"That's the idea," said Vickery. "And so there won't be war… unless." Their eyes met and Quidley understood.
Shiloh had to succeed.
An hour later, Vickery's rewritten documents in his briefcase, he stood again on Shenandoah, watching the Line dwindle astern. Large as they were, they seemed at last only toys, dwarfed by the immensity and dispassion of the sea.
For just a moment, standing far above the waves, he had a sense of both the power and the fragility of men. The Line, the concentrated might of half the world, was now a distant scatter of dark pinpoints. With the feeling came a sense, too, of his own part, small though it was, in the vast counterpoise of peoples and ideas that men on both sides called the Almost War. Aubrey Quidley was a tiny pivot in the immense ticking shell of Earth. But he could be an important pivot. By doing his duty — as Quidleys had ever done, Audemus jura nostra defendere — he could preserve the cause of freedom, of leadership by the natural elite, of the rights of property, safety, and duty. God himself favored the Allied side. They alone held Him in proper reverence as the source of their dominion over the less-advanced peoples. As the Indian, the colored, the Asiatic themselves recognized.
He nodded. The cause was just. But from somewhere the dark tortured face of Turner took form, blood welling from between clenched lips. He caught himself and gripped the rail as the sea below began to spin lazily around him, countermarching with slow dignity as if he were above the axis of the slowly rotating Earth. He bit his lips. A slight dizziness, no more than that. Possibly he was airsick, possibly the slow roll of the ship had done it. Perhaps a touch of concussion from the guns. It would pass….
NINE
Her hands shook as tried to fit the key to the lock. She cursed viciously with the mother oaths that were common coin among the women at the House. When it went in at last she twisted it hard and pushed the door open.
"Johnny?"
There was no answer. She could tell by the dead air in the apartment that no one had been in it since she'd left to go to work. It was now five in the morning and she was tired and her thighs, her belly, ached and burned; the last customer had been heavy, savage, and so drunken he'd labored over her for a full hour without his spasm.
She sat down suddenly on the tatty sofa and put her head in her hands. Where was he? His wound was still unhealed, he shouldn't be out on the streets. And what if he was picked up! Fear made her hug herself and rock back and forth, staring at the bottle he'd left empty, two days before, with two used cups —
Two used cups. Why hadn't she noticed that yesterday? So someone else had been here. They'd had a drink. Sometime later he had left. Who might it have been? Only his Railroad friends knew he was staying with her. Only Bo, Willie, the other men at the docks.
She felt weak; her body longed for a lonely bed. She looked at the window. The first gray light of dawn showed through the cracked square of glass.
She decided to go out and look for him.
The little electric heater set a cup of water bubbling in seconds. The CE-issue coffee powder made an insipid brew, but she poured the last few drops of the corn liquor into it and drank it off. It sent warmth through her. Johnny, she thought. Where are you?
The street was empty. She had no curfew worries; the Night Worker notation on her pass took care of that. But where to look first? Willie's, she thought. His place the closest.
Willie lived upstairs in one of the cheap brick two-story cribs that lined Church Street. His woman, China, a dried-up old creature with twinkling dark eyes and a reputation as a root doctor, answered her rap. "What you want this time a' the morning? You that Lewis girl, ain't you?"
"Yes'm. Please, is Willie in? Ask him if he knows where my man Johnny is."
The woman laughed — cackled, rather — and closed the door. Something thumped. Then Willie opened it and came out onto the narrow landing in his underwear. He was grossly fat, but his expresion was goodhumored. "Hello, Vyry. What you wantin'?"
"Johnny. He hasn't been back for two days. Where is he?"
"Johnny? I see him th'other night at the" — he seemed to catch himself — "the other night. Friday night it was."
"Was he all right? Where did he go after?"
"Yes, he seemed right lively, though he was limpin' a little. I didn't see him none after I left. I thought he'd go right on back to your place. Didn't he never arrive?"
— "No. He hasn't been back since then."
"Git my clothes, China," he yelled through the open door. To Vyry he said, "I help you look. Don't know just where — but there'll be two of us out. You tried Finnick's?"
"No."
"I'll go over there. Maybe you best try the hospital, the po-lice—"
"You think he might have—"
"Might have got rolled comin' home late. Or the patrollers pick him up, in which case he either at the station waitin' on trial, or down at the hospital."
"Oh, Lord."
"Les' go, girl."
The dawn was strong in the east now. She was glad of that; Willie would be legal. The police? The hospital? She'd walked several blocks before she thought of phoning. She passed several booths for whites, but had to walk another mile before she found one for colored that wasn't broken.
There was no John Turner in the colored ward at Norfolk General. She cursed and dropped coins and dialed the police. The dispatcher hung up at the sound of her voice.
No time now to curse being black in a white world. She hurried west through the streets. White men, up early, stared at her through the glass of automobiles as they passed. To hell what they thought, she said to herself. Johnny, Johnny —
She was almost running when someone gripped her roughly, almost throwing her down, and she looked up into the solid, suspicious face of a cop.
"What's going on, sister?" Small, hostile eyes. A large stomach, hairy hand resting on a holster. "Late for work?" He laughed.
"I'm going to the station."
"The station? Why?"
"My man — he's not come home."
"That's risky business, little darlin'." The hand held her arm insistently. "Maybe it'd be best if you was to just wait for him to come back. If'n he don't in a couple of days — well, you're a pretty young Negress. Might fancy you myself—"
"Let me go."
His guffaw echoed behind her as she fled. Down Fenchurch, toward the marbled heart of town. Past the old brick colonial homes on Freemason, past the old Norfolk Academy, past the new domed convention center, fire-blackened from the riots; past the new tall buildings of the banks and the government. Till at last, panting, she stopped at the corner of Granby and City Hall Avenue, and looked up at the police building. It was an immense monolith in red brick and red mortar and blank black narrow windows. A tiled moat surrounded it. Over the narrow bridge at the entrance arched a stark square of orange steel, flanked by the flags of Virginia and of the Confederacy, that of Virginia deep blue, of the Confederacy scarlet….
She'd never been inside. No CE would… voluntarily. She forced herself forward. As she reached for the door it opened automatically. A guard in the foyer looked up. A receptionist stopped talking to a man in a business suit. The guard came up swiftly. "What do you want?"
She feared the eyes — the flat hostile blue gazes with no sympathy, no human feeling at all. But she had to find Johnny. "I'm — I'm looking for someone."
"Who?"
"My man. His name's John Turner."
"He a prisoner here?"
"I don't know. I called, but they hung up on me."
"What makes you think he's here?"
"He hasn't been home… and he don't have a night pass."