"Freedom!" they echoed.

Jeff sighed. Back in the days before Grady Calkins had shot down President Hampton when he came to Birmingham, a lot more men would have come to Party meetings. The Freedom Party had looked like the wave of the future then. Now… Only the dedicated, the men who really saw something wrong with the CSA and saw that Jake Featherston knew how to fix it, went to Freedom Party meetings these days. And even now… "Where's Virgil?" Jeff asked.

Both other men shrugged. "Don't rightly know," one of them said. "He was at the foundry, so I don't reckon he's feelin' poorly."

Bell clanging, the trolley came up. Jeff was glad to climb aboard and drop five cents in the fare box so he wouldn't have to think about what Virgil's absence might mean. He was also glad to pay a fare measured in cents and not in thousands or millions of dollars. After the war, inflation had ripped the guts out of the Confederate States. Its easing had hurt the Freedom Party, too, but that was one bargain Pinkard was willing to make.

Several more men in white shirts and butternut trousers got on the trolley at its next few stops. Jeff liked the uniform look they had. It reminded him of the days when he and a lot of others who were now Freedom Party members had worn Confederate butternut together. They'd been fighting for something important then, just as they were now. They'd lost then. This time, by Jesus, we won't!

The Freedom Party men all got out at the same stop. Not far away stood the old livery stable where the Party met in Birmingham. As a livery stable, the place was a failure, with motorcars and trucks driving more horses off the road every year. As a meeting hall, it was

… Tolerable, Jeff thought.

But he was smiling as he went inside. This was where he belonged. Emily was gone. She was gone, at least in part, because the Freedom Party had come to mean so much to him. Whatever the reason, though, she was gone. The Party remained. This was such family as he had left.