Unfortunately, with the thick windows rolled up, traveling in the limousine was about as hot as traveling in a barrel. Al Smith promptly rolled his down a few inches. “They want to take a shot at me, they can take a shot at me,” he said. “At least I won’t roast.”
“Suits me.” Jake did his best to stay nonchalant. His guards and Smith’s were probably all having conniptions. Well, too damn bad, he thought.
The parade route from the station to the Gray House jogged once. That way, Smith—and the reporters with him—didn’t see the damage from an auto bomb Red Negroes had set off two days before. Featherston hated the black man who’d come up with that tactic. It did a lot of damage, it spread even more fear, and it was damned hard to defend against. Too many Negroes, too many motorcars—how could you check them all? You couldn’t, worse luck.
If President Smith noticed the jog, he was too polite to say so. He smiled out at the flag-waving children and adults lining the route. “Nice crowd,” he said, with no trace of irony Featherston could hear. Did that mean he didn’t realize they’d been specially brought out for the occasion? Jake hoped so.
When they got to the Gray House, Smith stared at it with interest. Comparing it to the White House, Jake thought, or to that place in Philadelphia.
They posed for more pictures in the downstairs reception hall, and then in Jake’s office. Then they shooed the photographers out of the room. “Care for a drink before we get down to business?” Featherston asked. He’d heard Al Smith could put it away pretty good, and he wasn’t so bad himself.
“Sure. Why not?” the president of the USA said.
A colored servant brought a bottle of hundred-proof bourbon, some ice cubes, and two glasses. Jake did the honors himself. He raised his glass to Al Smith. “Mud in your eye,” he said. They both drank.
“Ah!” Smith said. “That’s the straight goods.” He took another sip. Anyone that whiskey didn’t faze had seen the bottom of more than one glass in his day, sure as hell.
After Featherston poured refills, he said, “You know what I want, Mr. President. You know what’s right, too, by God.” As far as he was concerned, the two were one and the same. “Let the people choose. We’ll take our chances with that.”
“And in the meantime, you’ll keep murdering anybody in Kentucky and Houston who doesn’t go along,” Smith said.
“We haven’t got anything to do with that.” Jake lied without compunction.
The president of the USA let out a laugh that was half a cough. “My ass.”
Featherston blinked. Nobody’d come right out and called him a liar for a long time. He said, “You’re just afraid of a plebiscite on account of you know what’ll happen.”
“If I was afraid of a plebiscite, I wouldn’t be here,” Al Smith answered. “But if we go that way, I’ve got some conditions of my own.”
“Let’s hear ’em,” Jake said. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to grab every-thing on the table. If he got it served to him course by course, though, that would do.
“First thing is, no bloodshed in the time before the plebiscite,” Smith said. “If people are going to vote, let ’em vote without being afraid.”
“If you call a plebiscite, I expect the folks in the occupied states will be happy enough to go along with that,” Featherston said at once. He could rein in most of his people, and say the ones he didn’t rein in weren’t his fault. Besides, everybody knew by now what the Freedom Party could do. It wouldn’t have to add much more in the runup to a plebiscite to keep the message fresh.
“All right. Number two, then,” Al Smith said. “You want the people to vote, the people should vote. All the people—everybody over twenty-one in Houston and Kentucky and Sequoyah.”
“I’ve been saying that all along,” Jake answered. Despite his thunderings, he didn’t know if he would win in Sequoyah. Settlers from the USA had flooded into it since the war. Before, the Confederates had kept white settlement slow out of deference to the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians, who’d helped so much in the War of Secession. The United States had always been hard on Indians, which was why the Creeks and the Cherokees and the rest were so loyal to the CSA.
But President Smith shook his head. “I don’t think you get it. When I say everybody, I mean everybody. Whites and Negroes.”
“Whites and Negroes?” Jake was genuinely shocked. That hadn’t even occurred to him. “Niggers’ve never been able to vote in the CSA. They sure as hell won’t vote once they come back, either. Hell, they can’t vote in those states now.”
“They’ll vote in the plebiscite,” Smith said. “They’ve got surnames these days. We can keep track of ’em, make sure it’s fair and honest. They aren’t slaves any more. In the USA, they’re citizens, even if they don’t vote. If they’re going to change countries, they have to be able to help make the choice.”
Jake considered. Smith had neatly turned the tables on him. He’d been yelling, Let the people vote! Now Smith said, Let all the people vote! How could he say no to that without looking like a fool? He couldn’t, and he knew it. “All right, goddammit,” he ground out. That made Sequoyah even iffier, but he didn’t think it would hurt—except as far as precedent went—in Kentucky or Houston.
Smith seemed a little surprised he’d accepted, even if grudgingly. He gave his next condition: “Any state that changes hands stays demilitarized for twenty-five years.”
“That’s a bargain.” Jake didn’t hesitate for even a moment there. He knew he would break the deal inside of twenty-five days. He could always manufacture incidents to give him an excuse—or maybe, if the blacks got uppity, he wouldn’t have to manufacture any. “What else?”
“These have to be your last demands as far as territorial changes go,” Smith said. That would leave the United States with part of Virginia, part of Arkansas, part of Sonora—maybe enough to claim they’d still made a profit on the war.
“Well, of course,” Featherston said, again without hesitation. If I get that much, I’ll get the rest, too—you bet I will. “Anything else?”
“Yes—one more thing,” the U.S. president said. “We can announce an agreement now, but I don’t think the vote itself oughta come before 1941. We should have a proper campaign—let both sides be heard.”
“What?” Featherston frowned, wondering what sort of fast one Smith was trying to pull there. Then, suddenly, he laughed. Al Smith would run for reelection in November. He wanted to be able to say he’d made peace with the Confederate States, but he didn’t want to have to hand over any territory to them before Election Day. Afterwards, he’d have plenty of time to repair the damage. He thinks so, anyway. “All right, Mr. President,” Jake said. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
XV
Anne Colleton had heard that people danced in the streets in Richmond when Woodrow Wilson declared war on the United States. Now the newsboys here shouted, “Plebiscite!”—and people danced in the street. Maybe that was because they thought there wouldn’t be a war now. But maybe—and, odds were, more likely—it was because they thought the Confederate States would finally get back what they’d lost in the war.
She thought as much herself. She felt proud of herself for backing the right horse. Before the Freedom Party came to power, who would have believed the United States would ever even think of turning loose the lands they’d stolen from the CSA? But the stolen states had grown too hot to hold on to; the United States kept burning their fingers. And if that wasn’t Jake Featherston’s doing, whose was it? The right horse, sure enough, Anne thought smugly.
Celebrations in Capitol Square, across the street from Ford’s Hotel, were noisy enough to keep her awake at night. She hadn’t thought of that when she checked in. There were, of course, plenty of worse problems to have, even if she needed her sleep more regularly than she had when she was younger.
She was in Richmond to pay a call on the French embassy. Some of the men with whom she’d conferred in Paris years before had risen in prominence since. Sh
e could talk with one of them informally but still leave him certain he understood where the Confederate government stood. She hadn’t had much chance to speak French lately, but she expected her accent wouldn’t be too barbarous.
Across from the French embassy east of Capitol Square stood the much bigger building housing the U.S. embassy. A man-high fence of pointed iron palings protected the neoclassical white marble pile above which flew the Stars and Stripes. Anne understood why the U.S. embassy needed that kind of protection. How many times had her countrymen wanted to give it what they thought it deserved?
But not today. Today people cheered the U.S. military guards in their green-gray uniforms. The guards stood impassive at the entrance to the embassy. Their faces showed nothing of what they were thinking. All the same, Anne wondered what that would be. How happy did the prospect of a plebiscite in the annexed states make them?
Not very, I hope.
Colonel Jean-Henri Jusserand had been French military attaché in the Confederate States since sailing across the Atlantic with Anne aboard the Charles XI. “So good to see you again, Mademoiselle Colleton,” he said, bowing over her hand. “It has been too long a time.”
“Yes, I think so, too,” she said. “I hope you are well?”
“I must confess, the weather here in summer is a trial,” Jusserand replied. “Other than that, though, yes, thank you. And I must also say that I am full of admiration for the extraordinary achievement of your government. C’est formidable!”
“Merci beaucoup,” Anne said. “I hope that France will soon have similar good fortune with respect to Alsace and Lorraine.”
Colonel Jusserand’s narrow, intelligent face twisted. “Who can say? The Germans delay and delay. They delay endlessly. And we cannot even tax them for it overmuch, for the Kaiser delays dying. He delays and delays, delays—almost—endlessly. And while he is dying, what can be decided? Why, nothing, of course.”
“There are ways to make them decide,” Anne murmured.
“To go to war, do you mean?” the military attaché asked. Anne nodded. Jusserand sighed. “It is not so simple. I wish it were, but it is not. We have to know what the English will do, and the Russians, and the Italians. Until we are sure, how can we move? The Boches have beaten us twice in a lifetime. If we lose for a third time, we are ruined forever.”
“When we came across the Atlantic from France to the Confederate States a few years ago, your country was ahead of mine,” Anne said. “You poked and prodded at the Germans, while we could not do much with the United States. Things are different now. C’est dommage.”
The Frenchman’s eyes flashed. “Yes, it is a pity,” he agreed. “You will understand, I hope, that there are those who wish to move faster. And we wish to be certain that if we do move, we shall not move alone. If the United States are not distracted, if they land on our back while we face the German Empire . . .”
Anne had gone to the French embassy to pass along a message. Now she saw she was getting one in return. “I do not believe, my dear Colonel, that you need concern yourself on that score.”
“Ah? Vraiment?” Colonel Jusserand looked alert. “May I pass this interesting news on to my superiors—unofficially, of course?”
“Yes—as long as it is unofficially,” Anne answered.
He nodded. They understood each other. After some small talk, she stood to go. He bowed over her hand. He even kissed it. But it was politeness, and politeness only. No spark leaped. Anne could tell. That politeness felt like a little death. Twenty years ago, he would have drunk champagne from my slipper, she thought bitterly as she left the embassy. She hated the calendar, hated the mirror and what it showed her every morning. A handsome woman, that’s what you are. She would almost rather have been ugly. Then she wouldn’t have to remember the beauty she had been not so long ago.
She had walked to the French embassy. It was only three blocks from her hotel. She thought hard about taking a taxi back. All the heat and humidity had manifested themselves while she talked with Colonel Jusserand. The sun beat down from a sky like enameled brass. The air was thick as porridge. Sweat rivered off her and had nowhere to go. Every step felt enervating.
Stubbornly, she kept on. The hotel bar was air-conditioned. Just then, she would have crawled through broken glass to get out of the heat. Not many whites were on the sidewalks, though plenty drove past. But most of the pedestrians were Negroes.
By their clothes, a lot of them hadn’t been in Richmond long. She had no trouble recognizing sharecroppers thrown off the land as farming grew increasingly mechanized. She’d seen plenty of them in St. Matthews. Some of them turned to odd jobs in town, others to petty theft. The big farms, the farms that raised cotton and tobacco and grain, seemed to get on fine without them. Tractors and harvesters could do the work of scores, even hundreds, of men.
“ ‘Scuse me, ma’am, but could you spare me a quarter?” a gaunt colored man asked, touching the brim of his straw hat. “I’s powerful hungry.”
Anne walked past him as if he didn’t exist. She heard him sigh behind her. How many times had whites pretended not to see him? She didn’t care if he thought she was heartless. He’d been old enough to carry a rifle in the uprisings during the war. As far as she was concerned, that meant she couldn’t trust him. She was glad a good number of policemen and Freedom Party stalwarts tramped along the streets.
She walked past three or four more black beggars before getting back to Ford’s Hotel. One of them cursed softly when she went by without taking notice of him. He couldn’t have been in Richmond long, or he would have got used to being ignored. At the hotel, the colored doorman in his magnificent uniform smiled and bowed as he held the door open for her. Before the war, she would have taken that subservience as no less than her due. Now she wondered what lay behind it—wondered and had no trouble coming up with a nasty answer.
When she strode into the bar, she let out a sigh of relief. The cold air gushing from the vents seemed a blessing from on high. She ordered a gin and tonic and took the drink back to a small table. Five minutes later, she was fighting not to shiver. She’d never imagined that air conditioning could be too effective, but it was here. She felt as if she’d gone from subtropical Richmond to somewhere just north of the Arctic Circle.
A bespectacled officer—a colonel, she saw by the three stars on his collar tabs—sitting at the bar picked up his drink and carried it over to her table. “May I join you?” he asked, his accent sounding more like a Yankee’s than that of a man from the CSA.
“Clarence!” she said, and sprang to her feet to give him a hug. “Wonderful to see you again—it’s been years. I remember when you got your name in the papers at the Olympics, but I’d forgotten they put you back in uniform.”
“Had to find something to do with me,” Clarence Potter answered lightly, but with a hint of bitterness underneath. “How have you been, Anne? You still look damn good.”
She couldn’t remember the last time a man told her something like that and sounded as if he meant it. When she and Clarence had briefly been lovers down in South Carolina, nothing personal drove them apart, but she’d backed the Freedom Party while he despised Jake Featherston. Despite the saying, politics had unmade them as bedfellows.
“I’m—well enough,” she said. She and Potter both sat down. She couldn’t help asking, “What do you think of the plebiscites?”
“I’m amazed,” he said simply. “If you’d told me five years ago that we could annoy the United States into calling elections they’re bound to lose, if you’d told me we could get Kentucky back without going to war, I would have said you were out of your ever-loving mind. That’s what I would have said, but I would have been wrong.”
Not many men, as Anne knew too well, ever admitted they were wrong for any reason. All the same, she couldn’t help asking, “And what do you think of the president now? He’s sharper than you figured.”
“I never figured he wasn’t sharp. I figured he was crazy.” Potter
didn’t hold his voice down. He’d never been shy about saying what he thought, and he’d never worried much about what might come after that. After a sip at his own drink—another gin and tonic, Anne saw—he went on, “If he is crazy, though, he’s crazy like a fox, so maybe I’m the one who was crazy all along. You can’t argue with what he’s accomplished.”
She noticed he still separated the accomplishments from the man. In the CSA these days, people were encouraged—to put it mildly—to think of Jake Featherston and his accomplishments as going together. No, Clarence had never been one to join the common herd. Anne didn’t mind that; neither had she. “What are you doing in the Army these days?” she asked.
“Intelligence, same as before,” he answered, and then not another word. Given the four he had used, that wasn’t surprising. After a moment, he asked a question of his own: “Why did you come up to Richmond?”
“Parce que je peut parler français bien,” she said.
It didn’t faze him. He nodded as if she’d given him a puzzle piece he needed. He hesitated again, then asked, “How long are you going to be here?”
“Another few days.” She looked him in the eye. “Shall we make the most of it?” She’d never been coy, and the older she got, the less point to it she saw.
That didn’t faze him, either. He nodded again. “Why not?” he said.
Colonel Irving Morrell didn’t think he’d ever seen people dance in the streets before, not outside of a bad musical comedy on the cinema screen. Here in Lubbock, people were dancing in the streets, dancing and singing, “Plebiscite!” and, “Yanks out!” and whatever other lovely lyrics they could make up.
The people of the state of Houston had been his fellow citizens ever since it joined the USA after the Great War. If he’d been carrying a machine gun instead of the .45 on his belt, he would have gunned down every single one of them he saw, and he would have smiled while he did it, too.
The Victorious Opposition Page 52
