She unpacked her own suitcase. Once upon a time, she'd have had a colored maid to do it for her. The last one she'd had came much too close to murdering her in the long aftermath of the uprising. No more.
Once everything was put away, she went downstairs. A man sitting on an overstuffed chair in the lobby, a chair whose upholstery had seen better days, got to his feet and took off his hat. 'Evening, Miss Colleton!' he said. 'Freedom!'
'Good evening, Mr. Henderson,' Anne answered. A beat slower than she should have, she added, 'Freedom!' herself. The Party greeting still struck her as foolish. But she'd made the bargain, and she had to go through with it.
'Hope you had a pleasant drive down,' James Henderson said. He held out his hand. She briskly shook it. His eyes widened slightly. He hadn't expected so firm a grip. He was a few years younger than Anne- everyone is a few years younger than I am these days, she thought unhappily-lean as a lath, with a face so bony, it might have come off the label of an iodine bottle. He wore the ribbon for the Purple Heart on his lapel.
'It was all right,' Anne said. 'Some people drive for the sport of it. I drive to get where I'm going.'
'Sensible,' Henderson said. Men said that to her a lot these days, as they'd once said, Beautiful. She missed the other. This would have to do. Beauty didn't last. Brains did. She'd realized that a long time ago. She'd had brains even then, though men had done their best not to notice. Henderson went on, 'Shall we eat some supper? We can talk then, and figure out where to go from there.'
'All right,' Anne said. Not so many years earlier, he would have wanted to go back to her room and take her to bed. Now he probably didn't. That made doing business simpler. Most of the time, she appreciated it because it did. Every once in a while, she found herself pining for days gone by.
'Hotel restaurant suit you, or would you rather go somewhere else?' Henderson was doing his best to be polite. A fair number of Freedom Party men either didn't bother or didn't know how.
'The hotel restaurant is fine,' she answered.
She ordered crab cakes; she took advantage of Charleston seafood whenever she came down to the coast. Henderson chose fried chicken. They both ordered cocktails. The colored waiter who took their orders went back to the kitchen without writing them down; odds were he couldn't write. James Henderson's eyes followed him. 'Wonder where he was in 1915, and what he did.'
'He looks too young to have done anything much,' Anne said. 'Of course, you never can tell.'
'Sure can't.' Henderson scowled. He needed a visible effort to draw himself back to the business at hand. 'Let's talk about Congress and the Legislature.'
'Right,' Anne said briskly. Henderson might be skinny enough to dive through a soda straw without hitting the sides, but he came to the point. She liked that. She went on, 'We can figure that Jake Featherston is probably going to win this state.'
'Doesn't mean we won't campaign for him here,' Henderson said.
'No, of course not,' Anne agreed. 'We don't want any nasty surprises. But the rest of the ticket has to run well, too. Freedom Party Congressmen will help Jake get his laws through. The state legislators need to back us, too-and they're the ones who choose C.S. Senators. We're still weak in the Senate, because we didn't start getting a lot of people elected to state legislatures till 1929.'
James Henderson nodded. He began to say something more, but the waiter came back with drinks, and then with dinner. The fellow started to give Anne the chicken; she pointed to her companion to show where it should go. 'Sorry, ma'am,' the colored man said. He set things right, then withdrew.
Henderson looked around to make sure he was out of earshot before resuming. 'Can't trust 'em,' the Freedom Party man said. Anne couldn't quarrel with him there. Henderson continued, 'Anything they hear, the Rad Libs know tomorrow and the Whigs the day after.'
Anne wasn't so sure about that, but didn't care to argue with it, either. All she said was, 'They know they have to try to stop us any way they can. They know, but I don't think they can do it.'
'Have to make sure they don't. We have to make sure any way we need to.' Henderson let her draw her own pictures.
She had no trouble doing just that. 'We don't want to go too far,' she said. 'If we do, it'll only hurt us, cost us votes. The average law-abiding Confederate has to think we're the right answer, not the wrong one. We've shot ourselves in the foot before when we pushed too hard. We need to pick our spots.'
The skeletal man across the table from her nodded. 'See who's really dangerous,' he said, and bared a lot of teeth in a grin. 'Won't be so dangerous once we run over 'em with barrels a few times.'
Anne thought that was a figure of speech. She wasn't quite sure, though, and didn't care to ask. Theoretically, the armistice with the USA banned barrels from the CSA. The government had never admitted to having any-nor could it, without risking Yankee wrath. If a couple of them should suddenly clatter down a street with Freedom Party men inside… If that happened, Anne wouldn't have been astonished.
She said, 'Looks to me like we're thinking along the same lines, Mr. Henderson… Do you want to get some more chicken?' He'd reduced half a bird to bones in nothing flat.
'Don't mind if I do.' Henderson waved for the waiter. As the Negro took the request back to the kitchen, Henderson gave a half apologetic smile. 'Always been scrawny, no matter how much I eat.'
'I wish I could say that.' Corsets had been out of fashion for a good many years now, but Anne was tempted to get back into one to help her remind the world she did still have a waist. She wished she could wear a corset under her jaw, too, to fight the sagging flesh there. In fact, there were such things, intended to be put on at night. Three different doctors, though, had assured her they did no good.
The waiter returned with another whole chicken leg. Henderson devoured it. He patted his pale lips with his napkin. 'Hit the spot.'
'Good.' Even if she envied him at the same time, Anne couldn't help liking a man who put away his food like that. She went on, 'We have to hit the spot in November, too. We have to. If we lose this time, I don't think we'll ever get another chance.'
After Grady Calkins assassinated President Hampton, after the Confederate currency stabilized when the USA eased back on reparations, the Freedom Party had sunk like a stone, and had stayed down though almost all the 1920s. If it failed again, she was sure it wouldn't revive. She couldn't stand the idea of trying to make peace with the Whigs once more. This run had to reach the top.
'Don't you worry about that, ma'am,' James Henderson said. 'Jake Featherston, he isn't about to lose.' So, four hundred years before, a Spanish soldier seeing the might and wealth of the Inca Empire might have spoken of Pizarro. The Spaniard would have been right. Anne thought the Freedom Party man was, too, even if that ma'am rankled. Henderson wasn't so very much younger than she was.
She said, 'It's not just Jake, remember. We want to grab with both hands.'
'Think you're right,' Henderson said. 'Legislators, Congressmen-every place where we can win, we'll fight like the devil.'
'That's right. Mayors and county commissioners and sheriffs, too. Some of those people can appoint judges, and the more judges on our side, the better. Same with sheriffs. A lot of them-and city policemen, too-have been on our side for a long time.'
'Better be,' Henderson said, nodding. The waiter came up with a coffeepot. After he'd filled cups for Anne and Henderson, he retreated once more. Henderson waited, poured in lots of cream and sugar, tasted, added more sugar yet, and then continued, 'By the time we're done, we'll have this state sewed up tight, you bet.'
'Oh, yes,' Anne said softly. 'And not just South Carolina, either. By the time we're done, we'll have the whole country sewn up tight.'
'That's the idea,' Henderson said.
Anne wondered if Jake Featherston had thought he could come within arm's reach of ruling the Confederate States when he first joined the Freedom Party. What would he say if she asked him? And would what he said be true? Would he really recall here in 1933 what he'd thought and hoped and dreamt back in 1917? Even if he did, would he admit it? She had her doubts.
The waiter returned again. 'Dessert, folks? Apple pie is mighty fine today, or we've got cherry or lemon meringue or pecan, too.'
'Apple,' Henderson said at once. 'Slap some ice cream on top, too.'
'Yes, suh.' The waiter looked to Anne. 'Anything for you, ma'am?'
She shook her head. 'I couldn't possibly.'
