rebuilding. He added, 'We've got the United States to pay back, too.'
'I haven't forgotten,' Jake said. 'Don't you worry about that, Willy. I haven't forgotten at all. That's why I came out here-to help everybody remember.'
When he got to the park, it was filling up fast. Bare bulbs bathed the platform from which he would speak, though the sun hadn't set yet. As he walked up onto the platform and over to the microphone that would send his words across the CSA, a frightening, almost savage, roar went up from the crowd. He hoped the microphone would pick it up. He wanted people to get all hot and bothered when they heard him or thought about him.
'Hello, friends,' he said at six on the dot. 'I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth. The truth is, the United States are afraid of us. You look across what they call the border, you look into what they call Houston, and you'll know it's the truth. If they let people over there vote which country they wanted to belong to, they know what would happen. You know what would happen, too. Texas would be itself again. And so the Yankees don't let 'em vote.'
Cheers in Abilene had that savage edge, too. Here not far from the border, people feared the United States, whether the United States feared them or not.
Jake went on, 'The USA won't let people in Kentucky vote on that, either, or people in Sequoyah. They know where the people would go, and they don't aim to let 'em. Why? They're scared, that's why!'
He pointed east, a gesture full of contempt. 'And do the Whigs way over there in Richmond, the Whigs who've been running this country ever since the War of Secession, do they do anything about it? Do they push the USA to let the folks in Houston- Houston! — and Kentucky and Sequoyah vote about who they want to belong to? Do they? Do they? Noooo!' He made the word a howl of rage. 'They're nothing but a pack of dinosaurs, is what they are. And you know what you've got to do with dinosaurs, don't you? Send 'em to the museum! '
A vast roar went up. Featherston looked back at Willy Knight, standing there behind him. They grinned at each other. Knight was happy about his own cleverness, even though he thought Featherston had had the idea on his own, too. Jake was happy about how well the line had gone over. He knew he'd stolen it, knew and didn't care. The point was, it did what he wanted. And nobody else in the whole wide world knew, or cared, where he'd got it.
Little by little, Party men turned the roar into a chant: 'Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!' The crowd followed along. The chant went on till Jake's head rang with it.
He raised his hands. Quiet slowly returned. Into it, he said, 'Come November, you get your chance to send some more Whigs to the museum. I know you'll take care of it, friends. Folks who think they're smart used to say the Freedom Party was dead. We'll show 'em who's dead, see if we don't, and who needs burying, too. We're not dead, by God. We're just getting started!' Another roar went up, one that told him he'd found a brand-new slogan.
'H asta luego,' Hipolito Rodriguez told his wife. 'I'm going into Baroyeca. I'll vote, and then I'm going to stay to see how the election turns out.'
Magdalena wagged a finger at him. 'And in between times you'll sit in La Culebra Verde and waste money on cerveza.'
'If a man can't have a beer or two with his friends, the world is in a sorry state indeed,' Rodriguez said with dignity.
'A beer or two, or four, or six.' Magdalena wagged that finger again, but indulgently. 'Go on. Have a good time. I will say you've never been one to sit in the cantina all the time and come home drunk four days a week. Libertad! '
'Libertad!' Rodriguez echoed. He put a serape on over his shirt; the weather was about as chilly as it ever got around Baroyeca. He put on a wide-brimmed straw hat, too. It wasn't raining, but looked as if it might.
The polling place was in one room of the mayor's house. More often than not, Rodriguez still thought of the mayor as the alcalde; even though Sonora had belonged to the CSA longer than he'd been alive, the old Spanish forms died hard, especially here in the south.
He gave his name, signed on the appropriate line in the record book, and took his ballot into a voting booth. He voted for the Freedom Party candidates for Congress, for his state legislature, and for governor of Sonora. When he'd finished, he folded the ballot, gave it to a waiting clerk, and watched till the man put it into a ballot box.
' Senor Rodriguez has voted,' the clerk intoned, a formula as full of ritual as any in the Mass.
As Rodriguez left the mayor's office, Jaime Diaz came towards it. They exchanged greetings. From within, someone called out a warning: 'No electioneering within a hundred feet of the polling place.'
That too was ritual. Rodriguez snorted. 'Electioneering!' he said. 'All I want to do is say hello.'
'I can't chat anyhow,' Diaz said. 'I've got Esteban back at the general store, and he can't count to eleven without looking at his toes, so I have to get back there as fast as I can.'
'We'll talk some other time, then,' Rodriguez said. 'Adios.' He didn't say, Libertad. The fellow inside had warned him against electioneering.
When he wandered over to La Culebra Verde, he found it crowded. Many of the men sitting and drinking had worked in the silver mines that went belly-up soon after the stock market sank. These days, the miners didn't have much to do with their time but sit around and drink. Rodriguez wondered where some of them came up with the dimes they used to buy beer, but that wasn't his worry. A lot of the miners, he suspected, would spend money on cerveza before they spent it on their families. That wasn't the way he would have done it, but they wouldn't care.
Carlos Ruiz waved to him. He waved back, bought himself a bottle of beer, and joined his friend at a corner table. Ruiz was also a farmer. He might not have a lot of dimes-what farmer ever had a lot of money? — but he did still have some income. 'Have you voted?' he asked as Rodriguez sat down across from him.
'Oh, yes. Libertad! ' Rodriguez answered. He kept his voice down, though. Some people came into the cantina to brawl as well as to drink. Arguments over politics gave them a good excuse. Rodriguez had seen enough fighting during the Great War that he never wanted to see any more.
'Libertad!' Ruiz said, also quietly. 'I think we are going to do very well this year.'
'I hope so,' Rodriguez said. 'A pity, though, that it takes trouble to show people what they should have been doing all along.'
His friend shrugged. 'If you're fat and happy, do you want to change? Of course not. You keep on doing what you always did. After all, that's what made you fat and happy, si? You need a jolt to want to change.'
'Much truth in that,' Rodriguez agreed. 'But the whole country got a jolt in 1917. Too many people try to pretend it never happened. Ah, well- asi es la vida.' He shrugged, too, and took a pull at the beer.
The question that had occurred to Rodriguez was also on the minds of the out-of-work miners. One of them asked the man behind the bar for another beer, saying, 'You know I'll pay you soon, Felipe.'
Felipe shook his head. ' Lo siento, Antonio, but if you pay me soon you'll get your beer soon, too-as soon as you pay me, as a matter of fact. I can't carry people, the way I could when times were better. I hardly make enough money to keep this place open as is.'
Rodriguez had his doubts about that. If a cantina couldn't make money, what could? Probably nothing. After all, what did hard times do? They drove men to drink.
'My wife is going to get a job any day now,' Antonio whined. 'I'll have the money. By God, I will.'
Women's jobs in Baroyeca were even harder to come by than those for men. There was, of course, one obvious exception. Somebody behind Antonio-Rodriguez couldn't see who-said, 'She'll have a nice, comfortable time of it, too, working on her back.'
Rodriguez didn't think the man who made the crack intended Antonio to recognize his voice, either. Coming from nowhere in particular, a gibe like that might be tolerated. But Antonio whirled, shouted, 'Chinga tu madre!' and threw himself at another miner. They rolled on the floor, cursing and clawing and pounding at each other.
Felipe kept a club under the bar. Rodriguez had seen him take it out before, mostly to brandish it for effect. He'd never seen a sawed-off shotgun come out from under there before. Men dove away from the two battling miners.
'Enough!' Felipe yelled. Antonio and his foe both froze. The bartender gestured with the shotgun. 'Take it outside. Don't come back, either-and that goes for both of you. Out-or else I blow holes in you.'
Out they went. Rodriguez realized he was holding his beer bottle by the neck, ready to use it as a club or break it against the table for a nastier weapon. He'd also scooted back his chair so he could dive under the table if he had to. Across from him, Ruiz was just as ready to fight or take cover. Very slowly and carefully, Rodriguez set
