McCain removed the gold toothpick from his mouth, his teeth glistening briefly in the dark, as though he might be smiling. "You're Bob Perry," he said.
"My friends call me
Robert. But you can call me Lieutenant Perry. Why is it I have the feeling this collection of drunkards and white trash is under your direction?"
"Search me," McCain said.
"Can I accept your word you're about to take them from our presence?"
"They're just boys having fun."
"I'll put it to you more simply. How would you like to catch a ball between your eyes?"
The wind had died and the air in the street had turned stale and close, stinking of horse and dog droppings, the lantern overhead iridescent with humidity. The joy in the revelers had died, too, as they watched their leader being systematically humiliated. McCain's horse shifted its weight and tossed its head against the reins. McCain brought his fist down between the animal's ears.
"Hold, you shithog!" he said.
"Give me your answer, sir," Robert said.
McCain cleared his throat and spit out into the street. He wiped his mouth.
"You've read for the law. I'm a merchant who doesn't have your verbal skills," he said. He turned his horse in a circle, its hindquarters and swishing tail causing Robert to step backward. Then McCain straightened his shoulders and pulled the creases out of his coat and said something under his breath.
"What? Say that again!" Robert said, starting forward.
But McCain kicked his heels into his horse's ribs and set off in a full gallop down the street, his legs clenched as tightly in the stirrups as a wood clothespin, one hand dipping inside his coat. He jerked the bit back in his horse's mouth, whirled in a circle, and bore down on Robert Perry, his bowler flying from his head, a nickel-plated, double-barrel derringer pointed straight out in front of him.
He popped off only one round, nailing the lantern on the pole dead center, blowing glass in a shower above Robert's head. He held up the derringer in triumph, the unfired barrel a silent testimony to the mercy he was extending an adversary.
The revelers roared with glee and vindication and climbed aboard their flatbed wagon, then followed their leader back down the street to a saloon. Robert picked a sliver of glass off his shirt and pitched it into the darkness.
"The word is he's a White Leaguer," Willie said.
"I don't think they're all cut out of the same cloth," Robert said.
Willie looked at Robert's profile, the uncut hair on the back of his neck, the clarity in his eyes. "How would you be knowing that?" he said.
"The carpetbaggers are pulling the nails out of our shoes. We don't always get to choose our bedfellows. Wake up, Willie," Robert replied.
"Oh, Robert, don't be taken in by these fellows. They do their deeds in darkness and dishonor our colors. Tell me you're not associating with that bunch."
But Robert did not reply. As Willie watched his friend walk inside the school to find Abigail Dowling, the sword wound in his shoulder seemed to flare as though someone had held a lighted match to his skin.
Chapter Twenty-three
EACH morning Ira Jamison rose to greater prosperity and political expectations. Where others saw the collapse of a nation, he saw vast opportunity. He listened respectfully while his neighbors decried carpetbag venality and gave his money and support to the clandestine groups who spoke of retaking Louisiana from the Union, but in truth he viewed the carpetbaggers as cheaply dressed and poorly educated amateurs who could be bought for pocket change.
His summer days of 1865 began with a fine breakfast on his terrace, with an overview of the Mississippi and the trees and bluffs on the far side. He drank his coffee and read his newspapers and the mail that was delivered in a leather pouch from the plantation store. He subscribed to publications in New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, and Chicago, and read them all while a pink glow spread across the land and fresh convict labor throughout the state arrived by steamboat and jail wagon for processing in the camps and barracks they built themselves as the first down payment on their sentences.
Ira Jamison wondered if Abe Lincoln, moldering in the grave, had any idea what he had done for Ira Jamison when he emancipated the slaves..
Then he unwrapped the current issue of Harper's Weekly, read the lead stories, and turned to the second page. At the top of a four-column essay were the words:
The Resurrection of a Vanquished Enemy? The Negro as Convict in the New South, A View by Our Louisiana Correspondent
Jamison set down his coffee cup and began reading.
Even the apologists for Jefferson Davis would concede he spent a political lifetime attempting to spread slavery throughout the Western territories as well as the Caribbean. His close friend Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest has recently tried to influence congressional legislation that would bring about the importation of one million Cantonese coulees to the United States as a source of post-Emancipation labor.