'Mr. Chairman, I reckon Jake's got himself a point,' Ferdinand Koenig said, 'especially on account of the new business you've got in mind.'
Bang! 'No, sir,' Dresser said, angry now. 'I said it doesn't matter, and my ruling stands, by Jesus.'
'Mr. Chairman, I appeal that ruling to a vote from the floor,' Jake said. He hated parliamentary procedure, but he'd started learning it anyhow, even if he did think it was only a way to cheat by the numbers.
'Second,' Koenig said.
'Never mind,' Dresser said in a low, furious voice. He wasn't ready for a floor vote, then. Jake wasn't nearly sure he was ready for a floor vote, either. When one came, he wanted it to be for all the marbles. Dresser said, 'Go ahead, Ernie. Tell 'em what they want to know, so we can get on with things.'
Reluctantly, London said, 'Some came from dues, some came from contributions from people who heard Featherston's speaking tour.'
'How much came from each?' Jake demanded.
Fat as he was, Ernie London looked as if he wished he were invisible. 'I don't have the figures showing the split right here with me,' he said at last.
'Hell of a treasurer you are,' Featherston jeered. 'All right, let me ask you an easy one: did I bring in more or less than half the week's take? You tell me you don't recollect, I'll call you a liar to your face. Everybody knows bookkeepers like playing with numbers. They don't forget 'em '
Most unwillingly, London said, 'It was more than half.'
'Thank you, Ernie.' Jake beamed at him, then nodded to Anthony Dresser. 'Go on ahead, Tony. It's your show for now.' He put a small but unmistakable stress on the last two words.
'All right, then.' Dresser looked around the room, no doubt gauging his support. Featherston was doing the same. He didn't know how this would come out. He knew how it would come out if there were any justice in the world, but that had been in short supply for a while now. If there were any justice in the world, wouldn't the CSA have won the war? Maybe the same sorts of thoughts were going through Anthony Dresser's mind as he banged the gavel down once more and announced, 'New business.'
'Mr. Chairman!' Bert McWilliams' voice was more memorable than his face, but not much. When Dresser recognized him, he went on, 'Mr. Chairman, I move that we remove Jake Featherston from his position as head of propaganda for the Freedom Party.'
'Second!'' Ernie London said at once. Jake had expected London to bring the motion and McWilliams to second it; otherwise, he was unsurprised.
'It has been moved and seconded to remove Jake Featherston as head of propaganda,' Anthony Dresser said. 'I'll lead off the discussion.' He rapped loudly with the gavel several times. 'And we will have order and quiet from the members, unless they have been recognized to speak. Order!' Bang! Bang!
When something not too far from order had been restored, Dresser resumed: 'I don't deny Jake has done some good things for the Party-don't get me wrong. But he's done us a good deal of harm, too, and it's not the kind of harm that's easily fixed. He's taken all the great things we stand for and boiled them down to hang the generals and hang the niggers. Not that they don't need hanging, mind you, but there are so many other things to get the country going again that need doing, too, and he never talks about a one of them. People get the wrong idea about us, you see.'
London and McWilliams followed with similar speeches. Out in the hard, uncomfortable seats that filled the hall, the Freedom Party members were silent, listening, judging.
Confidence surged through Featherston. Even here, when they should be doing everything to crush him, his opponents beat around the bush and tried to see all sides of the question. He would never make that mistake. 'Mr. Chairman!' he said. 'Can I speak for myself, or are you just going to railroad me altogether?'
Warily, Dresser said, 'Go ahead, Jake. Have your say. Then we vote.'
'Right,' Featherston said tightly. He looked out at the crowd. 'Now is the time to fish or cut bait,' he said. 'The reason I'm head of propaganda is that I'm the only man up here people can listen to without falling asleep.' That got him a laugh. Anthony Dresser, sputtering angrily, tried to gavel it down and failed. 'I'm the one who brings in the money-Ernie said so himself. And I'll tell you why-I keep it simple. That's what propaganda is all about. I make people want to support us. I don't say one thing Monday and another thing Tuesday and something else on Wednesday. Like I say, I keep it simple.'
He took a deep breath. 'I shake things up. I make the people in high places sweat. That's the other thing propaganda is for, folks-to show people your way is better. So. Here it is: you can go on with me and see how much we can shake loose together, or you can throw me out and spend your time pounding each other on the back, on account of it'll be a cold day in hell before you see any more new members.' He rounded on Anthony Dresser. In tones of contemptuous certainty, he said, 'Mr. Chairman, I call the question.'
Dresser stared, the scales suddenly fallen from his eyes. 'You don't want to be head of propaganda,' he stammered. 'You- You want to head the Party.'
Jake grinned, hiding his own unease where Dresser let his show. 'I call the question,' he repeated.
Licking his lips, Dresser said, 'In favor of removing Jake Featherston?' Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the men in the hall raised their hands. In a voice like ashes, Dresser said, 'Opposed?' The rest of the hands flew high. So did a great shout of triumph. 'The motion is not carried,' Dresser choked out.
'Mr. Chairman!' Ferdinand Koenig said, and Dresser was rash enough to recognize the Party secretary. Koenig went on, 'Mr. Chairman, I move that you step down and we make Jake Featherston chairman of the Freedom Party.'
Another great shout rose. In it were two dozen cries of, 'Second!' — maybe more. Featherston and Koenig grinned at each other as Anthony Dresser presided over voting himself out of office. In that glorious moment, Jake felt the world turned only because his hands worked its axis. He had his chance now. He didn't know what he would make of it, not yet, but it was there.
Stephen Douglas Martin looked at his son. 'I wish you wouldn't do this,' he said, worry in his voice.
'I know,' Chester Martin answered. 'You've got to understand, though-you have a place. The way the bosses are acting these days, I'll never have one, not unless I take it for myself.'
His father pointed to the bulge of the pistol behind his belt. 'You won't get it with that.'
'I won't get it any other way,' Martin said stubbornly. 'I don't aim to shoot first-I'm not that stupid-but I'm not stupid enough to stand around and watch my friends on the picket lines get shot down like dogs, either. If there's no trouble, fine. But if those goons start banging away at me, I'm not going to run like a rabbit, not any more.'
His father shook his head, a troubled gesture. 'You've been listening to the Socialists again. If I never see another red flag, it'll be too soon.'
'You don't get it, Pa,' Chester said, impatient with the ignorance of the older generation. 'If it weren't for the Socialists, nobody'd make any kind of decent money-the bosses would have it all.' Unending labor strife since he'd come home from the war had eroded his lifelong faith in the Democratic Party.
'You're going to end up on a blacklist,' his father said gloomily. 'Then you won't have any work at all, no matter how the strikes turn out.'
'I won't have any steel work, maybe,' Chester said with a shrug. 'One way or another, though, I'll get along. There's plenty of things I can do if I have to. One of 'em or another is bound to work out. I'm a white man; I pull my weight.'
'Aahhh.' Stephen Douglas Martin made a disgusted noise. 'You're in it for the glory. I remember the red flags flying back in the '90s, too, and the battles, and the blood in the streets. It was all foolishness, if you ask me.'
'Glory?' Chester Martin laughed bitterly. He unbuttoned his left cuff and rolled the sleeve high to show the scar a Confederate bullet had left on his upper arm. 'There's no such thing as glory, near as I can tell. If the machine guns didn't kill it, the artillery did. Teddy Roosevelt promised us a square deal, but I don't see him delivering. If I have to go out into the streets to get it, I'll do that-and to hell with glory.'
'Aahhh,' his father repeated. 'Well, go on, then, since that's what you're bound and determined to do. I only hope you come back in one piece, that's all. You're playing for keeps out there.'
Chester nodded. The thought did not bother him, or not unduly. He'd been playing for keeps since his first comrade got hung up on Confederate barbed wire and shot just inside the Virginia line back in August 1914. He said, 'What was the war about, if it wasn't about having a better life after it was over? I don't see that, not for me I don't, not without this fight. I'm still here in the old room I had before I went into the Army, for heaven's sake.'
