Sen. Poulos sat back and let the applause continue for a bit. When it seemed to be going on too long, he tapped his gavel a couple of times, to no effect. He let it go on a little longer,
Pickett looked over his shoulder, at the gallery of spectators applauding him and, after a moment, realized that tears were running down his face. He turned back toward the Senators on the rostrum. They were staring at him, expressions inscrutable. He lowered his eyes and found himself thinking about Buddy Bourque. He hoped he had done well by him.
On the rostrum, Sen. Wendell put a hand over his mike and leaned toward Sen. Poulos. “I think we’ve heard more than enough from the Peanut Gallery, don’t you?”
Poulos nodded and tapped his gavel again, more loudly this time. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said sternly, “please be quiet. If there are any further disturbances of any kind, I’m going to have to clear the room.”
*
At the Plantation, Buddy Bourque lay in bed—the good days were fewer and shorter now—and, holding their breath, he and Delphine watched Pickett on TV, reading his statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
When Pickett finally concluded, and the applause began to build, Delphine stole a look at her father. Tears were running down his cheeks as well. He wiped his face, thinking he had not been observed, then turned to her. “I think that boyfriend of yours just may have saved our bacon,” he said, his booming voice now barely an echo of its former self.
“Boyfriend?” Delphine said.
“Come on, Delphine. I may be sick, but I’m not blind. I see how carefully the two of you avoid each other’s glance and sit as far apart as possible. T’ain’t natural. Can only mean one thing.”
Delphine decided not to argue. “How long have you known?”
Bourque shrugged. “Near on to a year now, I think.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Hell’s bells, Delphine, that woulda spoiled all my fun.”
“We were worried…”
“Yes, I know. You didn’t think our folks would take it all that well, the President’s daughter and a Black man. Would have been a scandal in the Confederacy, all right. But in America, it’s just a news item.”
“It might be a good idea to keep the secret until reunion is a fait accompli,” Delphine said.
“As you wish, Darlin’,” said her father.
*
The Foreign Relations Committee spent the rest of the day in debate, although it wasn’t really a debate, just an exchange of statements, made for the media’s benefit, for the Senators’ constituents and stake-holders, and to lay down a marker for posterity, if it happened to be listening.
Finally, Sen. Poulos, the committee chairman, called the proceedings to a close. “If there are no more comments, will someone move the vote?”
“So moved,” mumbled several senators. “And seconded,” said another.
They voted, one at a time, quite unpredictably—some thought to be certain supporters of reunion voting against it, some considered staunch opponents voting in favor. The vote began with the most junior members of the committee and running along the rostrum until it reached Poulos and Wendell. By that time, the count stood eight votes for reunion, seven votes against.
“I say nay,” said Wendell, with a token hand wave. That tied up the count, eight to eight.
Poulos regarded Wendell with a sort of wonder. “You heard Pickett and you still voted no?”
Wendell regarded Poulos with a sardonic smile. “Certainly you didn’t expect me to change my mind as the result of an emotional appeal—did you?”
“One can always hope,” Poulos told him. Then he spoke to the committee. “I vote in favor of reporting the bill to the full Senate. That makes it nine in favor, eight against. The bill goes to the Senate. Meeting adjourned.”
He tapped his gavel and everyone began to file out of the room. Bu Poulos made a point of engaging Wendell before they left. “You seem to have lost this round, Oliver.”
Wendell shrugged. “That was just the preliminary. The main bout starts tomorrow. And I will win that one, I promise you.”
“Even if you have to filibuster?”
“I intend to win, Thomas.”
“And you’re willing to thwart the will of the majority?”
Wendell smiled. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those who thinks the majority is always right.”
“Oh, hardly,” Poulos quipped. “After all, majorities elected both of us.”
“Exactly my point,” Wendell replied.
Poulos nodded, resigned.
*
Senate Majority Leader, Ed Lockett, thinking it best to strike while the iron was hot, began debate in the Upper House on Monday morning. All 78 Senators were on hand, not to mention their several assistants, and every last seat in the spectator’s gallery was filled. Nothing this consequential had reached the Senate floor in decades, maybe ever.
What followed was one of the longest, nastiest and most contentious debates in American history, during which normally well-behaved and respectful Senators, both men and women, called each other liars, bigots and traitors, among other things, causing Vice President Darren Garvey, who was presiding over the nearly continual five-day melee to break a gavel, trying to restore order.
The misbehavior began in earnest on Monday afternoon, after a few inconclusive skirmishes in the morning. It was triggered by the silver-haired Sen. Harold Muntz (R-IN), who told the Senate that he was opposed to reunion because he had determined that a large influx of Southern Blacks threatened to upset his state’s somewhat fragile social harmony.
This was more than Sen. Timothy Eberstadt (D-OH) was willing to put up with. In his impassioned denunciation of Sen. Muntz, he managed to call his esteemed colleague a Neanderthal, and a racist.
To the amusement of those in the Senate chamber, as well as those watching on television, Sen. Muntz demanded an immediate apology. Sen. Eberstadt not only refused, he doubled down, calling Muntz “an old fashioned bigot,” which some felt, given his initial remark, bordered on the redundant.
“I am insulted beyond words,” Muntz said. He rose from his seat and stormed out of the Senate Chamber, in what, the media folk agreed, was a “full-blown huff.” About twenty minutes later, he returned without a word, trying—but failing—to enter unnoticed.
The next outbreak of verbal violence occurred mid-morning, on Tuesday. This time, it was set off by Sen. Nina Rosenbush (R-KA), who, when it was her turn to speak, asserted that the entire reunion effort was a plot by CSA President Buddy Bourque to trigger a war between the North American Union and Mexico.
Sen. Etta Majewski (D-OH), who was often referred to as the Senate’s grandma, shot to her feet when she heard that, and accused her “good friend from Kansas” of an outright lie, in fact a despicable one, and intimating that she might be representing the interests of the German Empire.
Sen. Rosenbush fired back, charging that Sen. Majewski was a well-known Callaway “toady,” already campaigning for a job in the administration, in the very likely event that her Senate re-election failed. Then she sat down and put her fingers in her ears when Sen. Majewski denied the accusation.
On Wednesday, the fireworks was unwittingly set off by Sen. Wayne Postlethwait (R-OR), a tall drink of water in his mid-40s, with a black mustache that didn’t match his salt-and-pepper hair. “I worry how we are going to pay the CSA’s debts and its Social Security shortfalls. Reunion makes no sense if we have to impoverish ourselves to do it,” he said.
This mild observation, somewhat to the surprise of Sen. Postlethwait and Vice President Garvey, caused a sudden outburst of booing and catcalls from the gallery, several of the younger members of the audience calling Postlethwait a traitor. Garvey signaled to the Sergeant-at-Arms, who directed his deputies to eject the hooligans forthwith.
These weren’t the only unpleasant incidents to mark the debate, although they were the most egregious. The others reflected bitter differe
nces between the Senators, as well as anger, frustration and fear. And this was not surprising. Normally, Senatorial emotions, although detectable, are kept under control. Not this time. Reunion was far too momentous an issue. Whatever decision the Senate made, it would affect the lives of millions and determine the future of two nations. It would change the world.
All during the debate, pundits and the prognosticators tried to publicly predict the Senate’s final vote, with results that not only differed wildly, but changed daily. The truth was, although they pretended otherwise, no one, not even the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Lockett, or his Republican counterpart, Sen. Wendell, had any idea how this was going to end. And both of them were sweating buckets.
None of the traditional alliances pertained, it seemed. Party loyalty seemed iffy. Old alliances couldn’t be counted upon. Some Senators, of course, had announced their positions. Others had been claimed by one camp or the other, without their denials. But 29 out of the 78 sitting Senators were refusing commit themselves.
Even worse, many of the uncommitted refused to participate in the debate, further shielding their opinions—although not one missed a single minute of the discussion and several took extensive notes. Of those who did join in the debate, some made no speeches and argued no points. They merely asked questions—and whether their questions hinted at their opinions or were of the devil’s advocates variety, no one knew. They were like Supreme Court Justices.
In private, Lockett and Wendell put the arm on the undecided. They threatened, cajoled, reasoned and guessed, but they couldn’t figure out who was going to win this thing and who was going to lose. Callaway called Lockett at least once a day for a new count. He never once hung up feeling satisfied. Jack Sullivan and Helmet Metzger played much the same game, with the same result. The frustration and foreboding was palpable.
The members of the media, ever resourceful, tracked down and questioned legislative assistants, wives, children, ex-girlfriends and even former high school teachers. During the week, they managed to strike three names from the list of the uncommitted, but as the debate hurtled toward its end, 26 mysteries remained, uncrackable.
Of course, Las Vegas knew, or thought it did. The odds were 3-2 in favor of passage—at least on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday and Friday, they were 3-2 against, and it was mighty hard to find someone willing to take your money.
The late night comics, who couldn’t resist making fun of the uncertainty, claimed people were studying Biblical passages, Nostradamus’s quatrains and Mayan glyphs, as well as tea leaves and they would have examined the entrails of pigeons if they’d had the stomach for it.
Would the NAU and the CSA reunite? How would the Senators vote? The Bill of Acceptance required only a simple majority, although bringing the issue to a vote required cloture—and that needed a three-fifths majority: forty-eight yeses. But as the end of the debate approached, neither side had more than thirty committed votes.
The Senate debate was intended to decide the most momentous issue of modern times. It was also intended to demonstrate to all of America, all of the Confederacy, in fact all of the world that reunion had gotten a fair hearing, so they would accept the Senate’s verdict as final and definitive.
Europe—especially Germany—was watching with fascination, the government denying any attempts at influence, proclaiming itself absolutely and positively neutral and offering its sincerest good wishes. Presidente Garcia, caught off guard by an American reporter, was asked how he felt about a reunion between the North and the South. “None of my affair,” he said. “I expect to have friendly relations with my northern neighbors, however many of them there are.”
On Friday, Sen. Lockett declared the debate closed. The Senate would reassemble on Monday morning for the final vote.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Hay-Adam wake-up system roused Phyllis Iserbyt at 6 a.m. and the first thing she did was to start the running the bath water in the room’s two-person Jacuzzi, turning the “hot” faucet handle all the way up. Then she slipped out of her pajamas.
When the tub was mostly filled, she gritted her teeth and put a toe in the water, flinching with the heat. It was uncomfortable, but necessary. The heat definitely helped numb the pain.
For a week now, Phyllis had been praying to God to reduce her suffering, to let hemorrhoids regress, if only for this special weekend. And for a week now, God had apparently been busy with other matters.
So, she told herself, she would just have to suck it up, with the help of her little friend, Vicodin. But even with Vicodin and hot baths, her condition presented problems. Should she go to the bathroom early tomorrow, and risk making things worse. After all, the pain could affect her ability to speak convincingly and sap her energy. But if she waited until after the speech, she would be courting agony. And how long could she hold it, anyway?
Phyllis soaked in the tub for the better part of an hour, and when she got out, she was feeling a bit better. The Vicodin, the bath and the anesthetic cream, thickly applied, had given her some relief. But now she had to get dressed. Ed Poindexter, her faithful second-in-command and Sharon Hunt, her closest friend, would be waiting for her, as well as her team captains, her ‘ladies in waiting.’
She picked out an outfit—her blue suit would be fine for today, she’d wear the red one tomorrow—and as she dressed and fixed her hair, she opened the drapes and looked out of her hotel room window. She’d paid extra for the view. Her room overlooked Lafayette Park and Pennsylvania Ave. The White House was right in front of her. It was a lovely summer day and little knots of sightseers were already meandering past the famous buildings.
She tried to imagine what this area would look like tomorrow—jam-packed, she hoped, filled with enthusiastic, sign-waving protesters. Almost directly below her, and right across from the White House, she could see carpenters putting the finishing touches on the stage from which she’d address crowd. She was going to make history tomorrow. She was going to force a President to back down. She was going to emasculate the man who thought he was the most powerful person in the world. And in the process, she was going to personally establish herself as a politician to be reckoned with. That was going to make up for a lot.
Downstairs, her team was waiting for her in the dining room. “Good morning, everyone,” she said, taking her place at the head of the table, wincing slightly as her bottom made contact with the chair seat. Poindexter, Hunt and the team captains returned the greeting.
“Any problems I need to know about?”
“It’s all going smooth as a baby’s bottom,” said Ed Poindexter, unaware of the irony. “I’m almost worried that we haven’t had any real problems.”
Phyllis nodded, pleased. “And Sharon? The buses?”
“They’re already starting to come. All but a few should be here by dinner time. The rest should be in before dark.”
“No bus problems?” Phyllis asked.
“We’ve had two breakdowns, one coming from San Antonio, the other from Charlotte,” Sharon said. “But both are up and running again and on the way.”
“Excellent.” Phyllis turned to her trio of ladies-in-waiting, her eye settling on Roberta Cornish, a chubby 50-year-old woman with the lowest female voice she’d ever heard. “Accommodations?”
“Well, it’s going to be tight,” Roberta rumbled, “but enough of our suburban members have volunteered to put up people that I think we’re going to make it. Worse come to worse, some people can sleep in the buses.”
“The police won’t bother them?”
“We’ve rented parking lot space at the bankrupt Alexandria Mall,” Roberta said. “That won’t be a problem.”
A fresh-faced young waitress appeared and took their breakfast orders, while another server poured steaming cups of coffee or decafe, as requested.
Next up was the youngest of the ladies-in-waiting, Carla Hendrickson, a slender brunette whom Phyllis several times had been forced to warn about wearing sexy clothing to t
he Our Country First headquarters. “Are the electronics in place, Carla?” She asked.
“Everything but the flat screen TVs,” Carla told her. “We don’t want them out overnight. Too risky.”
“That’s probably wise,” Ed Poindexter put in, “although I don’t think any thieves are going to have vans big enough to cart them off.”
“Well, it might rain,” Arthurerta said.
“If it rains,” Phyllis said, “my meteorologist friend will have to go into the witness protection program.”
Polite but uncertain laughter followed, the group being wary of Phyllis’s temper.
“Now,” she said, showing no trace of a smile, “how about food?” She looked at the third of the ladies-in-waiting, Betty Mellon, a tall, patrician, well-coiffed auburn haired woman in her mid-40s, third in line to inherit a share of the Mellon steel fortune.
“We’ll have 250 private vendors in the area,” Betty said, “and in addition to that, I’ve hired two big catering firms to provide craft services for our staff people. It’s all set.”
“When did you last talk to them?” Phyllis asked.
“This morning, before I came down for breakfast,” said Betty Duke.
“Good. No problems, right?”
“Right.”
“Listen, if you’re worried about anything, even something small, this is the time to tell me, while I can still do something,” Phyllis said. “If something goes wrong tomorrow that you could have anticipated today, I’m going to be very unhappy. Do I make myself clear? Tomorrow has to be perfect.”
She surveyed her breakfast companions, all of whom nodded in assurance. Then she had another thought. “Ed, are the INN people up to speed?”
“Their team is here and they look ready for tomorrow,” Ed said. “I talked to their reporter, Lori Newbold I think her name is.”
Phyllis raised an eyebrow. “Why am I not surprised that you know her name?”
ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened? Page 44