The Center Cannot Hold

XVI

Colonel Irving Morrell kissed his wife good-bye and headed in to the U.S. Army base at Kamloops. "Election Day at last," he said. "It can't come any later than this, but it's finally here. November the eighth, 1932-time we throw the rascals out." He checked himself and sighed. "They aren't even rascals. I've met enough of them-I know they aren't. But they aren't what we need, either."

"I should say not!" Indignation filled Agnes' voice. "After what they let the… Japs do to Los Angeles…" By the pause there, she'd almost added some pungent modifier to the enemy's name.

"That was a nice piece of work. We haven't been so humiliated since the end of the Second Mexican War, more than fifty years ago now. It was just a pinprick, but what a pinprick!" Morrell reluctantly gave credit to a very sharp operation. "Two aeroplane carriers, a tanker to keep 'em fueled-and one great big embarrassment for the USA. They got away clean as a whistle, too, except for the one aeroplane we shot down and the two that collided with each other over the beach."

"Disgraceful." Agnes was, if anything, more militant than Morrell himself.

"Well, if President Blackford's goose wasn't cooked before L.A., Hirohito's boys put it in the oven and turned up the fire," he said.

"That's true." His wife brightened. "Maybe some good will come of it after all, then. Calvin Coolidge wouldn't let himself get caught napping like that."

"I hope not," Morrell said, though he didn't know what the governor of Massachusetts could have ordered done that President Blackford hadn't. He kissed Agnes again. As far as he was concerned, that was always worth doing. "I've got to go. I wish I could do something more useful than guarding a Canadian town that isn't likely to rise up, but that's what they say they need me for, so that's what I'll do."

"If they ordered you to do something else, you'd do that, too," Agnes said. "And you'd do a bang-up job at it, too, whatever it happened to be."

"Thanks, sweetie." Morrell would have been happy to stay there and listen to his wife say nice things about him. Instead, he left.

Snow had fallen the week before, but it was gone now. He couldn't ski to the office. Sentries came to attention and saluted as he went past. He returned the salutes with careful courtesy.

When he got in, his adjutant said, "Sir, you have a despatch from the War Department in Philadelphia-from the General Staff, no less."

"You're kidding," Morrell said. Captain Horwitz shook his head. So did Irving Morrell, in bemusement. "What the devil do they want with me? I thought they'd long since forgotten I even existed. I hoped they had, to tell you the truth."

"I just put it on your desk, sir," Horwitz replied. "It got here about fifteen minutes ago. If you like, you can probably catch up with the courier and ask him questions."

"Let's see what the order is first," Morrell said. "One way or another, it'll probably tell me everything I need to know."

He went into his office. As an afterthought, he closed the door behind him. That might miff his adjutant. If it did, too bad. He'd find a way to make amends later. Meanwhile, he wanted privacy. If the General Staff-specifically, if Lieutenant Colonel John Abell-was taking some more vengeance, he wanted to be able to pull himself together before he faced the world.

There lay the envelope, as Horwitz had said. Morrell approached it like a sapper approaching an unexploded bomb. It wouldn't blow up if he opened it. He had to remind himself of that, though, before he could make himself take the folded paper out of the envelope and read the typewritten order.

The more he read, the wider his eyes got. He sank down into his seat. The swivel chair creaked under his weight. When he'd neither come out nor said anything for several minutes, Captain Horwitz cautiously called, "Are you all right, sir?"

"Nine years," Morrell answered.

Horwitz opened the door. "Sir?"

"Nine years," Morrell repeated. He looked down at the order again. "Nine miserable, stinking years thrown away. Wasted. Wiped off the map. Gone."

He could have gone on cranking out synonyms for a long time, but his adjutant broke in: "I don't understand, sir."

Morrell blinked. It was all perfectly clear in his mind. He realized Horwitz hadn't read the order. Feeling foolish, he said, "They're sending me back to Fort Leavenworth, Captain."

"Oh?" For a second, that didn't register with Horwitz. But only for a moment-he was sharp as the business end of a bayonet. Then he leaned forward, like a hunting dog taking the scent. "To work on barrels, sir?"

"That's right. To work on barrels." Morrell didn't even try to hide his bitterness. "The very same project they took me off of-the very same project they closed down-almost nine years ago."

"Well…" His adjutant put the best face on it he could: "It's a good thing they are starting up again, wouldn't you say?"

That was true. Morrell couldn't begin to deny it. But he also couldn't help asking, "Where would we be if we hadn't stopped?"

Nine years before, they'd had a prototype of what a barrel should be. It was a machine much more agile, much less cumbersome, than the lumbering armored behemoths of the Great War. It carried its cannon in a turret that rotated 360 degrees, not in a mount with limited traverse at the front of the vehicle. It had a machine gun in the turret, too, and one at the bow, not half a dozen of them all around the machine. It took a crew of half a dozen, not a dozen and a half. It ran and shot rings around the old models.

But the prototype was powered by one truck engine. It could be, because it was made of thin mild steel, not armor plate. No one had wanted to spend the money to go any further with it. Manufacturing real barrels would undoubtedly reveal a host of flaws the prototype hadn't. For that matter, Morrell didn't even know if the prototype still existed. The way things were during the 1920s, it might have been cut up and sold for scrap metal. He wouldn't have been surprised.

Had the USA gone on building and developing barrels instead of letting them languish, it would have had the best machines in the world nowadays. As things were, the Confederates' Mexican stooges had built barrels at least as good as the prototype during the long civil war between Maximilian III and the U.S.-backed republican rebels. They hadn't only made prototypes, either. They'd had real fighting machines.

What they'd had, the CSA either had already or could have in short order. Morrell knew the same thing wasn't true-wasn't even close to true-in his own country. "Well," he said, "I've got a lot of work to do, don't I?"

"Yes, sir," Captain Horwitz said. "Congratulations, sir."

"Thanks, Ike." Morrell laughed, though it wasn't really funny. "I bet I know what finally got the Socialists off the dime."

"What's that, sir?" his adjutant asked.

"The Japs bombing Los Angeles-what else? And the sad part is, no matter what I do with barrels, even if I get it all done day after tomorrow, it won't matter much. How could it? Where are we going to use barrels fighting the Japanese?"

"Beats me, sir."

"Beats me, too." Morrell tapped the order with his fingernail. "I've got to let the base commandant know I've been transferred. And I've got to let my wife know."

"What will she think?" Horwitz asked.

"I hope she'll be pleased," Morrell answered. "We met in Leavenworth, Agnes and I. She was living in town, and I was stationed at the fort. I wonder how much it's changed since we left."

Captain Horwitz looked sly. "One thing, sir-you can leave your skis behind. No mountains in Kansas."

"Well, no," Irving Morrell agreed. "But I think I'll take 'em-they do get enough snow for cross-country skiing." He got to his feet, tucking the order into the breast pocket of his tunic. "And now I'd better tell Brigadier General Peterson he's going to have to live without me."

Brigadier General Lemuel Peterson was a lean, lantern-jawed New Englander. He said, "Congratulations, Colonel. I was wondering if you'd end up in command here when they sent me somewhere else. But you're the one who gets to go away instead, and you're actually going to do something useful."

"I hope so, anyhow," Morrell said. "If they give me twenty-nine cents for a budget and expect me to put barrels together out of railroad iron and paper clips, though…"

"You never can tell with those cheapskates in the War Department," Peterson said. If Morrell reported that to the powers that be, he might blight his superior's career. He intended no such thing-he agreed with Brigadier General Peterson. The commandant at Kamloops went on, "Maybe we'll see a little sense from now on, because it looks like the Democrats are going to win this election."

"Yes, sir." Colonel Morrell nodded. "Here's hoping, sir."

Lemuel Peterson could have used that against him-except few officers would have quarreled with the sentiments he expressed. "Why don't you go on home for the rest of the day?" Peterson said. "You're ordered out of here within a week-you'll be as busy as a one-armed paper hanger with hives. You should let your family know. What will your wife have to say?" As he had with his adjutant, Morrell explained how he'd met Agnes in Kansas. Peterson nodded. "That's a point for you. Go on, then. Do you have a wireless set?"

"Yes, sir," Morrell answered. "One more thing to pack."

"True, but that's not what I was thinking of," Brigadier General Peterson said. "You can listen to election returns tonight."

"Oh." Morrell nodded. "Yes, sir. We will do that, I expect."

Agnes exclaimed in surprise when he showed up at the front door. She exclaimed in delight when he told her about the order. "I don't care about Kansas one way or the other," she said, "but this is wonderful. You'll be doing something important again, not just makework."

"I know." He kissed her. "That's what I'm really looking forward to." He kissed her again. "And I knew you'd understand."

"I've got a couple of steaks in the icebox, and some good Canadian beer, too." Agnes raised an eyebrow. "After that, who knows what might happen?"

"The wench grows bold." He patted her on the bottom. "Good. I like it."

What happened after dinner was that he played with Mildred on the living-room floor while the wireless blared out endless streams of numbers. Every so often, his little girl would complain because his mind wasn't fully on their game. "You're listening to that silly stuff," she said.

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry." He was sorry to disrupt the game. He wasn't sorry, not in the least, about what he was hearing. What everyone had thought would happen was happening: Calvin Coolidge was trouncing Hosea Blackford. Even as he listened, Coolidge's lead in Ohio went up to a quarter of a million votes.

"And Coolidge is also ahead in Indiana, which last went Democratic in the election of 1908," the announcer said. Morrell clapped his hands in not quite childish glee. Mildred gave him a severe look a schoolmarm would have envied. He apologized again.

His daughter eventually went to bed. Morrell and Agnes stayed up a while longer, to let her fall asleep and to hear some more returns. Coolidge kept capturing state after state. By the time they went to bed, too, they had a lot to celebrate-and they did.

C incinnatus Driver knew a certain amount of local pride. "The new vice president, he was borned in Iowa," he said. "How 'bout that?"

His son sent him a jaundiced glance. "And he moved away as fast as he could go, too," Achilles retorted. "He moved as far as he could go, too-all the way out to California. What does that say about this place?"

"I don't know what it says, but I'll tell you what I say," Cincinnatus answered, giving back a jaundiced glance of his own: Achilles was getting altogether too mouthy these days. "What I say is, you can complain as much as you please, but you don't recollect enough about Kentucky to know when you's well off."

Elizabeth nodded. She used her fork to pull a clove out of her slice of beef tongue. "Your father, he right," she said, and took a bite.

At seventeen, Achilles was ready to lock horns with anybody over anything. "What do you two know about it?" he said. "Way you talk, it doesn't sound like you know anything." His own accent was ever more like a white Iowan's these days.

Cincinnatus said, "You're right." That startled Achilles; his father didn't say it very often. Cincinnatus went on, "You know why we talk like we do? You ever wonder 'bout that? Don't reckon so. It's on account of there weren't no schools for black folks there, on account of my ma and pa, and your mother's, too, they was slaves when they was little. Never had no chance to learn like you got here. I'm lucky I had my letters at all. You know that?"

"I better know it," Achilles said sullenly. "You go on about it all the time."

"Mebbe I do. But you better pay some attention, son. You go complainin' 'bout Iowa, you don't know when you's well off."

Achilles got up from the table even though he hadn't finished supper. He stormed away. Amanda stared after him. She was still young enough to be convinced her parents had all the answers, not to be dedicated to proving they didn't. "Oh, my," she said softly.

"Mebbe you laid it on too thick," Elizabeth said.

"Mebbe I did," Cincinnatus answered with a shrug. "Mebbe-but I don't think so. He got to see he don't know everything there is to know jus' yet."

His wife smiled. "When you was his age, didn't you reckon you knowed everything, too, jus' like him?"

" 'Course I did," Cincinnatus said. "My pa thrashed it out o' me. I don't like hittin' a boy that size-he ain't far from a man, even if he ain't as close as he thinks. I don't like it… but if I got to, I got to." Deliberately, he made himself take a bite of tongue. He usually liked it; it had been a treat when he was growing up. But anger spoiled the flavor.

"You got his goat, but he got yours, too," Elizabeth said.

He started to deny it, then realized he couldn't. He let out a long sigh. "Yeah, he done did." He raised his voice: "Come on back an' eat your supper, Achilles. I won't talk no more 'bout politics if you don't." That was as far as he was willing to go.

From the long silence that followed, he wondered if it was far enough to satisfy his son. At last, though, Achilles said, "All right, Pa. That's fair enough." He returned to the table.

"Probably ain't even had time yet to get cold," Elizabeth said.

"No, Ma. It's fine." As if to prove as much, Achilles made tongue and potatoes and carrots disappear. "Mighty good," he said. "May I have some more, please?" He had manners when he remembered to use them.

"I'll get it for you," Elizabeth said. She turned to Cincinnatus as soon as she'd picked up Achilles' plate. "He sure do like his food."

"That's true." Cincinnatus wasn't sure it was a compliment, especially during hard times, but he could hardly deny it.

After supper, Achilles went off to do his homework. He'd never lost his liking for school. That pleased Cincinnatus-pleased him all the more because, even though Achilles seemed to want to disagree with everything he said, his son hadn't rejected the idea that education was a good thing.

The next morning, Cincinnatus scrambled into his Ford truck and hurried out to the railroad yards. He got there before the sun came up, but he wasn't the first man there looking for whatever hauling business he could get. These days, cargo wasn't always the only thing that traveled in boxcars. As a freight train pulled into the yard, a couple of men in tattered clothes leaped down even before it had completely stopped. They started running.

They didn't disappear quite fast enough. "Come back here, you sons of bitches!" a railway dick shouted. He had a nightstick and a. 45 on his belt. Feet pounding on gravel, he lumbered after the fleeing freeloaders.

"Gotta be crazy to ride the rails like that," Cincinnatus said to the conductor with whom he was dickering over the price of hauling a load of office furniture to the State Capitol.

"Gotta be desperate, anyway," the conductor answered. "Why the hell anybody who was ridin' would want to get off in Des Moines…" He shrugged. "I don't know about crazy, but you sure gotta be stupid."

As he had with Achilles, Cincinnatus said, "This ain't a bad town, suh. Beats Covington, Kentucky, all hollow, and that's the truth."

"Well, sure, if that's what you're comparing it to," the other man said with a laugh. "But you run it up against Los Angeles or San Francisco or Portland or Seattle or Denver or Albuquerque or… You get the idea what I'm saying, buddy? I've seen all them places. I know what I'm talking about."

Cincinnatus knew his standards of comparison were limited. He was familiar with Des Moines, and with Covington, and with very little else. He knew Cincinnati a little, as it lay right across the Ohio from Covington. But San Francisco might have been on the far side of the moon, for all he knew of it. The newspaper had talked about building a bridge across the Golden Gate one day. That didn't mean much to Cincinnatus, either. He knew rivers, and bridges over rivers. The Pacific Ocean? He'd never even seen a lake-not a big one, anyhow.

He got back to the business at hand: "I may not know nothin' 'bout them places, Mistuh Gideon, but I knows haulin', and I knows I got to have another dollar to make this here trip worthwhile."

He ended up with another four bits. That was less than he'd hoped for, more than enough to make the journey worth his while. He stacked desks and swivel chairs and oak file cabinets in the back of the Ford till it wouldn't hold any more and the springs wouldn't bear much more. For good measure, he squeezed two more swivel chairs into the cabin with him.

The conductor nodded approval. "One thing I always got to give you, Cincinnatus-you work like a bastard."

"Thank you kindly." To Cincinnatus, that was high praise.

Getting to the Capitol took only a few minutes; it lay not far south of the railroad yards-like them, on the east side of the Des Moines River, across the river from Cincinnatus' apartment building. The gilded dome atop the ornate building was a landmark visible all over town. For that matter, since the Iowa countryside was so flat, the dome was visible from quite a ways outside of town, too.

Men in fancy suits, bright silk neckties, and expensive homburgs-legislators, lawyers, lobbyists-climbed the stairs to the Capitol's front entrance. Times might be hard, but men of that stripe seldom suffered. They were, of course, uniformly white. Cincinnatus, with his black skin, dungarees, wool sweater, and soft cloth cap, drove past the front entrance with hardly a glance. He pulled up at the freight entrance and backed his truck up to the loading dock.

A white man in an outfit almost identical to his own came over to the truck, clipboard in hand. "How you doin', Cincinnatus?" he said.

"Not too bad, Lou." Even after most of a decade in Des Moines, calling a white man by his first name still wasn't something Cincinnatus did casually. His upbringing in Confederate Kentucky ran deep. "How's yourself?"

"Damn cold weather makes my wound ache." Lou set a hand on his haunch. "If I'd known getting shot in the ass would stick with me so long, I wouldn't've left it up there for them Confederate sons of bitches to aim at. I'd've stuck my head up instead-ain't like I got the brains to worry about gettin' 'em blown out." He pointed to the truck. "So what the hell you got for us this time?"

"Office furniture," Cincinnatus told him.

" 'Bout time that shit started gettin' here," Lou declared. "All them fancy-pants bastards in there who waste our money been bellyachin' like you wouldn't believe about how their goddamn desk drawers squeak and they can't screw their secretaries on the old swivel chairs." Lou respected nothing and nobody, least of all the elected and appointed officials of the great state of Iowa.

Cincinnatus, on the whole a straitlaced man, hadn't thought about screwing in a chair, swivel or otherwise. Now that he did, he liked the idea-provided he and Elizabeth could both be home at the same time while their children weren't, which might not prove easy to arrange. He got out of the truck with a clipboard of his own. "I got papers for you to sign off on."

Lou laughed and flourished his clipboard, which made the papers on it flutter. "Listen, pal, this here is state business. I got more papers'n you do, and you can take that to the bank. Ain't nobody in the goddamn world got more papers'n you need to do state business, unless maybe it's them cocksuckers in Philly."

Again, Cincinnatus knew nothing about the habits, sexual or bureaucratic, of Philadelphians. From other trips to the State Capitol, he did know how many papers he'd have to sign before his delivery was official. "Let's get on with it," he said resignedly, and signed and signed and signed. Lou went through the relative handful of papers on Cincinnatus' clipboard in nothing flat.

Once Cincinnatus had got to the bottom of Lou's pile of paperwork, he asked, "What do they do with all these here forms?"

"Let the mice chew 'em up-what the hell you think?" Lou answered. He raised his voice to a full-throated bellow: "Ivan! Paddy! Luigi! Get your asses over here, and get this crap outa my buddy's truck! You think he's got all day?" The workmen descended on the truck. Lou pulled a flask from his hip pocket-the opposite side from his war wound. "Want a snort?"

Iowa was a dry state that took being dry very, very seriously. That didn't stop liquor from getting made there or smuggled in. Cincinnatus' experience was that it did keep good liquor from entering the state. The nip he took from Lou's flask did nothing to change his mind. "Do Jesus!" he said when he recovered the power of speech. "Tastes like paint thinner an' possum piss."

"I'm gonna tell that to my brother-in-law," Lou said, laughing. "He cooked up the shit."

"He don't like you in particular, or he don't like nobody?" Cincinnatus asked, still trying to get his breath back. Lou laughed again, and aimed a lazy mock punch at him. As lazily, he ducked. He tried to imagine himself sassing a white man like that back in Kentucky-tried and felt himself failing.

Lou asked, "You got the whole kit and caboodle here, or is there more of this shit back on the train?"

"There's more, plenty more. Some o' them fellers should be bringin' it any time. Soon as you get me unloaded, I'm goin' back, see if I can get me another load."

"I'll give you another slug of this stuff when you get back." Lou patted the pocket with the flask.

"Damn good reason to stay away," Cincinnatus said. Lou laughed yet again, for all the world as if he'd been joking.

J onathan Moss wasn't used to getting shaken awake at two in the morning. "Wuzzat?" he said muzzily. He wasn't used to waking up under any circumstances without a steaming cup of coffee or three at his elbow to make the transition easier.

Laura's voice, however, turned out to do the job well enough: "Jonathan, you'd better take me to the hospital now, because the pains are only four minutes apart, and they're getting stronger."

"Jesus!" Moss sat bolt upright. "Why didn't you tell me a while ago?"

His wife shrugged. "I've watched plenty of cows and sows and ewes give birth. I know what happens, as well as you can till it happens to you. I wasn't going anywhere much. Now I am-and so we'd better get moving."

"Right," he said. They'd packed a bag for her a couple of days earlier. He had clothes draped over the chair, ready to throw on. As he got out of bed, he gave her a kiss. "Congratulations, sweetheart. You're saving us some money."

"I'm not doing it on purpose, believe me," Laura said.

"I know." The lawyerly part of Moss' mind operated automatically. "But if Junior'd waited another week and a half, it would've been 1933, and then we couldn't write him off this year's taxes."

Having doffed her long wool nightgown, Laura was putting on a long wool maternity dress. A tent would have had no more material and been no less stylish. She draped a coat over the dress; it was snowing outside. "Somehow or other, taxes aren't my biggest worry right this minute," she said, her voice as chilly as the weather.

Moss lit a cigarette and patted her on the bottom. "Really, babe? Why is that, do you think?" She did her best to make her glare withering. He did his best not to wither.

Going downstairs was another adventure. He carried the case in one hand and held his wife's hand with the other. She had to pause on the stairs while a labor pain passed. He didn't want to think about what would happen if she fell. He didn't want to, and so he didn't. He did, however, let out a loud sigh of relief after they made it to the lobby, went down a few more stairs, and reached the sidewalk.

His breath would have smoked without the cigarette. When he inhaled, the air cut like knives. In conversational tones, Laura remarked, "The auto had better start, don't you think?"

"What, you don't want to hang around waiting for a cab?" Moss said, which earned him another glare. He opened the Bucephalus' door and carefully handed her in, then flung the overnight bag onto the back seat.

He slid behind the wheel and slammed his door shut. That got him out of the icy wind. When he turned the key, he uttered something between a prayer and a curse. Past two on a cold winter night… Would the engine turn over?

The starter made a grinding noise. The engine didn't start. He tried again. Still no luck. "Come on, you goddamn fucking son of a bitch," he growled, wishing for a groundcrew man to spin the prop.

Laura looked down at her swollen stomach. "Don't listen to him," she advised the baby. "Hold your hands over your ears. He's just a barbarous Yank, and he doesn't know any better."

"I don't know any better than to keep driving this miserable old rattletrap," Moss said, and twisted the key once more, with savage force.

Grind… Grind… Grind… He was about to throw up his hands in despair when the engine belched like a man after three quick beers. He came down hard on the gas, hoping, hoping… Another belch, and then a full-throated roar. Steam and smoke poured from the tailpipe.

"There is a God!" Moss shouted.

"I should hope so," Laura said, "and I doubt He's very amused at what you said a minute ago."

"Too darn bad," Moss said; now that the Bucephalus had started, he was willing to make his language less incandescent. But he didn't back down: "I wasn't very amused with Him a few minutes ago, either."

"Jonathan, I think-" What ever his wife thought was lost as another labor pain seized her. When she could speak again, she said, "I think you'd better get me to the hospital as fast as you can."

"I will," he promised. "I want to make sure the engine warms up before I put it in gear, though. If it quits on me, that would be.. not so good." Laura nodded. They might argue about a good many things, but she wasn't going to disagree with that.

Even though the streets of Berlin were almost deserted, he drove with great care. Skidding on snow would have been bad any time. Skidding on snow while his wife was in labor was one more thing he didn't care to contemplate.

Beside him, Laura let out a sharp hiss. She couldn't say anything more for most of a minute. At last, she managed, "I won't be sorry for the ether cone or what ever it is they give you to make the pain go away."

"We're almost there," he said. Nothing in Berlin was too far from anything else. He could have driven for quite a while longer in Chicago. Of course, Chicago also boasted more hospitals than Berlin's one.

As he took Laura toward the door, another auto pulled up behind his: a flivver even more spavined than his Bucephalus. The woman who got out was as extremely pregnant as Laura. Her husband said, "They can't pick two in the afternoon to do this, eh?"

"Doesn't seem that way," Moss agreed.

Nurses took the two women off to the maternity ward. Moss and the other man stayed behind to cope with the inevitable paperwork. After they'd dotted the last i and crossed the last t, another nurse guided them to the waiting room, which boasted a fine selection of magazines from 1931. Moss sat down on a chair, the other fellow on the leatherette sofa. They both reached for cigarettes, noticed the big, red NO SMOKING! FIRE HAZARD! signs at the same time, and put their packs away with identical sighs.

"Nothing to do but wait," the other man said. He was in his mid-twenties-too young to have fought in the Great War. More and more men these days were too young to have fought in the war. Moss felt time marching on him-felt it all the more acutely because so many of his contemporaries had gone off to fight but hadn't come home again.

Nodding now, he said, "I wonder how long it'll be."

"You never can tell," his companion said. "Our first one took forever, but the second one came pretty quick."

"This is our first one," Moss said.

"Congratulations," the other man said.

"Thanks." Moss yawned enormously. "I wish they had a coffeepot in here." Then he looked at the NO SMOKING! FIRE HAZARD! signs again. "Well, maybe not, not unless you want cold coffee."

"I wonder why it's a fire hazard," the Canadian said.

"Ether, maybe," Moss answered, remembering what Laura had said just before they got to the hospital. He sniffed. All he smelled was a hospital odor: strong soap, disinfectant, and a faintest hint of something nasty underneath.

They waited. Moss looked at the clock. The younger Canadian man did the same. After a while, he said, "You're a Yank, aren't you?"

"That's right," Jonathan admitted, wondering if he should have tried to lie. But his accent had probably given him away. American and Canadian intonations were close, but not identical.

Another pause. Then the Canadian asked, "Is your wife a Yank, too?"

Moss laughed. "No, she's about as Canadian as can be. Her first husband was a Canadian soldier, but he didn't come back from the war."

"Oh," the younger man said, and then shrugged. "None of my business, really."

Most Americans would have kept on peppering Moss with questions. Canadians usually showed more reserve, as this one had. Of course, some Canadians still wanted to throw all the Americans in their country back south of the border once more. Moss knew his own wife was one of them. If they hadn't been lovers, if she hadn't warned him of the rebellion a few years before, that might have been worse. He might have got caught in it, too, instead of coming through unscathed.

With another yawn, he picked up a magazine. The lead article wondered how many seats in the Confederate Congress the Freedom Party would gain in the 1931 elections. Not very many, the writer predicted. "Shows how much you know," Moss muttered, and closed the magazine in disgust.

He shut his eyes and tried to doze. He didn't think he had a prayer. He was worrying about what would happen in the delivery room, and the chair was stiff and uncomfortable. But the next time he looked at the clock, an hour and a half had gone by. He blinked in astonishment. His companion in the waiting room had slumped onto one arm of the sofa. He snored softly.

Daybreak came late, as it always did in Canadian winter. Moss wished for coffee again, and, when his stomach growled, for breakfast. The Canadian man slept on and on. Moss slipped out to use the men's room down the hall. He disturbed the other fellow not a bit.

A nurse came in at a little past ten. "Mr. Ferguson?" she said. Moss pointed at his sleeping comrade. "Mr. Ferguson?" she said again, louder this time. The Canadian man opened his eyes. He needed a moment to figure out where he was. As he straightened, the nurse said, "Congratulations, Mr. Ferguson. You have a baby boy, and your wife is fine."

"What'll you call him?" Moss asked, sticking out his hand.

Ferguson shook it. "Bruce," he answered, "after my wife's uncle." He asked the nurse, "Can I see Elspeth now? And the baby?"

"Just for a little while. Come with me," the nurse said.

As she turned to go, Jonathan asked her, "Excuse me, but how is Mrs. Moss doing?"

"She's getting there," the nurse answered. "Some time this afternoon for her, I expect."

"This afternoon?" Moss said in dismay. The nurse only nodded and led Mr. Ferguson out of the waiting room to see his wife and his son, who hadn't waited around before coming out to see the world.

It was half past four, as a matter of fact, with night falling fast and itchy stubble rasping on Moss' cheeks and chin, before another nurse came in and said, "Mr. Moss?"

"That's me." He jumped to his feet. "Is Laura all right?"

The nurse not only nodded, she cracked a smile; he'd thought that was against hospital regulations. "Yes, she's fine. You have a little girl. Not so little, in fact-eight pounds, two ounces."

"Dorothy," Moss whispered. A boy would have been Peter. "Can I see her, uh, them?"

"Come along," the nurse said. "Your wife is still woozy from the anesthetic."

Laura didn't just look woozy; she looked drunk out of her mind. "The peaches are spoiled," she announced, fixing Jonathan with a stare that said it was his fault.

"It's all right, honey," he said, and bent down and kissed her on her sweaty forehead. "Look-we've got a daughter!" The nurse holding the baby in a pink blanket lifted her up a little so both Mosses could get a look at her. She was about the size of a cat but much less finished-looking. Her skin was as thin and prone to crumple as finest parchment, and bright, bright pink. She screwed up her face. A thin, furious yowl burst from her lips.

"She's beautiful," Laura whispered.

At first, Jonathan Moss thought that was still the ether talking. Dorothy's head was a funny shape and much too big for her body, her skin was a weird color, she made her tiny, squashed features even stranger when she cried, and the noise that filled the maternity room put him in mind of a dog with its tail stuck in a door.

Those doubts lasted a good three or four seconds. Then he took another look at his new daughter. "You're right," he said, and he was whispering, too. "She is beautiful. She's the most beautiful baby in the world."

F ive days into a new year. Nellie Jacobs couldn't make herself care. Her husband wouldn't see the end of 1933. Hal probably wouldn't see the end of January. He might not see the end of the week, and this was Thursday. He lay in the veterans' ward of Remembrance Hospital, not far from the White House. If it weren't for his Distinguished Service Medal, they wouldn't have admitted him, for he hadn't formally been a soldier. And if it weren't for the oxygen they gave him, he would have been dead weeks before. Nellie wasn't sure they were doing him any favors by keeping him alive. But they also gave him morphine, so he wasn't in much pain.

She got dressed and went downstairs and made breakfast for herself and Clara. She'd just sent her younger daughter off to school when her older one came in. "Hello, Edna," Nellie said. "Thank you very much." She didn't like being beholden to Edna-or to anyone else-but here she had no choice.

And Edna didn't say anything but, "It's all right, Ma. Go on down to the hospital. Spend all the time you can with him. I know there's not much left. I'll mind the shop for you. It ain't like I never done it before."

Nellie couldn't resist a jab: "No handsome Confederate officers coming in nowadays."

"That's all right, too," Edna answered. "I made my catch, and I'm glad I did." After a small hesitation, she went on, "I won't say I'm not glad to get out of the house every once in a while myself. No, I won't say that."

Balked because her daughter hadn't sniped back, Nellie set a hat on her head, picked up her handbag, and said, "I'll be back before you have to go take care of Armstrong."

"Sure, Ma." Edna nodded. "Be careful when you're going down to the trolley stop, though. It's cold out there, and the sidewalks are icy. You don't want to fall."

"I'm not an old lady yet," Nellie said sharply, though she was, when she stopped to think about it, closer to sixty than fifty. Shaking her head-she didn't like thinking about that-she hurried out of the coffeehouse. The bell over the door jingled behind her.

Her breath fogged out around her as she hurried up the street. A man in an ancient ragged Army greatcoat stepped out of a doorway and whined, "Got any spare change, lady?" Nellie walked past him as if he didn't exist. He didn't bother cursing her; he must have been ignored a thousand times before. He just shrank back into the doorway and waited for someone else to come along.

Three men and a woman were waiting for the trolley when Nellie got to the stop. "Any minute now," one of the men said. He carried a dinner pail, which probably meant he had a job.

"Thank you," Nellie said-not, Good, or anything of the sort. She would have given anything she had not to be making this trip, the one she'd made every day she could while Hal lay dying in the hospital. How much it tormented her measured how much she'd come to love him.

Sure enough, the trolley clanged up to the corner a couple of minutes later. Nellie threw her nickel in the fare box. The car was already crowded. A middle-aged man with a scar on his cheek stood up to offer her his seat. "Here you go, ma'am," he said.

"Thank you," Nellie said again, this time in real astonishment. She couldn't remember the last time that had happened. Who would have thought any gentlemen were left in the world? she thought, and then, Who would have thought there were ever any gentlemen in the world? Except for her husband, her son-in-law, and her grandson, she still had no use for the male half of the race-and she knew her grandson was an unruly brat, even if he was blood kin. Well, Merle can always take Armstrong to the woodshed a little more often, that's all.

Her stop was only a few minutes away from the coffeehouse. "President-elect Coolidge in Washington to meet with Cabinet picks!" a newsboy shouted, waving a paper at Nellie. She shook her head and hurried on to Remembrance Hospital.

Built after the end of the war, the hospital was an immense, brutally modern building that resembled nothing so much as a great block of granite with windows. The stairs leading up to the front entrance were too wide for Nellie to take them in one step, too narrow for her to take them in two. The hitching strides she had to make annoyed her every morning. By the expressions some of the other people going up and down those steps wore, they didn't like them, either-or maybe they had other worries of their own, as Nellie did.

The only happy people she saw coming out of the place were a young couple, the man carrying a crying baby. Maternity wards are different, Nellie thought as she went past them. I bet they're the only place in a hospital where people win instead of losing.

She knew the way to the veterans' ward. By now, she'd come often enough to be a regular. A nurse in the corridor nodded to her as she walked past. A couple of the nurses had even dropped in at the coffeehouse when they came off their shifts.

Two long rows of metal-framed beds, facing each other, stretched the length of the ward. Hal lay in the sixth bed on the left-hand side as Nellie came in. Just beyond him lay a younger man, a fellow about forty, whose lungs were killing him faster than Hal's. He'd been gassed in Tennessee in 1917, and had been dying by inches ever since. Nellie had never seen anyone come to visit him. He nodded to her, his lips a little bluer than they had been the day before. Like Hal, he had a rubber attachment that fit over his nose to feed him oxygen.

"Hello, darling," Hal said, his voice rasping and weak. His lungs weren't all that was troubling him, not any more. The flesh had melted from his bones over the past few months. His skull seemed to push out through the skin of his face, as if to announce the death that lay not far ahead.

"How are you feeling?" As Nellie always did, she fought to hold worry and pain from her voice. Hal didn't need her reminders to know what was happening to him.

"How am I?" He wheezed laughter. "One day closer, that's all." He paused to fight a little more air into the lungs that didn't want to hold it any more. "We're always one day closer, but usually… usually we don't think about it. How's Clara?"

"She's fine," Nellie said. "I'll bring her Saturday. She wants to see you, but what with school and all now that New Year's is gone…."

"School is important," Hal said. "What could be more important than school?" He stopped to gather breath again. "Maybe it's better.. she doesn't see me… like this. Let her… remember me.. like I was when I was stronger."

"Oh, Hal." Nellie had to turn away. She didn't want her husband to see the tears stinging her eyes. All she cared about was making sure he stayed as happy and comfortable as he could till the end finally came.

A man in the row of beds facing Hal's lit a cigarette. Hal said, "Do you know what I wish?" Nellie shook her head. He lifted a bony hand and pointed with a forefinger that still showed a yellowish stain. "I wish I had one of those, that's what. They won't let me smoke… on account of this oxygen gear… Fire, you know."

"That's terrible." Nellie rose. "I'm going to see if I can't get 'em to change their minds." As far as she was concerned, cigarettes were more important for Hal than oxygen right now. The oxygen helped keep him alive, yes, but so what? Cigarettes would make him happy as he went, for he was going to go.

Out at the nursing station, a starched woman of about Edna's age, shook her head at Nellie. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Jacobs," she said, not sounding sorry in the least, "but I can't deviate from the attending physician's instructions." Nellie might have asked her to commit an unnatural act.

"Well, who is the attending physician, and where the devil do I find him?" Nellie asked.

"His name is Dr. Baumgartner, and his office is in room 127, near the front entrance," the nurse answered reluctantly. "I don't know if he's in. Even if he is, I don't think you can get him to change his mind."

"We'll see about that," Nellie snapped. She hurried off to room 127 with determined strides. Dr. Baumgartner was in, writing notes on one of his patients. He was in his late thirties, and wore the ribbon for a Purple Heart. Above his collar, the side of his neck was scarred. Nellie wondered how far down the scar ran and how bad it was. Shoving that aside, she told him what she wanted.

He heard her out, then shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Jacobs, but I don't see how I can do that. They don't call cigarettes coffin nails for nothing."

"What difference does that make?" Nellie asked bluntly. "He's dying anyhow."

"I know he is, ma'am," Baumgartner answered. "But my job is to keep him alive as long as I can and to keep him as comfortable as I can. That's what the oxygen is for."

"That's what the cigarettes are for," Nellie said: "the comfortable part, I mean."

Before Dr. Baumgartner could answer, an ambulance came clanging up to the front door of the hospital. The physician jumped to his feet and grabbed a black bag that sat on a corner of his desk. "You have to excuse me, ma'am," he said. "There might be something I can do to help there."

"We aren't done with this argument-not by a long shot we're not," Nellie said, and followed him as he hurried out of the office.

To her surprise, policemen rushed in through the entrance ahead of the men getting a stretcher out of the back of the ambulance. Some of them had drawn their pistols. Most people shrank away from them in alarm. Dr. Baumgartner eyed the pistols with the air of a man who'd known worse. "What the hell's going on?" he demanded.

"Come quick, Doc," one of the policemen told him. "Do what ever you can. He'd gotten out of the bathtub, they tell me, and he was shaving when he keeled over."

"Who's he?" Baumgartner asked. "And since when does an ambulance need a squad of motorcycle cops for escort?"

"Since it's got Calvin Coolidge in it, is since when," the policeman answered. "He keeled over, like I say, and nobody's been able to get a rise out of him since."

"Oh, dear God," Nellie said. Nobody paid any attention to her. The stretcher-bearers brought their burden into the hospital. Sure enough, the president-elect lay on the stretcher, his face pale and still.

Dr. Baumgartner knelt beside him. The doctor's hand found Coolidge's wrist. "He has no pulse," Baumgartner said. He peeled back an eyelid. "His pupil doesn't respond to light." He took his hand away from Coolidge's face. The president-elect stared up with one eye open, the other closed. Nellie could see what Dr. Baumgartner was going to say before he said it: "He's dead." Baumgartner's expression and voice were stunned.

"Can't you do anything for him, Doc?" a cop asked. "That's why we brung him here."

"You'd need the Lord. He can raise the dead. I can't," Dr. Baumgartner answered, still in that dazed voice. "If I'd been standing next to him the minute it happened, I don't think I could have done anything. Coronary thrombosis or a stroke, I'd say, although I can't begin to know which without an autopsy."

"Coro-what?" The policeman scratched his head. "What's that in English?"

"Heart attack," Baumgartner said patiently. "That'd be my guess. Without a postmortem, though, it's only a guess."

"What happens next?" Nellie asked. "He was president. I mean, he was going to be president. Now…" She looked down at the body, then quickly turned away. "Close his eye, please."

While Baumgartner did that, the policeman said, "Yeah, what the hell-'scuse me, lady-do we do now? We never had nothin' like this happen before. That damn Blackford-'scuse me again-better not get to be president on account of he finished second. That wouldn't be right, not after Cal here kicked his… tail."

"No, no, no. It doesn't work like that." Dr. Baumgartner shook his head. "The electoral college met yesterday, so the results are official. The vice president-elect becomes president-elect, and then he becomes president on the first of February."

"Well, that's a relief," the cop said. "Thanks, Doc."

And Nellie might have been the first one to taste the name and title the whole United States would know before the day was up: "President Herbert Hoover." She paused in thought, then slowly nodded and repeated the words. "President Herbert Hoover." She paused again. "I like the sound of it."

A long with her daughter, Mary Jane, Sylvia Enos crunched through snow to stand on the Boston Common and pay her last respects to Calvin Coolidge. George, Jr., would have come with them, too-Sylvia was sure of that-but his fishing boat was bringing in cod out on Georges Bank. For a moment, she wondered if he even knew. Then she shook her head, feeling foolish. The Whitecap had a wireless set aboard, so he was bound to.

Like her and Mary Jane, most of the people in the square wore black. It seemed all the more somber against the snow. Up on a rickety wooden platform, a newsreel photographer swung his camera over the crowd.

"It doesn't seem fair," Sylvia said. "He wasn't an old man-he was only sixty." Mary Jane gave her an odd look. But then, Mary Jane was only twenty, and to twenty sixty was one with the Pyramids of Egypt. Sylvia knew better, and wished she didn't. She went on, "And it doesn't seem fair he died before he could be president, especially when we've been stuck with Socialists the past twelve years."

"Hoover is a Democrat, too," Mary Jane said. But then, before Sylvia could, she added, "But he's not from Massachusetts."

"He certainly isn't," Sylvia said. "Born in Iowa, then on to California…" She sighed. "He's from about as far from Massachusetts as he can be and stay in the USA."

"He's-" Mary Jane broke off as heads swung toward a string of black autos approaching the State House behind a phalanx of motorcycle policemen. "Here comes the funeral procession."

A hearse carrying Coolidge's mortal remains led the cortege. Behind it came an open limousine in which sat President-elect Hoover. Behind his autos were a stream of others, all full of dignitaries civilian and military. When the hearse halted, an honor guard of soldiers, sailors, and Marines lifted Coolidge's flag-draped casket from it and set the coffin on a temporary bier whose black cloth cover was half hidden by red-white-and-blue bunting.

"I wish Pa could have got a funeral," Mary Jane said suddenly. "Not a fancy one like this, but any kind of funeral at all."

"You were a little girl when the Confederates torpedoed his ship," Sylvia said. "And he was away at sea so much before that. Do you remember him at all?"

"Not very much," her daughter answered. "But I do remember one time when he was home on leave and he kept telling my brother and me to go to bed. I didn't much like that then, so I guess it stuck with me."

Sylvia's face heated despite the chilly weather. A sailor home on leave wanted his children to go to bed so he could, too-with his wife. Sylvia's own life had been empty that way since George was killed. She sighed, exhaling a cloud of fog. When she had wanted a man, poor Ernie hadn't been able to do anything about it. That seemed so horribly unfair, it made her want to cry from sheer frustration. She couldn't do that now. Instead, she lit a cigarette. It helped take the edge off what ever bothered her.

"Look." Mary Jane pointed. "Hoover's going to make a speech." Sure enough, the new president-elect get out of his limousine and, black top hat on his head, made his way towards a podium set up beside the catafalque on which Calvin Coolidge's remains rested.

Wires ran from the podium back into the State House. Microphones sprouted from it: one to amplify Hoover's words for the crowd actually there, the rest to send those words across the United States by wireless. An announcer (who also wore a somber black suit) waited behind the podium to introduce him. The man reached out and shook Hoover's hand. They spoke for a moment, too far away for the microphones to let anyone hear their words. Then the announcer stepped up to the podium and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the new president-elect of the United States, Mr. Hoobert Heever."

Did I hear that? Sylvia wondered. Beside her, Mary Jane let out a small, startled giggle. Others rose from the crowd, too, so Sylvia supposed her ears hadn't tricked her after all.

If Herbert Hoover noticed his name being butchered, he gave no sign of it. He said, "Ladies and gentlemen, people of the United States, I would give anything I own not to stand here before you today in this capacity. I wish with all my heart that Governor Coolidge were still the president-elect, and that he, not I, would take the oath of office as president on February first of this year."

A polite round of applause followed. Sylvia joined it. She didn't see what else Hoover could say. With his round, blunt-featured face and strong chin, he looked very determined-he put her in mind of a bulldog ready to sink its teeth into something and not let go no matter what.

He continued, "Since fate has thrust me into the highest office in the land, I pledge to you today that I will to the best of my ability continue the policies on which Governor Coolidge campaigned and which the American people overwhelmingly chose in the election two months ago. We shall go forward!"

More applause. Again, Sylvia clapped along with everybody else. Again, she didn't see how Hoover could say anything else, but he said what needed saying well.

"Ever since this crisis struck our country almost four years ago," he went on, "the Socialist administration has tried every quack nostrum under the sun to set things right, but not a single treatment has worked. To our sorrow, we have seen that only too clearly. Governor Coolidge campaigned on the Democrats' fundamental belief that business has seen altogether too much regulation these past twelve years and that, if left to itself, it would find its own way out of the mire in which it finds itself. I believe this with all my heart, and it will be the guiding principle of my administration."

Again, people clapped their hands. Again, Sylvia was one of those people. She had no great love of businesses; they'd treated her like dirt in the years after the war. But whatever the Socialists had done hadn't worked. The whole country could see that-the whole country had seen that. Maybe what Coolidge had proposed and what Hoover now promised would be better. Sylvia didn't see how it could be much worse.

Hoover plugged ahead with his speech: "We are currently engaged in an unfortunate war. By now, the Empire of Japan has plainly seen it cannot subvert the United States of America's hold on the territories we conquered at such cost during the Great War. Japan has also seen that we are ready to respond strongly to any challenge facing us. Any time the Japanese are ready to seek an honorable peace, I shall listen to their proposals with great attentiveness."

"What does that mean?" Mary Jane whispered.

"I don't know," Sylvia whispered back. The war had cost both sides some ships. After hitting Los Angeles, Japanese bombing aeroplanes had attacked the Sandwich Islands from carriers, but they were spotted on the way in, did little damage, and took losses from U.S. fighters based near Pearl Harbor. If neither side could hurt the other much, why go on fighting? Maybe Hoover hoped the Japs would figure that out for themselves.

The president-elect stuck out his formidable jaw. "Regardless of that, our first goal is restoring prosperity at home. Conditions are fundamentally sound. The fundamental strength of the nation's economy is unimpaired." Hoover shook his head; maybe he hadn't meant to use variants of the same word in back-to-back sentences. He gathered himself. "Thanks to the American system of rugged individualism, we shall certainly prevail over any and all obstacles.

"Governor Coolidge epitomized that system. I promise you here today that I shall do everything I can to walk in his footsteps. With God's help, we will triumph over adversity. And if it does not defeat us, it will make us stronger in the end. We are a great nation. The burden that has fallen on my shoulders leaves me awed and humbled. I know Governor Coolidge would have succeeded. All I can do is my best. With God's help again, that will suffice. Thank you, and may He bless the United States of America."

He stepped away from the podium and walked over to the catafalque. There, very solemnly, he took off his top hat and bowed to Coolidge's casket. The soldiers and sailors and Marines who'd borne the coffin from the hearse saluted. Hoover returned the salute; he'd done his two years as a conscript well before the turn of the century, and had been a major in engineering during the war.

The wireless announcer introduced the new governor of Massachusetts-and, incidentally, got his name right. More praise for Calvin Coolidge came forth, this time in the familiar accents of home, not Hoover's flat Midwestern speech. Sylvia listened with half an ear. Mary Jane began to fidget. When the lieutenant governor came to the podium and began saying everything for the third time, Sylvia asked, "Shall we go?" Her daughter nodded.

They began making their way toward the back edge of the crowd. It wasn't so hard as Sylvia had feared, not least because they weren't the only ones slipping away from the Boston Common. The newsreel photographer, up there on his platform, wasn't taking pictures of the crowd shrinking.

"Good day, Mrs. Enos." There stood Joe Kennedy, with his sharp-faced wife beside him. He wasn't going anywhere, not till the last speech was made. Even the way he stood was an effort to make Sylvia feel guilty about leaving.

It didn't work. He wasn't paying her now that the campaign was done. Behind them, the lieutenant governor's empty words kept blaring forth through the microphone. "Good day, Mr. Kennedy," she answered. "We've got to be getting home, and after a while everything sounds the same."

That made Rose Kennedy smile. When she did, her face lit up. She looked like a whole different person. Her husband, though, frowned. He didn't look like a different person; Sylvia had seem him frowning plenty of times. Voice stiff with disapproval, he said, "We should all take notice of the praise for Governor Coolidge. He would have made a fine president, and he would have done a lot of good for the state. Now…" He shrugged. "Now a lot of that will go somewhere else."

He thought like a politician. Sylvia didn't know why she was surprised. In fact, after she thought about it for a moment she wasn't surprised any more. She said, "If you'll excuse us-"

"Of course." Joe Kennedy was barely polite to her. His whole manner changed when his gaze swung to Mary Jane. "The last time I saw your daughter, Mrs. Enos, she was a little girl. She's not a little girl now."

"No, she's not," Sylvia said shortly. Kennedy was practically undressing Mary Jane with his eyes, there right in front of his wife. Didn't she notice? Didn't she care? Or had she seen it too many times before to make a fuss about it? If George had looked at another woman like that, Sylvia knew she wouldn't have kept quiet. She touched Mary Jane's arm. "Come on. We have to go."

"If there's ever anything I can do for either one of you charming ladies, don't be shy," Kennedy said.

Sylvia nodded. All she wanted to do was get away. As she and Mary Jane descended into the subway entrance, her daughter said, "He's an interesting man. I didn't think he would be, not from the way you talk about him."

"I'll tell you what he's interested in-he's interested in getting you someplace quiet and getting your knickers down," Sylvia said. "And I'll tell you something else, too: any man who'll run around for you will run around on you, any chance he gets."

Mary Jane laughed. "I wasn't going to do anything with him, Mother."

"I should hope not," Sylvia said. She and Mary Jane lined up to trade nickels for tokens for the ride back to the flat by T Wharf.

T he red light in the studio went on. The engineer behind the glass pointed to Jake Featherston, as if to say he was on. He nodded and got down to business: "I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth."

All across the Confederate States, from the Atlantic to the Gulf of California, people would be leaning forward to listen to him. The wireless web knit the CSA together in a way nothing else ever had before. All the parties used the wireless these days, but he'd been doing it longer than anybody else, and he thought he did it better than anybody else. He wasn't the only one who thought so, either. By the way Whig newspapers flabbled about their party's ineffective speakers, they too knew he scored points every time he sat down in front of a microphone here.

"I'm here to tell you the truth," he repeated. "I've been trying to do that for a long time. Some of you kind folks out there didn't much want to believe me, on account of what I have to say isn't the sugar-coated pap you'll hear from the usual run of stuffed shirts in Richmond. No, it isn't sweet and it isn't pretty, but it's true.

"Up in the USA, they've got themselves a brand-new president-not the one they elected, but another Democrat just the same. Herbert Hoover." He spoke the name with sardonic relish. "He got famous up there for helping out in the big flood back in 1927. Of course, that hurt us a lot more than it did the Yankees. But even so, they voted for him up there because of the good he did. What did we do here, where it was so much worse? I'll tell you what. We voted for the people who let it louse up the country, that's what. And if that's not a judgment on us, I don't know what is. Before that, who ever had a platform that says, 'Throw the rascals in '?"

That made the engineer laugh, which convinced Jake it was a good line. The man was a staunch Whig. He was also a good engineer, and conscientious enough to make sure he gave his best to whoever was using the wireless. Featherston wished the Freedom Party attracted more men like that. When we win, we will, he thought, and this time, by God, we're going to win.

"They say the sky will fall if the Whigs lose an election," he went on aloud. "We've been our own country the past seventy years, and they've won every time. And I tell you something else, friends-we've paid for it. We've paid through the nose. What have they given us lately? A losing war. Two states stolen, and chunks carved out of three more. Money you took to the grocery store in a wheelbarrow. The worst flood since Noah's, with nobody doing much to clean up the mess. And now this here little-'business turndown,' they call it." He snorted. "If business turned down any more, it'd turn dead. And they say everything'll be fine in the morning. But then the morning comes, and we're still in the middle of it.

"I say it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. I say it's time to build dams to keep the Mississippi from kicking us like that again. I say we can use the jobs building those dams'll give us, and I say we can use the electricity we'll get from 'em, too. I say it's time to stand on our own two feet in the world, and to weed out all the traitors who want to see us stay weak and worthless. And I say seventy years is too long. The Whigs have had their chance. They've had it, and they fouled it up. I'm not telling you any secrets, friends. You know it, I know it, the whole country knows it. It's time to give somebody else the ball. Give it to the Freedom Party in November. Give it to us and watch us run. That's it for tonight." He had fifteen seconds left. "Remember, we won't let you down. The Whigs already have."

The engineer swiped a finger across his throat. The red light went out. By now, after going on ten years of sending his voice over the wireless web, Featherston could time a broadcast almost to the second. He gathered up his papers and left the studio. He'd be back in a week, pounding his message home. The country should have been ready to listen to him in 1927. He still thought it would have been if Grady Calkins hadn't murdered President Hampton.

"Son of a bitch had it coming," Jake muttered, but even he couldn't help adding, "Not like that, dammit."

Saul Goldman was waiting in the hallway, as usual. Featherston was glad he didn't seem to have heard those mutters. In the years since Jake started coming to the studio, the little Jew had put on weight, lost hair, and gone gray. Jake was glad time didn't show so much on his own rawboned frame and lean, harsh features. Goldman said, "Another fine broadcast, Mr. Featherston."

"Thank you kindly, Saul," Jake answered. "You've done the Party a lot of good, you know. When the day comes, you'll find we don't forget. We don't forget enemies, and we don't forget friends, either."

"That is not why I did it, you know," the wireless man said.

Jake slapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. "Yeah, I know, pal," he said. "You get extra points in my book for that. You don't lose any. When the time comes, how'd you like to be running all our broadcasts all over the country?"

"Do you mean all the broadcasts of the Freedom Party or all the broadcasts of the Confederate government?" Goldman asked.

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other," Jake replied. "Before very long, we'll be the government, you know. And when we get our hands on it, we'll have a lot of cleaning up to do. We'll do it, too, by God."

Goldman didn't say anything. He didn't back the Freedom Party because he was wild for revenge against the USA, or because he wanted to punish the blacks who'd risen up and stabbed the Confederacy in the back. He was just relieved the Party kept quiet about Jews. Jake had never seen the need to get hot and bothered over Jews. There weren't enough of them in the CSA to matter. Negroes, now…

Saul Goldman had never hidden his reasons for riding along on the Freedom Party's coattails. Featherston gave him credit for that. The Jew said, "If the time comes, I'll do what I can for you."

"Swell!" Featherston staggered him again with another swat on the back. "You're a man of your word, Saul. I've seen that. And so am I. Wait till we win. Your telephone'll ring. Job'll pay good, too. You'll get rich." What more could a Jew want?

But all Goldman said was, "We'll worry about that when the time comes."

Shrugging, Jake went out to his automobile. The guards who accompanied him everywhere in public these days came to attention. His chauffeur bounced out of the motorcar and held the door open for him. Across the street, a man in an overcoat with a couple of missing buttons waved and yelled, "Freedom!"

"Freedom!" Jake called, and waved back. He ducked down into the Birmingham.

Virgil Joyner closed the door behind him and got back into the auto himself. As he settled in behind the wheel, he asked, "Straight back to Party headquarters, Sarge?"

"Yes," Jake said, and then, in the same breath, "No." He laughed at himself; he didn't usually change his mind like that. He went on, "Take me around Capitol Square first. I want to have a good, long look at the Mitcheltown there."

In the USA, they called shantytowns like this one Blackfordburghs. Featherston wondered if they would change the names of such places to Hoovervilles now that they had a new president. He doubted it. They'd been saying Blackfordburgh for almost four years. That was plenty of time for the word to grow roots. Here in the CSA, Burton Mitchel got the blame.

Well, by God, when I take over, nobody's going to call a shantytown Fort Featherston or any damn stupid thing like that, Jake thought. Anybody tries it, he'll be sorry as long as he lives-and the son of a bitch won't live long.

Joyner put the motorcar in gear. The guards piled into two more autos and followed. They didn't take any chances with Featherston's health. He wondered if the Party could win without him. Maybe-with times as hard as they were now, people were panting to throw the Whigs out on their ear. But he didn't want anybody to have to find out. He'd waited too long. Now his hour was come round at last. He intended to stay right here and enjoy it.

Huts and tents huddled in the shadows of the statues of George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston. They would have lapped up against the Confederate Capitol, too, had a barbed-wire perimeter patrolled by soldiers not held them at bay. Men in wrinkled, colorless clothes smoked pipes and cigarettes. Women gossiped or hung up washing on lines that stretched from one makeshift dwelling place to another. Children scampered here and there. In a football game, a boy threw a forward pass. That was a Yankee innovation, but it had conquered the Confederate States.

Joyner ignored the football. "Shame and a disgrace when you've got to use wire to keep the people away from the politicians," he said. "I saw thinner belts than that when I was in the trenches."

"I know. I was thinking the same thing," Featherston said. "Well, we'll set that to rights, too. A little more than a year before the next Inauguration Day." The United States had moved up the date from March 4; the Confederate States, always more conservative, hadn't. Jake didn't care one way or the other. He had good guards. He figured he would last.

"Where now, Sarge?" the chauffeur asked him when they'd gone around the square.

"Now back to headquarters," Jake answered. "I hope Ferd's still there. I've got something I need to talk to him about." One of the reasons he hadn't wanted to go straight back was that he didn't want to talk with Ferdinand Koenig. He had to. He knew it. But he didn't want to. He'd known Koenig since 1917. The other man had backed every play he made, backed it to the hilt. Without Ferdinand Koenig, the Freedom Party probably would have been stillborn. This wasn't going to be easy.

Koenig was not only there, he was waiting in the entranceway when Featherston came in. "Good speech, Jake," he said. "It's getting ripe, isn't it? You can feel it there, ready for you to reach out and pick it."

"Yeah," Jake said. "Come on up to my office, will you? We need to chin for a few minutes."

"What's up?" Koenig sounded surprised and curious. Jake only went upstairs. He didn't want to do this in public. He didn't want to do it at all, but he saw the need, and need came first. Lulu still clattered away at a typewriter in the outer office. She looked surprised-and miffed-when Jake didn't explain anything to her. He knew he'd have to make it up to her later. That would be later. Now… Now he poured a shot for Koenig and another for himself. Ferd sipped the whiskey, lit a cigar, and asked his question again: "What's up?"

Give it to him straight, Jake thought. Give it to him straight, then pick up the pieces. "Made up my mind about something," he said. "When I run this summer, I'm going to put Willy Knight in the number-two slot to make sure we take Texas and some of the other states west of the Mississippi."

Ferdinand Koenig slowly turned red. "You goddamn son of a bitch," he said in a low, deadly voice. "So I'm not good enough for you all of a sudden? Is that it? I'll kick your stinking ass around the block. You don't think I can, let's go outside and find out."

"Easy, easy, easy." Featherston had known it would be bad. He hadn't known it would be this bad. He hurried on: "Vice president isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit anyhow. Let Willy-boy have it. He'll think it's great-till he figures out he hasn't really got anything. Give him the slot, if he wants it so bad. But I'll give you something that's really worth having."

"What is it?" Koenig's voice remained hard with suspicion.

"Well, now, I'll tell you." Featherston proceeded to do just that. He hadn't had such a tough audience since the early meeting that had left him master of the Party. And Ferd had been on his side then. Now he had to talk an old friend, an old comrade, around. At last, he asked, "Is it all right?"

Koenig stuck out his hand. "Yeah, Jake. It is all right. Don't worry about it." Featherston's clasp was full of relief.