"Yellin' ain't all them Freedom Party fellas does," Scipio said. "Erasmus reckon somethin' bad happen to he if he don't pay, so he done quit."
"That's a shame and a disgrace," Oglethorpe said. "That is nothing but a shame and a disgrace. This town needs hardworking folks like Erasmus a hell of a lot more than it needs blowhards like those Freedom Party yahoos."
Did he know Gulliver's Travels? Or was he using the word as a general term of contempt? Scipio didn't see how he could ask. That might involve trying to explain how he knew Gulliver's Travels. He kept trying to bury his past, but it lived on inside him.
All he said was, "Yes, suh." And then he got down to the business that had brought him out of the Terry: "Mistuh Oglethorpe, I gots me a family to feed. I been workin' fo' Erasmus a good long time now. Ain't like you an' Aurelius, but a long time. You know somebody lookin' for a waiter? I does janitor work, too, an' I cooks some. Ain't as good as you an' Erasmus, but I ain't bad, neither."
Oglethorpe frowned. "I was afraid you were gonna ask me that. Why else would you come up here?" Scipio's face heated. The restaurant owner only shrugged. "I don't mind. If you know somebody, you better ask him. Only trouble is, I can't think of anyone who's short of help right now. What about you, Aurelius? You know the Terry a damn sight better than I do."
"I ought to, boss, don't you reckon?" But Aurelius' smile didn't stick on his face. "No, I don't know nobody, neither. Wish to heaven I did."
"Damn." Scipio spoke quietly, but with great feeling.
"May not be so bad," Oglethorpe said. "This isn't like some businesses-slots do open up now and again. You pound the pavement-you'll find something. You can use my name, too. Don't reckon you'll need to, though. You tell people you worked for Erasmus all these years, they'll know you're the straight goods."
"Hope so. Do Jesus, I hope so." Scipio drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "Hope somethin' come up pretty damn quick. Don't wanna end up in no Mitcheltown."
As soon as he said the word, he wished he hadn't. It wasn't that he didn't feel that fear. He did. But the shantytowns named after the Confederate president were a judgment on the Whigs. Calling them by that name-even thinking of them by that name-only helped the Freedom Party. Trouble was, everyone in the Confederate States called them Mitcheltowns, just as they were Blackfordburghs in the United States. Whoever chanced to be in power when the disaster struck got the blame.
"Good luck, Xerxes," John Oglethorpe said. "Wish to God I could do something more for you."
"Thank you kindly, suh," Scipio answered. "I thanks you very kindly. An' I wishes you could, too."
A s Hipolito Rodriguez had seen when he went up north to fight in Texas, spring could be a wonderful time of year, a time when the land renewed itself after the chill and gloom of winter. It wasn't like that in Sonora. Here, it was the time when the rains petered out. The weather got warmer, yes, but it had never really turned cold. He'd seen snow in the trenches of Texas. The memory still appalled him.
He eyed the streams coming down from the mountains. If they dried up, his crops would dry up with them. They seemed all right. He worried anyhow. He'd never known a farmer who didn't worry. Even the white men beside whom he'd fought had worried about what was happening to their farms while they went to war.
He'd plowed. He'd planted his corn and beans and squashes. Now he and the rest of his family watched them grow-and weeded to make sure they would grow. Work on a farm was never done. Even so, he sent his children into Baroyeca for schooling as often as they could go. He wanted them to have a chance at a life that wasn't work, work, work every minute of every day. He didn't know how much of a chance they would have, but any chance was better than none.
Teachers taught in English, of course. Rodriguez worried about that only every now and again-would the children forget their heritage? More often, he thought it good that they learn as much of the dominant language of the CSA as they could.
Magdalena knew very little English. With his wife, Rodriguez stuck to Spanish. Because of that, his sons and daughters-especially his sons-thought he understood less English than he really did. They started using it among themselves to say things they didn't want him to follow.
"Silly old fool," Miguel called him one day, smiling as if it were a compliment.
Rodriguez boxed his son's ears. He smiled, too, though he doubted whether Miguel appreciated it. "Silly young fool," he said, also in English.
After that, his children were a lot more careful when they had something to say either to him or about him. He went on about his business, more amused than otherwise. Life taught all sorts of lessons, and only some of them came from school.
No matter how tired he was at the end of a day, he tried to go into Baroyeca one evening a week for the Freedom Party meeting. Magdalena had given up complaining about that when she saw he came back neither drunk nor smelling of a puta 's cheap perfume.
As far as Rodriguez was concerned, the scent of victory in the air was headier than liquor, sweeter than the dubious charms of Baroyeca's handful of women of easy virtue. (With the closing of the silver mines, a lot of the whores had moved to other towns, towns where they hoped to do better for themselves. The business collapse had had all sorts of unexpected, unfortunate consequences.)
Robert Quinn did his best to fan that scent all over the countryside. Baroyeca still had no electricity. Quinn couldn't call people together to listen to Jake Featherston's weekly speeches on the wireless. He did the next best thing: he got the text of the speeches by telegram and translated them into Spanish himself. Even though it wasn't his native tongue, he spoke well, and plainly believed every word he said.
Those speeches gave Hipolito Rodriguez a window on a wider world, a world beyond Baroyeca. After one of them, he said, " Senor Quinn, you are a traveled man. Is it true what Senor Featherston says, that these politicians in Richmond are nothing but criminals?"
"If Jake Featherston says it, you can take it to the bank," Quinn answered-he would sometimes translate English idioms literally into Spanish. Considering the sad state of banking in the CSA these days, this one lost something in the translation. Even so, Rodriguez understood it. Quinn went on, "How can you trust the Party if you don't trust what Jake Featherston says? You can't. It's as simple as that. You do trust the Party, don't you?"
"Of course I do," Rodriguez answered quickly; he knew a dangerous question when he heard one. That didn't mean he wasn't telling the truth, though. "Without the Party, what would we be?"
"Bad off, that's what," Quinn replied. "But as long as we follow what Jake says, we'll be fine. He's the leader. He knows what's what. All we have to do is back him up. That's our job. Comprende? "
"Si, senor," Rodriguez said as the other men at the meeting nodded.
"Bueno." Quinn grinned. "If Jake was wrong, he couldn't have come as far as he has, now could he? He couldn't see what all was wrong with los Estados Confederados, either, eh? We've got a lot of work to do to win this election, and we'll have even more to do after we win it."
Carlos Ruiz asked a question that had also been in Rodriguez's mind: "After Senor Featherston wins the election, what will the Confederate States be like?"
"That's easy, Carlos," Robert Quinn answered. "That's real easy, to tell you the truth. Once Jake Featherston gets to be president, we will fix everything that's wrong with the Confederate States of America. Everything, by God. And once we fix everything that's wrong inside the country, then we start thinking about getting even with los Estados Unidos, too. How does that sound?"