whether we go to Whig headquarters after supper.'
Potter smiled but shook his head. 'Plenty of time for that afterwards. I have this restless itch to know, and it needs satisfying as much as any other urge.'
'All right.' And, to Anne's internal surprise, it was all right. She knew Clarence Potter was interested; she'd had plenty of very pleasant proofs of that. If he put business before pleasure… well, didn't she, too? I'm keeping company with a grownup, she thought. It was, in her experience, a novelty, but one she didn't mind.
When they went out for supper, she ordered a big plate of boiled shrimp. 'They don't come fresh to St. Matthews,' she said.
'No, I suppose not,' Potter agreed. 'When I first moved here, I remember thinking how wonderful all the seafood was.' He'd chosen crab cakes for himself. 'Now, unless people remind me about it the way you just did, I take it for granted. I shouldn't do that, should I?'
'No,' Anne said. 'The whole country's taken too many things for granted.'
'We're liable to pay the price for it, too,' he said. 'That goes back a long way now, you know-starting when we took it for granted we'd win the Great War and be home to celebrate by the time the leaves turned red and gold.'
The colored waiter brought their suppers. As Anne began to eat, she said, 'I took that for granted, and I can't say otherwise. You didn't, did you?'
'No-but remember, I went to Yale. I was there for four Remembrance Days. I had a pretty fair notion of how desperately in earnest those people were. We figured we could whip them. They went out and made damn sure they could whip us.' He took a bite of crab cake, nodded, and went on in meditative tones: 'We've always figured we could whip the Freedom Party, too. But the damnyankees aren't the only people who are desperately in earnest. That's what worries me.'
'We'll find out.' Anne feared he might be right, but didn't want to think about it, not just then.
After they finished supper, they walked over to the Whig headquarters. It lay only three or four blocks away. Even in November, bugs still buzzed around street lamps. Something-a bird? a bat? — swooped down, grabbed one of them out of the air, and vanished into darkness again.
When Anne and Clarence Potter came into the headquarters, they got their share, and more than their share, of suspicious looks. Anne had former Freedom Party ties that made people distrust her. Her companion didn't, but he did have the unfortunate habit of saying exactly what he thought, and that regardless of what the received wisdom was.
But then someone called out to them: 'Have you heard the news?'
Potter shook his head. Anne said, 'No, that's what we came here for. What's the latest?'
'Horatio Standifer out in North Carolina,' the man replied. 'In Congress since before the war, but a Freedom Party man just did him in.'
'Oh, good God,' Potter said. 'If Standifer lost his seat, nobody's safe tonight. And if nobody's safe tonight, then God help the country tomorrow.'
'What's the news here in South Carolina?' Anne asked.
'Not as bad as that,' the Whig said. 'We're going to lose the seat we picked up two years ago, and maybe one more besides.'
Potter pointed at the blackboard on which new results were going up. 'Maybe two more besides, looks like to me.'
After a second look at the numbers, the other Whig scowled and nodded. 'Maybe two more besides,' he admitted, and went off as if Potter had some sort of contagious disease.
He does, Anne thought. He tells the truth as he sees it, and he pulls no punches. Such men are dangerous.
Returns from Georgia started coming, and then Tennessee and Alabama. The more of them there were, the longer the faces at Whig headquarters got. People started slipping over to the saloon across the street. Some of them came back. Others didn't-they stayed away and began the serious business of drowning their sorrows.
Clarence Potter didn't go. Each new seat lost to the Freedom Party-and those came in one after another, with no possible room for doubt in most of them-brought not howls of dismay from him, but rather a bitter smile. He might have been telling the world, I knew this was going to happen. Now here it is, and what are you going to do about it? No one in the Whig headquarters seemed to have the slightest idea what to do about it… except for the men who headed across the street to get drunk.
As Anne watched the man she was with, so he watched her, too. After a while, he said, 'It's probably not too late for you, you know.'
'What do you mean?' she asked, though she had a pretty good idea.
And, sure enough, he said, 'Your politics aren't that far from Jake Featherston's. If you want to, you can probably make your peace with him.'
She wanted to haul off and slap him. She wanted to, but she couldn't, for the same thought had crossed her mind. He told her the truth as he saw it, too. Still, she said, 'I don't know. I turned him down once when he asked for money, years ago. He doesn't forget things like that.'
Potter laughed scornfully. 'I'll tell you what he won't turn down. He won't turn down money if you give it to him now, that's what.'
Anne wondered about that. She decided Potter was probably half right. Jake Featherston might take her money if she offered it to him again. But would he ever trust her, ever let her have any real influence? She had her doubts. Featherston struck her as a man whose memory for slights an elephant would envy.
Casually, Clarence Potter added, 'If you do go back to him, we're through. I don't know how much that means to you. I hope it means something. Losing you would mean a lot to me. But I've known Featherston longer than any of the 'Freedom!'-shouting yahoos who go marching for him these days. We aren't on the same side, and we're never going to be.'
'What if he gets elected president?' Anne asked.
A muscle jumped in his right cheek, perhaps an inch below his eye. 'No one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the Confederate people, but I still find that hard to imagine-even harder than it was in 1921, when he came so close. And 1933's still a long way away. Things are bound to look better by then.' He paused and sighed. 'And the way you asked that question makes me wonder if we aren't through anyhow.'
'Up till now, you never put any conditions on me,' Anne said. 'I liked it that you never put any conditions on me.'
'Up till now, I never imagined I needed to,' he answered. 'But I can't put up with the Freedom Party. I'm sorry, but I can't.'
'Don't you want revenge on the USA?' she asked.
'I don't want anything that badly,' Potter said.
Anne sighed. 'Some things are worth any price.' He shook his head. Now she sighed. 'It's been fun, Clarence,' she said. 'But I'll do what I think I have to do, and not what anyone else tells me to. Not ever.' No wonder I never got married, she thought. She walked out of the Whig headquarters and back toward her motorcar.
K amloops, British Columbia, was a long way from Philadelphia, and a long way from the Confederate States, too. That didn't keep news from getting there about as fast as it got anywhere else, though, not in this age of telegraph clickers and wireless sets. Colonel Irving Morrell studied the Confederate election returns with a sort of horrified fascination.
'Sweet Jesus Christ!' he said, looking at the newspaper that had set them out in detail.
'Er-yes, sir,' his aide-de-camp said, and chuckled.
'No offense, Lieutenant,' Morrell said hastily. 'Just a manner of speaking.'
'Oh, yes, sir. I know that,' Lieutenant Ike Horwitz answered. 'You're not like that damn German sergeant who was tagging along with your buddy from the General Staff over there.'
'I should hope not.' Morrell set the paper on Horwitz's desk. 'But look at this. For heaven's sake, look at this. The Freedom Party went from-what? — nine Congressmen to twenty-nine. They won three governorships down there. They took control of four state legislatures, too, and that means they'll start electing Senators, because their state legislatures still choose 'em. They didn't switch to popular vote, the way we did.'
'That's a big pickup, no doubt about it.' Horwitz leaned forward to study the numbers. He looked up at Morrell. 'I'm awful damn glad I'm a Jew in the USA, and not a shvartzer in the CSA.'
