“There’s a financial side to all of this, of course. A nickel.”
“Of course—”
“See you. No way we can hold our heads up out in the world if we just let nature take its course. We’ve got to be firm.”
The sudden wave of rape and terror in the state has pushed the Cuban situation off the front pages, but Milsap has been following that story, too, reading everything he can find in Wilmington. Victory, if the enemy is engaged, is less of a question than the fate of the natives once they are liberated.
“I’ll fold. The thing is, some people can deal with free will and some can’t. Poor witless bastards don’t know if they’re coming or going. I think it’s nothing short of our Christian duty to take over the reins.”
“The timing will be tricky, of course. Some people will need to be brought along.”
“The first thing I think we need to do,” says Milsap, forgetting that he has not been invited into the conversation, “is to get this Teller Amendment repealed.”
The men look up at him through the smoke in the room, a bit surprised. Mr. Clawson squints as if trying to make out who he is.
“Something wrong with the machine?”
“No sir. I just—”
“Then to what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
“I was setting the front page and—”
“What’s the Teller Amendment?” asks Mr. Stedman.
“It’s the one that says if we boot the Spaniards out we can’t keep the island,” Milsap explains. “You were talking about Cuba, and—”
The men all laugh, even Mr. Clawson who had seemed annoyed before.
“I’m afraid the conflict we were discussing is much closer to home,” he says. He indicates Milsap and addresses the others. “Drew here is the reigning mechanical genius of the Messenger. The content of our publication, however,” he adds, smiling, but his eyes going cold as he looks back to Milsap, “is not within his purview.”
“Our lead story, Mr. Clawson, the nameless crime—”
“Yes?”
“I’ve read it before. In the News and Observer, over a month ago.”
The smile remains fixed. The eyes remain cold.
“And what of it? We frequently reprint items of public interest—”
“The headline says New Outrage. If the story is that old, how can we say—”
“Do you believe our average reader is as diligent as you in perusing the upstate dailies?”
“No, but—”
“If they have not read the story before,” Mr. Clawson says with an edge in his voice, “the story, and the outrage caused by it, is new to them—is it not?”
The card players are chuckling.
“Yes, but—”
“But what?”
“In the original story the crime was in Zebulon. This version says it was Eagle Rock.”
Mr. Clawson sighs and then exchanges a strange kind of smile with the seated men. “Were you at the scene of the violation, Drew?”
“Mr. Clawson, I only know what I read in the papers—”
“And that, gentlemen,” interrupts the editor, “may well be the salvation of our fair city.”
The men laugh again and Milsap wishes he had just let it slide.
“I thank you for your concern for our — our veracity, Drew, but we have a public duty to fulfill. We mustn’t let mere facts stand in the way of larger truths.”
“Yes sir.”
“And I’ve decided to move the article describing Mrs. Felton’s little soirée tonight to the first page, bottom right.”
“I’d just ignore the old crow,” says Walker Taylor.
“You may do just that,” smiles the editor. “But she has the more soft-headed of our local ladies in a dither, and that makes her appearance in our city news. And I have heard tell that her advocacy has been drifting in a more — a more pertinent direction of late.”
“I’ll make it fit, sir,” offers Milsap.
Mr. Clawson looks away from him then, finished, and glances at his hand. “I am going to raise you gentlemen ten cents.”
Milsap turns and immediately passes Mr. J. Allen Taylor, the colonel’s younger brother, looking impatient as he always does when he visits. Half the big wheels in town in the office, something big cooking no doubt, and he has to go pester Mr. Clawson with trifles.
“Fresh meat!” the editor calls from inside his office. “Sit down, young man, and we’ll deal you in.”
There are more men in the hall this evening than Miss Loretta has ever seen at a Suffrage lecture. One will note a half-dozen scattered, sympathetic clergymen, a few scoffers who come to sit with folded arms and tight smiles or stand at the side of the aisle for the entire program making the ushers uneasy, now and then a reporter for one of the newspapers scribbling unkind observations and chuckling to themselves. But tonight they are nearly a third of the audience, including some hard-looking types who might not be expected to be able to afford the “donation” at the door. The fellow beside her, a solid little man in a brown checked suit, needs to be reminded to remove his bowler by the woman behind.
As for the women, Miss Loretta is surprised at some of the faces she recognizes, representatives from many of Wilmington’s finest families among them. The controversial nature of Mrs. Felton’s views has no doubt kept the meek, the uncommitted, from attending so public a gathering, and she is heartened by the turnout. If the cause is to succeed it will need the support, the strength of Southern women.
“It has been said that we are whiners.”
The Suffragist is in excellent form. Miss Loretta has always admired her aptitude for speaking forcefully and intelligently without surrendering any of her feminine grace. She is credited, not always unkindly, with being the mastermind of her husband’s political campaigns, and somehow his popularity with an all-male electorate has not been damaged by his wife’s outspoken advocacy of a widely derided position.
“It has been said that we are the most privileged class the world has ever known.”
The Suffragist’s voice is strong, almost musical. She stands on the stage behind a lectern draped with the American flag, wearing a slate-gray ensemble and a hat enlivened by a corona of violets.
“It has been said that we are so elevated in the regard of our menfolk, so cosseted, that to desire more is a display of not only folly, but greed.”
Miss Loretta has seen Mrs. Felton unravel the plans of an inebriated disrupter with nothing more than her Southern woman’s irony, drawing him sweetly into a logical argument, seeming to agree with him, leading him deeper and deeper before delivering her fatal thrust. She has perfected the tactic of presenting men’s intransigence about Suffrage not as brutal and hard-hearted, but as weak and unworthy of their manhood.
“I will admit it for myself,” she says with a coy smile. “Yes, I am greedy.”
Polite laughter from the ladies, some of whom have heard this gambit before and know where it is leading. Miss Loretta realizes that the man beside her is making a noise, a perhaps unconscious growling sound, barely perceptible during the speaker’s dramatic pauses.
“And yes, I would venture, many of you fine women sitting before me share that greed. Yes, women desire to be educated. Yes, women desire to escape the drudgery and debasement of rural servitude. And yes,” here she looks to every corner of the hall, seeking out the eyes of the men, “women desire Suffrage. Without the vote we are mere spectators, fated to serve as handmaidens to the powerful but never to share in the administration of that power. Slaves, if you will, to the whims and stubbornness of the so-called ‘stronger sex.’ ”