Blood and iron

PRESIDENT MURDERED IN BIRMINGHAM!!!

Under it, a half-page subhead said, FREEDOM PARTY ASSASSIN

"My God," A

"I think you'd better do the same with your investments in the Freedom Party as you did with your Confederate investments right after the war," Tom told her, "and that's get rid of 'em. This time tomorrow, Jake Featherston's going to be worth less than a Confederate dollar, and that's saying something."

She shook her head. "Featherston would never order that kind of thing."

"I didn't say he did, though I wouldn't put it past him if he thought he could get away with it," Tom replied. "But that hasn't got anything to do with it. You think what he ordered or didn't order matters? Only thing that matters is, one of his people pulled the trigger. Who's going to vote for a party that blows the head off the president if they don't care what he's up to?"

"No one," A

"Who? The late Grady Calkins?" Tom said. "You bet he was a stupid son of a bitch. But who built a whole party out of stupid sons of bitches? Who aimed 'em at the country and fired 'em off, first with bare knuckles and then with clubs and pistols? You know who as well as I do, Sis. Is it any wonder one of'em picked up a Tredegar and decided to go president hunting?"

A

Tom didn't have a lot of help to offer. "I don't know," he said. "You burned a lot of bridges when you went with Featherston. How the devil do you propose to get back across them?"

"I don't know, either," A

The chicken was ready a few minutes later. In the years since Marshlands burned, she'd turned into a pretty fair cook. Before then, she'd have had trouble boiling water. But she took no pleasure in crispy skin or moist, juicy, flavorsome flesh. She hardly noticed what she ate, as a matter of fact: the chicken was bones and the baked potato that went with it reduced to its jacket without any apparent passage of time.

After supper, Tom pulled a bottle of whiskey from the shelf where it sat. That, A

"I sure will." He did. A

As she drank the one drink she allowed herself, she read the newspaper Tom had brought home. Grady Calkins was an out-of-work veteran who'd belonged to the Freedom Party. Past that, the reporters hadn't found out much about him. That was plenty. That was more than plenty.

"He shouted 'Freedom!' after he shot Hampton down," Tom said, as if to rub salt in the wound.

"Yes, I read that," A

"It sure is," Tom said. "God only knows what kind of president Burton Mitchel will make."

"I don't think anybody outside of Arkansas knows anything about Burton Mitchel, maybe including God," A

"He'll do more than that now," her brother said. "Christ, a backwoods bumpkin ru

"Look on the bright side," A

"I didn't know there was any bright side to look on," Tom answered.

"Of course there is. There always is," A

"That's a point," Tom acknowledged. "The other side of the coin is, now we get to find out how things get worse "

A

"What's he supposed to say?" her brother asked, and she had no good answer. Tom continued, "Those are the things that need doing, no doubt about it. I haven't any idea whether he can do them, but at least he knows that much. And after this"-Tom took a deep breath-"after this, maybe people will back off and give him room to move in for a while."

"Maybe," A

"Probably," Tom agreed. "Calkins may have killed the Freedom Party along with a Whig president. Featherston has to know that-he isn't stupid. But he's the one who raised the devil. He's got no business being surprised if it ended up turning on him."

"That isn't fair," A

When she walked to the tailor's the next morning, people in the streets of St. Matthews, white and black alike, fell silent and stared at her as she went by. They'd been talking about the assassination. They started talking about the assassination again as soon as she passed. While she was close by, they would not talk. Some of them moved away from her, as if they didn't want her shadow to fall on them. She'd been the dominant force in this part of South Carolina for more than a decade. People had always granted her the deference she'd earned. By the way they acted now, she might have just escaped from a leper colony.

Going into Aaron Rosenblum's shop felt like escaping. Clack, clack, clack went the treadle of his sewing machine. The clacking stopped when the bell above his door rang. He looked up from the piece of worsted he'd been guiding through the machine. "Good morning, Miss Colleton," he said, polite but no more than polite. He got to his feet. "I have ready the skirt you asked me to make for you."

"Good. I hoped you would." As was often her way, A

"Yes." The little old tailor looked at her over the tops of his half-glasses. "A very terrible thing. But what can you expect from a party that would sooner fight than think?"