The Victorious Opposition (38 page)

“Thank you very much, Mr. President.” Flora mentally apologized to the telephone. “Thank you
very
much. I appreciate that, believe me.”

“He was a good man. He did everything he could. The collapse wasn’t his fault, and fixing it isn’t easy.” The president sighed. “Hoover found that out, and I’m doing the same damn thing. Not fair he should be stuck with the memory of it.”

“I know,” Flora answered. “I’ve been saying the same thing since 1929. The next person who pays attention will be the first.”

“
I’m
paying attention,” Smith said. “The services will be out West?”

“That’s right. He wanted to be buried in Dakota. That was home for him. I’ll do what he would have wanted.”

“Good. That’s good.” Across the miles, Flora could all but see the president nod. “You have any trouble dealing with a
goyishe
preacher?”

In spite of everything, she laughed. The USA was a special country, all right, and New York a special state—where else would a Catholic leader come out with a perfectly fitting bit of Yiddish? “Everything seems all right so far,” she answered.

“Fine,” Smith said. “He gives you any
tsuris
, though, you tell him to talk to me.
I’ll
fix him—you see if I don’t.”

“Thank you,” Flora said. That made quite a picture, too: a Catholic president offering to browbeat a Methodist minister. She went on, “Joshua and I are going to fly back to Dakota this afternoon. We’ll finish making arrangements on the spot, and we’ll be ready when . . . when Hosea gets there.” Her husband’s body was coming by special train.

“Charlie will come out to the funeral,” Smith said.

Now Flora found herself nodding. When Hosea was vice president, one of his duties had been going to important people’s funerals, too. La Follette would only follow a long tradition there. And Al Smith himself didn’t want to seem too closely associated with Hosea Blackford even in death: people still blamed Blackford for the business collapse, and Smith didn’t want that to rub off on him no matter how unfair it was. Flora said, “President Sinclair has already left for Dakota.”

“He can afford to,” Smith answered. “He’s not going to run again year after next.” Yes, they were both thinking along the same lines.

“And Hoover asked if he was welcome,” she added.

“What did you tell
him
?” the president asked. “He’s not going to run again, either, not after the way I kicked his
tukhus
.” More Yiddish, jut as fitting.

“I said yes,” Flora replied. “I don’t agree with a lot of the things he did—Hosea couldn’t stand a lot of the things he did—but he’s an honest man. You have to respect that.”

“If you ask me, he’s a stiff-necked, sour prig,” Smith said, “but have it your own way.” Flora didn’t think that verdict was wrong. Maybe she had a bit of stiff-necked prig in herself, too, though, even if she did hope she wasn’t sour. The president went on, “If there’s anything I can do, you let me know, you hear? Don’t be shy about it.”

“I won’t,”she promised. They said their good-byes. As soon as she hung up the telephone, she started running around again. Too many things to do before she had to leave for the airport, not enough time to do them.

The airport itself was in Newark. New York City had a major airport under construction—largesse from a hometown president, and many, many jobs for local workers, all paid with federal money—but it wouldn’t be done for another couple of years. The aeroplane was a twin-engined Curtiss Skymaster. It carried thirty-two people in reasonable comfort west to Omaha. Flora and Joshua spent the night in a hotel there, then boarded a smaller Ford trimotor for the trip north to Bismarck.

That flight was like falling back through time. The Ford was smaller, with corrugated-metal skin rather than smooth aluminum. The seats inside were smaller, too, and more cramped. When the aeroplane took off, it was noisier, too. It didn’t fly so high, either, which meant the ride was bumpier. They flew around a storm on the prairie. Even the rough air on the outskirts was plenty to make Flora glad the airline provided airsickness bags. She turned out not to need hers, and neither did Joshua, but some of the other passengers weren’t so lucky. The rest of the flight was unpleasant even with the bags. Without them . . . Well, without them it would have been worse.

A black limousine waited at the field on the outskirts of Bismarck. It took her down to the little town of Frankfort, on the James River. Hosea Blackford’s nephew, William, owned a farm just outside of Frankfort; the former president would lie in the churchyard there. William Blackford and Flora weren’t far from the same age. The farmer and the Congresswoman from New York City were about as different as two Americans could be, but they had an odd sort of liking. And the farm fascinated Joshua. So did William’s daughter, Katie, who was blond and blue-eyed and very pretty. Flora watched that with more than a little amusement.

William Blackford did, too. “Maybe you’ll have to bring the boy out some other time,” he said, his voice dry.

“Maybe I will.” Flora couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “Or maybe you could visit New York or Philadelphia.”

Her husband’s nephew shook his head. “No, thanks. For one thing, you don’t mean me. And I’ve seen Philadelphia. I don’t care to go back. More people on the sidewalks, I think, than there are in all of Dakota.” He wasn’t far wrong, and Flora knew it. He went on, “I grew up with elbow room. I don’t know what to do without it.”

Flora had grown up with none whatsoever. Her family had crowded a cold-water flat, and they’d taken in boarders besides to help make ends meet. She took people and noise as much for granted as William Blackford took wide open spaces and peace and quiet. “The first time Hosea brought me to Dakota, I felt like a bug on a plate,” she said. “There was too much country, too much sky, and not enough me.”

“I’ve heard folks from back East say that before,” her host replied, nodding. “I reckon it’s heads to my tails, but—” He broke off, alarm on his face. “Here, let me get you a handkerchief.”

“I have one.” Flora reached into her handbag, pulled out a square of linen, and dabbed at her eyes. “Sometimes it catches me by surprise, that’s all. I remember the good times I had with Hosea, the things he showed me, and then I remember we won’t have any more, and . . . this happens.” She blew her nose.

William Blackford nodded. “I know how that goes, sure enough. I lost a brother in the war. Now and again, I’ll still think about going trout fishing with Ted, just like it was day before yesterday when we did it last. And I’ll be . . . darned if I don’t still puddle up every once in a while, too.”

Three days later, dignitaries and reporters crowded Frankfort’s tiny white clapboard church. The building might have come straight from New England. The enormous sweep of the horizon beyond it, though, could only have belonged to the West. Waiting had torn at Flora. Now she sympathized more than ever with the Jewish custom of holding the funeral as quickly as possible after death. These days in between were nothing but a torment.

The Reverend Albert Talbot had a face like a fish, with pale skin, big blue eyes, and a perpetually pursed mouth. His eulogy, to Flora’s ears, was purely conventional, and caught little of what Hosea Blackford had stood for, little of what he had
been
. She started to get angry, wondering if she should have sicced President Smith on him after all.

But she didn’t need long to decide the answer was no. Everyone else in the church, including Joshua, seemed satisfied with, even moved by, those ordinary phrases. That was what really mattered. As long as the minister’s audience went away pleased with what they heard, nothing else counted for much.

And the vice president and two former presidents of the United States served as pallbearers, helping Joshua and William Blackford and a more distant relative carry the coffin out to the graveyard under that vast sky.

“He was a good man—a fine man,” Upton Sinclair said.

“He was indeed,” Herbert Hoover agreed. They nodded to each other, and to Flora. Socialist and Democrat, they agreed on very little, but they would not quarrel about that. Flora nodded, too, though more tears stung her eyes. Here, they were both right.

B
rigadier General Daniel MacArthur was not a happy man. Colonel Irving Morrell had trouble blaming his superior. MacArthur’s cigarette holder jerked in his mouth. By all appearances, the U.S. commandant in Houston was having trouble not biting right on through the holder.

“Ridiculous!” he burst out. “Absolutely ridiculous! How are we supposed to keep this state in the USA if we go easy on all the rebels and traitors inside it?”

Morrell gave him the only answer he could: “Sir, I’ll be damned if I know.”

“May Houston and everybody in it be damned!” MacArthur growled. “That would be just what it—and they—deserve. It’s a running sore. We ought to cauterize it with hot metal.”

He meant hot lead, from rifles and machine guns. Morrell didn’t disagree—on the contrary. He said, “It’s hard to operate where everybody in the country where you’re stationed wants you to go to the devil and does his best to send you there. I thought Canada was bad. Next to this, Canada was a walk in the park.”

“Next to this, hell is a walk in the park, Colonel.” MacArthur gestured to the officers’ club bartender. “Another one, Aristotle.”

“Yes, suh, General, suh.” Aristotle did the honors, then slid the whiskey across the bar to MacArthur.
Well,
he’s
loyal
,
anyway,
Morrell thought. Any Negro who preferred Jake Featherston to Al Smith wasn’t just a traitor—he was certifiably insane. Morrell wished Houston held more Negroes; they would have made a useful counterweight to all the pro-Confederate fanatics. But they were thin on the ground here.

After a sip—no, a gulp—from the new drink, Daniel MacArthur went on, “By God, Colonel, there were stretches of the front during the Great War where a man was safer than he is in Houston today. During the war, only cowards got shot in the back. Here, it can happen to anybody at any hour of the day or night.”

“Yes, sir,” Morrell agreed mournfully. “Taking hostages after someone does get shot hasn’t worked so well as I wish it would have.”

MacArthur looked disgusted—not with him, but with Houston, and perhaps with the world. “Some of these sons of bitches seem
glad
to die. It’s not that I’m not glad to see them dead, either, but. . . .”

“Yes, sir. But.” Morrell turned the word into a complete, and gloomy, sentence. He went on, “I think we’re doing a better job of making martyrs for the Freedom Party than we are of making people decide not to take shots at us.”

“Unfortunately, you are correct. Even more unfortunately, I don’t know what to do about it.” MacArthur stubbed out the cigarette. He stuck another one in the holder, lit it, and puffed moodily. Then he looked at the pack. “ ‘Finest quality tobacco from the Confederate States of America,’ ” he read, and made as if to throw it away. Reluctantly, he checked himself. “God damn it to hell and gone, they
do
have the best tobacco.”

“Yes, sir,” Morrell agreed. “When they asked for a cease-fire in 1917, the officer who came into our lines with a white flag gave me one of his smokes. After three years of the chopped hay and horse turds we called cigarettes, it was like going to heaven.”

“I’d like to send half this state to heaven, assuming anybody here would go in that direction,” MacArthur growled. “But even that wouldn’t do much good.” He finished the whiskey with another gulp. Instead of asking for another refill, he sprang to his feet and stalked out of the officers’ club, trailing smoke from his cigarette. He was hot enough, he might have trailed smoke without it.

“Your glass is empty, suh,” Aristotle said to Morrell. “You want I should get you another one?”

“No, thanks,” he answered. “You’ve lived here a good long time, haven’t you?” He waited for the bartender to nod, then said, “All right. Fine. What would
you
do to keep Houston in the USA?”

The black man’s eyes widened. “Me, suh?” He needed a moment to realize Morrell meant the question seriously—after the time Morrell had had in Houston, he would have meant it seriously if he’d asked it of an alley cat. Aristotle said, “I reckon the first thing you do is, you blow off that Jake Featherston’s head.”

“I reckon you’re absolutely, one hundred percent right,” Morrell said. The real Greek philosopher couldn’t have solved the problem better. If anything would do the job, that was it. Unfortunately . . . “Suppose we can’t?”

“In that case, suh, I dunno,” Aristotle said. “But I know one thing. You Yankees ever decide you leavin’ this here state, you take me with you, you hear?”

“I hear you.” What Morrell heard was naked terror in the man’s voice. He soothed him as he would have soothed a frightened horse: “Don’t you worry. We’ve been here twenty years. We aren’t going anywhere.”

“Not even if they have one o’ them plebi—whatever the hell you call them things?” Aristotle asked.

“I don’t think you need to fret about that,” Colonel Morrell told him. “We paid for Houston in blood. I don’t expect we’ll give it back at the ballot box.”

That seemed to get through to the bartender. He pulled out a rag from under the bar and ran it over the already gleaming polished wood. Though Aristotle seemed happier, Morrell was anything but. The colored man probably didn’t pay much attention to what Al Smith said. Because of the nature of Morrell’s duties, he had to. He didn’t like what he’d heard. Talk of democracy and self-determination sounded very noble. He’d had some things to say on the subject himself, when the Ottoman Turks were persecuting Armenians. But when democracy and self-determination ran up against a country’s need to defend itself . . .

Morrell supposed the United States could lose Houston without hurting themselves too badly, though losing the oil found in the 1920s would be a nuisance—and seeing it fall into Confederate hands would be a bigger one. The same applied to Sequoyah, where the Indians most cordially despised the U.S. occupiers, who hadn’t even deigned to let the state enter the USA. Losing Kentucky, though, wouldn’t be a nuisance. Losing Kentucky would be a disaster. During the War of Secession, Lincoln had said he hoped to have God on his side but he had to have Kentucky. Losing the war and the state, he’d proved to have neither.