In At the Death

XIX

"Hi, hon," Sally Dover said when Jerry came back to the house. "You got a telephone call maybe half an hour ago."

"Oh, yeah?" Dover gave his wife the kind of absentminded kiss people who've been married a long time often share. "Good thing we didn't take it out yet, then." That was coming soon, he feared. You could pretend to stay middle-class for a while when you were out of work, but only for a while. After that, you started saving every cent you could, every way you could. The Dovers weren't eating meat very often these days, and most of the meat they did eat was sowbelly.

"Here's the number." She gave him a scrap of paper.

He'd hoped it would be the Huntsman's Lodge. It wasn't. He knew that number by heart, of course. He knew the numbers for just about all the restaurants in Augusta by heart. This wasn't any of them. If it was anything that had to do with work, whether in a restaurant or not, he would leap at it now.

He dialed the operator and gave her the number. She put the call through. It rang twice before someone on the other end picked it up. "This is Mr. Broxton's residence." The voice was unfamiliar. The accent wasn't-if the man hadn't been born in Mexico, Jerry Dover was an Eskimo.

Hope was also unfamiliar. Charlemagne Broxton-and wasn't that a name to remember? — was the principal owner of the Huntsman's Lodge. Heart thuttering, Dover gave his name. "I'm returning Mr. Broxton's call," he said.

"Oh, yes, sir. One moment, please," the-butler? — said. Back before the war, Charlemagne Broxton had had colored servants. Who among the wealthy in Augusta hadn't? Where were they now? Nobody who'd lived through the war wanted to think about things like that. Nobody on the Confederate side, anyway-the damnyankees were much too fond of asking such inconvenient and embarrassing questions.

"Broxton here." This voice was deep and gruff and familiar. "That you, Dover?"

No. My name's Reilly, and I sell lampshades. The mad, idiot quip flickered through Dover's mind and, fortunately, went out. "Yeah, it's me, Mr. Broxton. What can I do for you, sir?"

"Well, I hear you're looking for work," Broxton said. "How would you like your old job back?"

"I'd like that fine, Mr. Broxton. But what happened to Willard Sloan?" Jerry Dover asked.

Shut up! Are you out of your mind? Sally mouthed at him. He ignored her. No matter how tight things were, he didn't want to put a cripple on the street. That could have happened to him if a bullet or a shell fragment changed course by a few inches.

"Well, we had to let him go," Broxton answered.

"How come?" Dover persisted. "Not for my sake, I hope. He could do the job." Sally looked daggers at him. He went right on pretending not to see.

"Didn't have anything to do with that," Broxton said. Jerry Dover waited. The restaurant owner coughed. "Can you keep this quiet? I don't want to hurt his chances somewhere else."

"C'mon, Mr. Broxton. How many years have you known me? Do I blab?" Dover said.

"Well, no." Charlemagne Broxton coughed again. "We caught him taking rakeoffs from suppliers. Big rakeoffs. And so…"

If some food disappeared from the restaurant, well, that was part of the overhead. The manager and the cooks and the waiters and the busboys all stole a little. Skimming cash was something else again. If you got caught, you got canned. The one might not cost more than the other, but it went over the line. Dover wondered why Sloan needed to do it. Was he a gambler? Was he paying somebody else off? (Dover knew too much about that.) Or did he just get greedy? If he did, he was pretty dumb. And so? People were dumb, all the goddamn time.

"If you need me back, you know I'll be there," Dover said.

"Good. I hoped you'd say that." Charlemagne Broxton coughed one more time. "Ah…There is the question of your pay." He named a figure just over half of what Dover had been making before he went into uniform.

"You can do better than that, Mr. Broxton," Dover said. "I happen to know you were paying Willard Sloan more than that." Sally gave him a Freedom Party salute. He scowled at her; that was dangerous even in private. And if you did it in private you might slip and do it in public. His wife stuck out her tongue at him.

Broxton sighed. "Business isn't what it used to be. But all right. I'll give you what I was giving Sloan." He named another figure, which did indeed just about match what Jerry Dover had heard. Then he said, "Don't try fooling around to bump it up, the way Sloan did."

"If you think I will, you better not hire me," Dover replied.

"If I thought you would, I wouldn't have called," Broxton said. "But I didn't think Sloan would, either, dammit."

"When do you want me to start?" Dover asked.

"Fast as you can get over to the restaurant," the owner answered. "I've got Luis tending to it now, and I want him to go back to boss cook fast as he can. A greaser in that spot'd steal me blind faster'n Sloan did."

From what Jerry Dover had seen, honesty and its flip side had little to do with color. He didn't argue with Charlemagne Broxton, though. "Be there in half an hour," he promised, and hung up.

Sally flew into his arms and kissed him. "They want you back!" she said. He nodded. Her smile was bright as the sun. She'd worked in a munitions plant during the war, but times had been lean since. Money coming in was a good thing.

After Dover detached himself from her, he put on a tie and a jacket and hustled off to the Huntsman's Lodge. He didn't want to be late, even by a minute. As he hurried along Augusta's battered streets, he contemplated ways and means. He didn't want the head cook pissed off at him. That was trouble with a capital T. He'd have to find a way to keep Luis sweet, or else get him out of the restaurant.

To his relief, the Mexican didn't seem angry. "I'd rather cook," he said. "The suppliers, all they do is try to screw you. You want to take it, Seсor Dover, you welcome to it."

Dover's grin was pure predator. "I don't take it, man. I give it." Luis blinked. Then he grinned, too.

Before Dover could give it, he had to find out what was there. He checked the refrigerators and the produce bins. The menu had changed a little since he went into the Army. Part of that was because some things were unavailable. Part of it was because the damnyankees who made up such a big part of the clientele these days had different tastes from the regulars who'd filled the place before the war.

A glance at the list of telephone numbers in the manager's office said a good many suppliers had changed, too. Some of the old bunch were probably dead. Some were more likely out of business. And some of the new ones had been giving Sloan kickbacks.

"Damned if you don't sound like Jerry Dover," said a butcher Jerry'd known for a long time.

"Yeah, it's me all right, Phil," Dover agreed. "So your days of fucking the Huntsman's Lodge are over, through, finished. Got it?"

"I wouldn't do that!" Phil the butcher sounded painfully pure of heart.

He gave Dover a pain, all right. "Yeah, and then you wake up," he said sweetly.

He also enjoyed introducing himself to the new suppliers. If they gave him what they said they would and gave him decent prices, he didn't expect to have any trouble with them. If they tried to palm crap off on him…He chuckled in anticipation. They'd find out. Boy, would they ever!

For tonight, the place would run on what Luis had laid in. From what Dover had seen, the boss cook hadn't done badly. If he didn't want the job-well, that made things easier all the way around.

Most of the time, Jerry stayed behind the scenes. He would only come out and show himself to the customers if somebody wasn't happy and the waiters couldn't set things right by themselves. Tonight, though, he felt not just an urge but an obligation to look around and make sure things ran smoothly. He didn't want Charlemagne Broxton to regret hiring him back.

Everything seemed all right. The Mexican waiters and busboys sounded different from the Negroes who'd been here before, but they knew what to do. He'd started hiring Mexicans during the war. He'd already seen that they weren't allergic to work.

The customers seemed happy. Some of them were locals. One or two even recognized him, which left him surprised and pleased. More were U.S. officers. They didn't know him from a hole in the wall, which suited him fine. If the local women with them did know him, they didn't let on.

Then, around ten o'clock, a woman waved to him. She wasn't local, which didn't mean he didn't know her. He wished he'd stayed in his office. Melanie Leigh waved again, imperiously this time. He didn't want to go over to the table she shared with a U.S. colonel, but he feared he had no choice.

"Hello, Jerry," she said, as brightly as if she hadn't been his blackmailing mistress and a likely Yankee spy. "Don, this is Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry Dover. We've been friends a long time. Jerry, this is Don Gutteridge."

"I'm very retired, Colonel Gutteridge," Dover said, hesitantly offering his hand.

Gutteridge shook it. He was about fifty, in good hard shape for his age. "You were in the Quartermaster Corps, isn't that right?" he said.

Dover nodded. "Uh-huh. How did you know?" He looked at Melanie. Her blue eyes might have been innocence itself…or they might not have. Knowing her, they probably weren't.

"Let me buy you a drink, Dover, and I'll tell you about it," Gutteridge said. "War's over. We can talk about some things now that we couldn't before."

At his wave, a waiter appeared. He ordered whiskey all around, asking Dover with his eyebrows if that was all right. Dover nodded. The waiter went away. Before the drinks came back, Dover asked, "Were you Melanie's…handler? Isn't that what the spies call it?"

"Yeah, I was, and yeah, that's what we call it," Gutteridge answered easily. "You almost got her caught, you know."

Jerry Dover shrugged, as impassively as he could. "I gave it my best shot. I could afford the money-and I got value received for it, too," he said. Melanie turned red; she was fair enough to make that obvious, even in the low light inside the Huntsman's Lodge. Dover went on, "I could afford that, yeah, but I didn't want to pass on any secrets. And so I talked to some of our own Intelligence boys, and…"

"I didn't even wait for the answer to the letter I sent you," Melanie said. "Something didn't feel right, so I took a powder."

The drinks arrived. Dover needed his. "How'd you land on me, anyway?" he said.

"In the trade, it's called a honey trap," Gutteridge answered for his former lover. "We ran 'em all over the CSA, with people we might be able to squeeze if push ever came to shove again. It wasn't like your people didn't run 'em in the USA, either."

"A honey trap. Oh, boy," Jerry Dover said in a hollow voice. He looked at Melanie. "I thought you meant it."

"With you…I came a lot closer than I did with some others," Melanie said.

"Great. Terrific." He finished the drink in a gulp. What did they say? A fool and his money are soon parted. He'd parted with money, and he'd been a fool. He'd needed a while to realize how big a fool he'd been, but here it was in all its glory. He got to his feet. "'Scuse me. I have to go back to work." Well, he wouldn't be that kind of fool again-he hoped. He hurried away from the table.

Y ou know what Mobile is?" Sam Carsten said.

"Tell me," Lon Menefee urged him.

"Mobile is what New Orleans would've been if it was settled by people without a sense of humor," Sam said. New Orleans was supposed to be a town where you could go out and have yourself some fun. People in Mobile looked as if they didn't enjoy anything.

"Boy, you've got something there," the exec said, laughing. "Even the good-time girls don't act like they're having a good time."

"Yeah, I know." Sam had seen that for himself. He didn't like it. "Pretty crazy-that's all I've got to tell you. This was a Navy town, too. If a bunch of horny, drunk sailors won't liven you up, what will?"

"Beats me," Menefee said.

Sam pointed. "Crap, that's their Naval Academy, right over there." It and the whole town lay under the Josephus Daniels' guns. Several C.S. Navy ships and submersibles lay at the docks. U.S. caretaker crews were aboard them. Sam didn't know what would happen to them. People were still arguing about it. Some wanted to take the captured vessels into the U.S. Navy. Others figured the spares problem would be impossible, and wanted to scrap them instead.

"Academy's out of business," Menefee said. Sam nodded. All the cadets had been sent home. They weren't happy about it. Some wanted to join the U.S. Navy instead. Some wanted to shoot every damnyankee ever born. They weren't quite old enough to have had their chance at that. The exec waved toward the Confederate warships. "What do you think we ought to do with those, sir?"

"Razor blades," Sam said solemnly. "Millions and millions of goddamn razor blades."

Menefee grinned. Anything large, metallic, and useless was only good for razor blades-if you listened to sailors, anyhow.

Here on the Gulf coast, winter was soft. Sam had wintered in the Sandwich Islands, so he'd known softer, but this wasn't bad. Things stayed pretty green. It hadn't snowed at all-not yet, anyhow. "A couple of more days and it's 1945," he said. "Another year down."

"A big one," Lon Menefee said. "Never been a bigger one."

He wasn't old enough to remember much about 1917. Maybe that had seemed bigger in the USA. Nobody then had known how awful a war could be. A lot of people were inoculated against that ignorance now. And 1917 had shown the USA could beat the Confederate States and their allies. Up till then, the United States never had. Now…Maybe now the USA wouldn't have to go and do this all over again. Sam could hope so, anyhow.

He didn't feel like arguing with the younger man, nor was he sure he should. "What with the superbomb and everything, I'd have a devil of a time saying you're wrong."

"We've got it," the exec said. "Germany's got it. The Confederates had it, but they're out. The limeys had it, but-"

"Maybe they're out," Sam put in. "You never can tell about England."

"Yeah," Menefee said. "Japan and Russia and France all have the hots for it."

"I would, too, if somebody else had it and I didn't," Sam said. "I remember how rotten I felt when Featherston got Philly. If he'd had a dozen more ready to roll, he might have whipped us in spite of everything."

"Good thing he didn't," the exec said. "But how are you supposed to fight a war if everybody's got bombs that can blow up a city or a flotilla all at once?"

"Nobody knows," Sam answered. "I mean nobody. The board that talked to me when we came in for refit right after the war ended asked if I had any bright ideas. Me!" He snorted at how strange that was. "I mean, if they're looking for help from a mustang with hairy ears, they're really up the creek."

"Maybe the Kaiser will be able to keep England from building any more and France from getting started. Japan and Russia, though? Good luck stopping 'em!" Menefee said.

"Uh-huh. That occurred to me, too. I don't like it any better than you do," Carsten said.

"It's going to be trouble, any which way," Menefee predicted.

"No kidding," Sam said. "Of course, you can say that any day of the year and be right about nine times out of ten. But just the same…Hell, if Germany and the USA were the only countries that could make superbombs, how could we stay friends? It'd be like we mopped the floor with everybody else, and we had to see who'd end up last man standing."

"Hard to get a superbomb across the ocean," Menefee said. "We don't have a bomber that can lift one off an airplane carrier, and the Kaiser doesn't have any carriers at all."

"We don't have a bomber that can do it now. Five years from now? It'll be different," Sam said. "They'll shrink the bombs and build better airplanes. Turbos, I guess. That's how those things always work. I remember the wood and wire and fabric two-decker we flew off the Dakota in 1914. We thought we were so modern!" He laughed at his younger self.

Lon Menefee nodded. "Yeah, you're probably right, skipper. But the Germans still don't have carriers."

"Maybe they'll build 'em. Maybe they'll decide they don't need 'em. Maybe they'll make extra-long-range bombers instead. If I were fighting the Russians, I'd sure want some of those. Or maybe they'll make rockets, the way the damn Confederates did. I bet we try that, too. How's anybody going to stop a rocket with a superbomb in its nose?"

The exec gave him a peculiar look. "You know what, skipper? I can see why the board asked you for ideas. You just naturally come up with things."

"Well, if I do, the pharmacist's mates have always been able to treat 'em," Sam answered. Praise-especially praise from a bright Annapolis grad-never failed to make him nervous.

He got a grin from Menefee, but the younger man persisted: "If you'd gone to college, you'd be an admiral now."

Sam had heard that before. He didn't believe it for a minute. "I didn't even finish high school. Didn't want to, either. All I wanted to do was get the hell off my old man's farm, and by God I did that. And if I was the kind of guy who went to college, chances are I wouldn't've been the kind of guy who wanted to join the Navy. Nope, I'm stuck with the school of hard knocks."

"Maybe. But it's still a shame," the exec said.

"Don't flabble about me, Lon. You're the one who'll make flag rank. I like where I'm at just fine." Sam wasn't kidding. Two and a half stripes! Lieutenant commander! Not bad for a man up through the hawse hole, not even a little bit. And his superiors still wanted him around. Maybe he could dream of making commander, at least when they finally retired him. He sure hadn't wasted any time sewing the thin gold stripe between the two thicker ones on each cuff.

He'd flustered Menefee in turn. "Flag rank? Talk about counting your chickens! I just want to see what I can do with a ship of my own."

"I understand that." Sam had waited a long, long time for the Josephus Daniels. But doors opened to young Annapolis grads that stayed closed for graying mustangs.

Menefee pointed across the water. "Supply boat's coming up."

Before Sam could say anything, the bosun's whistle shrilled. "Away boarding parties!" Sailors armed with tommy guns went down into a whaleboat at the archaic command. Others manned the destroyer escort's twin 40mms. After that bumboat attacked the Oregon, nobody took chances.

If the boat didn't stop as ordered, the guns would stop it. But it did. The boarding party checked every inch of the hull before letting it approach. Sam hadn't had to say a word. He smiled to himself. This was the way things worked when you had a good crew.

Sooner or later, conscripts would replace a lot of his veteran sailors. By now, he knew what he needed to know about whipping new men into shape. He didn't look forward to the job, but he could do it.

Meat and fresh vegetables started coming aboard the destroyer escort. The chow was better than it had been when she spent weeks at a time at sea. Sam had never been one to cling to routine for its own sake. If he never tasted another bean as long as he lived, he wouldn't be sorry.

"I'm going to my cabin for a spell, Lon," he said. "The paperwork gets worse and worse-and if something disappears now, we can't just write it off as lost in battle, the way we could before. Damn shame, if you ask me."

"Sure did make the ship's accounts easier," Menefee agreed. "Have fun, skipper."

"Fat chance," Sam said. "But it's got to be done."

Dealing with the complicated paperwork of command might have been the toughest job for a mustang who'd never been trained to do it. You could end up in hock for tens of thousands of dollars if you didn't keep track of what was what, or if you absentmindedly signed the wrong form. Because he'd had to start from scratch, Sam was extra scrupulous about double-checking everything before his name went on it.

He absently scratched the back of his left hand, which itched. Then he went back to making sure of his spare-parts inventory. Some of that stuff-the part that petty officers found useful-had a way of walking with Jesus.

A few minutes later, he noticed his hand was bleeding. He swore and grabbed for a tissue. He must have knocked off a scab or something. When he looked, he didn't see one. The blood seemed to be coming from a mole instead. After a while, it stopped. Sam went back to work.

Things on the Josephus Daniels were just about the way they were supposed to be. If he had to turn the ship over to a new CO tomorrow, he could without batting an eye. His accounts were up to date, and they were accurate-or, where they weren't, nobody could prove they weren't. People said there was a right way, a wrong way, and a Navy way. He'd used the Navy way to solve his problems about missing things.

Sam grinned. Of course he'd used the Navy way. What other way did he know? He'd given the Navy his whole life. He hadn't known he would do that when he signed up, but he wasn't disappointed. He'd sure done more and seen more of the world that he would have if he'd stayed on the farm.

The only way he'd leave now was if they threw him out or if he dropped dead on duty. He'd been scared they would turn him loose when the war ended, but what did they go and do? They promoted him instead.

"Nope, only way I'm going out now is feet first," he murmured. "And even then, the bastards'll have to drag me."

A U.S. warship under his command anchored in Mobile Bay? He'd never dreamt of that when he signed on the dotted line. He hadn't imagined he could become an officer, not then. And he hadn't imagined the USA would ever take the CSA right off the map. The way it looked to him then-the way it looked to everybody-both countries, and their rivalry, would stick around forever.

Well, nothing lasted forever. He'd found that out. You went on and did as well as you could for as long as you could. When you got right down to it, what else was there?

Miguel Rodriguez said…something. "What was that?" Jorge asked.

His brother tried again. "Water," he managed at last.

"I'll get you some." Jorge hurried to the sink and turned the tap. When he was a little boy, he would have had to go to the well. This was so much easier.

Bringing the water back to Miguel, seeing his brother again, was so much harder. Now he understood why the Yankees had kept Miguel so long. Miguel sat in a U.S.-issue military wheelchair. He would never walk again. So said the letter that came with him, and Jorge believed it. His body was twisted and ruined. So was his face. U.S. plastic surgeons had done what they could, but they couldn't work miracles.

The shell that didn't quite kill him damaged his thinking, too-or maybe he was trapped inside his own mind, and his wounds wouldn't let him come out. The U.S. doctors had kept him alive, but Jorge wasn't even slightly convinced they'd done him any favors.

He gave Miguel the cup. His brother needed to take it in both hands; he couldn't manage with one. Even then, Jorge kept one of his hands under the cup, in case Miguel dropped it. He didn't, not this time, but he did dribble water down what was left of his chin. Jorge wiped it dry with a little towel.

How long could Miguel go on like this? Ten years? Twenty? Thirty? Fifty? Would you want to go on like this for fifty years? If somebody took care of you, though, what else would you do?

Pedro came in and looked at Miguel, then quickly looked away. What had happened to his brother tore at him even worse than it did at Jorge. And what it did to their mother…Jorge tried not to think about that, but he couldn't help it. She'd be taking care of and mourning a cripple for as long as she or Miguel lived.

"Those bastards," Pedro said savagely. "Damnyankee bastards!"

"I think they did the best they could for him," Jorge said. "If they didn't, he'd be dead right now."

Pedro looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Who do you think blew him up in the first place? Damnyankee pendejos, that's who."

He was probably right-probably, but not certainly. Jorge had seen men wounded and killed by short rounds from their own side. He didn't try to tell his brother about that-Pedro was in no mood to listen. He just shrugged. "It's the war. We all took chances like that. What can you do about it now? What can anyone do?"

"Pay them back," Pedro insisted. "Seсor Quinn says we can do it if we don't give up. I think he's right."

"I think you're loco," Jorge said. "What happens if you shoot somebody? They take hostages, and then they kill them. They take lots of hostages. They've already done it here once. You think they won't do it again?"

"So what?" Pedro said. "It will only make the rest of the people hate them."

"Suppose they take Susana or her kids? Suppose they take Lupe Flores?" Jorge said, and had the dubious satisfaction of watching his brother turn green. Yes, Pedro was sweet on Lupe, all right. Jorge pressed his advantage: "Suppose they take Mamacita? Will you go on yelling, 'Freedom!' then? It's over, Pedro. Can't you see that?"

Pedro swore at him and stormed out of the farmhouse again. Jorge noticed his own hands had folded into fists. He made them unclench. He didn't want to fight Pedro. He didn't want his brother doing anything stupid and useless, either. The Army had taught him one thing, anyhow: you didn't always get what you wanted.

Miguel had listened to everything. How much he'd understood…How much Miguel understood was always a question. It probably always would be. He struggled with his damaged flesh and damaged spirit, trying to bring out words. "Not good," he managed. "Not good."

"No, it isn't good," Jorge agreed. Just how his injured brother meant that…who could say? But Miguel wasn't wrong any which way. If Pedro went and did something stupid, people for miles around could end up paying for it.

Miguel tried saying something else, but it wouldn't come out, whatever it was. Sometimes Jorge thought Miguel knew everything that was going on around him but was trapped inside his own head by his wounds. Other times, he was sure Miguel's wits were damaged, too. Which was worse? He had no idea. Both were mighty bad.

If Pedro really was planning on doing something idiotic…Whatever Jorge did, he would never betray his own flesh and blood to the occupiers. If you did something like that, you might as well be dead, because you were dead to all human feeling. But that didn't mean he couldn't do anything at all.

The next time he went into Baroyeca, he did it. Then he went into La Culebra Verde and drank much more beer than he was in the habit of putting down. He didn't walk back to the farmhouse-he staggered. If the electric poles hadn't marched along by the side of the road to guide him back, he might have wandered off and got lost.

His mother looked at him with imperfect delight when he came in. "Your father didn't do this very often," she said severely. "I wouldn't stand for it from him. I won't stand for it from you, either."

"Shorry-uh, sorry-Mamacita," Jorge said.

"And don't think you can sweet-talk me, either," his mother went on. "You can call me Mamacita from now till forever, and I'll still know you've come home like a worthless, drunken stumblebum. I told you once, and I'll tell you again-I won't put up with it."

Jorge didn't try to argue. He went to bed instead. He woke up with his head feeling as if it were in the middle of an artillery barrage. Aspirins and coffee helped…some. Pedro eyed him with amused contempt that was almost half admiration. "You tied a good one on there," he remarked.

"Sн." Jorge didn't want to talk-or to listen, for that matter. He poured the coffee cup full again.

"How come?" Pedro asked him. "You don't usually do that." Miguel sat in the wheelchair watching both of them, or maybe just lost in his own world.

"Everything," Jorge said. "Sometimes it gets to you, that's all." He wasn't even lying, or not very much.

Pedro nodded vigorously. "It does. It really does! But I don't want to get drunk on account of it. I want to do something about it."

You want to do something stupid about it, Jorge thought. He kept that to himself. If you got into an argument when you were hung over, you were much too likely to get into a brawl. He didn't want to punch Pedro-most of the time, anyhow.

The Bible said a soft answer turned away wrath. No answer seemed to work just as well. When Jorge didn't rise to the bait, Pedro left him alone. He wondered whether he ought to remember that lesson for later. A shrug was all he could give the question. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't.

He went on about his business. Even in winter, the farm needed work. He tended the garden and the livestock. He went into Baroyeca once more, and came back sober. Magdalena Rodriguez nodded to him in somber approval.

Then Pedro went into town a few days later. When he came home, he was wild with rage. "The Yankees! They've taken Seсor Quinn!"

"I was afraid of that," Jorge said.

"But how could they know what he stands for?" Pedro demanded.

"He talks too much," Jorge answered, which was true. "And too many people know he was the Freedom Party man here. Someone in town must have blabbed to the soldados from los Estados Unidos." Most of that was true, but not all.

"What can we do?" his brother cried.

"I don't know. I don't think we can do anything. The Yankees have machine guns and automatic rifles. I don't want to go up against them. If you do, you have to be out of your mind."

Pedro frowned; that wasn't what he wanted to hear. "I hope nobody decides to inform on me," he said. "All we've got here are a couple of.22s, and you can't fight anybody with those."

"Of course not. That's why the Yankees let us keep them," Jorge said.

Then his brother brightened. "Maybe we could get some dynamite from the mines, and we could-"

"Could what?" Jorge broke in. "You can't fight with dynamite, either. What are you going to do, throw sticks of it?"

"Well, no. But if we made an auto bomb-"

"Out of what? We don't have an auto," Jorge reminded him. "Besides, do you know how many the Yankees shoot for every auto bomb that goes off?"

"We've got to do something for Seсor Quinn," Pedro said.

"Bueno. What do you want to do? What can you do that will set him free and won't get us into trouble?"

Pedro thought about it. The longer he thought, the more unhappy he looked. "I don't know," he said at last.

"Well, when you answer that, then maybe you can do something. Now we have to worry about keeping ourselves safe, and keeping Mamacita safe, and keeping Miguel safe," Jorge said.

Miguel sat in the wheelchair. Was he listening to his brothers argue, or not paying any attention at all? Jorge was never sure how much Miguel understood. Sometimes he even thought it varied from day to day. Now, though, Miguel's eyes came alive for a moment. "Stay safe!" he said clearly. "Get down!" Was that the last thing he said or the last thing he heard before the shell crashed down and ruined his life? Jorge wouldn't have been surprised.

Pedro gnawed on the inside of his lower lip. "You can put up with things easier than I can, Jorge."

"Sometimes, maybe," Jorge said.

"But it gets to you, doesn't it? It gets to you, too." His brother pointed an accusing forefinger at him. "Otherwise, why did you need to go to the cantina and get drunk?"

Jorge spread his hands. "Well, you've got me there."

"I thought so." Pedro sounded smug. Not many things anyone liked better than being sure he knew what someone else was thinking.

"Careful," Miguel said, maybe at random, maybe not. Was he still thinking about getting shelled? Or was he warning Pedro not to think he was so smart? How could anyone outside the wreckage of his body and mind and spirit guess?

With a sigh, Pedro said, "I will be careful. I won't do anything that gets us into trouble or gets us hurt."

"That's the idea." Jorge hoped his brother would keep the promise. "Maybe things will get better. We just have to wait and see-what else can we do that's safe?"

"Seсor Quinn didn't talk that way." Pedro wasn't ready to give up, not quite.

"No, he didn't," Jorge agreed. "And look what happened to him. If he'd just tried to fit in, the Yankees would have let him alone, I bet. But he started running his mouth, and-"

"Some dirty puto ratted on him," Pedro said savagely.

"Sн. It only goes to show, it can happen to anybody who isn't careful," Jorge said.

He knew what he was talking about. He knew more than he would ever talk about. He'd written the anonymous letter that betrayed Robert Quinn to the U.S. authorities. He hadn't been happy about it, not then. That was why he came home drunk that evening. But he wasn't sorry now that he'd done it. He'd kept Pedro safe-safer, anyhow. He'd done the same thing for the whole family. They could go on. After you lost a war, that would do.

George Enos and Wally Fodor and most of the other guys at the twin-40mm mount had their shirts off. They basked in the warm sunshine like geckos on a rock. "January," George said to the gun chief. "Fuckin' January. I tell you, man, Florida's been wasted on the Confederates too goddamn long."

"You got that straight," Fodor agreed.

It was somewhere close to eighty. Up in Boston, the snow lay thick on the ground. George had just got a letter from Connie talking about the latest blizzard. He missed his wife. He missed his kids. He sure as hell didn't miss Massachusetts weather.

"When I get old and gray, I'll retire down here," he said.

"Good luck, buddy. The Confederates'll blow your old gray ass from here to Habana," Wally Fodor said. "Do you really think these guys'll be glad to see us even by the time we get old?"

"Probably be glad to take our money," George said.

The gun chief laughed. "Like that's the same thing. A whore's glad to take your money, but that doesn't mean she's in love with you." Fodor laughed again. "Hell with me if you ain't blushing."

"Hell with you anyway, Wally." George smiled when he said it, but he knew how uneasy the smile was. He always felt bad about going to brothels. That didn't stop him, but it made him flabble afterwards.

All the joking stopped when a supply boat approached the Oregon. The 40mm crews and even the men on the battlewagon's five-inch guns covered the vessel while sailors searched it. That was, of course, locking the door with the horse long gone, but what else could you do? The diehards might hurt other warships, but they wouldn't get the Oregon again.

Everybody hoped like hell they wouldn't, anyhow.

This particular boat proved harmless. So the searchers said. If they were wrong, if the locals had outfoxed them…George did his best not to think about that. He breathed a sigh of relief when hams and flitches of bacon and sides of beef came aboard. Nothing explosive there.

He wasn't the only one who relaxed after seeing everything was on the up and up. "We keep eating awhile longer," Wally Fodor said.

"Yeah." George nodded. "We keep breathing awhile longer, too. Ain't it a pisser that we aren't getting combat pay any more?"

"Hey, we're at peace now, right?" Fodor said, and the whole gun crew laughed sarcastically. He went on, "'Sides, all the bookkeepers in the Navy Department are a bunch of damn Jews, and they make like it's their own personal money they're saving, for Chrissake. You ask me, we're fuckin' lucky we still get hazardous-duty pay."

"What would you call it when the bumboat blows us halfway to hell?" George said. "Hazardous enough for me, by God."

"Amen, brother," the gun chief said, as if George were a colored preacher heating up his flock.

The gun crews also covered the supply boat as it pulled away from the Oregon. If its crew were going to try anything, logic said they'd do it while they lay right alongside the battleship. But logic said people down here shouldn't try anything at all along those lines. They were well and truly licked. Didn't they understand as much? By the evidence, no.

A few minutes after the boat drew too far away to be dangerous, the Oregon's PA system crackled to life. "George Enos, report to the executive officer's quarters! George Enos, report to the executive officer's quarters on the double!"

As George hurried away from the gun, Wally Fodor called after him: "Jesus, Enos! What the fuck did you do?"

"I don't know." George fought to keep panic from his voice. If the exec wanted you, it was like getting called to the principal's office in high school. Here, George figured he'd be lucky to come away with only a paddling. But he wasn't lying to Fodor, either-he had no idea why he was getting summoned like this. Did they think he'd done something he hadn't? God forbid, had something happened to his family? He found the rosary in his trouser pocket and started working the beads.

Going up into officers' country gave him the willies on general principles. He had to ask a j.g. younger than he was for help finding the exec's quarters. The baby lieutenant told him what he needed to know, and sent him a pitying look as he went on his way. By now, the whole ship would be wondering what he'd done. And he was wondering himself-he had no idea.

He knocked on the open metal door. "Enos reporting, sir."

"Come in, Enos." Commander Hank Walsh was about forty, with hard gray eyes and what looked like a Prussian dueling scar seaming his left cheek. "Do you know a Boston politico named Joe Kennedy?"

"Name rings a bell." George had to think for a couple of seconds. "Yeah-uh, yes, sir. He used to get my mother to do work for the Democrats sometimes." What he really remembered was his mother's disdain for Kennedy. Piecing together some stuff he hadn't understood when he was a kid, he suspected Kennedy had made a pass, or maybe several passes, at her.

"Family connection, is there?" Walsh said. George only shrugged; he hadn't thought so. The exec eyed him. "Well, whatever there is, he's pulled some strings. You can have your discharge if you want it, go back home and pick up your life again. I've got the papers right here."

"You mean it, sir?" George could hardly believe his ears.

"I mean it." Commander Walsh didn't sound delighted, but he nodded. "It's irregular, but it's legal. No hard feelings here. I know you're not a regular Navy man. I know you have a family back in Boston. You've served well aboard the Oregon, and your previous skippers gave you outstanding fitness reports. If you want to leave, you've paid your dues."

George didn't hesitate for a moment. Walsh might change his mind. "Where's the dotted line, sir? I'll sign."

The exec shoved papers across the desk at him and handed him a pen. "This is the Navy, Enos. You can't get away with signing just once."

So George signed and signed and signed. He would have signed till he got writer's cramp, but it wasn't so bad as that. When he got to the bottom of the stack of papers, he said, "There you go, sir."

"Some of these are for you, for your records and to show the shore patrol and the military police to prove you're not AWOL." Walsh handed him the ones he needed to keep. "Show them to your superiors, too. We're sending a boat ashore at 1400. Can you be ready by then?"

By the clock on the wall behind the exec, he had a little more than an hour to let people know and throw stuff into a duffel. "I sure can. Thank you, sir!"

"Don't thank me. Thank Joe Kennedy." Walsh raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't be surprised if you get the chance to do just that once you're home. If Kennedy's like most of that breed, he'll expect favors from you now that he's done you one. Nothing's free, not for those people."

From what George knew of Joe Kennedy, he figured the exec had hit that one dead center. "I'll worry about it when it happens, sir… Oh! Could you have somebody wire my wife and let her know I'm coming home?"

Commander Walsh nodded. "We'll take care of it. Get moving. You don't have a lot of time."

"Aye aye, sir." George jumped to his feet and saluted. "Thanks again, sir!"

When he showed Wally Fodor his discharge papers, the gun chief made as if to tear them up. George squawked. Grinning, Fodor handed back the precious papers. "Here you go. Good luck, you lucky stiff!"

A sailor in the waiting boat grabbed George's duffel at 1400 on the dot. George climbed down into the boat. The sailor steadied him. The boat's outboard motor chugged. It pulled away from the Oregon. George didn't look back once.

When he came ashore, he got a ride to the train station in an Army halftrack. "Nice to know they love us down here," he remarked to the soldier sitting across from him.

"Yeah, well, fuck 'em," the guy in green-gray said, which only proved the Army and the Navy had the same attitude about the Confederates.

The station was a young fortress, with concrete barricades keeping motorcars at a distance. There were barrels near the entrance, and machine guns on the roof. George showed his papers at the ticket counter and got a voucher for the trip up to Boston. When the train came in, it had machine guns atop several cars. All the same, bullet holes pocked the metalwork.

Most of the men aboard were soldiers going home on leave. When they found out George didn't have to come back, they turned greener than their uniforms. You lucky stiff was the least of what he heard from them. George just smiled and didn't let them provoke him. He didn't intend to end up in the brig instead of in Connie's arms.

Nobody fired at the train while it worked its way through the wreckage of the Confederacy. As George had when he traveled through the USA during the war, he eyed the damage with amazement-and with relief that he hadn't had to fight on land. He'd seen plenty of danger, but it might have been nothing next to this. Connie'd got mad at him for joining the Navy, but he figured he was more likely never to have come home if he'd waited for the Army to conscript him. Of course, his old man had made the same calculation…

What now? he wondered. Now he would go out to T Wharf, hope his boat didn't hit a mine loose from its moorings, and come home to watch the kids grow up and to watch Connie get old. It wasn't the most exciting way to pass the next thirty or forty years he could think of. But he'd had enough excitement to last him the rest of his days. Fishing was honest work. What more could you want, really?

The stretch from the border up past Philadelphia was as battered as anything down in the CSA. He didn't see any of the damage from the superbomb in Philly-or miss it. The towns closer to New York City hadn't been hit so hard. From New York City north, he saw only occasional damage. The main exception was Providence. The Confederates had plastered the Navy training center as hard as they could.

And then he got into Boston. On other leaves, he'd seen the pounding his home town had taken. Now he had other things on his mind, and hardly noticed. He slung his duffel over his shoulder and pushed out of the train car. Lots of people-sailors, soldiers, civilians-were getting off here.

"George!" Connie yelled, at the same time as the boys were squealing, "Daddy!"

He hugged his wife and squeezed his kids and kissed everybody. "Jesus, it's good to be home!" he said. "You know that Kennedy guy pulled wires for me?"

"I hoped he would," Connie said. "I wrote him about how you'd been in long enough and who your folks were and everything, and it worked!" She beamed.

He kissed her again. "Except on a fishing boat, I'm never leaving this town again," he said. Connie cheered. The boys clapped. They tried to carry the duffel bag. Between them, they managed. That let him put one arm around them and the other arm around Connie. It was an awkward way to leave the platform, but nobody cared a bit.

R ain drummed down out of a leaden sky. Chester Martin's breath smoked whenever he went outside. It was nasty and chilly and muddy. He only laughed. He'd lived here long enough to know this was nothing out of the ordinary. "January in Los Angeles," he said.

Rita laughed, too. "The Chamber of Commerce tries not to tell people about this time of year."

"Yeah, well, if I were them, I wouldn't admit it, either," Chester said. "They do better with photos of orange trees and pretty girls on the beach."

"I've never seen a photo of an orange tree on the beach," Carl said. While Chester was off being a top kick, his son had acquired a quirky sense of humor. Chester sometimes wondered where the kid had got it. Knowing Carl, he'd probably won it in a poker game.

"You might as well hang around the house today," Rita said. "There won't be any work."

"Boy, you got that right," Chester agreed. Rain in L.A. left construction crews sitting on their hands. "In the Army, they just went ahead and built stuff, and the heck with the lousy weather."

"Yeah, but you're not in the Army any more. Good thing, too, if anybody wants to know what I think." By the way Rita said it, he'd better want to know what she thought.

"Hey, you get no arguments from me. It wasn't a whole lot of fun." Chester still didn't want to think about what he'd done in that little South Carolina town. Oh, he wasn't the only one. He could blame Lieutenant Lavochkin for most of it. He could-and he did. But he was there, too. He pulled the trigger lots more than once. That was one thing he never intended to talk about with anybody.

Carl asked, "If it wasn't any fun, why did you do it?"

"Good question," Rita said. "Maybe you can get a decent answer out of him. I never could." She gave Chester a dirty look. She still resented his putting the uniform back on. Chances were she always would.

He shrugged. "If Jake Featherston beat us this time around, I was just wasting my time in the last war. I didn't want that to happen, so I tried to stop it."

"Oh, yeah. You were going to whip Jake Featherston all by yourself. And then you wake up," Rita said.

"Not all by myself. That colored kid did, though." Chester shook his head. "Boy, am I jealous of him. Me and all the other guys who put on the uniform. But everybody who fought set things up so he could do it." He looked at his son. "Is that a good enough answer for you?"

"No," Rita said before Carl could open his mouth. "All it did was get you shot again. You're just lucky you didn't get your head blown off."

"I'm fine." Chester had to speak carefully. Rita's first husband had bought a plot during the Great War. "Wound I picked up doesn't bother me at all, except in weather like this. Then it aches a little. That's it, though."

"Luck. Nothing but luck," Rita said stubbornly, and Chester couldn't even tell her she was wrong.

"How many people did you shoot, Dad?" Carl asked.

That made Chester think of the massacre again. It also made him think of firing-squad duty. Neither of those was what his son had in mind, which didn't mean they hadn't happened. "Some," Chester answered after a perceptible pause. "I don't always like to remember that stuff."

"I should hope not!" Rita made a face.

"Why don't you?" Carl asked. "You joined the Army to kill people, right?"

Rita made a different face this time, a see-what-you-got-into face. Chester sighed. "Yeah, that's why I joined," he said, as steadily as he could. "But it's not so simple. You look at a guy who got wounded, and you listen to him, and it doesn't matter which uniform he's wearing. He looks the same, and he sounds the same-like a guy who's been in a horrible traffic accident. You ever see one of those?"

Carl nodded. "Yeah. It was pretty bad. Blood all over the place."

"All right, then. You've got half an idea of what I'm talking about, anyway. Well, imagine you just ran over somebody. That's kind of the way you feel when you've been through a firefight."

"But when you're in a wreck, the other guy isn't trying to hit you," Carl objected.

"I know. Knowing he's trying to get you, too…I think that's why you can do it at all. It's a fair fight, like they say. That means you can do it-or most people can do it most of the time. It doesn't mean it's a game, or you think it's fun," Chester said. Unless you're Boris Lavochkin, he added, but only to himself. Maybe that was what made the lieutenant so alarming: killing didn't bother him the way it did most people.

Carl was full of questions this morning: "What about guys who can't do it any more? Is that what they call combat fatigue?"

"This time around, yeah. Last war, they called it shellshock. Same critter, different names." Chester hesitated. "Sometimes…a guy sees more horrible stuff than he can take, that's all. If you can, you get him out of the line, let him rest up awhile. He's usually all right after that. War's like anything else, I guess. It's easier for some people than it is for others. And some guys go through more nasty stuff than others, too. So it all depends."

"You sound like you feel sorry for soldiers like that. I thought you'd be mad at them," his son said.

"Not me." Chester shook his head. "I went through enough crap myself so I know how hard it is. A few guys would fake combat fatigue so they could try and get out of the line. I am mad at people who'd do something like that, because they make it harder for everybody else."

"Did you run into anybody like that?" Rita asked.

"Not in my outfit," Chester answered. "It happened, though. You'd hear about it too often for all of it to be made up. Over on the Confederate side, they say General Patton got in trouble for slapping around a guy with combat fatigue."

"What do you think of that?" Rita and Carl said the same thing at the same time.

"If the guy really was shellshocked, Patton should have left him alone. You can't help something like that," Chester said. All the same, he was sure Lieutenant Lavochkin would have done the same thing. Having no nerves himself, Lavochkin didn't see why anybody else should, either.

Before Chester's wife and son could come up with any more interesting questions, the telephone rang. He stood closest to it, so he got it. "Hello?"

"Hello, Mr. Martin. Harry T. Casson here."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Casson?" Chester heard the wariness and the respect in his own voice. Rita's eyes widened. Harry T. Casson was the biggest building contractor in the Los Angeles area. Before the war, he'd wrangled again and again with the construction union Chester helped start. They didn't settle things till well after the fighting started. Now…Who could guess what was on Casson's plate now? If he wanted to try to break the union-well, he could try, but Chester didn't think he'd get away with it.

He started off in a friendly enough way: "Glad you're back safe. I heard you were wounded-happy it wasn't too serious."

"Yeah." The only wound that wasn't serious was the one that happened to the other guy. Chester asked, "Did you ever put the uniform on again yourself?"

"A few weeks after you did," Casson answered. "I was bossing construction projects, mostly up in the Northwest. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't come anywhere close to the sound of guns. Well, once, but that was just a nuisance raid. Nothing aimed my way."

"You paid those dues last time around." Chester knew the building magnate had commanded a line company-and, briefly, a line regiment-in the Great War.

"Generous of you to say so," Casson replied.

"So what's up?" Chester asked. "Latest contract still has a year to run."

"I know. All the more reason to start talking about the new one now," Casson said easily. "That way, we don't get crammed up against a deadline. Everything works better."

He was smooth, all right-smooth enough to make Chester suspicious. "You're gonna try and screw me, and you won't respect me in the morning, either."

Harry T. Casson laughed. "I don't know what you're talking about, Chester."

"Now tell me another one," Chester answered. "C'mon, man. We both know what the game's about. Why make like we don't?"

"All right. You want it straight? I'll give it to you straight. During the war, you got a better contract than you really deserved," Casson said. "Not a lot of labor available, and there was a war on. We didn't want strikes throwing a monkey wrench into things. But it's different now. Lots of guys coming out of the Army and going into the building trades-look at you, for instance. And it's not unpatriotic to care a little more about profit these days, either."

"So how hard are you going to try to hit us?" Chester asked. When Harry T. Casson told him, he grunted as if he'd been hit for real. "We'll fight you if you do that," he promised. "We'll fight you every way we know how."

"I think you'll lose," the building magnate said.

"Don't bet on it, Mr. Casson. You know how big our strike fund is?" Chester said. Casson named a figure. Chester laughed harshly. "Make it three times that size."

"You're lying," Casson said at once.

"In a pig's…ear," Chester replied. "We've been socking it away since 1942. We figured you'd try to give us the shaft first chance you got. We'll fight, all right, and we'll make your scabs sorry they were born. We whipped Pinkertons before. With all the vets back, like you say, sure as the devil we can do it again. Piece of cake, the flyboys call it."

"Siccing the Pinkertons on you was a mistake. I said so at the time, but my colleagues didn't want to listen," Harry T. Casson said slowly. "Do you swear you're telling the truth about your strike fund?"

"Swear to God." Martin made his voice as solemn as he could.

"Damnation," Casson muttered. "That could be difficult. Not just a hard strike, but bad publicity when we don't need it…Will you agree to extend the present contract unchanged for another two years, then? Come 1948, both sides can take a long look at where they are and where they want to go."

"You can get your friends to go along with that?" Chester asked.

"Yes, if you're sure the rank and file will ratify it."

"They will," Chester said. "Some of them might want a raise, but they're doing all right. Staying where we're at's a good enough deal."

"A good enough deal," Harry T. Casson echoed. "I'm not thrilled with it, but I think you're right. It will do. Good talking with you, Chester. So long." He hung up.

So did Chester. He also started laughing like a maniac. "What was that all about?" Rita asked.

"New contract. Two years. Same terms as the wartime one," Chester got out between guffaws.

"But what's so funny?" Rita demanded.

Chester didn't tell her. One more thing he never intended to tell anybody. The real strike fund was smaller than Harry T. Casson thought, not three times as big. He'd raised Casson with a busted flush, and he'd made the magnate fold. Rain? So what? If this wasn't a good day's work, for him and for everybody else in the union, he'd never done one. The sooner we sign the papers, the better, he thought. But they would. After the war, a contract was…a piece of cake.

E lizabeth clucked at Cincinnatus. "Aren't you ready yet?"

"I been ready for twenty minutes. So has my pa," he answered. "You're the one keeps checkin' her makeup an' makin' sure her hat's sittin' just the right way."

"I'm doin' no such thing," his wife said, and Cincinnatus prayed God would forgive the lie. Elizabeth added, "Not every day you marry off your onliest daughter."

"Well, that's a fact," Cincinnatus allowed. "That sure enough is a fact."

Amanda was at the beauty parlor, or maybe at the church by now. Cincinnatus reached up and fiddled with his tie. He'd never worn a tuxedo before. The suit was rented, but the clothier assured him plenty of white men rented tuxes, too. Seneca Driver wore Cincinnatus' ordinary suit. It was a little big on him, but he didn't have one of his own; he'd got away from Covington with no more than the clothes on his back, and money'd been tight since.

"You look mighty handsome," Elizabeth said.

"Glad you think so. What I reckon I look like is one o' them fancy servants rich folks had down in the CSA," Cincinnatus said. "They're the only ones I ever seen with fancy duds like this here."

His wife shook her head. "Their jackets always had brass buttons, to show they was servants." She snorted. "Like them bein' colored wouldn't tell you. But anyways, they did. Your buttons is jus' black, like they would be if you wore them clothes all the time on account of you wanted to."

Cincinnatus couldn't imagine anybody wanting to. The tux fit well, yes. But it was uncomfortable. On a hot summer day, it would be stifling, with the high wing collar and the tight cravat. He didn't even want to think about that. "I ain't sorry Amanda didn't want to wait till June," he said.

"Do Jesus, me neither!" his wife exclaimed. "She try an' do that, maybe she have herself a baby six, seven months after they do the ceremony. People laugh at you an' talk behind your back when somethin' like that happens."

"They do," Cincinnatus agreed. There was something he hadn't worried about. Well, his wife had taken care of it for him. He sent her a sidelong look and lowered his voice so his father wouldn't hear: "Only fool luck we didn't have that happen our ownselves."

"You stop it, you and your filthy talk," Elizabeth said, also quietly. He only laughed, which annoyed her more. It wasn't as if he wasn't telling the truth. Plenty of courting couples didn't wait till the preacher said the words over them before they started doing what they would have done afterwards.

For that matter, Cincinnatus had no way of knowing whether Amanda had a bun in the oven right now. He almost pointed that out to his wife, too, but held his tongue at the last minute. Maybe Elizabeth was already worrying about that, too. If she wasn't, he didn't want to give her anything new to flabble about.

Someone knocked on the door. "Ready or not, you're ready now," Cincinnatus told Elizabeth. "There's the Changs."

When Elizabeth opened the door, she might have been ready to meet President-elect Dewey and his wife. "Come in!" she said warmly. "Oh, isn't that a pretty dress!"

"Thank you," Mrs. Chang said. She didn't know a whole lot of English-less than her husband-but she understood enough to nod and smile and say the right thing here.

Joey Chang had on an ordinary suit, not a tux-he wasn't father of the bride, only father of the bride's sister-in-law. "I bring beer to reception, right?" he said.

"Right!" Cincinnatus said. Mr. Chang was also one of the best homebrew makers in Des Moines. Since Iowa remained legally dry, that was an important talent. The authorities didn't seem to be enforcing the law the way they had before the war, but you couldn't just go round to the corner package store and pick up a couple of cases of Blatz.

"I do it, then," Chang said. "You have colored people at your wedding, right?"

"Well, I think so," Cincinnatus said dryly.

"You have Chinese people, too." Chang nodded and pointed to himself and his wife. Their and Cincinnatus' grandchildren could have gone into either category. Chang went on, "You have white people, too?"

"Yeah, we will," Cincinnatus replied. "Some of the guys from the butcher shop where Calvin works. Little bit of everything."

"Maybe not so bad," Joey Chang said. Considering how hard he and his wife had resisted Grace's marriage to Achilles, that was a lot from him. He insisted they would have liked it just as little had Grace married a white guy. Cincinnatus…almost believed him. Grandchildren had softened the Changs, as grandchildren have a way of doing.

"We should go," Elizabeth said. "Don't want to be late." The church was a block and a half away, so there was very little risk of that. But Elizabeth would flabble. It was a wedding, after all.

"Long as Amanda and Calvin are there-and the minister-don't hardly matter if we show up or not," Cincinnatus said. He made his wife sputter and fume, which was what he'd had in mind. Joey Chang tipped him a wink. Cincinnatus grinned back.

The Changs made much of Seneca Driver as they walked to church. They took old people seriously. "Mighty nice great-grandchillun," Seneca said. "Mighty nice. I don't care none if they's half Chinese, neither. I wouldn't care if they was red, white, an' blue. Mighty nice."

Cincinnatus wished he could move along with his back straight and without a stick in his right hand. His leg still hurt. So did his shoulder. The steel plate in his skull made mine detectors go off-an amused Army engineer had proved that one day.

Beat up or not, though, he was still alive and kicking-as long as he didn't have to kick too hard. With a little luck, he'd see more grandchildren before long. Compared to most of the surviving Negroes in the conquered Confederacy, he had the world by the tail.

Calvin's father and mother were already at the church. They were pleasant people, a few years younger than Cincinnatus. Abraham Washington ran a secondhand-clothes store. It wasn't a fancy way to make a living, but he'd done all right. Calvin had a brother, Luther, a year younger than he was. Luther wore a green-gray uniform and had a PFC's chevron on his sleeve. He looked tough and strong-and proud of himself, too.

"I didn't see any combat, sir," he said to Cincinnatus. "Heard stories about what you truck drivers went through, though. What was it like?"

"Son, you didn't miss a thing," Cincinnatus answered. "That's the honest to God truth. Getting shot at when they miss is bad. If they hit you, it's worse."

"I told him that," Abraham Washington said. "I told him, but he didn't want to listen. He went and volunteered anyway."

"He got the chance to show he was as good as a white man, and he went and took it," Cincinnatus said. "How you gonna blame him for that?"

Luther Washington grinned from ear to ear. "Somebody understands why I did what I did!"

His father only sniffed. By the way Abraham Washington sounded, his people had lived in Des Moines for generations. He was used to being thought as good as a white man-or nearly as good, anyhow. Having grown up in the CSA, Cincinnatus could see why Luther was willing to lay his life on the line to get rid of the nearly. During the Great War, plenty of Negroes joined the Confederate Army to win citizenship for themselves. Plenty more would have this time around, if only Jake Featherston had let them. That urge to prove himself-that feeling you had to keep proving yourself-stayed strong in Negroes on both sides of the old border.

Cincinnatus didn't want to think about Jake Featherston, not at his daughter's wedding. He looked around the church. The Changs had gone over with Achilles and Grace and their grandchildren-who, in Cincinnatus' considered and unbiased (of course!) opinion, were the brightest and most beautiful grandbabies in the whole world.

And there were a few whites, as he'd told Joey Chang there would be. They were doing their best-some doing better than others-to be friendly with the colored people sitting around them. Cincinnatus smiled to himself. The whites were a small minority here. They were getting a tiny taste of what Negroes in the USA went through all the time.

But it was better here than it ever had been down in the Confederacy. Not good, necessarily, but better. Cincinnatus had experience with both places. He knew when he was better off. He'd voted here. His children had graduated from high school. Maybe his grandchildren would go to college. Down in the CSA, back before the Great War, he'd been unusual-and an occasional object of suspicion-because he could read and write.

A burly young man whose shoulders strained the fabric of his tuxedo jacket came up. His name was Amos Something-or-other. He was one of Calvin's friends, and the best man. "Wedding procession's forming up," he said.

"That's us," Elizabeth said. Cincinnatus couldn't very well tell her she was wrong.

Amanda seemed ready to burst with glee. That was how the bride was supposed to act on her wedding day. Calvin didn't look ready to run for his life. For a groom on his wedding day, that would do.

The organist struck up the wedding march. Down the aisle everybody went. A photographer fired off one flashbulb after another. Yellow-purple spots danced in front of Cincinnatus' eyes.

Up at the front of the church, he and the rest of Amanda's supporters went to the right, those of Calvin Washington to the left. The minister did what ministers do. After a while, he got to, "Who giveth this woman?"

"I do," Cincinnatus said proudly.

Amanda and Calvin got to say their "I do" s a couple of minutes later. Amanda's ring had a tiny diamond on it. Tiny or not, it sparkled under the electric lights. It shone no brighter than Amanda's smile, though. The kiss the new husband and wife exchanged was decorous, but not chaste.

Down the street three doors to the reception, Joey Chang's good beer was highly unofficial, but also highly appreciated. The minister drank several glasses and got very lively. Cincinnatus hadn't expected that. Preachers were supposed to be a straitlaced lot, weren't they? But if this one wanted to let his processed hair down, why not?

One of the white men congratulated Cincinnatus. "Your daughter's a pretty girl, and she seems mighty nice," he said.

"Thank you kindly." Cincinnatus was ready to approve of anybody who approved of Amanda.

"This is a good bash, too," the white man said. "People get together and have a good time, they're all pretty much the same, you know?"

He seemed to think he'd come out with something brilliant. "I won't quarrel with you," Cincinnatus said.

"And you've got to tell me who makes your beer," the white man added.

"That fella right over there." Cincinnatus pointed to Joey Chang, who held a glass of his own product. "His daughter's married to my son."

"Well, how about that?" the white man said, which was safe enough under almost any circumstances. "Stir everything around, huh?"

"Why not?" Cincinnatus waited to see if the ofay would go any further.

But he didn't. He just said, "How about that?" again.

Good, Cincinnatus thought. He wanted no trouble, not today. He never wanted trouble, but he'd landed in some. He wouldn't worry about that, either. This was Amanda's day, and it should be a good one. He smiled. He wanted her night to be better yet.