'You know I feel the same way about it, honey, but I can't do anything about it except close down the Barrel Works, pack my bags, and hop on the train for Philadelphia. That means you get to hop on the train for Philadelphia, too.'
Her eyes widened. 'I hadn't thought of that,' she said. 'I've never been to Philadelphia, even to visit. Now we'll be living there, won't we?'
'Unless they ever really get around to moving the War Department back to Washington,' Morrell answered. 'They've been talking about it ever since the end of the war, but I'll believe it when I see it.'
'Philadelphia,' Agnes said, her eyes far away. 'What's it like, living in Philadelphia?'
'Crowded,' he said. 'Expensive. The air is full of soot and smoke all the time. It's a big city. I don't much like big cities.'
Agnes smiled. 'I've noticed.'
'I figured you had.' Morrell smiled, too, but the smile slid into a grimace. 'Just have to make the best of it, I suppose.'
'Philadelphia,' Agnes repeated. He wondered if she'd even heard him. 'What will it be like in Philadelphia?'
As she'd come to know him, he'd also come to know her. At least half of what that question meant was, Will I measure up to the competition? Morrell smiled again. He was certain of the answer, and gave it: 'Sweetheart, you'll knock 'em dead.'
One of his wife's hands flew to her hair, patting it into place or maybe the outward expression of an imagined new style. 'You say sweet things,' she told him.
'Only when I mean them,' he said. 'Of course, when I'm talking about you, I mean them all the time.'
She stepped up, hugged him, and kissed him. His arms tightened around her. One thing might have led to another-except that, with regret, he broke off the embrace. Agnes looked disappointed; yes, she'd been ready for more. But she didn't frown for long. 'You're going to have a lot of work to do,' she said, proving she was indeed an Army wife.
Morrell nodded. 'I sure am. I haven't even told the base commandant about my orders yet-though I suppose a copy will have gone to him, too.' He hugged Agnes again, briefly now. 'You're really being a brick about this, honey.'
'I think they're making a big mistake,' she answered. 'But you've got your orders, and you've got to follow them.'
You've got your orders, and you've got to follow them. That was the way the Army worked, all right. Morrell had trouble imagining it working any other way. 'Couldn't have put it better myself,' he said. He gave Agnes one more kiss, then turned to go. 'The work won't do itself, however much I wish it would.'
'All right,' his wife said. 'I'll see you tonight, then.'
He smiled at the promise in her voice. He started looking ahead toward Philadelphia, too. Whatever they set him to doing, he'd do it as well as he knew how. He'd do it well, period; he had a good notion of his own ability. And performing well with important people watching did have certain advantages. With a little luck, he'd be wearing stars on his shoulders instead of eagles before too long.
He wouldn't be so easy to move around like a pawn on a chess board then, not with general's rank he wouldn't. As a matter of fact, he'd be able to do some maneuvering of his own once he had general's rank. Maybe John Abell thought he'd done Mor-rell's career a bad turn. Morrell's smile was predatory. Anyone who thought that about him had another think coming.
Jefferson Pinkard walked toward the livery stable. 'Freedom!'' he called to other men heading the same way.
'Freedom!' The greeting came back loud and clear as it had before the stalwarts went out to the Alabama State Fairgrounds when President Hampton came to Birmingham. The Freedom Party had raised a lot more hell than anybody-anybody except Grady Calkins, anyhow-expected.
And now the price of that hell was showing. Jeff called 'Freedom!' a couple more times before he went into the stable, but only a couple more times. The building had no trouble holding meetings these days. A lot of people who had been in the Party- people who'd put on white and butternut and banged heads, too-weren't any more. A lot of people who had been in the Party weren't admitting it any more, either.
Fair-weather friends, Pinkard thought scornfully. He still thought most of the same things were wrong with the Confederate States now as had been wrong with the country before Wade Hampton V got shot. He had trouble understanding why more people didn't feel the same way.
Up at the front of the stable, Caleb Briggs paced back and forth, pausing every so often to cough. Even by lamplight, the tough little dentist's color wasn't good. Pinkard wondered how long he could last, especially burning himself at both ends as he did. The damnyankees hadn't killed him all at once when they gassed him. They were doing it an inch at a time, giving him years full of hell before they put him in his grave. To Jeff's way of thinking, that was worse.
After a while, Briggs didn't seem able to stand waiting any longer. 'Come on, y'all, move up to the front,' he rasped. 'Talking's hard enough for me; I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna shout when I don't have to. And there's room. Wish to Christ there wasn't, but there is.'
A year before, the livery stable would have been packed. Men would have been milling around outside. Now there were more folding chairs and hay bales set out than people to sit on them. Jeff plopped his bottom down onto a chair in the second row. He could have sat in the first row-plenty of chairs to take-but memories of getting called on in school made him stay less conspicuous.
Caleb Briggs looked over the house. He pursed his lips, coughed again, and began: 'Well, we're still here, boys.' Maybe he gave a dry chuckle then, or maybe it was just another cough.
'Freedom!' Jefferson Pinkard called, along with his comrades.
'Freedom!' Briggs echoed. It sounded like a dying echo, too, enough so to send a chill through Jeff. But the dentist picked up spirit as he went on, 'We are still here, dammit, and we aren't going to go away, either, no matter how much the niggers and the folks in striped trousers and top hats and the generals in the War Department wish we would. We're here for the long haul, and we're going to win.'
'Freedom!' The shout was louder this time, stronger. Pinkard felt a little of the jolt of energy he always got from hearing Jake Featherston speak. He wondered if Caleb Briggs would last long enough to see the Freedom Party win. He had his doubts, even if victory came soon-and it wouldn't, dammit.
But Briggs was undeterred. He'd been a soldier, and pulled his weight like a soldier. 'What we have to do now is make it through the hard times,' he said. 'They aren't over yet. They won't be over for a while. It'll be God's own miracle if we don't lose seats in Congress this fall. What we've got to do is try and hold on to as many as we can, so we don't look like we're going down the toilet in front of the whole damn country. And what we've got to do right here in Birmingham is make sure we send Barney Stevens back to Richmond in November.'
Jeff clapped his hands. He wanted to see Stevens sent back to Richmond to keep the Freedom Party's seat there. He also wanted Stevens in Richmond because the Congressman was a rough customer whom he didn't particularly want coming home to Birmingham.
'We hang tough,' Briggs was saying. 'We try not to lose too much here in 1923, and we try to build up toward 1925 and especially 1927, when we vote for president again. Rome wasn't built in a day. The Confederate States won't be rebuilt in a day. either. But we will build our country back up, we will shove our niggers back down where they belong, and we-the Freedom Party-will be the ones who do that. So help me God, we will.'
'Freedom!' Jeff yelled, along with his friends. The cry echoed from the roof, almost as it had in the days when the Party was swelling.
'One more thing, and then I'm through,' Briggs said. 'We got as far as we did by standing up and fighting for what we know is right. We're going to go right on fighting. Don't you have any doubts about that. We may pick our spots a little tighter than we did before, but we'll put on the white and butternut whenever we see the need.'
Pinkard whooped. The chance to get out there and smash a few heads was one of the reasons he'd joined the Freedom Party. A good many other men cheered Caleb Briggs, too. But Jeff couldn't help noticing how many others sat silent.
Then he thought, Grady Calkins would have cheered. He shook his head, rejecting the comparison and all it implied. Calkins had been a madman. Every party had some. But Jeff wasn't crazy. Caleb Briggs wasn't crazy. And
