The Ballad of James McKenna

Day Twenty: Last Words

Day Twenty
         Last Words
Word Count: 805

The President had given them the use of his private zeppelin for the flight back to Chicago. Nate had wanted to turn it down, but Jimmy, more practical and quite probably more jaded these days than he had any right to be, had talked him into accepting the ride. It made no sense to pay for train tickets--Pinkerton wouldn't pay it once he found out they had been offered a free ride--and there weren't any horses east of the Mississippi anymore that didn't belong to equestrian shows. "You don't want to ruin your shoes, do you Nate? This would be a much farther walk than from our hotel to Harlem."

Nate hadn't spoken much since the President told them he was letting Moody go because of convenience. He'd abandoned the South because of its evils, and now the North he had fought for (guarding President Lincoln during the war--he'd stepped in front of good ol' Honest Abe when Jubal Early decided to attack Washington) was selling itself out for the prospect of peace. The southerners would just go right back to living the way they always had, and the freedmen would probably just go right on back to being enslaved. All because Hayes wanted to keep the Republicans in power.

Jimmy and Nate were the only ones on board, but for the small contingent of the air navy that accompanied the ship everywhere it went. Zeppelin technology had only been perfected after the war was over, though the Confederates had attempted to build one out of silk dresses and the Union had used a couple for reconnaissance purposes. Jimmy could only imagine the horrors that might have been visited upon the world if they'd actually been used as war machines.

"Well, at least we get to ride home in style." Jimmy sipped at a glass of lemonade--unfortunately, Hayes' wife had insisted that all alcohol be removed from everything related to the White House--and looked out of the window. They were in a gondola below the gas bag keeping them aloft. Up at the front, in a separate room, was the flight crew, a cracker jack team of pilots and gas technologists. For his part, Jimmy loved it. He knew it for the bribe that it was--Hayes' last ditch effort to keep them from thinking ill of him--but he fully admitted that it was very good bribe, as far as they went. This was the most technologically amazing device he had ever seen--the best in the line, he'd been told.

Next to him, Nate snorted. "It's a bribe, Jimmy. He's making sure we keep silent and keep voting. And you're letting him."

"Oh, and the alternative? Vote a Democrat into office who's going to overturn everything Reconstruction did for the South? Make slavery legal again? Put the entire Negro community back into chains? Undo all of the mechanical advances we've seen? You know the official policy of the party about that sort of thing. They want to undo them all rather than take us farther into a world where the mysteries of the universe are solved. You want to vote Democrat because Hayes is a weak-willed wasp of a man?" Jimmy put his lemonade down. "The world is an awful place, Nate. But I can't give up on it. I have to hope that it might get better. If I don't, what's there worth living for?"

Nate shook his head. "Not much worth living for now, I say. Ten people are dead, almost eleven. And the man behind it gets to go back to making himself rich installing mechanical parts into the minds and bodies of Negro prisoners. Do you think they'll actually have committed crimes, or will they be made up, you think?"

Jimmy stared out the window for a few moments, silent. "The latter. You know it'll be the latter as well as I do."

"Then what do you think we should do, Jimmy?" Nate was quiet, the words barely audible over the humming of the zeppelin. "What are we supposed to do in such a world?"

Jimmy looked at his partner, then at the floor of their gondola, and back at Nate again. "I don't know. Keep working for Pinkerton's, I guess. Struggle to bring justice where we can. Strive to be just men, because that's all we can do. Anything less and all we're doing is contributing to the world we're in, instead of trying to make it better."

It was hot in the airship, but Jimmy hadn't removed his coat. Proper men never removed their coat in public, even if they were alone in a public place. Now, however, Jimmy reached up and pulled the coat off of his shoulders and tossed it onto the chair beside them.

Proper men never removed their coat in public. Just men, however, surely did.