Rodriguez was glad to let his friend buy him a beer. He was a little elevated-not drunk, but a little elevated-as he and Ruiz walked down the street to the shopfront that said FREEDOM! and LIBERTAD!
A couple of men were already there. "Hola, amigos," Robert Quinn said in his accented Spanish as Rodriguez and Ruiz came in. Three more men followed right behind them. Quinn went on, " Libertad! I wish we had a wireless set here. This town needs electricity, por Dios."
"If the mines had stayed open…" Rodriguez began, and then shrugged, as if to say, What can anyone do?
But Quinn didn't have that attitude. "Let the Party come into power, and we'll do something about the mines. We'll do something about all sorts of things. That's why you're here, right? You believe in doing things, not in sitting around and waiting for them to happen."
Is that why I'm here? Rodriguez wondered. He thought he was here mostly because he couldn't stand the United States and wanted revenge on them. But if that required doing other things, then it did, that was all.
A messenger from the telegraph office came in with a sheaf of flimsy yellow papers. "Gracias," Quinn told him, and gave him a dime. He went through the telegrams in a hurry. Then he let out a banshee whoop of a sort Rodriguez hadn't heard since his days in the trenches. Some of the men there had called the battle cry a Rebel yell. "We're winning," Quinn said. "Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida-wherever I have returns, we're picking up seats in Congress and in the state legislatures. And our men running for governor are ahead in South Carolina and Florida, and the race in Virginia is still very close. Libertad! "
"Libertad!" the Freedom Party men shouted. Rodriguez couldn't wait for results to start coming in from states closer to Sonora.
To while away the time, Quinn pulled a whiskey bottle out of a desk drawer. He took a pull himself, then passed it around. Rodriguez had always thought whiskey tasted nasty. He still did, but that didn't keep him from swigging when the bottle got to him. "Ahh!" he said. The stuff might taste bad, but he liked what it did.
More telegrams came in. So did more people. The Freedom Party didn't look as if it would win the governorship of Virginia after all, but it gained a Senator from Mississippi and another from Tennessee. Before long, it also picked up two more Congressmen in Alabama, a Senator from Arkansas, and several Congressmen from eastern Texas. "Will we have a majority?" Rodriguez asked. Even a few weeks before, the question would have seemed unimaginable. Now…
Now, to his disappointment, Robert Quinn shook his head. "No, I don't think so," he answered. "But we're still doing better than anybody thought we could." He pulled out a fresh bottle of whiskey and led the Party men in a new shout of, "Libertad!"
An hour or so later, returns from Chihuahua started arriving. The Freedom Party men in Baroyeca cheered: their candidate for governor there was well ahead of the Radical Liberal incumbent. And in Sonora itself, two more Congressional districts swung to the Party. As Rodriguez had known he would be, he was very late getting home that night. But he hadn't known-he'd had no idea-how happy he would be making that long walk in the dark.
L ucien Galtier parked his motorcar in front of the house where his daughter Nicole lived with Dr. Leonard O'Doull. Nicole opened the door at his knock and gave him a hug. "Hello, Papa," she said. "It's always good to see you."
"Is it?" Galtier said. "I don't want to make a nuisance of myself." Since Marie died, he'd started visiting his children as often as he could. For one thing, he was lonely. For another, he was sure he was the world's worst cook. Any evening where he didn't have to eat what he turned out was an evening gained.
Nicole made a face at him. "Don't be silly. You know you're welcome here."
As if to underscore that, little Lucien came running up shouting, "Grandpere!" When Galtier picked up his namesake, the boy threw his arms around his neck and gave him a big, sloppy kiss.
"You're growing up," Galtier told him. "You're heavier every time I try to lift you." He turned to his daughter. "It must be that you keep feeding him."
She snorted. "You sound like Georges. He must get his foolishness from you. Now come in, for heaven's sake. Sit down. Relax."
"This is a strange word for a farmer to hear." But Galtier wasn't sorry to sit down on the sofa. Leonard O'Doull walked in a moment later, with glasses of applejack and fine Habana cigars.
"I thank you very much," Galtier said, accepting the brandy and the tobacco. He raised his glass in salute. "To your good health!"
"And to yours," his son-in-law answered. They both drank, as did Nicole. The applejack went down soft and sweet as a first kiss. Little Lucien ran off to play. O'Doull asked, "And how are you, mon beau-pere?"
Lucien shrugged. "As well as I can be, I suppose. It is not easy." That was as much as he would say. It would also do for an understatement till he found a bigger one, which might come along.. oh, a hundred years from now.
Dr. O'Doull looked sly. "But of course you have all the pretty ladies for miles around looking in your direction now that, however unfortunately, you are a single man once more."
He probably meant it for a joke. In fact, Galtier was almost sure he meant it for a joke. But that didn't mean it held no truth. He'd been amazed how many widows and maiden ladies had come to call on him, to say how sorry they were that Marie was gone… and, sometimes quite openly, to size him up. He'd been even more amazed that a couple of farmers, both in the most casual, offhand way imaginable, had brought up their marriageable daughters with him. True, he wasn't an old man-he wouldn't see sixty for a few years yet-but what would he do with an eighteen- or twenty-year-old girl? Oh, there was one obvious answer, but he couldn't even do that so often as he had when he was younger. And, if he were to have a wife younger than his youngest daughter, wouldn't making love to her feel like molesting a child? Some men his age, no doubt, would have thought themselves lucky to get offers like those. He didn't.
Making a production out of lighting his cigar meant he didn't have to answer his son-in-law. Once he had it going, once he'd savored the fine, mild smoke, he asked, "And how is it with you here?"
"Not too bad," O'Doull answered. Nicole nodded. Galtier did, too, in approval. The American sounded more like a Quebecois with each passing year. It wasn't just his accent, though the years had also meant that Riviere-du-Loup supplanted Paris in his French. But Americans, from everything Galtier had seen, liked to brag. Not too bad was about as much as a man from this part of the world was ever likely to say. Dr. O'Doull went on, "I wish I could do more about influenza and rheumatic fever and a dozen other sicknesses, but I don't know of any other doctors anywhere else in the world who wouldn't say the same thing."
"Your glass is empty, Papa," Nicole said, and then did something to correct that.
"Pour me full of applejack, yes, and how will I go home?" Galtier asked, not that he didn't want the freshened glass. "The one advantage a horse has over an automobile is that the horse knows the way."
"You can sleep here. You know you're welcome," his daughter said.
He smiled. He did know that. He'd even done it once or twice, on nights when he'd been too drunk to find the door, let alone to fit the Chevrolet's key into the ignition. He might even have slept better here than at home, and that wasn't because he'd been drunk. Trying to sleep alone in a bed where he'd had Marie beside him for so long… He grimaced and took a quick nip from the brandy. No, that wasn't easy at all.