Plainly, he didn't recognize Featherston. 'Just curious,' Jake answered-and, indeed, it was hardly more than that. Behind his hand, he whispered to Koenig: 'Might be cheaper to make a speech on the wireless than hold a bunch of rallies in a bunch of different towns. If we could be sure we were reaching enough people that way-'
One of the other customers in the shop was whispering behind his hand to the salesman. 'Oh?' the salesman said. 'He is?' By the tone of voice, Jake knew exactly what the customer had whispered. The salesman said, 'Sir, I am going to have to ask you to leave. This is a high-class establishment, and I don't want any trouble here.'
'We weren't giving you any trouble.' Featherston and Koenig spoke together.
'You're from the Freedom Party,' said the customer who'd recognized Jake. 'You don't have to give trouble. You are trouble.'
Several other men from among those crowding the shop drifted toward the fellow. A couple of others ranged themselves behind Featherston. 'Freedom!' one of them said.
'I am going to call for a policeman if you don't leave,' the salesman told Jake. 'I do not want this place broken apart.'
If breaking the place apart would have brought the Party good publicity, Featherston would have started a fight on the spot. But he knew it wouldn't-just the opposite, in fact. The papers would scream he was only a ruffian leading a pack of ruffians. They hadn't talked about him and the Party like that when he was a rising power in the land, or not so much, anyhow. Now they thought they scented blood. He wouldn't give them any blood to sniff.
'Come on, Ferd,' he said. 'If anybody starts trouble, it won't be us.'
'Look at the cowards cut and run,' jeered the man who'd recognized him. 'They talk big, but they don't back it up.'
He never knew how close he came to getting his head broken and his nuts kneed. Jake's instinct was always to hit back at whoever and whatever struck at him, and to hit harder if he could. Only a harsh understanding that that would bring no advantage held him back.
'One day,' he growled once he and Ferdinand Koenig were out on Franklin again, 'one fine day I'm going to pay back every son of a bitch who ever did me wrong, and that loud-mouthed bastard will get his. So help me God, he will.'
'Sure, Sarge,' Koenig said. But he didn't sound sure. He sounded like a man buttering up his boss after said boss had come out with something really stupid. Featherston knew flattery when he heard it, because he heard it too damn often. He hadn't heard it much from Koenig, though.
Sourly, he studied the man who'd run for vice president with him. He and Koenig went back to the old days together, to the days when the Freedom Party operated out of a cigar box. If Koenig hadn't backed him, odds were the Party would still be a cigar-box outfit. Koenig was as close to a friend as he had on the face of the earth. And yet…
'If you don't fancy the way things are going, Ferd, you can always move on,' Jake said. 'Don't want you to feel like you're wearing a ball and chain.'
Koenig turned red. 'I don't want to leave, Jake. I've come too far to back out now, same as you. Only…'
'Only what?' Featherston snapped.
'Only Moses got to the top of the mountain, but God never let him into the Promised Land,' Koenig said, going redder still. 'Way things are these days, I don't know how we can win an election any time soon.'
'We sure as hell won't if people lie down and give up,' Jake said. 'Long as we don't quit, long as we keep fighting, things will turn our way, sooner or later. It'll take longer now than I reckoned it would in 1921; I'd be a liar if I said anything different. But the time is coming. By God, it is.'
Koenig grunted. Again, the sound failed to fill Featherston with confidence. If even the man closest to him had doubts, who was he to be sure triumph did lie ahead? He shrugged. He'd kept firing against the damnyankees up to the very last minute. He would struggle against fate the same way.
There ahead lay Capitol Square, with its great statues of George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston. Pointing, Jake said, 'Look at 'em, Ferd. If Washington had given up, we'd still belong to England. And Johnston died so the Confederate States could be free. How can we do anything else and still look at ourselves in the mirror afterwards?'
'I don't know,' Koenig said. 'But you don't see people building statues to what's-his-name-Cornwallis-or to General Grant, the Yankee who licked Johnston. Damned if I know what happened to Cornwallis. Grant died a drunk. They were both big wheels in their day, Sarge.'
'And we'll be big wheels in ours.' Jake understood what Koenig was saying, but wouldn't admit it even to himself. Admitting it would mean he might also have to admit he wasn't sure whether he'd end up among the winners or the losers when the history books got written. He couldn't bear that thought.
'Hope you're right,' Koenig said.
'Hell, yes, I'm right.' Jake spoke with great assurance, to convince not only his follower but also himself. Ferdinand Koenig nodded. If he wasn't convinced, Featherston couldn't prove it, not from a nod.
And what about you? Jake asked himself. He'd been-the Freedom Party had been-that close to seizing power with both hands. Now, with Wade Hampton dead, with the Confederate currency sound again… He kicked at the sidewalk. The Party should have gone forward again in 1923. Instead, he counted himself lucky, damn lucky, it hadn't gone further back.
Could things turn around? Of course they could-that was the wrong question. How likely were they to turn around? Coldly, as if in a poker game, he reckoned up the odds. Had he been in a poker game, he would have thrown in his cards. But the stakes here were too high for him to quit.
'It'll work out,' he said. 'Goddammit, it will work out.' He did his best to sound as if he meant it.
