American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (99 page)

  At his request, the platform where he would take the oath of office had gone up on the south side of the square, near the statue of Albert Sidney Johnston and near Bank Street. Congressmen and Freedom Party bigwigs and other important people packed the platform and nearby wooden bleachers. Party stalwarts in white and butternut and Party guards in not-quite-Confederate uniform kept order in the square. Featherston hadn’t requested that. He’d insisted on it.

  Among the important people on the platform and in the bleachers were a dozen or so men, most of them elderly, in perfectly genuine Confederate uniforms: the highest-ranking officers from the War Department.

  Jake chuckled as the limousine stopped near the platform. He pointed to the generals. “I hope those bastards are shaking in their boots.”

  “If they’re not, they’re even dumber than you always said they were,” Koenig answered.

  Jake got out of the motorcar. The stalwarts sprang to attention. The guards presented arms. “Freedom!” they shouted as one. Congressmen who weren’t Party members—a minority, now—flinched. They’d never watched Party rallies up close. They’d stayed away on purpose, in fact. They had some lessons to learn, and Featherston looked forward to teaching them.

  His boots thumped on the wooden stairs as he ascended to the platform, Knight and Koenig trailing him.

  Waiting to greet him were President Burton Mitchel and Chief Justice James McReynolds. Mitchel extended his hand. Featherston shook it. They’d had the four months since the election to get to know each other as Mitchel prepared to leave office and Featherston to take over. Getting to know each other hadn’t meant getting to like each other; on the contrary.

  “May I give you one last bit of advice?” Mitchel asked formally.

  With newsreel cameras turning, Jake couldn’t say no without looking ungracious. “Go ahead,” he answered.

  Mitchel looked weary unto death. He’d become president after a Freedom Party man murdered his predecessor. Now he handed his office over to the head of the Freedom Party.
And how do you feel
about that, Burton old boy?
 Jake wondered. The outgoing president said, “I believe, Mr. President-elect, that you and your followers will find it has been easier to criticize than it will be to govern.”

  “Do you?” Jake said. Mitchel nodded stiffly. For the benefit of the cameras, Featherston smiled and clapped him on the back. “Well, Mr. President,” he went on quietly, smiling still, “I reckon some folks’ll believe anything, won’t they?”

  He stood well away from the microphones. He didn’t think they would pick that up. If by some mischance they did . . . Well, that bit of film could always end up on the cutting-room floor. Burton Mitchel winced as if bayoneted. Willy Knight laughed.

  Chief Justice McReynolds was a handsome man with a long face, a jutting chin, and white hair that had receded just enough to give him a high, high forehead. He had frowned when Jake delivered his cut, but made himself rally. “Are you ready to take the oath, Mr. President-elect?” Jake looked out over Capitol Square, over the crowd filling it (after the local Mitcheltown had been bulldozed to let a crowd fill it), and the throngs of people on the sidewalks of Bank Street. “Am I ready?” he echoed. “You bet I’m ready.”

  “Very well, sir. Raise your right hand and repeat after me. . . .”

  “I, Jake Featherston . . . do solemnly swear . . . that I will faithfully execute . . . the office of President . . . of the Confederate States, and will . . . to the best of my ability . . . preserve, protect, and defend . . . the Constitution thereof.”

  There. It was official. When Featherston lowered his hand, he did so as president of the Confederate States of America. Chief Justice McReynolds shook hands with him. “Congratulations, Mr. President,” he said. “I am the first one to have the privilege of addressing you thus.”

  “You sure are,” Jake agreed. He even smiled.
But if you think I’ve forgotten your Supreme Court let
this Mitchel bastard run again in 1927, you’d better think again. I haven’t forgotten one goddamn
thing, not me. And I know how to settle
your
hash when the time comes. You may not think so, you
fancy-pants son of a bitch, but I do.

  The time hadn’t come yet, though. For now, he had to show everybody what a smooth fellow he was.

  He shook hands with Burton Mitchel again, then stepped to the microphones. “Friends, I’m Jake Featherston, and I’m
still
here to tell you the truth.”

  “Feather
ston
! Feather
ston
! Feather
ston
!” The rhythmic chant from the crowd in Capitol Square and across the street rolled over him. He drank it in. He liked his whiskey as well as the next fellow, but the intoxication of a crowd took him higher and didn’t leave him with a headache the next morning.

  He held up his hands. Not everybody who was cheering had Party discipline; the noise took longer than it should have to die away. When it did, he went on, “The truth is, we’re going to make this country work again, and we’re going to make it work better than it ever did before. We’re going to dam the big rivers and keep them from flooding the way they did seven years ago. We’re going to use the electricity from the dams for people’s houses—the houses of honest people, working people, white people—and for factories that will make all the things we need, and make ’em cheap enough so folks can afford ’em.” More applause. Again, it faded more slowly than it might have. Once it did, he continued, “And it’s high time we show the USA that the Confederate States are a country that works, too. It’s time we stand up straight again and look the United States in the eye and say, ‘We’ve got a few things to talk about.’ We haven’t been able to do that yet, even though the war’s been over for a long time. We haven’t been strong enough. We will be, though.”

  This time, the rapturous shouts from the crowd were the older Party cry: “Freedom! Freedom!

  Freedom!” They were deeper and fiercer than those that had gone before, with more men and fewer women joining in. Even the generals in their gleaming uniforms looked intrigued.
What’s this, boys? You
think I’ll put my toys in your hands?
 In the quiet of his own mind, Jake laughed out loud.
You’re fools,
too. You’re worse fools than that stinking McReynolds, only you’re too dumb to know it.

  He kept the inaugural address short and sweet. That was best for the wireless web and for the crowd there in person. After the speech came the parade, for the crowd and for the newsreel cameras. An Army marching band began it. Behind the band strutted a crack regiment in dress uniform.

  And behind that one regiment came formation after formation of Freedom Party men from every state in the CSA: stalwarts in white shirts and butternut trousers, smaller units of guards in those almost military uniforms. Some bands of stalwarts simply marched. Some carried truncheons. Like the Army regiment, the Freedom Party guards carried rifles, and they plainly knew what to do with them.

  “Look at the generals,” Jake whispered to Ferdinand Koenig. “Now they’re seeing what we’ve got, and they want it for themselves.”

  Scorn filled Koenig’s voice: “Not likely.”

  “Oh, hell no,” Featherston said. “All that there”—he pointed to the parade—“that’s ours.
We
made it, and
we’ll
use it. I know just how, too. By God, you’d better believe I do.”