“Life is hard,” he said. “Even for an animal like yourself, one that does little work these days, life is hard. Believe me, it is no easier for men and women. Most of them, most of the time, have very little, and no hope for more than very little. I get down on my knees and thank the Lord for the bounty He has given me.”
Another ear flick might have said, Careful how you speak, there—I am a part of your bounty, after all. Maybe the horse was exceptionally expressive today. Maybe Galtier’s imagination was working harder than usual.
“Truly, I could have been unfortunate as easily as I have been fortunate,” Galtier said. The horse did not deny it. Galtier went on, “Had I been unfortunate, you would not be eating so well as you are now. Believe me, you would not.”
Maybe the horse believed him. Maybe it didn’t. Whether it did or not, it knew it was eating well now. That was what mattered. How could a man reasonably expect a horse to care about might-have-beens?
But Lucien Galtier cared. “Consider,” he said. “I might have been driven to try to blow up an American general, as was that anglophone farmer who blew himself up instead, poor fool. For I will not lie: I had no love for the Americans. Yes, that could have been me, had chance driven me in the other direction. But I am here, and I am as I am, and so you have the chance to stand in your stall and get fat and lazy. I wonder if that other farmer had a horse, and how the unlucky animal is doing.”
His own horse ate all he had given it and looked around for more, which was not forthcoming. It sent him a hopeful look, rather like that of a beggar who sat in the street with a tin cup beside him. Galtier rarely gave beggars money; as far as he was concerned, men who could work should. He did not insist that the horse work, not any more, but he knew better than to overfeed it.
After finishing in the barn, he walked through the snow to the farmhouse. The heat of the stove in the kitchen seemed a greater blessing than any Bishop Pascal could give. As Galtier stood close by it, Marie poured him a cup of steaming hot coffee. She added a hefty dollop of cream and, for good measure, a slug of applejack, too.
“Drink it before it gets cold,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You should be warmed inside and out.” And, before he could answer, almost—but not quite—before he could even think, she added, “And do not say what is in your mind, you dreadful brute of a man.”
“I?” After sipping the coffee, which was delicious, Galtier said, “I declare to the world that you have wronged me.”
“So you do,” his wife replied. “You should remember, though, that declaring a thing does not make it true.”
She was laughing at him. He could hear it in her voice. She was also laughing because of him, a very different business. He waggled a forefinger at her. “You are a very troublesome woman,” he said severely.
“No doubt you have reason,” Marie said. “And no doubt I have my reasons for being troublesome. One of those reasons that comes straight to my mind is that I have a very troublesome husband.”
“Me?” Lucien shook his head. “By no means. Not at all.” He took another sip of fortified coffee. “How could I possibly be troublesome when I am holding here a cup of the elixir of life?” He put down the elixir of life so he could shrug out of his wool plaid coat. It was not quite warm enough in the bitter cold outside, but much too warm for standing by the stove for very long. As Lucien picked up the coffee cup again, Georges came into the kitchen. Lucien nodded to himself. “If I am troublesome, it could be that I understand why.”
“How strange,” Marie said. “I just now had this same thought at the same time. Men and women who have been married a long while do this, they say.”
“How strange,” Georges said, “I just now had the thought that I have been insulted, and for once I do not even know why.”
“Never fear, son,” Galtier said. “There are always reasons, and they are usually good ones.”
“Here, then—I will give you a reason,” Georges said. He left the kitchen, and flicked the light switch on the way out. The electric bulb in the lamp hanging from the ceiling went dark, plunging the room into gloom.
“Scamp!” Galtier called after him. Georges laughed—he was being troublesome, all right. Muttering, Galtier went over and turned on the lamp again. The kitchen shone as if he’d brought the sun indoors. “Truly electricity is a great marvel,” he said. “I wonder how we ever got along without it.”
“I cannot imagine,” Marie said. “It makes everything so much easier—and you were clever enough to squeeze it out of the government.”
“And the Americans,” Galtier said. “You must not forget the Americans.”
“I am not likely to forget the Americans.” His wife’s voice was tart. “Without the Americans, we would not have the son-in-law we now have, nor the grandson, either. Believe me, I remember all this very well.”
“Without the Americans, we would not be living in the Republic of Quebec,” Galtier said, looking at the large picture as well as the small one. “We would still be paying our taxes to Ottawa and getting nothing for them, instead of paying them to the city of Quebec…and getting nothing for them.” Neither independence nor wealth reconciled him to paying taxes. Wealth, indeed, left him even less enthusiastic than he had been before, for it meant he had to pay more than he had when he was not doing so well.
“When the Americans came, we thought it was the end of the world,” Marie said.
“And we were right,” Lucien answered. “It was the end of the world we had always known. We have changed.” From a Quebecois farmer, that was blasphemy to rank alongside tabernac and calisse. “We have changed, and we are better for it.” From a Quebecois farmer, that was blasphemy viler than any for which the local French dialect had words.
His wife started to contradict him. He could tell by the way she opened her mouth, by the angle at which her head turned, by any number of other small things he could not have named but did see. Before she could speak, he wagged a finger at her—only that and nothing more. She hesitated. At last, she said, “Peut-être—it could be.”
That was a greater concession than he’d thought he could get from her. He’d been ready to argue. Instead, all he had to say was, “We are lucky. The whole family is lucky. Things could so easily be worse.” He thought again of the farmer out in Manitoba who’d tried to kill General Custer.
“God has been kind to us,” Marie said.
“Yes, God has been kind to us,” Galtier agreed. “And we have been lucky. And”—he knew just how to forestall an argument, almost as if he’d read a book on the subject—“this is excellent, truly excellent, coffee. Could you fix me another cup, exactly like this one?” His wife turned to take care of it. Galtier smiled behind her back. He’d had good luck and, wherever he could, he’d made good luck. And here he was, in his middle years and happy. He wondered how many of his neighbors could say that. Not many, unless he missed his guess. With an open smile and a word of thanks, he took the cup from Marie.
Jake Featherston tore open the fat package from the William Byrd Press. Dear Mr. Featherston, the letter inside read, Thank you for showing us the manuscript enclosed herewith. We regret that we must doubt its commercial possibilities at the present time, and must therefore regretfully decline to undertake its publication. We hope you will have success in placing it elsewhere.
He cursed. He couldn’t place Over Open Sights anywhere, and a lot of the letters he got back from Richmond publishers—and even from one down in Mobile—were a lot less polite than this one. “Nobody wants to hear the truth,” he growled.
“Nothing you can do about it now, Jake,” Ferdinand Koenig said, slapping him on the back in consolation. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“Stupid bastards,” Featherston snarled. “And they’re proud of it, damn them. They want to stay stupid.” But he was glad to escape the Freedom Party offices. Even to him, they stank of defeat.
When he went out onto the streets of Richmond, he could have pulled
the brim of his hat down low on his forehead or tugged up his collar so it hid part of his face. He could have grown a chin beard or bushy side whiskers to change his looks. He didn’t. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t. As always, he met the world head-on.
The world was less fond of him than it had been before Grady Calkins murdered Wade Hampton V. About every other person on the street recognized him, and about every third person who did recognize him showered him with abuse. He gave as good as he got, very often better.
Koenig shook his head while Jake and a passerby exchanged unpleasantries. After the man finally went on his way, Koenig said, “Christ, sometimes I think you look for trouble.”
“No such thing.” Featherston shook his head. “But I’ll be goddamned if I’ll run from it, either. After the damnyankee artillery, fools with big mouths aren’t enough to put me off my feed.”
“I still think you ought to lay low till it gets closer to the next election, let people forget about things,” Koenig said.
He was one of the very few people these days who spoke frankly to Jake instead of telling him what they thought he wanted to hear. That made him a valuable man. All the same, Jake shook his head again. “No, dammit. I didn’t do anything I’m ashamed of. The Party didn’t do anything I’m ashamed of. One crazy man went and fouled things up for us, that’s all. People need to forget about Calkins, not about me.”
“They didn’t forget last November,” Koenig pointed out.
“We knew that was going to happen,” Featherston said. “All right, it happened. It could have been a lot worse. A lot of people reckoned it would be a lot worse.”
“You know what you sound like?” Koenig said. “You sound like the War Department in the last part of 1916, the first part of 1917, when the damnyankees had started hammering us hard. ‘We hurt the enemy very badly and contained him more quickly than expected,’ they’d say, and all that meant was, we’d lost some more ground.”
Featherston grunted. Comparing him to the department he hated hit home. Stubbornly, he said, “The Freedom Party’s going to get the ground back, though. The War Department never did figure out how to manage that one.”
“If you say so, Sarge,” Ferdinand Koenig replied. He didn’t sound like a man who believed it. He sounded like a man humoring a rich lunatic—and he made sure Featherston knew he sounded that way.
“We can come back,” Jake insisted. As long as he believed it, he could make other people believe it. If enough other people believed it, it would come true.
He and Koenig turned right from Seventh onto Franklin and walked on toward Capitol Square. Jake’s hands folded into fists. After the war was lost—thrown away, he thought—discharged soldiers had almost taken the Capitol; only more soldiers with machine guns had held them at bay. A good bloodbath then would have been just what the CSA needed.
And in 1921 he’d come so close to storming his way into power in spite of everything the Whigs and all their Thirds and Fourths and Fifths could do to stop him. Sure as hell, he would have been elected in 1927. He knew he would have been—if not for Grady Calkins.
If even he was thinking about what might have been instead of what would be now—if that was so, the Freedom Party was in deep trouble. A man with a limp—wounded veteran, Jake judged—came toward him along Franklin. Jake nodded to him—he still had plenty of backers left, especially among men who’d fought like him.
“Freedom!” the fellow said by way of reply, but he loaded the word with loathing and made an obscene gesture at Jake.
“You go to hell!” Featherston cried.
“If I do, I’ll see you there before me,” the man with the limp answered, and went on his way.
“Bastard,” Jake muttered on his breath. “Fucking bastard. They’re all fucking bastards.” Then he saw a crowd on the sidewalk ahead and forgot about the heckler. “What the hell’s going on here, Ferd?”
“Damned if I know,” Koenig answered. “Shall we find out?”
“Yeah.” Jake elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, ably assisted by his former running mate. He’d expected a saloon giving away free beer or something of that sort. Instead, men and women were trying to shove their way into…a furniture store? He couldn’t believe it till Ferdinand Koenig pointed to the sign taped in the window: NEWEST MAKES OF WIRELESS RECEIVERS, FROM $399.
“They’re all the go nowadays,” Koenig said. “Even at those prices, everybody wants one.”
“I’ve heard people talking about them,” Featherston admitted. “Haven’t heard one myself, I don’t think. I’ll be damned if I can see what the fuss is about.”
“I’ve listened to ’em,” Koenig said. “It’s—interesting. Not like anything else you’ll ever run across, I’ll tell you that.”
“Huh.” But, having got so close to the store’s doorway, Featherston decided not to leave without listening to a wireless receiver. More judicious elbowing got him and Koenig inside.
The receivers were all big and boxy. Some cabinets were made of fancier wood than others; that seemed to account for the difference in price. Only one machine was actually operating. From it came tinny noises that, after a bit, Jake recognized as a Negro band playing “In the Good Old Summertime.”
“Huh,” he said again, and turned to the fellow who was touting the receivers. “Why would anybody want to listen to this crap, for God’s sake?”
“Soon, sir, there will be offerings for every taste,” the salesman answered smoothly. “Even now, people all over Richmond are listening to this and other broadcasts. As more people buy receivers, the number of broadcasts and the number of listeners will naturally increase.”
“Not if they keep playing that garbage,” Ferdinand Koenig said. He nodded to Featherston. “You were right—this is lousy.”
“Yeah.” But Jake had listened to the salesman, too. “All over Richmond, you say?”
“Yes, sir.” The rabbity-looking fellow nodded enthusiastically. “And the price of receivers has fallen dramatically in the past few months. It will probably keep right on falling, too, as they become more popular.”
“People all over Richmond,” Jake repeated thoughtfully. “Could you have people all over the CSA listening to the same thing at the same time?”
To his disappointment, the salesman replied, “Not from the same broadcasting facility.” But the fellow went on, “I suppose you could send the same signal from several facilities at once. Why, if I might ask?”
Plainly, he didn’t recognize Featherston. “Just curious,” Jake answered—and, indeed, it was hardly more than that. Behind his hand, he whispered to Koenig: “Might be cheaper to make a speech on the wireless than hold a bunch of rallies in a bunch of different towns. If we could be sure we were reaching enough people that way—”
One of the other customers in the shop was whispering behind his hand to the salesman. “Oh?” the salesman said. “He is?” By the tone of voice, Jake knew exactly what the customer had whispered. The salesman said, “Sir, I am going to have to ask you to leave. This is a high-class establishment, and I don’t want any trouble here.”
“We weren’t giving you any trouble.” Featherston and Koenig spoke together.
“You’re from the Freedom Party,” said the customer who’d recognized Jake. “You don’t have to give trouble. You are trouble.”
Several other men from among those crowding the shop drifted toward the fellow. A couple of others ranged themselves behind Featherston. “Freedom!” one of them said.
“I am going to call for a policeman if you don’t leave,” the salesman told Jake. “I do not want this place broken apart.”
If breaking the place apart would have brought the Party good publicity, Featherston would have started a fight on the spot. But he knew it wouldn’t—just the opposite, in fact. The papers would scream he was only a ruffian leading a pack of ruffians. They hadn’t talked about him and the Party like that when he was a rising power in the land, or not so much, anyhow. Now they thought they scen
ted blood. He wouldn’t give them any blood to sniff.
“Come on, Ferd,” he said. “If anybody starts trouble, it won’t be us.”
“Look at the cowards cut and run,” jeered the man who’d recognized him. “They talk big, but they don’t back it up.”
He never knew how close he came to getting his head broken and his nuts kneed. Jake’s instinct was always to hit back at whoever and whatever struck at him, and to hit harder if he could. Only a harsh understanding that that would bring no advantage held him back.
“One day,” he growled once he and Ferdinand Koenig were out on Franklin again, “one fine day I’m going to pay back every son of a bitch who ever did me wrong, and that loud-mouthed bastard will get his. So help me God, he will.”
“Sure, Sarge,” Koenig said. But he didn’t sound sure. He sounded like a man buttering up his boss after said boss had come out with something really stupid. Featherston knew flattery when he heard it, because he heard it too damn often. He hadn’t heard it much from Koenig, though.
Sourly, he studied the man who’d run for vice president with him. He and Koenig went back to the old days together, to the days when the Freedom Party operated out of a cigar box. If Koenig hadn’t backed him, odds were the Party would still be a cigar-box outfit. Koenig was as close to a friend as he had on the face of the earth. And yet…
“If you don’t fancy the way things are going, Ferd, you can always move on,” Jake said. “Don’t want you to feel like you’re wearing a ball and chain.”
Koenig turned red. “I don’t want to leave, Jake. I’ve come too far to back out now, same as you. Only…”
“Only what?” Featherston snapped.
“Only Moses got to the top of the mountain, but God never let him into the Promised Land,” Koenig said, going redder still. “Way things are these days, I don’t know how we can win an election any time soon.”
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