The Center Cannot Hold

The general store remained open. Rodriguez was astonished to discover that a packet of three needles cost only eight cents. The machine, when Magdalena bought it, had come with the one that had just broken, and no others. "I expected they would be much more," he told Jaime Diaz as the proprietor took his money.

"Then I will gladly charge you twice as much," Diaz said. "One way or another, I have to make some money. With the mine closed, I don't know how I'm going to do it. And the railroad, too! How will I get supplies?"

"I don't know," Rodriguez answered in a low voice. "My wife and I were talking about this. If you don't, how will Baroyeca go on?"

"I have no answers," the storekeeper said. "Every day, I keep hoping things will get better, and every day they get worse. Be thankful you live on a farm. It's not so bad for you. For anyone who has to get things from other places every day…" He shook his head.

"What can you do?" Rodriguez asked. "What can anyone do?"

"No one can do anything," Diaz replied. "No one can do anything to make things better, I mean. That's what makes this whole business so dreadful, my friend. The whole world is broken, and no one has the faintest idea how to fix it."

Hipolito Rodriguez hadn't thought of the collapse in those terms. He'd thought about what it meant to Baroyeca, to Sonora, and, to some degree, to the Confederate States. The world? That was too much for him to grasp. He said, " Senor Diaz, I know the man who can set things right."

"Who is that, then?" Diaz said. "In the name of God and the Blessed Virgin, tell me. If anyone can make the mine open and the train come back to Baroyeca, I will bless him with all my heart." In spite of his talk of the world, most of his thoughts stayed close to home, too. Such is life for most men.

"Jake Featherston of the Freedom Party, that's who," Rodriguez said. "They can make the country strong again, and if we are strong, how can we help being rich again, too?"

"Rich? I don't care about rich. All I care about is having the money to go on from day to day," the storekeeper said. He was polite enough to understate what he had and what he wanted. Rodriguez nodded, polite enough to accept the understatement for what it was. Diaz went on, "I don't know about the Freedom Party, either." He drummed his fingers on the countertop behind which he stood. "But the Whigs have no notion what to do. A blind man could see that. And the Radical Liberals"-he smiled a wry smile-"what have they ever been good for but making faces at the Whigs? So maybe, just maybe, you could be right."

"I think so," Rodriguez said. "When did you ever see the Whigs or even the Radical Liberals with a headquarters here in town? The Freedom Party has one. And Robert Qui

"A point," Diaz admitted. "Qui

Rodriguez nodded, a sour smile on his face. He'd also heard those English words, more often than he ever wanted to. He said, "You see? They speak English, but they don't look down their noses at Sonorans. If they can manage that, I think they can manage the whole country."

"I hadn't thought of it in that way," Diaz said. "Maybe you're right. It could be so."

"I really think it is," Rodriguez said. "Look at the mess the other parties have got us into. Doesn't the Freedom Party deserve the chance to get us out?" The storekeeper didn't say no. Rodriguez added the clincher: "And the election is coming up soon-only a little more than a month to go."

A

The Robert E. Lee Highway was better going than it had been in those days. It was paved all the way, where long stretches of it had been only rutted dirt. A lot more motorcars traveled up and down it, too. And nowadays, the bodies of hanged Negro Reds didn't dangle from trees by the side of the road. She'd seen plenty of them, coming back from Charleston to St. Matthews in 1915. She'd been going to see a lover then; she was going to see a lover now.

Back then, regardless of whether Roger Kimball had had a flat in Charleston rather than being on leave from the Navy, not even A

Times had changed. Much of what had been radical was now taken for granted. A

Potter opened the door. He gave A

"A heavy turnout is expected in today's Congressional election," the reporter on the wireless said as A

The typewriter started clacking again just then, drowning out the rest. Clarence Potter was far and away the most unusual man A

Drink in hand, she came back into the front room. "Do you want me to fix one for you, too?" she asked. He didn't expect her to fix drinks. That, no doubt, was why she was willing to do it.

And he shook his head now. Lamplight glinted from the metal frames of his spectacles. "No, thanks. Not yet. Let me finish up here. I think I've figured out who's been lifting crates from Lucas Williamson's warehouse, and how he can keep it from happening again." Concentration on his face, he went back to typing.

"You did remember to vote, didn't you?" A

He nodded. "Oh, yes. I'm not going to give the Freedom Party any help at all. The Whigs have done too much of that lately." He went back to typing, and might almost have forgotten A

She listened to the wireless. The commentator kept on sounding optimistic about the Whigs' prospects. She hoped he was right. Like Clarence Potter, she hoped and believed two different things.

Ten minutes later, Potter took the sheet of paper out of the machine. "There," he said in his half-Yankee accent, laying it on a neat stack. "Another week's bills paid. Now I get to remember I'm a human being." He went back into the kitchen and fixed a whiskey for himself. Raising it in salute, he added, "It's damn good to see you, you know that? Always nice to have company on the deck as the ship goes down."