The Ballad of James McKenna

Day Six: Win or Lose

Day Six
         Win Or Lose
Word Count: 1914 (Word Count does not include historical note at the bottom.)

The Oval Office was smaller than Jimmy had thought it would be.

It wasn't often that agents got to visit the White House. Usually that sort of thing was done by aethograph or, if none were available, telegraph. And if, for some reason, a visit to Washington were required, they usually met with a government liaison in the lobby at Willard's. Jimmy heard tell that General Grant used to meet with agents himself, sitting in his favorite chair and puffing away on a cigar, but he'd never been fortunate enough to meet him.

"We're the first agents to visit the White House since Lincoln. You know that, Nate?" Jimmy grinned. He couldn't help it. He was always a little bit giddy after solving a case, and solving something as big as the Tourist murders was enough to make him walk on air. With his bonus--for wouldn't the President provide them with something as a token of appreciation--he'd go home and visit his family. It had been too long since he'd been back to Ohio. Maybe he'd even invite Nate to go with him. The Virginian hardly left Chicago when he wasn't working and he couldn't go home.

Nate remained silent, and turned a grave look to his partner. "I mislike this," he said finally. "It's most irregular."

"Well, the Tourist murders were irregular. The governor just mustered his troops to send on down to West Virginia, so the President must be happy about that. We took down Horatio Moody and his entire cabal!" Jimmy pulled at his jacket--new wool that fit him perfectly--and smiled smugly. "Damned newspaper men. I knew they had something to do with it!"

Nate shook his head. "I've solved big cases before. Remember the San Francisco murders a while back? You were still working in the Chicago office most of the time. It was threatening the entire infrastructure of the city. All I got was a telegram from an executive liaison thanking me for my service. Agents are only brought before the President if something goes wrong. Lincoln has been dead for twelve years. You can't even work in your own state. There is something off about this whole thing."

"You're so cynical. Ten victims avenged. A Mecha-Slaver finally put behind bars for his crimes. President Hayes got exactly what he wanted. I just don't see what you're so worried about."

"A feeling. A premonition that all our hard work is going to be for nothing." Nate stood as the door opened. Grabbing his hat into his hands, Jimmy scrambled to his feet, cursing as always his gracelessness. He fumbled a bit with the edges of his coat, brushing and scratching. Next to him, Nate stood, impassive, unmoving, an aura of ease radiating around him. Jimmy frowned--he could never do something like that--and then turned his eye to the door.

President Hayes was not a big man, though his beard certainly was. "Ah, gentlemen. I hope I have not kept you waiting too long."

"No, sir," Nate replied, drawl more pronounced than usual. It was the only sign that he was uncomfortable. The rest was ease and charm. "We have only been here a few moments. Just long enough to rest our legs."

The President smiled. "Wonderful, wonderful! Well, gentlemen, do please sit down. Don't stand on ceremony here." Turning to Jimmy, he extended a hand. "I understand that you're an Ohio man like myself. Your family hails from Cincinnati, I hear. A good Republican family, I trust."

Jimmy grinned and took the President's hand. "Of course, sir. Of course."

"Wonderful! Now, I do hate to beat about the bush." Turning to the Negro man standing at the door, Hayes ordered some lemonade be brought to them. "You know my wife is very much a temperance woman. We only drink lemonade here, I'm afraid. But it is awfully good. Now, on to these murders...the Tourist, I believe they have been called." Jimmy got the distinct feeling that Hayes knew exactly what he was saying, despite his tendency to speak otherwise.

Nate sat, and Jimmy followed. "Yes. Horatio Moody. We left him in New York, with their police force. The plan is to try him quickly, and hang him soon after for his crimes. He was murdering people for their parts, so he could create a fully mechanical slave. He needed the organic material to ground the mechanized parts, which weren't carrying a charge properly." Jimmy felt more than comfortable speaking about the mechanical aspects of these crimes. It was the only aspect of the whole investigation that didn't make him sick with anger. "Hence why we called him the Tourist, since he only took one body part at a time."

Hayes nodded. "Horatio Moody was set free this morning, to be escorted here, where he will be re-instituting his practice of Mecha-installation."

"What?!" Jimmy jumped from the sofa. "You're setting him free? After all he did?"

"But what of the Thirteenth Amendment, Mr. President?" Nate had stood as well, though his voice remained impassive. "Mecha-slavery is expressly outlawed in the language of our very Constitution. To undo that would require a recantation of just about everything the Congress has worked so hard to do in the last twelve years, sir."

President Hayes nodded, his hands clasped behind his back. "I understand this, Mr. Price, Mr. McKenna. However, there is much we must do in order to appease the South. It is time to bring our country back together, to move past the time of divisiveness and strife. The South is imperiled and so we are similarly imperiled. I must do what I can to ensure the security of the Republican Party, as well as the passivity of the Southern states. We must appease them or else Civil War will begin again!"

"With all due respect, sir, what does that have to do with Horatio Moody?" Nate's voice was all honey, and that's how Jimmy knew his partner was as angry as he was. "Regardless of appeasing the South and of the ridiculous notion that they have the resources to start another Civil War--no matter that they might want to--Mecha-slavery is illegal. You can't re-institute slavery in the South!"

The lemonade had arrived. Hayes drank deeply, but Nate and Jimmy each ignored it, too angry to do anything but stare daggers at their President. Jimmy was shaking with the effort to keep still, to keep from doing something that could be misconstrued as an attack on the Commander-in-Chief. He wanted to shake the man, to tell him that his mind was addled, that setting Horatio Moody free was going to do more to alienate the black community than anything else. "What about the victims?" he asked finally, quietly. "Don't they deserve something?"

"Of course, and I am very sorry that their lives ended in such ignominy, but I cannot weigh the deaths of ten individuals, however gruesome they were, above the good of the whole nation." Hayes put his glass down on a tray and turned back to Nate. "To answer your concerns, Mr. Moody will not be working in mecha-slavery. Instead, we are instituting a new program in the South. It is one they have begun to use themselves, and which we believe will work very much to our advantage. Mr. Moody will be using his mechanicals to enhance prisoners, to ensure they remain docile, and then they will be put to work on the plantations and in the factories, to work off their sentence."

Nate crossed his arms and pursed his lips. "Let me guess, most of these prisoners are Negroes."

"Yes." President Hayes answered simply. "But it is the only way we can keep the South happy. And that is precisely what we need to do. The only way to ensure that the Negro population in the South is guaranteed their rights is to make sure that Southern whites don't feel that they are being trampled on. Mr. Moody will be brought here to Washington and he will go to work installing his mechanical enhancements into prisoners. When they are done serving their sentence, it will be decommissioned."

Jimmy stared down at the carpet, blinking rapidly in order to keep tears from building in his eyes. He suddenly felt as if the world had been dropped out from under him. Eugenie Baker stared back at him, eyes questioning, wondering why she was to be ignored, why her vengeance was to be overlooked in favor of political ease. "So all of this was for nothing, then?"

"Boys, boys! No! You solved the murders. Because of you, the Railroad Strike is just about done, those New York troops finishing everything for me. And now I have the means to extend the olive branch to southern whites. The Republican agenda--the agenda of human rights for all--can continue because of you boys." The President reached into his coat and pulled out two packets, each thick with money. "These are bonuses for the two of you. For all your good work. I thank you both."

Nate shook his head. "You can keep your money. I'm done here." Clapping his hat onto his head, he bowed and excused himself from the room, the first and only time Jimmy had ever seen him do something bordering on rude. Staring after his partner, Jimmy extended his hand.

"I thought you might understand, Jimmy. Good Ohio boy that you are. You served under Sheridan in the Valley and at Petersburg. Were you at Cedar Creek when we routed Early?"

Jimmy nodded. "I was. With all due respect, Mr. President, I would like to go home now. No offense to you and yours--I know you have a country to run--but I can't stay here right now. I'm taking the money because the victims deserve more than pine boxes in the bone yard and I'm going to pay to give them proper funerals."

"You're a good man, Mr. McKenna. A better man than I." Hayes handed him the money, but kept hold of his hand for a moment longer. "This hurts me, Jimmy. I don't want to do this. I'm afraid it's going to backfire, that it's going to mean slavery all over again--legal slavery--but I have to try, Jimmy. I have to try."

Jimmy pulled his hand back and tucked the money into his coat before putting his bowler back onto his head. "I know you do, Mr. President. But I don't have to agree with it. And I don't have to feel like we've won, when I'm damned well convinced that we haven't. Have a good day, sir. Best of luck with all your endeavors."

Nate was waiting for him outside the White House, face hard as stone and eyes harder. "Bastards," he muttered. "The lot of them--North, South, Democrat, Republican--they're all bastards. I am sorry, Jimmy, that my premonition turned out to be true. Most heartily sorry."

"Well, at least we can go home and get a good night's sleep now. After we take these bonuses and pay for the victims to have a good service." Jimmy patted at the pocket where the President's bribe money was--for that's what it was, in the end--and smiled solemnly. "I could use a good night's sleep."

Nate returned the smile, a tinge of humor crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Who are you kidding, Jimmy? We're Pinkerton men. We never sleep."

*****

This scene, while out of my own imagination, is based upon entirely true events. Rutherford B. Hayes did end Reconstruction and did place reconciliation with Southern Whites above the well-being of newly freed slaves. But he also loathed what he did, because he felt trapped, forced into doing it. And prisoners, the majority of whom were black, were forced to work off their sentences in what essentially became legalized slavery. To read more about this (cue my inner historian), see these two books:

The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson by Rayford W. Logan
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon