streaming out of Hampton Park. Even they forgot about Ainsworth Layne.
November 8 dawned chilly and drizzly in Richmond. Reggie Bartlett got out of bed half an hour earlier than he usually would have, so he could vote before going to work at Harmon's drugstore. Yawning in spite of the muddy coffee he'd made, he went downstairs and out into the nasty weather. It wasn't raining quite hard enough for an umbrella. He pulled his hat down and his coat collar up and muttered curses every time a raindrop trickled along the back of his neck.
A big Confederate flag flew in front of the house that served as his polling place. A couple of policemen stood in front of the polling place, too. He'd seen cops on election duty before. They'd always looked bored. Not this pair. Each of them had a hand on his pistol. After the riots that had ripped through the CSA in the weeks leading up to election day, Bartlett couldn't blame them.
'Freedom! Freedom!'' Four or five men in white shirts and butternut trousers chanted the word over and over again. They held placards with Jake Featherston's name on them, and stood as close to the polling place as the hundred-foot no-electioneering limit allowed. The cops watched them as if they were enemy soldiers.
So did Reggie Bartlett. He carried a snub-nosed.38 revolver in his trouser pocket these days. A jury might have acquitted the Freedom Party goons who'd burned down Tom Brearley's house around him, but Reggie knew- along with the rest of the world-who'd done what, and why. He'd signed his name on the letter that introduced Brearley to Tom Colleton. That presumably meant the Freedom Party knew it. No one had yet tried to do anything to him on account of it. If anyone did try, Reggie was determined he'd regret it.
As he walked past the policemen, they gave him a careful once-over. He nodded to them both and went inside. The voting officials waiting in the parlor all looked like veterans of the War of Secession. Reggie nodded to them, too; the next young voting official he saw would be the first.
They satisfied themselves that he was who he said he was and could vote in that precinct. Then one of them, a fellow with splendid white mustaches and a hook where his left hand should have been, gave Bartlett a ballot and said, 'Use any vacant voting booth, sir.'
Reggie had to wait a couple of minutes, for none of the booths was open. A lot of men were doing their civic duty before heading for work. At last, a fellow in overalls came out of a booth. He nodded to Bartlett and said 'Freedom!' in a friendly way. The voting officials glared at him. So did Reggie. The man didn't even notice.
In the voting booth, Bartlett stared down at the names of the candidates as if they'd lost their meaning. That didn't last long, though. As soon as he saw Featherston's name, he wanted to line through it. Hampton or Layne? he wondered. Wade Hampton surely had the better chance against the Freedom Party, but he liked Ainsworth Layne's ideas better.
In the end, he cast defiant ballots for Layne and the rest of the Radical Liberal ticket. If Jake Featherston took Virginia by one vote, he'd feel bad about it. Otherwise, he'd lose no sleep.
He came out of the voting booth and handed his ballot to the old man with the hook. The precinct official folded it and stuffed it into the ballot box. 'Mr. Bartlett has voted,' he intoned, a response as ingrained and ritualistic as any in church. Secular communion done, Reggie left the polling place and hurried to the drugstore.
'Good morning,' Jeremiah Harmon said as he came in. 'You vote?' He waited for Reggie to nod, then asked, 'Have any trouble?'
'Not really,' Reggie answered. 'Some of those Freedom Party so-and-so's were making noise outside the polling place, but that's all they were doing. I think the cops out front would have shot them if they'd tried anything worse, and I think they'd have enjoyed doing it, too. How about you?'
'About the same,' the druggist said. 'I wonder if Feather-ston's boys aren't shooting themselves in the foot with all these shenanigans, I truly do. If they make everyone but a few fanatics afraid of them, they won't elect anybody, let alone the president of the Confederate States.'
'Here's hoping you're right,' Bartlett said, and then, 'You don't mind my asking, boss, who'd you vote for?'
'Wade Hampton,' Harmon answered evenly. 'He's about as exciting as watching paint dry-^you don't need to tell me that. But if anybody's going to come out on top of Featherston, he's the man to do it. Layne's a lost cause. He's never been the same since that brawl down in South Carolina, and his party hasn't, either.' He raised a gray eyebrow. 'I suppose you're going to tell me you voted for him.'
'I sure did,' Reggie said with a wry chuckle. 'Why should I worry about lost causes? I live in the Confederate States, don't I?'
'That's funny.' Harmon actually laughed a little, which he rarely did. 'It'd be even funnier if it weren't so true.'
'We'll find out tonight-or tomorrow or the next day, I suppose-just how funny it is,' Reggie said. 'If Jake Featherston gets elected, the joke's on us.'
'And isn't that the sad and sorry truth?' his boss replied. 'Whoever wins, though, the work has to get done. What do you say we do it? After all, if we don't make a few million dollars today, we'll have to beg for our suppers.'
That would have been funnier if it weren't so true, too. Reggie dusted the shelves with a long-handled feather duster. He put out fresh bottles and boxes and tins to replace the ones customers had bought. He kept track of the prescriptions Harmon compounded, and set them under the counter to await the arrival of the people for whom the druggist made them. When customers came in, he rang up their purchases and made change.
Ringing things up wasn't so easy. The cash register, a sturdy and massive chunk of gilded ironmongery, dated from before the Great War. It was a fancier machine than most of that vintage, and could handle a five-dollar purchase with the push of but one key. Had Reggie had to do all the pushing he needed to ring up something that cost $ 17,000,000-and a lot of things did this week, give or take a couple of million-he would have been banging that five-dollar key from now till doomsday.
Everyone wanted to talk politics, too. Women couldn't vote, but that didn't stop them from having opinions and being vociferous about them. 'Isn't Mr. Featherston the handsomest man you ever saw in your life?' asked a lady buying a tube of cream for her piles.
'No, ma'am,' Reggie answered. In the back of the drugstore, Jeremiah Harmon raised his head. He didn't want to lose customers, regardless of Reggie's own politics and opinions. Reggie thought fast. 'Handsomest man I ever saw was my father,' he told the woman. 'Pity I don't take after him.'
She laughed. Bartlett's boss relaxed. Reggie felt some small triumph. Even if he'd sugarcoated what he said, he hadn't had to take it back.
He tried to gauge the shape of the election from conversations with customers. That wouldn't prove anything, and he knew it. He kept trying anyhow. From what he saw and heard, Jake Featherston had a lot of support. So did Wade Hampton V Only a few people admitted to backing Ainsworth Layne and the Radical Liberals. Reggie hadn't expected anything different. He was disappointed just the same.
When six o'clock rolled around, he said, 'Boss, I think I'm going to get myself some supper somewhere and then head over to the Richmond Examiner. I reckon they'll be posting returns all night long.'
'I expect they will,' Harmon answered. 'While you're there, do try to recall you're supposed to come in to work tomorrow.' The druggist's voice was dry; he had a pretty good idea that Reggie was liable to be up late.
Supper was greasy fried chicken and greasier fried potatoes, washed down with coffee that had been perking all day. Reggie's stomach told him in no uncertain terms what it thought of being assaulted in that fashion. He ignored it, shoved a few banknotes with a lot of zeros on them across the counter at the cook, and hurried on down Broad Street to the Examinees offices, which were only a few blocks from Capitol Square.
Like the Whig and the Sentinel and the other Richmond papers-like papers across the CSA-the Examiner was in the habit of setting up enormous blackboards on election night and changing returns as the telegraph brought in new ones. When Reggie got there, the blackboards remained pristine: the polls were still open throughout the country. Because of that, only a few people stood around in front of the offices. Reggie got an excellent spot. He knew he might have to defend it with elbows as the night wore along, but that was part of the game, too.
A man came up, loudly unhappy that all the saloons were closed on election day. 'Bunch of damn foolishness,' he said. 'Fools we've got running this year, we need to get drunk before we can stand to vote for any of 'em ' By his vehemence, he might already have found liquid sustenance somewhere.
At half past seven, a fellow in shirtsleeves and green celluloid visor came out with a sheaf of telegrams in his hand. He started putting numbers from states on the eastern seaboard in their appropriate boxes. Earliest returns showed Hampton ahead in South Carolina and Virginia, Jake Featherston in North Carolina and Florida, and the
