The Center Cannot Hold

XIX

In an odd way, Colonel Abner Dowling was glad to have something to worry about that didn't involve keeping the Mormons in Salt Lake City from erupting. The desultory war with Japan hadn't done the job. He'd wanted to go fight, and the War Department hadn't let him. That brought nothing but frustration.

Looking with alarm at events south of the border, though, did a fine job of distracting him. He rounded on his adjutant one morning, growling, "What the devil are we going to do if that Featherston maniac really does get elected in the CSA come November?"

"I don't know, sir," Captain Toricelli answered. "What can we do if he wins the election? We can't very well tell the Confederates to go back and vote again."

"No, but I wish we could," Dowling said. "That man is nothing but trouble waiting to happen. He wants another go at us. He hardly even bothers hiding it any more."

"I don't see how we can stop a politician from making speeches, sir," Angelo Toricelli said. "If he gets to be president and then starts building up the C.S. Army and violating the terms of the armistice the Confederates signed, we can do something about him. Till then…" He shrugged.

"But will President Hoover do anything?" Dowling said. "He certainly hasn't done much since he landed in Powel House six months ago."

Toricelli gave him a sly smile. "Would you rather we still had President Blackford?"

"Good God, no!" Dowling exclaimed; he'd always been a solid Democrat. "But I would like to see Hoover doing a little more. If things are any better than they were when Blackford went home to Dakota, I haven't seen it."

"It won't happen overnight, sir." His adjutant was a Democrat, too. Most officers were.

"Obviously," Dowling said. "I do wish it would show some signs of happening at all, though."

"The whole world has troubles," Toricelli said, and Dowling nodded, for that was obviously true.

"Utah probably has more troubles than the rest of the world." Abner Dowling corrected himself: "Utah certainly has worse troubles than the rest of the world. Maybe that's why we're not seeing things looking better here." He spoke as if trying to convince himself, hoping he could convince himself. But he remained incompletely convinced. He said, "If more people here had jobs, we wouldn't need to worry… quite… so much about this place going up in smoke."

"Yes, sir," Captain Toricelli agreed; his adjutant was nothing if not polite. But Toricelli was also stubborn. He went on, "If you know how to arrange that, sir, you should have run for president last year."

General Custer had always claimed he'd had a shot at the presidency in 1884. There were any number of ways in which Dowling didn't want to imitate the officer under whom he'd served for so long. He couldn't imagine any job he wanted less than that of the president, especially in these thankless times.

And yet… He snapped his fingers. "You know, Captain, we could put a lot of people to work if we cleared Temple Square of the rubble that's been sitting there for almost twenty years now."

Toricelli frowned. "Yes, sir, we could. But isn't the point of keeping the rubble there to remind the Mormons we gave them a licking? There's not going to be a new Temple in Salt Lake City, any more than there's going to be one in Jerusalem."

Dowling muttered under his breath. Not only was Captain Toricelli polite and stubborn, he was also smart. But Dowling still liked the idea, or part of it. "All right, suppose we cordon off the part of the square that held the Temple and get rid of the rest of the rubbish?" he said. "The Tabernacle and the other buildings weren't holy ground."

He waited, wondering what his adjutant would make of that. Toricelli spent close to a minute thinking it over. Then he said, "Shall I draft a telegram for you to send to the War Department?"

"Yes, Captain, if you'd be so kind." Dowling beamed. He suspected Captain Toricelli made a tougher audience than any he'd face back in Philadelphia.

The wire went out two days later. The afternoon it did, Dowling got a wire from the War Department: WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS IN UTAH DESIRABLE. YOUR IDEA FORWARDED TO SECRETARY OF WAR FOR APPROVAL. The printed signature on the sheet of yellow paper belonged to Lieutenant General Sam Sturgis, chief of the General Staff.

He heard from the Secretary of War the next day. PRESIDENT HOOVER PERSONALLY CONTROLS ALL DECISIONS ON UTAH, the wire said. I HAVE PASSED THIS PROPOSAL TO HIM RECOMMENDING APPROVAL, WHICH IS EXPECTED.

Dowling understood that this Cabinet official, a distant relative of the last Democratic president before Hoover, remained in the service of his country despite being confined to a wheelchair by some rare, debilitating disease.

Though Captain Toricelli already knew what was in the telegram, Dowling set it on his desk anyhow. "If the chief of the General Staff says yes, and if the Secretary of War says yes, how can the president say no?" he exulted.

"I don't know, sir," his adjutant replied. "I hope we don't find out."

But they did. The very next day, the telephone in Dowling's office rang. He picked it up. "Abner Dowling speaking."

"Colonel Dowling, this is Herbert Hoover." And it was. Dowling had heard his voice on the wireless and in newsreels too many times to have any doubt.

He stiffened to attention in his chair. "It's a privilege to speak with you, sir."

"Maybe you won't think so when I'm done," the president said. "Your proposal for makework for the people of Utah is not to go forward. Do you understand me?"

"It is not to go forward," Dowling repeated. "I hear you, and I will obey, of course, but I have to say I do not understand."

"We have had too much of Socialist-style, individualism-sapping false nostrums the past twelve years," Hoover said. "Paternalism and state socialism have done a great deal of harm to the country. They stifle initiative. They cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of the people. And I will not have them under my administration."

Well, that's that, Dowling thought. But he couldn't help asking, "Sir, don't you think Utah is a special case?"

"Every case has partisans who insist it is special," Hoover answered. "I recognize none of them. I believe none of them. The same principles must apply throughout the United States."

Quickly, Dowling said, "I meant no harm, Mr. President." He'd never heard Hoover sound so vehement, not in any of his speeches. He hadn't imagined the new president could sound so vehement.

"I believe you, Colonel. I am not angry at you," President Hoover said, which made Dowling feel a little-though only a little-better. Hoover went on, "I'm sure the Socialists meant no harm, either. But you know which road is paved with good intentions."

"Yes, sir," Dowling said.

"All right, then," the president said. "We'll say no more about it. But my decision is final. I do not want this issue raised again."

"Yes, sir," Dowling repeated.

"Good." Hoover hung up.

Dowling emerged from his office feeling like a man who'd survived a bomb going off much too close. Thanks to the Confederates during the war and that damned Canuck afterwards, he knew more about bombs going off too close than he'd ever wanted to learn. What he felt must not have shown on his face, though, for Captain Toricelli said, "I heard you talking to the president, sir. May we go ahead?"

His voice said he was confident of the answer. Well, Abner Dowling had been confident of the answer, too. Much good his confidence had done him. He shook his head. His jowls wobbled back and forth. "No, Captain. In fact, we're ordered not to go ahead, and so we won't."

Toricelli gaped. "But… why, sir?"

"The president feels the scheme smacks of socialism. He says we've had enough government programs trying to get us over the hump, and he doesn't want another one."

"But…" his adjutant said again.

"He's the president. What he says goes," Dowling said. "And he and Coolidge did campaign against government interference, and they did get elected. If I look at it that way, maybe I'm not so surprised."

"But…" Toricelli said once more. After a moment, he gathered himself and managed something else: "We're not competing against any private firm clearing Temple Square. There is no private firm clearing Temple Square."

"If you care to call Powel House, Captain, go right ahead," Dowling said. "As for me, I'm sure I know what the president wants done and what he doesn't. And he doesn't want us giving the Mormons even a dime to haul rocks out of Temple Square."

"A few days ago, we were saying he didn't seem to want to do much of anything," his adjutant observed. "Don't you think this goes too far, though?"

"What I think is, he's the president of the United States. If you set my opinion next to his, I know whose comes out on top. We've been ordered not to proceed. That being so, we won't proceed."

"I can't argue with you there, sir," Toricelli said.

"Good," Dowling said. "I'm glad. For your sake, I'm glad. It's a free country. You can disagree with the president. Nobody will say a word. But when he gives an order, we follow it."

"Of course, sir," Captain Toricelli replied, as any officer in the Army would have done.

A few days later, Dowling received Heber Young in his office. Young, a handsome man in his early thirties, was a grandson of Brigham Young. Given the number of wives and children Brigham had had, that was hardly a unique distinction in Utah these days. This particular Young came as close to being an official leader as the Mormons had. Since, under martial law, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was proscribed, he couldn't be very official. But he wasn't exactly unofficial, either.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Young?" Dowling asked after greetings that were what diplomats called "correct": polite and chilly.

"People here need work, Colonel," Heber Young replied.

"People all over the country need work, sir," Dowling said.

"Will you tell me the problem is not worse here?" Young asked.

"If it is, whose fault is that?" Dowling said. "I was with General Pershing when a Mormon fanatic murdered him-a Mormon fanatic we've never caught, for other Mormon fanatics have sheltered him for all the years since."

"I don't know how you can say that, Colonel, when the U.S. government insists again and again that there is no such thing as the Mormon Church in Utah these days." Young spoke with surprisingly mild irony.

It was still enough to raise a flush on Dowling's plump cheeks. "Funny, Mr. Young. Very funny. Come to the point, if you'd be so kind."

"All right. I will." Young looked serious to the point of solemnity. "We could use-we desperately need-a public-works program to give men jobs, help them support their families, and, most important of all, give them hope."

Dowling sighed. "As it happens, I have discussed that very notion with President Hoover in the past few days. He opposes such programs not only here but anywhere in the USA. Don't expect them. Don't hope for them. You will be disappointed."

Heber Young proved he could quote the Old Testament as well as the Book of Mormon, murmuring, " ' Mene, mene, tekel upharsin. Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting.' As God said to Belshazzar, so I say to Hoover." And he walked out of Abner Dowling's office without a backward glance.

S cipio hadn't got so dressed up since his days as Anne Colleton's butler. The Huntsman's Lodge was as fine a restaurant as Augusta boasted, and expected its waiters to look the part. (It paid no better than any other restaurant, and worse than some. It expected the men who served food to make most of their money from tips. The customers tipped no better there than anywhere else. One reason they'd got rich enough to afford to eat at the Huntsman's Lodge was their reluctance to part unnecessarily with even a penny.)

Walking to the restaurant in boiled shirt, black tie, and tails was torture for Scipio in the sodden heat of late August. If he hadn't needed work of any sort so badly… But he did, and he was glad to have any at all. So many men in Augusta, Negro and white, didn't.

Walking to the Huntsman's Lodge in formal attire was, or could be, torture in more ways than one. It exposed him to the wit, such as that was, of the white citizens of Augusta. He could usually see trouble coming before it struck. That did him no good what ever, of course.

"Looky what we got here!" a fellow in straw hat and bib overalls whooped, pointing at Scipio. "We got us a nigger all tricked out like a penguin! Ain't that somethin'?"

Other whites coming down Marbury Street smiled. One or two laughed. Three or four stopped to see what would happen next. Scipio hoped nothing would happen next. Sometimes one joke was enough to get the meanness out of a white man's system. Smiling what was probably a sickly smile, Scipio tried to walk on by.

As he came closer to the man in overalls, he saw a Freedom Party pin glittering on one overalls strap. His heart sank. That was likely to mean worse trouble than he would have got from somebody else. And, sure as hell, the white man stepped into his path and said, "What the hell's a nigger doin' dressed up like he's King Shit?"

When Scipio tried to walk around him, the man blocked his way again. He had to answer. He did, as meekly as he could: "I's a waiter, suh. I gots to wear dis git-up."

He should have known-he had known-nothing he said would do him any good. Scowling, the white man demanded, "How come you got a job when I ain't, God damn you? Where's the justice in that?" Scipio tried to escape with a shrug. It didn't work. The man shouted, "Answer me, you goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch!"

Because I have a brain, and you haven't. Because my mouth isn't hooked up to the toilet. Because I've had more baths this week than you have this year. If Scipio said any of that, he was a dead man. He looked down at the sidewalk, the picture of a submissive Negro. Softly, he said, "Suh, I been waitin' table forty year now. I's right good at it." What are you good at, besides causing trouble? Not much, I'll bet. One more thing he dared not say.

"You know how many white folks is hungry, and you're marchin' off to work in your goddamn fancy penguin suit?" the man in overalls snarled. "I ought to kick your black ass around the block a few times, teach you respect for your betters."

He drew back his foot as if to do just that. All Scipio could do was take it or try to run. He intended to run-he didn't want his outfit damaged. Getting it repaired or, worse, having to buy a new one would cost him money he didn't have. But then one of the other white men said, "Hell, let him go. Ain't his fault he has to dress up like a damn fool to go to work."

"Thank you, suh," Scipio whispered. "I thanks you from de bottom of my heart."

The white man with the Freedom Party pin glanced around at the little crowd. Most people nodded at what the other fellow had said. Scowling, the Freedom Party man said, "All right. All right for now, goddammit. But when Jake Featherston gets elected, we'll put every damn nigger in his place, not just the ones in the fancy suits." He strutted down the street as if he were a mover and shaker, not a man with no more than a fifty-fifty chance of being able to write his own name.

"Thank you," Scipio said once more.

"I didn't do it for you," said the man who'd urged he be left alone. "I did it on account of I purely can't stand the Freedom Party." He laughed bitterly. "And I wonder how long I'll be allowed to say that in public if Featherston does win."

Somebody's not blind, anyhow, Scipio thought as he hurried up the street toward the Huntsman's Lodge. But if Featherston wins, this fellow can change his mind. He can say he was for the Freedom Party all along, and he'll get on fine. I'm black. I didn't choose that, and I can't change it.

As far as he could see, he had no choices at all if the Freedom Party won.

Getting to the restaurant was a relief. For one thing, he did make it on time. If he got in trouble for any reason, he could be back pounding the pavement looking for work. He knew that all too well-how could he help knowing? For another, the rhythms and rituals of work kept him too busy to worry… much.

He was obsequious to the prosperous white men and their sleek female companions who dined at the Lodge, but that bothered him much less than having to be obsequious to whites on the street. A white waiter in New York City would act subservient on the job. Acting subservient was part of a waiter's job-which went a long way towards explaining why there were so few white waiters in the Confederate States, where whites thought subservience the province of blacks alone. But that waiter in New York City became his customers' equal as soon as he left his job. Scipio didn't, and never would.

A portly, middle-aged man eating pheasant looked up from his meal and said, "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

With a small thrill of horror, Scipio realized the man had danced attendance upon Anne Colleton at Marshlands before the war. Had his own past come back to haunt him after all these years? He shook his head and put on his thickest accent to answer, "Ah don' reckon so, suh."

The customer shrugged. "You must be right. The boy I knew spoke better than I do myself."

Boy. Even then, Scipio had been in his thirties. Whites in the CSA refused to take Negroes seriously. He supposed that was why the Red uprising during the war had got as far as it had. Not even clever whites like Miss Anne had imagined Negroes could conceive of grievances serious enough to make them take up arms for redress.

All that went through his head in a flash. To reassure the white man-he was Tony Somebody, and Anne Colleton had thought him a pompous ass-he said, "Ah talks lahk I talks, suh. Dis heah de onliest way Ah knows how." He wondered if he could speak like an educated white man any more. Or would that dialect of English have disappeared from his tongue like a foreign language seldom used?

"All right. Never mind," the customer said, and went back to his pheasant. When he walked out, he left a fifty-cent tip, as if to apologize for bothering Scipio. Noblesse oblige, Scipio thought, and made the silver coin disappear. These days, there were men desperate enough to kill for half a dollar.

It was after ten when the Huntsman's Lodge closed. Scipio worried less about being on the street in black tie and tails than he had during the day. Fewer whites would be out there to see him than during the day-and, with Augusta's bad street lighting, whoever was there wouldn't be able to get that good a look at him anyhow.

But as soon as he opened the door, he closed it again in a hurry and ducked back into the restaurant. "What's the matter with you, Xerxes?" demanded his manager, a skinny, energetic young white man named Jerry Dover. "Go on home. Get the hell out of here."

"Marse Jerry, I reckons I waits a while," Scipio answered. "Dem Freedom Party white folks"-he almost said buckra, but caught himself before using that word in front of a white-"is marchin' down de street. Don't want them seein' me, you don't mind too much."

He had no idea what Dover's politics were. Talking politics with a white man could only be futile and dangerous. But whatever else Dover might have been, he was no fool. The other three colored waiters in the place showed no eagerness to leave. "All right," the manager said. "Don't worry about it. Stay as long as you need to. Sooner or later, those folks out there'll be done, and then y'all can go on about your business."

But, staring out through the small panes of glass set into the door of the Huntsman's Lodge at eye level, Scipio wondered if Jerry Dover knew what he was talking about. Block after well-organized block of men and women-mostly men-paraded past on Marbury Street. Some carried Confederate flags. Some carried Freedom Party flags. Some carried torches, to make the rest easier to see and the gathering as a whole more impressive.

A lot of the men marched in step. Most of the ones who did wore the white shirts and butternut trousers of Freedom Party stalwarts. Some few of the disciplined marchers, though, were in what was almost but not quite Confederate uniform. They carried Tredegars whose bayonets gleamed bloody in the torchlight.

"Feather ston! Feather ston! Feather ston!" The endless chant came close to making Scipio long for the old cry of, Freedom! That had been a frustrated shout, the cry of men who didn't fully understand what they wanted or how to go about getting it. This… This promised trouble right around the corner, and said just what kind of trouble it was, too.

And the parade went on and on and on. Scipio wouldn't have believed that Augusta held so many people, let alone that it held so many Freedom Party backers. Jake Featherston wasn't in town. Neither was Willy Knight. These people had nothing special to lure them out of their houses. But they came. Maybe that was the scariest thing of all.

At last, after half an hour, the procession ended. Jerry Dover hadn't gone outside, either. He had pushed Scipio and the other blacks out of the way a few times to look at things for himself. "Well, well, well," he said when it was over and the raucous cries of Featherston! at last ebbed away. "I always wondered, but now I know. Those bastards really are crazy."

Scipio and the other waiters exchanged glances. Dover didn't need to say that. What white man in the CSA needed to make Negroes like him? The question was so ridiculous, it might not even have occurred to Scipio without the goad of something as massive as the Freedom Party procession.

The sheer scope of it got through to Dover, too. He spoke again: "Crazy or not, though, there's a hell of a lot of 'em, ain't there? Don't see how they're going to lose the election. Wish to God I did." He made pushing motions at the waiters. "They're gone. You can disappear, too."

Searchlights blazed from Allen Park, not far off to the west. With the door open, the rhythmic shouting of Jake Featherston's name grew louder and more frightening. Scipio scuttled back toward the Terry, a black dust mote adrift on that dreadful sea of sound.

J efferson Pinkard came to the Freedom Party meeting in his jailer's uniform. No time to go back to his apartment and put on the usual white shirt and butternut trousers, not if he wanted to be sure of having a place to sit down when he got to the old livery stable. Party meetings had never been so crowded. He saw faces he hadn't seen for years, and he saw plenty of faces he'd never seen before-more at every meeting, it seemed.

Now people want to hop on the train-when it looks like it's just about to get to the station, he thought, eyeing with no small scorn the strangers who suddenly called themselves Freedom Party men. He'd been with the Party train every inch of the way, through ups and downs and derailments. Hell, he'd been at the Alabama State Fairgrounds out at the west end of town when Grady Calkins murdered President Hampton. He hadn't given up even then, even when things looked blackest.

He sent the Johnny-come-latelies another sour stare. Would they have stuck with Jake Featherston when the going got rough? Not likely, not most of them. They were here because they wanted to ride a winner's coattails, not because they believed. You could use people like that, but could you ever really trust them? He had his doubts.

Caleb Briggs strode briskly up onto the rostrum. He had a microphone up there these days, to help his gas-ruined voice fill the meeting hall despite the buzz from the big crowd. In the row behind Pinkard, a man who'd been in the party for a while explained to a couple of new fish who Briggs was. Jeff muttered something incredulous under his breath. Didn't they know anything? Evidently not.

Behind the dentist who headed up the Freedom Party in Birmingham stood Confederate and Party flags. He crisply saluted each of them in turn, then stepped up to that microphone and said, "Freedom!"

"Freedom!" The roar from the crowd made Pinkard's head spin. The new Party men were good for something, anyhow-they had big mouths.

Briggs' smile showed white teeth. "Good to see y'all here," he rasped, "old friends and new." A few of the longtime Freedom Party men, Jeff among them, laughed softly. Caleb knew what was what, same as anybody else who'd seen the light a while ago. Smiling still, Briggs went on, "A month to go, boys, and then we get to the Promised Land. We've been in the wilderness a long time now, but we're almost there."

Pinkard whooped. "Freedom!" he shouted, as if he were a Negro responding to a preacher's sermon. He wasn't the only one, either. Far from it.

But when Briggs held up a hand, silence fell, just like that. By God, the Freedom Party had discipline. "The one thing we've got to do now," he said, and paused to draw more air into his ravaged lungs, "is make sure we don't stumble and fall. We've come too far for that. This time, we win."

More shouts of, "Freedom!" rang out. So did a chorus of, "Feather ston!" Pinkard tried to imagine waking up the morning after Election Day and finding out Jake Featherston had lost again. He didn't think the Party could survive it. He wasn't sure he could.

"We've got to make sure we win," Briggs went on. "We've been doing plenty, but we've got to do more. Just for instance, Hugo Black is coming to town Saturday."

A low murmur ran through the crowd. The Whig vice-presidential candidate was good on the stump-not so good as Featherston or Willy Knight, not as far as Pinkard was concerned, but still a formidable speaker.

Caleb Briggs grinned a sly, conspiratorial grin. "I'm sure we'll give him a nice, warm Birmingham welcome when he pays us a call." He waited for the grins and sniggers to stop, then held up a hand. "It may not be so easy. The Whigs aren't ashamed to steal our tricks. They'll have their own tough boys at Black's rally, you can bet on that."

"We'll lick 'em!" Jeff roared, before anybody else could. Somebody behind him clapped him on the back.

"We'd better lick 'em," Briggs said. "We need to make damn sure we do. I want a show of hands for volunteers."

Every man in the place raised his hand. Some men held up both hands at once to look more prominent. Pinkard thought about doing that, but didn't. One hand was plenty. He didn't need to show off.

Up on the platform, Caleb Briggs grinned. "I knew I could count on you. Be here Saturday at half past twelve. Black's speaking at two. He reckons he is, anyways."

Half past twelve was a good time to gather. The men who still worked Saturday mornings would have time to put in their half days. A lot of businesses had cut back to five days a week. Men who worked for them wouldn't have any problems showing up, either. And, of course, the men who were out of work could come whenever the Party needed them, as long as they could scrape up trolley fare.

Jeff was scheduled to work all day that Saturday. He traded shifts with another jailer, a man who despised politics of all sorts almost as much as he despised prisoners of all sorts. He got to Freedom Party headquarters fifteen minutes early. His shirt was so white, it gleamed like polished marble. His pants were the exact color of the uniform he'd worn during the war. He'd put on a pair of steel-toed shoes he hadn't worn since leaving the Sloss Works. They weren't a required part of a stalwart's outfit, but they let him kick like a mule.

Across the street from the headquarters, a couple of Whigs were arguing with a gray-clad policeman. "They're preparing for a riot in there!" one of them said loudly. "You've got to do something to stop them."

The cop shrugged broad shoulders. "I can't arrest anybody till he commits a crime," he said. "It's still a free country, you know." As the Whigs started to expostulate, he smiled and sank his barb: "Freedom!"

They jerked as if stung. The loud one cried, "Why, you miserable, stinking-"

"Shut up, buddy, or I'll run you in." The policeman set a hand on his nightstick.

"I thought you couldn't arrest anyone till he committed a crime."

"Disturbing the peace is a crime."

"What do you think the Freedom Party's going to do?" the Whig demanded.

"That's a political demonstration. That's different."

Into the old livery stable Pinkard went. When he came out again, a stout bludgeon in his hand, the Whigs were still yelling at the cop. They withdrew-hell, they ran for their lives-as soon as the Freedom Party started coming out. Jeers chased them down the street.

The day Grady Calkins killed Wade Hampton V, Tredegar-carrying state militiamen had held the stalwarts away from the president of the CSA. Nobody had called out the militia this time-so Caleb Briggs insisted. Back in the early 1920s, people had thought they could suppress the Freedom Party. The governor of Alabama wouldn't dare try it now. The legislature might not impeach him, convict him, and throw him out on his ear if he did. On the other hand, it might.

Down the street toward the park marched the Freedom Party stalwarts, several hundred strong. People on the sidewalk either cheered or had the sense to keep their mouths shut. People in autos drove away in a hurry. The ones who didn't got their windscreens and windows smashed. Pinkard supposed, if the Whigs had been ruthless enough, they could have sent cars smashing through the ranks of Freedom Party men. Featherston's followers would have done it to the Whigs in a minute if they thought it would help. The Whigs didn't try it.

Jeff was up in the fifth or sixth row of marchers. The leaders let out whoops when they turned the last corner and saw Ingram Park, near city hall, dead ahead. Shouts followed the whoops a heartbeat later, as the Whig stalwarts charged them. The Whigs aimed to fight in the narrow confines of the street and not let the Freedom Party men into the park at all.

That probably means we have got more men than they do, Jeff thought. Then the first Whig swung a club at him, and he stopped thinking. He blocked the blow and aimed one of his own at the Whig's head. They stood there smashing at each other for a few seconds. Then someone tripped the Whig. Jeff hit him in the face with his bludgeon, kicked him in the ribs with those steel-toed shoes, and strode forward, looking for a new foe.

He and another man in white shirt and butternut trousers teamed up on a Whig. They both stomped the fellow once he was down. Shouting "Freedom!" they pressed forward, shoulder to shoulder. "Freedom!" Jeff yelled again. "Featherston and freedom!"

"Longstreet!" the Whigs yelled back. "Longstreet and liberty!" Samuel Longstreet, a grandson of the famous James, was a Senator from Virginia. He wasn't bad on the stump, either. "Longstreet and Black!" a rash Whig shouted.

That gave the Freedom Party men an opening. "Longstreet the nigger-lover!" they yelled, and pushed forward harder than ever.

Pinkard's left arm ached where a club had got home. Another one had laid his forehead open above his left eyebrow. He kept shaking his head like a restive horse, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes. Step by bitter step, the Freedom Party men forced the Whigs back toward the end of the street. If they broke out into the crowd, they'd win the day, rampaging through the crowd and wrecking Hugo Black's rally.

A pistol barked. Jeff saw the muzzle flash rather than hearing the report; that was lost in the din of battle. The Freedom Party man next to him grunted and clutched his belly and folded up like a concertina.

As soon as the first shot was fired, pistols came out on both sides. Freedom Party men and Whigs blazed away at one another from point-blank range. The Whigs had fired first-Pinkard thought they had, anyhow-but the Freedom Party men had more firepower and more determination, or maybe just more combat experience. They kept going forward, smashing down or shooting the last few Whigs who stood against them.

"Freedom!" Pinkard bawled as he ran across the grass toward the people who'd thought they were going to hear the Whig vice-presidential candidate speak. "Freedom!" his fellow stalwarts howled at his side and behind him. This had to be what a breakthrough felt like, what the damnyankees had known when they smashed the Confederate lines in Tennessee and Virginia during the war.

He whooped with delight when more Freedom Party men burst out from another street and charged the assembled Whigs. Then the stalwarts were in among the crowd, some clubbing, some kicking, some shooting. A few of the men in the crowd tried to fight back. Most of the tough ones, though, had tried to hold the Freedom Party men out and were already down.

From the podium, Hugo Black cried out, "This is madness!"

He was right, not that it did him any good. Madness it was, madness engulfing his party, madness engulfing his country. After the third bullet cracked past him, after the Birmingham police did nothing to slow down the Freedom Party stalwarts, he leaped down and made his escape.

Pinkard's club broke when he hit a rich-looking man in the head. The Whig's skull broke, too; Jeff could feel it. He waded on through the fray with fists and heavy shoes. "Freedom!" he yelled exultantly. "Featherston and freedom!"

W hig headquarters in Charleston a week before the election reminded Clarence Potter of Army of Northern Virginia headquarters a week before the Confederate States had asked the United States for an armistice. He was among the walking wounded: two fingers of his left hand were splinted, he sported a shiner and wore a new pair of glasses he couldn't afford, and he was all over bruises. And, all things considered, he was one of the lucky ones.

Braxton Donovan had a bandage wrapped around his head. He'd needed an X ray to make sure he didn't have a fractured skull. His nod held a graveyard quality. "Almost over now," he said.

"Everything's almost over now," Potter said gloomily. "We showed those bastards we could fight, too, by God."

The lawyer nodded, then grimaced and reached into his jacket pocket for a vial of pills. He washed down two of them with a sip from his drink. "Wonderful stuff, codeine," he remarked. "It's especially good with whiskey. Doesn't quite make the headache go away, but it sure makes you stop caring. Yeah, we showed the yahoos we could fight, too. Fat lot of good it's done us. How many dead?"

"A couple of dozen here in Charleston." Even before Potter went into intelligence, he'd always had figures at his fingertips. "Over a hundred in the state. All over the country? Who knows? More than a thousand, or I miss my guess. Close to fifty men killed in that one shootout in Birmingham all by itself. Hugo Black is lucky to be alive, if you want to call it luck."

"Ha. Funny." Donovan drained the whiskey. He scowled. "I hope those pills hurry up. My head feels like it wants to fall off. If that bastard had hit me just a little harder, you'd be counting one more dead man here."

"I know." Potter held up his left hand. "I got these broken keeping another one of those stinking stalwarts from caving in my skull. We have made them pay, though. Even if they do win, they know they've been in a brawl."

"If they win, it doesn't matter," Braxton Donovan said. "Do you know what I wish?"

"Hell, yes, I know what you wish. You wish the same thing I do," Potter said. "You wish the Radical Liberals would drop out of the race and throw whatever weight they've got left behind Longstreet and Black. And you know what?"

"What?"

For once, Potter let a full, rich drawl come into his voice as he answered, "It ain't a-gonna happen, that's what."

"It should, by God," Donovan said. "The Rad Libs have just as much to lose if Jake Featherston wins as we do."

"You know that, and I know that, but Hull and Long don't know that," Clarence Potter said. "All they know is, we've been kicking their tails every six years as long as there've been Confederate States of America. If we were in hell-"

"What do you mean, 'if'?" Donovan said. "With Jake Featherston president…"

"If we were in hell and screaming for water, they'd throw us a big jar of gasoline to drink." Potter was damned if he'd let the lawyer step on a good line.

"What are we going to do?" Braxton Donovan said. "What can we do? Only thing left is to go down swinging."

"Far as I'm concerned, we battle 'em all the way up till next Tuesday," Potter replied. "The more Congressmen and legislators we elect, the more trouble Featherston and his goons will have getting their laws through. And the bastard can't run again in 1939, so this too shall pass."

"Like a kidney stone," Donovan said morosely. By the way he set one hand on the small of his back for a moment, he spoke from experience. But then he managed a smile and gently touched his bandaged head. "Codeine is starting to work."

"Good," Potter said. People were setting down drinks and taking seats on the folding chairs at the front of the hall. "Looks like the meeting's going to come to order. Let's see how exciting it is, shall we?"

It was about as bad as he'd expected. The speakers insisted on staying optimistic long after the time for optimism had passed. When Potter heard, "Sam Longstreet will make a great president of the Confederate States!" for the fourth time, he stopped listening. He didn't think Longstreet was a bad man at all-on the contrary. But as long as the Whigs kept running sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of the men who'd won the War of Secession, they gave Jake Featherston an easy target.

He thought about getting to his feet and saying so. In the end, he didn't. Time enough for that at the postmortem; the death wasn't official yet. The meeting was less quarrelsome than a lot he'd been to. He doubted he was the only one saving recriminations for after the election.

Quarrels did go on, though, through the streets of Charleston and across the Confederate States. Potter did his share. He didn't need his left hand to swing a blackjack. He dented a couple of Freedom Party crania-and had his new pair of spectacles broken. Only afterwards did he realize he hadn't had to wear them into the brawl. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. He, unfortunately, wasn't, and now he had to pay twice for the privilege of seeing straight. He was pretty sure the stalwarts he'd clobbered couldn't see straight now, either. That was something.

Tuesday, November 7, 1933, dawned chilly and drizzly. Polls opened at eight in the morning. Jamming a broad-brimmed fedora down low on his forehead to keep water out of his eyes, Potter made his myopic way to the polling place around the corner from his apartment building. Election officials had chalked on the sidewalk a hundred-foot semicircle with the polling place as its center. Inside that circle, electioneering was forbidden. Outside it, Freedom Party men chanted Jake Featherston's name.

Potter smiled at them. "Go ahead, boys. Make yourselves as obnoxious as you can. The more votes you cost your man, the better."

As he walked into the charmed circle, one of the men in white and butternut asked, "Who's that smart-mouthed son of a bitch?"

"Name's Potter," another answered. "Lives around the block. You don't need to write him down. He's already on the list."

Already on the list, am I? Potter thought. An honor I could do without. Behind him, the Freedom Party men resumed their chant. Where are our men, shouting for Longstreet and Black? he wondered. He knew the Whigs had men outside some polling places. Not this one. The business collapse wasn't the only reason the Freedom Party looked like winning today. How-ever much Potter hated to admit it, even to himself, the opposition was better organized than his own party. He would have bet every Freedom Party man-and woman, in states where women could vote-would get to the polls today. He wished he could have made the same bet about Whig backers. How many of them would sit on their hands? Too many. Any at all would be too many.

He cast his own ballot, then walked back the way he'd come. He didn't think the Freedom Party men would set on him so close to the polling place, where people could see them for what they were. They didn't… quite. They shouted, "Nigger-lover!" and, "You'll get yours!" at him, but they didn't try to give it to him. He was almost disappointed. For this trip, he had a pistol in his pocket, not a blackjack.

Having voted, he went to work. It was less than interesting today: a husband wanted evidence his wife was cheating, but the wife, busy with shopping and the couple's two small children, gave none. Potter thought the husband was inventing things to worry about, but he kept his opinions to himself. For one thing, clients seldom paid attention to opinions contradicting their own. For another, the man paid well. If he wanted to throw away his money… well, it was a free country, wasn't it?

It is till that Featherston bastard takes over, Potter thought.

On the trolley ride back to his flat after knocking off for the day, he passed another polling place. Police cars were parked in front of it. Blood stained the sidewalk and nearby walls. Freedom Party men waving their reversed-color Confederate battle flags still stood on the street. "Feather ston! Feather ston!" Even through the trolley's closed windows, the chant lacerated Clarence Potter's ears. The police didn't try to run the stalwarts off. If Whigs had been here, they were no longer. This skirmish belonged to the Freedom Party.

After pan-frying a pork chop and some potatoes and washing them down with a stiff whiskey, Potter went over to Whig headquarters to hear… whatever he heard. Dance music blared from the wireless sets: the polls hadn't closed yet. He pulled out his pocket watch. It was a little past seven-thirty-less than half an hour to go.

That gave him plenty of time for another drink, or two, or three. He nodded to Braxton Donovan, who also had a whiskey in his hand, and said, "The condemned man drank a hearty meal."

"Funny," the lawyer said. "Funny like a crutch."

"Oh, I didn't mean you," Potter said. "If you think I meant you, I apologize. I meant the country. Before they execute a man, they give him a blindfold and a cigarette. What do we do when the Confederate States of America go up against the wall?"

Donovan studied him. "I don't think I've ever heard you say you were sorry before. You must mean it. You don't waste time being polite."

I try not to waste time at all, Potter thought. But he had nothing to do but stand there banging his gums till clocks in Charleston started striking eight. "All along the eastern seaboard of the Confederate States, the polls have closed," an announcer on the wireless declared. "We'll bring you the latest results from the presidential, Congressional, state, and local elections-but first, a word from our sponsor." A chorus of young women started singing about the wonders of a soap made from pure palm oil. Potter wondered what could be going through their minds as they trilled the inane lyrics. Probably something like, We're getting paid. Times were hard indeed.

Then the numbers started coming in. Somebody posted each new installment on a big blackboard at the front of the room. That meant the Whigs could go on chattering and still keep up. As soon as Clarence Potter saw the early results from North Carolina, he knew what kind of night it would be. North Carolina was a solid, sensible, foursquare Whig state. The collapse hadn't hit it so hard as a lot of other places.

Jake Featherston led there. He led by more every time the fellow at the board erased old numbers and put up new ones. And he had coattails. Freedom Party Congressional candidates were winning in districts where they'd never come close before. And it looked as bad everywhere else.

Braxton Donovan stared owlishly at the returns. He fixed himself another drink, then came back to stand by Potter and stare some more. He didn't say anything for a long, long time. At last, he did: "Jesus Christ. It's like watching a train wreck, isn't it?"

Potter shook his head. "No, Braxton. It's like being in a train wreck." Donovan thought that over, then slowly nodded.

And it got no better, not from a Whig point of view, as the polls closed in states farther west. Back in 1921, Tennessee had decided the election when it finally went Whig. This year, it went for Featherston and the Freedom Party. So did Mississippi and Alabama. Potter hadn't expected anything different there, but he would have loved to be proved wrong. The Whigs led in Arkansas, but Arkansas wasn't big enough to matter.

"My God," somebody behind Potter said. "What is the world coming to?"

He didn't need to ask the question, not when he could see the answer. Jake Featherston was going to be president. He would have a majority-a big majority-in the House. The Senate, whose members were chosen by state legislatures rather than popular vote, wasn't so obvious. Even so, it all added up to the same thing: after seventy years in the saddle, the Whigs were going into the minority.

"The minority?" the man in back of Potter said when he spoke that thought aloud. "That's crazy." He still seemed unbelieving.

"If you don't get it, think like a nigger," Potter said. "It'll come to you then, believe me."

A long with news of a corruption scandal in the Iowa legislature, newsboys in Des Moines shouted about Jake Featherston's victory down in the Confederate States. More of them yelled about the scandal, which was right there in town. The election news hit Cincinnatus Driver a lot harder. He got out of his truck on the way to the railroad yards and bought a paper, something he hardly ever did: getting there a minute late might cost him a good cargo. But today he spread the Register and Remembrance on the seat beside him and read a paragraph or two whenever he had to stop.

He was still shaking his head when he got out of the Ford at the yards and started dickering with a conductor over a load of beds and dressers and nightstands. "What's the big deal?" asked the conductor, a white man too young to have fought in the Great War. "Who cares what happens down in the Confederate States?"

"I cares." Cincinnatus knew that was bad grammar even without Achilles telling him so. "I grew up in Kentucky when it was part of the CSA. Glad it ain't no more. I got out of there once the USA took it over. This here's a better place if you're colored."

The conductor was not only white, he was a blond who couldn't have got any whiter if somebody'd thrown him into a tub of bleach. He said, "I don't know nothin' about that. All I know is, you may be colored, but you haggle like a damn kike."

If he'd been talking about Cincinnatus to a Jew, he probably would have called him a damn nigger. Cincinnatus took such names in stride; he'd heard them all, especially the one applying to his own race, too often to get excited about them. He said, "I tell you, Mr. Andersen, I don't reckon it's against the law to try an' git me enough money to make the job worth my while. I ain't no charity."

"Well, I'm a penny-pinching squarehead myself, and I won't tell you anything different," Andersen said. Cincinnatus liked him better after that; if he could insult himself as casually as he insulted everybody else, odds were none of those insults meant much.

Cincinnatus got fairly close to the price he wanted for hauling the load of bedroom furniture, too. He drove it over to a furniture store on Woodland Street on the west side of town, only a little north of the bend of the Raccoon River. After growing up by the bank of the Ohio, Cincinnatus didn't think either the Raccoon or the Des Moines was anything special.

Olaf Thorstein, who ran the furniture store, was even paler than Andersen. Cincinnatus had trouble believing anybody this side of a ghost could be. Thorstein was a tall, thin man of stern rectitude, the sort who would skin you in a deal if he could but would walk across town in the snow to give back a penny-or a hundred-dollar bill-you accidentally left in his store. With a similar streak in his own character, Cincinnatus had no trouble getting along with him.

Thorstein said, "Way you talk, you used to live in the Confederate States." He was not far from Cincinnatus' age, which meant he'd likely fought in the Great War.

"Yes, suh, that's a fact." Cincinnatus nodded. "Came to Des Moines ten years ago. Ain't been sorry, neither. This here's a lot better'n Kentucky." He remembered Luther Bliss and shivered in spite of himself.

"Well, what do you think of what's going on down there now?" the white man asked.

"Don't reckon you'll hear no black man sayin' nothin' good about the Freedom Party," Cincinnatus answered. "What do you think, Mr. Thorstein?" A surprising-or maybe a depressing-number of whites weren't the least bit shy about saying what they thought of people who didn't look like them. Had the USA had more Negroes, it probably would have had something like the Freedom Party, too.

"Me? I don't know much. I have not been there, except in the Army," Thorstein said, confirming Cincinnatus' guess. The furniture-seller went on, "I tell you this, though: I think that man Featherston will bring trouble. He lies. How can you trust a man who lies? You cannot. And any man who comes on the wireless and says, 'I am going to tell you the truth'-well, what else can he be except a liar?" Behind bifocals, his ice-blue eyes flashed. Plainly, he was condemning Jake Featherston to some chilly hell.

Cincinnatus wished getting rid of the man were that simple. But he nodded to Thorstein. Hating dishonesty of any sort, the Swede might also hate injustice of any sort. "I got me no quarrel with any o' that," Cincinnatus said.

"How could anyone quarrel with it?" Olaf Thorstein sounded genuinely bewildered. "Is it not as plain as the nose on a man's face? And yet how could the people in the Confederate States have voted for the man if they saw it? They must not have seen it. This I do not understand."

"Sometimes folk don't want to see," Cincinnatus said. "I reckon that had a lot to do with it."

"But why would anyone blind himself on purpose?" Thorstein asked, seeming more bewildered still.

Cincinnatus had asked himself the same question, more than once. He said, "Seems to me they got a choice. They can look square in the mirror and see how ugly they are, or they can be blind. Looks like they done picked what they aim to do."

"Uh- huh." Olaf Thorstein chewed on that. At last, he asked, "And what would a Freedom Party man say about what you just said?"

"Oh, that one's easy." Cincinnatus laughed. "Reckon he'd say I was an uppity nigger, a crazy nigger. Reckon he'd be right. When I used to live in the CSA, I wouldn't never've said nothin' like that. Colored fella livin' in the CSA got to be crazy to talk that way. But I been in the USA since 1914 now. This ain't no great place for black folks-don't reckon there's anywhere that's a great place for black folks-but you take it all in all an' it's a lot better than the Confederate States ever was. I got me a chance here-not a good one, maybe, but a chance. Down there?" He shook his head. "No way, nohow, not before the Freedom Party, an' not now, neither."

Again, Thorstein thought before he spoke. "I have never heard a Negro talk so freely of these things," he said, and then shrugged. "How many Negroes are there in Des Moines for me to talk to?"

"Not many. We're thin on the ground here. We're thin on the ground all over the USA," Cincinnatus said. And maybe that's why things are a little easier for us here, he thought. White folks in the USA don't like us much, but they ain't afraid of us like in the Confederate States. Not enough of us here to be afraid of.

"I hope I have not delayed you too much," the furniture-store owner said. "I know you need as much work as you can get. Who does not, the way things are these days?"

"It's all right, Mr. Thorstein. Don't you worry about it none," Cincinnatus said, for Thorstein really did sound concerned. "When I seen in the paper that that Featherston fella won, I was so upset, I didn't know what to do. Times gonna be hard for colored folks down in the CSA-gonna be real hard. Glad I got me a chance to talk about it some."

He was less glad when he got back to the railroad yard just in time to see another driver go off with a choice load that might have been his had he returned five minutes earlier. But he got a load for himself half an hour after that, when a train full of canned salmon from the Northwest puffed to a stop. Several groceries were waiting for their fish, and he took them a lot of it.

He was tired but happy-he'd made good money that day-when he got back to his apartment building and parked the truck in front of it. Joey Chang, the Chinaman who lived upstairs, was checking his mailbox when Cincinnatus walked into the lobby. "Hello," Cincinnatus said, affably enough. He got on well with Chang, who brewed good beer in a dry state.

"Hello," Chang answered, his English flavored with an accent unlike any other Cincinnatus had heard. "We talk a few minutes?"

"Sure," Cincinnatus said in some surprise. "What's on your mind?"

"Your son Achilles ask my daughter Grace to go to the cinema with him," Chang replied. "What you think of this?"

" Did he?" Cincinnatus said, and the other man solemnly nodded. Achilles had said he thought Grace Chang was cute. As Olaf Thorstein had remarked, there weren't that many Negroes in Des Moines. If Achilles found somebody he might like who wasn't a Negro… Well, if he did, what then? "What do you think of that, Mr. Chang?" Cincinnatus asked.

"Don't know what to think," Chang said, which struck Cincinnatus as basically honest. He went on, "Your Achilles good boy. I don't say he not good boy, you understand? But he not Chinese."

Cincinnatus nodded. He had similar reservations about Grace. He asked, "What's your daughter think?"

"She is modern. She wants to be modern." Mr. Chang made it sound like a curse. "She says, what difference it make? But it makes a difference, oh yes."

"Sure does," Cincinnatus said. The laundryman gave him a surprised look. Perhaps Chang hadn't thought a Negro might mind if his son wanted to take a Chinese girl to the cinema. After scratching his head, Cincinnatus went on, "Maybe we just ought to let 'em go out and not say anything about it. Going to the moving pictures together ain't like gettin' married. And if we tell 'em no, that'll only make 'em want to do it more to rile us up. Leastways, Achilles is like that. Dunno 'bout your Grace."

"Her, too," Chang said morosely. "The more I do not like, the more she does. Modern." He made the word sound even worse than he had before. Now he screwed up his face. "Yes, maybe we do this. I talk to my wife, see what she say." By his tone, whatever Mrs. Chang decided would prevail.

"Fair enough," Cincinnatus said. "I'll talk to Elizabeth, too-and to Achilles."

His wife wasn't home yet. Neither was his son. After graduating from high school, Achilles was doing odd jobs and looking-along with so many others-for something more permanent. He got home before Elizabeth did, and set two dollars on the kitchen table, where Amanda sat doing homework. He was a good kid; he brought his pay home every day he worked.

As casually as Cincinnatus could, he said, "Hear you're goin' to the pictures with Grace Chang." Amanda dropped her pencil.

Achilles glared defiance. "That's right. What about it? I think some of the money I make ought to be mine to have some fun with. Don't you?"

Having fun with the money wasn't the point. Having fun with Grace Chang was. But all Cincinnatus said was, "Reckon I do. It's all right with me. Just wish I'd've heard about it from you and not from Grace's pa."

Set for a fight, Achilles didn't seem to know what to do when he didn't get one. "Oh," he said, and left his mouth hanging open. After a long moment, he added, "I figured you'd have a fit." Another pause, even longer. "Maybe I was wrong."

"Maybe you was," Cincinnatus agreed. "No matter what you think, son, I ain't quite one o' them dinosaur things. Not quite." He waited out one more pause. At last, Achilles nodded. His agreement made Cincinnatus feel he'd done a few things right after all.

T hanksgiving was supposed to be one of the happiest days of the year. When Chester Martin and Rita went to his parents' apartment for dinner, that was in the back of his mind. In the front of his mind was the chance to stuff himself till he was about ready to burst at the seams. The money his father had given him let his wife and him keep their own apartment and keep eating. It didn't let them keep eating well. He was sick of cabbage and potatoes and boiled noodles and day-old brown bread.

"Turkey," he said dreamily as he and Rita got off the trolley and walked toward the block of flats where he'd lived so long. The weather was sunny but crisp-a perfect late November afternoon. " Roast turkey. Stuffing with giblet gravy." He'd eaten a lot of giblets since losing his job, but they belonged in gravy. "Mashed potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Rolls and butter. Pumpkin pie. Apple pie, too. Whipped cream."

"Stop it, Chester," Rita said. "I'm going to drool on my shoes." A motorcar went by. Somebody inside waved. The Chevrolet parked in front of the apartment building. "There's your sister and her husband and little Pete."

"I see 'em." Chester waved back. His brother-in-law, Otis Blake, worked in a plate-glass plant and still had a job. He'd never given Chester a hard time about losing his. He couldn't very well, not when his own brother was out of work.

"Uncle Chester! Aunt Rita!" Pete Blake, who was five, hit Chester in the knees with a tackle harder than a good many he'd met on the gridiron.

"Careful there, tiger." Martin ruffled his hair. "You almost knocked me on my can. You gonna be a tough guy when you grow up?"

"Tough guy!" Pete yelled. Then he gave Rita a kiss. Either he wasn't so tough yet, or he knew a pretty girl when he saw one.

Chester hugged Sue and shook hands with her husband. Otis Blake had his blond hair permanently parted in the middle by a scar from a scalp wound during the war. An inch lower and he wouldn't have been standing there. "How are you?" he asked now.

With a shrug, Martin answered, "I'm still here. They haven't knocked me out yet."

"Good," Blake said. "That's good."

"Come on. Let's go up to the place," Sue said. She turned to Pete. "You want to see Gramps and Grandma, don't you?"

"Gramps! Grandma!" Pete was enthusiastic about everything. Chances were he'd never heard of a business collapse. If he had, it meant nothing to him. Chester wished he could say the same.

Wonderful smells filled his nose as soon as he walked through the door. When he saw his mother's face a moment later, he knew something was wrong no matter how good the odors wafting out of the kitchen were. She looked as if she'd been wounded and didn't want to admit it even to herself. After the hugs, after the kisses, Martin asked, "What is it, Ma? And don't tell me it's nothing, on account of I know that's not so."

Sue and Otis exchanged glances. Whatever it was, they already knew. Louisa Martin spoke in a low voice, as if in a sickroom: "Your father's been laid off."

Five words. Five words that changed-ruined-not just one life but at least two, maybe four. "Oh," Chester said, a soft, pained exhalation-he might have been punched in the stomach. Rita's lips skinned back from her teeth. Like her mother-in-law, she was trying to find out how much it hurt.

Laid off. It hurt bad. Martin didn't need to find out how much. What, after all, was the difference between bad and worse? Not enough to matter.

A toilet flushed. Out came Stephen Douglas Martin, rubbing his hands together. One look at Chester's face told him everything he needed to know. "So you heard already, did you?"

"Yeah," Chester said harshly. "I heard. What are you going to do, Pa?"

"Darn good question," his father replied. "Wish I had a darn good answer to go with it. Almost forty years at that place, and then-" He snapped his fingers. "I'm scrap metal. That's what I am now, scrap metal. Yesterday was my last day. But I tell you one thing: I'm going to have the best darn Thanksgiving anybody ever had, and you can take that to the bank." If Louisa and Sue and Rita hadn't been there, and especially if Pete hadn't, he might have expressed himself more pungently.

"This is a fancy spread." Chester wouldn't say any more than that. Lurking behind the bland statement was a not-so-bland worry. If you're out of work, how can you afford it?

Casually, Louisa Martin said, "Otis and Sue gave us a little help. Not much, just a little." Chester nodded. Otis was still working. The older Martins must have told him so they could make sure they got whatever help they needed for a proper holiday dinner.

Knowing what Chester knew took some of the enjoyment away from the feast: it seemed too much like sharing a condemned man's last meal. But that didn't stop him from eating till he was groaningly full. When would his next chance to gorge himself on meat come? He had no idea. Like a savage in the jungle, he made the most of the chance he did have.

About ten o'clock, Pete started getting sleepy and fussy. Sue and Otis took their son and some leftovers and headed back to their place. Chester had waited for that; he needed to speak to his parents without his sister and brother-in-law listening. He started, "Pa, the bosses had no business-"

"No business?" Stephen Douglas Martin said. "Ha! Business is all they had, the… so-and-so's." Yes, he had trouble swearing in front of women.

"What I meant was, we'll figure out something now that…" Chester's voice trailed away. He thought his father would know what he meant any which way. Now that the elder Martins had no money coming in, how could they afford to give anyone else a hand? They had to worry about keeping their own place.

"Yes, we'll manage. One way or another, we'll manage," Rita said. She had the same stubborn pride as anyone born a Martin.

Stephen Douglas Martin said, "I hear you two were talking about California."

"Yes, that's true," Chester said. "There's no work in Toledo, or none to speak of. If you have a job, you're all right. If you lose one, though, you haven't got a prayer of finding anything new."

"Thanks so much," his father said. "That's just what I wanted to hear."

"I'm sorry, Pa. I'm sorry as… the devil. But that doesn't mean I wasn't telling the truth."

"I know," his father said. "I sure wish it did, though."

"What about California?" Rita kept her mind on business.

"I'll tell you what," Chester's father said. "Louisa and I have some money set aside. They aren't going to throw us in the poorhouse right away, so you don't need to worry your heads about that. I know this is a hard place to find work, on account of you've both done everything you could, but you haven't had any luck. If I stake you two train tickets out West and enough money to keep you going a couple of months… well, what do you think about that?"

"We'll pay you back," Chester said without even looking at Rita. "As soon as one of us gets something, we'll pay you back, a little bit at a time till it's all done."

"You don't need to say that, Chester," his father said with a small smile. "If I wasn't sure of it, you think I'd offer?"

"I don't know," Chester answered. "Depends on how bad you and Ma want to get rid of us, I guess."

"Chester!" his mother said reproachfully.

"California." Rita murmured the word. "Things are supposed to be good there, or as good as they are anywhere. They've got the farms, and they've got the moving pictures, and they've got all the people building houses for the people moving there for the other things."

"And the weather," Chester said. "If we go to Los Angeles, we can kiss snow good-bye. I wouldn't miss it a bit, and that's the truth."

"You ready to tear everything up by the roots?" Stephen Douglas Martin asked. "If you do this, I can't give you much more help till I'm back on my own feet." If I ever am hung unspoken in the air. He went on, "Don't want you winding up in a Blackfordburgh out there, even if you did vote for the fellow."

"I voted for Coolidge and Hoover this time around," Chester said. Rita made a face at him. He made a face right back, and went on, "I held my nose, but I did it. But I don't think Hoover's exactly a ball of fire."

"He's a ball of…" Now Rita seemed hampered in her choice of language. " I didn't vote for Coolidge," she added.

"He's had most of a year to make things better. He hasn't done it," Louisa Martin said. "He hasn't done much of anything, not as far as I can see."

"President Blackford did everything under the sun for four years in a row," Stephen Douglas Martin said. "He didn't make things better, either." Chester's father was a rock-ribbed-Chester sometimes thought a rock-headed-Democrat. He continued, "Look how the war with the Japs is winding down now."

"Neither side ever wanted to fight that one all out, though," Chester said. "That's why it's winding down. It's not anything special Hoover's done."

"They haven't dropped any bombs on his head, the way they did on Blackford's," his father retorted. He wagged a finger at Chester. "Still want to go to Los Angeles after that?"

"Yes!" This time, Rita spoke up before Chester could. She sounded even hungrier for California than he was.

"Thank you, Pa, from the bottom of my heart," Chester said.

"If you get work, I may come out there myself," his father said. "Anybody who thinks I'd miss snow is crazy."

"California," Rita said again, as if she expected to pan for gold and pull nuggets the size of eggs from a clear, cold mountain stream.

"California," Chester echoed, as if he expected to go to Los Angeles and wind up a motion-picture leading man the day after he got there. He went on, "There are people who hop a freight for a chance like this." He had, every now and then, thought of being one of them. "I will pay you back, Pa. So help me God, I will."

"I told you once, I wouldn't stake you if I didn't think you were good for it," Stephen Douglas Martin answered. "Only thing I worry about is how many people will be going out there, looking for whatever they can find."

"At least there are things to find in California," Chester said. "This town is dying on its feet. I've lived here all my life, except for when I was in the Army, but I won't be sorry to say good-bye." He laughed. Sorry? He hadn't been so glad since the day the guns stopped and he realized he'd made it through the Great War alive.