VII
Jefferson Pinkard stood in line at the Odeum, waiting to buy a ticket. When he got up to the window, he shoved a quarter at the fellow behind it. He took the ticket and walked inside. After a pause at the concession stand, he went into the darkness of the theater, popcorn and a Dr. Hopper in hand.
He sat in the middle of a row, so people going by wouldn’t make him spill the popcorn or the soda. As soon as he was settled, he started methodically munching away. No one else sat very close to him, maybe because of the noise. He didn’t care. He wasn’t there for company. He was there to kill a couple of hours.
The maroon velvet curtains slid back to either side of the stage, revealing the screen. In the back of the theater, the projector began to hum and whir. SMOKING IS PROHIBITED IN THIS AUDITORIUM appeared on the screen, then vanished.
Most of the people in the Odeum came from Fort Deposit. They leaned forward almost in unison, knowing the newsreel was coming up next. Pinkard leaned forward with them. Since coming to work at the Alabama Correctional Camp (P), he’d felt far more cut off from the world around him than he ever had up in Birmingham. If not for wireless and moving pictures, the outside world would hardly have touched this little Alabama town.
“In Richmond, the Olympic Games came to a magnificent conclusion!” the announcer blared. “The Confederate States have shown the world they are on the move again, thanks to President Featherston and the Freedom Party.”
“Freedom!” somebody in the auditorium called, and the chant rang out. Jeff was glad to join it, but it didn’t last; people couldn’t chant and hear what the announcer was saying at the same time.
Confederate athletes with the C.S. battle flag on their shirtfronts ran and jumped and swam and flung javelins. Smiling, they posed with medals draped around their necks. President Featherston posed with them, shaking their hands in congratulations. He turned to face the camera and said, “We’re a match for anybody—more than a match for anybody. And nothing’s going to stop us from getting where we’re going.”
Suddenly, the camera cut away from the athletes. It lingered on the crumpled corpse of a black man, and on the submachine gun half visible under his body. “This stinking, worthless nigger tried to assassinate our beloved president, who sat watching the athletic competition,” the announcer declared. “Thanks to the heroism of a Great War veteran, he paid the price for his murderous folly.”
Another camera cut. The bespectacled white man standing beside Jake Featherston didn’t look like a veteran; he put Pinkard more in mind of a professor. Featherston spoke again: “Those damn blacks—beg your pardon, folks—stabbed us in the back during the war. They’re trying to do it again. This time, though, we’re good and ready for ’em, and we won’t let ’em get away with it.”
Murmurs of agreement ran through the Odeum. Fort Deposit was in the Black Belt, but no black faces had been visible in the theater before the lights went down. Indeed, armed guards outside and on the roof made sure no marauding Negroes would cause trouble while the motion picture played.
At the Olympic closing ceremonies, smartly turned-out Confederate soldiers ringed the stadium, protecting it as the guards protected the theater here. Aeroplanes with the words CONFEDERATE CITRUS COMPANY painted in big letters on their sides streaked low above the stadium. They flew wingtip to wingtip, in formations only professional pilots who were also daredevils would have tried.
They could fight if they had to, Pinkard realized. He wondered if they were Great War veterans, or if they’d picked up their experience flying for Maximilian in the Mexican civil war. That didn’t matter. Wherever they’d got it, they had the right stuff. So did the machines they flew: sleek low-winged metal monoplanes that made the slow, sputtering canvas-and-wire contraptions of the Great War seem like antiques by comparison.
After a moment’s pause, the newsreel shifted subjects. VETERAN STEPS DOWN, a card said. “Jeb Stuart Jr., who first came to prominence in the Second Mexican War more than fifty years ago, has left the Confederate General Staff after revelations about his unfortunate role in failing to prevent the Red uprising of 1915,” the announcer said. On the screen, Stuart looked ancient indeed, ancient and doddering. “President Featherston will soon name a younger, more vigorous replacement.”
Other newsreel snippets showed dams rising in the Tennessee River valley, tractors plowing, and other machines harvesting. “Agriculture makes great strides,” the announcer said proudly. “Each machine does the work of from six to six hundred lazy, shiftless sharecroppers.” The camera panned across shabbily dressed colored men and women standing in front of shanties.
“And in lands stolen from the CSA after the war, in Sequoyah and the part of occupied Texas miscalled Houston …” The announcer fell silent. The pictures of dust in dunes, in drifts, in blowing, choking curtains, spoke for themselves. Leaning forward against a strong wind, a man lurched through drifted dust towards a farmhouse with a sagging roof. His slow, effortful journey seemed all but hopeless. So did the wail of a baby on the lap of a scrawny woman in a print dress. She sat on the front porch of a house whose fields lay dust-choked and baking under a merciless sky.
Gloating, the announcer said, “This is how the United States care for the lands they took from their rightful owners.”
“Damnyankees,” a woman behind Pinkard whispered.
After those grim scenes, the serial that followed came as something of a relief. It portrayed a pair of Confederate bunglers who’d ended up in the Army during the war and had escape after unlikely escape. Jeff knew it was ridiculous, but couldn’t help laughing himself silly.
The main feature was more serious. It was a love story almost thwarted by a colored furniture dealer who kept casting lustful looks toward the perky blond heroine. Pinkard wanted to kick the Negro right in the teeth. That the people who’d made the motion picture might want him to react just like that never once crossed his mind.
He rose and stretched when the picture ended, well pleased that the black man had got what was coming to him. Then he left the theater and walked over to the bus that would take him back to the Alabama Correctional Camp (P). The bus was heavily armored, with thick wire grating over the windows. Pinkard wasn’t the only white passenger who drew a pistol before boarding. Here at the edge of the Black Belt, rebellion still sizzled. He wanted to be able to fight back if the Negroes shot up the bus. His heart thudded in his chest when the machine got rolling.
It reached the Alabama Correctional Camp (P) without taking fire. Jeff breathed a sigh of relief when he got off. Two sandbagged machine-gun nests guarded the front entrance. They were new. Black raiders hadn’t been shy about shooting into the camp, and didn’t seem to care whether they hit guards or prisoners. New belts of barbed wire ringed the place, too. They were as much to keep marauders out as they were to keep inmates in.
Jeff’s white skin was enough to get him past the machine-gun nests unchallenged. At what had been the entrance, another guard carefully scrutinized both him and his identity card. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Toby,” he fumed, “you know goddamn well who I am.”
“Yeah, I do,” the lower-ranking guard said, “but I gotta be careful. There was that camp in Mississippi where one of the prisoners managed to sneak out with a phony card.”
“You ever hear of anybody sneaking in with a phony card?” Jeff demanded. Toby only shrugged. Pinkard let it go. He couldn’t complain too hard, not when the camp needed solid security.
A mosquito bit him on the back of the neck. He swatted and missed. Its buzz as it flew away sounded as if it were laughing at him. The camp lay quiet in the summer night. Snores floated out the windows of the prisoners’ barracks. Men who’d proved too enthusiastic about being Whigs or Rad Libs weren’t going anywhere—except for hasty trips to the latrines.
“What do you say, Jeff?” a guard called as Pinkard headed toward his much more comfortable barracks. “How was the picture?”
“Pretty good, Charlie,” he answered. “Got to do something about those damn niggers, though. That one who took a shot at the president …” He caught himself yawning and didn’t go on. Instead, he just said, “Freedom!”
“Freedom!” Charlie echoed. It was a handy word when you wanted to say something without bothering with a real conversation.
Pinkard’s mattress creaked when he lay down. In the warm, muggy darkness, he was some little while falling asleep. He’d laid out the camp with room to grow. The expanded security perimeter had come from that extra room, which was fine. The land was there, for whatever reason. If it hadn’t been, that would have caused a problem. As things were … As things were, he rolled over and slept.
Reveille woke him. He got out of bed, put on a fresh uniform, washed his face and shaved, and went out to look at morning roll call and inspection. The politicals were lined up in neat rows. They wore striped uniforms like any convicts, with a big white P stenciled on the chest and back of each shirt and the seat of each pair of trousers.
Guards counted them off and compared the tally to the number expected. When Pinkard saw the count start over again, he knew the numbers didn’t match. The politicals groaned; they didn’t get fed till everything checked out the way it was supposed to. One of them said, “Take off your shoes this time, goddammit!”
Without even pausing, a guard walking by backhanded the talky prisoner across the face. The political clapped his hands to his nose and mouth, whereupon the guard kicked him in the belly. He fell to the ground, writhing.
Jeff ate breakfast with assistant wardens not involved in the count. Ham and eggs and grits and good hot coffee filled him up nicely. When the count finally satisfied the guards making it, the prisoners got the very same breakfast—except for the ham and eggs and coffee.
One of the assistant wardens said, “I hear we’ve got some new fish coming in today.”
“Yeah?” Jeff pricked his ears up. “What kind of new fish?”
“Blackfish,” the other man answered.
“Niggers?” Pinkard said, and the other fellow nodded. Jeff swore. “How the hell are we going to keep ’em separate? Nobody said nothin’ about niggers when we were laying out this place.”
“What the devil difference does it make?” the other fellow said. “Half the bastards we’ve got in here—shit, more than half—they’re already nigger-lovers. Let ’em stick together with their pals.” He laughed.
To Jeff, it wasn’t a laughing matter. “They’ll make trouble,” he said dolefully. He didn’t want trouble—he didn’t want trouble the prisoners started, anyhow. He wanted things to go smoothly. That made him look good.
With a shrug, the other assistant warden said, “They won’t bust out, and that’s all that matters. And how much trouble can they make? We’ve got the guns. Let ’em write the governor if they don’t like it.” He guffawed again. So did Pinkard—that was funny.
Sure enough, the colored prisoners came in a little before noon. Some of them were wounded, and went into the meager infirmary. The rest … The rest reminded Jeff of the Red rebels he’d fought just after he got conscripted into the C.S. Army. With them inside it, this camp would need more guards. He was morally certain of that. What, after all, did these skinny, somber Negroes have left to lose?
“Yankees go home! Yankees go home! Yankees go home!”
The endless chant worried Irving Morrell. He stood up in the cupola of his barrel, watching the crowd in the park in Lubbock. Trouble was in the air. He could feel it. It made the hair on his arms and at the back of his neck want to stand up, the way lightning did before it struck. Not enough men here, in the restless—hell, the rebellious—state of Houston; not enough barrels, either. They hadn’t been able to clamp down on things here and make them stay quiet.
What do you expect? he asked himself. We’ve got that long, long border with Confederate Texas, and agitators keep slipping over it. They keep sneaking guns across it, too, not that there weren’t plenty here already.
As if on cue—and it probably was—the crowd in the park changed their cry: “Plebiscite! Plebiscite! Plebiscite!” Morrell’s worry eased, ever so slightly. Maybe they were less likely to do anything drastic if they were shouting for a chance to vote themselves back into the CSA.
From the gunner’s seat, Sergeant Michael Pound said, “By God, sir, we ought to let Featherston have these bastards back. They’d be just as unruly for him as they are for us.”
“I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong, Sergeant, but that’s not what our orders are,” Morrell answered. “We’re supposed to hold Houston, and so we will.”
“Yes, sir.” By his tone, Pound would sooner have dropped the place. Morrell had trouble blaming him. As far as he was concerned, the Confederates were welcome to what had been western Texas. But he didn’t give orders like that. He only carried them out, or tried.
When trouble started, it started very quickly. The crowd was still chanting, “Plebiscite! Plebiscite!” Morrell barely heard the pop of a pistol over the chant and over the rumble of the barrel’s engine. But he realized what was going on when a soldier in U.S. green-gray slumped to the ground, clutching at his belly.
The rest of the soldiers raised their rifles to their shoulders. The crowd, like most hostile crowds in Houston, had nerve. It surged forward, not back. Rocks and bottles started flying. The soldiers opened fire. So did people in the crowd who’d held back up till then.
Morrell ducked down into the turret. “It’s going to hell,” he told Pound. “Do what you have to do with the machine gun.”
“Yes, sir,” the gunner answered. “A couple of rounds of case shot from the main armament, too?”
Before Morrell could answer, three or four bullets spanged off the barrel’s armor plate. “Whatever you think best,” he said. “But we’re going to dismiss this crowd if we have to kill everybody in it.”
“Yes, sir,” Michael Pound said crisply; that was an order he could appreciate. “Case shot!” he told the loader, and case shot he got. He had never been a man to do things by halves.
Despite the gunfire, Morrell stood up in the cupola again. He wanted to see what was going on. A bullet cracked past his ear. The turret traversed through a few degrees, bringing the main armament to bear on the heart of the crowd. The cannon bellowed at point-blank range. Barrels carried only a few rounds of case shot, for gunners seldom got the chance to use it. Sergeant Pound might have fired an enormous shotgun at the rioting Houstonians. The results weren’t pretty, and another round hard on the heels of the first made them even more grisly.
People ran then. Not even trained troops could stand up to that kind of fire. Sergeant Pound and the bow gunner encouraged them with a series of short bursts from their machine guns. The other barrel in the park was firing its machine guns, too, and the soldiers were pouring volley after volley into the dissolving crowd. Such treatment might not make the Houstonians love the U.S. government, but would make them pay attention to it.
They had nerve, even if they had no brains to speak of. Some men lay down behind corpses and kept shooting at the U.S. soldiers. And a whiskey bottle with a smoking wick arced through the air and smashed on the front decking of Morrell’s barrel.
It smashed, spilling flaming gasoline across the front of the machine. “God damn it!” Morrell shouted in furious but futile rage. What soldiers here in Houston called Featherston fizzes had proved surprisingly dangerous to barrels. Flames spread over paint and grease and dripped through every opening, no matter how tiny, in the fighting compartment. “Out!” Morrell yelled. “Everybody out!” He ducked back into the turret to scream the same message into the speaking tube, to make sure the driver and bow gunner heard him.
Then he scrambled out the cupola and down the side of the barrel. Escape hatches at the bow and on either side of the turret flew open. The rest of the crew got out through them, closely followed by growing clouds of black smoke. “Move away!” Sergeant Pound shouted. “When the ammo starts cooking off—”
Morrell needed no more encouragement. Neither did any of the other crewmen. They put as much ground between them and the doomed machine as they could. Morrell looked back over his shoulder. Smoke was pouring out of the cupola now, too. A moment later, the most spectacular fireworks display this side of the Fourth of July in Philadelphia finished the barrel.
“Do you know what we need, sir?” Pound said. “We need a good fire extinguisher in there. Could make a lot of difference.”
“I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong, because you’re—” Morrell knew he was repeating himself. A bullet thudded into a tree trunk behind his head. He threw himself flat. So did the rest of the barrel crew. Lying on his belly, he finished with such aplomb as he could muster: “—not. But do you think you could remind me about it when I haven’t got other things to worry about, like getting my ass shot off?”
“That was your ass, sir?” Michael Pound asked innocently, and Morrell snorted. Pound said, “I will, sir; I promise.” Morrell believed him; he wouldn’t forget something like that. The sergeant went on, “It did cross my mind just now for some reason or other.”
“Really? Can’t imagine why.” Still prone, Morrell watched another Houstonian get ready to fling a Featherston fizz at the second barrel in the park. A U.S. soldier shot him in the arm before he could let fly. The incendiary dropped at his feet, broke, and engulfed him in flames. A shrieking torch, he ran every which way until at last, mercifully, he fell and did not rise.
“Serves him right,” Sergeant Pound said savagely. Morrell would have been hard pressed to argue, and so didn’t try.
What happened to the fizz-flinger sufficed to scare even the Houstonians. Still shouting, “Freedom!” they fled the park. Soldiers in green-gray moved among the wounded. They weren’t helping them; they were methodically finishing them off, with single gunshots or with the bayonet.
“Grim work,” Pound said, getting to his feet, “but necessary. Those people won’t see reason, and so we might as well be rid of them.”
“You kill everybody who doesn’t want to see reason, people will get mighty thin on the ground mighty fast,” Morrell remarked as he too got up and brushed off his coveralls.
“Oh, yes, sir,” the sergeant agreed. “But if I kill everybody who won’t see reason and who’s trying to kill me, I’ll sleep better of nights and I’m a lot likelier to live to get old and gray.”
Sometimes perfect bloodthirstiness made perfect sense. This did seem to be one of those times. Morrell mournfully eyed the burning barrel, which still sent a thick column of black, stinking smoke up into the brassy sky.
Sergeant Pound looked toward the barrel, too. His thoughts, as usual, were completely practical: “I wonder how long they’ll take to ship a replacement machine down here.”
“Depends,” Morrell said judiciously. “If Hoover wins the election come November, it’ll be business as usual. But if it’s Al Smith, and the Socialists get back in …” He shrugged.
Sergeant Pound made a sour face. So did the rest of the barrel crew. Pound said, “I’m going to vote for Hoover, too. What sane man wouldn’t? And yet, you know, it’s a funny thing. Charlie La Follette makes a ten times better vice president than what’s-his-name running with Hoover—Borah, that’s it.”
“Bill Borah’s got no brains to speak of. I won’t argue that,” Morrell said. “Still, you have to vote the party, and the man at the top of the ticket. Odds two presidents in a row would drop dead are pretty slim.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Certainly. I said the same thing.” Pound wasn’t currying favor. Morrell didn’t think such a ploy had ever occurred to the gunner. If it had, he would have become an officer years ago. He had said that, and was just reminding Morrell of it.
A lieutenant with a .45 still in his hand strode up to the barrel crew. Seeing Morrell’s eagles, he started to come to attention. Morrell waved for him not to bother. “Aren’t you glad we’re in the USA, sir?” the young officer said. “If we’re not careful, though, they’ll send us to a country where the people don’t like us.”
Morrell clamped down hard on a laugh. If he started, he wasn’t sure he could stop. “I’ve served in Canada, Lieutenant,” he said carefully. “It’s nothing like this. The Canucks don’t like us, but even the ones who shoot at us aren’t … wild men like these.”
“Oh, good.” Real relief showed in the lieutenant’s voice. “I thought it was just me. I couldn’t imagine how they held their ground so long with the punishment they took.”
He might still have been making messes in his drawers when the Great War ended. Wearily, Morrell said, “People will do all kinds of mad things when their blood is up, son.” He hadn’t intended to add that last word, but the lieutenant had to be young enough to suit it, and hadn’t seen a quarter of the things Morrell had. Only after a couple of seconds did Morrell realize that made the other man lucky, not unlucky.
The lieutenant had seen enough to keep a firm grip on fundamentals: “A lot of those bastards won’t get their blood up again, on account of it’s out.”
“I know,” Morrell said. “That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”
“Yeah.” Shaking his head, the lieutenant went away. His feet were unsteady, as if he’d had too much to drink. Morrell knew he hadn’t. He’d simply seen too much. That could produce a hangover of its own, and one more painful than any that sprang from rotgut.
Sergeant Pound said, “We’re alive and they’re dead, and that’s how I like it.”
Ammunition was still cooking off inside the burning barrel. The flames had caught in the dry grass under it. Had the grass been less sparse, the fire would have spread farther and been more dangerous. Beyond the barrel lay the dead men—and a few women, too—who’d wanted to drag the state of Houston back into the CSA.
Morrell took a pack of cigarettes—Raleighs, from the Confederate States—out of the breast pocket of his coveralls and lit one. A moment later, he stubbed it out in the dirt. The smoke seemed to taste as greasy and nasty as the thick black stuff pouring from the barrel. He wondered if he’d ever want another cigarette again.
“It’s all right, Ernie.” Sylvia Enos heard the fright in her own voice, heard it and hated it. “It really is. That sort of thing can happen to anybody, not just to—” She broke off. She hadn’t helped. Her hands folded into fists, nails biting the flesh of her palms.
“Not just to someone who got his dick shot off,” Ernie finished for her, his voice flat and deadly. “Maybe it can. But there is a difference. For me, it happens all the goddamn time.” He glared at her as if it were her fault. Half the time, these days, he seemed to think it was.
Sylvia twisted away from him on the narrow bed in his flat. She almost wished they hadn’t succeeded so often when they were first starting out. Ernie had begun to think he could whenever he wanted to. He’d begun taking it—and her—for granted. Then, when he’d started failing again …
He reached down, plucked a bottle of whiskey off the floor, and took a big swig. “That won’t help,” Sylvia said. “It’ll only make things worse.” Drunk, he was always hopeless in bed. And when he proved hopeless, that made him meaner.
He laughed now. “Depends on what you mean by ‘things.’ ” He took another long pull at the bottle. “I do not know why I go on. There does not seem to be much point.” He reached into the drawer of the nightstand by the bed and pulled out a .45. He held it about a foot from his face, staring at it as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world.
“Ernie!” Sylvia wasn’t frightened any more. She was terrified. She snatched the pistol out of his hand. “Leave this damned thing alone, do you hear me?”
He let her take it. She shuddered with relief. He didn’t always, and he was much stronger than she was. When the black mood seized him … But now he smiled with a wounded tenderness that pierced and melted her heart even through her fear. “You never stop trying to make me into an angel, do you?” he said. “I am not an angel. I am from the other place.”
“You’re talking nonsense, is what you’re doing.” Sylvia got out of bed and started to dress. “What you need is sleep.”
“What I need …” Ernie cupped what he had with one hand.
Sylvia thought about taking the .45 with her when she left. The only reason she didn’t was that Ernie’s apartment was a young arsenal. She couldn’t carry off all the guns he owned.
She’d been standing on the corner waiting for a trolley at least five minutes before she realized her knees were shaking. When the streetcar came up, she staggered as she boarded it. She threw a nickel in the fare box, then all but fell into the closest seat. She looked down at her hands. They were shaking, too.
Her daughter Mary Jane was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee when she walked into the apartment. “Hi, Ma,” Mary Jane said cheerfully, and then, her smile fading and her jaw dropping, “My God, what happened to you? You’re white as a sheet.”
“Ernie.” Sylvia poured herself coffee, put in cream and sugar, and then poured in a good slug of whiskey, too.
“Ma, that guy is nothing but trouble.” Mary Jane spoke with the air of someone who knew what she was talking about. No doubt she did; at twenty-four she probably had more practical experience with men than did Sylvia, who’d found George, stuck with him, and then done very little till the writer came back into her life. Her daughter went on, “I know you’ve got a soft spot for him because he helped you with the book about Dad, but he’s a little bit nuts, you know what I mean? Maybe he was good for you once, but he isn’t any more.”
Before answering, Sylvia took a big gulp of the improved coffee. It wasn’t improved enough to suit her, so she put some more hooch in it. With a sigh, she said, “Chances are you’re right. But—”
“Wait.” Mary Jane held up a hand. “Stop. No buts. If he’s trouble, if you know he’s trouble, you don’t walk to the nearest exit. You run.”
“It’s not that simple.” Sylvia drank more of the coffee. She could feel the whiskey calming her. “You don’t understand, honey. When he’s right—and he is, most of the time—he’s the sweetest man I ever knew, the sweetest man I ever imagined.” That was true. Saying it, she almost forgot the cold weight of the .45 she’d wrenched from Ernie’s hand.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Mary Jane admitted. “But I’ll tell you what I do know. If he makes you come home looking like you just saw a ghost when he isn’t right, you don’t want anything to do with him.”
“He’s coping with more than most men ever have to. He’s got this war wound… .” Sylvia had never gone into detail about Ernie’s injury. She’d never even admitted they were lovers, though she was sure Mary Jane and George Jr. knew. Now shock and the potent coffee loosened her tongue. She explained what the wound was.
“Poor guy,” Mary Jane said when she finished. “I’m sorry about that. It’s terrible, and he can’t do anything about it. Fine. Now I understand better why he’s the way he is. But you’re not the Red Cross, Ma. You can’t go on giving like this when all you get back is grief. What if he decides to use you for a punching bag one of these days?”
“He wouldn’t do that.” But Sylvia was uncomfortably aware that she spoke without conviction.
Her daughter noticed, too. “How many times have you told me not to be dumb?”
“Lots.” Sylvia managed a wry grin. “How many times have you listened?”
“A few, maybe.” Mary Jane grinned, too. “But you’re my mother. You’re supposed to have good sense for both of us, right? Don’t be dumb, Ma. You want to find somebody? Swell. Find somebody who doesn’t scare you to death.”
“I’ll … think about it.” Sylvia hadn’t expected to say even that much. But she found herself continuing, “He’s working on a book about how he got wounded, about driving an ambulance up in Quebec. He’s let me see some of it. It’s really good—and when he’s writing, things go better.” Sometimes. Not tonight, but sometimes.
Mary Jane threw her hands in the air. “Honest to God, Ma, I swear you didn’t hear a word I said.”
Sylvia shook her head and lit a cigarette. Mary Jane held out a hand. Sylvia passed her the pack. She leaned close to get a light from her mother. Sylvia said, “I heard you. But I’ll do what I think I ought to, not what you think.”
“All right, all right, all right.” Mary Jane’s smile had a wry twist to it. “I can’t make you do anything. After all, I’m not your mother.”
Sylvia laughed. She hadn’t dreamt she’d be able to. But she did. Her daughter’s company and some strongly fortified coffee made the terror she’d felt not long before seem distant and unreal.
A few days later, she had a visitor who surprised her. Joseph Kennedy simply showed up, assuming she’d be glad to see him. “Good day, Mrs. Enos,” he said, and tipped his hat to her. “I hope we can rely on you to help get out the vote for Hoover and Borah.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after our … quarrel last year,” Sylvia said. And I hoped I wouldn’t.
He shrugged. “State Democratic headquarters reminded me how useful you’ve been. The Party comes first.” By his face, he wished it didn’t.
“I wondered whose side you’d be on this year,” she remarked.
“Why?” Kennedy asked, in real surprise now. Then he laughed. “You mean because Al Smith is a Catholic, and so am I?” Sylvia nodded. Kennedy laughed again, louder this time. “My dear lady, the Pope is infallible. I believe that. Al Smith? If Al Smith were the Pope, I’d kiss his ring. Since he’s not, I’m going to do my best to kick his … fanny.”
Knowing it would be useless, Sylvia said, “Mr. Kennedy, I’m not your ‘dear lady,’ and I don’t want to be.”
“Well, Mrs. Enos, that’s as may be,” the Democratic organizer said. “I’ll tell you this, though: I have no idea what you see in that miserable hack of yours.”
He’d made that crack before. “I told you, Ernie’s no hack,” Sylvia said. “He’s a writer!”
Kennedy shrugged again. “If you say so.” His dismissive tone said he wasn’t about to change his mind. But he went on, “Never mind bedfellows, then. We’ll keep this to politics. You’ve been helping the Democrats for a long time. Do you want another Socialist president now?”
“Well, no,” Sylvia admitted. “You’ll pay the same as you have the past couple of elections?”
“Of course,” Kennedy answered, as if insulted she needed to ask. “I told you you’d been good. We pay for what we get.”
If state headquarters tells us to, she thought. Still, the money was better than she could get any other way. Royalties from I Sank Roger Kimball were skimpy these days. There’d been talk of putting it out as one of the newfangled paperbound pocket books, but that hadn’t happened yet, and she didn’t know if it would. “It’s a deal—as long as you keep your hands to yourself.”
Joe Kennedy sighed. “You drive a hard bargain, Mrs. Enos, but yes, that’s a deal.” He held out his hand. Warily, Sylvia took it. She knew the only reason he stayed interested in her was that she stayed uninterested in him. But she couldn’t stomach giving in to get him out of her hair.
The Democrats trotted her out at a rally near T Wharf a few days later. Party faithful listened as she told them this was no time to let a Socialist, someone who was bound to be soft on the Confederate States, take up residence in Powel House. The crowd clapped in all the right places. Because they did, Sylvia needed longer than she would have otherwise to realize her speech was falling flat.
Four years earlier, the Democrats, who’d lost three presidential elections in a row, had been hungry—more than hungry; desperate—to reclaim Powel House. And they’d done it, even if Calvin Coolidge had dropped dead before he could take the oath of office. But Hoover hadn’t proved any better at fixing the collapse than Socialist Hosea Blackford had before him. And he was about as exciting as oatmeal without sugar. He was earnest. He worked hard. It wasn’t enough.
Even before the last round of applause faded, Sylvia thought, The Democrats are going to lose this time. The feeling—no, the certainty—was irrational, but no less real for that.
Her eyes met those of Joe Kennedy, who stood on the platform with her. He was still clapping, but his smile seemed held on his face by force of will alone. He knows, she realized. He’s slimy, but he’s not stupid. Yes, he knows.
He gave back a shrug, as if to say, This is my job, and I’m going to do it as well as I can no matter what happens. Sylvia nodded in reply; that was something she understood. She could respect Kennedy the political operator, no matter what she thought about Kennedy the man.
As she stepped down from the platform, a new realization came to her. The election still lay a couple of months ahead. She was going to have to be a professional herself all through that time, going up on platforms and saying what needed to be said in spite of what she thought would happen in November. That wouldn’t be easy. It might be harder than anything she’d ever tried before.
Her back stiffened. I don’t care whether it’s easy or not. If Joe Kennedy can do it, so can I.