More Freedom Party men sprawled snoring on couches and chairs and on the floor, too, some with whiskey bottles close at hand, others simply exhausted. A lot of reporters, by the look of things, were already gone. Watching the Freedom Party lose an election so many thought it might win had been story enough for them. But half a dozen fellows in cheap but snappy suits converged on Jake when he showed himself.
“Do you have a statement, Mr. Featherston?” they cried, as if with a single voice.
“Damn straight I have a statement,” Featherston answered.
“Jake—” began Ferdinand Koenig, who had followed him downstairs.
“Don’t you worry, Ferd. I’ll be fine,” Jake said over his shoulder. He turned back to the reporters. “Reckon you boys are waiting for me to say something sweet like how, even though I wish I was the one who’d gotten elected, I’m sure Wade Hampton V will make a fine president and I wish him all the best. That about right? Did I leave anything out?”
A couple of the reporters grinned at him. “Don’t reckon so, Sarge,” one of them said. “That’s what we hear from the Radical Liberals every six years.”
“To hell with the Radical Liberals,” Featherston said. “And to hell with Wade Hampton V, too.” The reporters scribbled. Jake warmed to his theme, despite Koenig’s dark mutterings in the background: “To hell with Wade Hampton V, and to hell with the Whig Party. They led us off a cliff in 1914, they don’t have the slightest scent of a notion of how to turn things around, and now they’ve got six more years to prove they don’t know what the devil they’re doing.”
“If they’re such a pack of bums, why’d you lose the election?” a reporter called.
“Don’t you think you ought to ask, ‘How’d you do so well the first time you tried to run anybody for president?’” Jake returned. No matter how he felt in private, in public he put the best face on things he could. “Christ, boys, in 1915 there was no Freedom Party. We didn’t elect anybody to Congress till two years ago. And now, our first time out of the gate, we get more votes than the Radical Liberals, and they’ve been around forever. And what do you ask? ‘Why’d you lose?’” He shook his head. “We’ll be back. As long as Hampton and the Whigs leave us any kind of country at all, we’ll be back. You wait and see.”
“You really have it in for Hampton, don’t you?” a man from the
Richmond Whig
asked.
Jake bared his teeth in what was not a smile. “You bet I do,” he said. “He’s part of the crowd that’s been running the Confederate States since the War of Secession: all the fancy planters, and their sons, and
their
sons, too. And he’s part of the War Department crowd, like Jeb Stuart, Jr., and the other smart folks who helped the damnyankees lick us. When I look at Wade Hampton and the Whigs, I look at ’em over open sights.”
He’d let his journal by that name slip when the Freedom Party began to climb; the furious energy that had gone into the writing came out in Party work instead. Now, for the first time in a while, he might have some leisure to put his ideas down in paper.
Have to look back over what I did before,
he thought.
Pick up where I left off.
“If you don’t work with the other parties, why should they work with you?” the reporter from the
Whig
asked.
“We’ll work with our friends,” Jake said. “I don’t have any quarrel with folks who want to see this country strong and free. People who want us weak or who try and sell us to the USA had better steer clear, though, or they’ll be sorry.”
“Sorry how?” Two men asked the question at the same time. The man from the
Richmond Whig
followed it up: “Sorry the way Tom Brearley’s sorry?”
Though half loaded himself, Jake knew a loaded question when he heard one. “I don’t know any more about what happened to that Brearley than I read in the papers,” he answered. That was true; he’d also made a point of not trying to find out any more. “I do know a jury didn’t convict the people the police arrested for burning down his house.”
“They were all Freedom Party men.” This time, three reporters spoke together.
“They were all acquitted,” Jake said. The reporters looked disappointed. Jake smiled to himself. Did they think he was stupid enough to carry ammunition to their guns? Too bad for them if they did. He went on, “A lot of people like the Freedom Party these days—not quite enough to win me the election, but a lot.”
“Are you saying you can’t be responsible for all the crazy people who follow you?” The fellow from the
Whig
wouldn’t give up.
“There’s crazy people in every party. Look in the mirror if you don’t believe me,” Jake replied. “And I’ll say it again, on account of you weren’t listening: the jury acquitted those fellows from the Freedom Party. I don’t know
who
burned Brearley’s house, and neither do the cops. No way to tell if it was Freedom Party men or a bunch of riled-up Whigs.”
“Not likely,” the reporter said.
Privately, Featherston thought he was right. Publicly, the Freedom Party leader shrugged. “Anything else, boys?” he asked. None of the reporters said anything. Jake shrugged again. “All right, then. We didn’t win, but we don’t surrender, either. And that’s about all I’ve got to say.” The newspapermen stood scribbling for a bit, then went off one by one to file their stories.
When the last one was out of earshot, Ferdinand Koenig said, “You handled that real well, Jake.”
“Said I would, didn’t I?” Jake answered. “Christ, I spent three years under fire. Damn me to hell if I’m going to let some stinking newspapermen rattle me.”
“All right,” Koenig said. “I was a little worried, and I don’t deny it. Hard loss to take, and you are sort of lit up.” Again, he told Featherston the truth as he saw it.
“Sort of,” Jake allowed. “But hell, you think those fellows with the notebooks are stone cold sober? Not likely! They’ve been drinking my booze all night long.”
Koenig laughed. “That’s true, but nobody cares what they say. People do care what you say. What do you say about where we go from here?”
“Same thing I’ve been saying all along.” Jake was surprised the question needed asking. “We go straight ahead, right on down this same road, till we win.”
As she did any evening she was at her apartment by herself, Flora Hamburger waited for a knock on the door. All too often, the quiet, discreet knock didn’t come. There were times these days—and, especially, these nights—when she felt lonelier than she had when she’d first got to Philadelphia almost five years before. That it was a few days before Christmas only made things worse. The whole city was in a holiday mood, which left her, a Jew, on the outside looking in.
She sat on the sofa, working her way through President Sinclair’s proposed budget for the Post Office Department. It was exactly as exciting as it sounded. Did the president really need to revise the definitions for third- and fourth-class post offices? At the moment, she hadn’t the faintest idea. Before long, though, the bill would come to a vote. She owed it to her constituents—she owed it to the country—to make her vote as well informed as she could.
Someone knocked on the door: the knock she’d been waiting for, the knock she’d almost given up expecting.
She sprang to her feet. Pages of the Post Office budget flew every which way. Flora noticed, but didn’t care. She hurried to the door and threw it open. There stood Hosea Blackford. “Come in,” Flora said, and the vice president of the United States did. She closed the door behind him, closed it and locked it.
Blackford kissed her, then said, “You’d better have something to drink in this place, dear, or I’ll have to go across the hall and come back.”
“I do,” Flora said. “Sit down. Wait. I’ll be right back.” She went into the kitchen, poured him some whiskey, and then poured herself some, too.
“You are a lifesaver,” he said, and gulped it down.
Flora sat down beside him. She drank her whiskey more slowly. “You look tired,” she said.
To her surprise, Blackford burst into raucous laughter. “God knows why. All I do is sit in a corner and gather dust—excuse me, preside over the Senate. There’s not much difference between the two, believe me. I’ve spent most of my life in the middle of the arena. Now…now I’m a $12,000-a-year hatrack, is what I am.”
“You knew this would happen when Sinclair picked you,” Flora said.
“Of course I did. But there’s a difference between knowing and actually having it happen to you.” Blackford sighed. “And I wanted it when he picked me. The first Socialist vice president in the history of the United States! I’ll go down in history—as a footnote, but I’ll go down.” His laugh was rueful. Flora thought he’d ask for another whiskey, but he didn’t. All he said was, “I feel like I’ve already gone down in history—very ancient history.”
“If you have so little to do, why haven’t you stopped by here more often?” Flora’s question came out sharper then she’d intended. After she’d said it, though, she was just as well pleased she’d said it as she had.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want me here crying on your shoulder every night? I can’t believe that.”
“Of course I do!” she exclaimed, honestly astonished. And she’d astonished him—she saw as much. She wondered if they really knew each other at all, despite so much time talking, despite lying down together in her bedroom.
“Well, well,” he said, and then again, in slow wonder: “Well, well.” He reached out and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. She didn’t know whether to pull away or clutch him to her. Deciding she was lonelier than angry took only a moment. She reached for him at the same time as he reached for her.
Later, in the bedroom, she moaned beneath him, enclosed in the circle of his arms, his mouth hot and moist and urgent on her nipple. His hand helped her along as he drove deep into her. Her pleasure was just beginning to slide down from the very peak when he gasped and shuddered and spent himself.
He kissed her again, then got off her and hurried into the bathroom. From behind the door came a plop as he tossed the French letter he’d been wearing into the toilet. He was careful not to leave them in the wastebasket for the maid to find. Usually, that wet plop made her laugh. Tonight, it only reminded her how wary they had to be. She was a mistress, after all, not a wife.
Usually, she managed not to think about that. Tonight, piled onto everything else, it hit her hard, harder than it ever had before. What had she done to her life, not even realizing she was doing it? While Blackford loosed a long stream into the toilet, she rolled over onto her belly and softly began to cry.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, and punctuated that by flushing. Flora didn’t answer. He opened the door, turned out the light, and stood there for a moment while his eyes got used to dimness again—or maybe his ears caught her quiet sobs first. He hurried over to the bed and set a hand on her back. “What on earth is the matter, dear?”
“Nothing!” Flora shrugged the hand away. She tried to stop crying, but discovered she couldn’t.
“I’ve been thinking,” Blackford repeated, and then, this time, went on: “I’ve been thinking we ought to figure out where we’re going.”
“Where
are
we going?” Flora asked bitterly. “Are we going anywhere?” She didn’t want to roll back over. She didn’t want to look at him.
“Well, that doesn’t just depend on me. That depends on both of us,” Blackford said. He waited for Flora to reply. When she didn’t, he shrugged; she felt the mattress shake. He spoke again: “We can’t very well get married, for instance, unless you want to marry me, too.”
Flora’s head jerked up. She swiped at her eyes with her arm—she didn’t want to see Blackford, or what she could see of him in the near darkness, through a haze of tears. Gulping to try to steady her voice, she said, “Married?”
Hosea Blackford nodded. She both saw and felt him do that. “It seems to be the right thing to do, don’t you think?” he said. “Heaven knows we love each other.” He waited for Flora again. She knew she had to respond this time, and managed a nod. That seemed to satisfy Blackford, who went on, “All over the world, you know, when people love each other, they do get married.”
“But—” The objections that filled Flora’s head proved she’d been in Philadelphia, in Congress, the past five years. “If you marry me, Hosea, what will that do to your career?” She didn’t just mean,
If you marry me.
She also meant,
If you marry a Jew.
He understood her. One of the reasons she loved him was that he understood her. With another shrug, he answered, “When you’re vice president, you haven’t got much of a career to look forward to, anyhow. And I don’t think the party will ever nominate me for president—Dakota doesn’t carry enough electoral votes to make that worthwhile. So after this term, or after next term at the latest, I’m done.”
“In that case, you go back to Dakota and take your old seat back,” Flora declared. “Or you could, anyhow. Could you do it with a Jewish wife?”
“I don’t know that I particularly want my old seat back. It seems in pretty good hands with Torvald Sveinssen, and he’ll have had it for a while by the time I’m not vice president any more,” Blackford said. He reached out and put his hand on her bare shoulder. This time, she let it stay. He went on, “All you’ve done is talk about me. What about you, Flora? How will people in New York City like it if you came home with a gentile husband?”
“I don’t think it would bother them too much—the Fourteenth Ward is a solidly Socialist district,” she answered. “And you wouldn’t be just any gentile husband, you know. You’re a good Socialist yourself—and you’re the vice president.”
“It could be,” Blackford said. “I can see how it could be that that would do well enough for your district. But I don’t have a lot of family back in Dakota. What will your family think if you go home and tell them you’re marrying a gentile?”
Flora rejected the first couple of answers that sprang to mind. Her family might indeed be delighted she was marrying at all, but Hosea didn’t have to know that. And her father, an immigrant tailor, might indeed be so awed she was marrying the vice president that he wouldn’t say a word even if her fiancé were a Mohammedan—but she doubted that. Abraham Hamburger wasn’t so outspoken as either Flora or her brothers and sisters, but he never had any trouble making his opinions known.