ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened?

by Harvey Ardman

  Wasserman nodded. "Good. What's the captain's name?"

  "Joshua Peyton."

  "Okay. Tell Captain Peyton that our ETA is 7 p.m. Tell him he can count on that. And tell him to relax. We've got his back."

  *

  President Callaway stretched out and parked his stockinged feet on the living room coffee table, earning a look of disapproval from his wife. "How would you like it if some stranger came into your house and did that?" she asked.

  Callaway reached for the remote control. "I've had a tough day, Julia. How about giving me a break?"

  She shrugged and he turned on the big TV.

  Nightly News Anchor Tom Braden appeared on the screen. "…so far, most of the public reactions to the announcement seem to be positive, except for some rumblings among union leaders. There've been rallies of support at Harvard, the University of Chicago and UC Berkley, among others. And Senate Majority Leader Ed Lockett,

  praised Callaway's boldness. Several other members of his party have endorsed the meeting, as have a number of church groups. And now, we have the results of the first NBS-Washington Journal polls since the announcement. NBS Political Director Mark McClarty has the numbers. Mark?"

  The view switched to a two-shot, embracing both the wise news anchor, with his studied gravitas, and the eager, apple-cheeked political director. "Tom, according to our poll results, 53% of the electorate has a positive attitude toward the meeting, while the rest is split pretty evenly between the 'don't knows' and the 'don't approves.'"

  "So the approval matches Callaway's percentage in the Presidential election?"

  "Almost exactly," McClarty said. "But the internals paint a slightly different picture."

  "How so?"

  "The ethnic mix is different. The Black support is off 10%, but the white support up about 5%."

  "What do you make of that, Mark?"

  "Well, clearly Blacks are less enthusiastic about the meeting than they were about voting for Callaway. This may mean that they distrust President Bourque. But evidently that isn't true for the whites."

  "Very interesting. How do you expect this to play out, as the meeting approaches?"

  "I think that's still in doubt, Tom. But we'll be tracking it."

  "Thanks, Mark," Tom said. Then it was back to a one shot. "And that's it for this evening. Thanks for being with us."

  Callaway hit the remote control and the TV set went dark.

  "I take it you don't want to see what INN is saying," Julie said.

  "Not all that much, no."

  Julia Callaway assumed a perturbed expression, wrinkling her forehead. "Who was it who said 'know thine enemy'?"

  Callaway knew he was trapped. "That's a misquote of something Sun Tzu said, in The Art of War. The actual quote goes like this: "'If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.'"

  "Aha," Julia said, smiling.

  Callaway sighed, picked up the remote and turned on the TV again. "704?"

  "704."

  He switched the channel.

  *

  At the same moment, on the 43rd floor of the INN tower in midtown Manhattan, the gnarled forefinger on the gnarled right hand of Helmut Metzger hit a button on his desk. A giant plasma television screen dropped noiselessly from the slot above his head, positioning itself for his perfect viewing pleasure. It turned itself on without further intervention and automatically settled on channel 704.

  "This should be good," said Metzger’s chief factotum, Robert D. Wade, who was reclining on a nearby black suede beanbag chair. He tried to pull himself into a sitting position, a nearly impossible task, given his size and shape.

  "It will be just what we want," Metzger told his number two, grinning with malicious anticipation. “I guarantee it.”

  A picture appeared on the television screen.

  "Well, hello, America! Welcome to the Gary Hobart show," chirped a cheerful, round-faced man with a blond buzz cut. He was dressed in what he evidently considered a natty outfit: an eye-watering mélange of pinstripes, paisley and plaid. "I'm glad you tuned in, ladies and gentlemen because what I am going to tell you tonight…well, this may just be the most important show of my entire career. And the future of our great and exceptional nation may depend on how you react to what you hear. So listen up."

  Hobart smiled grimly, then walked back to the studio's mock desk and took a seat. "You know what I'm talking about," he said, lowering his voice as though he was telling a secret. "I'm talking about the meeting. Yes, that's right. The sweet, innocent and totally harmless meeting between our shiny new President and that lovable old man from the Confederacy—what’s his name? Burke? Broke?”

  He paused for dramatic effect, to the count of three.

  "I'm here to tell you that apparently risk-free meeting is the greatest threat to our country since the Great War, which, thanks to ordinary, patriotic people like yourselves, we were able to stay out of. I'm here to tell you. The greatest threat to our nation," he repeated, his voice cracking slightly.

  At the White House, Julia nudged her husband. "Watch. He's already on the verge of tears."

  "Amazing."

  “What’s amazing is that it doesn’t embarrass him,” Julia said. “Makes me wish for the good old days.”

  “The good old days?”

  “Yes, love, when men didn’t cry in public.”

  In the Eagle's Aerie, Metzger glanced at Wade, who was still struggling to sit up straight. "I don't know what it is," he said, "but the man has some kind of peculiar emotional appeal."

  "Peculiar is right," Wade agreed. “I think that guy is right on the edge and he could go over at any minute.”

  “When he does, I’ll cut him loose,” Metzger said. “But for now, he’s still useful.”

  On screen, Hobart was on his feet again and walking toward the back of the set, which consisted mostly of a wall of whiteboard panels surrounded by a thick border of diffused red neon lights. He picked a fat dry-erase marker out of a plastic bucket full of them, and managed somehow both to face the camera and to put the marker on the whiteboard behind him.

  "Now here we have our beautiful country, the North American Union." He drew what, without explanation, most people would have seen as the outline of a misshapen potato. "And here we have the Confederate States of America, the rump country that was mid-wived by our much-maligned but extraordinarily courageous President, Abraham Lincoln." He drew another misshapen potato, a smaller one.

  "This one," he said pointing to the NAU, "has a gross national product of more than $10 trillion dollars. That’s trillion, folks, not million or billion. And this one" –he pointed to the CSA--" has an annual GNP of barely over one trillion dollars." He wrote the numbers inside the potatoes, then turned to face the audience head on.

  "Now," he said, "let's look at these numbers.” He scrawled 225 million in the big potato, in red marker, and 75 million in the smaller potato. “That’s the population of the two countries,” he said. Then, off to one side, he wrote another number, very large: 1/3.

  “What do all these numbers mean?” He asked, grinning as though he and only he knew the secret word. “I’ll tell you what they mean. The NAU has ten times the GNP of the Confederacy—but only three times the number of people.”

  He shook his head sadly, put down the marker and returned to his desk. “What conclusion can we draw from this, ladies and gentlemen? We can conclude that our country is three times as prosperous as our southern neighbor, three times as productive, three times as ambitious, three times as successful.”

  Hobart looked into the camera, much like a prosecutor about to deliver the final blow. “The figures don’t lie, ladies and gentlemen. They tell a simple tale: We are better than they are. In fact, three times better. I know you’re thinking old Gary Hobart has finally popped his cork. You’re thinking, ‘My God, he’s bigoted after all.’ ‘He’s been lying to us all along.’

  “Well, no, I’m not, and no, I haven’t
. I’m the same jolly fellow you all know and love. I can prove what I say. And it’s not just a matter of money. The Confederacy’s inferiority has nothing to do with individuals. They’re people just like we are, no better and no worse. It is their entire society that is inferior.”

  Hobart turned back to the white boards, and slid one of them aside, revealing another board behind it, this one already filled with his childlike handwriting in felt-tip marker: a numbered list of items.

  “These are the facts about the Confederate States of America, facts I dearly wish weren’t true, and that I’m sure the citizens of the CSA dearly wish were not true. But they are.”

  He pointed to the newly revealed whiteboard and read the items aloud, one by one: “They have a higher divorce rate than we do. They have a higher rate of teenage pregnancy. They have a shorter lifespan. They have a higher rate of infant mortality. They have a higher crime rate.”

  Hobart looked toward the camera for a moment and shook his head sadly. Then he turned back to the white board and continued. “They have a lower rate of high school graduation. They have a higher rate of obesity. They have a higher murder rate.” He was getting into a sort of rhythm now. “They have fewer hospitals, per capita, and less road mileage. And even though the CSA is much smaller in area than the NAU they cause much more air and water pollution.”

  He turned back to the camera, grinning. “I’m not making any of this up, folks. This is provable fact. You don’t need to take my word for it. You can look it up in your Funk and Wagnall if you want. But I know what you’re saying, You’re saying, ‘Their society can’t be all bad, Gary. You must be overlooking some ways in which it’s better than ours is. You’re leaving things out.’

  “Well, you got me folks, I am leaving something out. This I have to admit: They do go to church more often than we do, on average. Actually, a lot more. Whether or not that makes them more Godly, I can’t say. Maybe they’re more sinful. Maybe they have more reason to ask God’s forgiveness. We all know that the way they treat people of color just begs for acts of contrition. Many of them.”

  Hobart took a moment to catch his breath. “What does all of this mean? It means that we are crazy to even think about making a deal with the CSA—any kind of a deal. It means that our young President, bless his heart, is showing us the consequences of inexperience. It should warn us that meeting with President Buddy Bourque is a clear and present danger to the future of our country. I’m talking about national security, folks.”

  For a moment, Hobart bowed his head, apparently overcome by the responsibility he’d taken on. But he recovered, looked up, and then walked back to the white boards, to a clean panel. “Maybe you think that I’m prejudiced toward the Confederacy, but that isn’t it at all. I’m prejudiced toward the North American Union, our country. I’m desperately worried about our future. And here’s why:

  He drew a red circle on the whiteboard, with heat lines emanating from it. Then, using a blue marker, drew another circle, at some distance from the first. “Now I’m going to teach you a little science. I’m going to teach you about entropy. The principle is simple. You take one body—the sun—which is hot, and another body—the Earth—which is cold. Over time, heat radiates out of the warm body and is absorbed into the cooler one. Eventually, when one has cooled off enough and the other has heated up enough, you reach equilibrium. They’re both the same temperature. That’s entropy.”

  Hobart erased the sun and the Earth and redrew the NAU and the CSA, the two misshapen potatoes, one large, one small. Then he drew a circle around them both. “Now, let us apply the law of entropy to these two countries.

  “When you put them together—when we link them, as we all know Callaway and Bourque are just dying to do—what happens? Well, the great wealth and treasure this one possesses—“ he indicated the bigger potato—“flows to this one.” He drew a series of arrows running from the big potato to the smaller one. And we get poorer and poorer and poorer, while they get richer and richer and richer, and their society gets better as ours gets worse until, by the scientific rules of entropy, we are equal.”

  “And that, ladies and gentlemen is the threat we face. That is the threat of this so-called innocent and harmless meeting between the two Presidents, and the agreement that is certain to come out of it. That is what we risk if we let this meeting take place. And it will all be done with the best intentions—helping the poor, unfortunate CSA, saving those people with whom we share a common heritage.

  “Now don’t get me wrong. I’m very sympathetic to the poor, backward CSA. I think we should treat it charitably. In fact, I myself contribute generously to a charity promoting the education of young Confederate Negro boys. And I encourage all of you to do the same.

  “But our government has no right to give away our national wealth without our consent, taking away from us what we have worked hard for and earned, obeying all the rules. We did not kick the Confederacy out of the union—it demanded to be released. So its plight is entirely its own fault.

  “I’ll be back in a moment…”

  At the White House, Callaway and his wife exchanged bemused glances. “You have to admit, he’s entertaining—in a nutty way.”.

  “Maybe so,” Julie agreed, “but a large part of the country hangs on his every word. He’s sort of like the Pied Piper and the lemmings.”

  “No, no,” Callaway said. “The lemmings are a different story. The Pied Piper led the children astray. And that’s a good analogy. Too good.”

  At the Eagles Aerie, Robert D. Wade looked over at Metzger. “Why do you think people respond to this guy?”

  Metzger laughed. “I think that’s obvious, Robert. He relieves them of the need to think. And considering how unpleasant it can be to actually think, people are very grateful for the favor.”

  On the screen, Hobart’s face was replaced by that of a beloved TV actor—shockingly aged and barely able to talk—who began to mumble the praises of reverse mortgages.

  After a minute, the commercial faded away and Hobart reappeared, sitting at his desk now. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, smiling expansively “we have a special guest tonight. I want you to welcome the President of the American Family Alliance, Phyllis Iserbyt. She’s here to tell us about her newest grass-roots organization, Our Country First. Phyllis, what’s the goal of your new group?”

  The camera pulled back to reveal a woman sitting on Hobart’s couch. This was Phyllis Iserbyt, a tall, stern-faced lady in her early 60s, grey hair gone blonde, wearing a dark blazer and a skirt that fell well below her knees. “Nice to see you, Gary. I’m glad you asked that question. The sole purpose of Our Country First is to protect the NAU by halting the meeting between President Callaway and Buddy Bourque, or, if it should occur despite our best efforts, to make sure nothing comes of it.”

  “I see,” Hobart said, nodding, “and how do you plan to do that?”

  “We will show the President how America really feels about this appalling and totally improper get-together,” she said, her manner theatrical. “And we’ll do that with public demonstrations all over the country, starting this afternoon and continuing until the meeting is cancelled.”

  “All over the country?”

  “Absolutely, and all leading to a huge rally in Washington, D.C. three weeks from Sunday. There’s an enormous reservoir of anger out there about what the President is trying to do to us, Gary, and we’re organizing that anger to make a statement that can’t be ignored.”

  “And what do you feel the President—to use your words—is ‘trying to do to us’?”

  “Isn’t that obvious, Gary? He’s trying to win over Bourque and the Confederacy, to establish some sort of friendship,” she said with a smug smile. “A one-way friendship, I might add—and one that will seriously harm our country.”

  “Why would he do that, Phyllis?”

  “Because he wants to be everyone’s friend,” she explained patiently. “He wants to be seen as the savior of the western wor
ld, a kind of modern Moses. The wealth of our country is burning a hole in his pocket.” She couldn’t help smiling at the idea.

  “Hmmm. Okay. But what about Bourque? What are his motives?”

  “Bourque is the captain of a sinking ship. He wants us to bail him out of his difficulties. He wants us to prop up his failing country. And that’s all wrong.”

  “And why is that?” Hobart prompted.

  Iserbyt’s face clouded over with anger and indignation. “Because,” she said, “Because the Confederacy made its choice 150 years ago. They told us they could do without us, they didn’t want any part of us. Well, fine. But that’s not something you can take back. They went a different way—the wrong way, it turns out—and we let them go, Gary. And we don’t want them back.”

  “I understand.”

  “You know, Gary, it’s not like the NAU doesn’t have any problems,” Iserbyt went on. “We have our own poverty to deal with. We have health care problems. We have Social Security problems. We can’t afford to share our limited resources with other nations, no matter how needy they may be. And that’s why I founded Our Country First. I think it is profoundly unpatriotic to donate our hard-earned capital to those n’er-do-wells down south, and if it comes to that, I will call for the impeachment of Charles Callaway. We didn’t elect him to give away the country. We elected him to honor the Constitution.”

  “I think a lot of people agree with you, Phyllis. What can they do, as individuals, to help you?”

  “Gary, there are many ways they can help. They can call or write to the White House or to their Senators and Representatives. They can come out to the demonstrations in their own cities today. We’re holding rallies in 50 cities. Most of all, they can come to Washington, D.C. three weeks from Sunday for the massive Our Country First assembly at the Mall. We hope to have 500,000 people there.”

  “Well, Phyllis, a lot of concerned people might have trouble coming to Washington, you know, for financial reasons.”