"It's expanded wonderfully."
"You built a fucking cold-climate theme park with my name on it. We've been hemorrhaging dollars over there."
"Euro Beasley's turned around lately," Mickey pointed out.
"Yes. No thanks to you. It's a good thing I escaped from that damned loony bin."
"What damned loony bin?"
"Never mind. I'm back and, since I was on ice when you climbed aboard the good ship Beasley, let me dispense with the usual pep talk."
Mickey Weisinger was wondering if "on ice" meant what he thought it meant when Uncle Sam's face came up to his own and turned ferocious.
"You work for me, asshole, and you dedicate yourself to the advancement of the name Sam Beasley. If there's any other agenda, you can leave now."
"Can-can I think about it?"
"Go ahead. But this isn't like the old days. You know I'm alive. Can't have it getting out. The government's trying to commit me. The only way you're leaving Sam Beasley is in a pine box."
"This isn't the Mafia."
"True. The Mafia is built on loyalty. There'll be none of that sentimental guinea crap here. I pay you, I own you. It's that simple."
"Did Bob tell you about the park in Virginia?"
"Tell me? It was my fucking idea."
"I thought Bob came up with it."
"My idea. He was just the mouthpiece. Old Bob's been feeding you my ideas for months now."
"Exactly how long have you been back, Uncle Sam?"
"Remember that time Sam Beasley World disappeared into a Florida sinkhole a couple years back?"
"Yeah..."
"I was around then. Then I had a little problem and had to drop out of sight for a while."
"You've been out of sight since the sixties," Mickey pointed out.
"There's different ways of dropping out of sight. Never mind. I'm back and I'm running the show again. You've been screwing up. First this Euro Beasley and now Beasley U S.A."
"We have the state legislature of Virginia on our side. The governor's practically in our pocket."
"And you got us chased out of Manassas. From now on we're digging in for a knock down, drag-out battle. We break ground on Beasley U.S.A. by next year, or I break ground on you. "
Mickey Weisinger gulped.
"You're going to Virginia."
"Anything you say, Uncle Sam."
Mickey Weisinger's teeth clashed as a steel hand patted him on top of his head with brute affection. "That's my boy. I have a plan to break all resistance to Beasley U.S.A. But I need someone to whip up local passions."
"I'm a great corporate cheerleader. You should review the commercials I've been doing."
"I have. You have the smile of a shark."
"I'll get my teeth fixed."
"Keep 'em. I need a shark for this. I want a guy out there people hate. I want you to be at your most insincere."
"I'm not an actor."
"Just act natural. If my plan backfires and people look ready to lynch you, I'll step in and save the project."
"And me, too, right?"
"If it's not inconvenient. Remember, I own you."
"But I'm the second-highest-paid CEO ever," Mickey insisted.
"A Beasley serf is a Beasley serf," said Uncle Sam Beasley as he clumped over to his control console and punched up different camera angles on his empire.
Chapter 9
Narvel Boggs never celebrated Independence Day. Never. Instead, he wore a black armband every July Fourth. What was there to celebrate when the nation into which he had been born, the late lamented Confederate States of America, had been cruelly vanquished a century before he had been born into this sorry world?
Narvel had once celebrated Memorial Day. Proudly. Back when it was a proud Southern holiday known rightfully as Confederate Memorial Day. Then a few years back Washington federalized an obscure Yankee holiday called Decoration Day, renamed it Memorial Day and killed Confederate Memorial Day for good and longer.
It was one of the last aftershocks of the War Between the States, and the fact that it had taken place in 1971 hadn't made it sting any less to an unreconstructed Southerner like Narvel Boggs.
Probably no one was more unreconstructed than Narvel Boggs of Savannah, Georgia.
As boys, some fantasized of pitching for the Braves, circling the earth as astronauts or, if their imaginations were particularly unfettered, crashing around the universe as Superman.
Narvel's youthful fantasies had been especially unfettered. When he was eight years old, he began to imagine himself as Colonel Dixie, Scourge of the South, wearing a smart gray leotard and a cape patterned after the glorious Stars and Bars. Colonel Dixie's mission in life was to change history. Southern History.
In his imagination Narvel Boggs had been a lowly Confederate corporal who, when the cruel tides of history threatened to swamp the grand forces of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, reversed his uniform, pulled on the very colors he carried into battle and launched into action as Colonel Dixie, superhero.
Narvel saved the day at both Manassas, Antietam and Cold Harbor. He salvaged Jeb Stuart's life with a transfusion of his own supercharged blood and, in his favorite fantasy, single-handedly stemmed the repulse of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, thus saving the Confederacy, which, no longer held back by Yankee foot-dragging, ultimately put an Atlanta boy on the moon in 1948.
As he'd grown, the character of Narvel's fantasies naturally altered. It became harder and harder to sustain a Confederate victory even in daydreams when you opened your eyes and there was the cold concrete of the hateful Union. So Narvel contented himself with rescuing old Jeff Davis from his Union prison at Fort Monroe, rebuilding scorched Atlanta, flying an astonished and trembling Abraham Lincoln to odious exile in faraway Liberia and once in a while leading a twentieth-century uprising to restore the Confederacy.
When puberty had hit, Colonel Dixie flew less and less often through the landscape of Narvel Boggs's imagination. And when he'd settled down and married Eliese Calkins, Narvel Bogg's invincible alter ego stowed away his battle-flag cape for good. A man had to raise a family, even if he didn't breathe quite free in his home state.