He stepped away from the podium and walked over to the catafalque. There, very solemnly, he took off his top hat and bowed to Coolidge's casket. The soldiers and sailors and Marines who'd borne the coffin from the hearse saluted. Hoover returned the salute; he'd done his two years as a conscript well before the turn of the century, and had been a major in engineering during the war.
The wireless announcer introduced the new governor of Massachusetts-and, incidentally, got his name right. More praise for Calvin Coolidge came forth, this time in the familiar accents of home, not Hoover's flat Midwestern speech. Sylvia listened with half an ear. Mary Jane began to fidget. When the lieutenant governor came to the podium and began saying everything for the third time, Sylvia asked, 'Shall we go?' Her daughter nodded.
They began making their way toward the back edge of the crowd. It wasn't so hard as Sylvia had feared, not least because they weren't the only ones slipping away from the Boston Common. The newsreel photographer, up there on his platform, wasn't taking pictures of the crowd shrinking.
'Good day, Mrs. Enos.' There stood Joe Kennedy, with his sharp-faced wife beside him. He wasn't going anywhere, not till the last speech was made. Even the way he stood was an effort to make Sylvia feel guilty about leaving.
It didn't work. He wasn't paying her now that the campaign was done. Behind them, the lieutenant governor's empty words kept blaring forth through the microphone. 'Good day, Mr. Kennedy,' she answered. 'We've got to be getting home, and after a while everything sounds the same.'
That made Rose Kennedy smile. When she did, her face lit up. She looked like a whole different person. Her husband, though, frowned. He didn't look like a different person; Sylvia had seem him frowning plenty of times. Voice stiff with disapproval, he said, 'We should all take notice of the praise for Governor Coolidge. He would have made a fine president, and he would have done a lot of good for the state. Now…' He shrugged. 'Now a lot of that will go somewhere else.'
He thought like a politician. Sylvia didn't know why she was surprised. In fact, after she thought about it for a moment she wasn't surprised any more. She said, 'If you'll excuse us-'
'Of course.' Joe Kennedy was barely polite to her. His whole manner changed when his gaze swung to Mary Jane. 'The last time I saw your daughter, Mrs. Enos, she was a little girl. She's not a little girl now.'
'No, she's not,' Sylvia said shortly. Kennedy was practically undressing Mary Jane with his eyes, there right in front of his wife. Didn't she notice? Didn't she care? Or had she seen it too many times before to make a fuss about it? If George had looked at another woman like that, Sylvia knew she wouldn't have kept quiet. She touched Mary Jane's arm. 'Come on. We have to go.'
'If there's ever anything I can do for either one of you charming ladies, don't be shy,' Kennedy said.
Sylvia nodded. All she wanted to do was get away. As she and Mary Jane descended into the subway entrance, her daughter said, 'He's an interesting man. I didn't think he would be, not from the way you talk about him.'
'I'll tell you what he's interested in-he's interested in getting you someplace quiet and getting your knickers down,' Sylvia said. 'And I'll tell you something else, too: any man who'll run around for you will run around on you, any chance he gets.'
Mary Jane laughed. 'I wasn't going to do anything with him, Mother.'
'I should hope not,' Sylvia said. She and Mary Jane lined up to trade nickels for tokens for the ride back to the flat by T Wharf.
T he red light in the studio went on. The engineer behind the glass pointed to Jake Featherston, as if to say he was on. He nodded and got down to business: 'I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth.'
All across the Confederate States, from the Atlantic to the Gulf of California, people would be leaning forward to listen to him. The wireless web knit the CSA together in a way nothing else ever had before. All the parties used the wireless these days, but he'd been doing it longer than anybody else, and he thought he did it better than anybody else. He wasn't the only one who thought so, either. By the way Whig newspapers flabbled about their party's ineffective speakers, they too knew he scored points every time he sat down in front of a microphone here.
'I'm here to tell you the truth,' he repeated. 'I've been trying to do that for a long time. Some of you kind folks out there didn't much want to believe me, on account of what I have to say isn't the sugar-coated pap you'll hear from the usual run of stuffed shirts in Richmond. No, it isn't sweet and it isn't pretty, but it's true.
'Up in the USA, they've got themselves a brand-new president-not the one they elected, but another Democrat just the same. Herbert Hoover.' He spoke the name with sardonic relish. 'He got famous up there for helping out in the big flood back in 1927. Of course, that hurt us a lot more than it did the Yankees. But even so, they voted for him up there because of the good he did. What did we do here, where it was so much worse? I'll tell you what. We voted for the people who let it louse up the country, that's what. And if that's not a judgment on us, I don't know what is. Before that, who ever had a platform that says, 'Throw the rascals in '?'
That made the engineer laugh, which convinced Jake it was a good line. The man was a staunch Whig. He was also a good engineer, and conscientious enough to make sure he gave his best to whoever was using the wireless. Featherston wished the Freedom Party attracted more men like that. When we win, we will, he thought, and this time, by God, we're going to win.
'They say the sky will fall if the Whigs lose an election,' he went on aloud. 'We've been our own country the past seventy years, and they've won every time. And I tell you something else, friends-we've paid for it. We've paid through the nose. What have they given us lately? A losing war. Two states stolen, and chunks carved out of three more. Money you took to the grocery store in a wheelbarrow. The worst flood since Noah's, with nobody doing much to clean up the mess. And now this here little-'business turndown,' they call it.' He snorted. 'If business turned down any more, it'd turn dead. And they say everything'll be fine in the morning. But then the morning comes, and we're still in the middle of it.
'I say it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. I say it's time to build dams to keep the Mississippi from kicking us like that again. I say we can use the jobs building those dams'll give us, and I say we can use the electricity we'll get from 'em, too. I say it's time to stand on our own two feet in the world, and to weed out all the traitors who want to see us stay weak and worthless. And I say seventy years is too long. The Whigs have had their chance. They've had it, and they fouled it up. I'm not telling you any secrets, friends. You know it, I know it, the whole country knows it. It's time to give somebody else the ball. Give it to the Freedom Party in November. Give it to us and watch us run. That's it for tonight.' He had fifteen seconds left. 'Remember, we won't let you down. The Whigs already have.'
The engineer swiped a finger across his throat. The red light went out. By now, after going on ten years of sending his voice over the wireless web, Featherston could time a broadcast almost to the second. He gathered up his papers and left the studio. He'd be back in a week, pounding his message home. The country should have been ready to listen to him in 1927. He still thought it would have been if Grady Calkins hadn't murdered President Hampton.
'Son of a bitch had it coming,' Jake muttered, but even he couldn't help adding, 'Not like that, dammit.'
Saul Goldman was waiting in the hallway, as usual. Featherston was glad he didn't seem to have heard those mutters. In the years since Jake started coming to the studio, the little Jew had put on weight, lost hair, and gone gray. Jake was glad time didn't show so much on his own rawboned frame and lean, harsh features. Goldman said, 'Another fine broadcast, Mr. Featherston.'
'Thank you kindly, Saul,' Jake answered. 'You've done the Party a lot of good, you know. When the day comes, you'll find we don't forget. We don't forget enemies, and we don't forget friends, either.'
'That is not why I did it, you know,' the wireless man said.
Jake slapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. 'Yeah, I know, pal,' he said. 'You get extra points in my book for that. You don't lose any. When the time comes, how'd you like to be running all our broadcasts all over the country?'
'Do you mean all the broadcasts of the Freedom Party or all the broadcasts of the Confederate government?' Goldman asked.
'Six of one, half a dozen of the other,' Jake replied. 'Before very long, we'll be the government, you know. And when we get our hands on it, we'll have a lot of cleaning up to do. We'll do it, too, by God.'
Goldman didn't say anything. He didn't back the Freedom Party because he was wild for revenge against the USA, or because he wanted to punish the blacks who'd risen up and stabbed the Confederacy in the back. He was just relieved the Party kept quiet about Jews. Jake had never seen the need to get hot and bothered over Jews.
