Potter smiled at them. "Go ahead, boys. Make yourselves as obnoxious as you can. The more votes you cost your man, the better."
As he walked into the charmed circle, one of the men in white and butternut asked, "Who's that smart-mouthed son of a bitch?"
"Name's Potter," another answered. "Lives around the block. You don't need to write him down. He's already on the list."
Already on the list, am I? Potter thought. An honor I could do without. Behind him, the Freedom Party men resumed their chant. Where are our men, shouting for Longstreet and Black? he wondered. He knew the Whigs had men outside some polling places. Not this one. The business collapse wasn't the only reason the Freedom Party looked like winning today. How-ever much Potter hated to admit it, even to himself, the opposition was better organized than his own party. He would have bet every Freedom Party man-and woman, in states where women could vote-would get to the polls today. He wished he could have made the same bet about Whig backers. How many of them would sit on their hands? Too many. Any at all would be too many.
He cast his own ballot, then walked back the way he'd come. He didn't think the Freedom Party men would set on him so close to the polling place, where people could see them for what they were. They didn't… quite. They shouted, "Nigger-lover!" and, "You'll get yours!" at him, but they didn't try to give it to him. He was almost disappointed. For this trip, he had a pistol in his pocket, not a blackjack.
Having voted, he went to work. It was less than interesting today: a husband wanted evidence his wife was cheating, but the wife, busy with shopping and the couple's two small children, gave none. Potter thought the husband was inventing things to worry about, but he kept his opinions to himself. For one thing, clients seldom paid attention to opinions contradicting their own. For another, the man paid well. If he wanted to throw away his money… well, it was a free country, wasn't it?
It is till that Featherston bastard takes over, Potter thought.
On the trolley ride back to his flat after knocking off for the day, he passed another polling place. Police cars were parked in front of it. Blood stained the sidewalk and nearby walls. Freedom Party men waving their reversed-color Confederate battle flags still stood on the street. "Feather ston! Feather ston!" Even through the trolley's closed windows, the chant lacerated Clarence Potter's ears. The police didn't try to run the stalwarts off. If Whigs had been here, they were no longer. This skirmish belonged to the Freedom Party.
After pan-frying a pork chop and some potatoes and washing them down with a stiff whiskey, Potter went over to Whig headquarters to hear… whatever he heard. Dance music blared from the wireless sets: the polls hadn't closed yet. He pulled out his pocket watch. It was a little past seven-thirty-less than half an hour to go.
That gave him plenty of time for another drink, or two, or three. He nodded to Braxton Donovan, who also had a whiskey in his hand, and said, "The condemned man drank a hearty meal."
"Funny," the lawyer said. "Funny like a crutch."
"Oh, I didn't mean you," Potter said. "If you think I meant you, I apologize. I meant the country. Before they execute a man, they give him a blindfold and a cigarette. What do we do when the Confederate States of America go up against the wall?"
Donovan studied him. "I don't think I've ever heard you say you were sorry before. You must mean it. You don't waste time being polite."
I try not to waste time at all, Potter thought. But he had nothing to do but stand there banging his gums till clocks in Charleston started striking eight. "All along the eastern seaboard of the Confederate States, the polls have closed," an announcer on the wireless declared. "We'll bring you the latest results from the presidential, Congressional, state, and local elections-but first, a word from our sponsor." A chorus of young women started singing about the wonders of a soap made from pure palm oil. Potter wondered what could be going through their minds as they trilled the inane lyrics. Probably something like, We're getting paid. Times were hard indeed.
Then the numbers started coming in. Somebody posted each new installment on a big blackboard at the front of the room. That meant the Whigs could go on chattering and still keep up. As soon as Clarence Potter saw the early results from North Carolina, he knew what kind of night it would be. North Carolina was a solid, sensible, foursquare Whig state. The collapse hadn't hit it so hard as a lot of other places.
Jake Featherston led there. He led by more every time the fellow at the board erased old numbers and put up new ones. And he had coattails. Freedom Party Congressional candidates were winning in districts where they'd never come close before. And it looked as bad everywhere else.
Braxton Donovan stared owlishly at the returns. He fixed himself another drink, then came back to stand by Potter and stare some more. He didn't say anything for a long, long time. At last, he did: "Jesus Christ. It's like watching a train wreck, isn't it?"
Potter shook his head. "No, Braxton. It's like being in a train wreck." Donovan thought that over, then slowly nodded.
And it got no better, not from a Whig point of view, as the polls closed in states farther west. Back in 1921, Tennessee had decided the election when it finally went Whig. This year, it went for Featherston and the Freedom Party. So did Mississippi and Alabama. Potter hadn't expected anything different there, but he would have loved to be proved wrong. The Whigs led in Arkansas, but Arkansas wasn't big enough to matter.
"My God," somebody behind Potter said. "What is the world coming to?"
He didn't need to ask the question, not when he could see the answer. Jake Featherston was going to be president. He would have a majority-a big majority-in the House. The Senate, whose members were chosen by state legislatures rather than popular vote, wasn't so obvious. Even so, it all added up to the same thing: after seventy years in the saddle, the Whigs were going into the minority.
"The minority?" the man in back of Potter said when he spoke that thought aloud. "That's crazy." He still seemed unbelieving.
"If you don't get it, think like a nigger," Potter said. "It'll come to you then, believe me."
A long with news of a corruption scandal in the Iowa legislature, newsboys in Des Moines shouted about Jake Featherston's victory down in the Confederate States. More of them yelled about the scandal, which was right there in town. The election news hit Cincinnatus Driver a lot harder. He got out of his truck on the way to the railroad yards and bought a paper, something he hardly ever did: getting there a minute late might cost him a good cargo. But today he spread the Register and Remembrance on the seat beside him and read a paragraph or two whenever he had to stop.
He was still shaking his head when he got out of the Ford at the yards and started dickering with a conductor over a load of beds and dressers and nightstands. "What's the big deal?" asked the conductor, a white man too young to have fought in the Great War. "Who cares what happens down in the Confederate States?"
"I cares." Cincinnatus knew that was bad grammar even without Achilles telling him so. "I grew up in Kentucky when it was part of the CSA. Glad it ain't no more. I got out of there once the USA took it over. This here's a better place if you're colored."
The conductor was not only white, he was a blond who couldn't have got any whiter if somebody'd thrown him into a tub of bleach. He said, "I don't know nothin' about that. All I know is, you may be colored, but you haggle like a damn kike."
If he'd been talking about Cincinnatus to a Jew, he probably would have called him a damn nigger. Cincinnatus took such names in stride; he'd heard them all, especially the one applying to his own race, too often to get excited about them. He said, "I tell you, Mr. Andersen, I don't reckon it's against the law to try an' git me enough money to make the job worth my while. I ain't no charity."