And the parade went on and on and on. Scipio wouldn't have believed that Augusta held so many people, let alone that it held so many Freedom Party backers. Jake Featherston wasn't in town. Neither was Willy Knight. These people had nothing special to lure them out of their houses. But they came. Maybe that was the scariest thing of all.
At last, after half an hour, the procession ended. Jerry Dover hadn't gone outside, either. He had pushed Scipio and the other blacks out of the way a few times to look at things for himself. "Well, well, well," he said when it was over and the raucous cries of Featherston! at last ebbed away. "I always wondered, but now I know. Those bastards really are crazy."
Scipio and the other waiters exchanged glances. Dover didn't need to say that. What white man in the CSA needed to make Negroes like him? The question was so ridiculous, it might not even have occurred to Scipio without the goad of something as massive as the Freedom Party procession.
The sheer scope of it got through to Dover, too. He spoke again: "Crazy or not, though, there's a hell of a lot of 'em, ain't there? Don't see how they're going to lose the election. Wish to God I did." He made pushing motions at the waiters. "They're gone. You can disappear, too."
Searchlights blazed from Allen Park, not far off to the west. With the door open, the rhythmic shouting of Jake Featherston's name grew louder and more frightening. Scipio scuttled back toward the Terry, a black dust mote adrift on that dreadful sea of sound.
J efferson Pinkard came to the Freedom Party meeting in his jailer's uniform. No time to go back to his apartment and put on the usual white shirt and butternut trousers, not if he wanted to be sure of having a place to sit down when he got to the old livery stable. Party meetings had never been so crowded. He saw faces he hadn't seen for years, and he saw plenty of faces he'd never seen before-more at every meeting, it seemed.
Now people want to hop on the train-when it looks like it's just about to get to the station, he thought, eyeing with no small scorn the strangers who suddenly called themselves Freedom Party men. He'd been with the Party train every inch of the way, through ups and downs and derailments. Hell, he'd been at the Alabama State Fairgrounds out at the west end of town when Grady Calkins murdered President Hampton. He hadn't given up even then, even when things looked blackest.
He sent the Johnny-come-latelies another sour stare. Would they have stuck with Jake Featherston when the going got rough? Not likely, not most of them. They were here because they wanted to ride a winner's coattails, not because they believed. You could use people like that, but could you ever really trust them? He had his doubts.
Caleb Briggs strode briskly up onto the rostrum. He had a microphone up there these days, to help his gas-ruined voice fill the meeting hall despite the buzz from the big crowd. In the row behind Pinkard, a man who'd been in the party for a while explained to a couple of new fish who Briggs was. Jeff muttered something incredulous under his breath. Didn't they know anything? Evidently not.
Behind the dentist who headed up the Freedom Party in Birmingham stood Confederate and Party flags. He crisply saluted each of them in turn, then stepped up to that microphone and said, "Freedom!"
"Freedom!" The roar from the crowd made Pinkard's head spin. The new Party men were good for something, anyhow-they had big mouths.
Briggs' smile showed white teeth. "Good to see y'all here," he rasped, "old friends and new." A few of the longtime Freedom Party men, Jeff among them, laughed softly. Caleb knew what was what, same as anybody else who'd seen the light a while ago. Smiling still, Briggs went on, "A month to go, boys, and then we get to the Promised Land. We've been in the wilderness a long time now, but we're almost there."
Pinkard whooped. "Freedom!" he shouted, as if he were a Negro responding to a preacher's sermon. He wasn't the only one, either. Far from it.
But when Briggs held up a hand, silence fell, just like that. By God, the Freedom Party had discipline. "The one thing we've got to do now," he said, and paused to draw more air into his ravaged lungs, "is make sure we don't stumble and fall. We've come too far for that. This time, we win."
More shouts of, "Freedom!" rang out. So did a chorus of, "Feather ston!" Pinkard tried to imagine waking up the morning after Election Day and finding out Jake Featherston had lost again. He didn't think the Party could survive it. He wasn't sure he could.
"We've got to make sure we win," Briggs went on. "We've been doing plenty, but we've got to do more. Just for instance, Hugo Black is coming to town Saturday."
A low murmur ran through the crowd. The Whig vice-presidential candidate was good on the stump-not so good as Featherston or Willy Knight, not as far as Pinkard was concerned, but still a formidable speaker.
Caleb Briggs grinned a sly, conspiratorial grin. "I'm sure we'll give him a nice, warm Birmingham welcome when he pays us a call." He waited for the grins and sniggers to stop, then held up a hand. "It may not be so easy. The Whigs aren't ashamed to steal our tricks. They'll have their own tough boys at Black's rally, you can bet on that."
"We'll lick 'em!" Jeff roared, before anybody else could. Somebody behind him clapped him on the back.
"We'd better lick 'em," Briggs said. "We need to make damn sure we do. I want a show of hands for volunteers."
Every man in the place raised his hand. Some men held up both hands at once to look more prominent. Pinkard thought about doing that, but didn't. One hand was plenty. He didn't need to show off.
Up on the platform, Caleb Briggs grinned. "I knew I could count on you. Be here Saturday at half past twelve. Black's speaking at two. He reckons he is, anyways."
Half past twelve was a good time to gather. The men who still worked Saturday mornings would have time to put in their half days. A lot of businesses had cut back to five days a week. Men who worked for them wouldn't have any problems showing up, either. And, of course, the men who were out of work could come whenever the Party needed them, as long as they could scrape up trolley fare.
Jeff was scheduled to work all day that Saturday. He traded shifts with another jailer, a man who despised politics of all sorts almost as much as he despised prisoners of all sorts. He got to Freedom Party headquarters fifteen minutes early. His shirt was so white, it gleamed like polished marble. His pants were the exact color of the uniform he'd worn during the war. He'd put on a pair of steel-toed shoes he hadn't worn since leaving the Sloss Works. They weren't a required part of a stalwart's outfit, but they let him kick like a mule.
Across the street from the headquarters, a couple of Whigs were arguing with a gray-clad policeman. "They're preparing for a riot in there!" one of them said loudly. "You've got to do something to stop them."
The cop shrugged broad shoulders. "I can't arrest anybody till he commits a crime," he said. "It's still a free country, you know." As the Whigs started to expostulate, he smiled and sank his barb: "Freedom!"
They jerked as if stung. The loud one cried, "Why, you miserable, stinking-"
"Shut up, buddy, or I'll run you in." The policeman set a hand on his nightstick.
"I thought you couldn't arrest anyone till he committed a crime."
"Disturbing the peace is a crime."
"What do you think the Freedom Party's going to do?" the Whig demanded.
"That's a political demonstration. That's different."
Into the old livery stable Pinkard went. When he came out again, a stout bludgeon in his hand, the Whigs were still yelling at the cop. They withdrew-hell, they ran for their lives-as soon as the Freedom Party started coming out. Jeers chased them down the street.
The day Grady Calkins killed Wade Hampton V, Tredegar-carrying state militiamen had held the stalwarts away from the president of the CSA. Nobody had called out the militia this time-so Caleb Briggs insisted. Back in the early 1920s, people had thought they could suppress the Freedom Party. The governor of Alabama wouldn't dare try it now. The legislature might not impeach him, convict him, and throw him out on his ear if he did. On the other hand, it might.