As the pilot took off his goggles and climbed out of the aeroplane, his face bore an enormous grin. What was he thinking? Lived through it again, probably. Sailors hauled the two-decker out of the way so the other fighting scout could land.
Here he came, chasing the aeroplane carrier from astern. As before, the semaphore man stepped out and signaled to the approaching flying machine. Sam wondered why he bothered. That fellow had pulled out of his dive without help. If he couldn't land the same way…
Up, the man with the paddles signaled, and then Up again, more emphatically. The bow of the Remembrance slid down into a trough; the stern rose. Sam kept his balance as automatically as he breathed. So did the signalman. He had the paddle raised, urging more altitude, when the aeroplane slammed into the carrier.
The pilot almost got it onto the ship. That made things worse, not better. He still killed himself, and debris from the aeroplane scythed along the deck, cutting down the fellow with the semaphore paddles and half the crew waiting to take the aeroplane to the hydraulic lift and stow it belowdecks.
Sam sprinted forward, dodging blazing fuel and oil like a halfback dodging tacklers in the open field. He skidded to a stop beside a sailor who was down and moaning and clutching his thigh. Blood was soaking his trouser leg and puddling on the deck under him. He couldn't keep losing it that fast for long. Sam unhooked his belt, yanked it off, and doubled it around the man's leg above the wound for a tourniquet.
'It hurts!' the sailor moaned. 'Christ, it hurts!'
'Hang on, pal,' Sam said. More sailors came running across the deck, some with stretchers. Sam waved to draw their eyes. The sailor might live. As for the pilot… His head lay about ten feet away, still wearing goggles. Carsten looked down at the planking. Yeah, flyboys earned the right to be crazy.
XIV
Jake Featherston liked riding the train. When he rode the train. he was getting somewhere. He associated travel on foot with the long, grinding retreat through Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia. Then he'd been going where the damnyankees made him go. Now he was-mostly-on his own.
The train rattled through the Mississippi cotton country, bound for New Orleans. Featherston smiled to see Negroes working in the fields. Their hoes rose and fell as they weeded. The red and blue bandannas the women wore added splashes of color to the green, green fields. Jake nodded to himself in his Pullman car. That was where Negroes belonged.
The splendid car was where he belonged. He hadn't known luxury till lately. He figured he was entitled to a little, after so long without. He did wish he weren't going to New Orleans. He brought a fist down on his knee. Even the leader of the Freedom Party couldn't get everything he wanted, not yet.
Amos Mizell of the Tin Hats had strongly urged him to hold the Party's national convention on the banks of the Mississippi, to show it was a party for all the Confederate States. Willy Knight, who headed the Redemption League, said the same thing. Their arguments made sense, especially since Jake wanted to draw the League all the way into the Freedom Party.
He hadn't particularly wanted to hold a convention at all; he knew, and everybody else knew, who the Party's candidate would be. But the notion of having him simply declare his candidacy and point a finger at a running mate had horrified everyone around him. So here he was, on his way to a convention, on his way to New Orleans. He slammed his fist down again, this time hard enough to make himself jump and curse.
'Well, where the hell else could I go?' he demanded of the empty air around him. If he brought the convention to the Mississippi, New Orleans was the only logical choice. Little Rock was the middle of nowhere. Going to Dallas would have been asking for trouble from Willy Knight, who wanted to run for vice president; the Redemption League was stronger than the Party in Texas. Chihuahua? Featherston laughed without humor. 'The greasers down there would love me, wouldn't they?'
And so, to prove the Freedom Party's national appeal, he'd had to bring the convention to the one Confederate city least friendly to him and his message. New Orleans not only had rich niggers with their own high society, it had a whole great raft of white men who didn't care. The latter offended Jake even more than the former.
He felt better when the train pulled into the station. A company of men in white shirts and butternut trousers stood waiting for him on the platform. Some carried Freedom Party flags, others the Confederate battle flag with reversed colors that the Party also used. 'Sarge!' they shouted when he left his car. 'Sarge! Sarge! Sarge!'
'Good to be here,' Jake lied. 'Now, on to victory!' The Freedom Party stalwarts cheered lustily. Some of the other people on the platform, New Orleans natives by the look of them, raised eyebrows and curled lips in Gallic disdain at the raucous display. Featherston hardly noticed. He was among his own again- the dispossessed, the rootless, the angry-and so back where he belonged.
When he got to the hotel, he felt as if part of Richmond had been transplanted to this alien soil. He might have been back at Party headquarters, to judge by the deference he got. That from Party members was genuine, that from the hotel staff-both white and black-professionally perfect. Whores, he thought. Nothing but whores. But, like whores, they made him feel good.
He spotted Roger Kimball across the gorgeously rococo lobby. Kimball spotted him, too, and hurried over. He could have done without that. 'Good to see you, Sarge,' Kimball said, shaking his hand. 'Say, are they going to try those fellows they arrested for burning down Tom Brearley's house?'
Brearley and his wife had burned, too; Jake was wryly amused Kimball hadn't mentioned that. He answered, 'Reckon they are, yeah.' Lowering his voice, he added, 'Don't reckon any jury's gonna convict 'em, though. That's how it looks from here, anyway.'
'Bully,' Kimball said, and then, 'I won't keep you. You've got to get settled in, I reckon.' He drifted away. That was a smoother performance than Featherston had looked for from him. Thoughtfully, Jake rubbed his chin. If Kimball could be smooth as well as ferocious, he might end up making himself very valuable indeed.
After unpacking, Jake walked the couple of blocks to the convention hall, a huge marble wedding cake of a building that had gone up on Esplanade, just outside the French Quarter, a few years before the Great War. He was standing on the rostrum, looking out over the great hall, when Amos Mizell walked down the center aisle toward him. Willy Knight came in a couple of minutes later, before Jake and Mizell could do much more than say hello. Featherston was irked, but only a little; both men would have had spies in the hotel, and maybe back at the train station, too.
All the greetings were warier than they would have sounded to anyone who didn't know the men involved. At last, Mizell said, 'The Tin Hats will throw their weight behind you, Jake. You're what this country needs this year, no two ways about it.'
Suddenly, Featherston was awfully damn glad he'd come to New Orleans. He'd met Mizell halfway, and now the head of the veterans' organization was coming through for him in a big way. Willy Knight looked as if he'd just bitten down hard on the sourest lemon ever picked. He'd been threatening that if Jake didn't tap him for vice president, he'd run for the top spot himself on an independent Redemption League ticket. That would have hurt, and hurt bad, especially in the West. He could still do it. But if the Tin Hats were loudly backing the Freedom Party, his bid would look like nothing but an exercise in spite.
Now, still sour, he asked, 'You think you have any real chance of winning, Featherston?'
'Don't know for certain,' Jake said easily. 'The Party would have a better shot if TR had won up in the USA. Everybody down here hates him just as much as he hates us. Those Red bastards they've got up there now are bending over backwards so far, it's hard to get people riled up at 'em the way they ought to be.'
'You ought to count your blessings, Jake,' Mizell said. 'If Roosevelt had been president of the United States for longer than a couple of days after the news about your fellow down there in South Carolina broke, he'd have had his head on a plate-either that or he'd have blown Richmond to hell and gone.'
'Yeah, I was lucky there,' Featherston admitted. Knight sent him another hooded glance, as if to say, If I were a little luckier, I'd be wearing your shoes now. He was probably right. It did him no good.
'Picked a running mate yet?' Mizell asked, casual as if wondering about what Jake intended to have for supper. Maybe he was just idly curious, the way he sounded. And maybe Jake would flap his arms and fly to the moon, too.
