ROBBINS Harold.
Annotation.
… And behind the Northern Armies came another army of men.
They came by the hundreds, yet each traveled alone.
They came on foot, by mule, on horseback, on creaking wagons or riding in handsome chaises.
They were of all shapes and sizes and descended from many nationalities.
They wore dark suits, usually covered with the gray dust of travel, and dark, broad-brimmed hats to shield their white faces from the hot, unfamiliar sun.
And on their back, or across their saddle, or on top of their wagon was the inevitable faded multicolored bag made of worn and ragged remnants of carpet into which they had crammed all their worldly possessions.
It was from these bags that they got their name.
The Carpetbaggers. … And they strode the dusty roads and streets of the exhausted Southlands, their mouths tightening greedily, their eyes everywhere, searching, calculating, appraising the values that were left behind in the holocaust of war. … Yet not all of them were bad, just as not all men are bad.
Some of them even learned to love the land they came to plunder and stayed and became respected citizens.
ROBBINS Harold.
PREFACE
… And behind the Northern Armies came another army of men.
They came by the hundreds, yet each traveled alone.
They came on foot, by mule, on horseback, on creaking wagons or riding in handsome chaises.
They were of all shapes and sizes and descended from many nationalities.
They wore dark suits, usually covered with the gray dust of travel, and dark, broad-brimmed hats to shield their white faces from the hot, unfamiliar sun.
And on their back, or across their saddle, or on top of their wagon was the inevitable faded multicolored bag made of worn and ragged remnants of carpet into which they had crammed all their worldly possessions.
It was from these bags that they got their name. The Carpetbaggers.
… And they strode the dusty roads and streets of the exhausted Southlands, their mouths tightening greedily, their eyes everywhere, searching, calculating, appraising the values that were left behind in the holocaust of war.
… Yet not all of them were bad, just as not all men are bad.
Some of them even learned to love the land they came to plunder and stayed and became respected citizens.
JONAS – 1925.
Book One.
1.
THE SUN WAS BEGINNING TO FALL FROM THE SKY INTO the white Nevada desert as Reno came up beneath me.
I banked the Waco slowly and headed due east.
I could hear the wind pinging the biplane's struts and I grinned to myself.
The old man would really hit the roof when he saw this plane. But he wouldn't have anything to complain about.
It didn't cost him anything. I won it in a crap game.
I moved the stick forward and came down slowly to fifteen hundred feet.
I was over Route 32 now and the desert on either side of the road was a rushing blur of sand.
I put her nose on the horizon and looked over the side.
There it was, about eight miles in front of me. Like a squat, ugly toad in the desert. The factory. CORD EXPLOSIVES.
I eased the stick forward again and by the time I shot past, I was only about a hundred feet over it.
I went into an Immelmann and looked back.
They were at the windows already. The dark Mexican and Indian girls in their brightly colored dresses and the men in their faded blue work clothes.
I could almost see the whites of their frightened eyes looking after me. I grinned again.
Their life was dull enough. Let them have a real thrill.
I pulled out at the top of the Immelmann and went on to twenty-five hundred feet. Then I hit the stick and dove right for the tar-pitched roof.
The roar from the big Pratt Whitney engine crescendoed and deafened my ears and the wind tore at my eyes and face.
I narrowed my lids and drew my lips back across my teeth. I could feel the blood racing in my veins, my heart pounding and the juices of life starting up in my gut.
Power, power, power!
Up here where the world was like a toy beneath me.
Where I held the stick like my cock in my hands and there was no one, not even my father, to say me no!
The black roof of the plant lay on the white sand like a girl on the white sheets of a bed, the dark pubic patch of her whispering its invitation into the dimness of the night.
My breath caught in my throat.
Mother.
I didn't want to turn away. I wanted to go home.