XV
Roger Kimball whistled cheerfully as he tucked his white shirt into a pair of butternut trousers. A lot of Freedom Party leaders didn't care to join in the brawling that had marked the Party's rise. Kimball shrugged. He'd never backed away from a fight, and he'd gone toward a good many. And Ainsworth Layne was speaking in Charleston tonight, or thought he was.
"I need a tin hat," Kimball said, buttoning his fly. A helmet was useless aboard a submersible. It was a handy thing to have with clubs and rocks flying, though.
He picked up his own club and headed for the door. He was about to open it when somebody knocked. He threw it wide. There stood Clarence Potter. The former intelligence officer eyed him with distaste. "If you don't agree with what I have to say, you could simply tell me so," Potter remarked.
"I don't agree with what you have to say," Kimball snapped. "I don't have time to argue about it now, though. Can't be late."
Potter shook his head. "When we first got to know each other, I thought better of you. You were a man who wanted to build up his country, not a ruffian tearing down the fabric of the republic. We used to talk about riding Jake Featherston. Now he rides you—and you're proud of it."
"He doesn't ride me," Roger Kimball said. "We're both going the same way, that's all."
"Toward riot and mayhem." Potter pointed to the stout bludgeon in Kimball's hand. Then he added, "Toward murder, too, maybe."
"Clarence, I had nothing to do with Tom Brearley going up in smoke," Kimball said evenly. "I don't miss him, but I didn't have anything to do with it. Far as I know"—he carefully hadn't asked Featherston any questions—"the Freedom Party had nothing to do with it, either. The jury found those fellows up in Richmond innocent."
"No, the jury found them not guilty, which isn't close to the same thing," Potter answered. "And if the jury had found anything different, how many out of those twelve do you suppose would be breathing today?"
"I don't know anything about that. What I do know is, maybe you'd better not come around here any more." Kimball hefted the club.
Potter had very little give in him. Kimball had seen as much when they first met in a saloon. The club didn't frighten him. "You needn't worry about that," he said. Slowly and deliberately, he turned his back and walked away.
Kimball pulled his watch out of his pocket. Good—he wasn't late yet. He frowned, then set the watch on a table by the door. Some of the Radical Liberals were liable to have clubs, too, and that could be hard on a timepiece.
He passed a policeman on his way to Freedom Party headquarters. The gray-clad cop inspected him. He wondered if the man would give him trouble. But the cop called "Freedom!" and waved him on his way. Kimball raised the club in salute as he hurried along.
Freedom Party stalwarts spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the street around the headquarters. They'd drawn a few policemen on account of that. "Come on, fellows, you don't want to block traffic," one of the policemen said. The men in white and butternut took no special notice of him. Yes, he had a six-shooter, but there were more than a hundred times six of them, combat veterans all, and some no doubt with pistols of their own tucked into pockets or trouser waistbands.
"Form ranks, boys," Kimball called. The Freedom Party men did. They didn't just spill into the street then: they took it over, in a long, sinewy column that put Kimball in mind of the endless close-order drill he'd gone through down at the Naval Academy in Mobile. The comparison was fitting, because the stalwarts— mostly ex-soldiers, with a handful of Navy men—had surely done their fair share of close-order drill, too.
"You can't do that!" a cop exclaimed. "You haven't got a parade permit!"
"We are doing it," Kimball answered. "We're out for a stroll together—isn't that right, boys?" The men in butternut and white howled approval. Kimball waited to see if the policeman would have the nerve to try arresting him. The cop didn't. Grinning, Kimball said, "On to Hampton Park! Forward—march!'"
The column moved out, the stalwarts raising a rhythmic cry of "Freedom!" Kimball had all he could do not to break into snickers. Here he was, leading Freedom Party men to attack Radical Liberals in a park named for the family of the Whigs' presidential candidate. If that wasn't funny, what was?
Hampton Park lay in the northwestern part of Charleston, across town from Freedom Party headquarters. The column of stalwarts was ten men wide and a hundred yards long; it snarled traffic to a fare-thee-well. Some automobilists frantically blew their horns at the men who presumed to march past them regardless of rules of the road. More than a few, though, shouted "Freedom!" and waved and cheered.
"What do you aim to do?" a nervous policeman asked Kimball as the stalwarts strode up Ashley toward Hampton Park. By then, a couple of dozen cops were tagging along with the Freedom Party men. Tagging along was all they were doing; they seemed shocked to find themselves such a small, shadowy presence.
In Hampton Park, a couple of searchlights hurled spears of light into the sky. The Rad Libs hadn't adopted the glowing cathedral Anne Colleton had come up with, but they were doing their best to keep pace. Kimball pointed toward the searchlights. "We aim to have a talk with those folks yonder." The cop spluttered and fumed. He knew the Freedom Party aimed to do a hell of a lot more than that. But knowing it and being able to prove it were two different critters.
Ainsworth Layne had provided himself with a microphone, too. His amplified voice boomed out from the park. "—And so I say to you, people of the Confederate States, that with goodwill we can be reconciled to those with whom we have known conflict in the past: with our American brethren in the United States and with the colored men and women in our own country." He sounded earnest and bland.
"Are you listening to that crap, boys?" Roger Kimball asked. "Sounds like treason to me. How about you?" A low rumble of agreement rose from the men marching behind him. He asked another question: "What does this country really need?"
"Freedom!'' The thunderous answer put Layne's microphone to shame. The Freedom Party men advanced into the park.
Dark shapes rushed out of the night to meet them. The Radical Liberals had a cry of their own: "Layne and liberty!"
"Freedom!" Kimball shouted, and swung his club. It struck flesh. A Rad Lib howled like a kicked dog. Kimball laughed. If the other side felt like mixing it up, he and his comrades were ready.
Dozens of searchlights marked Freedom Party rallies these days. The Radical Liberals used only a couple. The Radical Liberals incompletely imitated the Freedom Party when it came to assembling a strong-arm force, too. They'd recruited a few dozen bullyboys: enough to blunt the first charge of the men in white and butternut, but nowhere near enough to halt them or drive them back.
"Layne and liberty!" A Radical Liberal swung at Roger Kimball's head. Kimball got his left arm up in time to block the blow, but let out a yip of anguish all the same. He shook the arm. It didn't hurt any worse when he did that, so he supposed the Rad Lib hadn't broken any bones—not from lack of effort, though. Kimball swung his own club. His foe blocked the blow with an ease that bespoke plenty of bayonet practice. But the Radical Liberal couldn't take on two at once. Another Freedom Party man walloped him from behind. He fell with a groan. Kimball kicked him, hard as he could, then ran on. "Freedom!" he cried.
Ainsworth Layne must have caught the commotion at the back of the park. "And now, I see, the forces of unreason seek to disrupt our peaceable assembly," he boomed through the microphone. "They pay no heed to the rights enumerated in the Confederate Constitution, yet they feel they have the right to govern. We must reject their violence, their radicalism, for we—"
"Freedom!" Kimball shouted again. Only a few of the Radical Liberals' muscle boys remained on their feet. Kimball smashed one of them down. Blood ran dark along his club. He guessed he'd fractured a skull or two in the fight. He hoped he had.
"Freedom!" the Party stalwarts roared as they crashed into the rear of the crowd. Some people tried to fight back. Others tried to run. They had a devil of a time doing it, with Layne's partisans so tightly packed together. Men and women started screaming.
"Freedom!" It was not only a war cry for Kimball and his comrades, it was also a password. They did their best to maim anyone who wasn't yelling their slogan.
They had fury on their side. They had discipline on their side, too. As they'd done in the trenches, they supported one another and fought as parts of a force with a common goal. The men in the crowd of Radical Liberals might have been their matches individually, but never got the chance to fight as individuals. The Freedom Party men mobbed them, rolled over them, and plunged deep into the heart of the crowd, aiming straight for the platform from which Ainsworth Layne still sent forth unheeded calls for peace.
Kimball stepped on someone. When she cried out, he realized her sex. He refrained from kicking her while she was down. Thus far his chivalry ran: thus far and no further. Swinging his club, he pressed on toward the platform.
Through the red heat of battle, he wondered what he and the rest of the Freedom Party men ought to do if they actually got there. Pull Layne off it and stomp him to death? A lot of the stalwarts would want to do that. Even with his blood up, Kimball didn't think it would help the Party. Some people would cheer. More would be horrified.
When the shooting started, it sounded like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Roger Kimball didn't know whether a stalwart or a man in the crowd first pulled out a pistol, aimed it at somebody he didn't like, and squeezed the trigger. No sooner did one gun come out, though, than a dozen or more on each side were barking and spitting furious tongues of fire.
What had been chaos turned to a panicked stampede. All the people in the crowd tried to get away from the Freedom Party men—and from the gunfire—as fast as they could. If they trampled wives, husbands, children . . . then they did, and they'd worry about it later. The only thing they worried about now was escape.
"Let us have peace!" Ainsworth Layne cried, but there was no peace.
Kimball saw a Freedom Party man taking aim at Layne. "No, dammit!" he shouted, and whacked the revolver out of the stalwart's hand with his club. The fellow snarled at him. He snarled back. "We've got to get out of here!" he yelled. "We've done what we came to do, but every cop in Charleston's going to be heading this way now. Time to go home, boys."
He thought the stalwarts might be able to take on the whole Charleston police force and have some chance of winning. He didn't want to find out, though. If the Freedom Party won here, the governor would have to call out the militia. Either the citizen-soldiers would slaughter the stalwarts or they'd mutiny and go over to them, in which case South Carolina would have a revolution on its hands less than a month before the election.
Jake Featherston would kill him if that happened. It was no figure of speech, and Kimball knew as much. "Out!" he yelled again. "Away! We've done what we came for!" Discipline held. The Freedom Party men began streaming out of Hampton Park. Even they forgot about Ainsworth Layne.
November 8 dawned chilly and drizzly in Richmond. Reggie Bartlett got out of bed half an hour earlier than he usually would have, so he could vote before going to work at Harmon's drugstore. Yawning in spite of the muddy coffee he'd made, he went downstairs and out into the nasty weather. It wasn't raining quite hard enough for an umbrella. He pulled his hat down and his coat collar up and muttered curses every time a raindrop trickled along the back of his neck.
A big Confederate flag flew in front of the house that served as his polling place. A couple of policemen stood in front of the polling place, too. He'd seen cops on election duty before. They'd always looked bored. Not this pair. Each of them had a hand on his pistol. After the riots that had ripped through the CSA in the weeks leading up to election day, Bartlett couldn't blame them.
"Freedom! Freedom!'" Four or five men in white shirts and butternut trousers chanted the word over and over again. They held placards with Jake Featherston's name on them, and stood as close to the polling place as the hundred-foot no-electioneering limit allowed. The cops watched them as if they were enemy soldiers.
So did Reggie Bartlett. He carried a snub-nosed .38 revolver in his trouser pocket these days. A jury might have acquitted the Freedom Party goons who'd burned down Tom Brearley's house around him, but Reggie knew—along with the rest of the world—who'd done what, and why. He'd signed his name on the letter that introduced Brearley to Tom Colleton. That presumably meant the Freedom Party knew it. No one had yet tried to do anything to him on account of it. If anyone did try, Reggie was determined he'd regret it.
As he walked past the policemen, they gave him a careful once-over. He nodded to them both and went inside. The voting officials waiting in the parlor all looked like veterans of the War of Secession. Reggie nodded to them, too; the next young voting official he saw would be the first.
They satisfied themselves that he was who he said he was and could vote in that precinct. Then one of them, a fellow with splendid white mustaches and a hook where his left hand should have been, gave Bartlett a ballot and said, "Use any vacant voting booth, sir."
Reggie had to wait a couple of minutes, for none of the booths was open. A lot of men were doing their civic duty before heading for work. At last, a fellow in overalls came out of a booth. He nodded to Bartlett and said "Freedom!" in a friendly way. The voting officials glared at him. So did Reggie. The man didn't even notice.
In the voting booth, Bartlett stared down at the names of the candidates as if they'd lost their meaning. That didn't last long, though. As soon as he saw Featherston's name, he wanted to line through it. Hampton or Layne? he wondered. Wade Hampton surely had the better chance against the Freedom Party, but he liked Ainsworth Layne's ideas better.
In the end, he cast defiant ballots for Layne and the rest of the Radical Liberal ticket. If Jake Featherston took Virginia by one vote, he'd feel bad about it. Otherwise, he'd lose no sleep.
He came out of the voting booth and handed his ballot to the old man with the hook. The precinct official folded it and stuffed it into the ballot box. "Mr. Bartlett has voted," he intoned, a response as ingrained and ritualistic as any in church. Secular communion done, Reggie left the polling place and hurried to the drugstore.
"Good morning," Jeremiah Harmon said as he came in. "You vote?" He waited for Reggie to nod, then asked, "Have any trouble?"
"Not really," Reggie answered. "Some of those Freedom Party so-and-so's were making noise outside the polling place, but that's all they were doing. I think the cops out front would have shot them if they'd tried anything worse, and I think they'd have enjoyed doing it, too. How about you?"
"About the same," the druggist said. "I wonder if Feather-ston's boys aren't shooting themselves in the foot with all these shenanigans, I truly do. If they make everyone but a few fanatics afraid of them, they won't elect anybody, let alone the president of the Confederate States."
"Here's hoping you're right," Bartlett said, and then, "You don't mind my asking, boss, who'd you vote for?"
"Wade Hampton," Harmon answered evenly. "He's about as exciting as watching paint dry-^you don't need to tell me that. But if anybody's going to come out on top of Featherston, he's the man to do it. Layne's a lost cause. He's never been the same since that brawl down in South Carolina, and his party hasn't, either." He raised a gray eyebrow. "I suppose you're going to tell me you voted for him."
"I sure did," Reggie said with a wry chuckle. "Why should I worry about lost causes? I live in the Confederate States, don't I?"
"That's funny." Harmon actually laughed a little, which he rarely did. "It'd be even funnier if it weren't so true."
"We'll find out tonight—or tomorrow or the next day, I suppose—-just how funny it is," Reggie said. "If Jake Featherston gets elected, the joke's on us."
"And isn't that the sad and sorry truth?" his boss replied. "Whoever wins, though, the work has to get done. What do you say we do it? After all, if we don't make a few million dollars today, we'll have to beg for our suppers."
That would have been funnier if it weren't so true, too. Reggie dusted the shelves with a long-handled feather duster. He put out fresh bottles and boxes and tins to replace the ones customers had bought. He kept track of the prescriptions Harmon compounded, and set them under the counter to await the arrival of the people for whom the druggist made them. When customers came in, he rang up their purchases and made change.
Ringing things up wasn't so easy. The cash register, a sturdy and massive chunk of gilded ironmongery, dated from before the Great War. It was a fancier machine than most of that vintage, and could handle a five-dollar purchase with the push of but one key. Had Reggie had to do all the pushing he needed to ring up something that cost $ 17,000,000—and a lot of things did this week, give or take a couple of million—he would have been banging that five-dollar key from now till doomsday.
Everyone wanted to talk politics, too. Women couldn't vote, but that didn't stop them from having opinions and being vociferous about them. "Isn't Mr. Featherston the handsomest man you ever saw in your life?" asked a lady buying a tube of cream for her piles.
"No, ma'am," Reggie answered. In the back of the drugstore, Jeremiah Harmon raised his head. He didn't want to lose customers, regardless of Reggie's own politics and opinions. Reggie thought fast. "Handsomest man I ever saw was my father," he told the woman. "Pity I don't take after him."
She laughed. Bartlett's boss relaxed. Reggie felt some small triumph. Even if he'd sugarcoated what he said, he hadn't had to take it back.
He tried to gauge the shape of the election from conversations with customers. That wouldn't prove anything, and he knew it. He kept trying anyhow. From what he saw and heard, Jake Featherston had a lot of support. So did Wade Hampton V Only a few people admitted to backing Ainsworth Layne and the Radical Liberals. Reggie hadn't expected anything different. He was disappointed just the same.
When six o'clock rolled around, he said, "Boss, I think I'm going to get myself some supper somewhere and then head over to the Richmond Examiner. I reckon they'll be posting returns all night long."
"I expect they will," Harmon answered. "While you're there, do try to recall you're supposed to come in to work tomorrow." The druggist's voice was dry; he had a pretty good idea that Reggie was liable to be up late.
Supper was greasy fried chicken and greasier fried potatoes, washed down with coffee that had been perking all day. Reggie's stomach told him in no uncertain terms what it thought of being assaulted in that fashion. He ignored it, shoved a few banknotes with a lot of zeros on them across the counter at the cook, and hurried on down Broad Street to the Examinees offices, which were only a few blocks from Capitol Square.
Like the Whig and the Sentinel and the other Richmond papers—like papers across the CSA—the Examiner was in the habit of setting up enormous blackboards on election night and changing returns as the telegraph brought in new ones. When Reggie got there, the blackboards remained pristine: the polls were still open throughout the country. Because of that, only a few people stood around in front of the offices. Reggie got an excellent spot. He knew he might have to defend it with elbows as the night wore along, but that was part of the game, too.
A man came up, loudly unhappy that all the saloons were closed on election day. "Bunch of damn foolishness," he said. "Fools we've got running this year, we need to get drunk before we can stand to vote for any of 'em " By his vehemence, he might already have found liquid sustenance somewhere.
At half past seven, a fellow in shirtsleeves and green celluloid visor came out with a sheaf of telegrams in his hand. He started putting numbers from states on the eastern seaboard in their appropriate boxes. Earliest returns showed Hampton ahead in South Carolina and Virginia, Jake Featherston in North Carolina and Florida, and the Radical Liberals—Reggie clapped his hands—in Cuba. The numbers meant hardly more than the blanks they replaced. He was glad to have them anyhow.
More numbers went up as the hour got later. Hardly any of them made the people who awaited them very happy. The Examiner leaned toward the Radical Liberals, and it soon became abundantly clear that, whatever else happened, Ainsworth Layne would not be the next president of the Confederate States.
That would have disappointed Reggie more had he thought going in that Layne enjoyed any great chance of winning. The Radical Liberals always did best on the fringes of the Confederacy; they were liable to win Sonora and Chihuahua, too, when results finally trickled out of the mountains and deserts of the far Southwest.
But the real battle would be decided between Texas and Virginia. Returns also came in slowly from the Confederate heartland. They hadn't seemed so slow during the last Congressional election, nor the one before that. Bartlett had been in no position to evaluate how fast the returns for the last presidential election came in, not in November 1915 he hadn't. Back in 1909, he hadn't cared; he hadn't been old enough to vote then.
"Hate to say it, but I'm pulling for Wade Hampton," a man about his own age said not far away. "I've voted Radical Liberal ever since I turned twenty-one, and I'd get into screaming fights with Whigs. But you look around at what the other choice is—" The fellow shivered melodramatically.
"I voted for Layne," Reggie said. "I'm not sorry I did, either. I'm just sorry more people didn't."
Off in the distance, somebody shouted, "Freedom!" But the Freedom Party muscle boys did not wade into the crowd outside the Examiner building. They would have paid for any attack they made; Reggie was sure he wasn't the only Radical Liberal packing a revolver in case of trouble from goons.
More and more numbers went up. By midnight or so, they started to blur for Reggie. Strong coffee at supper or not, he couldn't hold his eyes open any more. Things weren't decided, but he headed back toward his flat anyway. He was glad the election remained up in the air. Only when he'd got very close to home did he realize he should have been sorry Jake Featherston hadn't been knocked out five minutes after the polls closed.
Jake Featherston yawned so wide, his jaw cracked like a knuckle. He hadn't been so tired since the battles of the Great War. It was half past four Wednesday morning, and he'd been up since first light Tuesday. He'd voted early, posed for photographers outside the polling place, and then headed here to the Spottswood Hotel at the corner of Eighth and Main to see what he would see. He'd wanted the Ford Hotel, right across the street from Capitol Square, but the Whigs had booked it first.
He looked down at the glass of whiskey in his hand. Yawning again, he realized he might not have felt so battered if he hadn't kept that glass full through the night. He shrugged. Too late to worry about it now. He wasn't in the habit of looking back at things he'd done, anyway.
Somebody knocked on the door to his room. He opened it. As he'd expected, there stood Ferdinand Koenig, his backer when the Freedom Party was tiny and raw, his vice-presidential candidate now that the Party was a power in the land .. . but not quite enough of a power. Koenig held the latest batch of telegrams in his left hand. His face might have been a doctor's coming out of a sickroom just before the end.
"It's over, Jake," he said—like Roger Kimball and only a handful of others, he talked straight no matter how bad the news was. "Our goose is cooked. We won't win it this time."
Featherston noticed he was still holding that whiskey. He gulped it down, then hurled the glass against the wall. Shards sprayed every which way, like fragments from a bursting shell. "Son of a bitch," he snarled. "Son of a bitch! I really reckoned we might pull it off."
"We scared 'em," Koenig said. "By God, we scared 'em. You Ye still outpolling Ainsworth Layne. We took Florida. We took Tennessee. We took Texas. We've got—"
"We've got nothing," Jake said flatly. "God damn it to fucking hell, we've got nothing. During the war, we killed a million Yankees. Didn't do us one damn bit of good. We lost. I didn't want to scare Wade Hampton the goddamn Fifth. I wanted to whip the Whigs out of office like the cur dogs they are."
Koenig stared, then shook his head in rueful admiration. "You never did aim to do anything by halves, did you?"
"Why do you think we are where we're at?" Jake returned. "Anybody who settles for what he reckons is good enough deserves whatever happens to him. I want the whole damn shootin' match. Now I have to wait till 1927 to try again. That's a goddamn long time. What the hell's going to happen to the country from now till then? Christ, we aren't going to hell in a hand-basket, we're already there."
"You can come down off the stump for a few minutes, anyway," Ferdinand Koenig said. "The election's over, even if the reporters are waiting downstairs to hear what you've got to say."
"Goddamn vultures," Featherston muttered. The election's over meant nothing to him. His life was a seamless whole; he could not have told anyone, himself included, where Jake Featherston the man stopped and Jake Featherston the Freedom Party leader began. He wished he had another glass to shatter. "All right, I'll go down. Maybe they'll all be passed out drunk by then, and I won't have to make a speech after all."
Koenig was still trying to look on the bright side of things: "We picked up four, maybe five seats in Congress, not counting the Redemption League. Florida gave us a Senator; looks like we'll pick up the governor's spot in Tennessee, and maybe in Mississippi, too."
"That's all fine and dandy, but it's not enough, either." Even now, worn and half drunk and sorely disappointed, Jake knew he'd be happier in a few days. The Freedom Party had done very well. It just hadn't done well enough to suit him. He'd have to start building on what it had done, and to start looking ahead to see what it could do for 1923. He made a fist and slammed it into his own thigh several times. The pain was oddly welcome. "The reporters are waiting, eh? Let's go, by Jesus. Let's see how they like it."
Now his running mate looked faintly—no, more than faintly— alarmed. "If you want to get a couple hours' sleep, Jake, those bastards won't care one way or the other. Maybe you should grab the chance to freshen up a touch," Koenig said.
"Hell with it," Featherston replied. "Might as well get it over with." He headed for the stairway. Had Koenig not jumped aside, Jake would have pushed him out of the way.
Down in the lobby of the Spottswood, the victory celebration for which the Freedom Party had hoped was a shambles now. A few young men in white shirts and butternut trousers remained on their feet and alert. They'd been detailed to keep order, and keep order they would. The task was easier than Jake had thought it would be when he assigned it. Six more years of waiting. The thought was as bitter as yielding to the damnyankees had been.
More Freedom Party men sprawled snoring on couches and chairs and on the floor, too, some with whiskey bottles close at hand, others simply exhausted. A lot of reporters, by the look of things, were already gone. Watching the Freedom Party lose an election so many thought it might win had been story enough for them. But half a dozen fellows in cheap but snappy suits converged on Jake when he showed himself.
"Do you have a statement, Mr. Featherston?" they cried, as if with a single voice.
"Damn straight I have a statement," Featherston answered.
"Jake—" began Ferdinand Koenig, who had followed him downstairs.
"Don't you worry, Ferd. I'll be fine," Jake said over his shoulder. He turned back to the reporters. "Reckon you boys are waiting for me to say something sweet like how, even though I wish I was the one who'd gotten elected, I'm sure Wade Hampton V will make a fine president and I wish him all the best. That about right? Did I leave anything out?"
A couple of the reporters grinned at him. "Don't reckon so, Sarge," one of them said. "That's what we hear from the Radical Liberals every six years."
"To hell with the Radical Liberals," Featherston said. "And to hell with Wade Hampton V, too." The reporters scribbled. Jake warmed to his theme, despite Koenig's dark mutterings in the background: "To hell with Wade Hampton V, and to hell with the Whig Party. They led us off a cliff in 1914, they don't have the slightest scent of a notion of how to turn things around, and now they've got six more years to prove they don't know what the devil they're doing."
"If they're such a pack of bums, why'd you lose the election?" a reporter called.
"Don't you think you ought to ask, 'How'd you do so well the first time you tried to run anybody for president?' ' Jake returned. No matter how he felt in private, in public he put the best face on things he could. "Christ, boys, in 1915 there was no Freedom Party. We didn't elect anybody to Congress till two years ago. And now, our first time out of the gate, we get more votes than the Radical Liberals, and they've been around forever. And what do you ask? 'Why'd you lose?' " He shook his head. "We'll be back. As long as Hampton and the Whigs leave us any kind of country at all, we'll be back. You wait and see."
"You really have it in for Hampton, don't you?" a man from the Richmond Whig asked.
Jake bared his teeth in what was not a smile. "You bet I do," he said. "He's part of the crowd that's been running the Confederate States since the War of Secession: all the fancy planters, and their sons, and their sons, too. And he's part of the War Department crowd, like Jeb Stuart, Jr., and the other smart folks who helped the damnyankees lick us. When I look at Wade Hampton and the Whigs, I look at 'em over open sights."
He'd let his journal by that name slip when the Freedom Party began to climb; the furious energy that had gone into the writing came out in Party work instead. Now, for the first time in a while, he might have some leisure to put his ideas down in paper. Have to look back over what I did before, he thought. Pick up where I left off
"If you don't work with the other parties, why should they work with you?" the reporter from the Whig asked.
"We'll work with our friends," Jake said. "I don't have any quarrel with folks who want to see this country strong and free. People who want us weak or who try and sell us to the USA had better steer clear, though, or they'll be sorry."
"Sorry how?" Two men asked the question at the same time. The man from the Richmond Whig followed it up: "Sorry the way Tom Brearley's sorry?"
Though half loaded himself, Jake knew a loaded question when he heard one. "I don't know any more about what happened to that Brearley than I read in the papers," he answered. That was true; he'd also made a point of not trying to find out any more. "I do know a jury didn't convict the people the police arrested for burning down his house."
"They were all Freedom Party men." This time, three reporters spoke together.
"They were all acquitted," Jake said. The reporters looked disappointed. Jake smiled to himself. Did they think he was stupid enough to carry ammunition to their guns? Too bad for them if they did. He went on, "A lot of people like the Freedom Party these days—not quite enough to win me the election, but a lot."
"Are you saying you can't be responsible for all the crazy people who follow you?" The fellow from the Whig wouldn't give up.
"There's crazy people in every party. Look in the mirror if you don't believe me," Jake replied. "AndFll say it again, on account of you weren't listening: the jury acquitted those fellows from the Freedom Party. I don't know who burned Brearley's house, and neither do the cops. No way to tell if it was Freedom Party men or a bunch of riled-up Whigs."
"Not likely," the reporter said.
Privately, Featherston thought he was right. Publicly, the Freedom Party leader shrugged. "Anything else, boys?" he asked. None of the reporters said anything. Jake shrugged again. "All right, then. We didn't win, but we don't surrender, either. And that's about all I've got to say." The newspapermen stood scribbling for a bit, then went off one by one to file their stories.
When the last one was out of earshot, Ferdinand Koenig said, "You handled that real well, Jake."
"Said I would, didn't I?" Jake answered. "Christ, I spent three years under fire. Damn me to hell if I'm going to let some stinking newspapermen rattle me."
"All right," Koenig said. "I was a little worried, and I don't deny it. Hard loss to take, and you are sort of lit up." Again, he told Featherston the truth as he saw it.
"Sort of," Jake allowed. "But hell, you think those fellows with the notebooks are stone cold sober? Not likely! They've been drinking my booze all night long."
Koenig laughed. "That's true, but nobody cares what they say. People do care what you say. What do you say about where we go from here?"
"Same thing I've been saying all along." Jake was surprised the question needed asking. "We go straight ahead, right on down this same road, till we win."