'How long will the stove take to come?' he asked.
'Ah, is that what you're getting? Good for you,' the postmaster said. 'How long?' He looked up at the ceiling as he made mental calculations. 'My best guess would be three weeks or a month. You should light a candle for every day sooner than three weeks.'
'Gracias, senor,' Rodriguez said. That was about what he'd thought. Now he could use Cordero's authority when he told Magdalena.
'El gusto es mio,' Cordero replied. Rodriguez didn't think the pleasure really was his, but he always spoke politely. He went on, 'I hope your wife gets much use and much enjoyment from it. My own Ana has had a stove now for several years, and she would never go back to cooking over an open fire. The stove is much cleaner, too.'
'I had not thought of that, but I'm sure it would be.' Rodriguez hid a smile. He'd done a little bragging, and the postmaster had responded with some of his own. That was the way life worked.
'It is,' Cordero said positively. 'You've spent a lot of money, but you won't be sorry for it.' He sounded as if he were giving a personal guarantee.
'Without doubt, you have reason.' Rodriguez inked a pen, scrawled the name of the mail-order form on the envelope, put in the order form and the money order, and handed Cordero the envelope.
The postmaster looked embarrassed. 'Personally, I would gladly send it for nothing. You understand, though, I cannot be my own man in this matter: I am but a servant of the Confederate government. I must ask you for five cents more for the stamp that shows you have paid me postage.'
With a sigh, Rodriguez realized he hadn't brought a stamp of his own along. He passed Cordero the dime he'd found, but eight cents wouldn't let him go into the cantina. Before the war, beer had been five cents, but it was a dime nowadays. No help for it, though. He watched the postmaster put the envelope in the bin of mail that would leave Baroyeca. Once it was there, he left the post office.
Standing on the board sidewalk, he sighed again. No point in going into La Culebra Verde when he had no money to buy. He thought little of men who sat around in there hoping to cadge drinks from their more prosperous friends and neighbors. He didn't want to be one of those freeloaders himself. But he didn't want to turn around and head straight back to the farm, either. What point to that? He didn't escape from it often enough to care to go home as fast as he could.
What to do, then? He looked up and down Baroyeca's main street- Calle de los Estados Confederados — wondering which shops he could visit without drawing sneers from the proprietors. A man with eight cents in his pocket couldn't buy much. He jingled the coins. Because of the pennies, they did sound like more.
His eyes snapped back to a building at the far end of the street. It had stood empty since the weekly newspaper folded in the middle of the great inflation. Now, he saw, it was empty no more. A couple of bright new words were painted on the front window. From his angle, he couldn't make out what they were. He ambled toward the building, still jingling his few paltry coins.
Before long, he could read the words. He stopped in surprise and pleasure, a grin spreading over his face. FREEDOM! the window shouted, and below that, in slightly smaller letters,?LIBERTAD! As he got closer still, he could make out the much smaller words under the big ones: Freedom Party Headquarters, Baroyeca, Sonora. Everyone Welcome.
Everyone welcome? Hipolito Rodriguez's grin got wider. He stopped fooling with the coins and went in.
Inside, a blond man with his hair cut short like a soldier's clattered away at a typewriter. Rodriguez didn't scowl, but he felt like it. From what he'd seen in the Army, a lot of white Confederates looked down on Sonorans and Chihuahuans almost as much as they did on Negroes-unless the Sonorans and Chihuahuans had money, of course. He laughed a sour laugh. The eight cents in his pocket didn't qualify.
But this fellow startled him. 'Buenos dias. Como esta Usted?' he said in pretty good Spanish. It plainly wasn't his first language, but he managed more than well enough. ' Me llamo Robert Quinn,' he went on, 'Represento el Partido de Libertad en Baroyeca. En que puedo servirle?'
'Hello, Mr. Quinn,' Rodriguez said in English to the man who represented the Freedom Party in Baroyeca. 'I do not know what you can do for me. I came in because I saw you were here and I wanted to find out why.'
'Bueno. Excelente,' Quinn continued in Spanish. 'Como se llama, senor?'
Rodriguez gave his name. He added, 'Why does the Freedom Party have an office here?' He couldn't imagine the Radical Liberals or the Whigs opening a headquarters in Baroyeca. The town simply wasn't big enough.
But Quinn said, 'Para ganar elecciones.'
'Having an office here will help you win elections?' Rodriguez returned to Spanish, since the Freedom Party man seemed comfortable in it. 'How?'
'We did well here in 1925-we elected a Congressman from this district,' Robert Quinn replied in the same language. 'We intend to do better still this year. After all, in 1927 we will elect a president. With God's help-and some from the voters-it will be Jake Featherston.'
'I have only eight cents right now,' Rodriguez said, not mentioning the thirty-odd dollars he'd just sent to Birmingham. He kept quiet about that on purpose. Was this truly a party that might do a poor man some good? He'd find out. 'With eight cents, how can I help you?'
Quinn didn't laugh at him or tell him to go away. Instead, seriously and soberly, he began to explain exactly what Rodriguez could do for the Freedom Party, and what the Party might do for him. He talked for about ten minutes. By the time he finished, Rodriguez was sure he would go on voting Freedom as long as he lived. That wasn't all he was sure of, either. He would go out and preach for the Party, too. He felt like one of the very first Christians in ancient days. He'd met a disciple, and now he was a disciple himself.
C olonel Irving Morrell hadn't heard the garrison in Kamloops, British Columbia, so animated, so excited, since he'd got there from Philadelphia more than a year before. He would have been happier, though, had something military sparked the excitement. But all the gossip centered on Chevrolet's proposed acquisition of the White Motor Company. White, as far as Morrell was concerned, made the best trucks in the world. No one seemed to care about that. What people were talking about was what the acquisition would do to the stock prices of the two companies.
By midafternoon, Morrell had had as much of that as he could take. 'God forbid we should have to fight a war on a day when the market goes down,' he said.
He was a colonel, which meant he outranked everyone who sat in the mess hall with him. At last, though, a captain named David Smith said, 'Well, sir, you never can tell. It might make us meaner.'
Silence fell. People waited to see how Morrell would take that. Ever since he'd come West from General Staff headquarters, he'd made a name for himself as a man no one sensible would trifle with. But Smith's line was too good to make him angry. He grinned and said, 'Here's hoping, anyhow.'
The mess hall relaxed. He could almost feel the soft sighs of relief that came from just about everyone. In Philadelphia, a lot of soldiers had spent a lot of time laughing at him. The officers here took him seriously. His record was too good to ignore, and a colonel's eagles carried a lot more weight in Kamloops than they had back at General Staff headquarters. That wasn't why he'd been so eager to get out of Philadelphia; he'd never cared one way or the other about being a big fish in a small pond. All he wanted were a job he liked and the chance to do it without anybody looking over his shoulder. He hadn't had those in Philadelphia. He did here.
Captain Smith decided to push it a little, adding, 'Besides, sir, we'll never get rich on Army pay. If we're going to, wouldn't you rather have us playing the market than knocking over a bank?'
That went too far. Morrell got to his feet. He carried his tray of dishes toward the waiting cooks. Over his shoulder, he answered, 'If you want to get rich, you don't belong in the Army in the first place. And if you're not in the Army, I don't give a damn what you're doing. No one held a gun to your head to make you put on this uniform, Captain. If you want to resign your commission, I'll be glad to help you with the paperwork.'
Smith turned very red. He said, 'No, sir. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that at all.'
Morrell handed the tray to a man in an apron who'd drawn kitchen duty. Everyone eyed him, wondering how he would reply. He didn't want to get any deeper into the argument, so all he said was, 'Remember why you did join, then, Captain.'
As he left the hall, that silence returned. His leg twinged. It hadn't for a while. He'd been wounded when the Great War was young, and that was… Lord! he thought in surprise. That's heading toward thirteen years ago now. Where's the time gone?
He took his thick wool overcoat from its hanger and wrapped it around himself. Kamloops lay where the north
