“What kind of damage do you mean? Try to make some sense, man.”
And then in that next instant, the clouds began to clear. Standing before Archie was a pretty little girl of six — pretty in her tight blond curls, pretty in her striking cornflower blue eyes, pretty in her whisper of a smile for the visitor who had just come to her house, but ugly in one terrible, terrifying aspect. Her creamy white cheeks had been deeply carved by some instrument of frightening disfiguring capability. The gashes had widened without stitching, and time had created several fat, hideous scars upon her youthful face.
“My daughter Angeline,” said Waldo, introducing us. “My angel. My cherub. No man will ever see in her face a reason to hurt her when she grows up. She will remain forever pure. I wish the same for your own daughter, Hawke. And for all the other beautiful little girls of this wicked, wicked world. All should be protected from the evil that is our cursed gender. Come give Daddy a little hug, my angel. He’s going away for a while. But at least no harm will come to you in his absence. You will grow up untouched by the depravity of man.”
The little girl embraced her father, the expression on her lacerated face quizzical, confused.
1920 FILIAL IN TENNESSEE
He was, at twenty-four, the youngest of all ninety-nine members of the 61st Tennessee General Assembly. He was also among its better-looking gents, his face boyish, smooth-shaven, and really rather beatific. (Although the second of those three attributes was hardly extraordinary in the year 1920; only a handful of the members of that august legislative body still maintained their mustaches, and only four of the Assembly’s most senior representatives, Messrs. Rector, Leath, Skidmore, and Oldham, could be categorized as true bearded relicts — Mr. Oldham, a possible lost twin of the famously whiskered former associate Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes.)
Harry was winded. He sat himself down upon the mouse-nibbled, moth-munched upholstery of an overly embroidered chair from the Reconstruction Era and attempted to retrieve his lost breath. Although he hadn’t been literally chased from the House of Representatives’ Assembly Hall, there had been movement of a discernibly angry character in Harry’s direction by a number of those upon the floor who sported red roses upon their lapels. Not knowing whether such movement would transform into an overt display of broom-torch and pitchfork-wielding mob vengeance, the young legislator made the snap decision to decamp from the chamber in a great hurry, to climb out of one of the capitol building’s third-floor windows, to inch his way along a ledge, and finally to secure refuge for himself under the rafters of that proud Greek revival building where the representatives of the people of Tennessee gathered to make laws.
In the attic, Harry found quiet and solace. He also found Rufus Vester Cawthon, one of the Assembly’s two youthful chaplains (Rufus was thirty). R.V., as he was sometimes known, was a minister in the Church of Christ — a gospel preacher still in the spring of a career that would span decades and win him fame far beyond his pulpit at the Mt. Juliet Church of Christ seventeen miles east of Nashville.
Cawthon was standing behind a tattered, upstanding steamer trunk. He had been rehearsing the delivery of his next sermon. For a brief moment, Harry Burn thought he was seeing a ghost.
“Why aren’t you downstairs watching history in the making?” asked Harry, coming quickly to realize that his sudden companion wasn’t spectral in the least, and was, in fact, a man he knew quite well and even liked.
“Because history will be made whether I choose to be witness to it or not,” answered Rufus, stepping out from behind his makeshift pulpit.
As the two men came together to shake hands, Harry remarked that in the summer-long “War of the Roses,” the good reverend wore neither the yellow rose of the suffragists nor the red rose of the anti-Anthony amendment opposition.
To which the Church of Christ pastor replied, “The color of one’s lapel flower appears to have little bearing upon how one will ultimately vote on granting the franchise to the fairer sex.” Rufus poked the air in front of Harry’s red-colored sartorial garnishment. “You would not be seeking the sanctuary of this cobwebbed aerie were it not for the fact, Harry, that you have voted against those who also wear the red rose — against your own side. So, I ask you, sir, in my absence and in the presence of our all-seeing God, did you, in fact, just alter the course of history?”
Harry nodded. He sank down into a molting armchair and allowed all of the air in his lungs to take temporary leave.
“And why did you betray those in the cause to which you had already sworn fealty? Are you a traitor to your comrades?”
“I suppose, Reverend, that that is one way to look at it. On the other hand, let it never be said that I was a traitor to womanhood.” Harry and Rufus each took out handkerchiefs and patted their perspiring foreheads and the moist necks beneath their wilting collars. It was the middle of August, after all, and the attic was but minimally ventilated.
Rufus pulled up an antique hassock, which was losing its horsehair stuffing in three of its corners. He sat with his legs splaying out, his large ears giving him the appearance of a spindly-legged, floppy-eared creature of the East Tennessee forest.
“You searched your soul. So much was at stake. If the legislature had voted down the Anthony amendment today, the cause would eventually be won, I have no doubt, but most of the women of America would have to wait until 1924 for the chance to cast their first presidential ballot.”
“You sincerely believe, then, Reverend, that the amendment would have won its final statehouse ratification whether I switched sides or not?”
Rufus nodded. “Connecticut’s legislature has yet to vote on it, as you must surely know. Vermont’s is also waiting in the wings. And one of the southern states that has already rejected it could always put the matter up for a vote of reconsideration.”
Harry laughed. “You sound as if there might be a yellow rose tucked inside your jacket pocket.”
“And a red rose in the other pocket. I’m chaplain to all ninety-nine of our state representatives, Harry — not just the ones professing allegiance to the cause of universal suffrage. So the margin of victory: was it really only one vote—your vote?”
“It was my vote.”
“Boy, you amaze me. That took much courage, I’m sure.”
“Some, perhaps. Of course, I subsequently fled the hall like a hunted animal.”
Harry reached into his striped seersucker suit jacket pocket and took out an envelope. He pulled from it several handwritten pages. “It’s from my mother back home in Niota.”
“And given all the events of this tumultuous day you haven’t had time to read it. Let me leave you, then, to your private letter.”
Rufus started to rise. Harry stayed him with a fluttering hand. Harry’s eyes browsed the several pages of the folded letter. “She’s unhappy about the rain. And here she’s talking about a visit from Uncle Bill and Mr. Bushnell. They came in the Ford. She asks if I’ll be home for Labor Day. Oh, and here she tells me something that she figures I have forgotten: how very much she dislikes politicians and how very much she doesn’t want her own son to be one. And no, Reverend, I have not completely made up my mind as to whether I will run for re-election this fall, although if I choose to run, I do stand to pick up a few female votes as reward for my male apostasy, don’t you think?”
Rufus smiled. “How can you not?”
“And here it is — the part of the letter in which my mother pointedly asks me to vote for women’s suffrage. She tells me not to forget to be a good boy and to help Mrs. Catt with her ‘rats.’ Mama is making a joke, you see.”