Potter had to clap, too. As he did, he reluctantly nodded. He's shrewder than he used to be, he thought. He doesn't just think of himself any more. But that wasn't right. No, he lets people think he's thinking about them. Inside, he's still the same cold-blooded snake he always was.
'Burton Mitchel wants to cozy up to the United States. The USA saved his bacon once,' Featherston shouted. 'But the United States can't save his bacon this time around, on account of they haven't got any bacon of their own. And even if they did, do y'all want to be the USA's tagalong little brother from now till the end of time?'
Some people shouted, 'No!' Others shouted things a good deal more incendiary. Potter would never have said anything like that where ladies might hear. But then, not ten feet away from him, a woman who looked like a schoolteacher yelled something that would have made a sergeant, a twenty-year veteran, blush.
'We've got us a duty: a duty to be strong,' Jake Featherston declared. 'We've got us a duty to stand up to the United States just as soon as we can. And to do that, we've got us a duty to put our own house in order. We've got us a duty to put people back to work. We've got us a duty to make sure they don't go hungry. We've got us a duty to keep the niggers in their place, and not to let them steal work from white folks. And we've got us a duty to remember what the Confederate States of America are all about. And folks, what we're about is-'
'Freedom!' The great roar staggered Potter.
'Y'all remember that,' Featherston said. 'Remember it every single day. When you see the liars and the cheats getting together, don't let 'em get away with it. Smash 'em up! How can you have freedom when the rich folks want to take it away from you?'
Does he see the irony there? Potter wondered. Does he see it and not care, or does it go right by him? As the crowd roared, as Jake Featherston wished them a happy New Year and exhorted them to vote for the Party in November, Potter wondered which of those possibilities frightened him worse.
W hen Jake Featherston came through South Carolina on his speaking tour, Anne Colleton tried to see him. She tried, and she failed. Featherston wouldn't talk to her; a flunky told her he wasn't available.
She fumed for days afterwards. She wasn't used to getting brushed off. Her habit, in fact, was to brush off others. Featherston annoyed her enough to make her wonder if she shouldn't stay a Whig after all. In the end, what made her decide she had to swallow her pride was the thought that staying a Whig meant admitting Clarence Potter had been right all along. If he had, why had she broken up with him over their political differences? Staying a Whig would mean swallowing her pride, too, and swallowing it in front of an old lover. She preferred making up with Jake Featherston to that.
After the papers announced Featherston's return to Richmond, she sent a telegram to Freedom Party headquarters: SHALL I COME NORTH TO TALK THINGS OVER?
The answer, at least, returned promptly: COME AHEAD. CONVINCE FERD KOENIG. THEN WE'LL SEE. FEATHERSTON.
Anne said something extremely unladylike as she crumpled up the telegram and threw it in the trash. Having to talk with anyone except Jake Featherston himself was galling. But Ferdinand Koenig wasn't a flunky, or not precisely a flunky. He'd been in the Freedom Party even longer than Featherston had, and had twice been his running mate on the Party ticket. The main difference between him and Jake was that he wasn't colorful.
And so, swallowing her pride again, Anne wired, ARRIVE NEXT TUESDAY. LOOKING FORWARD TO MEETING MR. KOENIG.
As she usually did when coming up to Richmond, she booked a room in Ford's Hotel, just north of Capitol Square. The room she got gave her a fine view of the square. In happier times, it would have been a peaceful, restful, patriotic view. She could have looked out on the grass and on the splendid statues of George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston.
She could still see the statues. Tents and shanties swallowed almost all the winter-brown grass. Men walked aimlessly from one to another, some smoking, some sipping from whiskey bottles. Here and there, women hung out laundry on lines that ran from tents to trees. Children ran this way and that.
Columbia and Charleston had shantytowns, too. Even St. Matthews had a little one. But Anne had never seen any to match Richmond's. The capital of the Confederate States was a great city. When things went wrong, they went wrong more visibly here than anywhere else.
She asked the house detective, 'How bad are things? Will my clothes and suitcases still be in my room when I get back?'
'Likely so, ma'am,' he answered. 'We work hard at keeping the trash out of the hotel. We had some trouble with that when things first went sour, but we don't let it happen any more. It's just a matter of taking pains.'
Giving pains, too, she thought. The house dick was about six feet three, with shoulders wide as a barn door. He wasn't visibly armed, but she was sure he had brass knucks or a blackjack stashed where he could get at them in a hurry. She wouldn't have wanted to run into him if he found her anywhere she wasn't supposed to be.
When she waited on the street for a taxi, though, beggars hurried across Capitol Street to try to pry money out of her. She knew that, if she gave anything to anybody, none of them would ever leave her at peace. Closing the motorcar door on them was a relief.
'Where to, ma'am?' the cabby asked.
'Freedom Party headquarters,' Anne answered. She wondered if she would have to give him the address.
As things turned out, she didn't. The driver nodded. 'Take you right over there. It ain't far at all. I'm thinking about voting that way myself come November, matter of fact.'
Alert guards armed with bayoneted Tredegars stood outside the headquarters. They wore what was almost but not quite Confederate Army uniform. Their clothes weren't quite the same as what the Tin Hats put on. These men looked somehow more menacing than most members of the big veterans' outfit. Anne didn't know whether that was the cut of their uniforms or the expressions on their faces. Some of each, she thought.
'You're Mrs. Colleton, come to see Mr. Koenig?' one of them asked.
Anne shook her head. 'I'm Miss Colleton, and you'd better remember it.'
'Sorry,' the disconcerted guard muttered, and passed her on into the building.
She had to ask two more people how to find Ferdinand Koenig's office, which struck her as inefficient. When at last she got there, a pretty secretary led her inside. Koenig looked like a man who'd done time in the trenches. He had fierce eyebrows, a jutting jaw, and a rumbling baritone voice. 'Good to see you again, Miss Colleton,' he said. 'It's been a few years, hasn't it? Sit down. Make yourself at home. Tell me why you've decided the Freedom Party isn't such a bad thing after all.'
He looked like a bruiser. He didn't sound like one, though. He'd been Jake Featherston's right-hand man for a long time now. That almost certainly meant he could think as well as break heads. Anne said, 'When I left the Party, you were still tainted by what Grady Calkins did. Our politics have never been that far apart, whether I was formally with you or not.'
'You're saying you're a fair-weather friend. You'll back us if we look like winners and dump us if we don't,' Koenig said. 'Question is, in that case, why should we want to have anything to do with you?'
'Because we're going the same way. Because I can help you get there. You'll know what I did in South Carolina. When I wasn't with you, I was trying to bring the Whigs more into line with what you've been saying all along.'
Ferdinand Koenig paused to light a cigarette. After blowing out a cloud of smoke, he said, 'And you were doing us a favor by this, you say?'
'No, I don't think so, and that isn't what I said,' Anne answered. 'But I think I was doing the country a favor. That's what this is really all about, isn't it? — what happens to the Confederate States, I mean.'
Another cloud of smoke rose from Koenig. 'That's… some of what this is about,' he said at last. 'The rest of it is, why should we trust you now? You walked away once, walked away and left us in the lurch. Who says you won't do it again?'
'No one at all, if I don't happen to like the way you're going,' Anne said. 'But as long as we're heading in the same direction, wouldn't you rather have me on your side than against you?'
'Maybe,' he answered. 'Maybe not, too.' His eyes measured her. She didn't care for that gaze; Koenig might have been looking at her over the sights of a rifle. 'You don't pull any punches, though, do you?'
'I try not to,' Anne said. 'Getting straight to the point saves time.'
'Maybe,' Koenig said again. He didn't say anything more till he'd finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in an brass ashtray made from the base of a shell casing. Then he went on, 'You talk a good game, I will say that for
