"If it's a question of move or get squashed, I'll move," Anne said. "And Jake has more clout than I do. Jake has more clout than anybody does." She spoke with a certain somber pride. She might have been saying, Yeah, I got licked, but the fellow who licked me was the toughest one of the bunch. She shook her head. Might have? No. She was saying exactly that.
Tom shook his head, too, in wonder. "What's going to happen to the country, if a fellow who can make you pull in your horns starts running things?"
"We'll all go in the same direction, and it'll be the right direction," Anne said. "We've owed a lot of debts for a long time. Don't you want to pay them back? I know I do."
"Well, yes, but not if I have to go bust to do it."
"We won't," Anne said positively. "He'll do what needs doing, instead of fumbling around the way Burton Mitchel has ever since things went sour."
"Maybe. I hope so," her brother said. "Hell, I'll probably even vote for him myself. But that's all I intend to do. You can go running around the state if you want to. Me, I'll stay home and tend my garden."
Had he read Candide? She doubted it; she couldn't imagine a book that seemed less her brother's cup of tea. She said, "The whole Confederacy is my garden."
"You're welcome to it," Tom replied. "It's too big for me to get my arms around. South Carolina's too big. I think even St. Matthews is too big, but I can try that. My wife and my little baby boy, now- that I understand just fine."
He'd gone into the war a captain, and a boy himself. He'd come out a lieutenant-colonel, and a man. Now he was a family man, but that seemed a pulling-in, not a growing-out. It made Anne sad. "You've got a lot of time left," she said. "I hope you do, anyway. You can do whatever you want with it. What I'm going to do with mine is, I'm going to put this country back on its feet."
"I hope so." Tom got up and kissed her on the cheek. "What I'm going to do is, I'm going home to my family. Take care of yourself, Sis. I worry about you." He went out the door, taking her chance for the last word with him.
I'm going home to my family. Ever since they'd lost their parents when they were small, she'd been his family, she and their brother Jacob, who was dead. He didn't think that way any more. He didn't care about the country any more, either. Anne made herself another whiskey. Tom might have his wife and a little boy. She had a cause, and a cause on its way to victory.
She slept in her own bed that night. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept there. It had been weeks, she knew. Her own mattress felt as unfamiliar as any of the hotel beds where she'd lain down lately.
When morning came, she was on her way again, driving down to Charleston. Featherston was coming into town in a couple of days for a rally that should finish sewing up South Carolina for the Freedom Party. She hurled herself into the work of making sure everything went off the way it was supposed to. Things were more complicated than they had been when she first started planning rallies. Making sure the wireless web and the newsreels were taken care of kept her busy up until an hour and a half before Featherston's speech began. Saul Goldman did a lot of work with them-more than she did, in fact. She wondered if the head of the Freedom Party knew just what a smart little Jew he had running that part of his operation.
"Hello, there," Featherston said, coming up behind her as she peered out from the wings to make sure the lighting arrangements were the way she wanted them.
She jumped. She wasn't the sort of person who jumped when someone came up behind her, but Jake Featherston wasn't the ordinary sort of person coming up behind her. "Oh. Hello." She hated herself for how callow she sounded. No one had any business making her feel so unsure, so… weak was the only word that seemed to fit. No one had any business doing it, but Jake did.
He eyed the hall with the knowing gaze of a man who'd given speeches in a lot of different places. "Good to have you back in the Party," he said, his attention returning to her. "I wasn't even close to sure it would be, in spite of the pretty speeches you made me. But it is. You've given me a lot of help here, and I do appreciate it."
"Happy to do anything I can," Anne said: a great thumping lie. She knew she was doing things for Featherston, doing them as a subordinate. She wasn't used to being a subordinate, wasn't used to it and despised it. Once, she and Roger Kimball had thought they would guide Jake Featherston to power and then enjoy it themselves, with him in the role of puppet. The only small consolation she had was that they weren't the only ones who'd underestimated him. At one time or another, almost everybody in the CSA had underestimated Featherston.
He said, "There's a lot of people I owe, and I'm going to pay every single one of them back. But you, you owe me-you owe me plenty for walking out on me when I really needed a hand."
He hadn't forgotten. He never forgot a slight, no matter how small. Anne knew as much. And hers hadn't been small, not at all. She said, "I know. I'm trying to pay you back." Her gesture encompassed the hall where he'd speak.
The answer seemed to catch him by surprise. Slowly, thoughtfully, he nodded. "Well, you're doing better than a lot of folks I can think of," he said.
"Good." Anne didn't like the way he looked at her. He'd been an artilleryman during the war, not a sniper, but he eyed her as she thought a sniper would: all cold, deadly concentration. She was used to intimidating, not being intimidated. Being on the receiving end of a glance like that chilled her.
But Featherston sounded warm and lively when he went into his speech. "I never had a fancy name," he declared. "I was only one more Confederate soldier, with a stamped tin identity disk around my neck. But every great idea draws men to it. Every idea steps out before the nation. It has to win from the nation the fighters it needs, so one day it's strong enough to turn the course of destiny. Our day is here!"
The hall erupted. Anne found herself clapping as hard as anyone else in the building. When she listened to Jake on the stump, she always believed what he said while he was saying it. She might not believe it later, when she thought about it, but at the time… She shivered, though she also went on clapping. She hadn't met many people who frightened her. He did.
He thundered on: "Lots of people in the Confederate States think the Freedom Party can't do the job if we get in. They're fooling themselves! Today our movement can't be destroyed. It's here. People have to reckon with it, whether they like it or not. We recognize three principles-responsibility, command, and obedience. We've built a party-a party of millions, mind-based on one thing: achievement. And if you don't like it, we say, 'We'll fight today! We'll fight tomorrow! And if you don't fancy our rally today, we'll hold another one next week, even bigger!' "
He slammed his fist down on the podium. More applause interrupted him. Anne looked down at her carefully tended, carefully manicured hands. Her palms were red and sore. She'd broken a nail without even noticing.
"I'm not just here to ask you for your vote, or to ask you to do this or that for the Party," Featherston said. "I'm here to tell you the truth, and what I aim to do. What I've got to give is the only thing that can pull our country back on its feet again. If all you Confederates had the same faith in your country that our Freedom Party stalwarts do, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. We will pull ourselves together. We're on the way, and I know you'll help."
I'm already helping, Anne thought proudly. Not being in charge didn't bother her so much any more-not as long as she was listening to Jake, anyhow.
XIX
In an odd way, Colonel Abner Dowling was glad to have something to worry about that didn't involve keeping the Mormons in Salt Lake City from erupting. The desultory war with Japan hadn't done the job. He'd wanted to go fight, and the War Department hadn't let him. That brought nothing but frustration.
Looking with alarm at events south of the border, though, did a fine job of distracting him. He rounded on his adjutant one morning, growling, "What the devil are we going to do if that Featherston maniac really does get elected in the CSA come November?"
"I don't know, sir," Capt
ain Toricelli answered. "What can we do if he wins the election? We can't very well tell the Confederates to go back and vote again."
"No, but I wish we could," Dowling said. "That man is nothing but trouble waiting to happen. He wants another go at us. He hardly even bothers hiding it any more."
"I don't see how we can stop a politician from making speeches, sir," Angelo Toricelli said. "If he gets to be president and then starts building up the C.S. Army and violating the terms of the armistice the Confederates signed, we can do something about him. Till then…" He shrugged.
"But will President Hoover do anything?" Dowling said. "He certainly hasn't done much since he landed in Powel House six months ago."
Toricelli gave him a sly smile. "Would you rather we still had President Blackford?"
"Good God, no!" Dowling exclaimed; he'd always been a solid Democrat. "But I would like to see Hoover doing a little more. If things are any better than they were when Blackford went home to Dakota, I haven't seen it."
"It won't happen overnight, sir." His adjutant was a Democrat, too. Most officers were.
"Obviously," Dowling said. "I do wish it would show some signs of happening at all, though."
"The whole world has troubles," Toricelli said, and Dowling nodded, for that was obviously true.
"Utah probably has more troubles than the rest of the world." Abner Dowling corrected himself: "Utah certainly has worse troubles than the rest of the world. Maybe that's why we're not seeing things looking better here." He spoke as if trying to convince himself, hoping he could convince himself. But he remained incompletely convinced. He said, "If more people here had jobs, we wouldn't need to worry… quite… so much about this place going up in smoke."
"Yes, sir," Captain Toricelli agreed; his adjutant was nothing if not polite. But Toricelli was also stubborn. He went on, "If you know how to arrange that, sir, you should have run for president last year."
General Custer had always claimed he'd had a shot at the presidency in 1884. There were any number of ways in which Dowling didn't want to imitate the officer under whom he'd served for so long. He couldn't imagine any job he wanted less than that of the president, especially in these thankless times.
And yet… He snapped his fingers. "You know, Captain, we could put a lot of people to work if we cleared Temple Square of the rubble that's been sitting there for almost twenty years now."
Toricelli frowned. "Yes, sir, we could. But isn't the point of keeping the rubble there to remind the Mormons we gave them a licking? There's not going to be a new Temple in Salt Lake City, any more than there's going to be one in Jerusalem."
Dowling muttered under his breath. Not only was Captain Toricelli polite and stubborn, he was also smart. But Dowling still liked the idea, or part of it. "All right, suppose we cordon off the part of the square that held the Temple and get rid of the rest of the rubbish?" he said. "The Tabernacle and the other buildings weren't holy ground."
He waited, wondering what his adjutant would make of that. Toricelli spent close to a minute thinking it over. Then he said, "Shall I draft a telegram for you to send to the War Department?"
"Yes, Captain, if you'd be so kind." Dowling beamed. He suspected Captain Toricelli made a tougher audience than any he'd face back in Philadelphia.
The wire went out two days later. The afternoon it did, Dowling got a wire from the War Department: WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS IN UTAH DESIRABLE. YOUR IDEA FORWARDED TO SECRETARY OF WAR FOR APPROVAL. The printed signature on the sheet of yellow paper belonged to Lieutenant General Sam Sturgis, chief of the General Staff.
He heard from the Secretary of War the next day. PRESIDENT HOOVER PERSONALLY CONTROLS ALL DECISIONS ON UTAH, the wire said. I HAVE PASSED THIS PROPOSAL TO HIM RECOMMENDING APPROVAL, WHICH IS EXPECTED.
Dowling understood that this Cabinet official, a distant relative of the last Democratic president before Hoover, remained in the service of his country despite being confined to a wheelchair by some rare, debilitating disease.
Though Captain Toricelli already knew what was in the telegram, Dowling set it on his desk anyhow. "If the chief of the General Staff says yes, and if the Secretary of War says yes, how can the president say no?" he exulted.
"I don't know, sir," his adjutant replied. "I hope we don't find out."
But they did. The very next day, the telephone in Dowling's office rang. He picked it up. "Abner Dowling speaking."
"Colonel Dowling, this is Herbert Hoover." And it was. Dowling had heard his voice on the wireless and in newsreels too many times to have any doubt.
He stiffened to attention in his chair. "It's a privilege to speak with you, sir."
"Maybe you won't think so when I'm done," the president said. "Your proposal for makework for the people of Utah is not to go forward. Do you understand me?"
"It is not to go forward," Dowling repeated. "I hear you, and I will obey, of course, but I have to say I do not understand."
"We have had too much of Socialist-style, individualism-sapping false nostrums the past twelve years," Hoover said. "Paternalism and state socialism have done a great deal of harm to the country. They stifle initiative. They cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of the people. And I will not have them under my administration."
Well, that's that, Dowling thought. But he couldn't help asking, "Sir, don't you think Utah is a special case?"
"Every case has partisans who insist it is special," Hoover answered. "I recognize none of them. I believe none of them. The same principles must apply throughout the United States."
Quickly, Dowling said, "I meant no harm, Mr. President." He'd never heard Hoover sound so vehement, not in any of his speeches. He hadn't imagined the new president could sound so vehement.
"I believe you, Colonel. I am not angry at you," President Hoover said, which made Dowling feel a little-though only a little-better. Hoover went on, "I'm sure the Socialists meant no harm, either. But you know which road is paved with good intentions."
"Yes, sir," Dowling said.
"All right, then," the president said. "We'll say no more about it. But my decision is final. I do not want this issue raised again."
"Yes, sir," Dowling repeated.
"Good." Hoover hung up.
Dowling emerged from his office feeling like a man who'd survived a bomb going off much too close. Thanks to the Confederates during the war and that damned Canuck afterwards, he knew more about bombs going off too close than he'd ever wanted to learn. What he felt must not have shown on his face, though, for Captain Toricelli said, "I heard you talking to the president, sir. May we go ahead?"
His voice said he was confident of the answer. Well, Abner Dowling had been confident of the answer, too. Much good his confidence had done him. He shook his head. His jowls wobbled back and forth. "No, Captain. In fact, we're ordered not to go ahead, and so we won't."
Toricelli gaped. "But… why, sir?"
"The president feels the scheme smacks of socialism. He says we've had enough government programs trying to get us over the hump, and he doesn't want another one."
"But…" his adjutant said again.
"He's the president. What he says goes," Dowling said. "And he and Coolidge did campaign against government interference, and they did get elected. If I look at it that way, maybe I'm not so surprised."
"But…" Toricelli said once more. After a moment, he gathered himself and managed something else: "We're not competing against any private firm clearing Temple Square. There is no private firm clearing Temple Square."
"If you care to call Powel House, Captain, go right ahead," Dowling said. "As for me, I'm sure I know what the president wants done and what he doesn't. And he doesn't want us giving the Mormons even a dime to haul rocks out of Temple Square."
"A few days ago, we were saying he didn't seem to want to do much of anything," his adjutant observed. "Don't you think this goes too far, though?"
"What I think is, he's the president of the United States. If yo
u set my opinion next to his, I know whose comes out on top. We've been ordered not to proceed. That being so, we won't proceed."
"I can't argue with you there, sir," Toricelli said.
"Good," Dowling said. "I'm glad. For your sake, I'm glad. It's a free country. You can disagree with the president. Nobody will say a word. But when he gives an order, we follow it."
"Of course, sir," Captain Toricelli replied, as any officer in the Army would have done.
A few days later, Dowling received Heber Young in his office. Young, a handsome man in his early thirties, was a grandson of Brigham Young. Given the number of wives and children Brigham had had, that was hardly a unique distinction in Utah these days. This particular Young came as close to being an official leader as the Mormons had. Since, under martial law, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was proscribed, he couldn't be very official. But he wasn't exactly unofficial, either.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Young?" Dowling asked after greetings that were what diplomats called "correct": polite and chilly.
"People here need work, Colonel," Heber Young replied.
"People all over the country need work, sir," Dowling said.
"Will you tell me the problem is not worse here?" Young asked.
"If it is, whose fault is that?" Dowling said. "I was with General Pershing when a Mormon fanatic murdered him-a Mormon fanatic we've never caught, for other Mormon fanatics have sheltered him for all the years since."
"I don't know how you can say that, Colonel, when the U.S. government insists again and again that there is no such thing as the Mormon Church in Utah these days." Young spoke with surprisingly mild irony.
It was still enough to raise a flush on Dowling's plump cheeks. "Funny, Mr. Young. Very funny. Come to the point, if you'd be so kind."
"All right. I will." Young looked serious to the point of solemnity. "We could use-we desperately need-a public-works program to give men jobs, help them support their families, and, most important of all, give them hope."
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