Breakthroughs

XIII

Sylvia Enos was discovering that Brigid Coneval had been right: Boston held plenty of jobs. A lot of them paid better than the one she’d had in the canning plant, too. In the time since she last looked for work, wages had risen sharply. Her own had gone up, too, but not by so much. The more she saw what others were getting, the more she kicked herself as a fool for not quitting sooner.

She also discovered many more jobs were open to women than had been true when she got work after George went into the Navy. She didn’t see any women in overalls with pickaxes and sledgehammers on road-paving crews, but that was about the only limitation she found.

“Reason for quitting previous position?” a-female-clerk asked at a shoe factory.

“Both my children came down with chicken pox at the same time,” she answered, as she’d answered several times already. She looked for a sympathetic glance from the clerk, who wore a wedding band, but got nothing but the Well, where’s the rest of it? expression a bored man might have used. A bit nonplused, she went on, “I didn’t have anyone else who could watch them, and the canning plant wouldn’t hold the job for me-they could hire someone without any experience and pay her less.”

That still rankled. They’d used her, and then they went and threw her away with no more hesitation than if she’d been a torn label. Massachusetts, despite agitation, did not let women vote. If it had, Sylvia would have voted Socialist without a moment’s hesitation.

“Except for that, will this plant give you a good character?” The clerk made as if to reach for the telephone on her desk.

“Yes, I think so,” Sylvia said.

The clerk did not pick up the earpiece and ask for the operator. Sylvia smiled to herself. The woman had wanted to see if she’d been lying and could be panicked into revealing it. After scribbling a note to herself, the woman said, “You do know how to use a sewing machine?”

“Oh, yes.” Sylvia nodded. “I’m like most people, I suppose. I have one at home, and I use it when I have the time. I buy some ready-to-wear, but making clothes for myself and the children saves a lot of money.”

She’d done a lot of sewing while she was home with George, Jr., and Mary Jane. She’d sewn, and she’d taken care of the children, and she’d read the books and magazines in the apartment till she could have recited chunks of them from memory. She’d got out very little. She was hard pressed to remember when she’d felt more delight than that which filled her when her children’s blisters got crusty and scabbed over and the scabs started falling off.

“Have you ever sewn leather with a sewing machine?” the hiring clerk asked.

Sylvia shook her head. If she lied there, she would be too easily found out. “No, I’ve never done anything like that,” she admitted.

“Well, come try it,” the clerk said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find you an empty machine.” She got up from her desk. “Follow me, please.”

Back in the enormous work area, little old men-too old to be conscripted-sat hunched over about a third of the sewing machines. Women of all ages used the rest. The men, with only a couple of exceptions, ignored Sylvia, so intent were they on their work. Most of the women looked her over, curious as she would have been to see who might be hired next.

“Here,” the clerk said, pointing to a machine with no one at it. “Let me find you a couple of leather scraps, and you can see what it’s like.”

The stool behind the sewing machine had no back and was not very comfortable, but it was an improvement over standing all day, which Sylvia had been doing before. When she stretched out her right leg to set her foot on the treadle, she got a surprise.

“We have electric motors on the machine,” the clerk said, seeing what must have been the startled look on her face. “It lets the operators work much faster on thick leather like this than they could with foot-powered machines. You’ll see what I mean.” She handed Sylvia two pieces of shoe leather. “Join these together with two straight seams about a quarter-inch apart.”

“All right,” Sylvia said. Sure enough, the sewing machine had a switch near the base. She flicked it, and the motor hummed to life. Before guiding the pieces of leather under the needle, she noted how sturdy it was, and how strong and thick the thread that went through the eye.

As she started to sew, her right foot went up and down, up and down, even though it wasn’t on a treadle. The hiring clerk smiled. “A lot of girls do that when they first come here,” she said. “Some of them keep right on doing it even after they’ve worked here for years.”

“Do they?” Sylvia hardly noticed answering, because the needle snarled into action. The motor was strong as the very devil; she felt as if she were riding a poorly broken horse. The needle seemed to bite its way through the leather with every stitch the machine took. She’d hurt herself once or twice with her own sewing machine-she didn’t want to think what this one would do to her hand if she slipped or got careless.

She knew nothing but relief when she turned off the machine and handed the clerk her sample work. The woman examined it, then slowly nodded. “That’s very nice,” she said. “Even, straight. You can do the work, no doubt about it. Starting pay is fifty cents an hour. You go up to fifty-five after three months.”

That was more money than she’d been making at the cannery. “What time does the shift start tomorrow morning?” she asked.

“Eight o’clock,” the hiring clerk answered. “Eight o’clock sharp. You’re docked for every minute you’re late, and for every minute you clock out early.”

“I didn’t expect anything different,” Sylvia answered. This place looked to be like all the others. They wanted everything from the people they were generous enough to hire-that was how they’d look at it, anyhow-but what would they give back? What had the canning plant given back? Only a swift good-bye.

Still, at fifty cents an hour-fifty-five if she stayed-she’d soon make up for the time she’d lost taking care of the children. Fifty cents an hour plus the allotment she got from George’s pay was pretty good money. It was more money than she’d ever imagined making for herself. It would have been more money still had prices not risen right along with, and sometimes faster than, wages.

She got reminded how prices had gone up when she stopped at the Coal Board offices on the way home from the shoe factory. Being able to go without having the children along was an unusual blessing. The Coal Board was bureaucracy at its most plodding, and George, Jr., and Mary Jane did not take well to waiting in interminable lines.

Neither did Sylvia, not when the petty functionary she finally reached told her next month’s ration would be smaller but cost more. “This is the third time this year I’ve heard that!” she exclaimed in dismay. “It’s not right.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the fellow said, sounding not a bit sorry. Why aren’t you in the Army? Sylvia thought resentfully. The Coal Board clerk went on, “I am not responsible for setting policy, you must understand, ma’am, only for seeing that it is carried out. Here, let me stamp your ration tickets”-he did, plying the rubber stamp with might and main-“so you can go over to Line 7C to pay for the coal. Remember, you cannot acquire it without the stamp I just gave and the pay confirmation stamp you will receive in Line 7C.”

“I remember,” Sylvia said. “How could I forget?” She went and stood in Line 7C, and stood there, and stood there.

At last, grudgingly, the clerk there accepted her money and added his square red stamp to the other bureaucrat’s round black one. “Obtaining coal without a ration coupon showing both authorization and pay confirmation marking is a violation of law punishable by fine or imprisonment or both,” he droned.

“Oh, yes, I know.” Sylvia could have repeated the rigmarole back at him. She heard it every month.

“We are pleased to have been of service to you,” the clerk said, just as if he meant it. Then, while she was still standing in front of him, he forgot Sylvia existed. “Next.”

Luxuriating in an afternoon without the children and with a job in hand, Sylvia went out and bought a couple of shirtwaists and a skirt in the new style that daringly left the ankles bare. It was advertised as saving fabric for the war effort. That, she was convinced, had nothing to do with why only a couple were left on the rack. People finally felt victory in the air, and wanted to bust loose and go a little wild.

She took her purchases home before going out again to pick up the children. That was another small extravagance, but she would have plenty of nickels coming in to make up for the extra one she was spending on trolley fare. Both George, Jr., and Mary Jane looked forlorn, with the marks of the chicken pox still upon them, but they had been certified as noncontagious. Several of George, Jr.’s, classmates were down with the disease, as well as another girl Mrs. Dooley cared for.

After supper, the children were playing and Sylvia washing dishes when someone knocked on the door. “Who’s that, Mama?” Mary Jane said.

“I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “I’m not expecting anyone.” Apprehension filled her as she went to the door. Opening it, she breathed a silent sigh of relief to find no Western Union messenger standing there, but rather Isabella Antonelli. “Come in,” Sylvia exclaimed. “Have you eaten? Can I make you coffee?”

As the children stared at the woman who was a stranger to them, Mrs. Antonelli said, “Coffee will be fine. I have eaten, yes, thank you. I am not very hungry anyhow.”

The two women sat at the kitchen table and chatted. When they didn’t pay much attention to George, Jr., and Mary Jane, the children gradually stopped gaping at Isabella Antonelli. Sylvia was sure she hadn’t come to talk about the weather or even the high price of coal. Whatever was on her mind, she would get to it when she was ready.

Eventually, she did: “Mr. Winter asked me to marry him the other day.”

“That’s wonderful!” Sylvia said, at the same time thinking, Better you than me. “Have you set a day yet?”

“He wants it to be in about six months,” Isabella answered. Slowly, deliberately, she set both hands above her navel. “That is about five months later than I would like.” Her meaning was unmistakable. Sylvia’s eyes widened. The widow Antonelli nodded, adding, “He does not know this yet. What do I do?”

“Oh.” Sylvia understood why Isabella had not gone to her family. Even if she was a widow, they would have pitched a fit. All the Italians she’d ever met were like that. After some thought, she said, “I think you’d better tell him.”

Panic filled Isabella Antonelli’s face. “And what if he leaves me? I do not know if he wants a child.”

“Dear, doesn’t he have one whether he wants one or not?” Sylvia asked, to which Isabella gave a miserable nod. Or you could look for an abortionist, Sylvia thought. But she had no idea how to go about finding one; she’d never needed to, for which she heartily thanked God. She never would have advised anyone to do anything so flagrantly illegal, anyhow. And Isabella was Catholic, which would have made the suggestion worse than illegal in her eyes.

“That is so,” she said now. Her fingers spread, there on her belly.

“He’d better know,” Sylvia said. “It is his business, too, after all. I think he’ll do what’s right.” She was by no means sure the canning-plant foreman would, but…“If he doesn’t, do you want to have him around anyway?”

“With a bambino coming, I want someone around,” Isabella said in a firm voice. “I think you are right, though. He is a good man. He will do what is right. Grazie. Thank you.” She rose, kissed Sylvia on the cheek, and was gone before Sylvia could say good-bye-or anything else.

“Why did she come over here, Mama?” George, Jr., asked.

“To talk,” Sylvia answered absently. “Why don’t you and your sister get ready for bed?” She ignored the howls of protest that brought. Better you than me, Isabella, she thought again. Better you than me.

Wearily, Jefferson Pinkard and the rest of his regiment marched out of the front lines. Wearily, he groused with his buddies about how criminal it was to leave them at the front for so long without a breather. “What I reckon it is,” Sergeant Albert Cross said, “is that Richmond done forgot we was even here, so of course they forgot to send anybody out to take our goddamn place.”

A couple of people laughed: relatively recent replacements, most of them, who were innocent enough to think that was meant as a joke. “This Texas prairie sure as hell is the ass end of nowhere,” Pinkard muttered. “Wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit if everybody forgot about us.”

“To me, the country does not look so bad,” Hipolito Rodriguez said. Pinkard grunted; next to the chunk of Sonora Rodriguez had tried to farm, the west Texas prairie was liable to look pretty good, which, when you got down to it, was a frightening thought. The stocky little Sonoran went on, “And the Yankees, Jeff, the Yankees, they don’t forget about us.”

Pinkard grunted. Nobody could deny that. The U.S. advance wasn’t going fast-the United States didn’t have as many men in Texas as they needed, either-but it was and remained an advance. Nobody talked about throwing them back on Lubbock any more. The most anybody would talk about was halting their advance, and talk outran reality there, too.

Sergeant Cross said, “Damn me to hell and toast my toes over the fire if it ain’t gonna feel good not to get shot at for a while.”

“Si, es verdad,” Hip Rodriguez said. “Muy bueno.”

“Yeah,” Pinkard said, because Rodriguez expected him to say something like that. He didn’t mean it, though. He suspected his pal knew he didn’t mean it. Rodriguez had enough tact for any other dozen soldiers Jeff had ever met. Jeff wanted to be in the trenches. He wanted to be in the Yankee trenches, killing Yankees. When he was doing that, he didn’t have to think about anything else.

Replacements came forward to fill the trenches Pinkard and his comrades were leaving. It was a black unit, with white noncoms and officers moving the men along. “Mallates,” Rodriguez said, shaking his head. “You know, down where I was living, I didn’t hardly never see no niggers, not till I come into the Army.”

“Isn’t like that in Alabama,” Jeff said. “ ’Bout as many of ’em back home as there are white men.” Didn’t have to bring niggers down into Sonora, with greasers there already. But he didn’t say that out loud, and hoped Hip didn’t know he thought it. Rodriguez was a good soldier and a good guy-a good friend-even if he was a greaser.

On they trudged, toward the tiny hamlet of Grow, Texas, whose dusty main street, all of two blocks long, made a liar of the cockeyed optimist who’d named the place. Most of the buildings along those two blocks had been turned into saloons. Texas was officially dry. Where soldiers were involved, people looked the other way.

Some of the barmaids-most of the barmaids-sold more than beer and whiskey, too. Up above every saloon were several small rooms in constant frantic use. That sort of thing did not officially exist, either. Jeff had never felt the urge to go upstairs in any place like that, of which he’d seen a good many. A few shots of whiskey, maybe some poker-that had been plenty.

He didn’t know what the hell he’d do now. Along with most of his pals, he went into a saloon that called itself the Gold Nugget. When they got inside, Sergeant Cross said, “They should have named this place the Cow Pie.” He didn’t walk out, though. None of the other dives in Grow was any different. Sawdust on the floor, a bouncer with a bludgeon on his belt and a sawed-off shotgun by his chair, the stink of sweat and booze and the barmaids’ cheap perfume…they all came with saloons in Grow and in any of scores of little towns behind both sides of the line from the Atlantic to the Gulf of California.

Somebody from another unit got out of a chair while Jeff was standing by it. He threw his backside into it before anyone else could. A barmaid wiggled through the crowd of soldiers trying to crowd up to the bar. Their hands roamed freely till she almost decked one of them with a roundhouse slap.

“I ain’t apples, boys,” she said. “You got to pay before you pinch the merchandise.”

She spoke good English, but her accent reminded Pinkard of Hip Rodriguez’s. So did her chamois-colored skin and black, black eyes. Most of the barmaids were of Mexican blood. A few were black. Jeff didn’t see any white women at the Gold Nugget, though some did work in the other saloons in Grow.

When the barmaid finally got over to him, he ordered a double shot of whiskey and gave her a dollar, which would have been outrageous before the war and was too damned expensive now. Pinkard wasn’t one of the ones who groused about that, though-what the hell else did he have to do with his money except spend it on hooch and whatever other pleasures he could find?

He knocked the whiskey back in a hurry after the barmaid-Consuela, some of the guys were calling her-brought it to him. It wasn’t the sort of whiskey to sip and savor. It tasted like kerosene and went down his throat as if it were wearing shoes with long, sharp spikes. But once it got to his stomach, it made him hot and it made him stupid, and that was the point of the exercise.

He waved his empty glass, a signal that he wanted a full one to take its place. Eventually, he got one. He drank it and peered around. The Gold Nugget looked cleaner. The kerosene lamps looked brighter. He wondered what the devil the barkeep was putting in the whiskey.

When he waved the glass again, Consuela brought him another refill. She looked better, too. A moment later, she plopped herself down in his lap. Coyly, she spoke in Spanish: “Te gustaria chingar?”

He had a pretty good idea what it meant. Chinga tu madre was one of the things Hip Rodriguez yelled at the Yankees when he ran out of English. To leave Jeff in no possible doubt, Consuela wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss. He wondered whom else she’d kissed lately-and where. After a few seconds, though, his blood heated and he stopped worrying.

“We go upstairs?” she asked, coming back to English. Then her voice got amazingly pragmatic: “Ten dollars. You have a hell of a good time.”

Ten dollars was at least five dollars too much. With three doubles sloshing around inside him, Jefferson Pinkard wasn’t inclined to argue. “Upstairs,” he agreed, surprised at the way his tongue stumbled inside his mouth. “Ten dollars. Hell of a good time.”

Going up the stairs took longer than it would have if he’d been sober. The cubicle to which Consuela led him was cramped and humid and smelled as if someone should have taken a hose to it a long time before. She held out a hand for the money, then shucked out of her clothes with nonchalant aplomb.

He had a little trouble rising to the occasion. “I’ll fix,” Consuela said, and started to lower her head.

“No!” Jeff exclaimed. She looked up at him in surprise; she probably hadn’t had anybody refuse that offer lately. But instead of Consuela’s face, Jeff saw Emily’s, her eyes glowing, on the night he’d caught her with Bedford Cunningham. She’d lowered her head that same way. The mixture of pleasure and pain was too strong for him to want to repeat it.

He spat on his palm and played with himself instead till he was stiff enough to go into Consuela. She shrugged and did her best to hurry him along once he was inside her. The second after he spent himself, he wished he hadn’t bothered. That was too late, of course.

Hip Rodriguez came out of a little cubicle two doors down from the one he’d used. The little Sonoran looked drunk and sad, too. “Ah, Jeff,” he said, “I do this, it feels good, and I still miss my esposa. Maybe I miss her more than ever. Where is the sense in this? Can you tell me?” He was drunk, all right, and drunkenly serious.

“Sense?” Jefferson Pinkard shook his head. “Damned if I see any of that anywhere at all.” He wondered if he missed Emily. He supposed he did. When an opium fiend couldn’t get his pipe, he missed it, didn’t he? That was how Jeff missed his wife. He wanted her. He longed for her. And he wanted her and longed for her even though he knew she wasn’t good for him.

Downstairs, the bouncer and a couple of military policemen were breaking up a brawl. The military policemen looked like men going about their business. The bouncer looked like someone having a hell of a good time. Pinkard wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with him, and he was a big man who’d been a steelworker before going into the Army. He wondered why the bouncer wasn’t wearing a uniform himself. Maybe they didn’t make one wide enough through the shoulders to fit him. Had a tent had sleeves, that might have worked.

Consuela didn’t waste much time upstairs. Pretty soon, she was down on the floor of the saloon again, hustling drinks. And pretty soon again, she was going up the stairs with another soldier.

“Look at that,” Jeff said. “Just look at that. If she does that kind of business every day, she’ll end up owning half of Texas by the time the war’s over.”

“Yes, and the Yankees will own the other half,” Rodriguez said. “And do you know what else, Jeff? I will not be sorry. Sonorans have no love for Texans. More than anyone else in the CSA, Texans treat Sonorans like niggers. Let the Yankees have Texas. Hasta la vista. Hasta luego.” He waved derisively. “Adios.”

“But you’re fighting in Texas,” Pinkard pointed out. “Never heard you talk like this here before.”

“Yes, I am fighting in Texas,” Rodriguez agreed sadly. “Mala suerte-bad luck. You never hear me talk like this?” His smile was oddly sweet. “I am not so drunk before, I think, when we talk of Texas.”

“I don’t give a damn about Texas myself any more,” Pinkard said. “Hell, we’ve lost the damn war. Like you say, the damnyankees are welcome to the place. All I want to do is go back home.”

“You no say, ‘Go back home to my wife,’ like you used to,” Rodriguez said. “You didn’t used to go up with the putas, neither, when they take us out of line.”

“Leave it alone, Hip,” Jeff said. “Leave it the hell alone. Whatever happened back there happened, is all. It ain’t anybody’s business but mine.”

Rodriguez looked at him with large, liquid eyes. He realized he’d never before admitted anything out of the ordinary had happened back in Birmingham. The Sonoran said, “I hope it turns out well for you, whatever it is.”

“I got my doubts, but I hope so, too,” Jeff said, and fell asleep in his chair.

Even out in the middle of the ocean, Sam Carsten kept a weather eye peeled for aeroplanes whenever he came out on the USS Dakota’s deck. He was still amazed at how much damage a bomb explosion could do; the one from the Argentine-based aeroplane had caused at least as much harm as a hit from a battleship’s secondary armament.

Hastily welded sheets of steel covered the destruction the bomb had wrought; they looked as out of place as bandages covering a wound on a man’s body. Because the patches were neither painted nor smooth, they drew the wrath of petty officers merely by existing. Sam laughed when he had that notion-he was a petty officer himself these days, even if he did still think like an ordinary seaman.

Hiram Kidde came up beside him. Kidde had been one of the exalted for a long time now; Carsten waited for some snide comment about the way the Dakota looked with a steel plate in her head, or at the least a grumble over the repairs’ not having been neater.

He got nothing of the sort. What Kidde said was, “It’s a good thing those limey sons of bitches didn’t have an armor-piercing nose on that bomb, the way we’ve got armor-piercing shells. Otherwise, that one little bastard would’ve done even worse than it did.”

Carsten considered that. After a couple of seconds, he nodded. “You’re likely right, ‘Cap’n,’ ” he said. “This was only a first try, though. I expect they’ll get it right, or we will, or somebody will, pretty damn quick.”

Kidde gave him a look that was anything but warm. “You know what you’re saying, don’t you?” he demanded. “You’re saying we might as well melt the Dakota and all the other battlewagons in the whole damn Navy down for tin cans right now, on account of by the time the next war rolls around, aeroplanes’ll sink ’em before they get within five hundred miles of where they’re going.”

“Am I saying that?” Sam did some more thinking. “Well, maybe I am. But I tell you what-maybe we don’t melt ’em down for cans till after this here war is over, because I don’t figure the aeroplanes’ll sink too many battleships this time out.”

“Real white of you,” the gunner’s mate said. “Real white. You make me feel like a guy in the buggy-whip business, going broke an inch at a time because people are buying Fords instead of buggies these days.”

“Hell of a big buggy whip we’re sailing on,” Sam observed after letting his eye run along the Dakota from bow to stern.

“Don’t talk stupid,” Hiram Kidde snapped. “You know what I’m talking about. You’re a squarehead, yeah, but you never were a dumb squarehead.”

“Goddamn, ‘Cap’n,’ you say the sweetest things,” Carsten said, and they both laughed. After one more pause for thought, Carsten went on, “Maybe we’ll get some use out of battleships in the next war after all.” He didn’t doubt there would be a next war; there would always be a next war.

Kidde got a cigar going, then held it in his mouth at an angle that made his dubious look even more dubious. “Wait a minute. You’re the same guy who was just saying somebody’d have armor-piercing aeroplane bombs long about day after tomorrow, or next week at the latest. Soon as that happens, the jig is up, right?”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “Maybe not, too. It’s up if the aeroplanes get to drop the bombs on the ships, sure as hell. But if our side has aeroplanes, too, to shoot down the other fellow’s bombing aeroplanes, the battleships can get on with the job they’re supposed to be doing, right?”

Now Kidde stopped and did some thinking. “That sounds good,” he said when he came out of his own study, “but I don’t think it works. You squeeze enough, you might be able to mount two or three aeroplanes on a battleship, maybe one or two on a cruiser. That won’t be enough to hold off all the aeroplanes the other bastards can throw at you from dry land.”

“Mmm,” Carsten said-an unhappy grunt. “Yeah, you’re right. A fleet’d need a whole ship stuffed full of aeroplanes, and there is no such animal.”

“See?” Hiram Kidde said. “You got to keep your head on your shoulders, or else you go flying off every which way.” He walked down toward the stern, puffing contentedly on his cigar.

Carsten stuck his thumbs in his trouser pockets and slowly mooched after the gunner’s mate. His idea had been pretty foolish, when you got down to it. He had a picture of the Navy, whose business was ships, building a ship to take care of aeroplanes. It hung in his mental gallery right alongside the portrait of the first Negro president of the Confederate States.

The Dakota swung through a turn toward the west, toward the Argentine coast. Sam knew what that meant: it meant that, aeroplanes or no aeroplanes, the flotilla was going to bore in and see what they could do to the British convoys scuttling along in or near Argentine territorial waters.

He supposed that made sense. It sure as hell made dollars and cents. This attack had surely cost millions to fit out, and as surely hadn’t worked near enough devastation to be worthwhile. Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske either had wireless orders from Philadelphia to do something worth doing, or else he was going to try to do something big to keep from getting wireless orders from Philadelphia telling him to sail his command back to Valparaiso and forget about marauding in the South Atlantic. Carsten had no way of knowing which of those was true, but he’d been in the Navy long enough to be pretty sure it was one or the other.

Rear Admiral Fiske was also doing everything he could to keep the Dakota and the American and Chilean ships with her from getting a nasty surprise of the sort they’d already had once. Long before klaxons hooted men to their battle stations, he had crews at all the antiaircraft guns on the battleship’s deck.

He also sent not only the Dakota’s aeroplane but the other two the flotilla boasted off to the west ahead of the ships. They wouldn’t be able to fight off any bombing aeroplanes, but they could at least warn of their presence. Sam wondered how much good that would do. He shrugged. It couldn’t hurt.

The U.S. aeroplanes could and did do one other useful thing: they could spot convoys for the Dakota and her companions to attack. Down in the five-inch gun’s sponson, Sam attributed a sudden shift in course to the north as likely springing from a wireless report. “Hope they haven’t stuck some freighters out there to humbug us into getting too close,” Luke Hoskins said.

“Now there’s a nice, cheery thought,” Carsten said. He turned to Hiram Kidde, who was peering out through the vision slit. “See anything, ‘Cap’n’?”

“Smoke trails,” the chief of the gun crew answered. “Can’t spot the ships that are making ’em, though. Land behind ’em. We-”

A thunderous roar interrupted him. “That’s the main armament,” Sam said unnecessarily. If it weren’t the main armament, it had to be the end of the world.

Kidde looked disgusted. “They must have let the big guns open up as soon as they could take the range up in the crow’s nest on the observation mast. Skipper doesn’t want to get in close enough to let us do any work.”

“After what happened that one time, do you blame him?” Sam asked.

“Blame him? Hell, yes, I blame him. I want to be in on the fun, too, ’stead of sitting around here like some homely girl nobody wants to dance with,” Kidde said. He paused. “Now if you ask me whether I think he’s smart to do it this way, that’s a different question. Yeah, he’s smart.”

“Listen,” Hoskins said from behind Sam, “the best fighting is the fighting you don’t have to do.” As he spoke, he had both hands on the casing of a shell, ready to pass it to Carsten.

“Nope.” Kidde shook his head. “What matters is winning.”

“If we can win here easy enough so they don’t have to squawk for the secondaries, that’ll be fighting we don’t have to do,” Sam said. “We, this gun crew, I mean.”

“Give the man a big, fat, smelly cigar and put him in the judge advocate’s office,” Kidde said with a snort. “Sure as hell sounds like a bunkroom lawyer to me.”

“I always hated a Rebel accent,” Carsten said, “but this one time when I was a kid, I heard a fellow from Louisiana going on and on about lawyers-he’d just lost a lawsuit down in the CSA, I guess-and every time he said the word, it sounded like he was saying liars. I liked that. The older I get, the better I like it, too.”

“I remember one time I-” Luke Hoskins began. They never found out what he’d done or said or thought one time, because the main armament bellowed out another broadside. Speech was impossible through that great slab of noise, thought nearly so.

Then Kidde shouted “Hit!”-his voice sounding thin and lost after the guns spoke with twelve-inch throats. Everybody yelled after that. Carsten elbowed his way to the vision slit. Sure enough, out there far away, a British or Argentine or French freighter was burning, sending up more smoke than could ever have come out its stack.

The cruisers with the flotilla were firing, too; their guns had enough range to reach the freighters. The destroyers stayed silent, for the excellent good reason that their main armament was no match for the five-inch guns of the battleships’ secondary weaponry. Battleships were fierce, proud creatures, sure as sure. Nothing that prowled the sea could beat them.

For a moment, that thought made Sam Carsten feel as large and powerful as the ship of which he was a tiny part. Then he remembered submersibles and floating mines and the gnat of an aeroplane that had carried such a nasty sting in its tail. Twenty years earlier, battleships might have been all but invulnerable, save to one another. It wasn’t like that any more.

What would it be like for battleships twenty years down the road? He and Hiram Kidde had had that discussion just a little while before. He came up with the same answer as he had then: it would be tough as hell.

That was twenty years down the road, though. Now, here, the battleships and cruisers methodically pounded the convoy of freighters to bits. No one came out to challenge them: no torpedo boats, no submersibles, no aeroplanes. They had everything their own way, just as they would have in the old days before aeroplanes, before submersibles, when even torpedo boats were hardly to be feared.

Sam should have felt triumphant. In fact, he did feel triumphant, but only in a limited way. We pounded them to bits wasn’t really what was going through his mind. It was much more on the order of, Thank you, Jesus. We got away with one this time.

The Canucks and the limeys were pushed back to their last line in front of Toronto. They’d been working on that line since 1914-probably since before that-and had no doubt worked on it again after barrels entered the picture. If Toronto fell, the war for Ontario was as near over as made no difference. They did not intend to let it fall.

What the Canadians and British intended was not the most urgent thing on Jonathan Moss’ mind. He had been a part of the struggle since the day it opened. Thinking back on the Curtiss Super Hudson aeroplane with the pusher prop he’d flown then, he laughed. If either side presumed to put a flimsy old bus like that in the air in this modern day and age, it would last only until the first enemy fighting scout spotted it and shot it down-unless, of course, it fell out of the sky of its own accord, as such antiques had been all too prone to do.

Moss set a gloved hand on the doped-fabric skin of his fast, graceful, streamlined Wright two-decker. Here was a machine to conjure with, nothing like the awkward makeshifts with which both the Quadruple Alliance and the Entente had gone to war.

Archie from the enemy’s antiaircraft guns burst a little below Moss’ flight. Some of those black puffs came close enough to make his aeroplane jerk from the concussion. He started his game of avoidance, speeding up, slowing down, gaining a little altitude, losing some, swinging his course now a few degrees to one side, now a few to the other.

Along both sides of the line, tethered observation balloons hung in the sky like fat sausages. Some pilots went hunting for them with whole belts of tracer ammunition, hoping the flaming phosphorus that made the rounds visible would set the hydrogen in the balloons afire. Anyone who got forced down on the other side’s territory with that kind of load in his guns was unlikely to survive the experience, even if he landed perfectly.

And some pilots hunted balloons with no more than their usual ammunition. Moss had gone after a few in his time on the front line, but he’d never really worked at being a balloon buster. To him, enemy aeroplanes and enemy troops on the ground seemed more important targets.

Here today, though, one balloon in particular caught his eye. It had to be floating close to a mile in the air, a thousand feet or so higher than the other gas-filled cylinders from which observers watched U.S. troops movements and called artillery down on the Americans’ heads.

Moss grunted, a sound of discontent he could not hear over the roar of the engine and the shriek of the wind. That balloon was liable to be a trap. The enemy always had plenty of Archie around his sausages. If they’d run up a balloon there just to lure U.S. aeroplanes, they were liable to have more than plenty. But those extra thousand feet would give an observer a long, long look behind the American lines.

If the observation balloon was a trap, it was-that was all there was to it. Trap or not, it needed taking out. Moss nodded to himself as decision firmed. He swung his aeroplane toward the balloon. Percy Stone, Hans Oppenheim, and Pete Bradley followed without hesitation, though they had to know what they were liable to be getting into.

Sure as hell, heavy antiaircraft fire burst around Moss’ two-decker as he approached the balloon. “Told you so,” he said to no one in particular. He did settle one thing to his satisfaction, though: it was an observation balloon, not just a trap. He could see a man moving in the wicker basket beneath the gas bag.

Often, a balloon’s groundcrew would reel it in by its cable when it came under attack. That didn’t happen here. Maybe the observer thought the Archie would drive off the U.S. aeroplanes. Maybe he was a patriot. Maybe he was a damn fool. Moss neither knew nor cared. If the fellow stayed up there so temptingly high, he was going to get himself and his balloon shot to bits.

The twin machine guns mounted about the fighting scout’s engine started chattering. Moss aimed the stream of bullets first at the balloon and then at the smaller, more difficult target the wicker basket made.

To his amazement, the enemy observer started shooting back. He was hideously outgunned, but he’d brought a rifle up there to keep him company, and he was taking aimed potshots at Moss and his flightmates. The son of a bitch was a good shot, too. A bullet cracked past Moss’ head, close enough to scare him out of a year’s growth. He jammed his thumb down on the firing button as hard as he could, trying to blow holes in that crazy Canadian or eccentric Englishman or whatever the hell he was. He’d never live it down if he got shot down by an observer in a balloon basket.

That was a joke, something to laugh at, till Hans Oppenheim’s aeroplane pulled out of its run at the balloon and broke back toward the west, toward the American lines. Either the bus or Oppenheim himself was in trouble; Moss saw to his astonished dismay that his flightmate wasn’t going to make it back to territory the U.S. Army controlled. Down Hans went, not far from an enemy artillery position.

Canucks and limeys came running from every direction toward Oppenheim’s aeroplane. After seeing that, Moss had to look away, because he was around the far side of the balloon, with that infernal observer still blazing away at him and Stone and Bradley. The son of a bitch was a good shot. A bullet thrummed through the tight-stretched fabric of the fuselage, about three feet behind Moss’ seat.

He whipped the Wright two-decker into a tight turn and bored in on the observation balloon, Stone behind him to the right, Bradley to the left. “There!” he shouted in savage exultation, as the hydrogen in the fabric sausage finally caught fire. “That’ll teach you, you bastard.”

Maybe nothing would teach the observer. Even as his crew on the ground at last began hauling down the flaming balloon, he calmly climbed over the edge of the wicker basket from which he’d fought so hard and so well and leaped off into space.

His parachute must have been connected to the basket by a static line, for the big silk canopy opened almost at once. Pilots of fighting scouts were not issued parachutes. Moss didn’t know whether to be jealous or to despise the device as a sissy affectation.

The latter, he decided, and swung the nose of his aeroplane down a little. A burst from his machine gun, and the observer hung limp and unmoving beneath the ’chute. Maybe Moss wouldn’t have done it had the fellow not shot down his friend. But maybe he would have, too; that Canuck or limey or whoever he was had been too damn good to let him live.

Moss swooped down below the thunderous Archie and streaked toward the spot where Hans Oppenheim’s aeroplane went down. His flightmate wasn’t inside the bus any more; dead or alive, the enemy soldiers had taken him away. A crowd of men in khaki were gathered around the Wright. Moss machine-gunned them, and whooped with glee to watch them scatter. Some didn’t scatter-some crumpled and wouldn’t get up again.

Then Moss and Stone and Bradley zoomed past the disabled two-decker and low over the front line. The Canadian and British troops in the trenches gave them a warm sendoff with rifle and machine-gun fire. And then, because they were coming out of the east, half the Americans assumed they had to be hostile and fired at them, too. More bullets pierced Moss’ aeroplane.

“Now wouldn’t that be bully?” he growled. “Hell of a mission to have to try and explain to Major Cherney: a balloon observer shot down one machine from the flight and our own ground fire made another one crash. He’d love that, yes he would. He’d love it a hell of a lot.”

But his two-decker kept flying, and so, he saw to his relief in the rearview mirror, did those of Percy Stone and Pete Bradley. U.S. antiaircraft guns opened up on them, too, but they made it back to the Orangeville aerodrome unscathed.

As Moss had known it would be, “What happened to Lieutenant Oppenheim?” was the first question the groundcrew asked after he shut off the motor and the sounds of the outside world returned to his ears. After he answered, the silence that fell made him wonder if he’d gone deaf.

“You’re joking, ain’t you, sir?” asked a fitter who was walking down the length of the fuselage and examining the bullet holes Moss had picked up. “I mean to say, you guys shoot at the balloons. The guys in the balloons don’t shoot back-that’s Archie’s job.”

“You know that, Herm, and I know that,” Moss said, “but nobody ever told this skunk. One thing, though-he won’t ever do it again.” The groundcrew man nodded at the grim emphasis he gave the words.

As they walked toward Major Cherney’s tent, Stone and Bradley sounded as disbelieving as had Herm. “The nerve of that son of a gun,” Bradley said, over and over. “The nerve!”

“Good thing you got him,” Stone said to Moss. “If somebody didn’t punch his ticket for him, he’d have ended up an ace, and he hasn’t even got a motor in that damn thing.”

When they told Major Cherney what had happened to Hans Oppenheim, the squadron leader looked at them for a long time without saying anything. At last, he did speak: “You really mean it.” Solemnly, Moss, Stone, and Bradley nodded. Cherney shook his head. “You go into a war. You fight it for damn near three years. You think you’ve heard every single thing that could happen. And then…” He shook his head again. “Shot down by an observer in a balloon. I will be goddamned. Maybe it’s just as well for him that he didn’t make it back to our side of the line. Nobody would ever have let him forget it.”

“I only hope he’s alive to try and forget it, sir,” Pete Bradley said. “I couldn’t tell when we flew over his aeroplane.”

“Neither could I,” Moss and Stone said together.

“I will be goddamned,” Major Cherney repeated. He let out a long, slow sigh. “Maybe the Canucks will let us know. They do sometimes when one of our boys gets forced down on their side, same as we do for them.”

Two days later, an enemy aeroplane dropped a note behind the U.S. line in a washed-out jam tin made more noticeable by the small ’chute taken from a parachute flare. It duly made its way back to the Orangeville aerodrome, where Major Cherney called in Moss, Stone, and Bradley. “Hansie died of wounds,” he said heavily. “The Canadians buried him with full military honors, for whatever it’s worth.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jonathan Moss said. With one accord, he and his flightmates headed for the officers’ club after they left the squadron commander’s tent. After they had the first of what would be many drinks in front of them, Moss turned to the men on whom his life depended-and vice versa-and said, “Well, boys, I wonder what sort of bird’ll join our flock next.”

“Won’t be long till we find out,” Bradley said. Soberly-for the time being-Moss nodded.

Time hung heavy in the hospital. Lying there with a rubber drainage tube coming out of the shoulder that still stubbornly refused to heal, Reggie Bartlett had plenty of time to think and very little chance to do anything else.

One of the things he thought about-and disapproved of-was the weather. “You all sure this is really Yankee country?” he asked the wounded U.S. soldiers who filled most of the beds in the big ward. “Richmond doesn’t get any hotter and stickier than this.”

“St. Louis, sure as hell,” Pete reminded him. The one-legged soldier winked. “You ought to feel at home, ain’t that right?”

“Doesn’t mean I liked the weather,” Reggie said. “Anybody who likes summer in the Confederate States is crazy.” He turned to his countryman for support. “Isn’t that right, Rehoboam?”

The Negro was scratching toes on the foot he no longer had, as he often did. He said, “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout what it’s like in Richmond. Out in the fields down around Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where I’s from, it gets powerful hot in the summertime. This ain’t a patch on that, I don’t reckon.”

“From what I’ve heard about Mississippi, I expect hell would look chilly in the summertime next to it,” Reggie said thoughtfully. His shoulder twinged. He grunted and thought some more till the pain faded. Then he added, “Working in the fields down there doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.”

Rehoboam looked at him from across the aisle. “You ain’t the stupidest white man I ever did see.”

Pete whistled. “You gonna let him talk to you like that, Reggie? I thought a smoke who talked to a white man like that down in the CSA could go and write his will-except you wouldn’t let him learn to write and he wouldn’t own enough to bother leaving it to anybody.”

“You’re a natural-born troublemaker,” Reggie told him. “If you still had that other leg, I’d tear it off you and beat Rehoboam to death with it. That’d settle both of you. There. Are you satisfied now?”

“Minute I woke up and found out I was shy a pin, I was satisfied and then some, I’ll tell you that right now,” the amputee answered. “Right then, I knew I’d had all the fighting I was ever going to do.”

Reggie only grunted in reply to that. He still wasn’t satisfied, not in that sense. If he ever got healed up, he’d try to escape again. He’d done it once; he didn’t think doing it again would be so hard. But, while his leg wound bothered him less each day, pus still dripped from that shoulder. It left him sore and weak and feverish. There were lots of things he told himself he should be doing, but he lacked the energy to do any of them. Lying here was what he was up to, and lying here was what he did.

In came the nurse with a tray of suppers. Everyone got an identical slab of chicken breast-or possibly it was baked cardboard-an identical lump of mashed potatoes with gravy that looked and tasted like rust and machine oil, and something that might have been bread pudding or might have been sponge in molasses.

After working his way through the dismal meal, Reggie said, “You Yankees are winning the damn war-or you say you are-and this is what they give you? God have mercy on you if you were losing, that’s all I can tell you.”

“If cooking was something they shot out of the barrel of a gun, we’d be good at it,” Pete said. “Since it ain’t, we haven’t much bothered with it since the end of the Second Mexican War. Had more important things to worry about instead.”

Rehoboam said, “The kind o’ cooking you Yankees do here, y’all ought to shoot it out the barrel of a gun.”

“Amen,” Reggie said. “But if you shot it at our side, you’d just make the boys fight harder, for fear of having to eat like that all the time.”

Pete laughed. So did the rest of the wounded U.S. soldiers. They were no fonder of the grub the military hospital doled out than were their Confederate counterparts. And so did Rehoboam. But his laugh had an edge to it, and his dark face twisted in a way that for once had nothing to do with the pain and phantom itches from his missing foot.

“What’s chewing on you?” Reggie called across the aisle.

“What do you reckon?” Rehoboam returned. “When you was talkin’ ’bout what the boys’d do, you didn’t mean me. I ain’t the boys to you, an’ I ain’t never gwine be the boys, neither. I’s just a nigger, an’ I’d be a nigger without a gun if all the whites in the CSA wasn’t worse afeared o’ the damnyankees kickin’ ’em in the ass than they was of putting a Tredegar in my hands and callin’ me a sojer.”

He hadn’t spoken in a loud voice, but he hadn’t particularly kept it down, either. Everybody in the ward must have heard him. Silence slammed down. Everybody looked toward Reggie Bartlett, to see what he would say.

He hadn’t the faintest idea what the devil to say. He’d seen for himself that Confederate blacks harbored a deep and abiding loathing for the whites who ruled them. Outside of the prisoner-of-war camp in West Virginia, though, none of them had ever come out and said so to his face.

Rehoboam pressed the point, too: “What you think, Reggie? Is that the truth, or ain’t it?”

Bartlett had never had a Negro simply call him by his name before, either. He said, “Yeah, that’s the truth. I was there in Capitol Square in Richmond when President Wilson declared war on the USA, and I cheered and threw away my straw boater, same as every other damn fool in the place. If we could have licked these fellows here”-he waved with his good arm at the men in the green-gray hospital gowns-“without giving black men guns, of course we’d’ve done it.”

“Kept things like they always was, you mean,” Rehoboam said.

“Of course,” Reggie repeated. Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize it wasn’t necessarily of course. White Confederate public opinion was so wedded to the status quo that realizing other choices were possible came hard.

Then Pete stuck his oar in the water, saying, “Blacks got guns of their own any which way.”

“Don’t know much about that, especially not firsthand,” Bartlett said. “I got captured over on the Roanoke front before the risings started, and they’d been put down by the time I got loose.”

“Bunch of Reds.” Pete gleefully stoked the fire.

He got Rehoboam hot, too. “You take a man and you work him like they works niggers in the CSA,” the Negro growled, “and if he don’t turn into no Red, he ain’t much in the way of a man. Wasn’t for the risings, I don’t reckon Congress never would’ve done nothin’ about the Army.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right,” Reggie said. “But they did do something, you know. I was thinking about that a while ago. When you go back to Mississippi, you’ll be a citizen, with all the same rights I’ve got.”

“Mebbe,” Rehoboam said through clenched teeth. “Mebbe not, too.”

“It’s what the law says,” Bartlett pointed out.

“Ain’t got no black police. Ain’t got no black lawyers. Ain’t got no black judges. Ain’t got no black politicians.” Rehoboam rolled his eyes at Reggie’s naivete. “How much good you reckon the law gwine do fo’ the likes o’me?”

To Reggie, a law was a law, to be obeyed automatically for no better reason than that it was there. Seeing another side of things made him feel jittery, as if an earthquake had just shaken his bed. Still, he answered, “If there’s enough of the likes of you, you’ll do all right.”

“You reckon the stork brings the babies, too?” Rehoboam asked acidly. “Or do you figure they finds ’em under the cabbage leaves when they wants ’em?”

The ward erupted in laughter, laughter aimed at Reggie. His ears got hot. “No,” he said with venom of his own. “The Red party chairman or general secretary assigns ’em. That’s how it worked in the Socialist Republics, isn’t it?”

“You liable to be too smart for your own good,” Rehoboam said after a pause.

“I doubt it, not if I volunteered for the Army,” Bartlett replied. “And if you didn’t want to be a citizen, and if you didn’t think being a citizen was worth anything, what made you put on butternut?”

That made the Negro pause again. “Mebbe I was hopin’ more’n I was expectin’, you know what I’m sayin’?”

As a white man, as a white man living in a country that had beaten its neighbor two wars in a row, Bartlett had seldom had to worry about hope. His expectations, and those of his white countrymen, were generally fulfilled. He said, “I wonder what the Confederate States will look like after the war’s over.”

“Smaller,” Pete put in.

Both men from the CSA ignored him. Rehoboam said, “We don’t get what’s comin’ to us, we jus’ rise up again.”

“You’ll lose again,” Reggie said. “Aren’t enough of you, and you still won’t have enough guns. And we won’t be fighting the damnyankees any more.”

“Mebbe they give us a hand,” Rehoboam said. “Mebbe they give us guns.”

“Not likely.” Now Reggie’s voice was blunt. “They don’t much fancy black folks themselves, you know. If we deal with you, that’d suit them fine.”

And Rehoboam, who had answered back as boldly as if he were a man who had known himself to be free and equal to all other men since birth, now fell silent. His eyes flicked from one of the wounded U.S. soldiers with whom he shared the ward to the next. Whatever he saw there did not reassure him. He buried his face in his hands.

Pete said, “I guess you told him.”

“I guess I did,” said Reggie, who had not expected the Negro to have so strong a reaction over what was to him simply a fact of nature. He called to Rehoboam, “Come on, stick your chin up. It’s not that bad.”

“Not for you.” Rehoboam’s voice was muffled by the palms of his hands. “You’re white, you goddamn son of a bitch. You got the world by the balls, just on account of the noonday sun kill you dead.”

“If I had the world by the balls, none of these damnyankee bastards would have shot me,” Bartlett pointed out.

Rehoboam grunted. Finally, he said, “You had the world by the balls when you wasn’t in the Army, anyways. It’s the rich white bastards who don’t never have to fight got the world by the balls all the time.”

“See? I knew you were a Red,” Reggie said.

“Maybe he’s just a good Socialist,” Pete said.

“What the hell’s the difference?” Reggie demanded.

Rehoboam and Pete both got offended. They both started to explain the difference. Then they started to argue about the difference, as if one of them were a Methodist preacher and the other a hardshell Baptist. Reggie lay back and enjoyed the show. It was the most entertainment he’d had since he got wounded.

Bertha came back into Flora Hamburger’s private office. “Congresswoman, Mr. Wiggins is here to see you. Your two o’clock appointment.”

“Thank you,” Flora told the secretary. “Send him in.”

She put away the Transportation Committee report she’d been reading and wondered again whether she should have made the appointment with Mr. Edward C.L.-he’d insisted on both middle initials-Wiggins. Over the telephone, he hadn’t described his reason for wanting to see her as anything more specific than “a matter of possible common interest.” Well, if that was a polite way of leading up to offering her a bribe, she’d show him out the door one minute and put the U.S. marshals on his trail the next.

In he came. He proved to be a chunky little man in his late forties, sweating in a wool tweed suit and vest and fanning himself with a straw hat. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance in person, ma’am,” he said, giving Flora a nod just short of a bow. His manner was courtly, almost stagily so.

“Pleased to meet you, too,” Flora answered, wondering if she was lying. She did not believe in beating around the bush: “Now that we are meeting in person, I hope you will tell me what you have in mind.”

“I certainly aim to,” Edward C.L. Wiggins replied. “I want you to know, I truly do admire the way you’ve spoken out against the war, both before you got elected to Congress and since. I think it does you great credit.”

Flora had not expected that tack. “Thank you,” she said. “But I don’t quite see what that has to do with-”

“I’ll tell you, then,” Wiggins broke in. “You are not the only one who thinks this war was a mistake from the beginning and has gone on far too long already. I do hope your brother is doing well.”

“As well as you can with one leg,” Flora said tightly. Then she stared at her visitor. “How do you know about David and what happened to him? Are you connected with the War Department, and coming around here to gloat because I wouldn’t play along with you?”

“No, ma’am.” Edward C.L. Wiggins raised his right hand, as if taking an oath. “I have nothing to do with the U.S. government, nothing whatsoever. The people I have to do with don’t want this war to go on any more. They want to end it as soon as may be. That’s why I’m here: because you’ve been bold enough and brave enough and wise enough to want the killing stopped, too.”

“Thank you,” Flora repeated. “Who are the people you have to do with?” He was not a Socialist. She was sure of that. He behaved like a prominent man in his own circle, whatever that was, and it was not hers. Were the remnant Republicans approaching her with some kind of deal? Was he a renegade Democrat? A capitalist who’d grown a conscience?

“You must understand, this is at present highly unofficial, ma’am,” Wiggins said. Flora did not reply. In another moment, she was going to ask her visitor to leave. He must have sensed that, for he sighed and went on more quickly than he’d spoken before: “Very well, ma’am; I rely on your discretion. Unofficially, I have to do with President Gabriel Semmes, down in Richmond. The Confederate States are looking to see if there might be an honorable way to put an end to this ghastly war.”

Flora Hamburger gaped. That was among the last answers she’d expected. “Why me?” she blurted. “If President Semmes wants peace, why not go straight to President Roosevelt, who can give it to him?”

“Because President Roosevelt has made it plain he does not want peace, or peace this side of subjugation,” Wiggins replied. “Sooner than accept that, the CSA will go on fighting: I was instructed to be very clear there. But a fair peace, an equitable peace, a peace between equals, a peace that will let both sides rebuild after this devastation-that, President Semmes will accept, and gladly.”

“I see,” Flora said slowly. She had no great love for President Gabriel Semmes, reckoning him as much a class enemy of the proletariat as Theodore Roosevelt. His unofficial emissary had approached her in defense of no principle save his country’s interest. Still…“I will take what you have said to President Roosevelt. I can urge him to accept the kind of peace you are talking about, though you have given me no details. Kentucky has rejoined the USA, for instance. How do you stand on that?”

“We would accept the results of plebiscites as binding, there and elsewhere,” Wiggins answered. Flora nodded in understanding and some admiration. That not only had a fine democratic ring to it, it was likely to favor the CSA. Edward C.L. Wiggins went on, “We are also ready to negotiate all other matters standing in the way of peace between our two great American nations.”

“If President Roosevelt wishes to reach you, how may he do so?” Flora asked.

“I am at the Aldine Hotel, on Chestnut Street,” Wiggins said. Flora nodded again and wrote that down, though she had not taken notes on any other part of the conversation. Wiggins rose, bowed, and departed.

Flora stared down for a long time at the address she’d written. Then she picked up the telephone and told the switchboard operator she wished to be connected with the Powel House. “Congresswoman Hamburger?” President Roosevelt boomed in her ear a couple of minutes later. “To what do I owe the honor of this call?” Why does a radical Socialist congresswoman want to talk with me? was what he meant.

She gave him the gist of what Wiggins had told her, finishing, “In my opinion, Mr. President, any chance to end this horrible war is a good one.”

Roosevelt was silent for a while, a novelty in itself. Then he said, “Miss Hamburger, your brother-in-law lost his life in the service of his country. Your brother has been wounded in that service, and my heart goes out to him and to you and to your family. I am going to speak plainly to you now. In a fight, if you have a man down, you had better not let him up until you have finished beating him. Otherwise, he will think he could have beaten you, and he will try to beat you again first chance he sees. If the Confederate States want to say ‘Uncle,’ they shouldn’t come pussyfooting up to you and whisper it. Let them cry ‘Uncle!’ for the whole wide world to hear.”

“Haven’t you seen enough fighting yet, Mr. President?” Flora asked.

“As for seeing it, I’ve seen a great deal more than you have,” Roosevelt answered. “I’ve seen enough that I don’t want to see more in a generation’s time. And that is why, before I make peace with Confederate States, I aim to lick them till they don’t dream about getting up any more, and Canada right along with ’em.”

“If the Confederate States are seeking terms of peace, don’t you think they’ve seen enough war?” Flora said.

“If they want peace, Miss Hamburger,” Roosevelt told her again, “let them come right out and say so instead of sneaking around behind my back. Can you grant them peace, pray tell?”

“Of course not,” Flora said, “though I would if I could.”

“I would not,” Roosevelt said, “most especially not if they go about it in this underhanded way. And, since I was comfortably returned as president of the United States, defeating Senator Debs who shares your views, I must conclude that my views on the subject are also the views of the large majority of the American people.”

That was probably true. Because of it, Flora did not have a good opinion of the political wisdom of the large majority of the American people. Nationalism kept too many from voting their class interests. She said, “Mr. Wiggins-Mr. Edward C.L. Wiggins-is staying at the Aldine Hotel. I think you should hear him out, to see if the terms Richmond proposes are acceptable to you.”

“Not bloody likely,” Roosevelt said with a snort. “What did this fellow with the herd of initials have to say about Kentucky, for instance?”

Roosevelt might be a class enemy, but he was no fool. Flora reminded herself of it again: he went straight for the center of things. Reluctantly, she answered, “He spoke of a plebiscite, and-”

“No,” Roosevelt broke in. “Kentucky is ours, and stays ours. And I need hear no more. When the Confederate States are serious, they will let us know. Good day, Miss Hamburger.” He hung up.

So did Flora, angrily. Slighted was the least of what she felt. Her first instinct was to call or wire half a dozen good Socialist newspapers and break the story of the president’s refusal to negotiate with the CSA. But, before she picked up the telephone once more, she had second thoughts that had nothing to do with Socialism and everything to do with the ghetto from which her family had escaped to the United States. Don’t do anything to make things worse was the eleventh commandment of the ghetto, at least as important as the original ten.

And so, when she did pick up the telephone, it was not to call the newspapers: not at first, at any rate. Instead, when her call was answered, she said, “May I please speak with Mr. Blackford? This is Miss Hamburger.”

“Hello, Flora,” Hosea Blackford said a moment later. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

Flora felt her face heat at Blackford’s cordial-maybe even more than cordial-tone. As baldly as she could, she told him of the approach from Edward C.L. Wiggins, and of President Roosevelt’s response to it. When she was through, she said, “I want to expose Roosevelt for the bloodthirsty rogue he is, but at the same time I don’t want to do anything that would hurt the Party.”

Blackford was silent even longer than Roosevelt had been when she put Wiggins’ proposal to him. She heard him sigh, start to speak, and then stop. At last, he said, “Much as I regret admitting it, I would advise you to keep Mr.-Wiggins’, was it? — visit to yourself. You might embarrass Teddy if you thunder what he did from the rooftops. You might, I say, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it. You’re too much likelier to embarrass us instead.”

Flora made automatic protest: “This is a capitalists’ war. If we can keep the workers and farmers of one country from slaughtering those of another in the sacred name of profit, how can we hold back?”

“Because the workers and farmers of the United States will be perfectly happy to slaughter those of the Confederacy and Canada as long as they win in the end.” Was Blackford mournful or cynical or both at once? Flora couldn’t tell. The congressman from Dakota went on, “A year ago, I would have told you to take it to the papers as fast as you could. A year ago, the war was going nowhere.”

“And because it was going nowhere, the Confederate States wouldn’t have come to anyone in Congress looking for a way out,” Flora said.

“Exactly.” Blackford paused for a moment, perhaps to nod. “But if you go to the papers now, with the war on the edge of being won, Roosevelt will crucify us and say we’re jogging his elbow-and I’m afraid people will believe him.”

“But-” Flora didn’t go on right away, either. She sighed instead; it seemed to be her turn. Then she said, “All right, Hosea; thank you. You may be right.” Only then did she realize she’d called him by his first name.

“I am right. I wish I weren’t, but I am,” he said, and changed the subject: “How is your brother doing?”

“He’s not going to die,” Flora answered. “He’s out of the woods, as far as that goes. He’s only going to be crippled for life, in this war that Teddy Roosevelt has brought to the edge of being won, this war where we don’t dare jog his elbow, this great, grand, glorious, triumphant war.” She hung up the telephone and, very quietly, began to cry.