Blood and iron

XVII

Cincinnatus Driver pulled into the Des Moines railroad yard well before six in the morning, well before sunup. Most of the year, he'd found, business there was better and steadier than along the riverfront. He missed going over by the river; he'd been doing it for a long time, both down in Covington and since moving to his new home here. But he didn't miss an empty wallet, not even a little he didn't.

Early as he was, several other trucks were already waiting for the Chicago and North Western Railroad Line train to pull into the yard. Three or four others came in while he drank lukewarm coffee from a flask Elizabeth had given him. He sat in the cab of the Duryea and yawned. It wasn't so much that he hadn't got enough sleep the night before: more that he was always busy and always tired.

The train pulled into the yard at 6:35, right on time. Then the drivers scrambled to make deals with the conductor, who did the same job as a steamboat clerk and had the same cold blood in his veins.

For a while, Cincinnatus had had trouble getting any work at all from these hard-eyed gentlemen. That was partly because he'd been new to Des Moines and even more because he had a dark skin. He knew as much. He'd expected nothing more.

But he was still here. He'd got his foot in the door, he'd proved he was reliable… and now he was dickering with a conductor over a load of rolled oats for one of the last few livery stables in town. "Have a heart, Jerry," he said, putting a hand over his own heart. "You wouldn't pay that low if I was white."

Jerry rolled his eyes. "You're a Hebe in blackface, Cincinnatus, that's what you are. You want me to see if I can get somebody else to haul the stuff for that price?"

"Go ahead," Cincinnatus said. "Somebody else wants to lose money on gasoline and wear and tear on his truck, that's his affair. You don't pay me another dollar, it ain't worth my time and trouble."

"You are a Hebe," the conductor said. "All right, dammit, another four bits."

"Six bits," Cincinnatus said. "Six bits and I break even, anyways."

"What a damn liar you are. Tell me you don't sandbag when you play poker." Jerry puffed out his cheeks, then exhaled. "Awright, six bits. The hell with it. Deal?"

"Deal," Cincinnatus said at once, and went to get his hand truck to move the barrels of oats.

When he got to the livery stable, the proprietor, a big, ruddy, white-haired man named Hiram Schacht, said, "Stow the barrels in that corner there." He pointed.

"Will do, Mistuh Schacht," Cincinnatus answered. From everything he'd seen, Schacht didn't treat him any worse because he was colored. The stable owner approved of anyone who helped him care for his beloved horses. The trouble was, he had fewer horses to care for every month. People kept buying automobiles.

As Cincinnatus rolled barrel after barrel past the old man, Schacht sighed and said, "Getting harder and harder to stay in business. Back before the war, I'd have gone through an order this size in a week. Now it'll last me two, maybe three." He scratched at his bushy mustache. "Pretty soon, I won't need to order any oats at all. That'll cut down on my overhead, now won't it?" His laugh held little mirth.

"Well, suh, you don't see me bringin' you these oats in a wagon with a team pullin' it, now do you?" Cincinnatus said. "Automobiles and trucks, they're the coming thing."

"Oh, I know, I know," Schacht said, unoffended; they'd had this conversation before. "But I'm heading toward my threescore and ten, as the Good Book says. Up till a couple years ago, I was sure the stable would last out my lifetime, and I was damn glad of it, too: I'm just flat-out crazy about horses. Motorcars have no soul to 'em, and they smell bad, too. Anyway, though, I ain't so sure now. I'm lasting longer than I reckoned I would, and more people are getting rid of their horses faster than I reckoned they would."

"Can't blame me for that," Cincinnatus said as he trundled the dolly back out to the Duryea for another barrel of oats. "Never had me a horse-never could afford one-before I got the chance to buy my truck. By then, I figured a truck'd do me more good."

"Do your wallet more good, anyway," Schacht said, and Cincinnatus nodded; that was what he'd meant, all right. The stable owner went on, "A horse'd do your spirit more good, though. You can make friends with a horse-oh, not with all horses; some of 'em are stupid as fenceposts and a hell of a lot meaner, and God knows I know it-but with some horses, anyways. What can you feel about a truck? When it breaks down, all you want to do is kill it, but you can't even do that, on account of the son of a bitch is already dead."

Having had the urge to murder the Duryea a good many times since buying it, Cincinnatus could only nod. He did say, "Man's got to eat."

"Oh, no doubt about it," Schacht said. "I don't begrudge folks their autos and their trucks-well, not much I don't, anyways. But back when you were a pup, everybody had horses-near enough everybody, I guess I ought to say-and motorcars were toys for rich men. By the time you get as old as I am, it'll be the other way round, I bet: everybody'11 have himself a motorcar, but only rich folks'll be able to keep horses."

"Could be so," Cincinnatus agreed. In fact, he found it very likely, and likely to happen sooner than Schacht had predicted, too. He wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the livery-stable man thought the same thing.

"You take care of yourself, Cincinnatus," Schacht said after he'd brought in the last barrel of oats, "and take care of that rattletrap contraption you drive."

"Thank you kindly, Mistuh Schacht." Cincinnatus touched the brim of his cloth cap in salute. "Hope it's me bringin' your oats next time you need some."

"I wouldn't mind." Schacht scratched at that walrus mustache again; he didn't bother waxing it up into a stylish Kaiser Bill. As Cincinnatus fired up the Duryea, the stable owner added, "By the time you get as old as I am, folks will be trading in their autos for flying machines-but rich folks'11 still keep horses." He shouted to make himself heard over the thunderous roar of the engine.

"Flying machines," Cincinnatus said to himself. All he knew about them was that he didn't want to go up in one; the miserable things were too likely to fall out of the sky, with gruesomely fatal results the newspapers liked to play up. Maybe they'd solve all the problems by the time Achilles was an old man. Maybe they wouldn't, too. Either way, it would be for his son to worry about.

He picked up another hauling job when he went back to the railroad yard, and then another one. That one took him through his own neighborhood-right past the school where Achilles went. The kindergarten classes were just letting out as he drove by: sure enough, there was Achilles along with his schoolmates, who included blacks, whites, and the daughter of the Chinese laundryman upstairs. In Kentucky, Cincinnatus would never have dreamt that his son would go to a school whites also used. Iowans seemed to take it for granted.

Cincinnatus squeezed the bulb of the Duryea's raucous horn. All the little kids looked his way. "That's my pa!" Achilles squealed, loud enough for Cincinnatus to hear him over the Duryea's motor.

"Wow! What a swell truck!" a white boy exclaimed, also loudly. Cincinnatus laughed, waved, and drove on. Only to a six-year-old would this truck have seemed swell. Had the kid said funny-looking or beat-up^ he would have been closer to the mark. But Cincinnatus had succeeded in impressing one of his son's pals, so swinging by the school had been all to the good.

"Pals." Cincinnatus spoke the word he'd just thought. Could a Negro boy in Des Moines have real white friends? He'd probably have to be able to, if he expected to have more than a handful of friends: there wouldn't be enough other colored boys to go around. But, for a Negro from Covington, it was a strange and troubling notion. Cincinnatus would have been willing to bet it was a strange and troubling notion for a lot of whites from Des Moines, too.

When he got home that evening, Achilles was still bubbling over with pride. "Louie Henderson and Joey Nichols both said that was the swellest truck they ever saw," he reported.

"That's good," Cincinnatus said. He paused and listened again in his mind to what his son had just told him. When he'd been Achilles' age, back before the turn of the century, he would surely have said they ever seen. He still said things like that every now and then, or maybe more often than every now and then. Achilles had said them, too, till he started going to school: he'd listened to his mother and father and, while they were still down in Covington, to his grandmother as well. Now he listened to his teacher and to the boys and girls in class with him.

"Yeah, he's learnin' to talk like a Yankee, all right," Elizabeth said when Cincinnatus remarked on it over supper. "I seen that myself." She didn't notice her own slip. To her, it wasn't a slip: it was just the way she talked. It had been the same for Cincinnatus, too, but it wasn't any more. The more like a white he talked, the less likely people here-even other Negroes here, he'd seen- were to reckon him a dumb nigger. Not being thought of that way usually worked to his advantage.

After supper, Achilles read aloud from his primer and Cincinnatus read to him from an abridgement of Robinson Crusoe he'd picked up for a dime in a secondhand store. The sentences in the primer and the story of the castaway both used white folks' grammar-they used it rather better than a lot of the white folks with whom Cincinnatus did business. The more of those kinds of sentences Achilles read and had read to him, the more natural they would seem, and the more he would likely end up sounding like a white man himself. Up here, that couldn't help but be useful.

After Achilles had gone to bed, Cincinnatus sat on the sofa and read ahead in Robinson Crusoe; he was enjoying the tale himself. Elizabeth mended clothes on a chair under the other electric lamp. She'd sew a few stitches along a seam, yawn, and then sew a few more stitches.

Cincinnatus set down his book. "You know," he said, "we've done a lot better for ourselves up here than I figured we would 'fore we left Covington. Things keep going good a little while longer, maybe we can think about buyin' us a house here." He spoke hesitantly; he wasn't used to getting even a little ahead of the game.

Elizabeth yawned again. "You reckon Achilles asleep yet?" she asked.

Despite the yawn, Cincinnatus thought he knew why she asked that question. "Hope so," he answered, a large, male grin on his face. "Sure do hope so."

His wife would usually make a face of her own in response to that grin. Tonight, she ignored it. "Didn't want to say nothin' where he can hear it," she told Cincinnatus, "not yet-too soon. But I reckon I'm in the family way again."

"For true?" he said, and Elizabeth nodded. He thought about that, then started to laugh.

His wife's eyes flashed. "What's funny? Don't you want another baby?"

"Don't have much choice, do I?" Cincinnatus said, but that wasn't close to the right answer. He tried to improve it: "Just when you think you get up on things, life goes and hands you another surprise. This one, though, it sure enough is a nice surprise." He waited anxiously, then thought of something better to do: he walked over and kissed Elizabeth. Even without words, that did turn out to be the right answer.

Jefferson Pinkard put on his white shirt and butternut trousers. Both were freshly laundered and pressed. Ever since throwing Emily out of his cottage, he'd grown careless about the shirts and overalls and dungarees he wore to work. When he donned the white and butternut, though, he wasn't just himself: he was part of the Freedom Party. If he didn't look sharp, he let the Party down.

He went into the bathroom, examined himself in the streaky mirror there, and frowned. He rubbed some Pinaud's brilliantine into his hair, washed the greasy stuff off his hands, and combed out a nice, straight part. "That's more like it," he said. He grabbed his club off the sofa in the front room and headed out the door.

Bedford Cunningham sat on his front porch, enjoying the warm June Sunday afternoon. By the glass at his side and by the way he sprawled, he'd been enjoying it for quite a while. Pinkard raised the club as he walked by. His neighbor, his former friend, cringed. That was what he'd wanted to accomplish. He kept walking.

He wasn't the only man in Party regalia who'd come to the trolley stop by the Sloss Works company housing. Three or four of his comrades greeted him as he came up: "Freedom!'

"Freedom!" he answered, and grinned a fierce grin. "Reckon we're going to teach Wade Hampton V a thing or two about sticking his nose in where it's not welcome, ain't we, boys?"

"That's right. That's just right," the other Freedom Party men said, almost in chorus. Jeff was glad to have the reassurance, though he didn't really need it. Hampton might have won the election, but he had a lot of damn nerve to go barnstorming around the country making speeches and trying to pump up the Whigs. Who did he think he was, Jake Featherston or somebody?

Nobody sat near the men in white and butternut as the trolley rattled through the streets of Birmingham all the way out to the Alabama State Fairgrounds at the west edge of town, where Hampton would speak. When Negroes got on or off, they edged past the Freedom Party men and made their way to or from the back of the trolley car as if afraid they would be set upon at any moment. They had reason to fear; such things had happened before.

"State Fairgrounds! End of the line!'" the trolley driver announced, and loudly clanged his bell.

"End of the line for Wade Hampton, all right," Pinkard said, and the other Freedom Party men laughed wolfishly.

Caleb Briggs, the dentist who headed the Freedom Party in Birmingham, was marshaling his forces at the edge of the fairgrounds. "Won't be easy this time, boys," he rasped in his gas-ruined voice. "Goddamn governor got wind of what we had in mind and called out the goddamn militia. Anything we want, we're going to have to take."

Pinkard looked west across the rolling, grassy countryside to the platform from which President Hampton would speak. Sure enough, there were men in butternut and old-fashioned gray uniforms along with those in shirtsleeves or black civilian coats. The sun glinted off bayonets. He'd seen that too many times in Texas to mistake it for anything else.

Suddenly, the club in his hand didn't seem such a wonderful weapon at all. He asked, "We move on those sons of bitches, they going to open up on us?"

"I don't know," Briggs answered. "Only one way to find out, though, and that's what we're going to do." He raised his voice: "Anybody who hasn't got the balls to go forward, run along home to mama. The rest of us, we'll see if those summer soldiers mean it or if they'll fold when we come at 'em. Nobody's stopped us yet. My bet is, nobody can. Let's go."

Everybody advanced. Pinkard's mouth was dry, as it had been when he came up out of the trenches, but he kept going. It wasn't that he lacked fear: far more that he feared letting his comrades know he was afraid. If they didn't feel the same way, he'd have been astonished. On they came, through the ankle-high grass, past the little groves of shade trees planted here and there on the fairgrounds. The muggy heat accounted for only some of the sweat on Jeff's face.

The militiamen deployed to meet the Freedom Party stalwarts. They were outnumbered, but they had the rifles and the bayonets and the helmets. Pinkard didn't like the way they moved. Their manner said they were not about to give way for anything or anybody.

To applause from the smallish crowd in front of him, President Hampton began to speak. Pinkard paid scant heed to his amplified words. Why bother? They'd be full of lies anyhow. The major moving out ahead of the militiamen was more important. The fellow held up a hand. "You men halt right there," he said. "This is your first, last, and only warning."

"Hold up, boys," Caleb Briggs said, and the Freedom Party men obeyed him, not the militia major. He spoke to the officer: "Who are you to tell us we can't protest against the so-called policies of the government in Richmond?"

"You can stay right here," the major answered. "You can shout your fool heads off. I don't give a damn about that. If you take one step forward from where you stand now, I will assume you are attempting to riot, not to protest, and I will order you shot down like dogs. Those are my orders, and I shall carry them out. So will my men. If you think we are bluffing, sir, I invite you to try us."

Jeff didn't think the major was bluffing. The soldiers behind him looked ready, even eager, to open fire. The governor had picked with care the troops he'd activated. Caleb Briggs came to the same conclusion. "You'll pay for this, Major, when the day comes," he hissed.

"If you take that step, sir, you'll pay for it now," the major told him. "Your ruffians have gotten away with too many things for too long. You will not get away with anything today, by God. You may do what the law allows. If you do even a single thing the law does not allow, you will pay for it."

The stalwarts jeered him and hooted at him and cursed him. He seemed to worry about that no more than a man with a good slicker and a broad-brimmed hat worried about going out in the rain. And not one of the Freedom Party men took the step forward that would have made the officer issue his fatal order.

"All right, boys," Briggs said. "Maybe we won't give Hampton the tyrant what-for today in person. But we can let him know what we think of him, right? This here country still has freedom of speech."

"Freedom!" was the chant they raised, a loud and mocking chant. Jefferson Pinkard bellowed out the word as ferociously as he could, doing everything in his power to drown out the president of the Confederate States. As far as he was concerned, Jake Featherston should have been up on the platform a few hundred yards away. He would have told the truth, not the bland lies Wade Hampton V spewed forth. The bland crowd ate them up, too, and cheered Hampton almost as if they had true spirit.

"Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" All the stalwarts were roaring, doing their best to show Hampton and show the world the militia hadn't cowed them. Maybe next time we'll bring rifles, too, Pinkard thought. It had almost come to that during the presidential campaign. After fighting the damnyankees, he did not shy away from fighting his own government. "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!"

When the first shot rang out from the grove of hackberry trees off to the right of the Freedom Party men, Jeff didn't hear it. But he saw Wade Hampton V stagger on the platform and clutch at his chest. He did hear the second shot. That second bullet must have caught Hampton in the head or the heart, for he stopped staggering and went down as if all his bones had turned to water.

A few of the stalwarts whooped when the president of the Confederate States fell. Most, though, Pinkard among them, stared in the horrified silence that filled the crowd of Hampton's backers. Men dashed across the platform to the president's side. Jeff didn't think they'd be able to do much for him. He'd seen too many men go down in that boneless way during the Great War. Hardly any of them ever got up again.

From the hackberry grove came a wild, exultant shout: "Freedom!"

"Sergeant Davenport! Sergeant Sullivan!" the militia major rapped out. "Take your troops in among those trees and bring that man to me. I don't care whether he's breathing or not, but bring him to me."

Two squads of militiamen trotted toward the hackberries. Another shot rang out. A man fell. Another shot from the trees- this one a miss, the bullet whining past not far from Pinkard. Without conscious thought, he threw himself flat. A lot of Freedom Party men and a lot of militiamen did the same. The advancing militiamen opened fire on the grove.

Caleb Briggs stayed on his feet. More than gas roughened his voice as he said, "That man is not one of ours, Major. My God, I-"

One of the dignitaries on the platform walked up to the microphone. "President Hampton is dead." He sounded astonished, disbelieving.

Jeff understood that. He felt stunned and empty himself. He'd been ready-he'd been eager-to fight for the Freedom Party, but this… No one had murdered-assassinated, he supposed was the proper word-a president in the history of the Confederate States, or in the history of the United States before the Confederacy seceded.

Drawing his pistol, the militia major aimed it at Briggs. More shots came from the hackberries. Another militiaman went down with a shriek. But some of the others were in among the trees. The major ignored that action. Infinite bitterness filled his voice: "'Not one of yours, you say? He shouts your shout. He uses your methods. Politics was not war till the Freedom Party made it so."

"Now listen here-" Briggs began.

Triumphant cries rang out from the hackberry grove. Through them, the major said, "No, sir. You listen to me. Get your rabble out of here by the count of five, or I will turn my men loose on them and we will have a massacre the likes of which this country has never seen. Maybe it's one we should have had a couple of years ago-then things wouldn't have come to this. One… two… three-"

"Go home, boys," Caleb Briggs said quickly. His face was gray. "For the love of God, go home. There's been enough blood spilled today."

"Too much," the militia major said. "Far too much. You disappoint me, Mr. Briggs. I would have liked to shoot you down."

Briggs stood silent, letting himself be reviled. As Jefferson Pinkard got to his feet, militiamen came out of the hackberry grove. They were dragging a body by the feet. The corpse wore butternut trousers and a green shirt, now soaked with blood. The gunman must have been almost invisible in among the trees. Jeff stared at his long, pale, sharp-nosed face. He'd seen that face at Party meetings, not regularly, but every so often. The fellow was named Grady… Grady Something-or-other. Jeff knew he'd talked with him. but couldn't remember his surname.

From the appalled looks on other Party stalwarts' faces, he knew they also recognized the assassin. The militia major saw that, too. "Not one of yours, eh?" he repeated. "Another lie. Get out of my sight before I forget myself"

Briggs went. Jeff stumbled after him, along with his comrades. Someone close by was moaning. After a moment, he realized it was himself What do we-what do I-do now? he wondered. Sweet suffering Jesus, what do I do now?

Anne Colleton was frying chicken for supper when her brother came into the kitchen of the large apartment they still shared. She started to greet him, then got a good look at his face. She hadn't seen that kind of dazed, horrified expression since the war. Above the cheerful crackling of the chicken, she asked, "My God, Tom, what's gone wrong?"

By way of answer, he held up the copy of the Columbia South Carolinian he carried under his arm. The headline was enormous and very, very black:

PRESIDENT MURDERED IN BIRMINGHAM!!!

Under it, a half-page subhead said, FREEDOM PARTY ASSASSIN SHOT DEAD AT ALABAMA STATE FAIRGROUNDS.

"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?"

Rosenblum had to know she backed the Freedom Party. She'd made no secret of it-on the contrary. If he thought he could rebuke her like this… If that was so, the Party was in as much trouble as she'd feared. In a tight voice, she said, "The Freedom Party is trying to make the Confederate States strong again."

"Oh, yes. Of course." The tailor had a peculiar accent, half lazy South Carolina Low Country, the other half Yiddish. "And I, I am a lucky man to live now in the Confederacy. In Russia, where I am from, parties that try to make the country strong again go after the Jews. Here, you go after black people instead, so I am safe. Yes, I am a lucky man."

Anne stared at him. She knew sarcasm when she heard it. And Rosenblum's words held an uncomfortable amount of truth. "That isn't all the Freedom Party does," Anne said. The tailor did not answer. What hung in the air was, Yes, you also shoot the president Twice now in two days, she would sooner not have been left with the last word. She attempted briskness: "Let me see the skirt, if you please."

"Yes, ma'am." He gave it to her, then waved her to a changing room. "Try it on. I will alter it if it does not suit you."

Try it on she did. The gray wool skirt fit perfectly around the waist; she might be irked at Rosenblum, but he did good work. And the length was in the new mode, as she'd requested: it showed off not only her ankles but also several inches of shapely calf. Tom would pitch a fit. Too bad for Tom. Roger Kimball would approve, though he'd sooner see her naked altogether.

She changed back into the black skirt she'd worn, then paid Rosenblum for the new gray one: a bargain at two billion dollars. "Thank you very much," he said, tucking the banknotes into a drawer.

"You're welcome," she said, and then, "I am sorry the president is dead. I don't care whether you believe me or not."

"If you didn't care, you wouldn't say you didn't care," Rosenblum answered. While she was still unraveling that, he went on, "I do believe you, Miss Colleton. But now you believe me, too: a party that shouts and shoots for freedom is not a party that really wants it."

Another paradox. Anne shook her head. "I haven't got time for riddles today. Good morning." The new skirt folded over her arm, she stalked out of the tailor's shop.

Chester Martin sat down in a folding chair at the Socialist Party hall near the Toledo steel mill where he worked. "What did you call the Freedom Party down in the CSA?" he asked Albert Bauer. "Reaction on the march? Was that it? You hit the nail right on the head."

"Yeah, even for a reactionary party, shooting a reactionary president dead because he's not reactionary enough to suit them takes a lot of doing," Bauer allowed. "They'll be sorry, too, you mark my words."

"They're sorry already, I'll bet," Martin said. "It'll be a cold day in hell before they come so close to winning an election again."

"They'll be sorrier, too," Bauer predicted. "They've done something I wouldn't have bet they could: they've made people in the United States feel sorry for the Confederate States."

"They've even made me feel that way, and some Rebel bastard shot me," Martin said. "But shooting a president-" He shook his head. "Nobody's ever done that before, there or here. What is the world coming to?"

"Revolution," Bauer answered. "And the reactionaries in the CSA just gave the progressive forces here a leg up. Before, President Sinclair couldn't have gotten ending reparations through Congress if his life depended on it. Now, though, I think he may just have the votes to pull it off."

"Do you?" Martin wasn't so sure he liked the idea. "As far as I can see, we'd be better off if the Confederates stayed broke and weak."

"Sure we would, in the short run," Bauer said. "But in the long run, if the Confederate States keep going down the drain, who does that help? That Featherston lunatic almost won the election last year because the Rebs were in such bad shape. What happens if they get worse?"

"Well, they aren't going to have a revolution-not a Red one, anyway," Martin said. He got up, went over to a coffeepot that sat on top of an iron stove, and poured himself a cup. After he set it down on the table, he lit a cigarette.

Bauer waited patiently till he'd puffed a couple of times, then nodded. "No, they won't have a Red revolution, not right away. It's a conservative country, and Marxism is tied to the black man there, which means the white man has, or thinks he has, a strong extra reason to hate it. But the Confederates' time is coming, too. Sooner or later, all the capitalist countries will have their revolutions."

He spoke with the certainty of a devout Catholic talking about the miracle of transubstantiation. Chester Martin's faith in Socialism was newer, more pragmatic, and neither so deep nor so abiding. He said, "Maybe so, Al, but there's liable to be a hell of a long time hiding in that sooner or later."

"The dialectic doesn't say how fast things will happen," Bauer answered calmly. "It just says they will happen, and that's enough for me."

"Maybe for you," Martin said. "Me, I'd sort of like to know whether a revolution's coming in my time or whether it's something my great-grandchildren will be waiting for-if I ever have any." He wasn't so young as he had been. There were times when he wished he'd found a girl as soon as he came home from the war, or maybe even before then. But work in the foundry and work for the Socialist Party left little time for courting, or even thinking about courting.

Back when he'd been a Democrat, he'd thought Socialist girls were loose, without a moral to their name. People said it so often, he'd been sure it was true. Now, rather to his regret, he knew better. A lot of the women in the Socialist Party were married to Socialist men. A lot of the ones who weren't might as well have been married to the Party. That left… slim pickings.

Albert Bauer said, "Even if we don't get a revolution in the CSA any time soon, we don't want the reactionaries in charge down there. That would turn the class struggle on its head. As far as I'm concerned, keeping the Freedom Party down is reason enough to let reparations go."

"Well, maybe," Martin said. He wouldn't say any more than maybe, no matter how his friend tried to argue him around. He was sorry the Confederates had had their president shot. He wouldn't have wished that even on the CSA. But not wishing anything bad on the Confederate States didn't necessarily mean he wished anything good on them, either.

After he got home that evening, the topic came up again around the supper table. He'd expected it would; the newsboys were hawking papers by shouting about reparations. "What do you think, Chester?" Stephen Douglas Martin asked. "You were the one who was doing the fighting."

"Hard to say, Pa," Martin answered. "I used to think that, if I ever saw a Reb drowning, I'd toss him an anvil. Now-I just don't know."

"Can't we let the war be over at last?" Louisa Martin said. "Haven't both sides been through enough yet? When can we be satisfied?"

"Might as well ask the Mormons out West, Ma," her daughter Sue said. "They just took some shots at a couple of Army trucks-did you see that in the newspaper? They don't forget we beat them. You can bet the Confederates haven't forgotten we beat them. So why should we forget it?"

"It goes both ways, though," Chester said. "It's not an easy question. If we keep holding the Rebs down, they'll hate us on account of that. They did it to us for years and years, after the War of Secession and then after the Second Mexican War. Do we want them thinking about nothing but paying us back, the way we worked so hard to get even with them and with England and France?"

"You sound like a Socialist, all right," his father said, laughing. "Pass the peas, will you, you lousy Red?"

Chester laughed, too, and passed the bowl. "Talking to you and Mother, I sound like a Socialist. When I talk to people down at the Socialist hall, I sound like a Democrat half the time. I've noticed that before. I'm stuck in the middle, you might say."

"People who can see both sides of the question usually are," his mother told him. "It's not the worst place in the world to be."

Sue Martin looked curiously at Chester. "With that Purple Heart in your bedroom, I'd think you'd be the last one to want to let the Confederates up off the floor."

He shrugged. "Like Mother says, maybe it's time for the war to be over and done with. Besides, the one thing I don't want to do is have to fight those… so-and-so's again." Talking about a new war almost made him slip back into the foul language of the trenches. "If they can settle down because they're not paying reparations any more, that might not be too bad."

"You make good sense, son," Stephen Douglas Martin said. His wife nodded. After a moment, so did Sue. Martin's father went on, "Now, what are the odds that anybody in Congress would know common sense if it flew around Philadelphia in an aeroplane?"

"There's a Socialist majority," Martin said. But that didn't prove anything, and he knew it. "We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

Out of the blue, Sue asked, "How do you think that Congresswoman you met would vote? You know the one I mean-the one whose brother got wounded while he was in your squad?"

"Flora Hamburger," Martin said. "Yeah, sure, I know who you mean. That's a good question. She usually does what's right. I don't really know. We'll have to keep watching the newspapers, I guess."

"Flora Hamburger." Louisa Martin snapped her fingers. "I know where I saw that name. She's the one who got engaged to the vice president a little while ago." She looked from her son to her daughter and back again, as if to say getting engaged would satisfy her: catching a vice president was unnecessary.

"Mother," Sue said in warning tones.

"She's just giving you a rough time," Martin said. That got his sister and his mother both glaring at him. He forked up some peas, freshly conscious of the dangers peacemakers faced when they stepped between warring factions.

When Chester looked up from the peas, he found his father eyeing him with more than a little amusement. Stephen Douglas Martin had the good sense to stay out of a quarrel he couldn't hope to influence.

Over the next few days, the debate about reparations stayed in the newspapers, along with the reprisals the Army was taking against the perennially rebellious Mormons in Utah. The collision of two aeroplanes carrying mail elbowed both those stories out of the headlines for a little while, but the excitement about the crash died quickly-though not so quickly as the two luckless pilots had.

When Flora Hamburger came out in favor of ending reprisals, the papers carried the news on the front page. "Conscience of the Congress says yes!" newsboys shouted. "Reparations repeal seen as likely!"

Martin was less impressed with the announcement than he would have been before Congresswoman Hamburger got engaged to Vice President Blackford. In a way, that made her part of the administration proposing the new policy. But then again, from what he knew of her, she wasn't so easy to influence. Maybe she was speaking her mind after all.

"I think the bill will pass now. I hope it works out for the best, that's all," Martin said when Sue asked him about it that night over oxtail soup. "Can't know till it happens."

"When you do something, you can't know ahead of time what will come of it," his father said. ^Politicians will tell you they do. but they don't. Sometimes, you just go ahead and do things and see where they lead."

"That's how the war happened," Martin said. "Nobody imagined it would be so bad when it started. When it started, people cheered. But we locked horns with the Rebs and the Canucks, and for the longest time nobody could go forward or back. I hope this doesn't go wrong the same way, that's all."

"Sometimes being afraid of what could go wrong is a good reason not to do anything," Stephen Douglas Martin observed.

"You're a Democrat, all right," Chester said.

"Well, so I am," his father agreed. "Upton Sinclair's been in for more than a year now, and I'm switched if I can see how he's set the world on fire."

Louisa Martin said, "We already set the world on fire once, not very long ago. Isn't that enough for you, Stephen?"

"Well, maybe it is, when you put it like that," her husband said. "If letting the Confederates off the hook means we don't have to fight another war, I suppose I'm for it. But if they start spending the money they would have given us on guns and such, that'll cause trouble like you wouldn't believe." He raised his mug of beer. "Here's hoping they've learned their lesson." He sipped the suds.

"Here's hoping," Chester Martin echoed. He drank, too. So did his mother and sister.

Roger Kimball was drunk. He'd been drunk a lot of the time since Grady Calkins shot President Wade Hampton V Staring down into his glass of whiskey, he muttered, "Stupid bastard. Stupid fucking bastard." Calkins might as well have taken his Tredegar and shot the Freedom Party right between the eyes.

The whiskey, Kimball decided, was staring back at him. He drank it down so it wouldn't do that any more. Any old excuse in a storm, he thought. He poured himself a fresh glass. Maybe this one would be more polite. Whether it was or not, he'd drink it.

He did a lot of his own pouring these days. Too many people recognized him on the streets and in the saloons of Charleston. A few weeks before, a lot of those people would have greeted him with a wave and a cheery call of "Freedom!" Now they glared. Sometimes they cursed. One man had threatened to kill him if he saw him again. Kimball wasn't too alarmed-he knew how to take care of himself-but he spent more time in his flat than he had.

That meant his bankroll shrank with every day's inflation. He didn't get into so many card games as he had, which was too damn bad, because they'd been what kept him afloat. Without them, the millions that paid the rent one week bought a sandwich the next week, a cigar the week after that, and were good only as pretty paper the week after that.

"God damn Grady Calkins," he said, and drank some of the polite whiskey. It wasn't fair. The more whiskey he drank, the more obviously it wasn't fair. The Freedom Party still stood for exactly the same things as it had before the madman shot the president. Kimball still thought those things were as important as he had then. A couple of weeks before, people had applauded him and applauded Jake Featherston. Now they wouldn't give the Freedom Party the time of day. Where was the justice in that?

Tears came into his eyes, a drunk's easy tears. One rolled down his cheek-or maybe that was just a drop of sweat. Charleston in the summer, even early in the summer, taught a man everything he needed to know about sweating and then some.

Kimball knocked back the rest of his drink. At last, instead of leaving him furious or maudlin, it did what he wanted it to do: it hit him over the head like a rock. He staggered into the bedroom, took off his shoes, lay down diagonally across the bed, and passed out before he could undress.

Sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window woke him the next morning. It seemed so hot, so bright, so molten, he thought for a moment he'd died and gone to hell. He squinted his eyes down to narrow slits so he could come close to bearing the glare. When he rolled away from it, his head pounded like a sub-mersible's diesel running at full throttle.

His mouth tasted as if too many people had stubbed out too many cigars in there. Greasy sweat bathed his body from aching head to stockinged feet. He thought about getting up and taking a small nip to ease the worst of the pain, but his stomach did a slow, horrified loop at the mere idea.

Eventually, he did get up. "Only proves I'm a hero," he said, and winced at the sound of his own voice even though he hadn't been so rash as to speak loudly. He staggered into the bathroom, splashed his face with cold water, and used more cold water to wash down some aspirins. His stomach let out another loud shout of protest when they landed, as if it were a submarine under heavy attack from depth charges. He wondered if they'd stay down. He gulped a few times, but they did.

He brushed his teeth, which got rid of the worst of the cigar butts. Then he ran a tub full of cold water, stripped off his sweat-soaked clothes, and gingerly stepped in. It felt dreadful and wonderful at the same time. After he'd toweled himself dry and put on a shirt and trousers that didn't smell as if he'd stolen them from a drunk in the gutter, he felt better. Before too long, he might decide he wanted to live after all.

Showing stern military discipline, he walked past the whiskey bottle on the coffee table in the front room and into the kitchen. Black coffee was almost as painful to get down as the aspirins had been, but made him feel better. After some thought, he cut a couple of thick slices of bread and ate them. They sank to his stomach like rocks, but added ballast once there.

He went back into the bathroom and combed his hair in front of the mirror. Only red tracks across the whites of his eyes and a certain general weariness betrayed his hangover to the world. He would do. Donning a straw hat to help shield his eyes from the slings and arrows of outrageous sunbeams, he left the apartment. However much he might have wanted to, he couldn't stay indoors all the time.

Newsboys selling the Courier and the Mercury both shouted the same headline: "United States end reparations!" The boys with stacks of the Mercury\ the Whig outlet, added, "President Mitchel says Confederate currency will recover!"

"I'll believe that when I see it," Kimball sneered: both newspapers cost a million dollars. But, if enough people believed it, it might happen. The prospect made him less happy than he would have thought possible. The shrinking-hell, the disappearing- Confederate dollar had helped fuel the Freedom Party's rise.

A cop strode up the street toward Kimball, twirling his billy club in a figure-eight. He recognized the ex-Navy man, and aimed the nightstick at him like a Tredegar. "I catch you and your pals going around making trouble like you used to, I'll run y'all in, you hear? Them's the orders I got from city hall."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Bob," Kimball answered wearily, "tell me you didn't vote for Featherston and I'll call you a liar to your face."

"That don't have nothing to do with nothing." The policeman brushed a bit of lint from the sleeve of his gray tunic. "Word is, we got to be tough on keeping public order. We ain't messin' around with you boys no more, you hear?"

"I hear you," Kimball said, and went on his way. He would have made sure the Freedom Party walked small for a while, anyway-only sensible thing to do. But getting orders from a fair-weather friend rankled.

And, when he opened the door to the Freedom Party's Charleston offices, he realized the orders had been unnecessary for a different reason. The way things were right now, he would have had a devil of a time raising trouble even had he wanted to. The headquarters that had bustled all the way through the presidential campaign and afterwards felt more like a tomb now. Only a few people sat at their desks, none of them doing anything much. Damn that Calkins, Kimball thought again.

"God damn it," he said loudly, "it isn't the end of the world."

"Might as well be." Three people, one in the front of the office, one in the middle, and one at the back, said the same thing at the same time.

"No! Jesus Christ, no," Kimball said. "If we were right before that miserable son of a bitch of a Hampton got his head blown off, we're still right now. People will see it, so help me God they will."

One of the men who'd said Might as well be replied, "I had a rock chucked through my front window the other night. Had a note tied round it with a string, just like in the dime novels "

"The dime novels that cost millions nowadays," Kimball broke in.

As if he hadn't spoken, the Freedom Party functionary went on, "Said my neighbors would whale the tar out of me if I ever went out wearing white and butternut again, or else burn my house down." He gave Kimball as hard a look as he could with his round, doughy face.

Kimball glared back. The leftover pain of his hangover made his scowl even fiercer than it would have been otherwise. "God damn you to hell, Bill Ambrose, I didn't have a thing to do with burning down Tom Brearley's house. I don't do things like that. I might have shot the bastard-Lord knows I wanted to-or I might have beat him to death with a two-by-four, but I wouldn't have done that. It's a coward's way out, like throwing a rock through a window. I go straight after what I don't like. You understand me?"

Bill Ambrose muttered something. Kimball took two swift strides toward him. Feeling the way he did, he was ready-more than ready-to brawl. Ambrose wasn't, though he'd been bold enough when the stalwarts marched. Hastily, he said, "I understand you, Roger."

"You'd damn well better," Kimball growled. "We've got to walk small for a while, that's all. Yeah, some of our summer birds have flown south. Yeah, the cops are going to give us a rough time for a bit. But Jake Featherston's still the only man who can save this country. He's still the only man who has a prayer of licking the United States when we tangle with 'em again. All right, getting to the top won't be as easy as we hoped it would. That doesn't mean we can't do it."

He knew what he sounded like: a fellow at a football game when his team was down by two touchdowns more than halfway through the fourth quarter. If they only tried hard enough, they could still pull it out. If they gave up, they'd get steamrollered.

Looking around the office, he thought a lot of the men still there were on the point of giving up. They'd drift away, go back to being Whigs, and try to pretend their fling with the Freedom Party never happened, as if they'd gone out with a fast woman for a while and then given her up for the homely, familiar girl next door.

"Don't quit," he said earnestly. "That's all I've got to tell you, boys: don't quit. We are making this country what it ought to be. We never would have seen passbook laws with teeth if there hadn't been Freedom Party men in Congress. That bastard Layne might have won the election if it hadn't been for us."

Some of the men looked happier. Kimball knew he wasn't the only true-blue Party man here. But somebody behind him said, "Maybe things'll get better anyhow, now that we're not stuck with reparations any more."

That was Kimball's greatest fear. To fight it, he loaded his voice with scorn: "Ha! I know about Burton Mitchel, by God- I'm from Arkansas, too, remember? Only reason he got into the Senate is that his daddy and granddad were there before him- he's another one of those stinking aristocrats. You ask me, if he does anything but sit there like a bump on a log, it'll be the biggest miracle since Jesus raised Lazarus."

A few people laughed: not enough. Kimball spun on his heel and stalked out of the Freedom Party offices. He'd never been aboard a slowly sinking ship, but now he had a good notion of what it felt like.

And he got no relief out on King Street, either. Up the sidewalk toward him came Clarence Potter and Jack Delamotte. Potter's face twisted into a broad, unpleasant smile. "Hello, Roger. Haven't see you for a while," he said, his almost-Yankee accent grating on Kimball's ears. "I expect you're pleased with the pack of ruffians you chose. By all accounts, you fit right in."

Kimball's hands balled into fists. "First time I ever heard your whiny voice, I wanted to lick you. Just so you know, I haven't changed my mind."

Potter didn't back away, not an inch. And Delamotte took a step forward, saying, "You want him, you've got us both."

Joyously, Kimball waded in. The tiny rational part of his mind said he'd probably end up in the hospital. He didn't care. Potter's nose bent under his fist. As long as he got in a few good licks of his own, what happened to him didn't matter at all.

Sam Carsten was sick to death of the Boston Navy Yard. As far as he could see, the USS Remembrance might stay tied up here forever. He expected to find cobwebs hanging from the hawsers that moored the aeroplane carrier to its pier.

"There's nothing we can do, Carsten, not one damn thing," Commander Grady said when he complained about it. "The money's not in the budget for us to do anything but stay in port. We ought to count ourselves lucky they aren't cutting the ship up for scrap."

"They're fools, sir," Sam said. "They're nothing but a pack of fools. There's enough money in the budget for them to let the goddamn Confederates off the hook. But when it comes to us, when it comes to one of the reasons the Rebs had to pay reparations in the first place, a mouse ate a hole in the Socialists' pockets."

"If it makes you feel any better," Grady said, "the Army's feeling the pinch as hard as we are."

"It doesn't make me feel better, sir," Carsten answered. "It makes me feel worse."

"What kind of a Navy man are you, anyway?" the gunnery officer demanded in mock anger. "You're supposed to be happy when the Army takes it on the chin. Besides"-he grew serious once more-"misery loves company, doesn't it?"

"I don't know anything about that," Carsten said. "All I know is, I want us strong and the CSA weak. Whatever we need to do to make sure that happens, I'm for it. If it goes the other way, I'm against it."

"You do have the makings of an officer," Grady said thoughtfully. "You see what's essential, and you don't worry about anything else."

"Long as we are tied up here, sir, I've been trying to hit the books a little harder, as a matter of fact." Sam scratched his nose. His fingertips came away white and sticky from zinc-oxide ointment. A wry grin twisted up one corner of his mouth. "Besides, the more I stay belowdecks, the less chance I get to sunburn."

"Nobody can say you're not a white man," Grady agreed gravely. "With that stuff smeared all over your face, you're about the whitest man around."

"I only wish it did more good," Sam said. "I put it on just like the pharmacist's mate says, or even thicker, but I still toast. Hell, most of the time I look more like a pink man than a white one. I even burned over in Ireland."

"I remember that. It wasn't easy," Grady said. "They should have given you some kind of decoration for it."

"I guess they figured me turning red was decoration enough, even if I didn't think it was real pretty," Carsten said, which wrung a strangled snort from Commander Grady. Sam went on, "Sir, do you think we'd have more to do and more to do it with if Lieutenant Sandes hadn't flown his aeroplane into the stern when we were coming back across the Atlantic?"

"Nope," Grady answered. "We'd had accidents and battle damage before then. This business of flying aeroplanes off ships may be important, but it sure as hell isn't easy. The Remembrance doesn't carry as much armor as a battleship, either."

Remembering the shell that had struck his gun position, Sam nodded. "All right," he said. "I did wonder."

"I think we could have come through without any damage or accidents and still wound up right here," Grady said. "The problem isn't how we fought, because we fought well. The problem is politics." He made it a swearword.

"Yes, sir," Carsten said resignedly. He raised one of his pale eyebrows. "Can you think of any troubles that aren't politics, when you get down to it?"

Commander Grady rocked back on his heels and laughed. "No, by God, or not many, anyhow." He slapped Sam on the back, then pulled out a pad and a fountain pen and wrote rapidly. He pulled the top sheet off the pad and handed it to Carsten. "And here's a present for you: twenty-four hours' liberty. Go on across the river into Boston and have yourself a hell of a time."

"Thank you very much, sir!" Sam exclaimed.

He wanted to charge off the Remembrance then and there, but Grady held up a hand. "Just don't come back aboard Sunday afternoon with a dose of the clap, that's all. You do and I'll tear your stupid shortarm off and beat you over the head with it."

"Aye aye, sir," Sam said. "I promise." There were ways to make that unlikely to happen even if he didn't put on a rubber, though not all the girls in any house cared to use their mouths instead of doing what they usually did. If he had to pay a little extra for his fun, he would, that was all. He usually preferred a straight screw himself, but he hadn't expected to get this liberty and sure didn't want to end up in trouble on account of it. And the other was a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Several houses operated on the narrow streets across the Charles from the Navy Yard. Go where the customers are was a rule as old as the oldest profession. Sam got what he wanted- got it twice in quick succession, in fact, from an Italian woman about his own age who was as swarthy as he was fair. "Thanks, Isabella," he said, lazy and happy after the second time. He ran his hand through her hair. "And here's an extra dollar you don't have to tell anybody about."

"I thank you," she said as she got to her feet. "My little girl needs shoes. It will help." He hadn't thought about whores having children, but supposed it was one of the hazards of the trade.

A lot of the businesses near the south bank of the Charles that weren't brothels were saloons. Sam had himself a couple of schooners of beer. He thought about getting drunk-Commander Grady hadn't told him not to do that. But, after he'd emptied that second glass, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and walked out of the dingy dive where he'd been drinking. He'd had his ashes hauled, he'd drunk enough to feel it, and nothing in the whole wide world seemed urgent, not even getting lit up. If he felt like doing it later, he would. If he didn't… well, he still had most of a day left without anyone to tell him what to do. For a Navy man, that was a pearl of great price.

He sauntered through the streets of Boston, thumbs in the pockets of his bell-bottomed trousers. He wasn't used to sauntering. When he went somewhere aboard the Remembrance, he always went with a purpose in mind, and he almost always had to hurry. Taking it easy was liberty of a sort he rarely got.

Half by accident, half by design, he came out onto the Boston Common: acres and acres of grass intended for nothing but taking it easy. If he wanted to, he could lie down there, put his cap over his eyes, and nap in the sun.

"No, thanks," he said aloud at that thought. If he napped in the sun. he'd roast, sure as pork would in the galley ovens of the Remembrance. But there were trees here and there on the Common. Napping in the shade might not be so bad.

He headed for a good-sized oak with plenty of drooping, leafy branches to hold the sun at bay. Also heading for it from a different direction were a girl of nine or so, a boy who looked like her older brother, and, behind them, a woman with a picnic basket. Seeing Sam, the girl started to run. When she got to the shade under the oaks, she said, "This is our tree. You can't have it."

"Mary Jane, there's plenty of room for us all," the woman said sternly. "And don't you dare be rude to a sailor. Remember, your father was a sailor."

"Ma'am, if it's any trouble, I'll find another tree," Sam said.

The woman shook her head. "It's no trouble at all-or it won't be, unless you make some. But if you made a lot of trouble, you wouldn't have said you'd go someplace else like that."

"I'm peaceable," Sam agreed. If he hadn't paid a call on the house where Isabella worked, he might have felt like making some trouble: she was a pretty woman, even if she looked tired. And she'd said the girl's-Mary Jane's-father was a sailor, which probably made her a widow. Sometimes widows missed what their husbands weren't there to give them any more. As things were, though, Sam just sat down on the grass near the tree trunk, in the deepest part of the shade.

In a rustle of wool, the woman sat down, too, and took a blanket from the basket and spread it out on the grass. She started putting bowls of food on the blanket. While she was doing that, her son asked Sam, "Sir, did you know anybody who sailed aboard the USS Ericssonl"

"Can't say that I did," Carsten answered. Then his eyes narrowed as he remembered where he'd heard the name. "That ship! Was your father on her, sonny?"

"Yes, sir," the boy said. "And the stinking Rebs sank her after the war was over. That's not right."

"It sure as… the dickens isn't," Sam said, inhibited in his choice of language by the presence of the woman and little girl. "I'm awfully sorry to hear that. My ship got torpedoed once, by the Japs out in the Pacific. We didn't sink, but I know we were just lucky."

"And the Confederate skipper who sank the Ericsson is still walking around free as a bird down in South Carolina," the woman said. "He murdered my husband and more than a hundred other men, and no one cares. Even the president doesn't care."

"If Teddy Roosevelt had won his third term, he'd have done something about it," Carsten said. "If the Rebs didn't hand that… fellow over, TR would have walloped the Confederate States till they did."

"I think so, too," the woman said. "If women had the vote in Massachusetts, I would have voted for Sinclair when he got elected. I've changed my mind since I found out about the Ericsson› though."

"I bet you have," Sam said. "One thing you have to give Teddy-he never took any guff from anybody."

"No." The woman pointed to the food. "Would you like some fried chicken and ham and potato salad? I made more than we can eat, even if these two"-she pointed at her children-"do put it away like there's no tomorrow."

"Are you sure, ma'am?" Carsten asked. If she was a widow, things were liable to be as tough for her as for the whore who'd gone down on her knees in front of him-tougher, maybe. But she nodded so emphatically, turning her down would have been rude.

He ate a ham sandwich and a drumstick and homemade potato salad and pickled tomatoes, and washed them down with lemonade that made him pucker and smile at the same time. Even though her children did eat like starving Armenians, the woman tried to press more on him.

"Couldn't touch another bite," he said, which wasn't quite true, and, "Everything was terrific," which was. "Haven't sat down to a spread like that since I was a kid." That was true, too.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," she said, and seemed happy for a moment. She took a pack of cigarettes from her handbag. He got out a box of matches and lit the smoke for her. But as she drew on it, she frowned. "He's probably walking around down there in Charleston, puffing a big fat cigar. Damn him."

Sam had heard women swear before, but never with that quiet intensity. He didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. He watched the children play for a while, then got to his feet. "Obliged, ma'am-much obliged," he said. "Good luck to you." She nodded, but didn't speak. He went on his way. Only after he'd crossed half the Common did he realize he hadn't learned her name.