Chapter XIV
Jake Featherston liked riding the train. When he rode the train, he was getting somewhere. He associated travel on foot with the long, grinding retreat through Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia. Then he’d been going where the damnyankees made him go. Now he was—mostly—on his own.
The train rattled through the Mississippi cotton country, bound for New Orleans. Featherston smiled to see Negroes working in the fields. Their hoes rose and fell as they weeded. The red and blue bandannas the women wore added splashes of color to the green, green fields. Jake nodded to himself in his Pullman car. That was where Negroes belonged.
The splendid car was where he belonged. He hadn’t known luxury till lately. He figured he was entitled to a little, after so long without. He did wish he weren’t going to New Orleans. He brought a fist down on his knee. Even the leader of the Freedom Party couldn’t get everything he wanted, not yet.
Amos Mizell of the Tin Hats had strongly urged him to hold the Party’s national convention on the banks of the Mississippi, to show it was a party for all the Confederate States. Willy Knight, who headed the Redemption League, said the same thing. Their arguments made sense, especially since Jake wanted to draw the League all the way into the Freedom Party.
He hadn’t particularly wanted to hold a convention at all; he knew, and everybody else knew, who the Party’s candidate would be. But the notion of having him simply declare his candidacy and point a finger at a running mate had horrified everyone around him. So here he was, on his way to a convention, on his way to New Orleans. He slammed his fist down again, this time hard enough to make himself jump and curse.
“Well, where the hell else could I go?” he demanded of the empty air around him. If he brought the convention to the Mississippi, New Orleans was the only logical choice. Little Rock was the middle of nowhere. Going to Dallas would have been asking for trouble from Willy Knight, who wanted to run for vice president; the Redemption League was stronger than the Party in Texas. Chihuahua? Featherston laughed without humor. “The greasers down there would love me, wouldn’t they?”
And so, to prove the Freedom Party’s national appeal, he’d had to bring the convention to the one Confederate city least friendly to him and his message. New Orleans not only had rich niggers with their own high society, it had a whole great raft of white men who didn’t care. The latter offended Jake even more than the former.
He felt better when the train pulled into the station. A company of men in white shirts and butternut trousers stood waiting for him on the platform. Some carried Freedom Party flags, others the Confederate battle flag with reversed colors that the Party also used. “Sarge!” they shouted when he left his car. “Sarge! Sarge! Sarge!”
“Good to be here,” Jake lied. “Now, on to victory!” The Freedom Party stalwarts cheered lustily. Some of the other people on the platform, New Orleans natives by the look of them, raised eyebrows and curled lips in Gallic disdain at the raucous display. Featherston hardly noticed. He was among his own again—the dispossessed, the rootless, the angry—and so back where he belonged.
When he got to the hotel, he felt as if part of Richmond had been transplanted to this alien soil. He might have been back at Party headquarters, to judge by the deference he got. That from Party members was genuine, that from the hotel staff—both white and black—professionally perfect. Whores, he thought. Nothing but whores. But, like whores, they made him feel good.
He spotted Roger Kimball across the gorgeously rococo lobby. Kimball spotted him, too, and hurried over. He could have done without that. “Good to see you, Sarge,” Kimball said, shaking his hand. “Say, are they going to try those fellows they arrested for burning down Tom Brearley’s house?”
Brearley and his wife had burned, too; Jake was wryly amused Kimball hadn’t mentioned that. He answered, “Reckon they are, yeah.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Don’t reckon any jury’s gonna convict ’em, though. That’s how it looks from here, anyway.”
“Bully,” Kimball said, and then, “I won’t keep you. You’ve got to get settled in, I reckon.” He drifted away. That was a smoother performance than Featherston had looked for from him. Thoughtfully, Jake rubbed his chin. If Kimball could be smooth as well as ferocious, he might end up making himself very valuable indeed.
After unpacking, Jake walked the couple of blocks to the convention hall, a huge marble wedding cake of a building that had gone up on Esplanade, just outside the French Quarter, a few years before the Great War. He was standing on the rostrum, looking out over the great hall, when Amos Mizell walked down the center aisle toward him. Willy Knight came in a couple of minutes later, before Jake and Mizell could do much more than say hello. Featherston was irked, but only a little; both men would have had spies in the hotel, and maybe back at the train station, too.
All the greetings were warier than they would have sounded to anyone who didn’t know the men involved. At last, Mizell said, “The Tin Hats will throw their weight behind you, Jake. You’re what this country needs this year, no two ways about it.”
Suddenly, Featherston was awfully damn glad he’d come to New Orleans. He’d met Mizell halfway, and now the head of the veterans’ organization was coming through for him in a big way. Willy Knight looked as if he’d just bitten down hard on the sourest lemon ever picked. He’d been threatening that if Jake didn’t tap him for vice president, he’d run for the top spot himself on an independent Redemption League ticket. That would have hurt, and hurt bad, especially in the West. He could still do it. But if the Tin Hats were loudly backing the Freedom Party, his bid would look like nothing but an exercise in spite.
Now, still sour, he asked, “You think you have any real chance of winning, Featherston?”
“Don’t know for certain,” Jake said easily. “The Party would have a better shot if TR had won up in the USA. Everybody down here hates him just as much as he hates us. Those Red bastards they’ve got up there now are bending over backwards so far, it’s hard to get people riled up at ’em the way they ought to be.”
“You ought to count your blessings, Jake,” Mizell said. “If Roosevelt had been president of the United States for longer than a couple of days after the news about your fellow down there in South Carolina broke, he’d have had his head on a plate—either that or he’d have blown Richmond to hell and gone.”
“Yeah, I was lucky there,” Featherston admitted. Knight sent him another hooded glance, as if to say, If I were a little luckier, I’d be wearing your shoes now. He was probably right. It did him no good.
“Picked a running mate yet?” Mizell asked, casual as if wondering about what Jake intended to have for supper. Maybe he was just idly curious, the way he sounded. And maybe Jake would flap his arms and fly to the moon, too.
“Yeah,” he answered, and let it go at that.
“It isn’t me.” Knight’s voice was flat, uninflected.
“No, Willy, it isn’t you.” Jake looked him over. “And if you want to raise a stink, go right ahead. You can run your own little outfit, do whatever you want. Would you sooner be a general in a little tinpot army or a colonel in a real one?”
He waited. He didn’t know how he’d answer that question himself. Knight glared at him, but finally said, “I’ll stick.” He didn’t add, Damn you, not quite. His eyes said it for him.
Jake didn’t care. From that moment on, he seemed to hold the world in his hands and turn it as he desired. The convention—the convention he hadn’t wanted—went smooth as silk, slick as petroleum jelly. The platform called for ending reparations to the USA, restoring a sound currency, punishing the people who’d botched the war, putting Negroes in their place, and making the Confederate States strong again (by which Jake meant rearming, but he remained too leery of the United States to say so openly). It passed by thunderous voice vote; Jake hoped it would grab lots of headlines.
The next day was his. People made speeches praising him. He’d helped draft some of them. His nomination went forward as smoothly as the Confederate advance on Philadelphia should have gone at the start of the Great War. No one else’s name was raised. He became the Freedom Party’s choice on the first ballot.
He let it be known he wanted Ferdinand Koenig to run with him. The Freedom Party secretary had backed him when he needed it most, and deserved his reward. That didn’t go quite so smoothly as the first two days of the convention had. Willy Knight let his name be placed in nomination, and his followers made fervent speeches about balancing the ticket geographically. Having made their speeches, they sat down—and got steamrollered. Knight sent Jake a note saying he hadn’t known they would do it. It might possibly have been true. Jake wouldn’t have bet a postage stamp on it.
On the night after the convention nominated Koenig, Featherston stood on the stage at the front of the smoke-filled hall and stared out at the throng of delegates calling his name. The hair at the nape of his neck tried to stand up. Three and a half years before, he’d climbed up on a streetcorner crate to take Anthony Dresser’s place because the founder of the Freedom Party wasn’t up to speaking to even a couple of dozen people. Thousands waited for Jake’s words now. Millions—he hoped—would vote for him come November.
“We’re on the way!” he shouted, and the hall erupted in cheers. He held up his hands. Silence fell, instantly and completely. God must have felt this way after He made the heavens and the earth. “We’re on the way!” Jake repeated. “The Freedom Party is on the way—we’re on the way to Richmond. The Confederate States are on the way—they’re on the way back. And the white race is on the way—on the way to settling accounts with the coons who stabbed us in the back and kept us from winning the war. And we should have won the war. You all know that. We should have won the war!”
Not even his upraised hands could keep the Freedom Party delegates from yelling their heads off. He basked in the applause like a rosebush basking in the sun. When he began to speak again, the noise cut off. “The Whigs say vote for them, everything’s fine, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s really changed a bit.” Jake’s guffaw was coarse as horsehair. “Bet you a million dollars they’re wrong.” He pulled a $1,000,000 banknote from his pocket, crumpled it up, and threw it away.
Laughter erupted, loud as the cheers had been. Jake went on, “The Rad Libs say everything’s fine, and all we need to do is cozy on up to the USA.” He looked out at the crowd. “You-all want to cozy on up to the USA?” The roar of No! almost knocked him off his feet.
“And the Socialists—our Socialists, not the fools in the United States—say everything will be fine, and all we need to do is cozy on up to the niggers.” He paused, then asked the question everyone waited for: “You-all want to cozy on up to the niggers?” No! wasn’t a roar this time, but a fierce and savage howl. Into it, through it, he said, “If we’d have gassed ten or fifteen thousand of those nigger Reds at the start of the war and during the war, how many good clean honest white Confederate soldiers would we have saved? Half a million? A million? Something like that. And the ones who did die, by God, they wouldn’t have died for nothing, on account of we’d have won.
“But the dirty cowards in Richmond, the corrupt imbeciles in the War Department, didn’t have the nerve to do it. So the niggers rose up, and they dragged us down. But like I said before, we’re on the way again. This time, nobody stops us—nobody, do you hear me? Not the Congress. Not the jackasses in the War Department. Not the niggers. Not the USA. Nobody! Nobody stops us now!”
He suddenly realized he was dripping with sweat. He’d got the crowd all hot and sweaty, too. They were on their feet, screaming. He saw a sea of glittering eyes, a sea of open mouths. He had a hard-on. He didn’t just want a woman. He wanted the whole country, and he thought he might have it.
Once upon a time, the town had been called Berlin. Then, when the Great War broke out, the Canadians rechristened it Empire, not wanting it to keep the name of an enemy’s capital. Jonathan Moss had flown over it then, as the U.S. Army pounded it to pieces and eventually overran it during the long, hard slog toward Toronto. Now it was Berlin again. And now he was back, a brand-new lawyer with a brand-new shingle, specializing in occupation law.
He had himself a brand-new office, too. The Canadians and British had defended Empire as long as the last man who could shoot still had cartridges for his rifle. By the time the Americans forced their way into the town, hardly one stone remained atop another. The Romans could only have dreamt of visiting such destruction on Carthage. All the buildings that stood in Empire were new ones.
Arthur, Ontario, lay about thirty miles to the north. Jonathan Moss told himself over and over that that wasn’t why he’d decided to set up his practice in Berlin. Sometimes he even believed it. After all, he hadn’t hopped into his Bucephalus and driven up to Arthur, had he? Of course he hadn’t. That meant he didn’t have Laura Secord on his mind, didn’t it? It did, at least some of the time.
But when days were slow, he had too much time to sit in his brand-new office and think. On days like that, he welcomed visitors not so much for the sake of the business they might bring as for their distraction value.
And so, now, he was happy to set a cigarette in the brass ashtray on his desk and greet the skinny man in the faded, shiny suit of prewar cut who came through the door and said, “Mr. Moss, is it?”
“That’s right.” Moss’ swivel chair squeaked as he rose from it. He stuck out his hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr.—?”
“My name is Smith. John Smith.” The skinny man sighed. “Save the question, sir: yes, that really is my name. I can prove it if I have to. There are a lot of Smiths, and my father and his father were both Johns, so…” He sighed again. “It’s almost as much trouble as being named something like Cyrus Mudpuddle, or I think it must be, anyhow.”
“You’re likely right, Mr. Smith,” said Moss, who’d taken his share of ribbing about his name over the years. “Why don’t you sit down, have a smoke if you care to, and tell me what you think I can do for you.” He glanced at that shabby suit again. “No fee for the first consultation.” Smith was hungrier than he.
“Thank you, sir. You’re very kind.” Smith sat, then made a show of patting his pockets. “Oh, dear, I seem to have left my cigarettes at home.”
“Have one of mine.” Moss extended the pack. He’d half expected something like this. He lit a match for Smith, wondering whether he’d ever see any money from the man if he undertook to represent him. After the Canadian had taken a couple of drags, Moss repeated, “What can I do for you?”
For a moment, he didn’t know if he’d get an answer. John Smith seemed entranced with pleasure at the tobacco smoke. Moss wondered how long he’d gone without. After a few seconds, though, Smith seemed to recall he hadn’t come into the office just to cadge a smoke. He said, “I wish your assistance, sir, in helping me regain a piece of property taken from me without good reason.”
“Very well.” A lot of Moss’ business was of that sort. He slid a pad toward himself and took a fountain pen from the middle drawer of his desk. “First, the basics: did you serve in the Canadian Army during the Great War?”
“No, sir,” Smith said. “I am badly ruptured, I’m afraid, and was not fit for duty. I have a doctor’s certificate.”
“Good enough.” Moss scribbled a note. “Next obvious question: have you taken the oath of loyalty to the occupation authorities?”
“Yes, I did that—did it not long after the war ended, as soon as I had the chance,” Smith answered. “I am a peaceable man. I would not tell you a falsehood and say I am glad your country won the war—you are an American, I take it?” He waited for Moss to nod, then went on, “Because I am a peaceable man, all I can do is make the best of things as I find them.”
“That’s sensible, Mr. Smith.” Moss noted he’d taken the oath. “All right. I may be able to help you. If you’d answered no to either of those questions, I couldn’t possibly, and neither could any lawyer. Some would take your money and tell you they could work miracles, but they’d be lying. I make no promises yet, you understand, but you do meet the minimum criteria for pursuing a claim. Now—what piece of property are we talking about?”
Smith coughed apologetically. “This one, sir.”
“What?” Moss stared.
“This one, sir.” John Smith looked even more embarrassed. “Before the war, sir, my house stood right about”—he pronounced it aboat, as a Canadian would—“here, instead of this fine big building where you have your office.”
“You want me to help you make me move out of my office?” Moss had judged Smith a man without any nerve. Now he revised his opinion. If that wasn’t gall, Julius Caesar had never seen any.
With or without nerve, Smith remained a quiet, apologetic fellow. “It’s not so much that I want to, sir,” he said, “but this property was—is—almost the only thing I own. I’ve not had an easy time of it since…since the war.” Maybe he’d been on the point of saying something on the order of, Since you Yankee robbers came up here. But maybe not, too. Maybe he’d just stumbled over a word. He seemed the type to do a good deal of that.
Jonathan Moss started to laugh. He quickly held up a hand. “I’m not laughing at you, Mr. Smith—really, I’m not,” he said. “But this is absurd, and I don’t think you can argue with me there.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Smith said, and Moss believed him. The Canadian got to his feet. “I am sorry to have troubled you.”
“Don’t go away!” Moss sprang to his feet, too, quick as if he’d been turning his fighting scout onto the tail of a Sopwith Pup. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take your case. Let me see your documents, Mr. Smith, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“Really?” John Smith’s hangdog expression vanished, to be replaced by astonishment. “But you work here!”
“It’s not like I own the building.” Moss corrected himself: “It’s not like I think I own the building.” He wondered what he would have done in his landlord’s shoes. Probably thrown Smith out so hard he bounced. But the Canuck could always have found another lawyer. Plenty of eager young hotshots had come up from the United States, and some Canadians were also jumping into occupation law.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” Smith told him. “Thank you very much, sir.” He coughed and looked embarrassed again. “I’m also afraid I’ll have some trouble paying you.”
One look at his suit had warned Moss that was likely. The way Smith had “forgotten” his cigarettes warned him it was as near certain as made no difference. He shrugged. “What the hell, Mr. Smith,” he said—not proper legal language, but at the moment he didn’t care. “We’ll see what you can afford. If you can’t afford much, I’ll do it for a lark. I want to see the look on my landlord’s face when I serve him the papers.”
“Oh, that’s good. That’s very good.” For a moment, Smith, who had to be close to fifty, looked about fifteen. “What they call a practical joke, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it just?” Moss leaned forward in his chair. “Now—let’s find out exactly how practical a joke it is. Show me these documents.”
“I haven’t got everything with me, I’m afraid,” Smith said. Moss exhaled through his nose. He hadn’t been practicing long, but he’d already seen that unprepared clients were the bane of an attorney’s life. Blushing, Smith went on, “I left most of the papers I still have back at my flat, because I didn’t really believe you’d be interested in helping me.”
“Show me what you’ve—” Moss stopped. “The papers you still have?” he asked sharply. “What happened to the ones you used to have?”
John Smith showed a touch of temper for the first time. “What do you think happened to them?” he snapped. “You Yanks, that’s what. I stayed in Empire—in Berlin—till the shells started falling. When I got out, it was with the clothes on my back and one carpetbag. You try stuffing your whole life in one carpetbag, sir, and see how well you do.”
Before coming to Berlin, Moss hadn’t thought much about how civilians on the losing side felt about the war. He was getting an education in quiet bitterness. “All right,” he said. “What have you got?”
Smith reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the two documents he’d already mentioned. He’d have needed the doctor’s certificate as he fled the advancing Americans. Without it, the Canadians would have stuck a rifle in his hands and sent him to the trenches, rupture or no rupture. They might have done that anyhow, but he had the paper that said they wouldn’t have. He also had the paper that said he’d made his formal peace with the U.S. occupiers. No Canadian could work without that one.
And he had a photograph of himself—a younger version of himself—standing in front of a clapboard house that bore the same address as this big brick office building. A plain woman in a black dress and a frumpy hat stood beside him. “Your wife?” Moss asked.
“That’s right.” Smith paused, then went on, “Some Yank pilot shot us up as we were leaving—shot up the road, I mean, for the sport of it. He killed my Jane and left me without a scratch—and ever since, I’ve wished it had been the other way round.”
Moss didn’t know what to say to that. He’d shot up refugee columns. It was part of war: it disrupted the enemy. He hadn’t thought much about the consequences of what he did. He resolutely tried not to think about those consequences now.
“Besides this photograph,” he managed at last, “what sort of title can you show to this property? Have you got a deed? Have you got bank records?”
“Haven’t got a deed,” Smith said. “Used to be bank records—in the bank. Isn’t any bank any more. I hear tell Yank soldiers blew the vault open and stole everything inside—everything they wanted, anyway.”
That wouldn’t have surprised Moss. Among other things, armies were enormous robber bands. He said, “You do understand, lacking the proper papers will make your claim much harder to establish.”
“I should hope I understand that,” John Smith said. “If I’d reckoned it would be easy, I’d have tried it myself.”
“All right,” Moss said. “Go through your effects. Whatever you can bring that’s evidence you own this land, I want to see it. No matter how unlikely you think it is, I want to see it. If you know people who can testify they know you owned this land, I want to hear from them. I won’t kid you, though. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
“I’ll do my best,” Smith promised.
When Lucien Galtier saw the green-gray motorcar coming down the road from Rivière-du-Loup toward his farmhouse, he took it for granted at first. He had seen an infinitude of green-gray motorcars and trucks coming down that road, and another infinitude going up it.
Then, after he’d already started turning away, he spun back and stared at the Ford with eyes that wanted to narrow in suspicion and widen in surprise at the same time. He had not seen a green-gray motorcar in some time. The U.S. Army painted its motorcars that color. But the U.S. Army had not occupied the Republic of Quebec since the end of the war—well, since a little after the end of the war.
The Ford pulled off the road and parked beside the farmhouse, as Leonard O’Doull’s automobile more commonly did these days. Lucien sighed and walked toward it. “I might have known,” he muttered under his breath. “A man may think he has escaped troubles, but troubles never escape a man.”
Two men got out of the motorcar. Galtier recognized Bishop Pascal first, more by his vestments than by his own tubby form. His companion, the driver, was whipcord lean and, sure enough, wore U.S. Army uniform. Seeing Lucien approach, he waved. “Bonjour!” he called in excellent Parisian French. “It is good to see you once more, M. Galtier.”
“Bonjour…” As Galtier drew near, he saw that Jedediah Quigley wore eagles on his shoulders, not oak leaves of either gold or silver. He’d been a major when Galtier first made his acquaintance. Now—“Bonjour, Colonel Quigley. You have come up in the world since I saw you last.”
“He is the military liaison officer between the United States and the Republic of Quebec,” Bishop Pascal said. Hearing the bishop speak ahead of Colonel Quigley surprised Lucien not at all; Pascal had always found the sound of his own voice sweeter and more intoxicating than communion wine.
“An important man indeed,” Galtier said. “And how and why does a simple farmer deserve a visit from not only the military liaison officer between the United States and the Republic of Quebec but also the illustrious and holy bishop of Rivière-du-Loup?”
Bishop Pascal had no ear for irony. Colonel Quigley did. One of his eyebrows quirked upward. “It is a matter concerning the hospital,” he said.
“What about the hospital?” Galtier demanded, suddenly apprehensive. He saw Marie peering out the kitchen window, no doubt wondering what was going on. He’d been about to ask Quigley and Bishop Pascal to come into the farmhouse so she could serve them tea—or something stronger—and some of the cinnamon buns she’d baked the day before. Now, he was not nearly so sure they were welcome in his house.
“The hospital, of course, is built on land taken from your patrimony,” Bishop Pascal said. The plump bishop always looked out for himself first. He had embraced the Americans with indecent haste. Galtier would not have cared to turn his back on him for an instant. But he did understand the way a Quebecois farmer’s mind worked.
Colonel Quigley, despite having been in Quebec since 1914, didn’t. “And we’ve been paying you a good rent for it, too,” he said gruffly.
“It is my land,” Galtier replied with dignity. “And”—his own eyebrow rose—“for some long stretch of time, you paid not a cent of rent. You simply took it, because you had men with guns.”
“We suspected your loyalty.” Quigley was blunt in a way no Quebecois would have been. “Once we didn’t any more, we paid what we owed you.”
“If you steal land from a man’s patrimony, you are liable to make him disloyal,” Galtier said. “Indeed, you are fortunate this did not happen with me.” He still marveled that it hadn’t. He’d been disloyal after the Americans invaded Quebec. He clearly remembered that. But Nicole had gone to work at the hospital, she and Leonard O’Doull had fallen in love, Quigley had agreed to pay rent, and the Americans had not treated him so badly after all. He’d thrived since they came. Quebec had prospered, too. And he had a half-American grandson. Sure enough, he was at peace with Americans now.
Bishop Pascal said, “Naturally, my son, you can comprehend that it is awkward for this fine hospital to rest on land where, if the owner so desires, he may, at a whim, order it to leave so he might seed the soil with lettuces.”
“Lettuces?” Galtier said. “Certainly not. That is wheat land, and wheat land of the first quality, I might add.”
Jedediah Quigley seemed to need both hands to hold on to his patience. “Whatever you raised on it is beside the point,” he said. “The point is, the Republic of Quebec wants to buy that land from you, so no troubles of the sort Bishop Pascal is talking about can arise. I’m involved here because I am the one who took that land from you in the first place.”
“You wish me to sell part of my patrimony?” Galtier knew he sounded as if Colonel Quigley had asked him to sell one of his children. He didn’t care. That was how he felt—even if, at times, he wouldn’t have minded getting rid of Georges.
“Money can be part of your patrimony, too,” Quigley said, which only proved he did not completely understand the folk of Quebec.
“It would be an act of Christian charity, for the sake of the people of Rivière-du-Loup and the surrounding countryside,” Bishop Pascal said. “And, unlike most acts of charity, my son, it would not only be good for your soul but would bring money into your pocket rather than having it flow out.”
“And not just money,” Colonel Quigley added. “You know the hospital makes its own electricity. As part of the bargain, we would have the hospital make electricity for this farm as well.”
They were eager to make a deal. They were showing how eager they were. Against a canny peasant like Lucien Galtier, they were begging to be skinned. He knew now, he would sell the land. Marie would skin him if he let the chance to get electricity escape. But he intended to make the bishop and the colonel sweat first. “It is my patrimony,” he growled. “One day, my grandson’s grandson will grow wheat on that land.”
Colonel Quigley rolled his eyes. “Damn stubborn frog,” he muttered under his breath in English. Galtier smiled. He didn’t think he was supposed to hear, or to understand if he did. Too bad, he thought. He was a damn stubborn frog, and they would have to make the best of it.
“My son, have you not seen in these past few years how things can change, and change unexpectedly and quickly?” Bishop Pascal asked. “Would you not like to see this change be for the better?”
“By better, your Grace, you mean doing as you wish.” Galtier did not want to lose the chance he had here. Gruffly, grudgingly, he said, “Very well. Let us speak of this further, since you insist. Come inside. We may as well sit down.”
When he brought them into the farmhouse, Marie fussed over them, as he’d known she would. Once she had them settled with tea and buns, she asked, “How is it that we have such distinguished visitors?”
Before either visitor could speak, Lucien kept right on growling: “They seek to purchase some of our patrimony. Along with money, they even offer electricity.” He curled his lip, as if to show how little he cared for electricity. “They do not comprehend the importance of a man’s patrimony.”
“Mme. Galtier, I am sure you can make your husband see reason here,” Colonel Quigley said.
“I leave these matters to him. He is the man, after all,” Marie said primly. A single flashing glance toward Galtier sent quite another message, but neither Quigley nor Bishop Pascal saw it. After that glance, Marie retreated to the kitchen.
In tones of gentle reason, Bishop Pascal said, “You have not even inquired what the Republic and the United States—we will share the expense, our two countries—might pay for your parcel of land.”
“You haven’t said what you want for it, either,” Quigley said.
“I have not said I would take any amount of money for it,” Galtier replied. “But, if you must, you may name a price.” Quigley had invited him to set his own price when he’d started getting rent for the land on which the hospital stood. He’d named the highest price he dared, and Quigley had paid without a blink. Lucien knew he could have gone higher, but not how much. This time…If Quigley mentioned any sum less than five hundred dollars, maybe he really wouldn’t sell the piece of property.
“The United States are prepared to pay you one thousand dollars for that tract, M. Galtier,” Colonel Quigley said.
“And the Republic of Quebec will add one thousand dollars to that sum,” Bishop Pascal put in.
Galtier’s ears rang. Two thousand dollars? And electricity? “You are not serious,” he said, meaning he could not believe they would pay so much.
Thanks to his bold front, Bishop Pascal and Quigley thought he meant they weren’t offering enough. The American looked sour, the bishop piously resigned. Colonel Quigley said, “Oh, very well, then. Fifteen hundred from us, another fifteen hundred from the Republic, and not a dime more.”
Three thousand dollars? Lucien could buy a motorcar. He could buy a tractor. He would be a man to reckon with for miles around. He smiled at his guests. “Two thousand dollars from the United States, another two from the Republic, and not a dime less.”
Colonel Quigley and Bishop Pascal both looked alarmed. Galtier felt alarmed—had he pushed it too far? The bishop and Quigley put their heads together. After a couple of minutes, Bishop Pascal said, “In the interest of concord, we will split the difference with you—one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars from Quebec and a like amount from the United States. Is it agreeable to you?”
“And electricity?” Galtier demanded.
“And electricity,” Colonel Quigley said. “I told you that beforehand.”
“It is better to have everything certain than to leave anything in doubt.” Galtier sighed with reluctance he did not feel. “Very well. Let it be as you say. For one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars from each of your governments—and electricity—I will sell this land, but only, mind you, in the interest of concord, as the holy bishop says.”
“God will surely bless you, my son,” Bishop Pascal said, beaming.
“Do you think so?” Lucien said interestedly. “That would be good, too.”
Bishop Pascal didn’t know what to make of that. He scratched his head. Colonel Quigley knew exactly what to make of it. He looked even more sour than he had while they were dickering. Why should he care? Galtier thought. It isn’t his money. However sour Quigley looked, the bargain was sealed. The money would be Galtier’s—soon, he hoped.
Edna Semphroch came back into the coffeehouse. Nellie Jacobs gave her daughter an unhappy look, even though midafternoon business was slow. Truth to tell, business had never got back to what it was during the war, when Confederate officers from the force occupying Washington had kept the place hopping morning, noon, and night. Nellie didn’t miss the Rebs, not even a little bit, but she did miss their cash.
“Took you long enough, didn’t it?” Nellie said sourly. “I reckon I could have looked at every skirt between here and St. Louis in the stretch of time you’ve been gone. And you didn’t even buy anything. Can’t you make up your mind?” People who joked about women’s indecision had never met Nellie.
“Nope, didn’t buy anything,” Edna agreed. She eyed her mother with an odd mix of amusement and apprehension. “Didn’t even go looking at skirts, as a matter of fact.”
Nellie had no fancy education. She was, most ways, shrewd rather than really clever. But when Edna said something like that, her mother didn’t need a road map to figure out what she’d say next. “You’ve been sneaking around behind my back,” Nellie said, and could have sounded no more outraged if she’d been reading a philandering husband the riot act.
She would have had an easier time accepting a philandering husband. Men got it where they could. That was part—too large a part, as far as she was concerned—of how they were made. Women, though…She’d known for a long time that Edna burned hot. Her daughter had seemed calmer the past couple of years, so Nellie had dared hope she’d got it out of her system. No such luck, evidently.
“I’ve been trying to have a life, Ma,” Edna said. “God knows you don’t make it easy for a girl.” But the unbearably smug look on her face said she’d had her desire fulfilled—and had something else filled full, too, more than likely.
“You little hussy,” Nellie hissed. She wished Clara, who was taking a nap upstairs, would pick that moment to wake up. Otherwise, she’d be locked in a fight with her older daughter of the sort they’d had during the war, the sort they hadn’t had since Nellie married Hal Jacobs.
Again, no such luck. Edna tossed her head. “Hussy? Huh! Takes one to know one, I guess.” Had Nellie had a knife in her hand, she might have used it. Fortunately, she’d been washing cups and saucers. Edna ignored her furious squawk. Edna seemed inclined to ignore just about everything. She went on, “But none of that matters, anyhow. He asked me to marry him today.”
“Did he think about asking you to get an abortion instead?” Wounded, Nellie wanted to hit back any way she could.
Her daughter shook her head. “I ain’t in a family way, Ma. And I ought to know, too, I felt so lousy last week.” She laughed. “Turned out you were the one who ended up in a family way. I still think that’s the funniest thing in the whole wide world.”
If she’d had to find out for sure she wasn’t pregnant, she’d been doing things that left doubt in her mind. “At least I was married,” Nellie said.
“And I’m going to be,” Edna said. “Whether you like it or not, I’m going to be. I ain’t getting any younger, you know. I’m sick and tired of you watching me the way Teddy Roosevelt watched the damn Rebs.”
Edna wasn’t getting any younger, Nellie realized. She was closer to thirty than twenty, as Nellie was closer to fifty than forty. Even better than three years of marriage to Hal Jacobs hadn’t come close to making Nellie understand why a woman would marry for the sake of bedroom pleasures; for her, bedroom pleasures were at most rare accidents that brought as much embarrassment as release. But Edna wasn’t like that, however much Nellie wished her daughter were.
“Who is this fellow?” After Nellie asked the question, she realized it should have been the first one out of her mouth.
Her daughter seemed surprised she’d asked it at all. In less snippy tones than she’d been using, Edna answered, “His name is Grimes, Ma, Merle Grimes. He’s right my age, and he’s a clerk for the Reconstruction Authority.”
“If he’s right your age, how come he hasn’t got a wife already?” Nellie asked, wondering if in fact he had one Edna didn’t know about.
But Edna said, “He had one, but she died of the Spanish influenza a couple-three years ago. He showed me a snapshot once. I asked him to. She looked a little like me, I think, only her hair was darker.”
That took some of the wind out of Nellie’s sails. When she asked “What did you tell him about Lieutenant Kincaid?” she didn’t sound mean at all.
“I’ve told him I was engaged during the war, but my fiancé got killed,” Edna said. “I didn’t tell Merle he was a Reb, and I’ll thank you not to, neither.”
“All right,” Nellie said, and Edna looked surprised. Nellie guessed Merle Grimes would eventually find out, and there would be trouble on account of it. Too many people knew about the late Nicholas H. Kincaid for the secret to keep. His death at what would have been Edna’s wedding had even made the newspapers, though a clerk for the U.S. government wouldn’t have been in Washington then.
Bill Reach and me, we can keep a secret, Nellie thought. If anybody else knew… But no one else did, not Edna, not Hal, no one. No one ever would.
“He’s a nice man, Ma,” Edna said. “He’s a good man. You’ll like him when you meet him, swear to God you will.”
If he was such a nice man, if he was such a good man, what was he doing sticking it into Edna before he put a ring on her finger? Nellie started to ask that very question, but caught herself. For one thing, it would make Edna mad. For another, this Grimes had offered to put a ring on her finger. Nellie found a different question to ask: “How did you meet him?”
Edna giggled. “The first couple times were right here in the coffeehouse. I don’t reckon you’d recall him”—which was certainly true—“but he was here, all right. He doesn’t live too far away. We ran into each other at the greengrocer’s one time, and then again a week later. After that, one thing sort of led to another.”
I’ll bet it did, Nellie thought. But, regardless of whether she thought Edna was a fool, she couldn’t deny Edna was also a grown woman. “All right,” Nellie said again. “If he wants to marry you, if you want to marry him, the only thing I can say is, I hope you don’t end up sorry on account of it.”
“I don’t think we will, Ma,” Edna said. A few years before, she’d been unshakably certain she and Confederate Lieutenant Kincaid would live happily ever after. Maybe she really was growing up as well as grown—even if she did have more trouble keeping her legs together than she should have. Edna was thinking about such things, too, but in a different way, for she asked, “Wouldn’t you like to have a little grandbaby?”
“With Clara around, it feels like I’ve already got one,” Nellie said. “If you had a baby, the biggest difference would be that I wouldn’t have to keep an eye on the kid every single second of the day and night. I hope you’ll be happy, Edna. I wish you didn’t think you had to sneak around to meet somebody, and to see him.”
Edna didn’t answer that, which was probably just as well. Nellie had done everything but shove her daughter into a chastity belt to keep her from meeting and seeing anybody. Nellie had been sure—was still sure—she’d done the right thing, but Edna’d finally managed to get around her. Now she had to make the best of it.
Her husband was very little help. “High time she gets married, if that is what she wants,” Hal said. “If she is unhappy afterwards, she will have no one to blame but herself. But I hope and pray she will not be unhappy.”
“So do I,” Nellie said. “If she is, though, I bet she blames me.”
“We will see what we will see when we meet the young man,” Hal said. “He may turn out to be very nice.” Nellie was inclined to doubt that on general principles—hardly any young men, in her estimation, were very nice—and on specifics—had this Merle Grimes been very nice, he wouldn’t have yanked Edna’s drawers down till after they were married, and not too often then, either. By that standard, Hal Jacobs was very nice.
After Edna’s announcement, Nellie didn’t want to let her leave the coffeehouse for any reason whatever. With Edna a woman grown, that wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, impossible. And one day, about a week after Edna’s bombshell, she did go out. When she came back, she came back arm in arm with a man. “Ma,” she said proudly, “this here’s my intended. Merle, this is my mother. She’s Nellie Jacobs now; like I told you, my pa’s been dead a long time.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you at last, Mrs. Jacobs,” Grimes said.
“Pleased to meet you, too,” Nellie said grudgingly. She’d intended to limit herself to a simple hello. But Grimes wasn’t what she’d expected. For one thing, he walked with a cane, and wore the ribbon for the Purple Heart in a buttonhole. For another, he didn’t look like a practiced seducer. He seemed serious and quiet; his long, rather horsy face and gold-framed spectacles might have belonged to a lawyer, not a clerk.
Nellie knew that didn’t necessarily prove anything. Some of the men she recalled from her own sordid past had seemed ordinary enough on the outside. But she didn’t hate Grimes on sight, as she’d thought she would.
He said, “I think I’m the luckiest man in the world. Edna may have told you, ma’am, I lost my wife to the influenza. I never thought I’d fall in love with another woman again till I met your daughter. She showed me I was wrong, and I’m ever so glad she did.”
Edna looked as if she would have lain down on the floor for him then and there if Nellie hadn’t been in the coffeehouse. Nellie did her best to hide her disgust. Grimes had asked Edna to marry him. He hadn’t got her in a family way, either, as Edna’s father had before he married Nellie.
“Where are your people from, Mr. Grimes?” Nellie asked. “What do they do?”
“I was born in New Rumley, Ohio, Mrs. Jacobs,” Grimes answered, “the same town that saw the birth of the great General Custer. My father runs the weekly newspaper there: the New Rumley Courier. His father ran it before him; I reckon my brother Caleb’ll take it on when the time comes.”
“Why aren’t you still back there yourself?” What Nellie meant was, If you were still back there, you wouldn’t be rumpling my daughter’s clothes.
Merle Grimes could hardly have missed that, but it didn’t faze him. He said, “I wanted steady work. The newspaper business is a lot of things, but it’s not steady. You go to work for the U.S. government, you know you’ve got a paycheck for the rest of your days. I won’t get rich, but I won’t go hungry, either.”
Nellie didn’t know what sort of answer she’d thought she would get, but that wasn’t it. “You seem a steady enough young fellow,” she said, an admission she hadn’t looked to make.
“I try to be,” Grimes said—steadily.
“Isn’t he the bulliest thing in the whole wide world, Ma?” Edna said.
She was thinking with her cunt, a phrase that hadn’t come to Nellie’s mind since her days in the demimonde. But Merle Grimes did look to be a much better bargain than Nellie had expected. “He may do,” she said. “He just may do.”
Engine roaring, the barrel bounded across the Kansas prairie north of Fort Leavenworth. Colonel Irving Morrell stood head and shoulders out of the turret, so he could take in as much of the battlefield as possible. The test model easily outran and out-maneuvered the Great War machines against which it was pitted.
Morrell ducked down into the turret and bawled a command to the driver in the forward compartment: “Halt!” And the driver halted, and it was not divine intervention. With the engine separated from the barrel’s crew by a steel bulkhead, a man could hear a shouted order. In a Great War barrel, one man could not hear another who was screaming into his ear.
At Morrell’s order, the gunner traversed the turret till the cannon bore on the barrel he had chosen. The old-style machines were trying to bring their guns to bear on him, too, but they had to point themselves in the right direction, a far slower and clumsier process than turning the turret.
“Fire!” Morrell yelled. The turret-mounted cannon roared. A shell casing leaped from the breech as flame spurted from the muzzle. It was only a training round, with no projectile, but it made almost as much noise as the real thing, and getting used to the hellish racket of the battlefield was not the least important part of training. The loader passed a new shell to the gunner, who slammed it home.
An umpire raised a red flag and ordered the barrel at which Morrell had fired out of the exercise. Morrell laughed. This was the fifth or sixth lumbering brute to which he’d put paid this afternoon. The Great War barrels hadn’t come close to hurting him. Had it been a prizefight, the referee would have stopped it.
But, in the ring or on the battlefield, he who stood still asked to get tagged. Morrell ducked down again and shouted, “Go! Go hard! Let’s see how many of them we can wreck before they make us call it a day.”
He laughed. This was as close to real combat as he could come. He might have enjoyed going up to Canada with a few companies of barrels, but he knew General Custer didn’t really need his services. The Canucks had been pretty quiet lately. The Confederate States were still licking their wounds, too. So he would pretend, as he’d pretended before the Great War, and have a dandy time doing it, too.
The barrel up ahead had the name PEACHES painted on its armored flanks. That made Morrell laugh, too. Since the earliest days of barrels, men had named them for girlfriends and wives and other pretty women. Peaches belonged to Lieutenant Jenkins; Morrell could see him standing up in the cupola. He saw Morrell, too, and sent him a gesture no junior officer should ever have aimed at his superior. Morrell laughed again.
Jenkins tried to keep him off by opening up with his rear and starboard machine guns. They fired blanks, too. Not only was that cheaper, but live ammunition would have torn through the thin steel of the test model’s superstructure. This time, Morrell’s chuckle had a predatory ring. It wouldn’t do Jenkins any good. This machine was assumed to be armored against such nuisances.
But an umpire raised a flag and pointed at Morrell. Morrell started to shout a hot protest—sometimes the umpires forgot they were supposed to pretend his barrel was properly armored. But then he realized the officer was pointing not at the barrel but at himself. He could not argue about that. His own body was vulnerable to machine-gun fire, even if that of the barrel was supposed not to be.
It was, in fact, a nice test of his crew. He bent down into the turret one last time. “I’m dead,” he said. “You’re on your own. I’ll try not to bleed on you.” He started to tell them to nail Jenkins’ barrel, but decided he’d used up enough “dying” words already.
The men made him proud. His gunner, a broad-shouldered sergeant named Michael Pound, said, “If you’re dead, sir, get the hell out of the way so I can see what I’m doing.” As soon as Morrell moved, Pound peered out of the turret and then started giving orders with authority a general might have envied. They were good orders, too, sensible orders. Maybe he couldn’t have commanded an entire brigade of barrels, but he sounded as if he could.
And he went straight after the barrel that had “killed” his commander. Morrell knew he couldn’t have done a better job himself. In short order, Pound shelled Jenkins’machine from the side: fire to which its main armament could not respond. An umpire soon had to raise a flag signaling the Great War barrel destroyed.
“Bully!” Morrell shouted, and smacked Pound on his broad back. “How did you learn to command so well?”
“Sir, I’ve been listening to you all along,” his gunner answered, “and keeping an eye on you, too. I copied what you’d do and what you’d say.”
“At least you didn’t copy my accent,” Morrell said. Pound laughed. His voice had a northern twang to it that made him sound almost like a Canadian. Morrell went on, “It’s still your barrel, Sergeant. What are you going to do next?”
Sergeant Pound went barrel hunting as ferociously as Morrell could have wanted. When the umpires finally whistled the exercise to a halt, one of them approached the test model. “Colonel, you were supposed to have been killed,” he said in the fussily precise tones that failed to endear umpires to ordinary soldiers.
“Captain, on my word of honor, I did and said nothing at all to fight this barrel after your colleague signaled that I’d been hit,” Morrell answered. He climbed out onto the top of the turret, then called down into it: “Sergeant Pound, stand up and take a bow.” Pound did stand up. When he saw the captain with the umpire’s armband, he came to attention and saluted.
As if doing him a favor he didn’t deserve, the captain returned the salute. Then he gave Morrell a fishy stare. “I have a great deal of trouble believing what you just told me, Colonel,” he said.
That was the wrong tack to take. “Captain, if you are suggesting that I would lie to you on my word of honor, I have a suggestion for you in return,” Morrell said quietly. “If you like, we can meet in some private place and discuss the matter man to man. I am, I assure you, at your service.”
U.S. Army officers hadn’t dueled since before the War of Secession. Morrell didn’t really have pistols at sunrise in mind. But he would have taken a good deal of pleasure in whaling the stuffing out of the officious captain. He let that show, too. As he’d expected, the captain wilted. “Sir, I think you may have misunderstood me,” he said, looking as if he wished he could sink into the churned-up prairie.
“I hope I did,” Morrell said. “I also hope Sergeant Pound’s outstanding achievement will be prominently featured in your reports of the action. He deserves that, and I want to see him get it.”
“He shall have it,” the umpire said. “You may examine the report as closely as you like.” He wasn’t altogether a fool, not if he realized Morrell would be reading that report to make sure he kept his promise. He still came too close to being a perfect fool to make Morrell happy.
Pound said, “Thank you very much, sir,” as Morrell climbed down into the turret once more.
“Don’t thank me,” Morrell said. “You’re the one who earned it. And now, let’s take this beast back to the barn. We keep showing them and showing them that we can run rings around every other barrel in the United States. If that won’t make them build more like this one, I don’t know what will.”
Odds were, nothing would make the Socialists build new, improved barrels. The political fight back in Philadelphia at the moment had to do with old-age pensions, not the War Department. Morrell was convinced he’d have a better chance of living to collect an old-age pension if the Army got better barrels, but he had no friends in high places, not in President Sinclair’s administration.
After the barrel returned to the shed that sheltered it from the elements—and at whose expense the quartermasters had grumbled—Morrell climbed out and headed for the Bachelor Officer Quarters. Then he stopped, did a smart about-face, and went off in the other direction. As he went, he shook his head and laughed at himself. He’d been married only a little more than a month, and the habits he’d acquired over several years died hard.
The cottage toward which he did go resembled nothing so much as the company housing that went up around some factories. It was small and square and looked like the ones all around it. It was also the first time Irving Morrell had had more than a room to himself since joining the Army more than half a lifetime before.
Agnes Hill—no, Agnes Morrell; the habit of thinking of her by her former name died hard, too—opened the door when he was still coming up the walk. “How did it go today?” she asked.
He kissed her before waggling his hand and answering, “So-so. We blew a bunch of Great War barrels to smithereens, the way we always do, but I got shot in the middle of the exercise.”
To his surprise, Agnes looked stricken. She needed a few seconds to realize what he meant. Even when she did, her laugh came shaky. “An umpire decided you got shot,” she said, sounding as if she needed to reassure herself.
Morrell nodded. “That’s right. See? No blood.” He did a neat pirouette. When he faced Agnes again, she still wasn’t smiling. Now he had to pause to figure out why. When he did, he felt stupid, not a feeling he was used to. Her first husband had died in combat; was it any wonder she didn’t find cracks about getting shot very funny? Contritely, Morrell said, “I’m sorry, dear. I’m fine. I really am.”
“You’d better be.” Agnes’ voice was fierce. “And now come on. Supper’s just about ready. I’ve got a beef tongue in the pot, the way you like it—with potatoes and onions and carrots.”
“You can spend the rest of the night letting out my trousers, the way you feed me,” Morrell said. Agnes laughed at that with real amusement. However much Morrell ate—and he was a good trencherman—he remained skinny as a lath.
After supper, Morrell stayed in the kitchen while his wife washed dishes. He enjoyed her company. They chatted while she worked, and then while she read a novel and he waded through reports. And then they went to bed.
Though he’d hardly been a virgin before saying “I do,” Morrell’s occasional couplings with easy women had not prepared him for the pleasures of the marriage bed. Every time he and his wife made love, it was as if they were getting reacquainted, and at the same time learning things about each other they hadn’t known before and might have been a long time finding out any other way. “I love you,” he said afterwards, taking his weight on elbows and knees while they lay still joined.
“I love you, too,” Agnes answered, raising up a little to kiss him on the cheek. “And I love—this. And I would love you to get off me so I can get up and go to the bathroom, if that’s all right.”
“I think so,” he said. Agnes laughed and poked him in the ribs. When she came back to bed, he was nearly asleep. Agnes laughed again, on a different note. She put on her nightgown and lay down beside him. He heard her breathing slow toward the rhythms of sleep, too. Feeling vaguely triumphant at staying awake long enough to notice that, he drifted off.
Anne Colleton had always fancied that she had a bit of the artist in her. Back before the war, she’d designed and arranged the exhibition of modern art she’d put on at the Marshlands mansion. Everyone had praised the way the exhibit was laid out. Then the world went into the fire, and people stopped caring about modern art.
Now Anne was working with different materials. This Freedom Party rally in Columbia would be one of the biggest in South Carolina. She was bound and determined it would also be the best. She’d done her best to get permission to hold the rally on the grounds of the State House, but her best hadn’t been good enough. The governor was a staunch Whig, and not about to yield the seat of government even for a moment to Jake Featherston’s upstarts. She’d hoped for better without really expecting it.
Seaboard Park would do well enough. Neither the governor nor the mayor nor the chief of police could ban the rally altogether, though they would have loved to. But the Confederate Constitution guaranteed that citizens might peaceably assemble to petition for redress of grievances. The Freedom Party wasn’t always perfectly peaceable, but it came close enough to make refusal to issue a permit a political disaster.
Tom Colleton touched Anne’s arm. “Well, Sis, I’ve got to hand it to you. This is going to be one devil of a bash.”
“Nice of you to decide to come up from St. Matthews and watch it,” Anne replied coolly. “I didn’t expect you to bother.”
“It’s my country,” Tom said. “If you remember, I laid my life on the line for it. I want to see what you and that maniac Featherston have in mind for it.”
“He’s not a maniac.” Anne did her best to hold down the anger in her voice. “I don’t deal with maniacs—except the ones I’m related to.”
“Heh,” her brother said. But then he surprised her by nodding. “I suppose you’re right—Featherston’s not a maniac. He knows what he wants and he knows how to go after it. You ask me, though, that makes him more dangerous, not less.”
Anne wondered and worried about the same thing herself. Even so, she said, “When he does win, whether it’s this year or not, he’ll set the Confederate States to rights. And he’ll remember who helped him get to the top.” Tom started to say something. She shook her head. “Can’t talk now. The show’s about to start.”
Gasoline-powered generators came to life. Searchlights began to glow all around Seaboard Park. Their beams shot straight up into the air, making the park seem as if it were surrounded by colonnades of bright, pale light. Anne had come up with that effect herself. She was proud of it. Churches wished they made people feel the awe those glowing shafts inspired.
More electric lights came on inside the park. Tom caught his breath. They showed the whole place packed with people. Most of the crowd consisted of the ordinary working people of Columbia in their overalls and dungarees and cloth caps and straw hats, with a sprinkling of men in black jackets and cravats: doctors and lawyers and businessmen, come to hear what the new man in the land had to say.
At the front, though, near the stage a team of carpenters had spent the day running up, stood neat, military-looking ranks of young men in white shirts and butternut trousers. Many of them wore tin hats. If the Whigs and the Radical Liberals tried imitating Freedom Party tactics and assailing the rally, the protection squads would make them regret it.
The foremost rows of Party stalwarts carried flags—some Confederate banners, some C.S. battle flags with colors reversed, some white banners blazoned with the red word FREEDOM. The tall backdrop for the flag-draped stage was white, too, with FREEDOM spelled out on it in crimson letters twice as tall as a man.
“You don’t need to worry about investing money,” Tom said. “You could make billions designing sets for minstrel shows and vaudeville tours. Christ, you might make millions even if Confederate dollars were really worth anything.”
“Thank you, Tom,” Anne Colleton said. She wasn’t altogether sure whether he offered praise or blame, but took it for the former. “Look—here comes Featherston.” Her own vantage point was off to the right, beyond the edge of the crowd, so she could see farther into the left wing than any of the regular audience. She tensed. “If those spotlight men have fallen asleep on the job, God damn them, they’ll never work in this state again.”
But they hadn’t. As soon as Jake advanced far enough to be visible to the crowd, twin spotlight beams speared him. One of the Freedom Party bigwigs from Columbia rushed to the microphone and cried, “Let’s hear it for the next president of the Confederate States, Jaaake Featherston!”
“Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom!” The rhythmic cry started among the stalwarts in white and butternut. At first, it had to compete with the unorganized cheers and clapping and the scattered boos from the larger crowd behind them. But the stalwarts kept right on, as they’d been trained to do. And, little by little, the rest of the crowd took up the chant, till the very earth of Seaboard Park seemed to cry out: “Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom!”
The two-syllable beat thudded through Anne. She’d orchestrated this entire performance. Thanks to her, Jake Featherston stood behind the microphone, his hands raised, soaking up the adulation of the crowd. Knowing what she knew, she should have been immune to what stirred the thousands of fools out there. But, to her own amazement and rather to her dismay, she found she wasn’t. She wanted to join the chant, to lose herself in it. The excitement that built in her was hot and fierce, almost sexual.
She fought it down. The farmers and factory hands out there didn’t try. They didn’t even know they might try. They’d come to be stirred, to be roused. The ceremony had started that work. Jake Featherston would finish it.
He dropped his hands. Instantly, the Freedom Party faithful in white and butternut stopped chanting. The cries of “Freedom!” went on for another few seconds. Then the people in the ordinary part—much the bigger part—of the crowd got the idea, too. A little raggedly, the chant ended.
Jake leaned forward, toward the microphone. Anne discovered she too was leaning forward, toward him. Angrily, she straightened. “God damn him,” she muttered under her breath. Tom gave her a curious look. She didn’t explain. She didn’t want to admit even to herself, let alone to anyone else, that Jake Featherston could get her going like that.
“Columbia,” Jake said. “I want you all to know, I’m glad—I’m proud—to set foot in the capital of the first state of the Confederacy.” He talked in commonplaces. His voice was harsh, his accent none too pleasing. Somehow, none of that mattered. When he spoke, thousands upon thousands of people hung on his every word. Anne was one of them. She knew she was doing it, but couldn’t help herself. Featherston was formidable in a small setting. In front of a crowd, he was much more than merely formidable.
Through cheers, he repeated, “Yes, sir, I’m proud to set foot in the capital of the first state of the Confederacy—because I know South Carolina is going to help me, going to help the Freedom Party, give the Confederate States back to the people who started this country in the first place, the honest, hard-working white men and women who make the CSA go and don’t get a dime’s worth of credit for it. Y’all remember dimes, right? That’d be a couple million dollars’ worth of credit nowadays, I reckon.”
The crowd laughed and cheered. “He’s full of crap,” Tom said. “The people who started this country were planters and lawyers, just about top to bottom. Everybody knows that.”
“Everybody who’s had a good education knows that,” Anne said. “How many of those folks out there do you figure went to college?” Before Tom could answer, she shook her head. “Never mind now. I want to hear what he’s going to say.”
“Now I know the Whigs are running Wade Hampton V, and I know he’s from right here in South Carolina,” Featherston went on. “I reckon some of you are thinking of voting for him on account of he’s from here. You can do that if you want to, no doubt about it. But I’ll tell you something else, friends: I thought this here was an election for president, not for king. His Majesty Wade Hampton the Fifth.” He stretched out the name and the number that went with it, then shook his head in well-mimed disbelief. “Good Lord, folks, if we vote him in, we’ll be right up there with the Englishmen and George V.”
“He is good,” Tom said grudgingly as the crowd exploded into more laughter. Anne nodded. She was leaning forward again.
“Now, Hampton V means well, I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Jake said. “The Whigs meant well when Woodrow Wilson got us into the war, too, and they meant well when a War Department full of Thirds and Fourths and Fifths fought it for us, too. And you’d best believe they meant well when they stuck their heads in the sand instead of noticing the niggers were going to stab us in the back. If you like the way the war turned out, if you like paying ten million dollars for breakfast—this week; it’ll be more next Wednesday—go right ahead and vote for Wade Hampton V. You’ll get six more years of what we’ve been having.
“Or if you want a real change, you can vote for Mr. Layne. The Radical Liberals’ll give you change, all right. I’ll be…switched if they won’t. They’ll take us back into United States, is what they’ll do. Ainsworth Layne went to Harvard, folks—Harvard! Can you believe it? It’s true, believe it or not. And the Rad Libs want him to be president of the CSA? I’m sorry, friends, but I’ve seen enough damnyankees come down on us already. I don’t need any homegrown ones, thank you kindly.”
That drew more laughter and applause than his attack on Wade Hampton had done. The Radical Liberals, though neither very radical nor very liberal, had always been weak in hard-line South Carolina. Were Hampton not a native son, Anne would have thought Jake Featherston the likely winner here. Even with things as they were, she thought he had a decent chance to take the state.
Featherston went on, “The Whigs and the Rad Libs both say we have to learn from the war, to take what the Yankees dish out on account of we’re not strong enough to do anything else. What I say is, we have to learn from the war, all right. We have to learn that when we hit the United States, we have to hit ’em hard and we have to keep on hitting ’em till they fall down! They’ve stolen big chunks of what’s ours. I give you my word, friends—one fine day, it’s going to be ours again!”
The crowd exploded. Anne caught herself shouting at the top of her lungs. She thirsted for revenge against the USA. She glanced over toward her brother. Tom was shouting, too, his fist pumping the air. Whatever he thought of Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party, he wanted vengeance on the United States, too. That yen for revenge brought together people in the CSA who had nothing else in common. With luck, it would bring them together under the Freedom Party banner.
“Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom!” The stalwarts began the chant as Jake stepped back from the microphone. It swelled until the whole huge crowd bellowed the word as if it came from a single throat. Anne looked at Tom again. He was shouting it, too. She’d been shouting it till she made a deliberate effort of will and stopped. All of Columbia could hear that furious roar. By the time November came, all of the Confederate States would hear it.