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"It won't be as bad as that," A
"No, indeed. It'll probably be worse." Potter looked out the window. Twilight was setting in. "Polls'll close before long. Then we'll start getting returns, and then we'll know how big a mess we'll have for the next two years. To tell you the truth, I'd almost sooner not find out."
"Would you rather stay here and stay in bed, then?" A
Potter smiled but shook his head. "Plenty of time for that afterwards. I have this restless itch to know, and it needs satisfying as much as any other urge."
"All right." And, to A
When they went out for supper, she ordered a big plate of boiled shrimp. "They don't come fresh to St. Matthews," she said.
"No, I suppose not," Potter agreed. "When I first moved here, I remember thinking how wonderful all the seafood was." He'd chosen crab cakes for himself. "Now, unless people remind me about it the way you just did, I take it for granted. I shouldn't do that, should I?"
"No," A
"We're liable to pay the price for it, too," he said. "That goes back a long way now, you know-starting when we took it for granted we'd win the Great War and be home to celebrate by the time the leaves turned red and gold."
The colored waiter brought their suppers. As A
"No-but remember, I went to Yale. I was there for four Remembrance Days. I had a pretty fair notion of how desperately in earnest those people were. We figured we could whip them. They went out and made damn sure they could whip us." He took a bite of crab cake, nodded, and went on in meditative tones: "We've always figured we could whip the Freedom Party, too. But the damnyankees aren't the only people who are desperately in earnest. That's what worries me."
"We'll find out." A
After they finished supper, they walked over to the Whig headquarters. It lay only three or four blocks away. Even in November, bugs still buzzed around street lamps. Something-a bird? a bat?-swooped down, grabbed one of them out of the air, and vanished into darkness again.
When A
But then someone called out to them: "Have you heard the news?"
Potter shook his head. A
"Horatio Standifer out in North Carolina," the man replied. "In Congress since before the war, but a Freedom Party man just did him in."
"Oh, good God," Potter said. "If Standifer lost his seat, nobody's safe tonight. And if nobody's safe tonight, then God help the country tomorrow."
"What's the news here in South Carolina?" A
"Not as bad as that," the Whig said. "We're going to lose the seat we picked up two years ago, and maybe one more besides."
Potter pointed at the blackboard on which new results were going up. "Maybe two more besides, looks like to me."
After a second look at the numbers, the other Whig scowled and nodded. "Maybe two more besides," he admitted, and went off as if Potter had some sort of contagious disease.
He does, A
Returns from Georgia started coming, and then Te
Clarence Potter didn't go. Each new seat lost to the Freedom Party-and those came in one after another, with no possible room for doubt in most of them-brought not howls of dismay from him, but rather a bitter smile. He might have been telling the world, I knew this was going to happen. Now here it is, and what are you going to do about it? No one in the Whig headquarters seemed to have the slightest idea what to do about it… except for the men who headed across the street to get drunk.
As A
"What do you mean?" she asked, though she had a pretty good idea.
And, sure enough, he said, "Your politics aren't that far from Jake Featherston's. If you want to, you can probably make your peace with him."
She wanted to haul off and slap him. She wanted to, but she couldn't, for the same thought had crossed her mind. He told her the truth as he saw it, too. Still, she said, "I don't know. I turned him down once when he asked for money, years ago. He doesn't forget things like that."
Potter laughed scornfully. "I'll tell you what he won't turn down. He won't turn down money if you give it to him now, that's what."
A
Casually, Clarence Potter added, "If you do go back to him, we're through. I don't know how much that means to you. I hope it means something. Losing you would mean a lot to me. But I've known Featherston longer than any of the 'Freedom!'-shouting yahoos who go marching for him these days. We aren't on the same side, and we're never going to be."
"What if he gets elected president?" A
A muscle jumped in his right cheek, perhaps an inch below his eye. "No one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the Confederate people, but I still find that hard to imagine-even harder than it was in 1921, when he came so close. And 1933's still a long way away. Things are bound to look better by then." He paused and sighed. "And the way you asked that question makes me wonder if we aren't through anyhow."
"Up till now, you never put any conditions on me," A
"Up till now, I never imagined I needed to," he answered. "But I can't put up with the Freedom Party. I'm sorry, but I can't."
"Don't you want revenge on the USA?" she asked.
"I don't want anything that badly," Potter said.
A
K amloops, British Columbia, was a long way from Philadelphia, and a long way from the Confederate States, too. That didn't keep news from getting there about as fast as it got anywhere else, though, not in this age of telegraph clickers and wireless sets. Colonel Irving Morrell studied the Confederate election returns with a sort of horrified fascination.
"Sweet Jesus Christ!" he said, looking at the newspaper that had set them out in detail.