"Sure isn't," Knight said. "If the people in occupied Texas ever got the chance to vote, they'd come back to the Confederate States in a red-hot minute."
"Same with Kentucky," Featherston agreed. "Same with Sequoyah." He had mixed feelings about Sequoyah-it was, after all, full of redskins, and he had little more use for them than he had for niggers. (The USA had even less use for Indians; Sequoyah remained occupied territory, while Houston and Kentucky were full-fledged U.S. states.) But Sequoyah was also full of oil and gas, and cars and trucks and aeroplanes meant the Confederate States needed all the oil and gas they could lay their hands on. If the redskins came along, too, then they did, that was all. At least they'd been loyal during the war, unlike the blacks in the Confederacy.
"Take you to the hotel first, if that suits you," Knight said. "Give you a chance to freshen up, maybe rest a little bit, before you go out and give your speech. You aren't set to start till six, you know."
"Oh, yeah." Jake nodded as they left the platform together. "That way, it's eight o'clock back on the East Coast-a good time for folks on the wireless web to listen in." He laughed. "Who would've reckoned a few years back that we'd have to worry about such things? Times are changing-if we don't change with 'em, we're in trouble."
"That's what's wrong with the Whigs," Knight said. "They're a bunch of damn dinosaurs, is what they are."
Dinosaurs had been much in the news lately. A team of Japanese scientists in Mongolia had come back with not only spectacular skeletons but also some of the first dinosaur eggs ever seen. They'd sent some of their specimens to the Museum of Natural History in Richmond, where they'd drawn record crowds. Jake liked the phrase, too; it captured exactly what he felt about the Whigs.
He slapped Willy Knight on the back. "They sure are," he said. "You took the words right out of my mouth, matter of fact-I'm aiming to call 'em that very thing tonight." And so he was, even if he hadn't been a moment before.
"Good," Knight said, not suspecting Featherston was stealing his figure of speech.
Driving through Abilene was depressing. The town had flourished in the years just before the Great War and, like so much of the Confederacy, languished since. Timber buildings looked sun-blasted; brick ones looked old before their time. As he did all over the CSA, Jake saw men sleeping on park benches and in bushes, and others prowling the streets looking for food or work.
The hotel seemed as gloomy as the rest of the place. Ceiling fans spun lazily in the lobby, stirring the air without cooling it much. The carpet was shabby. The walls needed painting. The clerk behind the registration desk seemed pathetically glad to have anybody come in. "Welcome to Abilene, sir," he said as he gave Jake his key.
"Thanks," Jake replied, in lieu of what he really thought. "Freedom!"
"Uh, freedom," the clerk said, but not as if he were a Party man.
Since Featherston was due to speak at six, he and Willy Knight ate an early supper: enormous slabs of steak, a Texas specialty. Texas wasn't dry; they could drink beer without breaking the law. Knight swallowed a big piece of rare meat and then said, "God damn you, Jake. I thought you were buzzard bait, but you turned out to be right all along. Our time is coming."
"I always said so." Featherston cocked his head to one side. "You reckoned we were going down the drain, and you'd pick up the pieces."
The mixed metaphor didn't faze the former head of the Redemption League. "Damn right I did. This party was drying up and blowing away four years ago." He cut off another chunk of steak. By the way he did it, he would sooner have stuck the knife into Featherston. "Amos Mizell and I, we were ready to get on another horse. The Party did jussst well enough"-he stretched the word into a long hiss-"to keep us on board. But now-"
Jake finished for him: "Now we're back in business."
"We are." Knight nodded. "Hell with me if we're not. I'd take my hat off to you if I was wearing it. All through everything, you said this was going to happen one of these days. You said so, and you were right."
"You bet I was," Featherston said, adding, You stinking bastard, to himself. "Come November, we're going to pick up a hell of a lot more seats in the House. We'll pick up some in the Senate, too, from states where we got control of the legislature two years ago. And two years from now… Two years from now, by God…" Even in the dimly lit steakhouse, a feral glow shone in his eyes.
"Yeah." That same glow lit Willy Knight's face. He and Jake nodded to each other. Both men had been hungry, hungry in the spirit, for a long, long time, and at last they thought they could see satisfaction on the horizon.
Softly, Jake said, "If things go our way two years from now, I'm going to pay back every blue-blooded bastard and every nigger who ever did me wrong. And I'm going to put this poor, sorry country back on its feet again."
"Yeah," Knight said again. As with Featherston, he sounded more as if he looked forward to revenge than to rebuilding. He added, "We've got the United States to pay back, too."
"I haven't forgotten," Jake said. "Don't you worry about that, Willy. I haven't forgotten at all. That's why I came out here-to help everybody remember."
When he got to the park, it was filling up fast. Bare bulbs bathed the platform from which he would speak, though the sun hadn't set yet. As he walked up onto the platform and over to the microphone that would send his words across the CSA, a frightening, almost savage, roar went up from the crowd. He hoped the microphone would pick it up. He wanted people to get all hot and bothered when they heard him or thought about him.
"Hello, friends," he said at six on the dot. "I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth. The truth is, the United States are afraid of us. You look across what they call the border, you look into what they call Houston, and you'll know it's the truth. If they let people over there vote which country they wanted to belong to, they know what would happen. You know what would happen, too. Texas would be itself again. And so the Yankees don't let 'em vote."
Cheers in Abilene had that savage edge, too. Here not far from the border, people feared the United States, whether the United States feared them or not.
Jake went on, "The USA won't let people in Kentucky vote on that, either, or people in Sequoyah. They know where the people would go, and they don't aim to let 'em. Why? They're scared, that's why!"
He pointed east, a gesture full of contempt. "And do the Whigs way over there in Richmond, the Whigs who've been running this country ever since the War of Secession, do they do anything about it? Do they push the USA to let the folks in Houston- Houston! — and Kentucky and Sequoyah vote about who they want to belong to? Do they? Do they? Noooo!" He made the word a howl of rage. "They're nothing but a pack of dinosaurs, is what they are. And you know what you've got to do with dinosaurs, don't you? Send 'em to the museum! "
A vast roar went up. Featherston looked back at Willy Knight, standing there behind him. They grinned at each other. Knight was happy about his own cleverness, even though he thought Featherston had had the idea on his own, too. Jake was happy about how well the line had gone over. He knew he'd stolen it, knew and didn't care. The point was, it did what he wanted. And nobody else in the whole wide world knew, or cared, where he'd got it.
Little by little, Party men turned the roar into a chant: "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" The crowd followed along. The chant went on till Jake's head rang with it.
He raised his hands. Quiet slowly returned. Into it, he said, "Come November, you get your chance to send some more Whigs to the museum. I know you'll take care of it, friends. Folks who think they're smart used to say the Freedom Party was dead. We'll show 'em who's dead, see if we don't, and who needs burying, too. We're not dead, by God. We're just getting started!" Another roar went up, one that told him he'd found a brand-new slogan.