'It sure is,' Tom said. 'God only knows what kind of president Burton Mitchel will make.'
'I don't think anybody outside of Arkansas knows anything about Burton Mitchel, maybe including God,' Anne said. Tom let out a startled snort of laughter. Anne went on, 'The Whigs plucked him out of the Senate to balance the ticket; Featherston would have done the same thing if he'd chosen Willy Knight. All Mitchel was supposed to do was sit there for the next six years.'
'He'll do more than that now,' her brother said. 'Christ, a backwoods bumpkin running the country till 1927. Just what we need!'
'Look on the bright side,' Anne told him.
'I didn't know there was any bright side to look on,' Tom answered.
'Of course there is. There always is,' Anne said. 'The bright side here is: how could things get any worse?'
'That's a point,' Tom acknowledged. 'The other side of the coin is, now we get to find out how things get worse '
Anne opened the South Carolinian to the inside page on which the story of President Hampton's assassination was continued. She read aloud: ' 'After taking the oath of office, President Mitchel declared a week of national mourning and lamentation. The new president prayed for the aid of almighty God in the difficult times that lie ahead, and said he would do his best to promote internal order, establish good relations with foreign neighbors, and put the currency on a sound basis once more.'' Her lip curled. 'And while he's at it, he'll walk across the James River without getting his trouser cuffs wet.'
'What's he supposed to say?' her brother asked, and she had no good answer. Tom continued, 'Those are the things that need doing, no doubt about it. I haven't any idea whether he can do them, but at least he knows that much. And after this'-Tom took a deep breath-'after this, maybe people will back off and give him room to move in for a while.'
'Maybe,' Anne said. 'I don't know if that will help, but maybe.' She shoved the newspaper to one side. 'And maybe everything I've done since the end of the war to try to set the CSA to rights went up in smoke with a couple of shots from that maniac's gun. If the militiamen hadn't killed that Calkins, I'd be glad to do it myself-but I think I'd have to stand in line behind Jake Featherston.'
'Probably,' Tom agreed. 'Calkins may have killed the Freedom Party along with a Whig president. Featherston has to know that-he isn't stupid. But he's the one who raised the devil. He's got no business being surprised if it ended up turning on him.'
'That isn't fair,' Anne said, but even in her own ears her voice lacked conviction. Tom said nothing at all, leaving her with the last word. She'd never been so sorry to have it.
When she walked to the tailor's the next morning, people in the streets of St. Matthews, white and black alike, fell silent and stared at her as she went by. They'd been talking about the assassination. They started talking about the assassination again as soon as she passed. While she was close by, they would not talk. Some of them moved away from her, as if they didn't want her shadow to fall on them. She'd been the dominant force in this part of South Carolina for more than a decade. People had always granted her the deference she'd earned. By the way they acted now, she might have just escaped from a leper colony.
Going into Aaron Rosenblum's shop felt like escaping. Clack, clack, clack went the treadle of his sewing machine. The clacking stopped when the bell above his door rang. He looked up from the piece of worsted he'd been guiding through the machine. 'Good morning, Miss Colleton,' he said, polite but no more than polite. He got to his feet. 'I have ready the skirt you asked me to make for you.'
'Good. I hoped you would.' As was often her way, Anne chose to take the bull by the horns. 'Terrible about President Hampton yesterday.'
'Yes.' The little old tailor looked at her over the tops of his half-glasses. 'A very terrible thing. But what can you expect from a party that would sooner fight than think?'
Rosenblum had to know she backed the Freedom Party. She'd made no secret of it-on the contrary. If he thought he could rebuke her like this… If that was so, the Party was in as much trouble as she'd feared. In a tight voice, she said, 'The Freedom Party is trying to make the Confederate States strong again.'
'Oh, yes. Of course.' The tailor had a peculiar accent, half lazy South Carolina Low Country, the other half Yiddish. 'And I, I am a lucky man to live now in the Confederacy. In Russia, where I am from, parties that try to make the country strong again go after the Jews. Here, you go after black people instead, so I am safe. Yes, I am a lucky man.'
Anne stared at him. She knew sarcasm when she heard it. And Rosenblum's words held an uncomfortable amount of truth. 'That isn't all the Freedom Party does,' Anne said. The tailor did not answer. What hung in the air was, Yes, you also shoot the president Twice now in two days, she would sooner not have been left with the last word. She attempted briskness: 'Let me see the skirt, if you please.'
'Yes, ma'am.' He gave it to her, then waved her to a changing room. 'Try it on. I will alter it if it does not suit you.'
Try it on she did. The gray wool skirt fit perfectly around the waist; she might be irked at Rosenblum, but he did good work. And the length was in the new mode, as she'd requested: it showed off not only her ankles but also several inches of shapely calf. Tom would pitch a fit. Too bad for Tom. Roger Kimball would approve, though he'd sooner see her naked altogether.
She changed back into the black skirt she'd worn, then paid Rosenblum for the new gray one: a bargain at two billion dollars. 'Thank you very much,' he said, tucking the banknotes into a drawer.
'You're welcome,' she said, and then, 'I am sorry the president is dead. I don't care whether you believe me or not.'
'If you didn't care, you wouldn't say you didn't care,' Rosenblum answered. While she was still unraveling that, he went on, 'I do believe you, Miss Colleton. But now you believe me, too: a party that shouts and shoots for freedom is not a party that really wants it.'
Another paradox. Anne shook her head. 'I haven't got time for riddles today. Good morning.' The new skirt folded over her arm, she stalked out of the tailor's shop.
Chester Martin sat down in a folding chair at the Socialist Party hall near the Toledo steel mill where he worked. 'What did you call the Freedom Party down in the CSA?' he asked Albert Bauer. 'Reaction on the march? Was that it? You hit the nail right on the head.'
'Yeah, even for a reactionary party, shooting a reactionary president dead because he's not reactionary enough to suit them takes a lot of doing,' Bauer allowed. 'They'll be sorry, too, you mark my words.'
'They're sorry already, I'll bet,' Martin said. 'It'll be a cold day in hell before they come so close to winning an election again.'
'They'll be sorrier, too,' Bauer predicted. 'They've done something I wouldn't have bet they could: they've made people in the United States feel sorry for the Confederate States.'
'They've even made me feel that way, and some Rebel bastard shot me,' Martin said. 'But shooting a president-' He shook his head. 'Nobody's ever done that before, there or here. What is the world coming to?'
'Revolution,' Bauer answered. 'And the reactionaries in the CSA just gave the progressive forces here a leg up. Before, President Sinclair couldn't have gotten ending reparations through Congress if his life depended on it. Now, though, I think he may just have the votes to pull it off.'
'Do you?' Martin wasn't so sure he liked the idea. 'As far as I can see, we'd be better off if the Confederates stayed broke and weak.'
'Sure we would, in the short run,' Bauer said. 'But in the long run, if the Confederate States keep going down the drain, who does that help? That Featherston lunatic almost won the election last year because the Rebs were in such bad shape. What happens if they get worse?'
'Well, they aren't going to have a revolution-not a Red one, anyway,' Martin said. He got up, went over to a coffeepot that sat on top of an iron stove, and poured himself a cup. After he set it down on the table, he lit a cigarette.
Bauer waited patiently till he'd puffed a couple of times, then nodded. 'No, they won't have a Red revolution, not right away. It's a conservative country, and Marxism is tied to the black man there, which means the white man has, or thinks he has, a strong extra reason to hate it. But the Confederates' time is coming, too. Sooner or later, all the capitalist countries will have their revolutions.'
He spoke with the certainty of a devout Catholic talking about the miracle of transubstantiation. Chester
