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“Nigger, we can look all this shit up. If you’re lyin’, you’re dyin’,” the cop growled.
“Why you reckon I’m telling you this stuff? I want you to look it up,” Cinci
His attitude did confuse the white man, anyhow. He sounded a little less hostile when he asked, “You seen Bliss since?”
That was a dangerous question, because the answer was yes. Since Luther Bliss was one of the worst enemies the Confederates had in Kentucky, Cinci
If the Confederates asked the right questions of the right people, they could show the rest was a lie. The cop pointed a warning finger at Cinci
“Oh, yes, suh. I surely do,” Cinci
He sat there in the little interrogation room and worried. After a while, he needed to use the toilet-the Jax he’d drunk was taking his revenge. He stuck his head out the door and asked another cop if he could. He was afraid the white man would say no, if only to pile more discomfort and indignity on him. But the cop took him down the hall, let him do his business, and then led him back.
Cinci
“Suh, I been takin’ care o’ my mama, an’ my pa’s been taking care o’ me.” Cinci
“I seen you walk. I know you’re screwed up some kind of way,” the cop said.
“Do Jesus! That is the truth!” Cinci
“I know what we ought to do with you,” the policeman told him. “We ought to send you over the damn border. If the Yankees want you, they’re welcome to you. Sounds like all you want to do is get the hell out, and take your ma and pa with you. The longer you stay here, the more likely you are to get in trouble.”
Hope flowered in Cinci
“I’ll see what we can cook up,” the policeman said. “We deal with the damnyankees every now and then under flag of truce. If they want to let you cross the border, we’ll let you go.”
“Suh, when them guards grabbed me, I reckoned I was a dead man,” Cinci
“Don’t get yourself all hot and bothered yet,” the police captain said. “These things don’t move fast. When we’ve got to talk to the Yankees or they’ve got to talk to us, though, you’re on the list. For now, go on home and stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, suh. God bless you, suh!” Cinci
Since he wanted the same thing, he didn’t even complain about the long walk home. It didn’t hurt as much as it might have, either. When he got there, he found his father almost frantic. “What you doin’ here?” Seneca Driver exclaimed, eyes almost bugging out of his head in disbelief. “Some damnfool nigger done tol’ me them Freedom Party goons grab you.”
“They did, Pa,” Cinci
“You believe this here policeman?” His father didn’t sound as if he did.
But Cinci
The older man thought it over. He screwed up his face in what was almost a parody of cogitation. “He don’t mean nothin’ good by it,” he said at last. He wouldn’t believe a Confederate cop could be decent, and Cinci
Cinci
Congresswoman Flora Blackford clicked on the wireless set in her Philadelphia office. She usually left it off, turning it on at the hour and half hour to get what news she could. She had little-no, she had no-use for the music and advertising drivel that came out of the speaker most of the time.
Some people were saying television-wireless with moving pictures-was the next big thing. The war had put it on hold, and might have derailed it altogether. Flora wasn’t sure she was sorry. The idea of having to watch advertisements as well as listen to them turned her stomach.
She wasn’t listening to news now, though, or not directly. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was a quarter to five. What were they waiting for? The a
Out of the wireless poured music the likes of which was almost unknown in the United States. Negroes in the Confederate States had been oppressed for hundreds of years, and had no hope of anything else, anything better. They poured their wish for a different life-and a jaunty defiance of the life they were forced to live-into their music. Those sly rhythms and strange syncopations had no parallel in the USA. Satchmo might almost have been playing his trumpet in Portuguese rather than English.
And yet, a great singer could make an audience feel what he felt even in a foreign language-would opera have been so popular if that weren’t true? Satchmo had the same gift. Nobody in the United States played his kind of music. But joy and despair and anger came through just the same.
When the Rhythm Aces finished their number, the a
“Ain’t got nothin’ much to say to the white folks there,” Satchmo answered, sounding like a gravelly bullfrog. “White folks down there don’t listen to the niggers anyways. If you is colored an’ you is in the Confederate States, I gots one thing to tell you-git out if you can. You stays dere, you gwine end up dead. I hates to say it, but it’s de Lawd’s truth.”