"And Nashville is still Confederate. Just this past week, the brilliant General Custer, the heroic General Custer, attacked again. And what did he get? Half a mile of ground, moving away from Nashville, mind you, not toward it. And what was the cost? Another division thrown away. Three-quarters of a million dead since 1914, two million wounded, half a million in the enemy's prisoner-of-war camps. Poor Kaiser Bill!" Her voice dripped venom.
"And will you have all those brave men die in vain?" Daniel Miller demanded. "Will you have the United States abandon the struggle before it's over, go back to our old borders, tell our enemies, 'Oh, we're sorry; we didn't really mean it'?" He was sarcastic himself. "Once you've begun a job of work, you don't leave it in the middle. We have given as good as we've got; we have given better than we've got. The Canucks are tottering; the Confederates are about to put rifles into black men's hands. We are winning, I tell you."
"So what?" Flora said. The blunt question seemed to catch her opponent by surprise. She repeated it: "So what? What can we win that will bring those boys back to life? What can we win that's worth a hundredth part of what they paid? Even if we make the CSA make peace instead of the other way round, what difference does it make? Two thousand years ago, there was a king who looked around after a battle and cried out, 'One more victory like this and I am ruined!' He could see. He gave up the war. Is the Democratic Party full of blind men?"
"No. We're full of men who remember what happened in 1862, who remember what happened twenty years later," Miller shot back. "We're full of men who believe the United States of America must never be humiliated again, men who believe we must ten times never humiliate ourselves."
"A man who makes a mistake and backs away from it has sense," Flora said. "A man who makes a mistake and keeps on with it is a fool. We-"
"Traitor!" came a voice from the crowd. "You're just a woman. What do you know about what war costs?"
Tight-lipped, Flora pointed to her family. "Sophie, stand up." Her sister did, still holding little Yossel. "There's my nephew," Flora said into sudden silence. "He'll never know his father, who died on the Roanoke front." She pointed again. "David, stand up." The older of her two brothers rose, wearing U.S. green-gray. "Here is my brother. He has leave. He's just finished his training. He goes to the front day after tomorrow. I know what this war costs."
The crowd applauded. To her surprise, the heckler subsided. She'd thought the Democrats would have pests more consistent than that fellow.
No matter. She turned to-turned on-Daniel Miller. "You love the war so well, Congressman." Now she did use the title, etching it with acid. "Where are your hostages to fortune?"
Miller was a little too old to be conscripted himself. He had no brothers. His wife, a woman who looked to be very nice, sat in the audience not far from Flora's family. With her were her two sons, the older of whom might have been thirteen. Flora had known the Democratic appointee couldn't well come back if she raised the question, and she'd been hoping she'd get or be able to make the chance to do it.
And, just for a moment, her opponent's composure cracked. "I honorably served my time in the United States Army," he said. "I yield to no one in-"
"Nobody was shooting at you then!" Four people, from four different sections of the hall, shouted the same thing at the same time. A storm of applause rose up behind them. Miller looked as if he'd had one of his fancy clients stand up in court and confess: betrayed by circumstances over which he had no control.
The debate went on. Daniel Miller even made a few points about what a Democratic congressman could do for his district that a Socialist couldn't hope to match. "Wouldn't you like to have the majority on your side again?" he asked, almost wistfully. It was not the best question, not in a hall full of Jews. When, since the fall of the Second Temple, had they had the majority on their side? And, after the blow Flora had got in, it mattered little.
At last, like a referee separating two weary prizefighters, Isidore Rothstein came out again. "I know you'll all vote next month," he told the crowd. "I expect you'll vote the patriotic way." Flora glared at the Democratic Party chairman. He had no business-no business but the business of politics-getting in a dig like that.
Now more like a corner man than a referee, Rothstein led Miller away. Flora had to go offstage by herself. Only when she was walking down the dark, narrow corridor to the dressing room did she fully realize what she'd done. Her feet seemed to float six inches above the filthy boards of the floor.
When she opened the door, Maria Tresca leaped out and embraced her. "It's ours!" she exclaimed. "You did it!"
Right behind her, Herman Bruck agreed. "His face looked like curdled milk when you reminded people he has no personal stake in watching the war go on."
"That stupid Democratic heckler gave me the opening I needed," Flora said. "Rothstein must be throwing a fit in the other dressing room."
Maria looked at Bruck. Bruck looked uncommonly smug, even for him. "That was no stupid Democrat. That was my cousin Mottel, and I told him what to say and when to say it."
Flora stared at him, then let out a shriek, then kissed him on the cheek. "Shall we go out and have supper to celebrate?"
She thought she'd meant the invitation to include Maria, too, but Maria didn't seem to think so. And Flora discovered she didn't mind. Herman Bruck had just given her the congressional seat on a silver platter. If that didn't deserve a dinner what did?
Besides, she always had her hatpin, if she felt like using it. Maybe she wouldn't.
"We've got to hold this town, boys," Lieutenant Jerome Nicoll said. "Below Waurika, there's no more Sequoyah left, not hardly. There's just the Red River, and then there's Texas. The whole Confederacy is depending on us. If the damnyankees push over the river and into Texas, you can kiss Sequoyah good-bye when the war is done."
"Wish I could kiss Sequoyah good-bye right now," Reginald Bartlett muttered under his breath. "Wish I was back in Virginia."
Napoleon Dibble gaped. "You wish you was back on the Roanoke front, Reggie?" He sounded as if he thought Bartlett was crazy.
Had Reggie wished that, he would have been crazy. "No. I wish I was back in Richmond, where I came from." Dibble nodded, enlightened, or as enlightened as he got. Under his breath, Reggie went on, "The other thing I wish is that Lieutenant Nicoll would get himself a new speech."
Nap Dibble didn't hear him, but Sergeant Hairston did. "Yeah," he said. "We got to hold this, we got to hold that. Then what the hell happens when we don't hold? We supposed to go off and shoot ourselves?"
"If we don't hold a place, the damnyankees usually shoot a lot of us," Bartlett said, which made Pete Hairston laugh but which was also unpleasantly true. The regiment-the whole division-had taken a lot of casualties trying to halt the U.S. drive toward the Red River.
An aeroplane buzzed overhead. Reggie started to unsling his rifle to take a shot at it: it wasn't flying very high, for gray clouds filled the sky. But it carried the Confederate battle flag under its wings. He stared at it in tired wonder. The USA didn't have many aeroplanes out here in the West, but the CSA had even fewer.
Hoping it would do the damnyankees some harm, he forgot about it and marched on toward Waurika. The town's business district lay in a hollow, with houses on the surrounding hills. "We'll have to hold the Yanks up here," he said, as much to himself as to anyone else. "We go down there into that bowl, we're going to get pounded to death."