'Seeing as he's going to be on the train that gets to St. Matthews in half an hour, don't you think it's a little late to worry about that? If I show him up now, I've made an enemy. I'm liable to have made a dangerous enemy. I don't care to do that, thank you very much.'
'I suppose you're right-you usually are.' Tom still looked unhappy. 'I can't say I much fancy what I've heard about him, though.'
'Hush,' Anne said absently as she walked over to the closet. 'I want to pick out the hat that goes best with this dress.' The dress was of orchid cotton voile, with a new-style square collar and with ruffles at the sleeves, waist, hips, and a few inches above the ankle-length hemline. It managed to be stylish and to suit the formidable South Carolina climate at the same time.
The flowered hat she chose had a downturned brim that was also of the latest mode. She didn't know how much attention Featherston paid to fashion. She'd tried to find out what he thought of women; all she'd been able to learn was that he was a bachelor. Not being able to find out more left her obscurely irked.
'Are you sure you want to come along, Tom?' she asked. 'One thing we do know is that he doesn't love officers.'
'Next enlisted man I meet who does love officers will be the first.' Her brother pulled out his pocket watch. 'We'd better get going, if you aim to meet him at the station.'
'Do you expect the train to run on time?' Anne asked, but she went with him.
As it happened, the train did run late, but only by twenty minutes or so: hardly enough time in which to start fuming. It pulled into the battered station-not all the damage from the black uprising had been repaired-with wheels squealing and sparking as the brakes brought it to a halt and with black smoke and cinders belching from the locomotive's stack. Anne brushed soot from her sleeve with a muttered curse that made Tom chuckle and that no one else heard.
Only two people got off the train in St. Matthews. Since one of them was a fat colored woman, figuring out who the other one was did not require brilliance. The lanky white man dressed in butternut trousers, a clean white shirt, and a straw hat looked around for people to greet him, as any traveler might have done.
'Mr. Featherston!' Anne called, and the newcomer alertly swung toward her. His features were pinched and not particularly handsome, but when his eyes met hers, she had to brace herself for an instant. Roger Kimball had been right: whatever else he was, Jake Featherston was not a man to take lightly. She stepped toward him. 'I'm Anne Colleton, Mr. Featherston. Pleased to meet you, and thank you for coming down. This is my brother, Tom.'
'Right pleased to meet you both,' Featherston said, his Virginia accent not bespeaking any great education. When he shook hands with Anne, his grip was so businesslike, it revealed nothing. He turned to her brother. 'You were an officer on the Roanoke front, isn't that right?'
'Yes, that's so,' Tom said. / wasn*t the only one doing some checking, Anne thought. No, Featherston was not a man to be taken lightly, not even a little bit.
He said, 'I'll try not to hold it against you.' From the lips of most former noncoms, it would have been a joke. Anne and Tom both started to smile. Neither let the smile get very big. Anne wasn't at all sure Featherston was kidding. He asked, 'You have a motorcar here, to take us wherever we're going?'
Anne shook her head. 'I didn't bother. We're only a couple of blocks from my apartment. This isn't a big town-you can see that. It's an easy walk.'
'I'll take your carpetbag there, if you like,' Tom added, reaching out for it.
'Don't bother,' Featherston said, and did not hand it over. 'I've been taking care of myself a long time now. I can go right on doing it.' He nodded to Anne. 'Lead the way, Miss Colleton. Sooner we're there, sooner we can get down to business.'
He was mostly silent as they walked along: not a man with a large store of small talk. As he walked, he studied St. Matthews with military alertness. He studied Anne the same way. His eyes kept coming back to her, but not in the way of a man who looks on a woman with desire. Anne had seen that often enough to be most familiar with it. No, he was trying to size her up. That was interesting. Usually, till they realized she had a brain, men were more interested in trying to feel her up.
Back at the apartment, Featherston accepted coffee and a slice of peach pie. He ate like a man stoking a boiler, emptying his plate very fast. Then he said, 'What can I do for you, Miss Colleton?'
'I don't quite know,' Anne answered. 'What I do know is that I don't like the way the Confederate States have been drifting since the end of the war. I'd like the country to start moving forward again. If the Freedom Party can help us do that, maybe I'd like to help the Freedom Party.'
'I can tell you what I want for the CSA,' Featherston said. 'I want revenge. I want revenge on the damnyankees for licking us. I want revenge on the damnfool politicians who got us into the war. I want revenge on the damnfool generals in the War Department who botched it. I want revenge on the niggers who rose up and stabbed us in the back. And I aim to get it.'
Revenge was a word that struck a chord with Anne. She'd spent most of two years getting even with the blacks of the Con-garee Socialist Republic after they'd torched Marshlands, killed her brother Jacob, and almost killed her. She dearly wanted to get even with the United States, though she didn't see how the Confederate States would be able to manage it any time soon. Still…
'How do you propose to do all that?' she asked.
'You said it yourself: everything in the country seems dead right now,' Featherston replied. 'The Freedom Party is alive and growing. People see that. They're starting to come over to us. We'll elect Congressmen this year- you just wait and see if we don't. Before too long, we'll elect a president.'
He had all the confidence in the world, that was certain. Tom remarked, 'You're not running for Congress yourself, are you?'
Featherston shook his head. 'That's right-I'm not. Don't want to sit there, for one thing, on account of I can't stand too many who're already in. And for another, I want to be able to go where I want to go when I want to go there. If I had to stay in Richmond too much of the time, I wouldn't be able to do that. So, no, I'm not going to the dance.'
'You're going to stay on the sidelines and call the tune,' Anne said.
'You might put it that way,' Jake Featherston agreed. He had a pretty good poker face, but it wasn't perfect. Anne saw his attention focus on her. It still wasn't the look a man gave an attractive woman: more like the look a sniper gave a target. Now he's realized I'm no fool, she thought. / wonder if I should have let him know so soon. I wonder if I should have let him know at all.
She also realized Featherston was no fool. Not running for Congress let him pick and choose his issues and what he did about them. It also protected him from the risk of running and losing. She had no feel yet for how smart he was, but he was plenty shrewd.
'What tune are you going to call?' she asked.
'I already told you,' he answered. 'I don't hide anything I aim to do; I just come right out and say it.' An alarm whistle went off in Anne's head: any man who said something like that was almost bound to be lying. She kept her face quite still. Feather-ston continued, 'Platform's pretty simple, like I said. Pay back the USA as soon as we can. Clean out the House and Senate. Clean out the War Department. Put the niggers back in their place. Best place for 'em, you ask me, is six feet under, but I'll settle for less for now. Still and all, this is a white man's country, and I aim to keep it that way.'
'What do you propose to do about the black men who got the vote by fighting in the Army?' Tom Colleton asked.
'Most of 'em don't deserve it,' Featherston said at once. 'Most of'em ran instead of fighting. I was there. I saw 'em do it. I fired into 'em, too, to make 'em more afraid of me than they were of the damnyankees.'
'Some did run,' Tom agreed. 'I saw that myself. Toward the end of the war, I saw white troops break and run, too.' He waited. Slowly, Featherston nodded, looking unhappy about having to do it. Tom went on, 'I saw some niggers fight pretty well. They're the ones I'm talking about. How do you take their vote away?'
'Wouldn't be hard, once we got around to it,' Featherston replied with breathtaking and, Anne thought, accurate cynicism. 'Most decent white folks can't stand 'em anyway. Besides, chances are the ones who fought hard against the USA learned how by fighting against the Confederate States. Pin that on 'em, call it treason, and hang the lousy bastards.'
'What do we do if the United States try to stop us from getting strong again?' Anne asked. 'That's my biggest
