Applause almost drowned him out. He said all the right things. Charlie La Follette could have used his speech without changing more than a couple of words. Flora would rather have heard it from La Follette than Dewey.
La Follette had gone back to Wisconsin to vote. He didn't even carry his home state. A few minutes after the Democrats, he came on the wireless. "The people have spoken," he said. "I congratulate Governor Dewey-President-elect Dewey, as he is now-and wish him the best of luck in the next four years. I did not expect to be President of the United States during the most profound crisis of the twentieth century. Under Jake Featherston, the Confederate States aimed not merely at beating us but at crushing us and subjecting us so we could never rise again. Instead, we triumphed in the hardest war ever fought on this blood-soaked continent.
"Perhaps we did not do everything as well as we might have. That is easier to see in hindsight than it was through foresight. But the people have called us to account for it, as is their right. May the new President fare well in ruling the territories we have gained, and in the complex field of international relations. With superbombs, everyone is suddenly everyone else's nearest neighbor. I will serve President Dewey in whatever capacity he may find useful, or in none if that be his pleasure. Serving the people of the United States has been the greatest privilege of my life. Thank you, God bless you, and good night."
"That was Charles La Follette, the outgoing President of the United States," the announcer said unnecessarily.
"A good good-bye," Herman Bruck said as the wireless started catching up on races that remained close.
"I wanted a good victory speech, dammit," Flora said. All through the crowded Socialist headquarters, heads bobbed up and down.
"Changeover time," Maria Tresca remarked, and it would be. It looked as if the Democrats would also capture the House, though the Senate would stay in Socialist hands. But an earthquake would hit the executive branch. Since 1920, only Herbert Hoover's single term had broken the Socialists' hold on the Presidency. Lots of new and untested officials would try out lots of new and untested policies.
Flora might have been in line to chair the House Judiciary Committee. Not now. Back to the minority. That hadn't happened very often since the end of the Great War. If the Democrats proposed foolish laws now that they ruled the roost, she would do her best to keep them from passing.
"Why are the people so ungrateful?" Bruck wondered out loud.
"There's a story," Maria said. "Back in the days when Athens held ostracisms to get rid of politicians they didn't like, an illiterate citizen who didn't recognize Aristides the Just came up to him and asked him to write 'Aristides' on a potsherd. He did, but he asked why. The man answered, 'I'm tired of hearing him called "the Just." ' And that's what happened to us, or something like it."
Flora found herself nodding. She said, "Still, it's a shame to run on a platform where the main plank is 'Throw the rascals in.'"
She got a laugh. If it was tinged with bitterness-well, why wouldn't it be? She thought the Socialists deserved better than they'd got from the people, too. No matter what she thought, though, she couldn't do anything about it. Every so often, the government turned over. The world wouldn't end. The country wouldn't go down the drain-even if the party in power always tried to make the voters think it would if the opposition won.
She'd lost a brother-in-law to war. Her own brother had lost a leg. Her son lost only a finger. Other than that, Joshua was fine, and it wouldn't much affect the rest of his life. Next to important things like that, how much did elections really matter?
A ll the arguing was over. Jonathan Moss had done everything he could. He'd tried his damnedest to convince the U.S. military court that Jefferson Pinkard had followed his own superiors' legal orders when he ran his extermination camps in Louisiana and Texas. He'd done his best to persuade them that the USA had no jurisdiction over what the Confederates did to their own people.
Now the military judges were deliberating. Pinkard sat in the courtroom, large and blocky and stolid. Only the way his jaw worked on some chewing gum showed he might be nervous.
"You gave it everything you had," he told Moss. "I thought that Jew who got hurt was hot stuff, but you're good, too. Don't reckon he could've pulled any rabbits out of the hat that you didn't."
"Thanks," Moss said. If he'd satisfied his client, his own conscience could stay reasonably clear. That was just as well, because he had no doubt in his own mind that Pinkard was guilty. If they didn't hang him, would they-could they-hang anybody?
"All rise!" the warrant officer who transcribed the proceedings intoned as the panel of judges entered the courtroom.
Moss stood and came to attention. Jeff Pinkard stood but didn't. He'd loudly denied that the court had any jurisdiction over him. That wouldn't endear him to the men who judged him. Everyone sat down again.
"We have reached a verdict in United States vs. Jefferson Davis Pinkard," the chief judge said.
Beside Moss, Pinkard stiffened. His jaw set. He might claim he was ready for the Army to convict him, but he wasn't, not down deep. Who could be? No one was ever ready to face his own death.
"The defendant will please rise," the chief judge said.
Pinkard did. This time, without being asked, he did come to attention. Maybe the solemnity of the moment pressed on him in spite of himself. He'd fought in the Great War. Nobody said he'd been anything but brave. Nobody said that about Jake Featherston, either. Bravery wasn't enough, not by itself. The cause for which you showed courage counted, too.
"Jefferson Davis Pinkard, we find you guilty of crimes against humanity," the chief judge said. Pinkard's shoulders sagged. The breath hissed out of him, as if he'd been punched in the gut. The officer pronouncing his fate continued, "We sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, at a date to be set by competent military authority. May God have mercy on your soul."
Jonathan Moss jumped to his feet. "Your Honor, I appeal this conviction and the sentence you've imposed."
"You have that privilege," the chief judge said. "Appeals will be heard by the Secretary of War and, no doubt, by the President of the United States. I do not believe the upcoming change in administrations will affect the process."
He was bound to be right. The outgoing Socialists wouldn't show mercy to someone like Jeff Pinkard. They were the ones who'd brought him to justice in the first place. And the Democrats had campaigned by saying, If we were running things, we would have been even tougher. Still, you had to go do everything you could.
"Do you have any statement for the record, Mr. Pinkard?" the chief judge asked.
"Damn right I do," Pinkard said-he had no quit in him. "You can hang me. You won, and you caught me, so you can. But that don't make it right. I was doing a job of work in my own country, following orders from the Attorney General of the CSA-"
"Ferdinand Koenig has also been sentenced to death, among other things for giving those orders," the chief judge broke in.
Jeff Pinkard shook his head. He was furious, not bewildered. "It's none of your goddamn business what we did. It wasn't your country, and they weren't your people."
"We made it our business," the chief judge replied. "We want people everywhere to get the message: doing things like this is wrong, and you will be punished for it. And besides, Mr. Pinkard, you know as well as I do-if you'd won the war, you would have started in on us next."
Pinkard didn't even waste time denying it. He just said, "Yeah, and you'd've had it coming, too. Fuck you all, assholes."