Blood and iron

VII

Scipio was in love, and wondered why in God's name he'd never been in love before. The best answer he could come up with- and he knew it was nowhere near good enough-was that he'd always been too busy. First, he'd had an education forcibly crammed down his throat. Then he'd been butler at Marshlands, which under Anne Colleton was a job to keep any four men hopping. And after that, he'd been swept up into the affairs of the Congaree Socialist Republic.

Now… Now, as far as anybody in Augusta, Georgia, knew, he was Xerxes the waiter, an ordinary fellow who did his job and didn't give anybody any trouble. And Bathsheba, he was sure, was the most marvelous creature God had seen fit to set on the face of the earth.

He'd never had any trouble finding a woman to bed when he wanted one. But he'd never understood the difference between making love and being in love, not till now. He stroked Bath-sheba's cheek as they lay side by side on the narrow bed in his furnished room. "I is the most luckiest man in the whole wide world," he said-no originality, but great sincerity.

She leaned over and kissed him. "And you are the kindliest man," she said. No one had ever called Scipio anything like that before. He hadn't had many chances to be kindly, either. Now that he did, he was doing his best to make the most of them.

Bathsheba got out of bed and started to dress for the trip back across the hall to her room. "Don't want you to go," Scipio said.

"I got to," she answered. "Got to go clean for the white folks tomorrow mornin'. The work don't never go away."

He knew that. Among the reasons he loved Bathsheba was the solid core of sense he'd found in her. It wasn't that he wanted to make love with her again that made him want her to stay. Since he'd reached his forties, second rounds didn't seem so urgent as they once had. But he enjoyed talking with her more than with anyone else he'd ever met.

He wished he could recite some of the love poetry he'd learned. The only way he knew it, though, was in the educated white man's accent he'd been made to acquire. Using that accent might-no, would-make her ask questions he couldn't afford to answer.

That was the one fly in the ointment of his happiness: everything he said about his past had to be either vague or a lie. Even the name by which she knew him was false. He counted himself lucky that he quickly got used to the aliases under which he protected his real identity. Back in South Carolina, reward posters with his true name on them still hung in post offices and police and sheriff's stations. Some might even have come into Georgia, though he'd never seen one in Augusta.

As if to flick him on that wound of secrecy, Bathsheba said, "One of these days, I'm gonna know all about you-everything there is to know. And do you know what else? I'm gonna like every bit of it, too."

"I already likes everything there is to know 'bout you," Scipio said, and her eyes glowed. As for him, he was glad of the butler's training that let him think one thing and say another without giving any hint of what was going on behind the expressions he donned like convenient masks.

Bathsheba leaned down over the bed and gave him another kiss. "See you tomorrow night," she said, her voice rich with promise. Then she was gone, gently closing the door behind her.

Scipio rose and put on a light cotton nightshirt. In Augusta in early summer, no one wanted anything more. He picked up a fan of woven straw. He wished the roominghouse had electricity: he would have bought an electric fan and aimed it at the bed as he slept. It got every bit as hot and oppressive here as it did over by the Congaree. He'd heard it got even worse down in Savannah. He found that hard to believe, but you never could tell.

His cheap alarm clock jangled him awake the next morning. He yawned, got out of bed, and started getting dressed. He had his white shirt halfway buttoned before his eyes really came open. Bathsheba's door was closed when he left his room, and everything quiet within her place. She got up earlier than he did, to cram the most work she could into a day.

The fry joint where he worked didn't serve breakfast. He got eggs and grits and coffee at a place that did, and paid for them with a $500 banknote. "Need another hundred on top o' that," the black man behind the counter said.

With a grimace, Scipio peeled off another banknote and gave it to him. "Be a thousand tomorrow, I reckons," he said.

After considering, the counterman shook his head. "Not till next week, I don't think," he answered seriously.

Despite those serious tones, it was funny in a macabre way. Every day, Confederate paper dollars bought less and less. Scipio had just put down six hundred of them on a cheap breakfast. If it was a thousand tomorrow, or a thousand next week at the latest, so what? The printing presses would run off more banknotes with more zeros on them, and another cycle would begin.

The good, sweet smell of baking cornbread filled Scipio's nostrils when he went into Erasmus' fish store and restaurant. The grizzled Negro who ran the place nodded to him and said "Mornin'."

"Mornin'," Scipio answered. He grabbed a broom and dustpan and started sweeping the floor. He kept his furnished room as neat as he could, and he did the same here, even though Erasmus had given him no such duty.

Erasmus watched him now as he plied the broom. The cook rarely said anything about it. Maybe he didn't know what to make of it. Maybe he was afraid that, if he said anything, Scipio would quit doing it.

A couple of minutes later, Erasmus took the pan of cornbread out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool. Then he said, "Make sure nobody steal the store, Xerxes. I'm gonna git us fish fo' today. The ice man come before I git back, put it in the trays there like you know how to do."

"I takes care of it," Scipio promised.

Erasmus, by now, had good reason to know his promises were reliable. He headed out the door. A fat bankroll made a bulge in his hip pocket. The roll would be considerably thinner after he came back from the riverside fish market. He'd get good value for the money he spent, though. Even in these times of runaway prices, he always did.

Off he went. Left behind to his own devices, Scipio went right on cleaning. The ice man did come in. Scipio stuck some of the slabs of ice in the display trays and put the rest in the damp sawdust underneath those trays so it wouldn't melt before it was needed. Then he got a hammer and an ice pick and began to break up the ice in the trays from slabs to glistening chunks.

By the time he'd finished dealing with the ice, Scipio wasn't hot any more. His teeth chattered, and he could barely feel his fingers. He wondered if that was what living through a winter up in the USA felt like. He doubted he'd ever find out.

He didn't stay cold for long. Nothing could stay cold very long, not in that weather. He took a little chunk of cracked ice and dropped it down the back of his shirt. It made him squirm and felt good at the same time.

Erasmus came back with a burlap bag slung over his shoulder. He grunted when he saw the ice in the trays. "Come on," he said to Scipio. "Got to clean us these here fish."

He did most of the cleaning himself. He'd long since seen that Scipio knew how, but he was an artist with the knife; had he had a fancy education, he might have made a surgeon instead of a fry cook. Scipio carried fish and set them on ice. He also carried pink, bloody fish guts out to the alley in back of the shop and flung them into a battered iron trash can. He always hosed the can out right after the refuse collectors emptied it. It still stank of stale fish. Flies buzzed around it. Flies buzzed everywhere in Augusta when the weather was warm.

People knew when Erasmus would be getting back with his fish. Within fifteen minutes of his return, housewives started coming in to buy for their husbands and families. When Scipio first started working there, they'd viewed him with suspicion, as people had a way of viewing anyone or anything new with suspicion. By now, they took him for granted.

One woman, carrying away a couple of catfish wrapped in old newspapers, turned back and said to Erasmus, "That Xerxes, he jew me down better'n you ever could, old man."

"It ain't so hard these days, not with money so crazy ain't nobody knows what nothin' supposed to cost," Erasmus answered. The woman took her fish and departed. Scipio glanced over to his boss, wondering if her comments had annoyed him. Erasmus gave no sign of that; catching Scipio's eye, he grinned at him, as if to say the housewife had paid him a compliment.

Business picked up as noon approached. Men started coming in and having their fish fried in the shop for dinner. Erasmus fried potatoes to go with them, too, and a big pot of greens never seemed to go off the stove. A man could leave the table hungry, but it wasn't easy.

And how the money flowed in! Hundred-dollar banknotes, five hundreds, thousands, even a ten-thousand now and then- Scipio felt like a bank cashier as he made change. He would have felt even more like a bank cashier and less like a poor Negro if he hadn't been making $40,000 a week himself. Next week, Erasmus would probably give him fifty or sixty or seventy. However much it was, it would keep food in his belly and a roof over his head, and it wouldn't go a great deal further than that.

One more reason to marry Bathsheba as soon as he could was that then they'd need only one roof over their two heads, and save the cost of the second-not that anyone could save anything much with prices as mad as they were.

Trouble started about half past twelve. The first hint of it Scipio got was an angry shout from not far away: "Freedom!" A moment later, it came again, from a lot of throats: "Freedom!"

"They's buckra!' Scipio exclaimed. "Why fo' buckra come into de Terry carryin' on like dat?"

"Don't know." Erasmus tucked a knife into his belt. "Don't much fancy the notion, neither. They ain't got no business in this part o'town."

Whether they had business or not, here they came, straight up the street past the cafe: a dozen or so white men, all of them in white shirts and butternut trousers. "Freedom!' they shouted, again and again. As they shouted, they knocked down any Negro in their path, man, woman, or child.

"What we do 'bout dat?" Scipio said. "What can we do 'bout dat? I know they's white folks, but they got no call to do nothin' like that. You reckon yellin' fo' the police do any good, Erasmus?"

Erasmus shook his gray head. "Not likely. Two-three of them fellas, they was the police." Scipio thought about that for a little while. He thought he'd escaped terror for good when he'd got free from the last wreck of the Congaree Socialist Republic.

Now he discovered he'd been wrong.

"I never thought I'd live to see the day," Sam Carsten said as the USS Remembrance steamed through St. George's Channel. If he looked to starboard, he could see England-no, Wales. Ireland lay to port.

George Moerlein nodded. "I know what you mean," he said. "Pretty damn crazy, us paying a courtesy call in Dublin harbor."

"Only way a U.S. warship would've been able to get into Dublin harbor before the war or during it would've been to kick its way in," Sam agreed. "Of course, Ireland belonged to the limeys then, and we weren't exactly welcome visitors."

"Well, we are now," Moerlein said. "And if England doesn't like it, let her try and start something. She'll get the idea pretty damn quick after we give her a good boot in the ass."

Despite that bravado, he looked east more than a little nervously. The Royal Navy had been beaten in the Great War, but it hadn't been crushed. England hadn't been crushed, not the way the Confederate States and France had been. He had no doubt the USA and the German Empire could crush her if they had to. He also had no doubt they'd know they'd been in a scrap by the time they were through.

A destroyer flying a green-white-orange flag with a harp in the middle of the white led the way for the Remembrance. The destroyer had started life as a U.S. four-stacker; dozens much like her had gone into the water during the Great War. Her crew consisted of Irishmen who'd begun their careers in the Royal Navy. Men like that, thousands of them, formed the basis for the Irish Navy.

"I hope they've got a good pilot up there," Carsten said. A moment later, he added, "I hope he's got good charts, too." A moment later still, he made another addendum: "I hope none of the mines from the fields are drifting loose through the Irish Sea."

He thought that covered everything, but his buddy showed him he was wrong. "As long as you're doing all that hoping, hope the limeys haven't snuck out and planted a few of those little bastards right in our path," George Moerlein said.

"That wouldn't be very nice of them, would it?" Sam grimaced. "And they could always say something like, 'Oh, we're very sorry-we didn't have any notion that one was there.' How would anybody prove anything different?"

"You couldn't," Moerlein said. "You wouldn't have a prayer of doing it. Of course, the good thing is that Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't need any proof. If we come to grief here, he'll make England pay. The limeys have to know it, too. I don't think they'll get gay with us."

"Here's hoping you're right." Carsten glanced up at the sky, which was full of thick gray clouds. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

Moerlein thought he was being sarcastic. "Yeah, if you're moss on a tree," he answered. "I was hoping we'd get sent down to South America myself, to give Brazil a hand against Argentina. That's my kind of weather."

"No, thanks," Carsten said with a shudder. "I burn like a rib roast in the galley after the cooks forgot about it."

When the Remembrance came into Dublin harbor, she got a welcome about the size of the one the Dakota had enjoyed coming into New York City after the end of the Great War. New York City boasted more people than the whole country of Ireland, but the ones who lined both sides of the River Liffey cheered loud enough to make up for their lack of numbers. As the Remembrance drew near its assigned wharf, Sam was bemused by the sight of tens of thousands of people, almost all of them as fair-skinned as he was.

"If you towed this place down to Brazil, you'd give everybody here heatstroke in about a day and a half," he said. No one else paid him any attention. If the other sailors on deck contemplated Irishwomen's skins, as they doubtless did, they had different things on their minds. So, for that matter, did Sam.

A couple of light gray German cruisers were berthed only a few piers over from the Remembrance. Sailors aboard them waved toward the aeroplane carrier. Sam and his comrades waved back. Here in Dublin, Americans and Germans were both about the business of giving England a black eye. All the same, Sam sent those cruisers an appraising glance, wondering what going into battle against the squareheads would be like. And officers aboard the German ships were bound to be photographing the Remembrance so their bosses in Berlin could figure out how to fight her and whether to build ships like her.

After she'd been made fast, the lord mayor of Dublin and a redheaded fellow in a fancy naval uniform came aboard to welcome her to their country. The lord mayor, who wore a green-white-and-orange sash, made a speech. The admiral studied the Remembrance as if wishing he had a dozen of her class under the Irish flag.

"And so," the lord mayor said at last, in an accent that struck Carsten's ear as more nearly British than Irish, "we are proud indeed to welcome this magnificent warship to our port, a symbol of the affection between the United States and Ireland that caused you to aid us in at last regaining our freedom after so many centuries of oppression at the hands of the British Crown."

Along with the rest of the assembled American sailors, Sam dutifully applauded. During the war, the USA would have done anything to help give England a rough time. That, more than affection, had prompted U.S. help for the Irish rebellion. The mayor didn't look stupid; he had to know as much. Politicians looked to be the same on both sides of the Atlantic.

Had the world been a perfect place, an Irishman would have commanded the Remembrance. Captain Oliver Roland, though, was a swarthy man of French descent. He said, "The United States are delighted to welcome Ireland into the family of nations. Along with those of Poland and Quebec, her independence shows how the powers of the Quadruple Alliance respect the national aspirations of peoples whom our late foes for too long kept from the freedom they deserved."

The lord mayor bowed in delight. The Irish admiral clapped his hands. Beside Sam, Willie Moore let out a rude but quiet snort. The gun-crew chief proceeded to put words to it: "The Poles get to do what the Germans tell 'em, and the froggies in Quebec get to do what we tell 'em, and the micks have never been any goddamn good at doing what anybody tells 'em."

That was cynical. It was also very likely to be true. A chief gunner's mate could say it to a man in his crew. Had Captain Roland said it to the lord mayor of Dublin, it wouldn't have gone over so well. The skipper had to be, or at least had to act like, a politician here.

"We going to get liberty, Chief?" Sam whispered to Moore.

"I hear we are," Moore whispered back. "Other thing I hear is, anybody picks up a dose of the clap, they're going to cut his balls off so he never, ever gets a chance to do it again. You understand what I'm saying?"

"I sure do," Sam answered in a whispered falsetto.

Willie Moore's eyes opened wide for a moment. Then, in lieu of laughing, he started to cough. "Damn you, Carsten, you sly son of a bitch," he wheezed. He coughed again, and gave Sam a dirty look. Sam did his best to assume a mantle of angelic innocence. By Moore's expression, his best was none too good.

He did get liberty, but not till three days later: this close to England, Captain Roland wanted to keep as near a full crew aboard the Remembrance as possible. Maybe officers toured Dublin's cathedrals and other sights. Sam still thought about trying to become an officer himself. He wasn't interested in cathedrals, though. He went into the first bar-pubs, they called them here-he spotted, only a couple of blocks away from the quay on the River Liffey by which the Remembrance lay.

GUINNESS is GOOD FOR YOU! proclaimed a sign in the window. It showed a healthy-looking fellow pouring down a pint of stout. Sam had heard of Guinness, but he'd never drunk any. He couldn't imagine a better place to ease his thirst and improve his education at the same time. In he went.

When he asked for the famous stout, the publican beamed at him. "Indeed and I'm happy to serve a Yank," he declared, sounding much more like an Irishman than had the lord mayor. "If you haven't changed your money, a quarter of a dollar'll do it."

"I'll bet it will," Sam said, not very happily. Back in the States, he could buy five glasses of beer for a quarter. But he wasn't back in the States, and Guinness was supposed to be something special. He dug in his pocket and set a silver coin on the bar.

The Irishman did give him full measure, filling the pint pot to the brim and then using the last drips from the tap to draw a shamrock in the creamy head. Seeing Sam's eye on him, he smiled shyly. "Just showing off," he murmured.

"Thanks," Sam said, and lifted the glass in salute. "Cheers." He sipped at the Guinness. After a moment's thought, he nodded. It might not have been worth a quarter, but it came close. A lot more was going on in that taste than in the pale, watery beers he bought at home. It put him in mind of drinking pumpernickel bread. It packed a wallop, too. He could see where, after three or four pints, he wouldn't be hungry any more and he wouldn't be able to walk, either.

He wasn't ready to get blind. He had something else on his mind first. "You happen to know where I could find me a friendly girl?" he asked.

"I do that," the tapman answered. "You go round the corner here"-he pointed-"then knock at the house with the blue door. Tell 'em Sean sent you, and they'll take a wee bit off the price."

They'd give him his cut for sending trade their way, was what he meant. Sam had got that same answer from a good many bartenders in his time. It didn't bother him. They weren't in business for their health; they wanted to make a buck-no, a pound here-like anybody else.

He drank another pint of Guinness and then, feeling a pleasant buzz, found the house with the blue door. Sean's name got him inside. "Another one!" the madam said, seeing his uniform. "Christ, you Yanks are horny devils."

"We've been at sea a long time, ma'am," Sam answered.

Before long, he was happily settled upstairs with a plump blonde who said he could call her Louise. His first round ended almost before it started, as often happened after a long time without. He laid out some more cash and began again. Things were progressing most enjoyably when some sort of commotion broke out down below.

He concentrated on the business at hand till a raucous American-accented voice bellowed, "Any sailors off the Remembrance who ain't back aboard in an hour, you're damn well gonna get stranded! We're sailing then!" That blue door slammed shut.

"Jesus!" Sam said, and applied himself. He came in a few strokes. That spoiled things for Louise, who, he thought, had been warming up nicely beneath him. But he didn't have time to worry about her, not any more. She gave him an unhappy look as he scrambled into his clothes. He didn't have time to worry about that, either. He was right behind one American leaving the whorehouse, and right in front of another one.

Panting, he hurried up the gangplank to the Remembrance, "What the hell's going on?" he asked as he came aboard.

"Uprising in the north," a sailor answered. "They don't want to cut England's apron strings up there. The Irish have asked us to give 'em a hand with our aeroplanes and guns, and we're going to do it."

"Oh. All right." Sam thought for a moment, then chuckled. "Damn good thing they didn't rise up an hour earlier, that's all I've got to say."

Emily Pinkard said, "I swear to Jesus, Jeff, if I didn't know where you was goin' nights, I'd reckon you had yourself another girl on the side."

"Well, I don't." Jefferson Pinkard gave his wife a severe look. She was the one who'd been unfaithful, and now she had the nerve to think he might be? Emily dropped her eyes. She knew what she'd done. Jeff went on, "The Freedom Party's important, dammit. I don't think there's anything more important in the whole country right now."

What was she doing on nights when he wasn't home? Pinkard worried about that, especially since Bedford Cunningham, however much he'd thought of Jake Featherston's speech, hadn't followed up by joining the Freedom Party. Jeff had, and kept going to Party meetings. Before he'd signed up, everything had seemed pointless, useless. Now his life had a focus. He'd found a cause.

"It's bigger than I am," he said, trying to make Emily understand. "It's more important than I am. But I'm part of it. Things'll get better, and they'll get better partly thanks to me. To me." He jabbed a thumb at his own chest.

Emily sighed. "People carry on too much about politics, I swear they do. You come right down to it, none of that stuff means anything anyways."

"Weren't for politics, we wouldn't have fought the war." Jeff gave her a perfunctory kiss, then headed out the door. "I ain't got time to argue tonight. I don't want to be late."

He'd heard that the Freedom Party had started out meeting in a Richmond saloon. Since Alabama was a dry state, the Birmingham Party headquarters couldn't imitate those of the founding chapter. Jeff regretted that; he would have enjoyed sitting around with the new friends he'd made and hashing things out over a couple of schooners of beer or shots of whiskey.

He enjoyed sitting around with his new friends anyway, but doing it in a livery stable wasn't the same. Still, the stable owner was a Party member, and the money he got for renting the place out once a week as a meeting hall helped keep him afloat. With so many people going from carriages to motorcars these days, he needed all the help he could get.

The chairman of the Birmingham chapter was a beefy, red-faced fellow named Barney Stevens. He'd been a sergeant during the war; Pinkard would have bet he'd been a mean one. At eight o'clock on the dot, he said, "Come on, boys-let's get this show on the road."

Together, they sang "Dixie." The singing wasn't of the best, nor anywhere close. That didn't matter. Roaring out the words to the Confederacy's national hymn reminded Jeff-and everyone else-why they'd banded together. The good times the song talked about could come again. The Freedom Party would make them come again.

After the last notes died, Stevens said, "Boys, the force that will conquer in the end is the fire of our young Confederate manhood. Today new people who claim power are arising in the Confederacy, men who've shed their blood for the Confederate States and know their blood flowed in vain, through the fault of the men who ran the government."

Jeff clapped till his hard-palmed hands were sore. He looked around the stable. A handful of the men there were of solid middle years. Most, though, were like him: men in their twenties and early thirties who'd been through the crucible of war and were ready to be poured into some new shape.

"There are too damned many of us for the government to put down by force," Barney Stevens declared, and his audience applauded again. "We have to wreck what needs wrecking, and by God there's plenty of it. We have to be hard and tough. The abscess on the body of the country needs cutting out and squeezing till the clear red blood flows. And the blood needs to flow for a good long time before the body is pure again."

"Freedom!" Jeff and the others shouted. The stable, the heavy air inside smelling of hay and horses, echoed to the cry.

"Come this fall," Stevens went on, "you'll need a new chairman here, on account of the Ninth District is going to send me to Congress." More cheers. Through them, he said, "And when I get to Richmond, I'm going to have me a few things to say about-"

"Freedom!" Pinkard shouted again, along with his comrades. He had a hard-on. It made him laugh. Emily had been unfaithful to him with a man. He was being unfaithful to her with the Party.

Stevens said, "Between now and election day, we're going to make people notice us. This Saturday afternoon, I hear tell, the niggers our damnfool government gave the vote to are gonna hold a rally-like they was really citizens, like they deserve to be citizens " Scorn dripped from his words. He wasn't quite so good as the national chairman, but he wasn't bad, either. He grinned out at the crowd. "How many of you boys want to put on white shirts and butternut pants and pay 'em a call?"

Almost every hand shot into the air. One of the men Stevens picked was Jefferson Pinkard. The chairman of the Birmingham chapter said, "Meet me at the corner of Cotton and Forestdale two o'clock Saturday afternoon. We'll have ourselves a good old time, damned if we won't."

"What about the cops?" somebody called from the back of the stable.

"What about 'em?" Barney Stevens said contemptuously. "They ain't gonna do nothin' to hold us off a bunch of uppity niggers." He grinned again. "And besides, a lot of them is us."

Most of the men at the meeting whom Pinkard knew were steelworkers at the Sloss foundries. But there were plenty he didn't know well enough to have learned what they did. He wouldn't have been surprised had some been policemen. Cops needed freedom like everybody else.

On the way out of the meeting, he threw a $500 banknote into the tin hat one of Barney Stevens' friends was holding. Weekly dues would probably go to $1,000 before long. Money didn't seem real any more. It was dying, along with so much of what he held dear. I'll make it better, he thought. I will.

Emily was still up when he got home. He'd thought she would have gone to bed. "It's late, Jeff," she said. "You're gonna be walkin' around like you was drunk tomorrow, you'll be so tired."

"Don't start in on me," he growled.

"Somebody needs to start in on you," his wife answered. "Dangerous enough out on the foundry floor when you're awake." Her voice rose, shrill and angry and worried, too. "You go out there half asleep, and-"

"Don't start in on me, I said!" He slapped her. She stared at him, her eyes enormous with shock. He'd never raised a hand to her, not even when he'd walked in on her and Bedford Cunningham. Why the hell not? he wondered, and found no answer.

He shoved her down the hall toward the bedroom, then picked her up, threw her down, and took her by force. They'd played lots of rough games over the years. This was no game, and they both knew it. Emily fought back as hard as she could. Pinkard was bigger and stronger and, tonight, meaner. After he spent himself and pulled out, she rolled away from him and cried, her face toward the wall. He fell asleep, sated and happy, with her sobs in his ears.

She didn't speak to him the next morning, except to answer things he said to her. But she made him his breakfast and handed him his dinner pail and generally took care not to get him angry. He pecked her on the cheek and walked off to work whistling.

"Mornin', Mistuh Pinkard," Vespasian said when he came onto the manmade hell that was the foundry floor. "Just got here my ownself"

"Good morning, Vespasian," Jeff said cheerfully. Vespasian was the best kind of nigger, sure enough: one who knew his place. Pinkard could hardly wait for Saturday afternoon. He and his buddies would take care of some niggers who didn't know theirs. They'd learn, by God!

He glanced toward Vespasian. In a really proper world, even the best kind of nigger wouldn't be doing any sort of white man's work. He'd be shoveling coal into the furnaces or out in the cotton fields where blacks belonged. Jeff wondered what the Freedom Party would do about that when it got the chance. Something worth doing. He was sure of that.

After he finished his Saturday half-day, he hurried home and changed into a white shirt and trousers the color of the Confederate uniform. When he started toward the door, Emily asked, ever so cautiously, "Where are you going?"

"Out," he answered, and did.

He got to the meeting place in good time. Barney Stevens shook his hand. "Good man," Stevens said, and gave him a two-foot length of thick doweling-as formidable a club as any policeman carried. "We'll teach the niggers they can't get away with putting on airs like they was as good as white folks."

Some of the Freedom Party men brought their own lead pipes or bottles or other chosen instruments of mayhem. With seventy or eighty of them all together, all dressed pretty much alike, they made a formidable force. Jeff's spirit soared at being part of something so magnificent. It soared again when a gray-clad policeman on horseback waved and tipped his cap to the Freedom Party force.

"Let's go," Barney Stevens said, as if they were about to head out of their trenches and over the top. And so, in a way, they were. "Remember, this is war. Hurt the enemy, help your pals, stay together, obey my orders. If I go down and out, Bill McLana-han's next in line. Now-form column of fours." The veterans obeyed without fuss. They'd done it before, countless times. "For'ard-haarch!" Stevens barked.

Magnolia Park, where the Negroes were holding their rally, was only a few blocks away. Their speaker stood on a platform on which Confederate flags fluttered. That made Jeff's blood boil, even more than Birmingham summer did. A dozen or so cops sufficed to keep a couple of dozen white hecklers away from the rally. Those white men weren't organized. The company from the Freedom Party was.

Cries of alarm rose from black throats when the Freedom Party men came into sight. "Double line of battle to the left and right," Barney Stevens shouted, and the men performed the evolution with practiced ease. Stevens pointed with his club as if it were a British field marshal's baton. "Charge!"

"Freedom!" Jeff yelled, along with his friends. A couple of policemen made halfhearted efforts to get between the Freedom Party men and the Negroes. The tough young veterans in white and butternut rolled over them.

Jeff swung his club. It smacked into black flesh. A howl of pain rose. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. He swung again and again and again. A few of the black veterans fought back. Far more fled, though. Some few of them might have gained the vote, but a Negro who fought a white man in the CSA fought not just his foe but also the entire weight of Confederate society and history.

Inside five minutes, the rally was broken up, destroyed. Some of the white hecklers had joined the Freedom Party men. None of the cops had made more than a token effort to hold them back. A lot of Negroes were down with broken heads. Jeff felt as if he'd just stormed a Yankee position in west Texas. He stood tall, the sweat of righteous labor streaming down his face. Just for the moment, he and his comrades were masters of all they surveyed.

The Speaker of the House pointed toward Flora Hamburger. "The chair recognizes the honorable Representative from New York," he intoned.

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," Flora said. That was more than a mere courtesy; Seymour Stedman of Ohio was himself a Socialist, the first non-Democrat to be Speaker since the first Congress of President Blaine's disastrous term at the start of the 1880s. "Mr. Chairman, I move that the House pass a resolution whose text I have conveyed to the Clerk, deploring and condemning the assaults against law-abiding Negroes now taking place within the Confederate States."

"Mr. Speaker!" Several Congressmen tried to gain Stedman's attention. As had been arranged, he recognized Hosea Blackford. "Second!'" Blackford said in a loud, clear voice. He and Flora grinned at each other.

"It has been moved and seconded that we adopt the resolution Miss Hamburger has conveyed to the Clerk," Congressman Stedman said. "The Clerk will now read the resolution for debate."

Read the clerk did, in a deadly drone. As soon as he finished stating the resolution Flora had summarized, hands shot up all around the House chamber. Speaker Stedman said, "The chair recognizes his honorable colleague from Ohio."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker." William Howard Taft rose ponderously to his feet, then turned toward Flora. "I should like to inquire of the distinguished Representative from New York why she does not include in her resolution the disorders currently taking place in China, Russia, South America, France, and Spanish Morocco, all of those being no less beyond the boundaries of the United States and the purview of the House of Representatives than the events condemned in the Confederate States."

Flora glared at Taft, and there was a lot of him at which to glare. With the Socialists and Republicans holding a slim majority in the House, he no longer chaired the Transportation Committee, and could not use his power there to make her life miserable. He seemed to have trouble realizing that; a lot of Democrats did. They took power for granted, even when it wasn't there.

"I would answer the gentleman from Ohio in two ways," she said. "First, what happens in the Confederate States is vitally important to the United States, because the Confederate States are so close and so closely related to us. And second, the attacks on the Negroes there are fierce, unjustified, and altogether unprovoked."

"They're only niggers, for Christ's sake," somebody called out without waiting to be recognized. "Who the devil cares what the Rebs do to them?"

"Order!' Speaker Stedman slammed down the gavel. "The chair recognizes the honorable Representative from Dakota."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," Hosea Blackford said. "That unmannerly fellow gives me the chance to quote Donne, and I shall not waste it: 'No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' If the Confederates now permit the terrorizing of their Negroes, as appears to be true from the reports reaching us, who can guess what they may permit a year from now, or five years, or ten?"

"I have two questions for the gentleman from Dakota," said the Democrat who rose to reply to Blackford. "The first is, why do you think the Confederate States will pay any attention to a resolution from this House? The second is, if you Socialists want us to do something the Confederate States will pay attention to, why have you taken a meat axe to the War Department budget?"

The second question, in particular, made Flora wince. She'd urged and voted for cutting the military budget, too, and the reasons for which she'd done so-chief among them that the country could no longer afford to keep spending as it had-still seemed good to her. But she had to admit that a warning delivered under credible threat of war would have done far more to deter the thugs who called themselves the Freedom Party than any resolution from the House of Representatives.

As debate went on, she also began to see that even the resolution was going to have a hard time passing. A lot of Democrats proclaimed that they did not care to be seen meddling in the internal political affairs of a neighboring sovereign state. Speaker Stedman countered that one with a sardonic gibe: "As we won't meddle in the affairs of the Republic of Quebec? Had we not meddled in those affairs, there would be no Republic of Quebec."

But the Congressman who'd said, "They're only niggers," had spoken for a great many of his colleagues, whether they would come out and admit it or not. Flora had expected little better from the Democrats. But the Republicans, mostly farm-belt Congressmen from the Midwest, also proved to have little sympathy for the colored man's plight. And even one Socialist stood up and said, "This is not an issue that concerns the people of my district."

"The people of your district don't care about pogroms?" Flora shouted angrily, which made Speaker Stedman bang the gavel against her.

When Stedman called the question, Flora's resolution fell eighteen votes short of passage. "As the hour now nears six, I move that we adjourn for the day," the Speaker said. His motion carried by voice vote, without a single dissenter heard. The House floor emptied rapidly.

Still furious, Flora made no effort to hide it. "What will they do when the bell tolls for them?" she demanded of Hosea Blackford.

"Who can guess, till the time comes?" he answered with a wry smile. "You don't win all the time, Flora. For a lot of years, we hardly won at all. We are on the record, even if the resolution failed. If things go on, we can bring it up again later in the session."

"You take the long view of things," she said slowly.

"I'd better, after all the worthwhile resolutions and bills I've seen die." Blackford flashed that wry grin again. "For now, what sort of view do you take toward supper?"

"I'm in favor of it," Flora admitted. "With luck, someplace where they know how to serve up crow."

"Oh, I think we can do a little better than that," he said, and took her to a chophouse they'd visited a couple of times before. After mutton chops and red wine, the world did seem a less gloomy place. Brandy afterwards didn't hurt, either. Blackford took out a cigar case. He waited for Flora's nod before choosing and lighting a panatela. Between puffs, he asked, "Shall we go out dancing, or to a vaudeville show?"

Flora thought about it, then shook her head. She wasn't that happy. "No, thanks. Not tonight. Why don't you just take me back to my flat?"

"All right, if that's what you want." Blackford rose and escorted her out to his motorcar. The ride back to the apartment building where they both lived passed mostly in silence.

They walked upstairs together. The hallway across which their doors faced each other was quiet and dim: dimmer than usual, because one of the small electric light bulbs had burned out. As usual, Blackford walked Flora to her doorway. As usual, he bent to kiss her good-night. The kiss that followed was anything but usual. Maybe Flora was trying to make up for the day's disappointment. Maybe it was just the brandy talking through her. She didn't know, or care.

Neither, evidently, did Hosea Blackford. "Whew!" he said when at last they broke apart. "I think you melted all the wax in my mustache."

Flora's laugh was shaky. Her cheeks felt hot, as if in embarrassment, but she was not embarrassed. Her heart pounded. She turned, wondering if the routine business of unlocking and opening her door would still the tumult in her. It didn't. She reached for the light switch by the door, then looked back to Blackford. "Would you like to come inside?" she asked.

"Good-" he began, responding to the Good night she'd always given him before. Then he heard what she'd really said. He asked a question of his own: "Are you sure?"

She leaned forward and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the end of the nose. He'd never pushed her to go further than she wanted to go. Pushing her would have done no good, as a lot of people, in Congress and out, could have told him. But he hadn't needed telling. He wasn't pushing now. She liked him very much for that… and for the feel of his lips pressed against her, his body pressed against her. "Yes," she said firmly.

/ could never have done this back in New York, she thought as they sat side by side on the sofa-not with everyone who lives in our apartment. But even that wasn't true. When Yossel Reisen was about to go off to war, her sister Sophie had found a way to give him a woman's ultimate gift-and he'd given her a gift in return, a gift that now bore his name, a gift he'd never lived to see. If you wanted to badly enough, you could always find a way.

She'd never dreamt she might want to so badly. When, in an experimental way, Blackford slipped an arm around her, she pinned him against the back of the sofa. This kiss went on much longer than the one in the hallway had, and left her feeling as if she might explode at any moment.

Blackford kissed her eyes, her cheeks; his mouth slid to the side of her neck, then up to her ear. Every time his lips touched her skin, she discovered something new and astonishing and wonderful. He nibbled at her earlobe, murmuring, "You don't know how long I've wanted to do this, darling." She didn't answer, not with words, but left no doubt about what she wanted.

But going into her bedroom with him a few minutes later was another long step into the unknown. She didn't turn on any of the lights in there. No matter how much urgency filled her, the idea of undressing in front of a man left her shaking. Even so, she sighed with relief as she slid off her corset. On a hot, muggy late-summer night, bare skin felt good.

Her bare skin soon felt quite a lot better than good. She was amazed at the sensations Hosea Blackford's hands and lips and tongue evoked from her breasts, and then amazed again when one hand strayed lower. She'd stroked herself now and again, but this was different: every touch, every movement, a startlement. The small, altogether involuntary moan of pleasure she let out took her by surprise.

But that surprise also recalled her partly to herself. She remembered Sophie's horror and panic out on the balcony of the family flat when her sister told her she was pregnant. "I can't have a baby!" she exclaimed.

Blackford hesitated, studying her in the half-light. Had she made him angry? If he got up and left now, she would die of humiliation-and frustration. But, to her vast relief, he nodded. "One of the reasons I care for you so much is for your good sense," he said. "We'll make sure everything is all right." He bent so that his mouth went where his hand had gone before.

Flora had literally never imagined such a thing. She hadn't imagined how good it felt, either. When pleasure burst over her, it made everything she'd done by herself seem… beside the point was the best way she found to think of it.

If he'd done that for her, she ought to return the favor, though she didn't quite know how. Awkwardly, she took him in her hand. As she drew near, she saw he looked strange. From inadvertencies around the family apartment, she knew how a man was made. Hosea Blackford was made a little differently. He's not circumcised, she realized. She'd forgotten that consequence of his being a gentile.

She kissed him and licked him. He needed only a moment to understand she didn't know what she was doing. "Put it in your mouth," he said quietly. She did, though she hadn't imagined that only minutes before, any more than the other. The sound he made was a masculine version of her moan. Encouraged, she kept on.

She didn't need to keep on very long. He grunted and jerked and spurted. It caught her by surprise, and didn't taste very good. She coughed and sputtered and gulped before she could help herself. When she could speak again, she asked, "Was that right?"

He put her hand over his heart, which pounded like a drum. "If it were any more right," he assured her, "I'd be dead." She laughed and lay beside him, still marveling that such pleasure was possible-and ever so relieved that, unlike Sophie, she would not have to worry about consequences nine months later.

"Atlanta!" the conductor called, stepping into the car in which Jake Featherston rode. "All out for Atlanta!" He strode down the aisle, making sure no one could doubt the upcoming stop.

Featherston grabbed his carpetbag and sprang to his feet. His seat had been in the middle of the car, but he was one of the first people off it. He was one of the first people to a taxicab, too. "The Kendall Hotel," he told the driver.

"Sure thing," the fellow answered. The hotel proved to be only a few blocks east of Terminal Station. Brakes squealed as the driver stopped in front of the massive brick building with Moorish-looking turrets and ornaments. "That'll be twelve."

"Here you go." Jake handed him a $1,000 banknote and a $500. "I don't need any change." With the taximan's tip, he would have got back only a hundred dollars, two hundred if he wanted to be a cheapskate. He didn't. Anyhow, with currency the way it was these days, you had to be crazy to worry about anything as small as a hundred bucks.

A uniformed Negro porter came up to carry his bag. He gave the black man a hundred dollars. That was what such nearly worthless banknotes were good for. It was also, he thought, what nearly worthless black men were good for.

When Jake gave his name at the front desk, the clerk handed him his key and then said, "I have a message here for you, Mr. Featherston." He plucked an envelope from a pigeonhole and presented it with a flourish.

"Thanks." Featherston pulled out the envelope and unfolded the sheet of paper inside. It read, Knight got in this morning. If you see this in time, have supper with us at seven tonight in the hotel restaurant Amos MizelL He stuck the note in his pocket. "How do I find the restaurant?" he asked the desk clerk.

"Down that corridor-second doorway on your left-first is the bar," the young man answered. Shyly, he went on, "It's an honor to have you in the Kendall, Mr. Featherston. Freedom!''

"Freedom, yeah." Jake was still getting used to people recognizing his name. It was, he found, very easy to get used to.

Another colored porter carried the bag up to his room, and earned another hundred dollars. Jake snorted, imagining a hundred-dollar tip before the war. He unpacked his clothes, then pulled a watch from his pocket and checked the time. It was half past five.

He didn't feel like sitting in the room for an hour and a half like a cabbage, so he went down to the bar and peeled off a $500 banknote for a beer. He nursed the one glass till it was time for supper. The last thing he wanted was to go to this meeting drunk, or even tipsy.

When he left the bar and headed over to the restaurant, a professionally obsequious waiter led him to a table in a quiet corner: not the best seating in the place for anyone who wanted to show off, but a fine place to sit and eat and talk. Two other men were already sitting and talking. Featherston would have pegged them both for veterans even had he not known they were.

They got to their feet as he approached. "Featherston?" the taller one asked. Jake nodded. In a twanging Texas accent, the fellow went on, "I'm Willy Knight of the Redemption League, and this here is Amos Mizell, who heads up the Tin Hats."

"Pleased to meet you gents," Jake said, shaking hands with both of them. He wasn't sure how pleased he was to meet Knight; the Freedom Party was growing only slowly west of the Mississippi, not least because the Redemption League spouted similar ideas there. Supper with Amos Mizell was a feather in his cap, though. The Tin Hats were far and away the largest ex-soldiers' organization in the CSA.

Mizell sipped from a whiskey glass in front of him. He was about forty, and missing the little finger on his left hand. He said, "I think all three of us are going in the same direction. I think all three of us want to see the country going in the same direction, too. What we want to do is make sure nobody sidetracks anybody else."

"That's right." Knight nodded. He was blond and handsome and wore an expensive suit, all of which made Jake jealous. 'That's just right," he went on. "If we bang heads, the only ones who win are the damnyankees."

"Fair enough." Jake smiled, as he might have smiled over a bad poker hand. Knight reminded him of an officer, which in his book was another black mark against the Redemption League man. "We might have been smarter not to talk till after the Congressional elections, though. Then we'd have a better notion of who's strong and who isn't."

Almost imperceptibly, Willy Knight winced. Featherston grinned at him, the fierce grin of defiance he threw at everyone who got in his way. The Freedom Party was stronger than the Redemption League, at least for now. It had its base in the more populous eastern part of the Confederate States and was reaching west, where only a relative handful of people on this side of the Mississippi belonged to the Redemption League.

Again, Mizell played peacemaker: "One thing certain is, we're stronger together than we are apart." The Tin Hats weren't a political party, so he wasn't a direct rival to either of the men at the table with him. But if he tipped to one or the other of them, his influence would not be small.

They paused when the waiter came up. Knight ordered a beefsteak, Mizell fried chicken, and Jake a ham steak. "I'm shooting for ten Congressmen next session," he said, though he expected perhaps half that many would win seats. "How about you, Knight?"

"We'll win Dallas-I'm pretty sure of that," the leader of the Redemption League said. "They can see the Yankees up in Sequoyah and over in that damned new state of Houston from there. We may take a couple of other seats, too. I'll tell you what we will do, though, by God: we'll scare the Radical Liberals clean out of their shoes."

"No arguments there," Amos Mizell said. He raised the drink to his lips again. "I wish more of the new leaders who think along our lines would have joined us here tonight. The Tennessee Volunteers, the Knights of the Gray, and the Red-Fighters all have ideas we might find worthwhile, and they aren't the only ones."

"There's plenty of people angry with the way things are going now," Jake allowed. "A couple of years ago, the Freedom Party wasn't anything more than a few people sitting around in a saloon grousing." He drew himself up straight with pride. "We've come a long ways since then."

"That you have," Mizell said. Knight nodded once more. Now he looked jealous. The Freedom Party had come further and faster than the Redemption League. Mizell continued, "I know for a fact that a lot of Tin Hats are Freedom Party men, too."

"I never thought we could get away with breaking up the soft parties' rallies," Will Knight said, and looked jealous again. "But you've gone and done it, and you've gone and gotten away with it, too."

"You bet we have," Jake said. "If you reckon the cops love the Whigs and the Radical Liberals and the niggers, you can damn well think again. And"-he lowered his voice a little-"if you reckon the soldiers love the traitors in the War Department, you can damn well think again about that, too."

"Some of the things you've said about the War Department have been of concern to me," Amos Mizell said. "I don't care to bring disrepute down on men who served so bravely against the foe. Traitor is a hard word."

Featherston fixed him with that savage grin. "Jeb Stuart III was my commanding officer," he said. "Pompey, his nigger servant, was ass-deep in the rebellion. He shielded that nigger from Army of Northern Virginia Intelligence. His old man, Jeb, Jr., shielded him when it turned out he'd been wrong all the time. If that doesn't make him a traitor to his country, what the hell does it do?"

Before either Mizell or Knight could answer, the waiter returned with their suppers. They ate in silence for a while. Knight was the first to break it. "Suppose what you say is true. If you say it too loud and too often, don't you figure the Army is going to land on your back?"

"I reckon the generals'd love to," Jake answered with his mouth full. "But I don't reckon they'd have an easy time of it, even now, on account of the soldiers who got the orders wouldn't be happy about following 'em. And the longer they wait, the harder it'll be."

"You may be right about the second part of that," Mizell said. "I've got my doubts about the first, I have to tell you. You might be smarter to take a step back every now and then so you can take two forward later on."

"The Freedom Party doesn't back up." Featherston eyed Mizell, but was really speaking more to Knight. "You talk about people who want to straighten out the mess we're in and you talk about us first. Everybody else comes behind us."

"You go on like that, why'd you bother coming down here at all?" Knight asked. "What have we got to talk about?"

That was a good question. Jake did not want to negotiate with the Redemption League. Negotiating implied he reckoned Knight his equal, which he did not care to do. But he did not dare risk antagonizing the Tin Hats. If Amos Mizell started saying harsh things about him and about the Freedom Party, it would hurt. But he was not about to admit that, either.

Picking his words with more care than usual, he replied, "We're on the way up. You want to come with us, Knight, you want to help us climb, that's fine. You want to fight, you'll slow us down. I don't say anything different. But you won't stop us, and I'll break you in the end." That wasn't party against party. It was man against man. The only thing Featherston knew how to do when threatened was push back harder than ever. Knight was a man of similar sort. He glared across the table at Jake.

"We're here to stop these brawls before they hurt all of us," Amos Mizell said. "If we work things out now, we don't have to air our dirty linen in public and waste force we could aim at our enemies. That's how I see it."

"That's how I see it, too," Jake said. "If the Redemption League was bigger than the Freedom Party, I'd ease back. Since it's the other way round-"

"You're the one who gets to talk that way," Willy Knight said. Jake only smiled. He knew he was lying-he would have done anything to get ahead of a rival-but nobody could prove it.

"It appears to me, things being as they are, that our best course is to use the Freedom Party as the spearhead of our movement and the Redemption League and other organizations as the shaft that helps give the head its striking power," Mizell said. "How does it appear to you, Mr. Knight?"

Featherston felt like kissing Amos Mizell. He couldn't have put the leader of the Redemption League on the spot like that himself. Knight looked like a man who'd found a worm-no, half a worm-in his apple. Very slowly, he replied, "I think we can work with the Freedom Party, depending on who's stronger in any particular place."

"That's a bargain," Jake answered at once. "We'll pull a couple of our candidates in Arkansas, where you look to have a better chance, and we'll throw our weight behind you. There are some districts in Alabama and Mississippi and one in Tennessee I can think of where I want you to do the same."

Even more slowly, Knight nodded again. If the Freedom Party outperformed the Redemption League in this election, support would swing Featherston's way, leaving Knight in the lurch. He could see that. He couldn't do anything about it, though.

He'd want a high post if the Redemption League got folded into the Freedom Party. Jake could already tell as much. He'd give Knight a good slot, too. That way, he could keep an eye on him. The CSA, he thought, had been stabbed in the back. He didn't intend to let that happen to him.

Jonathan Moss slid out of his Bucephalus and stumbled toward his Evanston apartment building. He was glad he'd managed to get home without running over anybody. After his last course, he and Fred Sandburg and several other people-he couldn't recall how many right now-had found a friendly saloon and done their best to drink it dry. Why not? he thought. It was a Friday night. He wouldn't need his brains again till Monday morning.

His breath smoked. The wind off Lake Michigan blew the smoke away. It was chilly, despite the antifreeze he'd poured into his pipes. "Not as chilly as it would be up in Ontario," Moss said, as if someone had asserted the opposite. He stepped up onto the stairs. "Not half as chilly as Laura Secord's heart."

Fred never had stopped ribbing him about Laura Secord. Even now, after she'd rejected him again, he couldn't get her out of his mind. He'd come home. He'd done well at Northwestern. He hadn't found a girl he cared about, though. He wondered if he ever would. He wondered if he ever could.

He opened the door at the top of the stairs, then quickly shut it behind him. Getting out of the wind felt good. He fumbled for the key to his mailbox. It wasn't easy to find, not when every key on the ring looked like one of twins. He almost gave it up as a bad job and headed for bed. But, figuring he'd probably have trouble finding his apartment key, too, he chose to regard the mailbox key as a test. He made a determined drunk.

"There you are, you sneaky little bastard," he said, capturing the errant key. Making it fit the lock was another struggle, but he won that one, too.

A couple of advertising circulars fell onto the floor. Bending to pick them up made his head spin. He also had a letter from a cousin out in Denver and another envelope with his address written in a hand he didn't recognize. He'd taken two steps toward the stairs before he remembered to go back and shut and lock the mailbox.

He did have a devil of a time finding the key that opened the apartment door, but by luck he got it into the lock on the first try. He flipped on the electric light and tossed the mail down on the table in front of the sofa. He tossed himself down on the sofa and fell asleep.

Next thing he knew, the sun was streaming in the window. A determined musician pounded on kettle drums inside his head. His mouth tasted the way a slit trench smelled. His bladder was about to explode. He staggered off to the bathroom, pissed forever, brushed his teeth, and dry-swallowed two aspirin tablets. Black coffee would have helped, too, but making it seemed too much like work.

After splashing cold water on his face, he slowly went back out into the front room. He discovered he hadn't thrown out the circulars, so he did that. Then he read his cousin's letter. It had already started snowing in Denver, and David looked likely to get a promotion at the bank where he worked.

"Bully," Moss muttered. His voice sounded harsh and unnaturally loud in his ears. He let the letter lie where he'd left it. Cousin David was not the most interesting man God ever made.

That left the other envelope, the one with the unfamiliar handwriting. It bore no return address. Something about the stamp looked funny. When he peered closely, he saw that Ben Franklin's portrait had the word ONTARIO printed over it.

"No," he said hoarsely. He shook his fist at the window, in the general direction of the Northwestern campus. "God damn you to hell for the practical-joking son of a bitch you are, Fred." He found it much easier to believe that his friend had got hold of some occupation stamps than that anyone in Ontario should write to him. He knew only one person in the conquered Canadian province, and she wished she didn't know him.

But the envelope carried a postmark from Arthur. Could Fred have arranged to have someone up there put it in the mail? Moss knew Fred could have. His friend would go to great lengths to jerk his chain.

"Only one way to find out," he mumbled, and opened the envelope with fingers not all of whose shaking sprang from his hangover. The paper inside was coarse and cheap. He unfolded it. The letter-a note, really-was in the hand that had addressed the envelope.

Dear Mr. Moss, it read, Now you have the chance to pay me back. I daresay it will be sweet for you. I would sooner do anything than rely on the word of a man to whom I offered nothing but insult, but I find I have no choice. The harvest this year was very bad, and I have no way to raise the $2001 need to keep from being taxed off my farm. So far as I can tell, all my kin are dead. My friends are as poor as I am. Even if you do find it in your heart to send the money, I can make no promise to feel toward you the way you would want me to feel. I would not deceive you by saying anything else. Laura Secord. Her address followed.

Moss stared. The letter couldn't be anything but genuine. He'd told Fred Sandburg some of what he'd said and done up in Ontario, but he'd never mentioned the promise he'd given Laura Secord. He'd known too well how Fred would laugh.

"What do I do now?" he asked the ceiling. The ceiling didn't answer. It was up to him.

If he threw the letter away, he would have his revenge. The trouble was, he didn't much want revenge. He hadn't been angry at Laura Secord when she turned him down. He'd been disappointed. He'd been wounded, almost as if by machine-gun fire. But what he'd felt for her hadn't turned to hate, though for the life of him he couldn't have said why.

If he sent her the two hundred dollars, he'd be throwing his money away. He knew that. Had he not known it, she'd made it very plain. But, that frozen day up in Arthur, he'd told her that if she ever needed him for anything, all she had to do was ask. Now she'd asked. Was he going to break his promise? If he did, what would that make her think of Americans? What would it make her think of him?

He'd never been a man in whom altruism burned with a fine, hot flame. He was well-to-do, but not so well-to-do that spending two hundred dollars wouldn't hurt-it wasn't as if he were playing with Confederate money.

"What do I do?" he said again. The ceiling still wasn't talking.

He went back into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked like hell: bloodshot eyes, stubble, hair all awry because he hadn't bothered combing it yet. If he threw Laura Secord's letter into the wastebasket, what would he see the next time he looked in a mirror?

"A lying bastard." That wasn't the ceiling talking. That was him. Did he want to go through life thinking of himself as a liar every time he lathered up with his shaving brush? Some people wouldn't care. Some people would figure rejection made their promise null and void.

But he'd given that promise after Laura Secord had rejected him, in spite of her rejecting him. His headache had only a little to do with the hangover. He sighed, fogging the mirror. That proved he was still alive. He knew what he would do. He'd never tell Fred Sandburg. Fred wouldn't let him live it down if he found out. He'd do it anyway.

It was Saturday morning. The banks would be closed. The post office was open, though. He could send a money order-if he had two hundred dollars in cash. By turning the apartment upside down, he came up with $75.27. He cursed under his breath for a minute, then telephoned Fred Sandburg.

"Hullo?" When Sandburg answered the phone, he sounded as if he'd just been raised from the dead and wished he hadn't been.

"Hello, Fred," Moss said cheerfully-the aspirins were working. "Listen, if I write you a check for a hundred and thirty bucks, can you cash it?"

"Yeah, I think so," his friend answered.

"Good. See you in a few minutes," Moss said. Sandburg started to ask him why he wanted the money right away, but he hung up without answering. Throwing on some clothes, he drove the few blocks to Sandburg's flat.

"What the hell is this all about?" Sandburg asked. He looked like a poor job of embalming; he'd had more to drink than Moss had. "You eloping with some broad and you need to buy a ladder?"

"Got it the first time," Moss told him. He wrote a check and thrust it at his friend. In return, Sandburg gave him two fifties, a twenty, and a gold eagle. "Thanks, pal, you're a lifesaver," Moss said. He headed out, leaving Sandburg scratching his head behind him.

At the post office, Moss discovered he couldn't buy a money order for two hundred dollars. "Hundred-dollar maximum, sir," the clerk said, "but I can sell you two." Moss nodded. The clerk went on, "That will be $200.60-thirty-cent fee on each order." Moss gave him the money. When he got the money orders back, he put them in an envelope he'd already addressed. For another two cents, the clerk sold him a stamp.

After that, he drove home. Now that the deed was done, he wondered how foolish he'd been. Two hundred dollars foolish, he thought-and sixty cents. When he asked his parents for money, as he'd eventually need to do, they'd want to know where it had gone. They were liable to suspect he'd spent it on a loose woman. He laughed mirthlessly. If only Laura Secord were loose, or even a little looser!

He returned to the study of the law on Monday. Every day when he went home, he checked the mail in hope of finding another envelope with an overprinted stamp. Ten days later, he got one. The note inside read simply, / see there are decent Yanks after all God bless you. He read it a dozen times, convinced beyond contradiction that that was the best two hundred dollars he'd ever spent.