Clarence Potter could have found any number of things about which to disagree with the president of the Confederate States. Not about getting Kentucky back, though. He stood, came to attention, and saluted. "Yes, sir!" he said.
Flora Blackford remembered when going out on the floor of Congress had been a thrill. It wasn't any more. Not these days. The Freedom Party Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky made sure of that. They weren't there to do the nation's business. They were there to disrupt it, and they were good at that. The pair of Representatives Utah had elected after the end of the military occupation weren't much better. They seemed more interested in complaining about what had happened over the past twenty-sometimes, over the past sixty-years than in trying to make the next two better.
Congressman Nephi Pratt was complaining even as Flora took her seat. "I accept your correction with all due humility, Mr. Speaker," he was saying. "I would have been more fully abreast of these matters had the government not labored so long and hard to suppress my creed and oppress my state, thereby depriving me of the opportunity to participate in the decisions made by this august body since the end of the war."
Up jumped a young pepperpot Democrat from New Mexico. "Perhaps the distinguished gentleman will state on the record in which direction he pointed a gun during the war: at the foes of the United States or at her soldiers."
Pratt was a portly man with a mane of white hair. He tossed it angrily now. "I need not answer that-"
"You just did, seems to me," the Democrat shot back.
"Mr. Speaker, I resent the imputation," Pratt said.
"Mr. Speaker, I resent having to share the chamber with a damned traitor," the Congressman from New Mexico said.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The Speaker's gavel descended like the crack of doom. "Mr. Pratt, Mr. Goldwater, you are both out of order," he said. "Any further outbursts from either of you, and I will have the sergeant-at-arms remove you from the floor."
"The United States hanged my grandfather," Nephi Pratt said. "I see things have not changed much since."
"He had it coming, by God," Congressman Goldwater snapped.
Bang! Bang! Bang! "Sergeant-at-arms!" Congressman Cannon of Missouri said. The Speaker looked thoroughly disgusted as he continued, "You and your assistants are to escort the two contentious gentlemen to separate waiting rooms, in which places they shall remain until they see fit to comport themselves in civilized fashion."
Congressman Pratt left the room with majestic dignity. Congressman Goldwater shouted, "Defense of the truth is no vice! I should not be removed." He scuffled with the men who tried to take him away, and landed one solid blow before they did.
All the Freedom Party men stood up and cheered at the chaos they, for once, had not created. That made Flora signal to the Speaker, a fellow Socialist. He pointed back, intoning, "The chair recognizes the distinguished Congresswoman from New York, Mrs. Blackford."
"Thank you, Mr. Speaker." She waited till the din died down a little, then said, "In my opinion, the Freedom Party has been the source of most of the problems and most of the bad manners in both houses of Congress, even if members of other parties have caught the disease from it. The Freedom Party-"
She couldn't go on, not right away, for the House chamber echoed with angry shouts from the Freedom Party Congressmen and cries of "Hear! Hear!" from Socialists, Republicans, and even a good many Democrats. Speaker Cannon again plied the gavel with might and main. At last, something like quiet returned.
Flora resumed: "The Freedom Party, as I was saying before its Congressmen so neatly proved my point, differs from other parties in the United States in one particular: that its members do not truly wish to take part in the serious business of making this country a better place."
To her surprise-indeed, to her amazement-Congressman Mahon of Houston sprang to his feet, crying, "Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! If the distinguished Congresswoman from New York will yield…"
The sight of a Freedom Party man following proper parliamentary procedure must have astonished Congressman Cannon as much as it did Flora. "Mrs. Blackford?" the Speaker asked.
"I will yield for a brief statement or question," Flora said. "Not for a harangue."
Even that didn't upset Mahon. "I will be brief," he promised. Flora nodded. The Speaker pointed to the Houstonian. Mahon said, "I would like to note that the Freedom Party Representatives do not wish to serve our states here in Philadelphia or in Washington. We-"
This time, shouts of, "Shame!" drowned him out. The Speaker of the House rapped furiously for order. With some reluctance, he said, "The gentleman from Houston has the floor. He may continue."
"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," Mahon said, willing to be courteous since the presiding officer of the House had ruled in his favor. "We don't care to be here, I say, because we would rather represent our states in Richmond, since they rightfully belong to the Confederate States of America!"
"Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" his fellow Freedom Party members chanted, and, "Plebiscite! Plebiscite! Plebiscite!"
Roars of, "Treason!" and, "Never!" came from Democrats, Republicans, and some Socialists. Again, Speaker Cannon had to ply his gavel with might and main to restore quiet-or at least lower the noise. He might have done better by firing a pistol round into the ceiling. But if he'd had a pistol, other Congressman would have, too, and they might have aimed them at one another. The Speaker said, "Mrs. Blackford has the floor. You may go on, Mrs. Blackford."
"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," Flora said. "However much pleasure most of us would take from no longer having the company of the members from the Freedom Party, I am also certain more than a few of us would not care to give them the satisfaction of gaining anything they want, simply because they have made themselves so obnoxious to us."
That brought jeers from the Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky, jeers largely drowned out by a storm of applause from Representatives of other parties. Flora wasn't particularly proud of herself despite the applause. She knew she'd sunk to the Freedom Party's level in condemning it.
Hosea wouldn't have done that, she thought. When he'd been a Congressman, Hosea Blackford had got on well with everyone-he'd got on better with reactionary Democrats than Flora ever had. But the men from the Freedom Party weren't just reactionaries. They were reactionaries on the march, in the same way as the Reds in the failed uprisings in the CSA and Russia had been radicals on the march. Up till the past few years, the world hadn't had to worry about revolutionary reaction. It did now.
Wearily, Speaker Cannon fought yet again for order. When he finally got it, he spoke in wistful tones: "Do you suppose we could possibly return to discussion of the trade bill before us at the moment?"
They did go on. In due course, the Speaker let Congressman Pratt and Congressman Goldwater return to the floor. They started sniping at each other again, but within-sometimes narrowly within-the rules of House decorum. The Freedom Party Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky went back to ignoring the rules, as they usually did. They cared nothing for them, and admitted as much. They didn't want to be here in the first place, and seemed to operate on the theory that, if they made all the colleagues hate and despise them, their states became more likely to leave the USA for the CSA. What worried Flora was that they might well prove right.
Thanks to their unending shenanigans-and thanks to the basically uninspiring nature of trade bills-the day crawled past on hands and knees. Speaker Cannon didn't look for a motion to adjourn till well past six that evening. When he did, a throng of Representatives tried to make it and another throng tried to second it. Wearily, the members left the floor.
Competition for cabs outside was as fierce as anything that had gone on within the hallowed hall. Flora, normally polite and gentle, brawled with the best of them. She wanted to get home to Joshua as fast as she could. Thanks to a judicious elbow, she quickly won a ride.
Her son looked up from his homework in surprise when she came through the door. "Hello," he said, his voice at fifteen as d
eep as a man's. "I didn't expect you back so soon. Weren't you going to do some office work before you came here?"
"The session ran long, so I came…" Flora's voice trailed away, also in surprise-not at what he'd said but at what she smelled. "That's cigarette smoke. When did you start smoking cigarettes?"
"Last year, not long after Father died," Joshua answered, resolutely nonchalant. "Everybody at school does it, and it doesn't hurt anything."
"It hurts me that you've been sneaking cigarettes behind my back," Flora said. "If you thought I wouldn't mind, why didn't you come out and tell me?"
"Well…" Her son looked uncomfortable, but he finally said, "Mostly because you're so old-fashioned about some things."
"Old-fashioned?" Flora yelped. If that wasn't the most unkind cut of all for someone who'd always prided herself on her radicalism, she couldn't imagine what would be. "I am not!"
"Oh, yeah?" Joshua said, a colloquialism that made his mother incline more toward reaction than radicalism. He went on, "If you weren't old-fashioned, you wouldn't flabble about cigarettes." As fifteen-year-old boys are wont to do, he acted monstrously proud of his own logic.
Flora blinked at the slang, then figured out what it had to mean. "I don't flabble about cigarettes-for grownups," she said. Instead of seeming pleased that she'd understood him, Joshua merely looked scornful that she was trying to speak his language. She might have guessed he would. Suppressing a sigh, she forged ahead: "No matter what you think, you're not a grownup yet."
"Father was smoking cigarettes when he was fifteen," Joshua said.
He was right about that, however much Flora wished he weren't. "Your father grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere," she answered. "When he was fifteen, he was going to the bathroom in a privy, bathing once a month, and eating food his folks had cooked over buffalo chips. Do you want to imitate him there, too?"
For a moment, she thought he would say bathing once a month didn't sound so bad. But he visibly changed his mind and changed the subject: "If cigarettes are so terrible, how come everybody smokes them?"
"Not everybody does."
"Just about!" Joshua said, by which he doubtless meant three or four people he liked did.
This time, Flora didn't suppress her sigh. She knew a losing fight when she saw one, and she saw one here. Whether she liked it or not, Joshua was going to smoke. She said, "From now on, you don't need to sneak any more." That made him happy. She wished it would have made her happy, too.
Sylvia Enos came out of the moving-picture theater with Ernie. She looked happy-she'd liked the film. He didn't, and hadn't. "What was wrong with it?" she asked. "It was exciting, and it had a good love story."
"What was wrong with it?" he echoed. "I will tell you what was wrong. The men who made it never saw war. They were boys in 1914. They had to be. Either that or they were cowards. Half the things in the film could not have happened. Soldiers would have gone to the guardhouse for the other half."
"It's only a story," Sylvia said. "It's not supposed to be true."
"But it pretends to be true," Ernie said. "That offends me."
She didn't want him angry. When he got angry, he got angry at the whole world, not just at what had bothered him in the first place. She said, "Let's go somewhere, and we'll have a couple of drinks, and we'll forget about it."
"All right," he said. "That film deserves forgetting."
They ended up having more than a couple of drinks-considerably more, in Ernie's case. Then they went back to Sylvia's apartment. Mary Jane was out with friends, and wouldn't be back till late. They had the place to themselves. Sober or drunk, Ernie made a conscientious lover. He did what he needed to do to make Sylvia happy. Then she tried to do the same for him. She'd had pretty good luck with that lately. Not tonight, though. Try as she would, nothing happened.
She did her best to make light of it, saying, "See what those last couple of cocktails will do to you?"
"My cock has more wrong with it than cocktails," Ernie answered, which was unfortunately true. "Half-cocked," he muttered. That was what Sylvia thought she heard, anyhow. He shook his head. "It is no good. It is no goddamn good at all."
"That's not true," Sylvia exclaimed. "It was fine just last week."
He didn't want to listen. "No good at all," he said again. "Sometimes I wonder why the hell I bother. What is the use? There is no use. I know that. I know that much too well."
"Don't be silly," Sylvia told him. "It can happen to anybody at all, not just to you."
"It does not happen to a real man," Ernie said. "That is what it means to be a real man. And what am I?" His laugh told what he thought he was. "A leftover. Something from the scrap heap. I ought to go to Spain. I could fight there." A Nationalist uprising backed by Trance and Britain had half the country up in arms against King Alfonso XIII. Kaiser Wilhelm had belatedly sent the Monarchists weapons to resist their would-be overthrowers, but things didn't look good for them even so.
Sylvia shook her head. "What does shooting people have to do with-this?" She set her hand on the part, or part of a part, that hadn't quite worked.
Ernie twisted away, kicking the quilt she'd got from Chris Clogston down onto the floor. "You do not understand. I knew you would not understand. Damn you anyway." He all but jumped out of the bed they'd shared and started putting on his clothes.
"Maybe I would understand, if you'd talk sense once in a while," Sylvia said.
"You are only a woman. What do you know?" Ernie stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Sylvia sighed as she picked up the quilt and put on a nightgown. This sort of thing had happened before. It would probably happen again. She sighed once more, went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and then came back and fell asleep. Whatever time Mary Jane came in, Sylvia never heard it.
George Jr., his wife, Connie, and their children came over for supper the next evening. Sylvia enjoyed spoiling her grandchildren. Bill, the baby boy for whom Mary Jane had bought another quilt, was toddling now. Sylvia also enjoyed listening to her son's stories about life on a fishing boat. They took her back to the days when her husband had told the same kind of stories. Hard to believe George was more than twenty years dead. Hard to believe, but true.
"And how are you, Ma?" George Jr. asked. "How's Ernie? Sis said you went to the cinema with him last night."
He sounded earnest himself. The pun made Sylvia laugh a little. He wants me to be happy, she thought. He really does. That's sweet. But she had to answer. "He's been better," she said slowly. "But he's been worse, too."
Her son's sigh had an indulgent quality, one that made her wonder who'd raised whom. "You really ought to-" he began.
Sylvia held up a hand and cut him off. "I really ought to do whatever I think is the best thing for me to do. And you really ought to"-she enjoyed turning George Jr.'s phrase back on him-"mind your own beeswax."
"Give up, George," Connie said. "You don't let her tell you what to do. How can you blame her if she doesn't want to let you tell her?"
"That's right." Sylvia beamed at her daughter-in-law.
"Fine. I give up. Here-I'm throwing in the towel." George Jr. took his napkin off his lap and tossed it into the middle of the table. "But I'm going to tell you one more thing before I shut up."
"I know what you're going to say." Sylvia held up her hand again, like a cop stopping traffic. "I don't want to hear it."
"I don't care. I'm going to say it anyway." George Jr. stuck out his chin and looked stubborn. "That guy is bad news, Ma. There. I'm done."
"About time, too." Sylvia knew her son was right. Ernie was, or could be, bad news. She would have known even if Mary Jane hadn't told her the same thing. The feel of danger-within limits-was part of what made him attractive. Whether he would ever break those limits… But he hadn't-quite-in all the time Sylvia had known him. And he had reasons for being the way he was. Sylvia didn't think George Jr. knew about those. She couldn't very well talk about such things with a man, and especiall
y not with her son.
She wondered whether George Jr. could keep from bringing up Ernie again for the rest of the evening. She would have bet against it, but he managed. That made time pass a lot more pleasantly. Only when he and his family were leaving did he say, "Take care of yourself, Ma."
"And haven't I been doing that since before you were born?" Sylvia said. "A fisherman's wife who can't take care of herself is in a pretty sorry state, that's all I've got to tell you." She looked to Connie. "Am I right or am I wrong?"
"Oh, you're right, all right," her daughter-in-law said.
"You bet I am." Sylvia spoke with great certainty. Fishermen were away at sea so much, their wives had to do things on their own behalf. If the wives didn't, nobody would or could. And Sylvia had gone from fisherman's wife to fisherman's widow. Nobody gave a widow a helping hand. She'd discovered that the hard way.
For that matter, no elves emerged from the walls to help her with the dishes. She did them herself, the way she always had. She couldn't go to bed without being angry at herself till they were done. Her hard-earned, hard-learned self-reliance ran deep.
And when Ernie showed up at her door with flowers two days later to ask her out the next Saturday, she didn't say no. She didn't even ask him if he would behave himself. A question like that would just have made him angry and all the more determined to act up. She couldn't blame him for that, not when she felt the same way herself.
When Saturday came, he took her to the Union Oyster House. She smiled, remembering her last visit there with Mary Jane. Unlike Mary Jane, though, Ernie washed down his fried oysters with several stiff drinks. "Are you sure you want to do that?" Sylvia picked her words with care. He did have more trouble in the bedroom when he was drunk-and he had plenty when he was sober. And when he was drunk, he had a harder time coping with the trouble he had.
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