'I prefer to stand.'
'Sit down, I said,' Jake snapped, and Stuart, startled, sank into the chair. Featherston nodded. 'Remember the last time you paid a call on me, General? You were gloating, on account of I was down. You reckoned I was down for good. You weren't quite as smart as you reckoned, were you?'
'No, sir.' Jeb Stuart Jr.'s voice remained stubbornly wooden.
'Do you recollect Clarence Potter, General Stuart?' Featherston asked. Doing his best to remain impassive, Stuart nodded. Featherston went on, 'I just brought him back into the Army-rank of colonel.'
'That is your privilege, Mr. President.' Stuart did his best not to make things easy.
His best wasn't going to be good enough. Jake had the whip hand now. 'Yeah,' he said. 'It is. You screwed his career over just as hard as you screwed mine. And for what? I'll tell you for what, God damn you. On account of we were right, that's what.'
Jeb Stuart Jr. didn't answer. During the war, Jake had served in a battery commanded by Jeb Stuart III, his son. He'd suspected Pompey, the younger Stuart's colored servant, of being a Red. He'd said as much to Potter. Jeb Stuart III had used his family influence, and his father's, to get Pompey off the hook. The only trouble was, Pompey had been a Red. When that proved unmistakably clear, Jeb Stuart III had thrown his life away in combat rather than face the music. And Jeb Stuart Jr. had made sure neither Featherston nor Potter saw another promotion through the rest of the war.
'Did you reckon I'd forget, General Stuart?' Jake asked softly. 'I never forget that kind of thing. Never, you hear me?'
'I hear you, Mr. President,' Stuart said. 'The high respect I hold for your office precludes my saying more.'
'For my office, eh? Not for me?' Featherston waited. Again, Jeb Stuart Jr. didn't answer. Jake shrugged. He knew the older man blamed him for Jeb Stuart III's death. Too damn had, he thought. In spite of his campaign promises, he'd walked softly around the Army up till now. He hadn't been quite ready to clean house. All of a sudden, he was-and surviving an assassination attempt would do wonders for his popularity, cushion whatever anger there might have been. 'I accept your resignation, General.'
That struck home. Stuart glared. He'd spent fifty-five years in the Confederate Army; he'd been a boy hero in the Second Mexican War, and had never known or wanted any other life. 'You don't have it, you… you damned upstart! ' he burst out.
Upstart? Jake knew he was one. The difference between him and Stuart- between him and all the swarms of Juniors and IIIs and IVs and Vs in the CSA-was that he was proud of it. 'No resignation?' he said. Jeb Stuart Jr. shook his head. Featherston shrugged. 'All right with me. In that case, you're fired. Don't bother cleaning out your desk. Don't bother about your pension, either. You're finished, as of now.'
'I demand a court-martial,' Stuart said furiously. 'What are the charges against me, damn you? I've been in the Army and risking my life for my country since before you were a gleam in your white-trash father's eye. And not even the president of the Confederate States of America has the power to drum me out without my day in court.'
'White trash, is it?' Featherston whispered. Jeb Stuart Jr. nodded defiantly. 'All right, Mr. Blueblood. All right,' Jake said. 'You want charges, you stinking son of a bitch? I'll give you charges, by Christ!' His voice rose and went harsh and rough as a rasp: 'Yeah, I'll give you charges. Charges are aiding and abetting your inbred idiot son, Captain Jeb fucking Stuart III, in hiding that his prissy little nigger called Pompey was really a goddamn Red. I'll take you down, cocksucker, and I'll take your stinking brat down with you. There won't be a place in the CSA you can hide in by the time I'm done with you two, you'll stink so bad. And so will he.'
The color drained from Jeb Stuart Jr.'s face. It wasn't just that no one had talked to him like that in all his life. But no one had ever gone for the jugular against him with such fiendish gusto. He was white as typing paper when he found his voice, choking out, 'You-You wouldn't. Not even you would stoop so low.'
Jake smiled savagely. 'Try me. You want a court, that's what you'll get.'
'G-Give me a pen, God damn you,' Stuart said. Featherston did, and paper to go with it. The officer's hand shook as he wrote. He shoved the paper back across the desk. I resign from the Army of the Confederate States, effective immediately, he'd written, and a scrawled signature below the words. 'Does that satisfy you?'
'Damn right it does. I've been waiting for it for twenty years,' Jake answered. 'Now get the hell out of here. You start feeling unhappy, just remember you're getting off easy.'
Jeb Stuart Jr. stormed from the office. He slammed the door as he went. Jake laughed. He'd heard a lot of slams since becoming president. This one didn't measure up to some of the others.
After a moment, Jake called, 'Lulu?'
'Yes, Mr. President?' his secretary said.
'Give Saul Goldman a buzz for me, will you?' Featherston was always polite to Lulu, if to nobody else. 'Tell him I want to talk with him right away.'
When he said right away to Goldman, the skinny little Jew, who got the Freedom Party's message out to the country and the world, took him literally. He got to Jake's office within five minutes. 'What can I do for you, Mr. President?'
'General Jeb Stuart Jr. just resigned.' Featherston flourished the sheet of paper with the one-line message. 'I'm going to tell you why he resigned, too.' He gave Goldman the story of Jeb Stuart III and Pompey.
Goldman blinked. 'You want me to announce that to the country? Are you sure?'
'Damn right I do. Damn right I am.' Jake nodded emphatically. 'Let people know why he left. Let 'em know we'll be cleaning out more useless time-servers soon, too. That's the angle I want you to take. Reckon you can handle it?'
'If that's what you want, Mr. President, that's what you'll get,' Goldman said.
'That's what I want,' Jake Featherston declared. And sure as hell, what he wanted, he got.
VII
Jefferson Pinkard stood in line at the Odeum, waiting to buy a ticket. When he got up to the window, he shoved a quarter at the fellow behind it. He took the ticket and walked inside. After a pause at the concession stand, he went into the darkness of the theater, popcorn and a Dr. Hopper in hand.
He sat in the middle of a row, so people going by wouldn't make him spill the popcorn or the soda. As soon as he was settled, he started methodically munching away. No one else sat very close to him, maybe because of the noise. He didn't care. He wasn't there for company. He was there to kill a couple of hours.
The maroon velvet curtains slid back to either side of the stage, revealing the screen. In the back of the theater, the projector began to hum and whir. SMOKING IS PROHIBITED IN THIS AUDITORIUM appeared on the screen, then vanished.
Most of the people in the Odeum came from Fort Deposit. They leaned forward almost in unison, knowing the newsreel was coming up next. Pinkard leaned forward with them. Since coming to work at the Alabama Correctional Camp (P), he'd felt far more cut off from the world around him than he ever had up in Birmingham. If not for wireless and moving pictures, the outside world would hardly have touched this little Alabama town.
'In Richmond, the Olympic Games came to a magnificent conclusion!' the announcer blared. 'The Confederate States have shown the world they are on the move again, thanks to President Featherston and the Freedom Party.'
'Freedom!' somebody in the auditorium called, and the chant rang out. Jeff was glad to join it, but it didn't last; people couldn't chant and hear what the announcer was saying at the same time.
Confederate athletes with the C.S. battle flag on their shirtfronts ran and jumped and swam and flung javelins. Smiling, they posed with medals draped around their necks. President Featherston posed with them, shaking their hands in congratulations. He turned to face the camera and said, 'We're a match for anybody-more than a match for anybody. And nothing's going to stop us from getting where we're going.'
Suddenly, the camera cut away from the athletes. It lingered on the crumpled corpse of a black man, and on the submachine gun half visible under his body. 'This stinking, worthless nigger tried to assassinate our beloved president, who sat watching the athletic competition,' the announcer declared. 'Thanks to the heroism of a Great
