"I can't argue with you there, sir," Toricelli said.

"Good," Dowling said. "I'm glad. For your sake, I'm glad. It's a free country. You can disagree with the president. Nobody will say a word. But when he gives an order, we follow it."

"Of course, sir," Captain Toricelli replied, as any officer in the Army would have done.

A few days later, Dowling received Heber Young in his office. Young, a handsome man in his early thirties, was a grandson of Brigham Young. Given the number of wives and children Brigham had had, that was hardly a unique distinction in Utah these days. This particular Young came as close to being an official leader as the Mormons had. Since, under martial law, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was proscribed, he couldn't be very official. But he wasn't exactly unofficial, either.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Young?" Dowling asked after greetings that were what diplomats called "correct": polite and chilly.

"People here need work, Colonel," Heber Young replied.

"People all over the country need work, sir," Dowling said.

"Will you tell me the problem is not worse here?" Young asked.

"If it is, whose fault is that?" Dowling said. "I was with General Pershing when a Mormon fanatic murdered him-a Mormon fanatic we've never caught, for other Mormon fanatics have sheltered him for all the years since."

"I don't know how you can say that, Colonel, when the U.S. government insists again and again that there is no such thing as the Mormon Church in Utah these days." Young spoke with surprisingly mild irony.

It was still enough to raise a flush on Dowling's plump cheeks. "Funny, Mr. Young. Very funny. Come to the point, if you'd be so kind."

"All right. I will." Young looked serious to the point of solemnity. "We could use-we desperately need-a public-works program to give men jobs, help them support their families, and, most important of all, give them hope."

Dowling sighed. "As it happens, I have discussed that very notion with President Hoover in the past few days. He opposes such programs not only here but anywhere in the USA. Don't expect them. Don't hope for them. You will be disappointed."

Heber Young proved he could quote the Old Testament as well as the Book of Mormon, murmuring, " ' Mene, mene, tekel upharsin. Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting.' As God said to Belshazzar, so I say to Hoover." And he walked out of Abner Dowling's office without a backward glance.

S cipio hadn't got so dressed up since his days as Anne Colleton's butler. The Huntsman's Lodge was as fine a restaurant as Augusta boasted, and expected its waiters to look the part. (It paid no better than any other restaurant, and worse than some. It expected the men who served food to make most of their money from tips. The customers tipped no better there than anywhere else. One reason they'd got rich enough to afford to eat at the Huntsman's Lodge was their reluctance to part unnecessarily with even a penny.)

Walking to the restaurant in boiled shirt, black tie, and tails was torture for Scipio in the sodden heat of late August. If he hadn't needed work of any sort so badly… But he did, and he was glad to have any at all. So many men in Augusta, Negro and white, didn't.

Walking to the Huntsman's Lodge in formal attire was, or could be, torture in more ways than one. It exposed him to the wit, such as that was, of the white citizens of Augusta. He could usually see trouble coming before it struck. That did him no good what ever, of course.

"Looky what we got here!" a fellow in straw hat and bib overalls whooped, pointing at Scipio. "We got us a nigger all tricked out like a penguin! Ain't that somethin'?"

Other whites coming down Marbury Street smiled. One or two laughed. Three or four stopped to see what would happen next. Scipio hoped nothing would happen next. Sometimes one joke was enough to get the meanness out of a white man's system. Smiling what was probably a sickly smile, Scipio tried to walk on by.

As he came closer to the man in overalls, he saw a Freedom Party pin glittering on one overalls strap. His heart sank. That was likely to mean worse trouble than he would have got from somebody else. And, sure as hell, the white man stepped into his path and said, "What the hell's a nigger doin' dressed up like he's King Shit?"

When Scipio tried to walk around him, the man blocked his way again. He had to answer. He did, as meekly as he could: "I's a waiter, suh. I gots to wear dis git-up."

He should have known-he had known-nothing he said would do him any good. Scowling, the white man demanded, "How come you got a job when I ain't, God damn you? Where's the justice in that?" Scipio tried to escape with a shrug. It didn't work. The man shouted, "Answer me, you goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch!"

Because I have a brain, and you haven't. Because my mouth isn't hooked up to the toilet. Because I've had more baths this week than you have this year. If Scipio said any of that, he was a dead man. He looked down at the sidewalk, the picture of a submissive Negro. Softly, he said, "Suh, I been waitin' table forty year now. I's right good at it." What are you good at, besides causing trouble? Not much, I'll bet. One more thing he dared not say.

"You know how many white folks is hungry, and you're marchin' off to work in your goddamn fancy penguin suit?" the man in overalls snarled. "I ought to kick your black ass around the block a few times, teach you respect for your betters."

He drew back his foot as if to do just that. All Scipio could do was take it or try to run. He intended to run-he didn't want his outfit damaged. Getting it repaired or, worse, having to buy a new one would cost him money he didn't have. But then one of the other white men said, "Hell, let him go. Ain't his fault he has to dress up like a damn fool to go to work."

"Thank you, suh," Scipio whispered. "I thanks you from de bottom of my heart."

The white man with the Freedom Party pin glanced around at the little crowd. Most people nodded at what the other fellow had said. Scowling, the Freedom Party man said, "All right. All right for now, goddammit. But when Jake Featherston gets elected, we'll put every damn nigger in his place, not just the ones in the fancy suits." He strutted down the street as if he were a mover and shaker, not a man with no more than a fifty-fifty chance of being able to write his own name.

"Thank you," Scipio said once more.

"I didn't do it for you," said the man who'd urged he be left alone. "I did it on account of I purely can't stand the Freedom Party." He laughed bitterly. "And I wonder how long I'll be allowed to say that in public if Featherston does win."

Somebody's not blind, anyhow, Scipio thought as he hurried up the street toward the Huntsman's Lodge. But if Featherston wins, this fellow can change his mind. He can say he was for the Freedom Party all along, and he'll get on fine. I'm black. I didn't choose that, and I can't change it.

As far as he could see, he had no choices at all if the Freedom Party won.

Getting to the restaurant was a relief. For one thing, he did make it on time. If he got in trouble for any reason, he could be back pounding the pavement looking for work. He knew that all too well-how could he help knowing? For another, the rhythms and rituals of work kept him too busy to worry… much.

He was obsequious to the prosperous white men and their sleek female companions who dined at the Lodge, but that bothered him much less than having to be obsequious to whites on the street. A white waiter in New York City would act subservient on the job. Acting subservient was part of a waiter's job-which went a long way towards explaining why there were so few white waiters in the Confederate States, where whites thought subservience the province of blacks alone. But that waiter in New York City became his customers' equal as soon as he left his job. Scipio didn't, and never would.