The Victorious Opposition (40 page)

“Ha!” she said. “If fighting started, they’d do whatever they pleased.”

She could have been right. But Jonathan shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. They know what I’ve been doing since I came to Canada. They want people they can trust to carry out their orders, and I don’t think I qualify.”

“Are you sure? Isn’t it likely they just want Yanks who know how to fly?”

That paralleled Moss’ own worries too closely for comfort. Angry because it did, he snapped, “You sound like those Canadians who want to murder me because I was born in the United States, no matter what I’ve tried to do up here.”

Laura turned red. “There are Canadians who want to murder me, too, because you were born in the United States. Me!” She sounded furious. She was descended from, and named for, the first Laura Secord, who in the War of 1812 had done for the Canadians what Paul Revere had for the Americans in the Revolution: warned of oncoming enemy soldiers and saved the day. Laura was proud of her ancestry, and was as much a Canadian patriot as her ancestor had been.

“Yes, I know that,” Moss said. “If you think it doesn’t worry me, you’re crazy.”

Hostages to fortune,
he thought unhappily. “If anything happened to you and Dorothy, I’d—”

“You’d what?” Laura broke in. “Hop in an aeroplane and machine-gun my people from the sky for revenge? That’s not the right answer, you know.”

Maybe it wasn’t. It was exactly what Moss had been thinking. He knew he couldn’t say that to his wife. He kissed her again instead. She looked as if she would rather have gone on arguing. To his relief, she didn’t.

H
ipolito Rodriguez hadn’t been on a train for a long time: not since he laid down his rifle at the end of the Great War and came home to Baroyeca from west Texas. Then he’d had the taste of defeat in his mouth, sour as vomit after too much beer. Now, as the car rattled and jounced toward Hermosillo along the twisting track, he was having the time of his life.

Why not? Many of his friends from Baroyeca rode with him: among others, Carlos Ruiz and Felipe Rojas and Robert Quinn, who’d brought the Freedom Party to his home town. And better yet, Jorge and Miguel rode with him, too. What could be better than going into action with your own sons at your side? Nothing he could think of.

Everybody in the car seemed to feel the same way. Men chattered and sang snatches of Freedom Party songs and passed bottles of tequila and whiskey back and forth. Nobody got drunk, but a lot of people got happy. Rodriguez knew he was happy.

He kept an eye on his boys. He didn’t want them making fools of themselves and embarrassing him in front of his comrades. But they did fine. They mostly stared out the window, watching the landscape change. Even in the Freedom Youth Corps, they hadn’t gone so far from home.

As the crow flew, Hermosillo was about 150 miles northwest of Baroyeca. The railroad line from the little mining town to the capital of Sonora was no crow. It went west from Baroyeca to Buenavista, south to Terim, west to Guaymas on the coast, and then, at last, north to Hermosillo. That made the journey take twice as long as it would have by a more direct route, but Rodriguez didn’t mind. No, he didn’t mind at all.

He nodded to Robert Quinn. “
Gracias, muchas gracias, señor,
for arranging to have the Freedom Party pay for our fares. We never would have been able to come otherwise.”

“El gusto es mio,”
Quinn answered with a smile. “The pleasure is also that of the
Partido de Libertad
. This is important business we are going to tend to in Hermosillo. We need all the help we can get. We need it, and we are going to have it. No one can stop us. No one at all.”

Hipolito Rodriguez nodded again. “No. Of course not.” Hadn’t he seen Don Gustavo, his one-time
patrón
, turned away from the polling place in Baroyeca? Hadn’t he helped turn him away? Yes, indeed, nothing could stop the Freedom Party.

They got into Hermosillo late that afternoon. It was as big a city as Rodriguez had ever seen—big enough to make his sons’ eyes bug out of their heads. The train station stood a couple of miles north of downtown. Rodriguez wondered whether they would have to march down to the Plaza Zaragoza, the square where they would go into action, but buses draped with
PARTIDO DE LIBERTAD
banners waited for them. The men from Baroyeca weren’t the only Freedom Party members who’d come to Hermosillo on the train. By the time everybody filed aboard the buses, there weren’t many empty seats.

The ridge line of the Cerro de la Campaña rose higher in the southern sky as the buses rolled down toward the Plaza Zaragoza. Rodriguez noted the hill only peripherally. He was used to mountains. The profusion of houses and shops and restaurants and motorcars was something else again. More than half the signs, he noted, were in English, which had a stronger hold in the city than in the Sonoran countryside.

Hermosillo’s two grandest monuments stood on either side of the Plaza Zaragoza. To the west was the Catedral de la Asunción, to the east the Palacio de Gobierno. A cathedral had stood next to the plaza since the eighteenth century. When Sonora passed from the Empire of Mexico to the Confederate States in the early 1880s, the original adobe building had been crumbling into ruin. The replacement, not completed till the early years of the twentieth century, dwarfed its predecessor in size and splendor. With its two great bell towers and elaborate ornamentation, it put Rodriguez in mind of a gigantic white wedding cake.

It dwarfed the Palacio de Gobierno on the other side of the square, though that brick-and-adobe structure was impressive in its own right. And, since the Palacio de Gobierno housed the governor and legislature of the state of Sonora, it was of more immediate concern to the Freedom Party than the cathedral. God could take care of Himself. Secular affairs needed a nudge in the right direction.

Freedom Party men already jammed the Plaza Zaragoza. They greeted the latest set of newcomers with calls of, “Freedom!” and
“¡Libertad!”
and handed out signs, some in Spanish, others in English. Rodriguez looked up at the one he got. In English, it said,
REPEAL THE SEVEN WORDS!

Robert Quinn translated for him, knowing he didn’t have much written English:
“Abrogan las siete palabras.”
The Freedom Party man went on, “You understand what that means?”

“Oh,
sí, sí,
” Rodriguez said. “The Constitution.”

“That’s right.” Quinn nodded. “The way it is now, it says”—he switched from Spanish to English—” ‘The Executive power shall be vested in a President of the Confederate States of America. He and the Vice-President shall hold their offices for the term of six years; but the President shall not be reeligible.’ ”

“But if we take out the last seven words, President Featherston can run again next year,” Rodriguez said.

“Exactamente,”
Quinn agreed. “That’s what the Constitutional amendment the legislature is debating will do. South Carolina and Mississippi demanded that the Congress in Richmond call a Constitutional convention, so it did, and the convention reported out this amendment. As soon as two-thirds of the states in the CSA ratify it, it becomes the new law.”

“It
will
become law, won’t it?” Rodriguez asked anxiously.

“Oh, yes.
Absolutamente.
” Quinn grinned. “The
Partido de Libertad
has a big majority in both houses of the legislature here in Sonora, and in all the other states it needs to pass the amendment. This demonstration is mostly for show. But show is an important part of politics, too, eh?”

“Yes.” Rodriguez’s time in the Freedom Party had left him sure of that. “If people see many other people want the change made, they will all be happy with it.”

“Just so. You are a clever fellow,
Señor
Rodriguez.” Quinn hesitated, then asked, “Have you ever thought of doing anything but farming?”

“Not for myself. It’s what I know, and I am not ready to move to the big city to try something else,” Rodriguez answered. “For my sons, though—well, who knows?”

The sun sank toward the western horizon. Rodriguez’s belly growled and rumbled. He wondered what he would eat, and if he would eat anything. Quinn hadn’t told him to bring food along. He wished the Freedom Party man would have; even a few tortillas would have helped hold emptiness at bay.

But he started worrying too soon. Here and there, fires began to burn in the Plaza Zaragoza. The savory smell of cooking meat rose from them. “Form lines!” somebody shouted. “Form lines to the nearest fires! Form lines, and you’ll all be fed!”

A lot of the Freedom Party followers were veterans. They knew how to queue up. Some of the younger fellows in the plaza milled about at first, but not for long. Shouts and elbows got them into place.

A woman whose features said she had more Spanish blood than Indian handed Rodriguez two rolled tortillas filled with
carne asada
when he got to the head of the line.
“Gracias, señora,”
he said.

“De nada,”
she answered.
“¡Libertad!”

“¡Libertad!”
he echoed, and then got out of the way so she could feed the man behind him. He took a big bite from one of the tortillas.
Carne asada
was a Sonoran specialty; the grilled, spicy beef came with chilies that made him long for a cold beer to put out the fire in his mouth.

He looked around hopefully, but didn’t see anybody passing out bottles of beer. After a while, though, he did hear someone calling,
“¡Agua! Agua fresca aquí.”
He got into another line, eating as he snaked forward. A dipperful of fresh water gave him most of what he wanted, though he still would rather have had beer.

He wondered if anyone would pass out blankets. Nobody did. He hadn’t slept on bare ground since the Great War ended. He also wondered if his sons would complain, but they didn’t. He supposed they’d spent their fair share of time sleeping outdoors in the Freedom Youth Corps. They knew enough to close up with him and several other men. The night got chilly, but all that body warmth kept anyone from having too bad a time.

Rodriguez woke before sunup. He didn’t remember getting so stiff and sore in the trenches in Texas. Of course, that had been half a lifetime earlier. When Miguel and Jorge climbed to their feet, they seemed fresh enough. More lines formed, these for tortillas for breakfast and for strong coffee partly tamed with lots of cream.

More Freedom Party men came into the square in the early morning hours. They dressed like townsfolk, not peasants. Rodriguez guessed they were native Hermosillans. They didn’t need feeding, but they got their signs on the edge of the plaza. Things had to look right.

And things had to sound right. When the real demonstration got under way a little past nine, the chants had been carefully organized.
“¡Abrogan las siete palabras!”
the Freedom Party men roared in rhythmic unison, and then, in English, “Repeal the seven words!” After that came choruses of, “Featherston!” and
“¡Libertad!”
and “Freedom!” Then the cycle began again.

Newsreel cameras filmed the crowd in the Plaza Zaragoza. Rodriguez wondered how many state capitals had chanting crowds putting pressure on legislators and governors. Enough. He was sure of that. The Freedom Party would make sure the Constitutional amendment took effect well before next year’s elections.

Not everything that happened in the Plaza Zaragoza was official and planned in advance. Somebody behind Rodriguez tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked around, a man with a big black mustache passed him a flask. He swigged, expecting tequila. Good brandy ran down his throat instead.
“¡Madre de Dios!”
he said reverently, and handed the flask to Jorge, who stood next to him. His son gulped, coughed, and then grinned.

The bells in the cathedral had just struck twelve when a man in a somber black suit came out of the Palacio de Gobierno. He held up his hands. Little by little, the demonstrators stopped their choruses. “I am pleased to inform you,” he called in English, “that the amendment to our dear Confederate Constitution has passed both houses of the legislature of Sonora. We have voted to repeal the seven words! Freedom!” Then he said the same thing in Spanish.

The Plaza Zaragoza went wild. Men threw hats in the air. Others threw their signs in the air. Still others cursed when those came down—they were heavy enough to hurt. “Freedom!” some shouted. Others yelled,
“¡Libertad!”

Rodriguez shouted in Spanish, then in English, and then in Spanish again. Which language he used didn’t seem to matter. The Freedom Party had won. Jake Featherston had won. That made him feel as if he’d won, too.

Someone started a new chant: “Nothing can stop us!” He gladly joined in. How could he not believe that, when it was so obviously true?

A
rmstrong Grimes didn’t want to get out of bed. He mumbled and tried to stick his head under the pillow when his mother shook him awake. “Get up!” Edna Grimes said sharply. “Annie’s already eating breakfast. You don’t want your father coming in here, do you? You’d better not, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.”

He didn’t. With a last resentful mutter, he got to his feet and went into the bathroom to take a leak and brush his teeth and splash cold water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror, trying to decide whether he needed to shave. He had his mother’s long, oval face, but his coloring was darker, more like his father’s. “Hell with it,” he said to his reflection. He’d shaved the day before, and at sixteen he didn’t have much more than peach fuzz to begin with. He also had pimples, which made shaving even less fun than it would have been otherwise.

Back to his room. He put on a checked shirt and a pair of slacks. He would rather have worn blue jeans, but his father wouldn’t let him get away with it, not when he was going to high school. Some of his friends wore dungarees all the time. He’d pointed that out to his old man—pointed it out in loud, shrill, piercing tones. It hadn’t done him any good at all. Merle Grimes wasn’t a man to bellow and carry on. But once he said no, he wasn’t a man to change his mind, either.