The Center Cannot Hold ae-2

by Harry Turtledove

  "Uh, freedom," the clerk said, but not as if he were a Party man.

  Since Featherston was due to speak at six, he and Willy Knight ate an early supper: enormous slabs of steak, a Texas specialty. Texas wasn't dry; they could drink beer without breaking the law. Knight swallowed a big piece of rare meat and then said, "God damn you, Jake. I thought you were buzzard bait, but you turned out to be right all along. Our time is coming."

  "I always said so." Featherston cocked his head to one side. "You reckoned we were going down the drain, and you'd pick up the pieces."

  The mixed metaphor didn't faze the former head of the Redemption League. "Damn right I did. This party was drying up and blowing away four years ago." He cut off another chunk of steak. By the way he did it, he would sooner have stuck the knife into Featherston. "Amos Mizell and I, we were ready to get on another horse. The Party did jussst well enough"-he stretched the word into a long hiss-"to keep us on board. But now-"

  Jake finished for him: "Now we're back in business."

  "We are." Knight nodded. "Hell with me if we're not. I'd take my hat off to you if I was wearing it. All through everything, you said this was going to happen one of these days. You said so, and you were right."

  "You bet I was," Featherston said, adding, You stinking bastard, to himself. "Come November, we're going to pick up a hell of a lot more seats in the House. We'll pick up some in the Senate, too, from states where we got control of the legislature two years ago. And two years from now… Two years from now, by God…" Even in the dimly lit steakhouse, a feral glow shone in his eyes.

  "Yeah." That same glow lit Willy Knight's face. He and Jake nodded to each other. Both men had been hungry, hungry in the spirit, for a long, long time, and at last they thought they could see satisfaction on the horizon.

  Softly, Jake said, "If things go our way two years from now, I'm going to pay back every blue-blooded bastard and every nigger who ever did me wrong. And I'm going to put this poor, sorry country back on its feet again."

  "Yeah," Knight said again. As with Featherston, he sounded more as if he looked forward to revenge than to rebuilding. He added, "We've got the United States to pay back, too."

  "I haven't forgotten," Jake said. "Don't you worry about that, Willy. I haven't forgotten at all. That's why I came out here-to help everybody remember."

  When he got to the park, it was filling up fast. Bare bulbs bathed the platform from which he would speak, though the sun hadn't set yet. As he walked up onto the platform and over to the microphone that would send his words across the CSA, a frightening, almost savage, roar went up from the crowd. He hoped the microphone would pick it up. He wanted people to get all hot and bothered when they heard him or thought about him.

  "Hello, friends," he said at six on the dot. "I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth. The truth is, the United States are afraid of us. You look across what they call the border, you look into what they call Houston, and you'll know it's the truth. If they let people over there vote which country they wanted to belong to, they know what would happen. You know what would happen, too. Texas would be itself again. And so the Yankees don't let 'em vote."

  Cheers in Abilene had that savage edge, too. Here not far from the border, people feared the United States, whether the United States feared them or not.

  Jake went on, "The USA won't let people in Kentucky vote on that, either, or people in Sequoyah. They know where the people would go, and they don't aim to let 'em. Why? They're scared, that's why!"

  He pointed east, a gesture full of contempt. "And do the Whigs way over there in Richmond, the Whigs who've been running this country ever since the War of Secession, do they do anything about it? Do they push the USA to let the folks in Houston- Houston! — and Kentucky and Sequoyah vote about who they want to belong to? Do they? Do they? Noooo!" He made the word a howl of rage. "They're nothing but a pack of dinosaurs, is what they are. And you know what you've got to do with dinosaurs, don't you? Send 'em to the museum! "

  A vast roar went up. Featherston looked back at Willy Knight, standing there behind him. They grinned at each other. Knight was happy about his own cleverness, even though he thought Featherston had had the idea on his own, too. Jake was happy about how well the line had gone over. He knew he'd stolen it, knew and didn't care. The point was, it did what he wanted. And nobody else in the whole wide world knew, or cared, where he'd got it.

  Little by little, Party men turned the roar into a chant: "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" The crowd followed along. The chant went on till Jake's head rang with it.

  He raised his hands. Quiet slowly returned. Into it, he said, "Come November, you get your chance to send some more Whigs to the museum. I know you'll take care of it, friends. Folks who think they're smart used to say the Freedom Party was dead. We'll show 'em who's dead, see if we don't, and who needs burying, too. We're not dead, by God. We're just getting started!" Another roar went up, one that told him he'd found a brand-new slogan.

  "H asta luego," Hipolito Rodriguez told his wife. "I'm going into Baroyeca. I'll vote, and then I'm going to stay to see how the election turns out."

  Magdalena wagged a finger at him. "And in between times you'll sit in La Culebra Verde and waste money on cerveza."

  "If a man can't have a beer or two with his friends, the world is in a sorry state indeed," Rodriguez said with dignity.

  "A beer or two, or four, or six." Magdalena wagged that finger again, but indulgently. "Go on. Have a good time. I will say you've never been one to sit in the cantina all the time and come home drunk four days a week. Libertad! "

  "Libertad!" Rodriguez echoed. He put a serape on over his shirt; the weather was about as chilly as it ever got around Baroyeca. He put on a wide-brimmed straw hat, too. It wasn't raining, but looked as if it might.

  The polling place was in one room of the mayor's house. More often than not, Rodriguez still thought of the mayor as the alcalde; even though Sonora had belonged to the CSA longer than he'd been alive, the old Spanish forms died hard, especially here in the south.

  He gave his name, signed on the appropriate line in the record book, and took his ballot into a voting booth. He voted for the Freedom Party candidates for Congress, for his state legislature, and for governor of Sonora. When he'd finished, he folded the ballot, gave it to a waiting clerk, and watched till the man put it into a ballot box.

  " Senor Rodriguez has voted," the clerk intoned, a formula as full of ritual as any in the Mass.

  As Rodriguez left the mayor's office, Jaime Diaz came towards it. They exchanged greetings. From within, someone called out a warning: "No electioneering within a hundred feet of the polling place."

  That too was ritual. Rodriguez snorted. "Electioneering!" he said. "All I want to do is say hello."

  "I can't chat anyhow," Diaz said. "I've got Esteban back at the general store, and he can't count to eleven without looking at his toes, so I have to get back there as fast as I can."

  "We'll talk some other time, then," Rodriguez said. "Adios." He didn't say, Libertad. The fellow inside had warned him against electioneering.

  When he wandered over to La Culebra Verde, he found it crowded. Many of the men sitting and drinking had worked in the silver mines that went belly-up soon after the stock market sank. These days, the miners didn't have much to do with their time but sit around and drink. Rodriguez wondered where some of them came up with the dimes they used to buy beer, but that wasn't his worry. A lot of the miners, he suspected, would spend money on cerveza before they spent it on their families. That wasn't the way he would have done it, but they wouldn't care.

  Carlos Ruiz waved to him. He waved back, bought himself a bottle of beer, and joined his friend at a corner table. Ruiz was also a farmer. He might not have a lot of dimes-what farmer ever had a lot of money? — but he did still have some income. "Have you voted?" he asked as Rodriguez sat down across from him.

  "Oh, yes. Libertad! " Rodriguez answered. He kept his voice down
, though. Some people came into the cantina to brawl as well as to drink. Arguments over politics gave them a good excuse. Rodriguez had seen enough fighting during the Great War that he never wanted to see any more.

  "Libertad!" Ruiz said, also quietly. "I think we are going to do very well this year."

  "I hope so," Rodriguez said. "A pity, though, that it takes trouble to show people what they should have been doing all along."

  His friend shrugged. "If you're fat and happy, do you want to change? Of course not. You keep on doing what you always did. After all, that's what made you fat and happy, si? You need a jolt to want to change."

  "Much truth in that," Rodriguez agreed. "But the whole country got a jolt in 1917. Too many people try to pretend it never happened. Ah, well- asi es la vida." He shrugged, too, and took a pull at the beer.

  The question that had occurred to Rodriguez was also on the minds of the out-of-work miners. One of them asked the man behind the bar for another beer, saying, "You know I'll pay you soon, Felipe."

  Felipe shook his head. " Lo siento, Antonio, but if you pay me soon you'll get your beer soon, too-as soon as you pay me, as a matter of fact. I can't carry people, the way I could when times were better. I hardly make enough money to keep this place open as is."

  Rodriguez had his doubts about that. If a cantina couldn't make money, what could? Probably nothing. After all, what did hard times do? They drove men to drink.

  "My wife is going to get a job any day now," Antonio whined. "I'll have the money. By God, I will."

  Women's jobs in Baroyeca were even harder to come by than those for men. There was, of course, one obvious exception. Somebody behind Antonio-Rodriguez couldn't see who-said, "She'll have a nice, comfortable time of it, too, working on her back."

  Rodriguez didn't think the man who made the crack intended Antonio to recognize his voice, either. Coming from nowhere in particular, a gibe like that might be tolerated. But Antonio whirled, shouted, "Chinga tu madre!" and threw himself at another miner. They rolled on the floor, cursing and clawing and pounding at each other.

  Felipe kept a club under the bar. Rodriguez had seen him take it out before, mostly to brandish it for effect. He'd never seen a sawed-off shotgun come out from under there before. Men dove away from the two battling miners.

  "Enough!" Felipe yelled. Antonio and his foe both froze. The bartender gestured with the shotgun. "Take it outside. Don't come back, either-and that goes for both of you. Out-or else I blow holes in you."

  Out they went. Rodriguez realized he was holding his beer bottle by the neck, ready to use it as a club or break it against the table for a nastier weapon. He'd also scooted back his chair so he could dive under the table if he had to. Across from him, Ruiz was just as ready to fight or take cover. Very slowly and carefully, Rodriguez set down the bottle. "Some of the things we learned in the war don't want to go away," he remarked sadly.

  "You're right," Ruiz said. "It's terrible that we should remember all the best ways to kill the other fellow and keep him from killing us."

  As Felipe made the shotgun disappear, Rodriguez nodded. "Of course, most of the men who didn't learn those ways are dead now," he said. "And a lot of the ones who did learn are dead, too. A shell from the yanquis didn't care who it killed."

  "Oh, yes." His friend nodded. "Oh, yes, indeed." Ruiz's face twisted, as at some memory that wouldn't go away. Rodriguez didn't ask him about it. He had memories of his own. Every once in a while-not so often as right after the war, when it would happen every week or two-he would wake up from a dream shuddering and drenched with sweat. Sometimes he would remember what he'd seen in his sleep. Sometimes the details would be gone, but the horror would remain. He didn't scream very often any more. That made him glad and Magdalena, no doubt, gladder.

  Not wanting to think about such things, he got up, bought himself another beer, and got one for Carlos Ruiz as well.

  "Muchas gracias, amigo," Ruiz said when he brought it back.

  "De nada," Rodriguez answered. He sipped from the beer, then asked the bartender, "Que hora es?"

  Felipe wore a big brass pocket watch on a chain. It could have been a conductor's watch-a thought Rodriguez wished he wouldn't have had, since the railroad came to Baroyeca no more. The bartender made a small ceremony out of pulling it out and checking it. "Son las cuatro y media," he answered, and made another ceremony of returning the watch to his pocket.

  Half past four. Rodriguez nodded. "Gracias," he said. Sure enough, by the lengthening shadows outside, the sun was getting low in the west.

  Ruiz said, "Pretty soon we can go over to Freedom Party headquarters. The trains may stay away, but the telegraph still comes. We can find out what's happening in the elections, especially since the polls in the east of los Estados Confederados close earlier than they do here. Let me buy you a beer to pay you back for the one you so kindly got me, and then we'll see what we see, eh?"

  Rodriguez was glad to let his friend buy him a beer. He was a little elevated-not drunk, but a little elevated-as he and Ruiz walked down the street to the shopfront that said FREEDOM! and LIBERTAD!

  A couple of men were already there. "Hola, amigos," Robert Quinn said in his accented Spanish as Rodriguez and Ruiz came in. Three more men followed right behind them. Quinn went on, " Libertad! I wish we had a wireless set here. This town needs electricity, por Dios."

  "If the mines had stayed open…" Rodriguez began, and then shrugged, as if to say, What can anyone do?

  But Quinn didn't have that attitude. "Let the Party come into power, and we'll do something about the mines. We'll do something about all sorts of things. That's why you're here, right? You believe in doing things, not in sitting around and waiting for them to happen."

  Is that why I'm here? Rodriguez wondered. He thought he was here mostly because he couldn't stand the United States and wanted revenge on them. But if that required doing other things, then it did, that was all.

  A messenger from the telegraph office came in with a sheaf of flimsy yellow papers. "Gracias," Quinn told him, and gave him a dime. He went through the telegrams in a hurry. Then he let out a banshee whoop of a sort Rodriguez hadn't heard since his days in the trenches. Some of the men there had called the battle cry a Rebel yell. "We're winning," Quinn said. "Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida-wherever I have returns, we're picking up seats in Congress and in the state legislatures. And our men running for governor are ahead in South Carolina and Florida, and the race in Virginia is still very close. Libertad! "

  "Libertad!" the Freedom Party men shouted. Rodriguez couldn't wait for results to start coming in from states closer to Sonora.

  To while away the time, Quinn pulled a whiskey bottle out of a desk drawer. He took a pull himself, then passed it around. Rodriguez had always thought whiskey tasted nasty. He still did, but that didn't keep him from swigging when the bottle got to him. "Ahh!" he said. The stuff might taste bad, but he liked what it did.

  More telegrams came in. So did more people. The Freedom Party didn't look as if it would win the governorship of Virginia after all, but it gained a Senator from Mississippi and another from Tennessee. Before long, it also picked up two more Congressmen in Alabama, a Senator from Arkansas, and several Congressmen from eastern Texas. "Will we have a majority?" Rodriguez asked. Even a few weeks before, the question would have seemed unimaginable. Now…

  Now, to his disappointment, Robert Quinn shook his head. "No, I don't think so," he answered. "But we're still doing better than anybody thought we could." He pulled out a fresh bottle of whiskey and led the Party men in a new shout of, "Libertad!"

  An hour or so later, returns from Chihuahua started arriving. The Freedom Party men in Baroyeca cheered: their candidate for governor there was well ahead of the Radical Liberal incumbent. And in Sonora itself, two more Congressional districts swung to the Party. As Rodriguez had known he would be, he was very late getting home that night. But he hadn't known-he'd had no idea-how happy he would be making
that long walk in the dark.

  L ucien Galtier parked his motorcar in front of the house where his daughter Nicole lived with Dr. Leonard O'Doull. Nicole opened the door at his knock and gave him a hug. "Hello, Papa," she said. "It's always good to see you."

  "Is it?" Galtier said. "I don't want to make a nuisance of myself." Since Marie died, he'd started visiting his children as often as he could. For one thing, he was lonely. For another, he was sure he was the world's worst cook. Any evening where he didn't have to eat what he turned out was an evening gained.

  Nicole made a face at him. "Don't be silly. You know you're welcome here."

  As if to underscore that, little Lucien came running up shouting, "Grandpere!" When Galtier picked up his namesake, the boy threw his arms around his neck and gave him a big, sloppy kiss.

  "You're growing up," Galtier told him. "You're heavier every time I try to lift you." He turned to his daughter. "It must be that you keep feeding him."

  She snorted. "You sound like Georges. He must get his foolishness from you. Now come in, for heaven's sake. Sit down. Relax."

  "This is a strange word for a farmer to hear." But Galtier wasn't sorry to sit down on the sofa. Leonard O'Doull walked in a moment later, with glasses of applejack and fine Habana cigars.

  "I thank you very much," Galtier said, accepting the brandy and the tobacco. He raised his glass in salute. "To your good health!"

  "And to yours," his son-in-law answered. They both drank, as did Nicole. The applejack went down soft and sweet as a first kiss. Little Lucien ran off to play. O'Doull asked, "And how are you, mon beau-pere?"

  Lucien shrugged. "As well as I can be, I suppose. It is not easy." That was as much as he would say. It would also do for an understatement till he found a bigger one, which might come along.. oh, a hundred years from now.

  Dr. O'Doull looked sly. "But of course you have all the pretty ladies for miles around looking in your direction now that, however unfortunately, you are a single man once more."