Little by little, returns began trickling in from farther west. Indiana had long been a Socialist stronghold; Senator Debs had twice lost to Teddy Roosevelt as the Socialist Party's standard-bearer. Hosea Blackford was well ahead there. Republicans remained strong in Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa-those three-cornered races wouldn't be settled till the wee small hours. Like Indiana, Wisconsin was solidly in the Socialist camp.
"We're doing fine," Flora said, and tried to make herself believe it.
"Maybe I'm glad I'm here after all," her husband said. "Looks like it's going to be a long night. This way, I can just go back into the bedroom and sleep whenever I feel like it. And there aren't any reporters yelling at me, either. I wouldn't be able to hear myself think over at Party headquarters."
"I wish it didn't look like a long night," Flora said. "I wish we were sweeping the country, and we could declare victory as soon as the polls closed."
"Well, I wouldn't mind that myself." Hosea laughed. "The Democrats did it for one election after another. Maybe we will, too, somewhere down the line But we haven't got there yet. This one's going to be close."
Flora's fists tightened till her nails bit into the palms of her hands. It wasn't just that she wanted the Socialists to win Powel House and as many seats in the House and Senate as they could, though she did. She'd always wanted that, ever since becoming a Party activist before the Great War. But it felt secondary now. With her husband in the race, she wanted his triumph with an intensity that amazed her. A win tonight would cap a lifetime of service to the Socialist cause and to the country. Losing…
Again, she refused to think about losing.
Hosea Blackford didn't. "If I win, we stay in Philadelphia," he said. "If I lose, we go home. How would you like living way out West for a while?"
"It's beautiful country," Flora answered, and then said the best thing she could for it: "Joshua would like growing up there." Having said that, she went on, "It seems so… empty, though, to somebody who's used to New York City or Philadelphia."
She'd enjoyed spending holidays in Dakota with her husband. The wide open spaces awed her, for a while. But towns and trains and civilization in general seemed a distinct afterthought there. She didn't like that, not at all. To someone who'd grown up on the preposterously overcrowded Lower East Side, so many empty miles of prairie, relieved-if at all-only by a long line of telegraph poles shrinking toward an unbelievably distant horizon, felt more alarming than inspiring.
Someone slammed down a telephone and let out a string of curses that ignored her presence in the room. "Kansas is going for Coolidge, God damn it," he said.
That made Flora want to curse, too. Hosea Blackford took it in stride. "Confederate raiders hit Kansas hard during the war," he said. "They don't love Socialists there; they've been Democrats since the Second Mexican War."
"Well, they can geh kak afen yam," Flora said.
Her husband chuckled; he knew what that Yiddish unpleasantry meant. "There's no yam anywhere close to Kansas for them to geh kak afen," he pointed out.
"I don't care," Flora said. "They can do it anyway."
The new state of Houston, carved from the conquered piece of Texas, went for Calvin Coolidge. So did Montana, which had been a Democratic stronghold ever since Theodore Roosevelt made a hero of himself there during the Second Mexican War. Flora began to worry in earnest. But a little past midnight, Pennsylvania, which had teetered for a long time, fell into her husband's camp-and Pennsylvania's electoral votes made up for a swarm of Montanas. New Jersey had also stayed close till then, and also ended up going Socialist.
"We may make it," Hosea Blackford said. "We just may."
By then, returns from the West were coming in. Colorado had a strong union tradition, and looked like going Socialist again. Idaho fell to Coolidge, and so did Nevada, but Blackford swept the West Coast, including populous California: Hiram Johnson had delivered his state.
Flora was yawning when one of the telephones rang a little past three in the morning. "Mr. Vice President," called the man who answered it, and then, in a different, awed, tone of voice, "Mr. President-elect, it's Governor Coolidge, calling from Massachusetts."
That woke Flora better than a big cup of black coffee could have done. She kissed her husband before he could go to the telephone. "Hello, Governor," he said when he picked up the instrument. "Thank you very much, sir… That's very generous… Yes, you did give me quite a scare, and I'm not ashamed to admit it… What's that?" He had been smiling and cordial, but now his expression hardened. "I certainly hope you're wrong, Governor. I think you are.. .. Yes, time will tell. Thank you again. Good night." He hung up, perhaps more forcefully than he had to.
"What did he say that made you angry?" Flora asked.
"He said maybe he was lucky not to win," Hosea Blackford answered. "He said bull markets don't last forever, and this one's gone on so long and risen so high, the crash will be all the worse when it comes back to earth."
"God forbid!" Flora exclaimed.
"I think we've given God some help," Hosea said. "The business cycle's been rising steadily all through both of President Sinclair's terms. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't do the same for me. The Democrats may have enjoyed boom-and-bust capitalism before the war, but we've put that behind us now. We're prosperous, and we'll stay prosperous."
"Alevai, omayn!" Whenever Flora fell back into Yiddish these days, she spoke from heart and belly.
Hosea Blackford smiled. He understood that. "I really do think it'll be all right, Flora," he said gently. "Oh, there's more farm debt than I care to see out in the West, and the factories almost seem to be making things faster than people can buy them, but all that's just a drop in the bucket. We'll do fine."
"I'm not going to argue with you, not now-Mr. President." Flora kissed him again. The telegraphers and men at the phones all cheered.
"Not for another five months," Hosea reminded her. "Say that to me in front of President Sinclair and he'll arrest you for treason."
"Phooey," Flora said, which wasn't English or Yiddish, but was exactly what she meant.
Another telephone rang. "Mr. President-elect, it's the president."
This time, Flora didn't try to delay her husband when he went to the telephone. "Hello, Upton," he said. "Thank you so very much… Yes, Cal threw in the towel a little while ago. He gave me some sour grapes, too, babbling about a crash… Yes, of course it's idiocy. When in all the history of the country have things gone so well? And we have you to thank for it. I'll do my best to follow your footsteps.
… Thanks again. Good-bye."
Flora went in and woke up Joshua. "Your father's going to be president," she told him.
"I want to go back to sleep," he said irritably-he wasn't quite three, and didn't care whether his father was president or a garbageman. Flora wanted to go to sleep, too. Now I won't have to live in Dakota, she thought. And if that wasn't reason enough, all by itself, to be glad Hosea had won, she couldn't imagine what would be.
T he year had turned eight days before. Lucien Galtier didn't want to be standing out in the open, not with the weather down around zero and a raw wind blowing out of the northwest. Under his overcoat, his tight collar and black cravat felt as if they were choking him.
Charles and Georges stood beside him in the graveyard. His sons' faces were blank and bitter with grief. So, he suspected, was his own. His daughters-Nicole, Denise, Susanne, and Jeanne-could show their grief more openly, though that wind threatened to freeze the tears on their faces.
It also whipped at Father Guillaume's wool cassock. "Is everyone here?" he asked. Galtier nodded. Himself, his children, their spouses, his two grandchildren-and Charles' wife big with child, due almost any day-Marie's brother and sister and their spouses and children and grandchildren, some cousins, some friends. The priest raised his voice a little: "Let us pray."