Blood and Iron (25 page)

He took her by surprise. There were several seconds of silence up in St. Matthews before she answered, “I haven’t really thought much about it one way or the other. It certainly has been making a lot of noise lately, though, hasn’t it?” Now she might have been a detective whipping out a magnifying glass. “Why do you want to know?”

He explained what he had in mind for the Freedom Party, finishing, “People are starting to listen to this Featherston. If he says the right things, he might be the one who can haul the country out of the swamp.”

“Well,” Anne said after another thoughtful pause, “I don’t know what I expected you to say when you called, but that wasn’t it.” She hesitated again. “Why do you think Featherston would listen to me?”

Kimball hadn’t wanted Featherston listening to her; he’d wanted the Freedom Party leader listening to what he had to say. Maybe Anne would say the same things he would have, but he had no guarantee about that. Still, she was waiting for an answer, and he gave her a blunt one: “You’ve got money. You ever hear of a politician—any sort of politician—who didn’t need money?”

She laughed. “You’re right about that, heaven knows—and so do I, the hard way. I don’t know that I want to spend any of my money on the Freedom Party, but I don’t know that I don’t, either. Let me do some checking around and see if it would be money well spent. If I decide it is, I expect I can find a way to let Featherston know I want to have a talk with him.”

She spoke about the Freedom Party as if it were a firm in which she was considering an investment. In a way, that was probably just what it was to her. As far as Roger Kimball was concerned, politics and investments were two separate worlds. Maybe that meant Anne Colleton was the right person to approach Featherston after all. Kimball said, “All right, that’s fair enough. Thanks.”

When he didn’t say anything more, Anne teased him: “No sweet talk, Roger? Have you gone and found somebody else?”

“After you, anyone else’d be boring,” he answered. This time, pleasure filled her laugh. He went on, “I just didn’t reckon it’d work today, that’s all.”

“You’re a smart man,” she said. Getting such praise from her pleased Kimball much more than getting it from Clarence Potter had done.

Tom Colleton looked quizzically at Anne. He asked, “Are you really sure you want to do this?”

“What, meet with Jake Featherston?” she asked. Her brother nodded. She exhaled in some exasperation. “Seeing as he’s going to be on the train that gets to St. Matthews in half an hour, don’t you think it’s a little late to worry about that? If I show him up now, I’ve made an enemy. I’m liable to have made a dangerous enemy. I don’t care to do that, thank you very much.”

“I suppose you’re right—you usually are.” Tom still looked unhappy. “I can’t say I much fancy what I’ve heard about him, though.”

“Hush,” Anne said absently as she walked over to the closet. “I want to pick out the hat that goes best with this dress.” The dress was of orchid cotton voile, with a new-style square collar and with ruffles at the sleeves, waist, hips, and a few inches above the ankle-length hemline. It managed to be stylish and to suit the formidable South Carolina climate at the same time.

The flowered hat she chose had a downturned brim that was also of the latest mode. She didn’t know how much attention Featherston paid to fashion. She’d tried to find out what he thought of women; all she’d been able to learn was that he was a bachelor. Not being able to find out more left her obscurely irked.

“Are you sure
you
want to come along, Tom?” she asked. “One thing we do know is that he doesn’t love officers.”

“Next enlisted man I meet who does love officers will be the first.” Her brother pulled out his pocket watch. “We’d better get going, if you aim to meet him at the station.”

“Do you expect the train to run on time?” Anne asked, but she went with him.

As it happened, the train did run late, but only by twenty minutes or so: hardly enough time in which to start fuming. It pulled into the battered station—not all the damage from the black uprising had been repaired—with wheels squealing and sparking as the brakes brought it to a halt and with black smoke and cinders belching from the locomotive’s stack. Anne brushed soot from her sleeve with a muttered curse that made Tom chuckle and that no one else heard.

Only two people got off the train in St. Matthews. Since one of them was a fat colored woman, figuring out who the other one was did not require brilliance. The lanky white man dressed in butternut trousers, a clean white shirt, and a straw hat looked around for people to greet him, as any traveler might have done.

“Mr. Featherston!” Anne called, and the newcomer alertly swung toward her. His features were pinched and not particularly handsome, but when his eyes met hers, she had to brace herself for an instant. Roger Kimball had been right: whatever else he was, Jake Featherston was not a man to take lightly. She stepped toward him. “I’m Anne Colleton, Mr. Featherston. Pleased to meet you, and thank you for coming down. This is my brother, Tom.”

“Right pleased to meet you both,” Featherston said, his Virginia accent not bespeaking any great education. When he shook hands with Anne, his grip was so businesslike, it revealed nothing. He turned to her brother. “You were an officer on the Roanoke front, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that’s so,” Tom said.
I wasn’t the only one doing some checking,
Anne thought. No, Featherston was not a man to be taken lightly, not even a little bit.

He said, “I’ll try not to hold it against you.” From the lips of most former noncoms, it would have been a joke. Anne and Tom both started to smile. Neither let the smile get very big. Anne wasn’t at all sure Featherston was kidding. He asked, “You have a motorcar here, to take us wherever we’re going?”

Anne shook her head. “I didn’t bother. We’re only a couple of blocks from my apartment. This isn’t a big town—you can see that. It’s an easy walk.”

“I’ll take your carpetbag there, if you like,” Tom added, reaching out for it.

“Don’t bother,” Featherston said, and did not hand it over. “I’ve been taking care of myself a long time now. I can go right on doing it.” He nodded to Anne. “Lead the way, Miss Colleton. Sooner we’re there, sooner we can get down to business.”

He was mostly silent as they walked along: not a man with a large store of small talk. As he walked, he studied St. Matthews with military alertness. He studied Anne the same way. His eyes kept coming back to her, but not in the way of a man who looks on a woman with desire. Anne had seen that often enough to be most familiar with it. No, he was trying to size her up. That was interesting. Usually, till they realized she had a brain, men were more interested in trying to feel her up.

Back at the apartment, Featherston accepted coffee and a slice of peach pie. He ate like a man stoking a boiler, emptying his plate very fast. Then he said, “What can I do for you, Miss Colleton?”

“I don’t quite know,” Anne answered. “What I do know is that I don’t like the way the Confederate States have been drifting since the end of the war. I’d like the country to start moving forward again. If the Freedom Party can help us do that, maybe I’d like to help the Freedom Party.”

“I can tell you what I want for the CSA,” Featherston said. “I want revenge. I want revenge on the damnyankees for licking us. I want revenge on the damnfool politicians who got us into the war. I want revenge on the damnfool generals in the War Department who botched it. I want revenge on the niggers who rose up and stabbed us in the back. And I aim to get it.”

Revenge
was a word that struck a chord with Anne. She’d spent most of two years getting even with the blacks of the Congaree Socialist Republic after they’d torched Marshlands, killed her brother Jacob, and almost killed her. She dearly wanted to get even with the United States, though she didn’t see how the Confederate States would be able to manage it any time soon. Still…

“How do you propose to do all that?” she asked.

“You said it yourself: everything in the country seems dead right now,” Featherston replied. “The Freedom Party is alive and growing. People see that. They’re starting to come over to us. We’ll elect Congressmen this year—you just wait and see if we don’t. Before too long, we’ll elect a president.”

He had all the confidence in the world, that was certain. Tom remarked, “You’re not running for Congress yourself, are you?”

Featherston shook his head. “That’s right—I’m not. Don’t want to sit there, for one thing, on account of I can’t stand too many who’re already in. And for another, I want to be able to go where I want to go when I want to go there. If I had to stay in Richmond too much of the time, I wouldn’t be able to do that. So, no, I’m not going to the dance.”

“You’re going to stay on the sidelines and call the tune,” Anne said.

“You might put it that way,” Jake Featherston agreed. He had a pretty good poker face, but it wasn’t perfect. Anne saw his attention focus on her. It still wasn’t the look a man gave an attractive woman: more like the look a sniper gave a target.
Now he’s realized I’m no fool,
she thought.
I wonder if I should have let him know so soon. I wonder if I should have let him know at all.

She also realized Featherston was no fool. Not running for Congress let him pick and choose his issues and what he did about them. It also protected him from the risk of running and losing. She had no feel yet for how smart he was, but he was plenty shrewd.

“What tune are you going to call?” she asked.

“I already told you,” he answered. “I don’t hide anything I aim to do; I just come right out and say it.” An alarm whistle went off in Anne’s head: any man who said something like that was almost bound to be lying. She kept her face quite still. Featherston continued, “Platform’s pretty simple, like I said. Pay back the USA as soon as we can. Clean out the House and Senate. Clean out the War Department. Put the niggers back in their place. Best place for ’em, you ask me, is six feet under, but I’ll settle for less for now. Still and all, this is a white man’s country, and I aim to keep it that way.”

“What do you propose to do about the black men who got the vote by fighting in the Army?” Tom Colleton asked.

“Most of ’em don’t deserve it,” Featherston said at once. “Most of ’em ran instead of fighting. I was there. I saw ’em do it. I fired into ’em, too, to make ’em more afraid of me than they were of the damnyankees.”

“Some did run,” Tom agreed. “I saw that myself. Toward the end of the war, I saw white troops break and run, too.” He waited. Slowly, Featherston nodded, looking unhappy about having to do it. Tom went on, “I saw some niggers fight pretty well. They’re the ones I’m talking about. How do you take their vote away?”

“Wouldn’t be hard, once we got around to it,” Featherston replied with breathtaking and, Anne thought, accurate cynicism. “Most decent white folks can’t stand ’em anyway. Besides, chances are the ones who fought hard against the USA learned how by fighting against the Confederate States. Pin that on ’em, call it treason, and hang the lousy bastards.”

“What do we do if the United States try to stop us from getting strong again?” Anne asked. “That’s my biggest worry.”

“We walk small as long as we have to,” Featherston said. “I hate it, but I don’t know what else to tell you. We build up our strength every chance we get, though, and before too long we get to tell the damnyankees to leave us alone unless they want a sock in the nose.”

That made sense to Anne. She couldn’t see what else the CSA could do, in fact, except become a supine U.S. puppet. She said, “So you want to get the Negroes out of the towns and factories and back to the fields, do you?” Would keeping Marshlands be worthwhile? No, she judged. Featherston had more on the ball than she’d expected, but the Freedom Party remained very new and raw. It sought power; it wasn’t about to lay claim to much yet.

Featherston answered, “That’s about right, Miss Colleton.” He eyed her again. Did he guess the calculation she was making? She wouldn’t have been surprised.

Her gaze flicked over to Tom. That did surprise her; she rarely relied on anyone to help her decide. Her brother shrugged, ever so slightly. He was leaving it up to her. He did that more often than not. She wished he wouldn’t have, not here. Featherston waited. He had more patience than she would have thought.

He had more of quite a few things than she’d thought. She wasn’t easy to impress, but he’d impressed her. She said, “I think we’re traveling in the same direction, Mr. Featherston. I suspect you could use some help along the road, too.”

“We sure could,” he said. “We sure could. When I joined the Freedom Party, it operated out of a cigar box. We’re better off than that now, but not a whole lot.” Contempt washed over him, as if poured from a bucket. “Most rich folks don’t dare change what made ’em rich. They’ll go on sucking up to the Whigs and the Radical Liberals while the country goes down the drain. Always good to find somebody who zigs when most folks zag.”

He couldn’t have paid her a compliment she appreciated more if he’d tried for a week. “I think I may be able to help some,” she said. “How much depends on any number of things.”

Featherston got to his feet, as if getting up on the stump. “Put those niggers back in the fields where they belong!” His voice filled the apartment with a raspy thunder that didn’t enter it when he was speaking in ordinary tones. That took Anne by surprise again, and for a moment almost took her breath away. She nodded, recognizing the good bargain she’d made. She held out her hand. Jake Featherston shook it.
You give the speeches,
she thought.
Yes, you call the tune—after I whistle it to you.