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It is till that Featherston bastard takes over, Potter thought.
On the trolley ride back to his flat after knocking off for the day, he passed another polling place. Police cars were parked in front of it. Blood stained the sidewalk and nearby walls. Freedom Party men waving their reversed-color Confederate battle flags still stood on the street. "Feather ston! Feather ston!" Even through the trolley's closed windows, the chant lacerated Clarence Potter's ears. The police didn't try to run the stalwarts off. If Whigs had been here, they were no longer. This skirmish belonged to the Freedom Party.
After pan-frying a pork chop and some potatoes and washing them down with a stiff whiskey, Potter went over to Whig headquarters to hear… whatever he heard. Dance music blared from the wireless sets: the polls hadn't closed yet. He pulled out his pocket watch. It was a little past seven-thirty-less than half an hour to go.
That gave him plenty of time for another drink, or two, or three. He nodded to Braxton Donovan, who also had a whiskey in his hand, and said, "The condemned man drank a hearty meal."
"Fu
"Oh, I didn't mean you," Potter said. "If you think I meant you, I apologize. I meant the country. Before they execute a man, they give him a blindfold and a cigarette. What do we do when the Confederate States of America go up against the wall?"
Donovan studied him. "I don't think I've ever heard you say you were sorry before. You must mean it. You don't waste time being polite."
I try not to waste time at all, Potter thought. But he had nothing to do but stand there banging his gums till clocks in Charleston started striking eight. "All along the eastern seaboard of the Confederate States, the polls have closed," an a
Then the numbers started coming in. Somebody posted each new installment on a big blackboard at the front of the room. That meant the Whigs could go on chattering and still keep up. As soon as Clarence Potter saw the early results from North Carolina, he knew what kind of night it would be. North Carolina was a solid, sensible, foursquare Whig state. The collapse hadn't hit it so hard as a lot of other places.
Jake Featherston led there. He led by more every time the fellow at the board erased old numbers and put up new ones. And he had coattails. Freedom Party Congressional candidates were wi
Braxton Donovan stared owlishly at the returns. He fixed himself another drink, then came back to stand by Potter and stare some more. He didn't say anything for a long, long time. At last, he did: "Jesus Christ. It's like watching a train wreck, isn't it?"
Potter shook his head. "No, Braxton. It's like being in a train wreck." Donovan thought that over, then slowly nodded.
And it got no better, not from a Whig point of view, as the polls closed in states farther west. Back in 1921, Te
"My God," somebody behind Potter said. "What is the world coming to?"
He didn't need to ask the question, not when he could see the answer. Jake Featherston was going to be president. He would have a majority-a big majority-in the House. The Senate, whose members were chosen by state legislatures rather than popular vote, wasn't so obvious. Even so, it all added up to the same thing: after seventy years in the saddle, the Whigs were going into the minority.
"The minority?" the man in back of Potter said when he spoke that thought aloud. "That's crazy." He still seemed unbelieving.
"If you don't get it, think like a nigger," Potter said. "It'll come to you then, believe me."
A long with news of a corruption scandal in the Iowa legislature, newsboys in Des Moines shouted about Jake Featherston's victory down in the Confederate States. More of them yelled about the scandal, which was right there in town. The election news hit Cinci
He was still shaking his head when he got out of the Ford at the yards and started dickering with a conductor over a load of beds and dressers and nightstands. "What's the big deal?" asked the conductor, a white man too young to have fought in the Great War. "Who cares what happens down in the Confederate States?"
"I cares." Cinci
The conductor was not only white, he was a blond who couldn't have got any whiter if somebody'd thrown him into a tub of bleach. He said, "I don't know nothin' about that. All I know is, you may be colored, but you haggle like a damn kike."
If he'd been talking about Cinci
"Well, I'm a pe
Cinci
Olaf Thorstein, who ran the furniture store, was even paler than Andersen. Cinci
Thorstein said, "Way you talk, you used to live in the Confederate States." He was not far from Cinci
"Yes, suh, that's a fact." Cinci
"Well, what do you think of what's going on down there now?" the white man asked.
"Don't reckon you'll hear no black man sayin' nothin' good about the Freedom Party," Cinci