called.
'Freedom to you, pal,' Featherston answered. 'Hang on. Just remember, we'll lick those bastards yet.'
'How?' the man asked. 'What can we do?'
'Same thing I've been saying all along,' Jake told him. 'First thing is, we've got to get rid of the stupid bastards who landed us in this mess in the first place. They aren't fit to carry guts to a bear, but they've been running this country-and running it straight into the ground-ever since the War of Secession. That means the politicians and the bonehead generals in the War Department.'
'Sounds good to me. Sounds mighty damn good to me,' the salesman said. 'What else?'
'Got to pay back the niggers,' Featherston said. 'Got to get strong again, so we can look the USA in the eye again. Got to get strong, so we can spit in the USA's eye, too, if we ever have to. How do you like that?'
'Me? I like it fine,' the man said. 'You go on and give 'em hell.'
'Just what I intend to give 'em. But I'll need your help, buddy. Remember, vote Freedom come November. We've got to get this country on its feet again. I've been saying that for years. Now maybe people will start paying attention to me.' He walked on, leaving the drummer with a last, 'Freedom!'
'Freedom!' the fellow echoed.
Back in the middle of the 1920s, that luckless drummer had probably been comfortable enough to vote Whig. Bad times made the Freedom Party grow. Featherston knew as much. He looked around. He'd seen plenty of bad times right after the war, when the money went down the toilet. This… This felt worse. This felt as if the Confederate States were closing down, one store, one factory, at a time, and might never open for business again.
'Freedom!' somebody else called-a woman, her voice high and shrill with worry.
'Freedom, dear,' Jake told her. 'Everything's going to be just fine.' He waved and kept going.
During the war, he'd usually had a pretty good notion of whether the troops in front of him would succeed in an attack-or, later, if they would succeed in holding back the damnyankees when they attacked. Now, after years wandering in the wilderness, he felt things in his own country turning his way again.
Shame it took a panic and a crash to do it, he thought. But that's the way it goes sometimes. If you don't grab with both hands when you get the chance, you deserve what ever happens to you. He intended to grab what ever the times gave him. He'd had one chance, and seen it go glimmering. God damn you to hell and gone, Grady Calkins. That had been the first time. He'd wondered if he would ever see another. Now, here it was again, if he could make it so.
He and his escorting guards rounded a corner. One of them pointed up Grace Street toward Capitol Square. 'Look at that, boss,' he said. 'Isn't it a shame and a disgrace?'
'It's a judgment on the damn Whigs, that's what it is,' Jake answered.
Back just after the Great War ended, Capitol Square had been full of soldiers fresh out of the Army. They'd had nowhere to go and nothing to do, so they'd camped there, many of them still with their weapons-enough to make the police leery of trying to clear them out, anyhow, even though they'd rioted more than once.
Now tents and shanties sprouted in the square once more. Jake didn't know who all was in them. Some veterans, certainly. But some men who weren't, and a lot of women and kids, too. People who'd lost jobs and lost their homes or couldn't pay the rent on a flat any more
… where else were they going to go?
Again, the police were going easy on them. Clearing them from the shantytown by force would have made dreadful headlines. Another guard said, 'Those people shouldn't ought to be in a mess like that. Ain't their fault, not most of the time. But that ain't the only shantytown in the country, neither.'
'Damn right it ain't, Joe,' Featherston agreed. 'There's one outside of every town in the CSA. And you're right-most of the people in 'em are decent, hardworking folks who're just down on their luck.' He slapped Joe on the back, hard enough to stagger him. 'And I'll be go to hell if you didn't just give me next week's wireless talk on a silver platter.'
By then, going into the studio was second nature for him. When the red light came on, he rasped out the greeting he'd been using for years: 'This is Jake Featherston of the Freedom Party, and I'm here to tell you the truth.'
Inside the glassed-in room next to the studio, the engineers nodded at him-everything was going the way it should. And his words were going out to far more people in the CSA than they had a few years before. A whole web of stations, a nationwide web, was getting this broadcast now. It went everywhere, from Richmond to Miami to deep in Sonora. And stations near the postwar, U.S.-imposed border beamed it up into Kentucky and Houston and Sequoyah.
'Truth is,' Jake went on, 'all across our country people are losing their jobs. Truth is, all across our country they're losing their homes. Truth is, all across our country they're trying to get by in shacks and tents a God-fearing dog wouldn't want to live in. And the truth is, my friends, the Whig Party doesn't care. '
He banged his fist down on the table, hard enough to make papers jump in front of him-but not hard enough to make them fall off or to tip over the microphone. He'd had practice with that thump. 'So help me God, friends, that is the truth. I'm ashamed to say it about anybody in these Confederate States, but it is. What are the Whigs doing to help these folks get new jobs? Nothing! What are the Whigs doing to help 'em hang on to their houses? Nothing! What are the Whigs doing to keep 'em from starving? Nothing, one more time! 'That's not the government's job,' is what they say.
'Well, friends, I'm going to tell you something. The Whigs proved how useless they were two years ago, when the big floods came. Did they do anything much for the poor, suffering people in Tennessee and Arkansas and Mississippi and Louisiana? Did they? In a pig's ear they did. They patted 'em on the head and said, 'Sure wish you good luck. Y'all'll be just fine.' Were they just fine? You know better'n I do.
'I'll tell you something else, too. This here panic, this here crash, is dragging more people under than Mother Nature ever dreamt of doing. And that's happening all over the Confederate States, not just in the Mississippi Valley. God help us all, there's a shantytown in Capitol Square here in Richmond. The fat Whig Congressmen could look out their windows and see the poor hungry folks. They could, but they don't.'
On and on he went, finishing, 'Two years ago, the Supreme Court-the bought and paid-for Supreme Court- said Burton Mitchel could run for president again. Well, he did, and he got himself elected again, too. And now we're all paying for it.
'So if you want things to work again, if you want us to be strong again, if you want to tie a can to the Whigs' tail-and to the Supreme Court's tail, too-if you don't want to have to live in a shack like a nigger cotton-picker, vote Freedom in November. God bless you all, and thank you kindly!'
The lead engineer drew a finger across his throat. The red light in the studio went out. Jake Featherston leaned back in his chair, then gathered up his papers and left the small, soundproofed room.
Saul Goldman, the station managed, waited in the hallway. 'That was a strong speech, Mr. Featherston, a very strong speech,' he said.
'Let's hope it does some good,' Jake answered.
'I've heard a lot of your speeches the past few years, Mr. Featherston,' Goldman said. 'I think this one will sway people, especially… with things the way they are.'
'Yeah. Especially,' Featherston said. 'I think this one'll do some good, too. High time people got the wool pulled away from over their eyes. High time they see you don't have to be a Whig to run the country. High time they see we'd be better off with people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, who aren't afraid to pitch right in and do what needs doing. We've got to fix things. We can't go on like this.'
'No.' Goldman shook his head. 'Times are very hard.' He risked a smile at Jake. 'You should be glad you have a job.'
'I am,' Jake said. 'I've had a job ever since the war ended: to see the Confederate States back on top. It's taken me a long time to start doing that job. But I think my hour's coming round at last.'
'I think you may be right,' the station manager agreed. 'If not now, when will it come?'
If not now, will it ever come? But Jake Featherston pushed that thought to the back of his mind, as he did whenever it cropped up. He couldn't afford to doubt, and so he didn't. 'I'm going to tell you something, Mr. Goldman,' he said. 'This here station and the web you've set up have done the Freedom Party a hell of a lot of good. We don't forget our enemies. Everybody knows that. But we don't forget our friends, either. You'll see.'
'Thank you,' Goldman said. 'That I should be your friend surprises me. We've had that talk before, a long time
