Alternate Generals II

The League will enforce the Peace from now on, Wilson had proclaimed. Stevenson had been only nineteen, but he remembered it clearly. Seen with the idealism-and self-interest-of youth, Wilson's demilitarization had seemed bold and courageous.

In hindsight, Wilson seemed less wise. To keep American boys out of the meatgrinder of the Western Front was one thing. Boys who had trained with wooden rifles? Folly! It would have taken two years to build an American Expeditionary Force around the few professional regiments. And the Western Front ate regiments for breakfast. No, Wilson had been right about that.

Staying neutral had let him play peacemaker to the exhausted participants, to referee the Treaty of Silver Spring, to midwife his brainchild, the League of Nations. Yet, it is Wilson's League that now humiliates the United States, citing the very Article 10 upon which Lodge's Republicans had based their opposition. Mandatory member intervention in domestic disturbances.

"No," Stevenson tells Wallace with heavy finality. "Our citizen militias ca

"So white men must lay down their arms while the SCLC commandos creep through the hills and bayous, and strike with impunity under German protection?"

There is no audience to impress with fine words of defiance. Wallace must be speaking from the heart. His regrets about the mob ru

Wallace's eyes go wide, then he laughs. "King would never agree. Why would he go against his protectors?"

"He may have his reasons. But he needs a word from… the friends of your friends. We have to stop this before it goes too far."

Wallace's lips seem to thicken and a distant look comes over him. "It may already have," he says sadly. And indeed, the old world of the 30s and the 40s, of cheap, servile labor, are probably gone past recalling. No matter how the Situation plays itself out, things will never again be as they were before. Thus do reactionaries, fighting to preserve a half-mythic past, create in the process a new world order.

Wallace rises and makes to leave; but at the door he turns. "You know, Stevenson," he says, "I never much cared for the nigger. All that smilin' and shuckin' and jivin'… Nothin' there a man could respect. But that King, he showed they could stand up like men, and I got to respect that. If you ever see that murdering son of a bitch, you tell him I said that."

Stevenson goes all bland. "When would I ever see King?"

The two of them lock eyes for a moment and Stevenson senses the pressure inside the other man. Wallace is a boiler, building a head of steam. Then the Alabaman laughs. "When he wants to see you." And then Stevenson is alone once more.

That evening, in the hotel's restaurant, talk runs high. A German soldier has raped a woman-or so the bar talk has it. The honor of the South has been tarnished once again. If they had let it go at that-if they had spoken of liberty and independence and national honor; if they had spoken only of sovereignty betrayed-he might have stomached it. But-

"… snooty Europeans…"

"… bringin' them niggers back to Darktown…"

"… forced busing…"

"… cold-blooded guerilla killers livin' right over the tracks from us…"

"… goose-steppers can't be everywhere, and the minute they turn their back…"

"… ain't enough bayonets in the world…"

"… that Southern Colored Liberation Corps ain't turned over their guns like they was supposed to, so why should we…"

Stevenson hunches over his steak. It is overdone and salty. The vegetables are boiled to a mush. No one in the South knows how to cook. He wants to tell them that they are blaming the wrong people. It wasn't the coloreds that brought in the League, not King and his SCLC; but they, themselves, and the bloody savagery they had wrought on their neighbors.

But he says nothing. If the people around him despise the coloreds and hate the Germans, they do not exactly love Yankees, either. This is a land that treasures its grudges.

Northern governors, chafing over Black's inaction, had been quietly pla

Well, the match had been thrown-by the sanctimonious Europeans-and all hell had broken loose anyhow; and if the South has lost its sovereignty, the North had lost its chance to stand up for a principle. There comes a time when circumspection sails almighty close to acquiescence; when, as Burke observed, forebearance ceases to be a virtue.

We should have spoken up, he thinks as he signs the meal to his room. Is Party unity worth this? Yet, without the Solid South, the Democrats will never win the White House. Truman is doomed, but he must run a credible campaign if the Party is to be taken seriously in 56. That means northern and southern wings closing ranks. If the party splits, men of quality like Sparkman will lose all influence and restraint over men like Wallace. And even men like Wallace would give way to those who made no fine distinction between lynching the right or wrong Negro.

That night the dull thump of an explosion shakes the windows of the hotel. It wakes him and he lies in bed unable to sleep, listening to the rattle of distant gunfire that follows.

The next morning the Germans revoke all travel permits. Stevenson drives out with the locals to look and returns shaken to his hotel room, where he pours himself the last of the bourbon, and stares into it without drinking.

A crater in the highway and burnt and scattered flinders are all that remain of the guard shack. Telephone poles have been toppled and charred like so much kindling. Gasoline fires burn hotter than Hell itself. Of Lieutenant Goldberg and the young sentry, nothing but greasy ashes remain. Stevenson stares out the hotel room window at the blackened remains of Darktown and, for a moment, he imagines the sweetish odor of crackling flesh carried on the hot summer breeze. It is overpowering, as if millions have been incinerated.

The alcohol, when he throws it back over his throat, does nothing to soothe the roiling in his belly.

Now the Germans will retaliate in their usual ham-fisted ma

Sparkman is not so inept. He knows the Party's interests lie in making the Situation go away as quickly and as quietly as possible. Wallace can call it Kaiser-kissing if he wishes, but there comes a time to turn the other cheek and negotiate a solution. Even Wallace, intemperate as he is, must know better. The attack on the guard post doesn't quite make sense yet. Somthing is missing.

Stevenson senses that not all the pieces are yet in play.

Late that afternoon, helicopters settle on the town and disgorge elite storm troops, who fan out into every neighborhood of the city. If the locals think the Wehrmacht hard to deal with, they find these newcomers in their Prussian-blue uniforms impossible. Hardened veterans of the Philippine campaign, they have dealt with tougher resistance than anything the "good ol' boys" of Selma can muster. Men who have fought with Japanese fanatics in Pacific jungles will not flinch from potbellied white men in overalls. They arrest one man from every block, apparently at random, and bring them to a compound just outside the city limits. In the barroom of the hotel, Stevenson now hears fear mixed with the feckless bravado.