The Victorious Opposition (18 page)

As the men assembled for the march on the park, they told stories of other elections, other brawls. A lot of them talked about 1933, when Jake Featherston won the presidency. Pinkard was one of the smaller number who could talk about 1921, when Featherston almost won. Nobody talked about the presidential election of 1927; the Party had wandered in the wilderness then. Even Jeff, a stalwart among stalwarts, had wondered if it would ever emerge.

Policemen tipped their hats to the advancing stalwarts. The dustup in the park that followed came almost as an anticlimax. The Whigs weren’t what they had been two years earlier. They’d been fighting for their lives then, and known it. Now . . . Now it was as if they sensed it was all over but the shouting. A few stubborn men fought hard to hold back the Freedom Party avalanche, but only a few. The rest fled. So did the Whig candidate for governor, and just in time. The stalwarts would surely have beaten him had they caught him, and they might have strung him up.

“That’ll teach those sons of bitches,” somebody not far from Pinkard said.

“Yeah.” Jeff nodded. “Not like it was in the old days, when the governor used to sic the National Guard on us to keep us from kicking up our heels.”

“Folks know which side their bread is buttered on nowadays,” the other stalwart said. “And what the hell? We’re holding most of the bread now.”

“That’s right.” Pinkard nodded again, emphatically. “And we’re going to get the rest of it, too.”

He wished he could go to a saloon and have a few drinks with his comrades, but Alabama remained stubbornly dry. Instead, he went home and slept in his own bed for the first time in months. He’d got used to the hard military cot down at the Alabama Correctional Camp (P). His mattress seemed squashy by comparison, and he woke up with a stiff back. Grumbling, he made a cup of coffee—just about all he had in the place—and got into the stalwarts’ almost-uniform again.

When he went back to Freedom Party headquarters, Caleb Briggs sent him to a polling place a few blocks away. “I don’t expect the police’ll enforce the electioneering limits,” Briggs rasped. “Case they do, don’t pick a fight with ’em. Here.” He handed Jeff and the other party men a sheet of newspaper-style photos of men’s faces. “See if y’all can keep these bastards from getting to the booth. They’re nothing but trouble-making trash.”

Jeff grinned at the men with him. They were grinning, too. “You bet,” he said, and took a cudgel from among those stuffed into a sheet-metal trash can. He thwacked the bludgeon into the palm of his left hand. This was the enjoyable part of the job. He pulled a quarter from his pocket, too. “Gonna buy some doughnuts before we get there,” he said. “I’m empty inside.”

The Confederate flag flew in front of an elementary-school auditorium. Sure enough, no one said a word, no policemen appeared, when the Freedom Party men stationed themselves right outside the door. Quite a few of the men going in to vote displayed Party pins, some without the black border that showed a new member, more with. They nodded and tipped their hats to the stalwarts as they went by. The call of “Freedom!” rang out again and again.

About half past eight, Pinkard nudged the stalwart nearest him. “There’s one of the fuckers we’re supposed to stop.”

“Right,” the other fellow said, and stepped into the would-be voter’s path. “You better get the hell out of here, buddy, you know what’s good for you.”

“Are you saying I’m not allowed to exercise my Constitutional right to vote?” the man asked. He was bald, skinny, middle-aged, and wore a suit; he looked like a lawyer or somebody else too smart for his own good.

“He said you better get lost,” Pinkard answered. “And you better, too, or you’ll be real sorry.”

“I will—as soon as I vote.” The clever-looking guy started forward again.

Maybe he had guts. Maybe he was too stupid to know what was coming. All four stalwarts set on him, bludgeons rising and falling. “Freedom!” they shouted as the blows thudded home. Pinkard added, “You should’ve listened, you dumb asshole. You gonna vote now?” The bald man’s wails rose above the thumps of the clubs and the stalwarts’ battle cries.

At last, they let him go. He staggered away, face and scalp bloodied. He didn’t try to go into the polling place, which proved they hadn’t beaten
all
the brains out of him.

They beat up three or four other men from their sheet of photos; several more abruptly discovered urgent business elsewhere on seeing them waiting. The stalwarts saluted one another with their blood-spattered bludgeons each time that happened. Schoolchildren watched one beating. They laughed and cheered the stalwarts on. No policemen came to bother them. Pinkard hadn’t expected that any would; the Party had been strong in police and fire departments across the CSA for years.

When the polls closed, a couple of Jeff’s comrades headed home. He went back to Party headquarters. As he’d known they would, they had wireless sets blaring out election returns. They also had sandwiches and homebrew.

Results from the Confederate states on the East Coast had a good start on those in Alabama and farther west. “Looks like the Freedom Party landslide that started two years ago is still rolling downhill, folks,” the announcer said. He sounded delighted with the news. People who didn’t sound delighted the Freedom Party was doing well didn’t last on the wireless. This fellow went on, “North Carolina’s going to have a new governor, a Freedom Party man. Same with Georgia. And Party candidates are picking up seat after seat in the legislatures in the Carolinas and Florida. That makes races for the Senate likely to go Freedom, too.”

Jefferson Pinkard turned to the closest stalwart and raised his glass of beer. “Here’s to us, by Jesus! We’ve gone and done it. We sure as hell have.”

“Looks like it,” the other Party man agreed. He sported a mouse under one eye. He must have run into a Whig with more gumption than most. Pinkard hadn’t.

After a while, Alabama returns and others from the western part of the Confederacy started coming in along with those from the Eastern seaboard. The only state where the Freedom Party didn’t seem to be doing well was Louisiana, where the Radical Liberal governor had a solid organization of his own. Somebody not far from Jeff said, “He can laugh now, but that son of a bitch’ll pay before long. You can count on it.” Heads solemnly bobbed up and down, Pinkard’s among them.

With restive Kentucky on its border, Tennessee went Freedom in a big way, and probably would have even without stalwarts outside polling places. With even more restless Sequoyah and stolen Houston on
its
borders, Texas voted Freedom more spectacularly still. Jeff went back to his apartment and to bed before many returns came in from Chihuahua and Sonora. For one thing, he was confident they’d turn out for the Party, too. For another, they were mostly greasers down there anyhow, and he’d had his fill of greasers fighting in the Empire of Mexico.

He got on the train again the next day, to go back to the Alabama Correctional Camp (P). Newsboys shouted election results. “Freedom Party claims vetoproof majority in both houses of Congress!” was one cry.

Conscious of a job well done, Jeff bought a paper. He read it as the train rumbled south from Birmingham. Then he let it fall to the floor and dozed: no, he didn’t sleep well in his own bed any more.

He got rudely awakened just before the train pulled into Montgomery. He came within inches of getting killed. A bullet blew out the window by his seat, cracking past his head and spraying him with broken glass. More bullets stitched along the length of the car.

“Down! Get down, goddammit!” he shouted, and dove between his seat and the one in front. Quite a few of the men in the car—likely the ones who’d seen combat during the war—did the same thing. Like him, they knew machine-gun fire when they heard it. Screams and wails said some of the bullets hadn’t missed—and that civilians were panicking. Before long, Pinkard’s hands and knees were wet and sticky with someone’s blood.

The last time anybody’d shot up a train in which he was riding, it had been Negro rebels when he was a private on his way to put down one of the Socialist republics the blacks had proclaimed in Georgia. Who was it this time? The country between Birmingham and Montgomery was full of farms and plantations . . . and the plantations were full of Negroes.

Coincidence? Or the start of a new uprising? Jeff didn’t know—he had no way of knowing—but he muttered under his breath.

F
lora Blackford didn’t realize how much she’d missed the floor of Congress till she came back to Philadelphia. “Is it any wonder there is armed struggle against the Freedom Party in the Confederate States?” she demanded. “Is it any wonder at all, after the farce that went by the name of an election in that country two weeks ago?”

A Congressman—a Freedom Party Congressman—from Houston sprang to his feet. “How is that there election different from most of the ones y’all put on in what you call my state?”

He didn’t want to be in the U.S. Congress at all. He would sooner have served in Richmond. “Excuse me, Mr. Mahon, but I have the floor,” Flora said with icy courtesy. “May I go on?”

“That’s right. Ride roughshod over me. You’ve been riding roughshod over my state—what you call my state—ever since you tore us bleeding from Texas and made us join the USA.”

“Tell the lady, George!” That was another Freedom Party man from Houston. Two more Congressmen, these from Kentucky, began singing “Dixie.” Neither they nor their constituents wanted to belong to the United States, either.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
Congressman La Follette of Wisconsin, the speaker of the House, plied his gavel with gusto. “The gentlemen are out of order,” he declared. “The gentlemen will observe the rules of the House. Mrs. Blackford has the floor.”

“This body is out of order!” George Mahon shouted. “This whole damn
country
is out of order!” The Kentucky Congressmen sang louder than ever.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
“That will be quite enough!” Charles La Follette declared. “The sergeant-at-arms will eject from this chamber any individual flouting the rules of the House. Is that clear?”

“It’s clear, all right,” Mahon said. “It’s clear that even though our own people elected us, you don’t want to let us tell you what they want.” But he sat down after that, and the rowdy singing stopped. The Freedom Party Congressmen knew La Follette meant what he said. He’d ejected them before. Flora wasn’t sure how much good that did, though. Getting thrown out of Congress only made them bigger heroes back home.

“You may continue, Mrs. Blackford,” La Follette said wearily. “Without further interruption, I very much hope.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Flora said. “I rose to call upon the administration to take stronger action against the Confederate States than it has done up until this time. President Hoover stayed silent in the wake of the riots—I might even say, the pogrom—aimed against the black residents of the CSA and does not appear to recognize their legitimate right to rise against oppression and brutality. He—”

“The distinguished Congresswoman from New York worries more about the Negroes of the Confederate States not because they are black but because they are Red,” another Congressman broke in. “Most people in the United States worry very little about them for any reason.”

He wasn’t a Freedom Party man. He was a rock-ribbed Democrat from Maine. Speaker La Follette gaveled him to silence, too, but not with the vehemence he’d used against the Freedom Party buffoons. And, to her dismay, Flora saw heads nodding in agreement with what the New Englander had said. The United States had only a handful of Negroes. Border patrols stayed busy keeping would-be colored refugees out. The USA wanted no more blacks; if anything, most people would have been happier with none at all.

Stubbornly, she said, “They are human beings, too, Congressman, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among those being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“Jefferson was a damned Virginian,” the man from Maine sneered. “Give me Adams and Hamilton any day.” More nods, these from all around the big room. Founding Fathers from states no longer in the USA had a low reputation north of the Mason-Dixon line these days, and had ever since the War of Secession.

“Do you deny, sir, that they are human beings?” Flora asked. “Do you deny that they possess those rights I named?”

“They are in a foreign country,” the Congressman from Maine replied. “I deny that they are any business of the USA.”

He got more nods, from fellow Democrats, from the handful of Republicans and Freedom Party men, and even from a few Socialists. To her dismay, Flora had seen that before. Socialists spoke on behalf of racial equality, but couldn’t get too far ahead of the people who voted them into office. That was how they rationalized it, anyhow.

“Congressman Moran, would you say the same if these persecuted people were Irish?” Flora asked sweetly.

“Since they aren’t Irish, the question does not apply.” Moran was too smart to answer that one the way she asked it.

Because he was, she waited for Speaker La Follette to gavel down his interruption and then introduced her motion of censure against the Confederate States. She knew it would fail; the next motion passed censuring the Confederate States for the way they treated their Negroes would be the first. But she had to make the effort. It wasn’t as if Jews didn’t know pogroms, too. News out of Russia and the Kingdom of Poland (which bore about the same relationship to Germany as the Republic of Quebec did to the USA) wasn’t good.

After the House adjourned, she went across the street to her office. A newsboy waving the
Philadelphia Inquirer
shouted, “Confederates ask to enlarge their army! Read all about it!”

“I certainly do want to read about that!” Flora exclaimed, and gave him a nickel. He handed her a paper, and smiled broadly when she didn’t wait for change.

She spread the
Inquirer
out on her desk. That was the lead headline, all right. She zoomed through the story. President Featherston, apparently, had requested permission to boost the Confederate Army to a size significantly larger than that allowed by the treaty ending the Great War. Featherston was quoted as saying, “These soldiers will be used only for internal defense. We have uprisings against the lawful authority of our government in several states, and need the extra manpower to put them down.”