"I said I might write my memoirs," Potter told him after he put it on the kitchen table. "I may as well. Maybe the book'll make me enough money to live on." Palaiologos' grunt was nothing if not skeptical (and weary-the typewriter weighed a ton). Potter didn't care. He ran a sheet of paper into the machine. HOW I BLEW UP PHILADELPHIA, he typed in all caps. By Clarence Potter, Brigadier General, CSA (retired). He took out the title page and put in another sheet. I first met Jake Featherston late in 1915…
O ne more Election Day in New York City. One more trip to Socialist Party headquarters over the butcher's shop. One more tray of cold cuts from the Democrat downstairs.
Flora Blackford put corned beef and pickles on a bagel. "One more term, Flora," Maria Tresca said.
"Alevai." Flora knocked wood. One reason she kept getting reelected was that she never took anything for granted. She wasn't too worried this time around, not for herself. She hadn't been worried about the national ticket, either, not till the past couple of weeks. Now…"I hope Charlie La Follette does what he ought to."
On paper, the President of the USA had the world on a string. The war was over. He'd been at the helm when his country won it. The United States bestrode North America like a colossus: the Stars and Stripes flew from Baffin Island to below the Rio Grande. Surely people would be grateful for that…wouldn't they?
Not if they listened to the Democrats, they wouldn't. Tom Dewey and his running mate were saying the war was all the Socialists' fault in the first place. If Al Smith hadn't given Jake Featherston his plebiscite, the Confederate States wouldn't have got Kentucky and the state of Houston back. How could they have gone to war without Kentucky?
Nobody now seemed to remember there'd been guerrilla war in Kentucky and Houston and Sequoyah before the plebiscite. Flora agreed that Al Smith might have chosen better. But what he did choose wasn't halfway between idiocy and treason, no matter how the Democrats made it sound.
They were saying they could have fought the war better, too. And they were saying the United States went into it unprepared because the Socialists spent years gutting War Department budgets. Those budgets hadn't been exactly luxurious when Democrat Herbert Hoover ran things, either. Because of the economic collapse, nobody'd had much money to spend on guns…nobody but Jake Featherston.
The Democrats blamed the collapse on the Socialists, too. More to the point, they blamed it on Hosea Blackford. That made Flora see red. Yes, her husband was President when it happened. That didn't make it his fault. Except, in too many people's minds, it did. Hosea was a one-term President.
Herman Bruck looked at his watch. Every two years, he seemed a little plumper, a little grayer. Oh, and I haven't changed at all, Flora thought. That would have been nice if only it were true.
"Seven o'clock," Herman said ceremoniously. "The polls are closed." He turned on a wireless set.
None of the results from the East Coast would mean anything for a while. That wouldn't stop the broadcasters from reporting them and pontificating over them. It wouldn't stop inexperienced people from flabbling over them if they were bad or from celebrating too soon if they were good.
"Dewey jumps out to an early lead in Vermont!" a reporter said breathlessly. Flora had to fight the giggles. Of course Dewey led in Vermont. The sky would have to fall for him to do anything else. Vermont had been a rock-ribbed Democratic stronghold for years.
"Do you think we can hold New York?" Maria asked. That was a more important question. New York had a ton of electoral votes. It went Socialist more often than not, but Dewey the Democrat was a popular governor. How many people would vote for him for President because of that? Enough to swing the state?
"I hope so," Flora said. She didn't know what she could say past that. Polls called the race close, but she didn't have much faith in them. Pollsters had proved spectacularly wrong before.
Maine held its elections early, and had already gone for Dewey. A moment later, New Hampshire also fell into his column. Again, none of that was too surprising; only in landslide years did upper New England fall out of the Democratic camp.
But when early returns showed Dewey with a substantial lead in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Flora began to worry. Both states were in play in most elections. Herman Bruck said, "All depends on where the returns are coming from," which put the best possible face on things. He wasn't wrong, but they shouldn't have needed to fret so soon.
New Jersey seemed to be going Socialist, and by a solid majority. That made Flora breathe a little easier, anyhow. Any year the Socialists lost New Jersey would probably not be a year where they held on to the Presidency.
To drive her crazy, returns from Pennsylvania started coming in before any from New York. Those showed the race there neck and neck. How many people in western Pennsylvania were blaming the Socialists for the Confederate invasion two years earlier? Flora thought that would have happened regardless of who was running the country at the time, but she could see how others might see things a different way.
"Here is some of the early tally from New York," the newsman said. Everybody yelled for everybody else to hush. "These results show Governor Dewey with 147,461 votes to President La Follette's 128,889. In the race for Senator-"
"Where are they coming from?" This time, Bruck wasn't the only one to ask the question. Several people shouted it at the same time. The newscaster? He went blithely on to results from West Virginia.
"I'll find out," Herman Bruck said, and got on the telephone with the canvassing headquarters downtown. When he hung up, he might have been a balloon that had sprung a slow leak.
"What's the matter?" Flora asked, seeing his face.
"Those are city returns, not upstate," he answered. The news felt like a blow in the belly to Flora. New York political battles centered on whether Socialist New York City could outvote the Democratic hinterland. If New York City leaned Democratic…
If New York City leaned that way, it was liable to be a long, unhappy night.
And it was. The air in Socialist district headquarters went blue with tobacco smoke, and bluer with profanity. State after state fell to the Democrats. The Republican candidate, the energetic young Governor of Minnesota, stole his home state and Wisconsin from the Socialists in three-cornered races, and also took traditional Republican strongholds like Indiana and Kansas.
Flora held her own seat. Her margin was down from the last election, but she still won upwards of fifty-five percent of the vote. All the same…"I don't think we're going to do it," she said somewhere around one in the morning.
"How could they be so ungrateful?" Herman Bruck said. "We won the war for them. What more could they want?"
A country too strong for the Confederates even to think of attacking, that's what. Flora looked around in the gloomy, smoky headquarters. No, the ghost of Robert Taft wasn't sitting right behind her. But it might as well have been. The old Democratic stalwart had an answer for the Socialist cri de coeur.
After another hour, the newsman said, "Governor Dewey and Senator Truman are going to claim victory."
The Vice President-elect spoke first. His high, twangy voice full of good humor, he said, "I'm holding in my hands a copy of the Chicago Tribune. The headline reads, LA FOLLETTE BEATS DEWEY! I don't know where they got that headline from, but tonight Tom Dewey and the Democratic Party are winners!" Cheers interrupted him. He went on, "And tonight the American people are winners, too!" More cheers. "It is now my privilege to introduce the new President of the United States, Tom Dewey!"
"Thank you, Harry," the President-elect said. "I am humbled and honored to be chosen to lead the United States in these tense and trying times. I call on all people-Democrats, Socialists, and Republicans-to unite behind me to bind up the wounds of war and help guide the country into an era of peace and one of renewed prosperity and hope."