Under it, a half-page subhead said, FREEDOM PARTY ASSASSIN

"My God," Anne said again. "Oh, my God." Mechanically, she kept turning the floured chicken in the hot fat.

"I think you'd better do the same with your investments in the Freedom Party as you did with your Confederate investments right after the war," Tom told her, "and that's get rid of 'em. This time tomorrow, Jake Featherston's going to be worth less than a Confederate dollar, and that's saying something."

She shook her head. "Featherston would never order that kind of thing."

"I didn't say he did, though I wouldn't put it past him if he thought he could get away with it," Tom replied. "But that hasn't got anything to do with it. You think what he ordered or didn't order matters? Only thing that matters is, one of his people pulled the trigger. Who's going to vote for a party that blows the head off the president if they don't care what he's up to?"

"No one," Anne said dully. Tom was right. She wasn't so naive as to pretend otherwise. She'd been riding the crest of the Freedom Party wave up and up and up. She'd been sure she could ride it all the way into the president's residence in Richmond. And so she could have. She remained certain of that. But now… "The son of a bitch," she whispered. "The stupid son of a bitch."

"Who? The late Grady Calkins?" Tom said. "You bet he was a stupid son of a bitch. But who built a whole party out of stupid sons of bitches? Who aimed 'em at the country and fired 'em off, first with bare knuckles and then with clubs and pistols? You know who as well as I do, Sis. Is it any wonder one of'em picked up a Tredegar and decided to go president hunting?"

Anne had never thought, never dreamt, such a thing might happen. That didn't necessarily mean it was any wonder, though, not when you looked at it the way her brother suggested. "What do we do now?" she said. She rarely asked for advice, but her mind remained blank with shock.

Tom didn't have a lot of help to offer. "I don't know," he said. "You burned a lot of bridges when you went with Featherston. How the devil do you propose to get back across them?"

"I don't know, either," Anne said. "Maybe things will straighten out somehow." Even to herself, she didn't sound as if she believed that. Hot lard splashed up and bit the back of her hand. She swore with a fervor that wrung a couple of embarrassed chuckles from her brother.

The chicken was ready a few minutes later. In the years since Marshlands burned, she'd turned into a pretty fair cook. Before then, she'd have had trouble boiling water. But she took no pleasure in crispy skin or moist, juicy, flavorsome flesh. She hardly noticed what she ate, as a matter of fact: the chicken was bones and the baked potato that went with it reduced to its jacket without any apparent passage of time.

After supper, Tom pulled a bottle of whiskey from the shelf where it sat. That, Anne noticed. "Pour me a slug, too, will you?" she asked.

"I sure will." He did. Anne wanted to drink to the point of oblivion, but refrained. Far more than most in the Confederate States, she appreciated the value of a clear head. But oh, the temptation!

As she drank the one drink she allowed herself, she read the newspaper Tom had brought home. Grady Calkins was an out-of-work veteran who'd belonged to the Freedom Party. Past that, the reporters hadn't found out much about him. That was plenty. That was more than plenty.

"He shouted 'Freedom!' after he shot Hampton down," Tom said, as if to rub salt in the wound.

"Yes, I read that," Anne answered. "It's a disaster. I admit it. I don't see how I can deny it. It's a disaster every way you look at it."

"It sure is," Tom said. "God only knows what kind of president Burton Mitchel will make."

"I don't think anybody outside of Arkansas knows anything about Burton Mitchel, maybe including God," Anne said. Tom let out a startled snort of laughter. Anne went on, "The Whigs plucked him out of the Senate to balance the ticket; Featherston would have done the same thing if he'd chosen Willy Knight. All Mitchel was supposed to do was sit there for the next six years."

"He'll do more than that now," her brother said. "Christ, a backwoods bumpkin running the country till 1927. Just what we need!"

"Look on the bright side," Anne told him.

"I didn't know there was any bright side to look on," Tom answered.

"Of course there is. There always is," Anne said. "The bright side here is: how could things get any worse?"

"That's a point," Tom acknowledged. "The other side of the coin is, now we get to find out how things get worse "

Anne opened the South Carolinian to the inside page on which the story of President Hampton's assassination was continued. She read aloud:" 'After taking the oath of office, President Mitchel declared a week of national mourning and lamentation. The new president prayed for the aid of almighty God in the difficult times that lie ahead, and said he would do his best to promote internal order, establish good relations with foreign neighbors, and put the currency on a sound basis once more.'" Her lip curled. "And while he's at it, he'll walk across the James River without getting his trouser cuffs wet."

"What's he supposed to say?" her brother asked, and she had no good answer. Tom continued, "Those are the things that need doing, no doubt about it. I haven't any idea whether he can do them, but at least he knows that much. And after this"-Tom took a deep breath-"after this, maybe people will back off and give him room to move in for a while."

"Maybe," Anne said. "I don't know if that will help, but maybe." She shoved the newspaper to one side. "And maybe everything I've done since the end of the war to try to set the CSA to rights went up in smoke with a couple of shots from that maniac's gun. If the militiamen hadn't killed that Calkins, I'd be glad to do it myself-but I think I'd have to stand in line behind Jake Featherston."

"Probably," Tom agreed. "Calkins may have killed the Freedom Party along with a Whig president. Featherston has to know that-he isn't stupid. But he's the one who raised the devil. He's got no business being surprised if it ended up turning on him."

"That isn't fair," Anne said, but even in her own ears her voice lacked conviction. Tom said nothing at all, leaving her with the last word. She'd never been so sorry to have it.

When she walked to the tailor's the next morning, people in the streets of St. Matthews, white and black alike, fell silent and stared at her as she went by. They'd been talking about the assassination. They started talking about the assassination again as soon as she passed. While she was close by, they would not talk. Some of them moved away from her, as if they didn't want her shadow to fall on them. She'd been the dominant force in this part of South Carolina for more than a decade. People had always granted her the deference she'd earned. By the way they acted now, she might have just escaped from a leper colony.

Going into Aaron Rosenblum's shop felt like escaping. Clack, clack, clack went the treadle of his sewing machine. The clacking stopped when the bell above his door rang. He looked up from the piece of worsted he'd been guiding through the machine. "Good morning, Miss Colleton," he said, polite but no more than polite. He got to his feet. "I have ready the skirt you asked me to make for you."

"Good. I hoped you would." As was often her way, Anne chose to take the bull by the horns. "Terrible about President Hampton yesterday."

"Yes." The little old tailor looked at her over the tops of his half-glasses. "A very terrible thing. But what can you expect from a party that would sooner fight than think?"