He paused a moment, his gaze seeming to waver, and he lost himself for maybe ten, twelve seconds. Then the fire rose in him again. His fist clenched. It came up like a gavel.
“This is my country, Copeland. I know this country. I know how it works, and how it thinks. I own this country. I own transport, media, construction. I own hospitals, I own insurance. I own manufacturing. And here’s a thing I know—I know that there is no more loyalty left here. I know that.” There was anger in him now—anger, and, it seemed to me, a trace of something else—regret. “Fellow works for you. Works for you for years, maybe. Then one day, someone comes along and whispers in his ear—oh, he sees it on TV, or in some stupid lifestyle magazine, something like that—and suddenly, it’s—” he did a mocking sing-song “—I should get more money for this job. Or, I need more vacation time. Or—oh, it just goes on. It’s hardly credible, a lot of it. There is a wonderful thing I’ve been hearing lately. Wonderful. You called me a name. Yeah. You called me a bad word, Mr. Ballington. Oh, I love that! Love it. I’m leaving ’cause you said—ha. You bet I called you a bad word. You fucking bet I did! I got a word for you, the word is traitor. That’s my bad word. Traitor to me, and traitor to the USA.” He glared at me, his eyes alight. “You know what wrecked this country? You know why US jobs are going to Mexico, and China, and Brazil? Because, because—” He swung his head from side to side. “I should get more money for this job. I should get more vacation time.” He wrinkled up his nose. “You called me a bad word. That’s it, through and through.” He slapped his fist against the chair arm. “This used to be a great country. A man could make something of himself here, like my daddy did, and his daddy before him. Make himself a giant, a colossus, towering, high over his fellows. Oh yes. Not these days, though. Not now. Oh, Mr. Ballington, I want more money. Well—you know what? You know what?”
He reached for his glass, gulped the drink like medicine. His cheeks were red.
“I’m gonna ask again, now, Mr. Copeland. Speaking as an—as an Englishman: What is our country’s greatest sin? In all of history?”
Behind his father’s back, Eddie-boy mouthed at me.
“Slavery . . . ?” I read.
“Exactly.” Ballington’s fist jabbed at the air. “When they abolished that, they ruined us. And that’s a fact.”
I thought I hadn’t understood.
“One stupid, stupid move. They wiped out everything that made this nation great, everything that would have gone on making us great, into eternity. They set us back a thousand years, all at a stroke.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“And why not?”
He looked at me from hooded eyes.
“Oh, listen to yourself! You perfect little puppet! I will tell you now,” he said. “There is not one CEO or one executive, not one HR man, not one politician, left or right—not one fucking manager in this whole country, doesn’t long for the return of slavery. But here’s the trick: he doesn’t call it that. Because slavery has been so thoroughly defamed throughout our history it cannot even be considered. It cannot be spoken of, except in the narrative of the oppressors. He doesn’t even say it to himself. Oh no. He’ll talk about the unions, the fickleness of staff. He’ll moan about the call-offs, and the paid vacations, and the rules on sick leave.” He clapped his hands and gave a bitter little laugh. “He’ll moan about the economics, and the politics. He’ll relocate to Mexico. But what he really wants—make no mistake—is slavery. And nothing else.”
“That’s—”
“Oh, do not misquote me. Do not misquote me. This is not a matter of race. Race is irrelevant. And I will say now: the abduction and enslavement of the African peoples was a crime for which this country has been paying ever since. It brought us into disrepute. It turned our greatest asset into a thing of shame and degradation, so much that it could not even be named. They called it the ‘peculiar institution.’ We turned our backs on our inheritance. As a country, we demeaned ourselves. We lost our heritage.
“Now, let me tell you, Copeland—as a nation, we are big. We are vigorous. We have resources. The result of that—it skews the time line on these things. So it’s taken a good while for the shit to hit the fan, but hit it has, most well and truly.”
He took the bottle and refilled his glass.
“The banks collapse. Economy—well, crisis to crisis. Doesn’t even matter who’s in charge, who’s President, who’s in Congress. But people are beginning to look about themselves. They say: do we need this? Should we put up with this? What’s the alternative?
“And there are whispers. There are ripples of opinion. You move in the circles I move in, you hear them. This Congressman, this CEO . . . They know. They talk behind closed doors. And what was once unthinkable, unsayable—it shines now with a bright, bright light upon our future.”