American Front

But disciplining him didn't look so repugnant as it usually did, not when the alternative was paying more of the bills that made her capital flow away like the waters of the Congaree -in fact, more swiftly than the lazy waters of the river. She nodded again. "Send him in."

"Yes, ma'am." Scipio turned and murmured to his companion in the hallway. Cassius showed himself for the first time. His shapeless cotton garments, brightened only by the blue banda

A

Cassius could not long bear up under her scrutiny. He cast his eyes down to the hardwood floor. A

"What do you have to say for yourself?" she asked, her voice crisp and businesslike. "It had better be good."

He interlocked the fingers of his hands, a gesture almost prayerful in its supplication. "I is sorry, Miss A

She didn't think of speaking it now. Using her own brand of English helped remind Cassius who was superior, who inferior. " 'Sorry' might be enough to make amends for being gone a day or two," she snapped. "You were gone for four mortal weeks. Where did you go? What did you do? Did you think you could just show up here again one day and go on about your business as if nothing had happened? Answer me!"

Cassius did some more hand-wringing. He was good at it -too good to be altogether convincing. He had a foxy gleam in his eye, too, one that never quite went away no matter how contrite and woebegone the rest of his face looked. "Whe' I was at? Miss A

"I don't believe a word of it," she answered. "If you wanted to go on a long hunting trip, you know you wouldn't have had any trouble arranging it with me. You've done that before -never for four weeks, but you've done it."

He hung his head again. Now she thought she recognized the expression on his face. If he'd been white, he would have blushed. After a long silence, he said, "Miss A

Not a white man, she noted, just a man. A suspicion began forming in her mind. "Go ahead," she told him.

He twisted his hands once more, this time, she judged, in embarrassment. She wasn't a man; no one who was had any cause to doubt that. "Miss A

Since he'd been gone that long, A

"She name Drusilla, Miss A

"And so you just went off after her." For all her effort, A

"No, ma'am." Cassius shook his head. But he might have said the same thing before the war. He was far and away the best hunter on the plantation; he was liable to make himself invisible to anyone who wanted to keep an eye on him.

Well, now that he'd come back, he wasn't invisible any more. Turning up the intensity of her glare, A

"I ain't lyin', Miss A

"Scipio!" A

She picked up the telephone, rang Jubal Marberry's home, and put her questions to him. "What? Drusilla?" he said, shouting at her; he was old and deaf. "Yes, there's been some new buck nigger sniffing around Drusilla. There's always a buck or two sniffing around Drusilla, same as there's always flies buzzing around sugar water, heh, heh." The last was a wheezy chuckle. A

But that, whether or not it was his affair, was his concern. He'd told her what she needed to know. She summoned Cassius back to the office. "All right -it seems you were where you say you were. You could have gotten into worse mischief. Even so… Of course your pay for the time you were gone is gone, too." Cassius grimaced, but didn't say anything. A

"Maybe, Miss A

She went back to her bill-paying. A few minutes later, the telephone rang. She was alert as she picked it up -maybe Jubal Marberry had done some more checking and found out that the Negro who'd been keeping Drusilla company wasn't Cassius after all. But the voice on the other end of the line wasn't old and rheumy, but young and vigorous: "Miss A

I was just calling to find out whether the coast is clear for me to go up there and sleep with you. A

"Oh. I'm right sorry to hear that." Sorry both ways, probably, she thought; the wounded tone in his voice certainly suggested he was sorry she wasn't inviting him up despite poor Jacob's condition. And then he said, "Maybe you could come down to Charleston one day and pay me a visit, then."

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