Soulcatcher by Charles Johnson Page A

his freshly pressed linen, the Mayor grumbled and pulled on his wrinkled shirt from the day before (on the front was a red soup stain from a lunch he'd taken at his club, but he couldn't worry about that now), his uncreased trousers, his coat, then hurried downstairs and through the frigid hallways of his many-roomed house, calling for their servants. Again, there was no answer. In the kitchen, in the chambers set aside for their live-in help, and in the livery stable there was only silence. And not a black face to be found. Moreover, the horses had not been groomed. Or fed. His carriage was not ready. He would have to travel, he realized, the five miles to City Hall under his own locomotion!
    Not being accustomed to walking, it took the Mayor two hours to traverse the distance between his home and office. He stopped to rest often, puffing, placing his hand against a wall, his heart racing and empty stomach growling. And what he saw—or rather didn't see—along the way to work startled him. There were no black people. It wasn't as if he looked for them every day. No, most of the time they blended into the background of his city, as unnoticeable as trees or weather vanes or lampposts—or maybe like the inner workings of a finely tuned watch. Obviously, no one paid attention to a timepiece's hidden mechanism until it ceased to work. But now, along the five-mile stretch between his home and City Hall, he saw chaos. Coal had not been delivered to homes, and this was the dead of winter! Barges had not been unloaded in the harbor. Fresh bread had not been delivered from bakeries. Roadwork lay unfinished, as if the fingers of God had plucked its dusky crews off the face of the earth. No windows were washed. No snow was shoveled. It was as if his city had run out of its primary source of power, coal. (A terrible pun, he knew, but on this awful day it seemed appropriate.) He wondered aloud as he galumphed down the nearly empty streets, "What in heaven's name is going on?" No carriages, driven by black coachmen, bore white passengers to and from the offices where they conducted the country's crucial business, domestic and international. Indeed, half the offices he saw were closed.
    It was, therefore, a befuddled and disheveled Mayor who finally reached City Hall by 2 P.M. and slumped heavily behind his desk, wondering if his heart might fail him once and for all after his morning's exertions. Everything he'd accomplished this morning (which wasn't much) had taken two—perhaps three—times longer to do. His secretary, a young man named Daniel, looked very sad that Thursday. He told the Mayor the people with whom he'd missed appointments were furious. Two entrepreneurs of enormous wealth and influence who'd traveled a great distance to see him—one a railroad man, the other a maritime merchant-felt insulted by what they called Hizzoner's "malfeasance" and planned to cancel further discussions of their proposed contracts and in the future only do business with other cities.
    "No!" whispered the Mayor.
    His secretary said, "I'm afraid so, sir. Your political rivals will make great capital of this. Your reelection is only months away, and you promised in the last campaign to improve commerce, shipping, and transportation."
    "I
know
what I promised, damn it!" The Mayor pounded his desk. "But it's not my fault! Nothing's been normal today!" He leaned back in his seat, red-faced, and began pulling at his fingers. "All the Negroes are gone. Have you noticed that? What on earth happened to them?"
    "What
you
agreed to, I guess," said his secretary.
    "
Me?
What are you babbling about, man? Talk sense! I never told the Negroes to go away! Have you been drinking?"
    "No, sir. I'm quite sober, insofar as it appears we both will be out of a job by November. I'm referring to the Compromise in Congress, which you fully endorsed."
    "What does
that
have to do with our Negroes being gone?"
    Quietly, his secretary stepped from the