LV.

Bright Marin and The Major found tables at the Nickajack Hotel where Chef Burman was serving up steer butt with steamed asparagus and roasted potatoes. It was the Magic Hour of a cool October.  The sweet smoke of a pit wafted down into the bottoms of Strangetown, which returned the exchange with the sound of guitar picking by the band called the Hine Streeters, or what was left of them anyway. They were playing a giddy-up from the gazebo overlooking the creek. The concierge had the windows opened, and the music ambled in to the leisure of the guests, many of whom were visitors passing through from the North. Many of them knew The Major, and he'd greet them with great gusto and present Bright Marin as his business partner, which in fact she was. This drew surprise which Bright reveled in. It piqued the air of the sanctum of men. She enjoyed the brusque manner and relaxed etiquette of Northerners, who all seemed so pragmatic and restless she thought.  Above all, she was positively grateful that so many of them were Republicans. Those goddam Democrats are were so demented! 

They were seated, and The Major ordered a bottle of Chablis Laroche 1859, the stock of which he procured himself for the hotel. It was poured and examined and accepted.  He glided through these rituals with such a big smile, and with physically elaborate grace. It always amused Bright more than it ever impressed her. The Major was in such in an expansive mood, she felt guilty she was about overturn it. Unsure of where to begin, she got right to the middle of it.  

I'd like to speak at the rally for Jimmy Sugar next Saturday, Bonwit.  I need you to get me in.  

The Major nearly coughed up his Chablis.  Bright recognized the slight look of palpitating that Bonwit Vrooman exhibited when confronted with crises.  His eyes grew glazed and still, and slid slowly into the dead space past your face.  His breathe grew a pace faster, but more measured.  

Bright, you can't do that.  You can't even vote.  What will the coloreds think of a rich white woman coming to speak to them about... about what?  What would you say anyway?  

You'll hear my voice when the time comes, Bonwit, she said huffily.  

That may be so, but if you want to be heard, you might as well dovetail behind Mary Fletcher Wells and the Temperance Society.  They're grabbing up quite the basket of ears among the Bible beaters.  

She snorted and drank her wine. Then she crossed her legs and kicked them impatiently.  When The Major's palpitations had passed, she leaned in.  

Bonwit, she said again, I want to speak at Jimmy Sugar's rally. You are going to let me.  

Goddamit woman, he barked with exasperation such that it drew the askance attentions of the next table. This election means everything. More importantly, it means everything to my superiors in Washington. 

Are you saying I could lose Jimmy Sugar the election by what I might have to say?  

No, but you sure as hell won't help win it.  

She was indignant.  She was hurt.  It sparked the forgiven resentments that come with a ripened love.  She felt like throwing her drink in his face. She felt like slapping him. She felt like kicking him out of his chair.  But she said again:

Bonwit. I'm going to speak at Jimmy Sugar's rally.  You're not going to stop me.  I've got Barry Hogan approval.  

The Major looked red in the face.

You went behind my back to Barry Hogan?  

Now she was angry.  Who are you to keep me from speaking to whom I please?  

Bonwit shook his head with exasperation.  He picked up his fork and pushed around a morsel of meat. He looked like he was divining an entrail.  Then he sighed.  

I didn't mean it like that, Bright.  Its just... its just politically risky.  The Democrats can hook into it and drag it through the mud.  I'd expect nothing less from Lyman Resnick and his dogs at the Limestone Democrat. But... I'd be grateful to hear what you have to say.  He said this with the exhale of resignation.

Bright Marin rubbed her mysterious amulet she always wore around her neck, which was a red and milk white agate.  Then she leaned forward across the table towards The Major and kissed him.  At every last word, he had always had her back.  

He returned to eating, more silent now seemingly lost in thought. Bright watched him.  Loved on him.  Drank him in.  She let it wash through and over her.  But it did nothing to change the sadness she suddenly felt for him.  

She would never tell him of the pregnancy she terminated. Why this thought occurred to her, she did not know.  

She had visited Maw Possum, and she was prescribed the abortifacient Black Cow.  It took three days with few complications, during which she rested at her mansion Swan Song on Beaty Street.  She pretended fever and turned Bonwit away during those troubled hours.  

She felt he never needed to know.  No good would come by it.  And though she loved Bonwit Vrooman deeply, she simply did not want his child... any child.  She watched him, and she pushed the watercress on her plate pretending to be hungry.  When her emotions seemed to rise to brim of her eyes, Bonwit sensed something was amiss.  

What's getting you so upset?  I'm acquiescing to your desire to speak at the rally.  That's about it.  It doesn't mean I can't be nervous about it.  Why the tear that I see?  

Nothing, she said, smiling and dabbing at a rivulet that ran down across her cheek.  

I was thinking about something sad from long ago, she replied, and it was mostly the truth.  

XLVI

The Molly MacGuires had come to the Nickajack by way of the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, and the prospect of good paying jobs in the coal mines that were being opened up in Birmingham. These were rough gangs of Irish who had been hustled off the boats off the East River Docks in New York by Boss William Tweed. They were given a hot meal and told to vote Democrat, then they were signed on to a coal mining company in Pennsylvania controlled by Tammany Hall cronies. During the war, Boss Tweed was signing these same bereft Irish into the Union Army. Little had changed since. The Irish were still coming off the boats in droves, and they were told to sign here for a Square Deal somewhere in the ferment of post-war America. Tens of thousands ended up in the mines of Pennsylvania where their Democratic voting bloc proved a headache for "Pig Iron" Kelly, a powerful House Committee chairman and Radical Republican.

The origins of this Irish phenomenon known as the Molly MacGuires are clouded in mystery, but certainly stem from the bond of poverty and resistance of the Old Country which characterizes every Irish-American immigrant. Dozens of such Irish gangs existed in Boston and New York, and their strange Celtic rituals migrated inland everywhere from the meatpackers of the Midwest to the coal mines of the Alleghenies. Each were familiar with each other by way of ties with the Old Country, though the Molly MacGuires tended to have origins in County Kerry. 

Meanwhile, Pig Iron represented the Southern concerns of the Consortium, which was a cabal of Radical Republicans who were as corrupt as the day was long. One project he was exceptionally proud of was the Huntsville Railroad Corporation, which bilked the government for millions on overbid contracts to build a new bridge across the Tennessee River at Decatur. Now the Consortium had purchased a controlling stake in the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, which was then racing Jimmy Sloss's L&N railroad from Decatur toward the newly founded settlement of Birmingham. The Molly MacGuires came to the Nickajack from Pennsylvania at the behest of Frank O'Brien, an influential Irish land speculator in that promising new settlement. They called him "Billfold" O'Brien on account of his mysterious wealth. He was also an ally of Jimmy Sloss, who was building his own competing railroad from Decatur south to that Birmingham.  Many of these railroad investors included Greeks like Bourbon George Houston, who was then running for Governor of Alabama.  

Through those ancient and mystic cords that seem to bind the bereft Irish race together the world over, Billfold O'Brien beckoned the Molly MacGuires. And they tumbled down South along the railroad like so many gypsies. The honest ones were finding work in the mines they were beginning to bore through Red Mountain like so many dwarves in a subterranean fantasy of cursed toil. The more pragmatic ones took to the usual racketeering among their own race, but there was more than that.  O'Brien set them to harassing the Consortium railroad interests in the Nickajack.  They plagued Pig Iron Kelly's machinations by roughing up the Alabama & Chattanooga railroad crews, and sticking up trains on the Memphis & Charleston. They were a plague on the Consortium's interests, and an embarrassment to the Radical Republicans.

Congressman Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, who was Pig Iron Kelly's boss in the Consortium and on Capitol Hill, was livid over sagging profits. Moreover there was this influx of Irish cockroaches flooding into Birmingham and the Nickajack. They were buoying the already anemic Democrat base in Alabama, and threatening the Republican hold on the Alabama governorship. In a secret meeting with Senator "Parson" Brownlow of Tennessee and Pig Iron Kelly, Spoons Butler orbited his desk a dozen times while reciting a litany of bitching. Spoons Butler was a figure to behold. He was so corrupt, he had two pejorative nicknames - "Spoons," on account of his habit of purloining silverware, and "Beast," on account of the rough and indignant manner he treated sesech women during the war.  He had hound dog eyes and sagging jowls. The swale of his gut sloped away from his chest to where he could not see his small feet. No matter. He spoke with his hands, which were also unusually small.  Little was this detail noticed, however, on account of the enormous dome of head which was speckled and repulsively matte. A tonsure of long hair, however, seemed to rebel at the encroaching desiccation of his skull, and it looked seldom washed. He could have worn a toupee, but he was naturally uncouth about his appearance.  His power, influence and ego spoke for themselves. 

These goddam Micks are a real burr in our ass, you know.  Parson?  What about your man, The Melungeon? What can he do about this?  

Parson replied.  He had blue marble eyes and sunken cheeks like the late Mr. Lincoln.  His mouth was wide and curled downward at the ends.  These Molly MacGuires, they're mostly operating out of Huntsville and Chattanooga. He said The Melungeon could clean the Molly MacGuires off the Memphis & Charleston tracks, but the Chattanooga to Birmingham Railroad was beyond what the Melungeon could manage.

I'll work on that, Spoons Butler spat.  I've got negroes in Chattanooga that can work the railroad to Birmingham, but you just get The Melungeon to work on the Irish in Huntsville.  Parson Brownlow nodded.  

As for you! Spoons Butler pointed his child-like finger at Pig Iron Kelly.  This Credit Mobilier scandal is getting out of hand and could blow open the whole circus tent.  I think we can put a lid on this, but this Huntsville Railroad Corporation. We can't have that dangling as a loose end.  I want you find a way to tie that up. There's an accountant somewhere who knows too much.  Find him.  He's probably Jewish.  So he was.  His name was Asher Applebaum, and he was now the accountant for The Major in Athens.  But for now the Molly MacGuires were the priority. No one expected violence from a Jewish accountant, but from an Democrat Irishman with a knife?  This was more than what any of these men bargained for sinking their interests in the Deep South.  

XLV

After the war, Bill Marmaduke's home and plantation had been confiscated by the military government of Alabama on account of a forfeiture of property taxes. He had been away fighting in Jackson Co. when his father died, leaving the estate to wither and the slaves to wander into freedom. And so it was auctioned from the Limestone Co. Courthouse steps by Captain Fritz Hermann, who commanded the local Yankee garrison of Fort Henderson on the Browns Ferry Road. By freak of bureaucratic fumbling, he commanded a company of 120 Irish "volunteers" who spoke incomprehensible English while he himself spoke only German.  It was by luck that there were several German families who had taken up temporary residence in Strangetown, many of whom spoke English.  These were immigrants who were bound for Colonel John Cullman's colony of Germans south beyond Falkville in the Warrior Mountains, where Jimmy Sloss was building his railroad to Birmingham.

Colonel Cullman and Captain Hermann became fond friends. Among the German immigrants, they organized concerts at the public gazebo in Strangetown where polka and the waltz wafted through the crisp autumn air.  Oktoberfest was celebrated, and these immigrants set up a makeshift beerhall beneath a circus tent on the Niphonia Track on West Houston Street.  To the dismay of Ms. Mary Fletcher Wells and the Temperance Society, the Germans brewed a a variety of beers for public consumption.  Most negroes had never tasted beer before. It flowed freely along with linked sausages and boiled cabbage.  And so did the Bavarian polka and the Austrian waltz. Both John Cullman and Captain Hermann dined together often in the Nickajack Hotel over a fine bottle of Franconian and retired to the Captain's private quarters for cards or to recite Goethe together.  The Greeks whispered else. 

Oktoberfest brought its own joys, but the freedman were celebrating more than that.  Captain Hermann was auctioning off confiscated properties of former Confederates who had failed to pay their property taxes.  These included Bill Marmaduke's plantation Damascus, and Drake Shoney's farm at Gloaming Birch.  According to a formula formerly proposed by General Sherman, each plantation would be subdivided into 40 acre parcels. Prices ranged from $4 - $12 per acre.  The Freedman's' Bureau under The Major, Bonwit Vrooman, ensured all coloreds had the first right of refusal on bidding above the reserve.  Big Jim Crow had high hopes.  He counted himself lucky. His survived the war and more in the Union Army and found gainful employment in the uncertain world of post-war freedom as a carpenter.  He had help construct most of Strangetown's boarding houses and saloons. He'd even help build Father Jessup's new African Methodist Church and Swampy Joe's Chapel of Freedom, which was vaguely of the Baptist tradition. Now with all he saved, he had his eyes set on his 40 acres of fertile bottomland on Bill Marmaduke's plantation called Damascus.  Bill Marmaduke was as of yet the Sheriff of Limestone County. He was at that time nowhere to be seen. He was rumored to be mining in Nevada, whaling in the Galapagos, or filibustering in Venezuela.  Wherever he was, he was nowhere to dispute the sale or payoff the lien.  

And so the morning of the sale, Drake Shoney had shown up with a mysterious carpet bag full of cash and paid off his lien in the nick of the moment.  He retained Gloaming Birch.  Damascus, however, was sold off in ten parcels of 40 acres, and the mansion went to the carpetbagging attorney names Rufus Lipman.  Big Jim Crow won his bid for the price of $385 the plot he so desired.  But the sale had been sneered at by Lyman Resnick of the Limestone Democrat.  He reflected the arguments of Dr. Prentiss, that the negro was naturally indolent and impulsive, and whose inability to subsist even on his own property will subject the State to burdensome welfare.  Better that the negro continue to work the plantations they knew under contracts negotiated by the planters.  This, of course, would not do so long as the Yankees were in charge. Freedman who continued to work these plantations had their contracts negotiated by The Major himself, who organized their labor according to blocs of collective contracts.  It infuriated the Greeks, but not more than giving negroes their own land. If their black labor fled to the yeomanry to plant their own plots, they will simply grow subsistence crops.  The Greeks' entire plantation system, which was dependent on the ability to command labor, was in jeopardy.  

But these concerns were none of Big Jim Crow's. He held in his hand something more than freedom - he land of his own.  It was a deed with his name - Jonas Jackson, owner of 40 acres of good bottom land on parcel 16-06-16 along Piney Creek. This was it - the Square Deal.  Not so many others were lucky.  As a carpenter and a soldier, Big Jim Crow was able to save up for his land.  Most of the freedman were laboring on contracts that, although negotiated by The Major, still resulted in conflict with former masters.  Many planters sought to impose old habits of controlling the lives of their laborers, while at the same charging them for clothing, food and shelter... all of which they benefitted from for free during slavery.  It was a tumultuous time as the freedman sought to exert their new independence, and define what their new freedom and community would look like after emancipation.  Meanwhile, the planters sought to command from their laborers as much work as they provided during slavery.  It was an impasse of plantation capital against agricultural labor, complicated by the racist assumption that a man like Jonas Jackson, on account of his skin, could not make it on his own, nor should he.  

XXIX

It bears worth observing a question asked often - what is the Nickajack? For a dweller of this region must be prepared to properly relate his or her origins to the newcomer from distant lands. Waves of Americans are yet to settle into its economic ferment looking for that Square Deal. And they will themselves become the dweller, adapting the mysteries of this region into their concentric identity. And such has it been since the region was first settled by the Clovis chasing the Mastodon into its glades.

The name itself is derived from Cherokee, a derivative of 'Koasati.' There is no demonym for the dweller of the Nickajack. There is no "Nickajacker" or "Nickjackee." The dweller simply says they are from the Nickajack, and leaves it thus.

Yet when the dweller themselves are asked what constitutes its boundaries, the observer will find variations to its geographic periphery. It is, however, generally accepted that the region known as the Nickajack is bounded to the east by the Great Tennessee River Gorge, and to the west by the white waters known as the Mussel Shoals, once as mighty as any cataract of the Nile, but now submerged by the TVA. Both are ancient hazards to navigation penetrating into the interior of the Nickajack. Here is where the Tennessee River, older than the mountains themselves, makes its great curve south into North Alabama before turning north past the Mussel Shoals.

The northern and southern boundaries of the Nickajack are more nebulous. No dweller might deny that the confines of the Elk River Valley, which cuts across and into the Highland Rim, lies definitively within the Nickajack. Some, however, have liberalized their definition of the northern periphery to embrace such places as the Sequatchie Valley, or even the upper Duck River Valley. To the south it is generally accepted that the barrier of the Warrior Mountains lie within the Nickajack. Again, the dweller may also broaden their scope to include the upper Wills Valley on the other side of Sand Mountain, or the Mississippi Foothills south of the Mussel Shoals.

For the modern dweller, the importance of cultural, social and political heuristics can ease their sense of regional identity. For example, a politician may define the Nickajack as simply the 5th Congressional District of Alabama. Or the languorous dweller reclining on his couch might consider the viewing area of their local television station as the Nickajack. The dweller may observe it under other terms of convenience, such as the Tennessee Valley (rather nebulous), or North Alabama (rather narrow). Or they put men on the Moon in the Nickajack. Even the automobile has deeply influenced the dweller's sense of this region's identity. Nonetheless, it remains the prerogative of the dweller of the Nickajack to observe these boundaries according to their own concentric identity.

And so the Nickajack today has become a new congruent center of economic prosperity, wrested from the grist of post-modernity by entrepreneurial spirits not unlike The Major. It serves no better time than now to understand your definition of this place. It is your home. And before the coming days when places like Hurricane Valley, and Jones Valley and Paint Rock Valley are paved over and settled by the new dweller looking for that Square Deal, you will remember what the Nickajack used to look like. Or when they have slashed a highway across the brakes and fields of Limestone County, and will have built the Las Vegas of gas stations, you might tremble about what it will become. But it will always be the same identity - your identity as the dweller. It is yours to shape the Nickajack to your own.

I am from the Nickajack.  

XXIV

"Pig Iron" Kelley by any other measure would have had no business to do with actually going to Alabama. A Pennsylvania abolitionist and Radical Republican congressman, he detested the Democratic Party and was an impassioned advocate of the freedman. Ostensibly that's why came to Limestone County by the cars from Philadelphia - to observe the negro's condition. He would do so in an extravagant junket trailed by a bootlicking political entourage that lazily made its way south like a caravan of Mughals. As it were, he met with The Major, Bonwit Vrooman, at the Nickajack Hotel to discuss the future of the Freedman's Bureau. Pig Iron wore a tweed frock coat of pedestrian make that contrasted with The Major's fine Italian linen suit and Chinese silk cravat. So it was that the congressman was such a zealous protectionist that he only bought American-made. The niceties were rushed. The congressman was a busy man.

I don't need to tell you that your little cabal here is f****d, Bonwit. The Major was taken aback. Kelley lit a monstrous cigar and exhaled a nimbus of smoke. You know what's going in Washington? Congress is about the defund the Freedman's Bureau. Nobody wants coloreds on the government teat anymore. You've done great work here, Bonwit. But I'm afraid the curtain is closing on your little show. I get the long face. You've got a lot invested here. Well that's why I've come. We're here to lift up the negro. Luckily that can still be a profitable enterprise for the both of us.
The Major was listening. Kelley continued.

 
He explained how millions in railroad bonds were being issued to rebuild the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, which was still damaged from the war. Specifically, only a train ferry then existed linking the M&C between Decatur and Limestone County across the Tennessee River. The original stone pier railroad bridge had been burned down by the Yankees in '62. Construction of the bridge was going to take three years. The bonds themselves were backed by the Alabama state coffers, which cut the Republican governor into the deal, William Hugh Smith. They were solicited out to Northern investors by the Lehman Brothers, Henry and Emanuel, who were Jewish cotton brokers in Montgomery with shady Wall Street connections. The public offering was a stunning success for Radical Republicans who promised vast employment for the tens of thousands of freedman looking for better wages and freedom of movement that railroad work entailed.

 
Governor William "Skedaddle" Smith grew rich off the bond deal. He was Alabama's first of only two Republican governors before Guy Hunt was elected in a landslide over 110 years later. Both of these governors, the other being David "Beechnut" Lewis, had deep connections to the Nickajack Unionism movement during the war. Smith was sneered at as Skedaddle because he fled to Union lines when we couldn't get elected the Confederate Congress. He spent the rest of the war in Huntsville, Ala. recruiting Unionists across the Nickajack into the 1st Alabama Cavalry (US) without doing any actual fighting himself.

 
"Pig Iron" Kelley explained he represented a Consortium of investors - good Party men like yourself, he added. This Consortium owned the management company Huntsville Railroad Corporation, each investor holding a 1% stake in the entity. These investors included bankers, politicians, generals, and industrialists affiliated with the Republican establishment - all good Party men like yourself, he said again. We hold the contract for the new railroad bridge over the Tennessee River at Decatur. We need your labor. And now that the Freedman's Bureau is about to get defunded, you could use the money to keep up the good work you're doing down here. The HRC can give you 20% margin on your labor, but mind you this will be paid all up front.

 
What Pig Iron did not explain was the the HRC was just a post office box at the Huntsville Depot. A check for $4,000,000 (less "loan costs") payable to the Memphis & Charleston was written out by Lehman Brothers which had underwritten the bond sale. The check arrived at the Eastern Division headquarters of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, which had only one employee at Huntsville Depot and whose only purpose was to deposit the check and subsequently draw a cashier's check for $4,000,000 on the bridge contract, payable to the HRC.

An accountant from Huntsville named Asher Applebaum arrived later to collect the check, who was the bookkeeper for HRC, which had no employees at all. He deposited the check at the National Bank of Huntsville, which was a great temple of money overlooking the Big Spring. Then at the desk of the bank president spent all $4,000,000 within the space of half an hour. Cashier checks were drafted for stockholder dividends and overbid subcontracts controlled by Consortium interests. When this was done, he closed the bank account and prepared financial statements showing a 15% profit margin for the investors, who had already cashed their dividend checks. Then the Consortium took the company public and dumped the stock on the back of a bogus prospectus. The deal was so clean that everyone from the governor on down thought to try it again to build the railroad from Chattanooga to Birmingham. And so later they did, nearly bankrupting the state.

 
The Major always thought himself a good Party man. What if they cut him in on the Huntsville Railroad Corporation someday? So he took the deal and four months later the Democrats indeed shut down the spigots from Washington. But since the Freedman's Bureau still technically existed, it had only one office left open in the waning years of existence, which was on Pryor Street in Athens. Asher Applebaum was hired to manage its manage its finances, for it held several subcontracts for which The Major held interests. And the labor was paid fairly, as implored by Pig Iron Kelley, who indeed cared for the freedman's condition, as did The Major. Strangetown continued to boom even as the Freedman's Bureau withered on the vine of history.

XIX

James Withers Sloss of Birmingham fame was known as the "The Colonel" on account of his service with the Confederate Corps of Engineers during the war. This complicated social occasions that involved The Major, so he called him Bonwit. James Sloss was a native of Limestone County who had proven to possess all the industry of his class. Having started his bookkeeping business in Mooresville, he expanded into planting on several non-contiguous plots he steadily acquired throughout Limestone County. To farm these scattered fields, he employed various bogtrotters and other poor whites to till and harvest, though he continued to employ household slaves at his home. He was a burgher and yeoman, a Whig to the bone who had voted against secession. He was also of a class more rarified and aristocratic than even the wealthiest Greeks. He was the new breed of a bright and promising age of gilded capital.

 
Following the war The Colonel became president of the Decatur & Nashville Railroad and negotiated its merger with the larger Louisville & Nashville. This created a transportation monopoly spanning from the Ohio River to the Nickajack. It terminated near the Tennessee River in Limestone County where it junctioned with the east-west Memphis & Charleston. The L&N grew into a vital conduit of capital and goods flowing both ways to rebuild a war-torn Dixie. It thrived under long periods of Yankee occupation during the war, and grew further still under the The Colonel's vision which unfolded with the settlement of Birmingham.

 
The ridge and valley system of today's Birmingham was nearly inaccessible from the Nickajack and was sparsely settled before the war. When surveyors found deposits of iron, coal and limestone in close proximity in Jones Valley, the settlement of Birmingham was founded by investors including The Colonel. They intended to exploit these resources to build blast furnaces and coal mines under the aegis of rising post-war tariffs. Tariffs were vilified by the Greeks who believed they reduced cotton exports by strengthening the dollar. This was of no concern to James Withers Sloss, who was never a Greek and who no longer even lived in Limestone County. He had liquidated his local holdings to invest wholly in the Birmingham deal, bedding with Northern industrial and banking partners. He had gone 'national.' Limestone County's politics were mainly a provincial concern to him now.

 
But he could not wholly disregard the political ferment of his home county. The L&N Railroad was now laying tracks across the Warrior Mountains towards Birmingham, requiring enormous amounts of material and labor, much of which needed staging in Limestone County. Theft and graft was rampant along the L&N corridor. So The Colonel returned to the county of his birth to meet with The Major, Bonwit Vrooman. They met in the conference room of Sloss's agent in Athens, an obdurate and carpetbagging attorney named Rufus Lipman who never ceased glaring at The Major. The niceties were rushed. Sloss was a busy man. They had known each other through business circles.

I don't need to tell you that your little cabal here is f****d, Bonwit. The Major was taken aback. The Colonel spoke in a bizarrely neutral accent for his origins. It was the accent of money. The Colonel continued. You know what's going on in Washington? Congress is going to defund the Freedman's Bureau. The Democrats and moderate Republicans don't want negroes on the government teat, so they are shutting down your party. What will you do then? Look, I know you've got a lot invested here. I've come to offer you a deal. I need labor for the railroad. That's easy. You find me labor and I'll lease them. We are subsidized cost plus, so I can give you 20% margin. That's a generous offer. But it needs to come with extras.

Bonwit shifted uncomfortably. His hands were sweating underneath the table. Extras?

 
Look, The Colonel explained. I need protection for my investments all up and down these tracks. You know people here. I'm an outsider here now. I never had anything in common with these people, referring to the Greeks. I'm hiring colored labor from you. I need them protected. The political situation here is dicey, Bonwit. You're eaten up with the Klan, and they are growing more violent as we approach the mid-term elections. I can't be seen as getting my hands dirty here, but you? You are one dirty bastard, Bonwit. I know you can find the people to put a lid on the Klan.

 
Bonwit was stunned. He had never thought of himself as a "dirty bastard." The Colonel was assuming Bonwit had dealt in violence. How else could he have prospered in this tumultuous political environment of Reconstruction Alabama? But it was all just good old government fraud. Before he could raise a finger in objection, The Colonel continued.

You don't have to pay them. Just invoice them directly to me. Call them railway detectives. I dont give a damn. All you need to do is keep the Klan off my work crews and protect our capital here. We've got a lot invested in this railroad. I don't need a bunch of white cracker peckerwoods gumming up the works just because they won't work for less than a negro.

 
And with that said, Bonwit's mind raced. This was indeed getting his hands dirty, but he was sharing the risk with one of the most renowned industrialists of the New South. And furthermore, The Colonel was right. The Freedman's Bureau was on the chopping block in Washington. Nevermind the social progress made in Strangetown, he was facing destitution. Bonwit blurted out - 30%.

The Colonel thought a minute and then nodded. 30%. This is important to me, and your reputation for the work you've done here serves to your credit. The Colonel turned and presented his hand towards his attorney.

This is my attorney Rufus Lipman. He's Jewish. Lipman nodded. He'll be my agent here in Limestone County. He's just here to watch over my interests. He'll draft the first contracts, but this is where we shake hands.

 
And so they did, but James Withers Sloss held his grip. Leaning forward he spoke very seriously.

I have one problem now that does not involve the Klan that I'd also like for you to take care of. He and his gang have been filching my depots all up and down this railway, and my people tell me he is moving his operation to Athens. His name is The Melungeon.

XIV

The plaintive amblings of a waltz from Strangetown drifted in through the windows where Bright Marin had opened the drapes but left drawn the sheers, which wafted in a dry breeze. It was the hottest day of June. Bonwit poured a scotch and watched her recline into the couch. She uncoiled her shawl and she touched her neck, which glistened. It had been a long night of dancing at the Loyal League fundraiser for freedmen. They were both drunk and had ridden his red landau back to the Nickajack Hotel on Clinton Street. He moved towards her and dropped into the couch beside. A marihuana cigarillo was crushed out in an ashtray on the coffee table. He turned to her and took her in with his eyes. Her hair was lush and raven. Her eyes hazel. Her skin olive.

 
He wanted her. But not like that. He plotted deeper than that. Is this pragmatism? It feels like love. Why don't we get married?

 
She burst into laughter. I'm not going to marry you!

 
Why not? He looked hurt.

 
Her smile brightened. I’m having too much fun with you! Besides, I've been married before, and withdrew her body in mock timidly.

He knew now he wanted to marry her.

Ahh yes. You know everyone thinks you poisoned him, he said without invective. She pursed her lips and shrugged.

 
There was silence. Did you love him, he asked?

 
The question took her aback for a moment but her smile grew tender. She thought carefully about it. Yes, she said. Bonwit said nothing. He knew Dr. Marin was forty years her senior.

 
How did you come to marry him, he asked intrepidly?

 
She paused, keeping her smile.

Another life was recalled from the recesses of her memory and she related it to him - of how she was a bastard of her Cherokee mother and a white merchant. Of how gold was discovered in Georgia and they were all roused from their homesteads by soldiers. They were given an hour's notice to pack their belongings for the trek to lands beyond the Father of Waters. The roads were already flooded with Cherokee moving West as though the menace of an evil consumed the lands in their wake. They journeyed through the Nickajack following the river. Food was scarce. They were bilked by white settlers and merchants at every step. When her mother perished beside the road, her stepfather abandoned her into the ward of Dr. Marin as an unwanted half breed.

 
Dr. Marin was a bachelor and a physician in Athens of significant wealth. He took her in. He educated her. He read the Bible to her. And she told how she walked into his room disrobed and made love to him when she had come of age, because she thought she loved him. And he asked her to marry him. And she did, not really with understanding. And she was loyal to his last day. And she reflected again that yes, she loved Dr. Marin.

When she had finished she saw that The Major had fallen asleep.

 
She leaned into Bonwit and ran her slender fingers through his reddish-brown hair. She watched him this time. And when she was finished, she leaned into him and kissed him wistfully. She knew now that she was going to spend the rest of her life with him.

IV

Everybody was getting it down in Strangetown. It was the place to be in the days after that damned ole war. Everyone was so desperate, and here was a place where money suddenly flowed like honey. Only three years before the Yankees had pillaged the town like lunatics. Even the Greeks on the Hill were feeling the pinch. Egyptian cotton flooded the market, and Confederate bonds were in the toilet. Now the Yankees were dumping thousands into Limestone County to give freedmen and poor whites what The Major patently called “The Square Deal.” It sounded suspicious to anyone who first listened, but everyone went along with it because this was real money. It wasn’t that Confederate dreck they just printed out like it was nothing during the war. Nobody knew or asked where this money came from, but it worked, and that’s all that mattered.

Strangetown was getting crowded with all sorts of comers: freedman, veterans, cranks, immigrants, laborers. Everyone was coming to get some of that Square Deal The Major kept going on and on about. The problem was that Town Creek was a place of ill-humors. Frequent flooding left an air of miasma for which people fashioned masks. So, The Major financed a dam, which gave Brother Pruitt more than a foot of water to baptize the wicked in. Next, The Major planked in the road known today as Strange Street and built a bridge over the waters. Businesses sprouted along the banks and the main drag. The Major walked down every day from the Freedman's Bureau to look satisfied at the progress.

At one point during Reconstruction, Strangetown had no less than two cathouses, four saloons, and a Chinese laundry. There was also a theater, a brewery, three fortune tellers and two churches. That was in addition to the shacks and tenements that crowded this little clapboard skyline. And then there was Maw Possum, giant of them all, who ran Strangetown with a deck of Tarot and the luck of an obsidian stone. She called everyone in Strangetown her darlings… the Darlings of Strangetown.

III

Bonwit Vrooman was a Dutch New Yorker and a carpetbagger through and through. No man knew how to bilk the government better than this grinning, obnoxious, fun-loving Yankee. He had served as a federal captain of volunteers during the war where he became a virtuoso in the surreptitious art of government contracting. As a regimental quartermaster he built a tidy side income on contract kickbacks. At outrageous prices he bought boots that became un-soled on the march, and cardboard haversacks that melted in the rains. For his efficient labors they awarded him a pension after the war, and a permanent rank of major in the New York State Guard.

 
Taking his skills to further task, he outbid his competitors for a post from President Johnson to run the Freedman’s Bureau of Limestone County. He was viewed with great suspicion by the locals when he arrived by the cars from Nashville. That is until he walked out of the Western Union with his fat leather-bound checkbook. Not only did this Yankee have real money, but he knew how to get it, he knew how to squirrel it, and he knew how to spend it.

 
He settled into a mansion on Lee Street known as Grand Coeur and dressed it with fancy furniture and plush linens no one had ever seen before. Then he got to work spreading the wealth from an office he rented on Pryor Street, which became the Freedman’s Bureau headquarters. He hired a battery of scriviners to dictate grants and draft contracts from that fast-moving mouth of his. All of his old war buddies were in Washington controlling the spigots, and the dollars came flowing down an odious chain of custody straight into the Heart of Dixie.

 
Everyone was getting in on the cut, starting with Maw Possum, who pulled all the strings in the little freedman hamlets that were springing up all around the County. No one was getting paid enough to work the plantations they used to work as slaves. What gives? So, Maw Possum got contracts to build cisterns, livestock fencing and schoolhouses for all the freed negroes. Vrooman, who soon earned the nickname The Major, was pleased by the public progress and personal profits. He then worked over the Greeks on the Hill, mostly Democrats who found him abrasive and faux refined. But they gracefully tolerated the quick-tongued foreigner in their midst because he paid exorbitant prices for their wares, and they still controlled much of the local politics.

 
He rode around town in an imported Italian chaise with his mistress, the wealthy widow Bright Marin. She was a raven-haired femme fatale rumored to have poisoned her physician husband. They frequented Wang Fu’s laundry where they reclined on cotton divans, smoked opium and laughed into the night to the music that wafted across Strangetown. Bright Marin was no Greek, nor The Major a man of good Southern graces, but they were richer than just about anyone else in the County. They were resented by many on the Hill because of that wealth and because they were Republican, anathema to the old Democrat elites. These two stuck around for a time until the election of Rutherford Hayes, when the Greeks cut their devil’s deal with the Klan and Jim Crowe brought the hammer down on Strangetown. There might be more to tell about these two kids later.