse, which had been smashed and leveled but not burned. All the lumber in the new place was either broken, scorched, or both. The result was a crazy-quilt structure, but at least it sheltered the survivors, black and white, in separately curtained areas.
The food situation was desperate. Their neighbor Markham Bull had shared some hoarded flour and yeast. Thus they had bread and their own rice, but little else. Occasional visitors who appeared on the river road said the whole state was starving.
The visit to Summerville confirmed it. Even if they had been carrying bags of gold, it would have done no good. There was nothing to buy. Just the paper left behind by some refugee in flight.
Wishing for a cigar — he hadn't enjoyed one since the day he came home — Charles finished reading the lengthy account of Abe Lincoln's second inaugural. The war might last a while longer, but Charles assumed Lincoln would soon take charge of a conquered South. Therefore he ought to know what the man was thinking.
Mr. Lincoln sounded forgiving — on the surface. There was much in his address about malice toward none and charity for all. He wanted to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. He wanted to achieve a just and lasting peace.
All very fine and humane, Charles thought. But certain other passages suggested that while Mr. Lincoln might forgive Southerners as individuals, he could not forgive the sin of slavery. And so long as the institution survived, he would prosecute the war.