"What's our message?" Potter asked for the second time. "Why should anybody vote for us? If you ask me, the only chance we've got is to make Jake Featherston look like a dangerous lunatic. That shouldn't be too hard, because the son of a bitch really is a dangerous lunatic. But we aren't working hard enough to make him out to be one."
Bang! went the gavel again. "I repeat, you're out of order, Mr. Potter."
"Hang on." That was Braxton Donovan. "Clarence has a point, by God. We can't campaign on what we did this past presidential term, that's for damn sure. And if we can't make ourselves look good, we'd better try to make the Freedom Party look bad. Otherwise, we are stone, cold dead."
"I'll be damned," Clarence Potter muttered. Somebody had listened to him. He wasn't used to that. Even the clients who paid him pretty decent money to find out this, that, or the other thing often ignored what he learned when it didn't gibe with what they thought they already knew.
Donovan went on, "We ought to pass that notion on to the national party in Richmond. They may not have thought of it for themselves." He made a sour face. "Who knows how well they're thinking up there these days?"
Reluctantly, Washburn nodded. "Let it be noted in the minutes," he said. He was a good man. He'd been a good man for a long time-he had to be seventy, near enough. Potter wondered if the Freedom Party had any city chairmen that old. He would have bet money against it.
As far as he was concerned, nothing else of any importance happened during the meeting. Since he hadn't expected anything at all important to happen, he left feeling ahead of the game: not easy, not for anyone who cared about the Whig Party in 1933. Maybe, just maybe, the Whigs could keep Jake Featherston out of power one more time by making him look like a raving maniac. Potter felt like Horatius at the bridge, doing everything he could to keep the enemy from breaking into the city.
He started back toward his neat little flat. Behind him, Donovan called, "Wait a second, Potter. I had an idea."
Clarence stopped. "Congratulations."
"Smarty-britches. Your pa should have walloped you more when you were little." But the lawyer spoke without heat. He went on, "You ever see Anne Colleton these days?"
"No," Potter said shortly. That he didn't still pained him. They'd got on very well; in a lot of ways, they were two of a kind. But they hadn't come close to seeing eye to eye about politics, and they both took politics too seriously to let them stay together. So much for bedfellows, strange or otherwise, he thought.
"Maybe you ought to try again," Donovan said. "If you can convince her that Featherston needs a straitjacket and a rubber room, you'll hurt the Freedom Party."
"I would," Potter said, "but I don't think she's likely to pay any attention to me."
"What have you got to lose?" Donovan asked. "If you haven't got the price of a long-distance telephone call, I can pay for it." He reached for his hip pocket.
"I've got it, I've got it." Potter waved for him to stop, and he did. What have you got to lose? It was a good question. How would he be worse off if Anne hung up on him or told him to go peddle his papers? Oh, his self-respect would take a beating, but that didn't have anything to do with the Whigs and their hopes, such as those were. He nodded to Braxton Donovan. "All right, I'll take a shot at it. Don't say I never did the Party a good turn."
"Heaven forbid such a thought from ever crossing my mind." Donovan sounded pious as a preacher. Such fine phrases meant exactly nothing, as Potter knew perfectly well. Maybe Donovan would remember them, maybe he wouldn't. Potter also knew which way he would guess.
Being in the line of work he was, he had a telephone back at his flat. As he took the mouthpiece off the hook, a black excitement filled him. "Operator, I'd like to make a long-distance call, please," he said, and gave the telephone number he'd never scratched out of his address book.
"One moment, sir, while I place the call," the operator replied. "And whom shall I say is the calling party?" Potter gave her his name. The call took longer than the promised moment to complete. He listened to clicks and pops on the line and a couple of faint, almost unintelligible, conversations between operators.
Then a telephone rang. He heard that quite plainly. "Hello?" There was Anne Colleton's voice, almost as clear as if she were down the block instead of halfway across the state. Telephones had come a long way since the Great War. The operator announced the long-distance call and gave her Potter's name. "Yes, I'll speak to him," Anne said at once, and then, "How are you, Clarence? What's this all about?"
"I'm fine," he answered. "How have you been? Haven't talked to you in a while."
"No-you chose your party, and I chose mine," Anne said. "When November rolls around, we'll see who chose better."
Clarence knew then his call was hopeless. He went ahead anyway: "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. You've met Jake Featherston. You must know as well as I do, he's got a few screws loose up there. Lord knows we're sinners here in the CSA, Anne, but do we really deserve Jake for president? What ever we may have done to make God angry at us, it's not that bad."
Anne laughed. "What does he say that's wrong? That we need to get back on our feet? We do. That the niggers rose up and stabbed us in the back? They did. That the War Department didn't know what was going on till way too late? It didn't. That we ought to stand up to the United States? We should. If any of that's crazy, then I'm crazy, too."
"Wherever you want to go, there are lots of ways to get there," Potter said stubbornly. As long as they were talking, he'd give it his best try even if he was sure it wasn't good enough. "Featherston's going over the rocks and through the swamp. You ask me, he's more likely to put us on our backs than on our feet."
"I didn't ask you, Clarence," Anne said. "You made this call."
"I'm trying to tell you the man's dangerous."
"I know he is-to everybody who wants to keep us down."
"No, to us," Potter insisted. "Is he going to pay the niggers back or scare them into another uprising? Wasn't one bad enough?"
"If they try it twice, they'll never try it three times." Anne sounded almost as if she looked forward to crushing another Negro revolt.
Even so, Potter went on, "If he cleans out the War Department, who goes in instead? His drinking buddies? Will they be any better?"
"How could they be any worse?" Anne returned.
"I don't know. I don't want to find out, either. And do you really want us to fight the United States again and lose?"
"No. I want us to fight those goddamn sons of bitches again and win," Anne said. "And so does Jake Featherston, and I think we will."
"How?" Potter demanded. "Think straight, Anne. I know you can if you want to. They're bigger than we are. They're stronger than we are. They would be even if they hadn't stolen two of our states and pieces of others. Whatever we want to do to them-and I don't love them, either; believe me, I don't-what chance have we got to actually do it?"
"We haven't got any chance if we don't try," Anne said. "Good-bye, Clarence." She hung up. Potter wondered if he ought to call her again and try to make her see reason. Slowly, he shook his head. She wouldn't do it. That seemed only too plain. With a soft curse, he set the mouthpiece back in its cradle.
L ike most Confederate veterans, Jefferson Pinkard belonged to the Tin Hats. They weren't nearly so important in his life as the Freedom Party. He paid his dues every year, and that was about it. Still, when Amos Mizell, the longtime head of the Tin Hats, came to Birmingham to make a speech on a bright spring Sunday, Jeff went over to Avondale Park to hear what he had to say.