The Center Cannot Hold

XIV

Another Friday. Another payday. It wouldn't be much of a check; Chester Martin knew as much. He'd been working six hours a day instead of eight for quite a while now, and not working at all on Saturdays. He should have enjoyed the extra time off. He would have enjoyed it a lot more if he'd had the money to do more things. As it was, fifty cents for a couple of cinema tickets once or twice a month made him and Rita worry. The evening out would mean beans for supper instead of liver and tripe-or, the way things were these days, it might mean potatoes and cabbage instead of beans.

I've still got a job, he thought as he inched toward the clerk who would give him his pay envelope. The clerk still had a job, too, and still had the faintly supercilious air he'd worn when times were good. Petty-bourgeois bastard looking down his nose at the proletariat, Martin thought sourly. Do you really believe the bosses can't replace you, too?

Later on, he remembered that that had gone through his mind just before he got to the clerk and gave him his name and pay number. The clerk checked him off a long, long list, handed him the envelope, and all of a sudden didn't seem so snotty any more. "Here you are, Martin," he said, as if speaking in a sickroom.

What's eating him? Chester wondered. He didn't open the envelope till he got to the front door of the steel mill. A couple of galvanized iron trash cans stood there, to hold just such refuse. Martin pulled out the check and put it into the breast pocket of his overalls. He started to throw away the envelope when he noticed another piece of paper inside.

This one was pink.

Martin stood there staring at it, altogether unmoving, for at least half a minute. He'd known the same mix of numbness, disbelief, and swelling pain when he got wounded on the Roanoke front-never before, and surely never since.

He pulled out the second sheet of paper, hoping against hope it might be something else. It wasn't. Come Monday, he didn't have a job any more.

Other paydays, he'd seen stunned men holding pink slips here. You didn't say anything. You didn't look at them. Maybe that was cruel. Maybe it had a touch of, There but for the grace of God go I. But maybe it held a sort of rough kindness, too. If you didn't look at your fellow workers who all at once weren't working beside you, they could say anything, do anything, they chose, and not have to worry about losing face.

The only trouble with that was, Chester had no idea what to do with the license he had. What could he possibly say? Nothing would make any difference. He was gone, and the steel mill would go on without him.

At last, one thing did occur to him. "Fuck," he said softly. He tore up the pink slip, dropped the pieces into a trash can, and walked out. He might as well have torn himself up and thrown himself away instead. After all, what was he but a disposable proletarian the capitalists who ran the mill had just disposed of?

That thought made him look up the street toward the Socialist Party hall. He almost started over there. If anybody knew what to do, if anybody could help him, he'd find what he needed there. But he shook his head before taking his first step in that direction. The hall could wait. It was only a trolley ride away (but, with no money coming in, was it only a trolley ride?), and Rita deserved to know first.

When the trolley rattled past the statue of Remembrance across from the city hall, Martin had to look away. He'd remembered. He'd helped the United States get their honor back. He'd paid in blood and pain doing it, too. But now, it seemed, the whole world had forgotten him-him and how many hundreds of thousands, how many millions, of others just like him?

He almost missed his stop, and had to scramble off at the last minute. The motorman, who'd started rolling, sent him a sour look as he braked again. Most of the time, Martin would have apologized. Now he hardly even noticed. He trudged off toward his apartment building, his feet scuffing through snow.

A man in a ragged overcoat came toward him from an alley. "Spare change?" the fellow said, and coughed. He'd probably been hatchet-faced when he was eating well. Now a man could wound himself on the sharp angles of cheeks and nose and chin.

Martin had always given what he could, even though he hadn't had much. Tonight, he shook his head. "Sorry, buddy," he said. "I just lost my job, too."

"Just?" The hatchet-faced man's scorn said there were degrees in misery, too, degrees Martin hadn't yet imagined. "It's been two years for me. I used to have a house and a motorcar. Hell, I used to have a wife. Enjoy it. You're only a beginner." He tipped his battered hat and walked away.

Shivering from more than the cold, Martin hurried into his building. He half feared another beggar would find him before he got up the steps, but none did. How long can we keep this place? he wondered as he turned the key in the lock. Is the next stop a Blackfordburgh?

Rita came to the door and gave him a quick, wifely peck on the lips. "How did it…?" she began. Her voice trailed away as she got a real look at his face. Slowly, the blood drained from hers. "Oh, no," she said. "You didn't…" She stopped again.

"I sure as hell did," Chester said. "Yes, I sure as hell did, and God only knows what happens now. Have we got anything to drink in this place?"

He knew they did. He took a bottle of bourbon-KENTUCKY PRIDE, NOW MADE IN THE USA, it said-from a cupboard and poured himself a glass. Very much as an afterthought, he added a couple of ice cubes.

When he started to put the bottle away, Rita said, "Wait a minute." She made a drink for herself, too, though she added water as well as ice to the whiskey.

Martin raised his glass. "Cheers," he said-the very opposite of what he meant. He drank. A good many steelworkers celebrated payday by going out and getting drunk. He'd never fallen into that habit. Tonight, though, he felt like killing the bottle, and whatever other bottles they had in the place. Why not? he thought. Why the hell not? It's not like I've got to get up in the morning. Who knows when I'll have to get up in the morning again?

"What are we going to do?" Rita said in a thin, frightened voice.

"Maybe one of us'll find a job," Chester answered. He didn't mean that, either. He took another sip and shook his head. It wasn't so much that he didn't mean it as that he didn't believe it. Rita had been looking ever since she lost her job, and hadn't had any luck landing a new one. She hadn't just searched for typist positions, either. Nobody seemed to be hiring anyone, even as a waitress or a salesgirl.

As for him… He wanted to laugh, but he hurt too much inside. He wondered if he even ought to bother trying other steel mills. They were all laying people off, not hiring. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a new face on the foundry floor.

Rita said, "What do we do if… if we can't find a job? Neither one of us, I mean."

"Why do you think I'm drinking?" he said, which seemed as complete a reply as anything else. A couple of swallows of bourbon later, he added, "My pop's still working. We've got a place to stay, if we have to."

He couldn't imagine a worse humiliation than moving back in with his folks as he neared his own fortieth birthday-and bringing his wife with him. His father and mother would take them in. He was sure of that. But having to crawl back to them was the last thing he wanted.

He shook his head again. The last thing he wanted was to have nowhere at all to go, and to end up in a Blackfordburgh. Next to that, the prospect of trying to fit himself and Rita into the room that had been cramped for him alone didn't seem so bad.

Rita said, "Maybe you can find something in some other line: construction or something like that."

Even she sounded doubtful. Chester wanted to laugh again. Again, the pain was too much to let him. As gently as he could, he asked, "Hon, why would they want me when they've got real carpenters and whatnot coming out their ears?"

He didn't expect his wife to have an answer for him, but she did: "Why? I'll tell you why. Because you'd work cheaper."

"Oh." He winced. It wasn't because she was wrong. It was because she was right. And so much for Socialist solidarity among workers, he thought. If times got bad enough, if people got desperate enough, Socialist solidarity went straight out the window. A job now, no matter what the pay, counted for more than the damage taking that job did to labor's ability to get better wages later.

His glass was empty. He filled it again. Again, he started to put away the bottle. Again, Rita wouldn't let him. She poured herself another drink, too. After she'd taken a swallow, she said, "At least your father's still got work."

"Yeah," Chester said. Rita's father had worked in a cement plant for more than thirty years, except when he'd done his time in the Army during the Great War. That hadn't stopped him from losing his job a few months before. He hadn't been fired, or not exactly; the company had gone belly-up. He'd been able to land only odd jobs since, and worried about losing his house.

"How much exactly have we got in the bank?" Rita asked.

Their bank was still sound, where so many had gone under. If this mess had any sort of silver lining, that was it. "We can get by for a month or two, anyhow," Martin answered. "We'd be better off if we'd never bought any stocks at all, dammit."

"We were suckers," his wife said. "Lots of people were suckers."

"Don't I know it," he said bitterly. "Buy when the market was near the top, throw money away on margin calls when it went sour. And you're right, honey-we aren't the only ones."

"Election's coming up this year," she said. "I don't see how Hosea Blackford has a prayer of getting a second term."

"I almost went to the Socialist Party hall before I came home," Martin said. And then, proving the depths of his own despair, he asked, "Why the devil should anyone who's out of work vote Socialist, though?"

"It wasn't the Democrats who passed the relief bills," Rita said. "They voted against most of them."

"I know. But they say the crash never would have happened in the first place if they'd been running things." Martin sighed. "Maybe they're even right. Who knows?" Rita looked shocked. He held up a defensive hand. "I used to be a Democrat till after the war. My old man still is-you know that. I changed my mind when the bosses sicced the cops on us when we struck for higher wages. We needed worker solidarity then, and we needed the Socialists, too."

"We still do." Rita's family had always voted Socialist.

Chester wasn't so sure. Chester wasn't so sure of anything just then, except that the bourbon was hitting him hard. "They've had twelve years," he said. "Blackford's had his whole term to get us back on our feet, and he hasn't done it. Maybe the other side deserves a shot. How could it be worse?"

"You'd really vote for Calvin Coolidge?" his wife asked. The governor of Massachusetts again looked to be his party's likely candidate for president.

"Right now, I don't know what the hell I'd do," Martin answered. "All I know is, I wish I still had my job. I wish I did, but I don't. And God only knows what we're going to do on account of that." He waited to see if Rita would argue some more. He hoped she would-that might mean she'd seen a ray of hope he hadn't. But she said not a word.

R ounding the Horn in the USS Remembrance felt like old times to Sam Carsten. "I came the other way, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, in the Dakota during the war," he said as waves lifted and dropped the aeroplane carrier again and again.

"It's easier going that way," Lieutenant Commander Michael Watkins said. "The waves are coming with you instead of hitting you head-on."

"Yes, sir," Sam agreed. "I still don't know how they ever got around this place against the wind in sailing ships."

"It wasn't easy-I know that," Watkins said, snatching up his mug of coffee from the galley table as the Remembrance plunged into another trough. Sam did the same. The table was mounted on gimbals, but the pitching in the strait was more than it was designed to handle.

After another couple of rises and falls, Sam said, "I pity the poor fellows whose stomachs can't take this."

"That's no joke," Watkins said, and took another sip of coffee.

"I didn't think it was, sir," Carsten said. "Have you seen the sick-bay lists? It's a good thing we don't have to do any fighting in these latitudes, that's all I've got to say." He checked himself. "No, I take that back. Anybody else who tried to fight down here would have just as many seasick cases as we do."

"True enough." The other officer sent him a sly look. "But I'll bet you don't mind the weather a bit."

"Who, me?" Sam tried to look innocent. Lieutenant Commander Watkins snickered, so he couldn't have pulled it off. He went on, "Rounding the Horn in April-autumn down here, heading toward winter? No, sir, I don't mind it one little bit. It's the kind of weather I was made for. I can go on deck without smearing goop all over my face and my hands. I'm not burned. I'm not blistered. And we're heading for the Sandwich Islands. I'm going to toast up there. I've been there before, and I know I'll toast. So I'll enjoy this while it lasts."

He hadn't intended to get so worked up, but he didn't enjoy, never had enjoyed, owning a hide that scorched if the sun looked at it sideways. Watkins held up a hand. "All right. I believe you. Do you think we're going to have to fight when we do get up there?"

"Me, sir?" Sam shrugged. "I'm no crystal-ball reader. No, we're talking about the Japs, so I guess I should say I'm no tea-leaf reader." Watkins made a face at him. He grinned, but then quickly became serious once more. "One thing I'll tell you, though, is that a scrap with them won't be any fun at all. I was aboard the Dakota when they suckered her out of Honolulu harbor and torpedoed her, and for the Battle of the Three Navies in the Pacific. They're tougher than most Americans think, and that's the truth."

"We can whip 'em." Lieutenant Commander Watkins sounded confident. "We can whip anybody, except maybe the High Seas Fleet-and the Kaiser's got more things on his plate than us right now. What do you know about these Action Francaise people?"

"Sir, when I was on the O'Brien, we put in at Brest. I went into town to have a few drinks and look around, and I saw an Action Francaise riot. What they remind me of most is the Freedom Party in the CSA. They remember how things were back before the war, and they want to turn back the clock so they're that way again."

"Good luck," Watkins said. "The Kaiser won't let them get away with that, and we won't let the damned Confederates get away with it, either. We'd better not, anyhow."

"Yes, sir," Carsten said. "But hard times mean parties like that get more votes, seems like. I don't know what anybody can do about it. I don't know if anybody can do anything."

He was sorry when the Remembrance rounded Cape Horn and made her way up the west coast of South America to Valparaiso, where she refueled. He'd been there briefly in the Dakota during the war. Chile was a staunch U.S. ally, not least because Argentina, her rival, had close ties to England and the other great alliance system. Argentina outweighed Chile, but the peace held because the Argentines didn't outweigh the United States and didn't want to give them any excuse to meddle in South American affairs.

Valparaiso had grown in the years since Sam was last there. He saw no signs of damage from the great earthquake of 1906. The weather was mild, which meant he got sunburned. Then the Remembrance started north and west again, toward the Sandwich Islands. He sighed, went to the pharmacist's mate, and drew himself yet another tube of zinc-oxide ointment.

"You don't happen to carry this stuff in five-gallon tubs, do you?" he asked, not altogether in jest.

"Sorry, no." Like most in his post, the pharmacist's mate had no sense of humor.

A few days out of Valparaiso, the Remembrance changed course, swinging more nearly toward the north. "Change of plan," Commander Martin van der Waal told Carsten. "Keep it under your hat for a bit, though, because the men won't like it. You can forget about Honolulu. No bright lights. No booze. No fast women, not any time soon. We're bound for patrol duty off the coast of British Columbia."

Sam had fond memories of some of the fast women in Honolulu. Even so, he said, "That's the best news I've had in months, sir. You ever eat one of those whole roasted pigs they cook in a pit in the Sandwich Islands? That's what I look like when I'm stationed there-cooked meat, nothing else but. The coast of British Columbia… That's not so bad." He'd sunburned in Seattle, too, but only a little.

Van der Waal looked him over, then nodded to himself. "No, you wouldn't be one to complain about going way north, would you? You've got your reasons."

"You bet I do, sir." Sam nodded. "But what's the scuttlebutt about the change in plans? What's going on off British Columbia?"

"We'll be flying combat air patrol, keeping an eye out for the Japs and giving 'em hell if we catch any of 'em in the neighborhood," Commander van der Waal replied. "I don't know this for a fact, but I hear they've been trying to stir up the Canucks, get 'em to rebel again."

"Bastards," Carsten said without much rancor. Having gone to Ireland during the Great War, he knew that was how you played the game. But, frowning, he asked, "Why us, sir? They've got to have other aeroplane carriers closer to Canada than we were when we set out. Why not use one of them? We're going the long way round, seems like."

"Yes, there are other carriers closer," van der Waal agreed. "They're purpose-built ships, not a converted battle cruiser like the Remembrance. They carry more aeroplanes than we do. And they're all going to the Sandwich Islands. So is a lot of the rest of the fleet-whatever we don't leave behind in the Atlantic to keep an eye on the Confederates and the limeys."

And the Germans, Sam thought. He lit a cigarette. "If they want the first team in Honolulu," he said slowly, "then they think there really might be trouble with the Japs."

"That's the way it looks to me, too," van der Waal said. "And that means we're going to have to pay special attention to torpedo-damage drills on our way north. Nobody knows what the Japs have operating off the Canadian coast. It may be nothing. It may be a destroyer or two. Or it may be more, including submersibles. And destroyers can launch torpedoes, too-that's their best hope against bigger ships, in fact."

"Yes, sir." Sam hoped he didn't sound too resigned. It wasn't that torpedo-damage control wasn't important. He knew it was. He'd seen how important it was aboard the Dakota. Important or not, though, it wasn't what he wanted to be doing. He'd come to the carrier hoping to work with aeroplanes or, that failing, to stay in gunnery, his specialty as a petty officer before he got promoted. Of course, what he wanted to do and what the Navy wanted him to do were two different beasts.

Van der Waal knew he was reluctant. He said, "This duty is vital to the ship's security, Ensign-vital, I tell you."

"Yes, sir," Carsten said again. "I know that, sir." He stifled a sigh. "I'll do what ever you need, sir."

"I'm sure you will. I appreciate it," van der Waal said. "You make a solid officer, Carsten, and I'm pleased to have you under me. If you'd gone to Annapolis instead of taking the mustang's route, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd made captain by now."

"Thank you very much, sir," Sam said. "I do appreciate that, believe you me I do." A lot of what he was doing these days amounted to showing people what he might have done if he'd had better chances when he was younger. He shrugged. Those were the breaks. He hadn't even thought about becoming an officer till years after the war. But I passed my exams very first try, he thought proudly. Some veteran CPOs had been trying for years, with no luck at all.

He went out on deck. This wasn't Cape Horn, not any more. The air was warm. The sea was blue and calm. The sun shone bright. Sam sighed. You couldn't have everything. He reached for the zinc-oxide ointment.

B erlin, Ontario, didn't boast a whole lot of fancy saloons. The best one, as far as Jonathan Moss was concerned, was the Pig and Whistle, not far from the courthouse. He found himself having a couple of drinks with Major Sam Lopat, the military prosecutor. They weren't sparring with each other in court today. They'd both ducked in to get warm; though the calendar declared it was April, a new blizzard had just left Berlin eight more inches of snow.

Hoisting a glass, Moss said, "Mud in your eye."

"Same to you," the U.S. officer said, and drank. "Of course, all the mud around here's frozen into a cheap grade of cement."

"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth?" Moss drank, too. "Nobody in his right mind would come here for the weather, that's for sure."

"Nope. Nobody in his right mind would come here at all." But then Lopat paused and shook his head. "I take that back, damned if I don't. You're here for a reason-you can't very well practice occupation law in the USA. Two reasons, matter of fact, because you married that Canadian gal, too."

"Yeah." Moss didn't mention that he'd gone into occupation law not least because even then he hadn't been able to get Laura Secord out of his mind.

Lopat's train of thought went down a different track, which was probably just as well. He said, "And everything's going to hell all over the world, but you're a civilian with a steady job. That's nothing to sneeze at, either, not these days it's not."

"Ain't it the truth?" Moss said, without grammar but with great sincerity. "I don't know when it's going to turn around. I don't know if it's ever going to turn around."

"Tell you one thing." The military prosecutor spoke with a glee unfueled as yet by whiskey. "Come November, old man Blackford can head back to Dakota, and nobody'll miss him a bit. And with a Democrat in Powel House, things here in Canada will tighten up-and about time, too. You see if they don't, Jonathan my boy."

"If they tighten up any more, you won't bother trying Canucks at all," Moss said. "You'll just give 'em a blindfold and a cigarette, the way it worked during the war."

"What a liar!" Lopat said. "Some of the fast ones you've pulled off in military court, and you're boo-hooing for the Canucks? Give me a break, for crying out loud!"

"Your trouble, Major, is that you think people spell prosecute and convict the same way," Moss said. "That's not how it works. Even in military court, a defendant's entitled to a fair shake."

"Most of the ones who come up before the court deserve to be shaken, all right," Lopat said. "One of these days, you're going to be sorry for getting so many of 'em off. You may be turning another Arthur McGregor loose on the world."

"McGregor never went to court," Moss snapped. "And there's not a lawyer in the world who doesn't have some clients he wishes he didn't. But what can you do, for Christ's sake? If you don't give everybody as good a defense as you can, everybody's rights go down the drain."

"Some people deserve to be locked up, and to have the jailer lose the key," Lopat insisted. "Or worse. How many people did McGregor end up killing? And a lot of 'em were just Canucks in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"McGregor deserved whatever happened to him-after he had his day in court," Moss said. "Till you have a trial, you just don't know. You people have tried to railroad a few Canadians in your time, and don't try to tell me any different."

Lopat snorted. "You'd say that, wouldn't you? I've got news for you, though. Just because you say it doesn't make it so." He picked up his glass of whiskey, poured it down, and signaled for a refill.

"If you don't admit that…" Moss threw his hands in the air. Of course Sam Lopat wouldn't admit it. He was a lawyer, too. Expecting a lawyer to admit anything damaging to the point of view he was presenting was like wishing the Easter Bunny would hop across your lawn. You could do it, but it wouldn't do you any good, and you'd spend a long time waiting.

Lopat underscored the point, grinning and saying, "I don't admit one damn thing, Counselor. Not one damned thing."

Moss finished his own drink, then got to his feet. "Fine. Don't admit anything. I'm still going to whale the stuffing out of you when we go back to court tomorrow morning. For now, I'm heading home. See you in the morning." He plucked his hat off the rack, stuck it on his head, and strode out of the Pig and Whistle in more than a little annoyance. How could you have a civilized discussion with a man who wouldn't admit one damned thing and was proud of it?

That Lopat might think the same of him never crossed his mind.

His Bucephalus started reluctantly. He let out a sigh of relief when it did start. The battery was going, no doubt about it. Pretty soon he'd have to get a new one. Pretty soon he'd have to get a new, or at least a newer, auto, too. Too many things on the Bucephalus were breaking down. And the company had gone out of business in 1929, so parts were hard to come by and ever more expensive.

He parked it outside his block of flats and hoped it would fire up again in the morning. If it didn't… If it doesn't, I'll walk in, he thought, and reminded himself to set the alarm clock half an hour earlier than usual to give him time to walk if he had to.

His key turned in the lock. "I'm home!" he called as he stepped in the door. He wondered how glad Laura would be to see him. She'd been happy enough to marry him, but neither of them had been particularly happy since. Moss listened. Silence. "I'm home, honey," he said again, wondering what sort of trouble he was in.

But it turned out not to be that kind of silence. A moment later, noise came from the bathroom: the unmistakable sound of someone being sick. A moment after that, the water closet flushed.

Laura came out a minute or so afterwards. She looked distinctly green. "What happened, hon?" Moss asked. "Are you all right?"

"Better now," she said, and made a face, probably at the nasty taste in her mouth. "In about eight months, we'll know if it's a boy or a girl."

For a moment, that seemed a complete non sequitur. Then Moss' jaw dropped. "You mean we're-?"

She nodded. "Doesn't seem to be much room for doubt any more. I've missed a month, and I've got morning sickness, even if it isn't morning right now. We're going to have a baby, sure enough."

"That's… wonderful," Moss said. A good attorney was never supposed to be caught speechless. He went on, "But… how did it happen?"

His wife's mouth quirked in a wry grin. "Very much in the usual way, I'm sure. It hasn't happened any other way since the days of our Lord."

He made a face at her. "I didn't mean that. What I meant was, it's a surprise." He couldn't think of the last time he hadn't worn a safe when they made love.

"Those things aren't perfect," Laura said.

"Evidently not." Moss shrugged and laughed. "If it's a boy, we can call him Broken Rubber Moss. That has a ring to it, don't you think? Or how about Prophylactina for a girl?"

"What I think-" Laura Moss didn't, couldn't, go on. What ever she'd been about to say, a giggle swallowed it. She tried again: "What I think, Jonathan, is that you're dangerously insane."

He bowed. "Your servant, ma'am. You've known that for a long time, I'm sure."

"I certainly have." She nodded. "There I was, with this mad Yank who kept coming to the farm. I didn't want any mad Yanks coming to the farm."

"I should hope not," Moss said gravely. "You get into all sorts of trouble if you let those people anywhere near you. You might even end up married to one of them if you're not careful, and after that anything can happen. Obviously."

"Obviously," Laura echoed. She set one hand on her belly, though the pregnancy didn't show and wouldn't for months. "This was as much a surprise to me as it was to you, you know. I didn't much want a child. Now… Now we'll just have to make the best of it, won't we?"

"I don't know what else we can do." Moss kissed her on the cheek.

When he tried to kiss her on the mouth, too, she pulled away, saying, "You don't want to do that. I haven't properly cleaned my teeth yet."

"Oh." Jonathan nodded. "Well, why don't you, then?" While Laura went back to the bathroom, he hurried to the kitchen. The occasion really called for champagne, but they didn't have any. Whiskey over ice would do the job well enough. He had the drinks ready by the time Laura came out again.

She took one. They solemnly clinked glasses and drank. Then Moss did kiss her. Her mouth tasted of liquor and toothpaste. She said, "I hope this won't make me sick again." After seeming to listen to something internal, she shook her head in relief. "No, I think it will be all right." As if to prove it, she took another sip. "That's good."

"It is, isn't it?" Jonathan drank some more, too. He raised his glass. "Here's to us, and to… whom it may concern."

"That's pretty good. I like it a lot better than… what you said before." Laura wouldn't dignify it by repeating it.

"All right." Moss made his drink disappear in a hurry. Along with what he'd had at the Pig and Whistle, it left him owlishly serious. He took his wife's hands in his and said, "I do love you, you know. I always have."

"You always called it love, anyhow," she said. "I think for a long time it was just what any man feels when he's been away from women for too long."

Since she was bound to be right, he didn't dignify that with a direct reply. Instead, he said, "Well, you can't very well accuse me of that now." As if to prove as much, he kissed her again. His hands resting on the swell of her hips, he continued, "And, since you can't accuse me of that…" He kissed her once more, his lips hard against hers. One of his hands slid to her behind, to press her to him. Her own arms tightened around his back. As the kiss went on, she made a little wordless sound, almost a growl, in the back of her throat.

He lifted her off her feet. She let out a startled squawk: "Put me down! You'll hurt your back!" She had a reasonable chance of being right; she wasn't a small woman, and he was pushing forty. He ignored her all the same, carrying her off to the bedroom. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

"What do you think?" He set her on the bed and got down beside her. His hand slid under her skirt and up her thigh to the joining of her legs. He rubbed there. Her legs slid apart to make it easier for him. He hiked her skirt up and pulled her underpants down, then went back to what he'd been doing.

She laughed. "I think you're going to take advantage of me."

"Damn right I am." Jonathan unbuttoned his own fly. He was also going to take advantage of her being pregnant: if he didn't have to worry about putting on a rubber, he didn't intend to. He certainly liked it better without.

They both still wore most of their clothes when he went into her. She wasn't quite so wet as he would have wanted, but having to force his way in added to his excitement. She wrapped her legs around him and bucked hard. "Come on!" she said as he squeezed and fondled her breasts through the thin cotton fabric of her blouse. As she kindled, she said a good deal more than that. She was the very model of a lady

… except in the bedroom, when she was well and truly roused. Then anything could happen, and anything could come out of her mouth.

It hadn't lately. The two of them had started taking each other for granted since they'd got married. Today, though… Today they thrashed on the bed and clawed at each other as they hadn't done since he would drive up to Arthur and they'd picnic and then fornicate at her farmhouse outside the little town.

His own building pleasure driving him on, Moss rammed at her, not caring in the heat of the moment if he hurt her a little, too. By the way Laura yowled, she didn't care, either. Suddenly, she arched her back, threw back her head, and let out a long, shuddering moan. At the same time, she squeezed him inside her, so tight that he couldn't help but erupt.

"You're rumpling me," Laura said a moment later, pushing at him.

He shook his head and replied with lawyerly precision: "No, sweetheart, I just rumpled you." She made a face when he gave her a kiss. He laughed, his weight still on her. "If I remember right, that has something to do with why we got married."

"You think so, do you?" She pushed at him again, harder this time. He flopped out of her, which reminded him that, despite the fierce lovemaking they'd just enjoyed, he didn't burn so hot as he had back in his twenties. Then he'd have been ready for a second round as soon as the first was over. Now… Now he'd wait for tomorrow, or maybe the day after. Laura gave him another shove, and twisted under him, too. "Let me up. Let me set myself to rights."

"Oh, I suppose so," he said. But he couldn't keep wonder from his voice as he went on, "A baby. How about that?"

"Yes. How about that?" His wife's voice softened, too. "It isn't what I expected, but I'm glad it's happened."

"So am I." He wondered if he meant it. He decided he did. "About time we put down some roots here."

" I've already got roots here," Laura said pointedly. She nodded, too, though. "It's about time we were a family."

"A baby," Moss said again. "I wonder what he'll see by the time he grows up." The baby would be his age in the early 1970s. What would the world be like then?

A creek ran through the farm on which Mary McGregor and her mother lived. Scrubby oaks and willows grew alongside it. They got some firewood there, which was all to the good. Ducks sometimes nested along it, too, which gave Mary practice with a shotgun and gave her mother and her a tasty dinner every so often. And she would pull trout out of it once in a while, though she seldom had the time to sit and fish.

The creek and the trees by it also came in handy in other ways. Mary lit a fuse and ducked down behind an oak to wait for the explosion. It came just when she thought it would-a harsh, flat crack! Mallards leaped into the air with a thunder of wings. A couple of crows in a willow flapped away, cawing in alarm. Moments later, quiet returned.

Mary stepped out from behind the tree trunk to see what the dynamite had done. She nodded to herself. The stump she'd blown up had landed in the creek, just as she'd thought it would. The hole in the ground it left was about the size she'd expected, too.

She hadn't done anything particularly useful-a stump here wasn't the nuisance it would have been out in the middle of a field. But she'd learned a little more about explosives and fuses, which was knowledge that wouldn't go to waste, either on the farm or…

Or anywhere else, she thought. She was, after all, Arthur McGregor's daughter. She wondered what had gone through her father's mind while he waged his long one-man war against the Americans who occupied Canada. He'd never talked about it much-but then, he'd never been one to talk about anything much. What had he thought? Her guess was that he'd tried not to think about it except while he was actually busy at it. That would have made it harder for him to give himself away when the Yanks came snooping around, which they had again and again.

Not thinking about it would also have made it easier for him to go on thinking of them as the enemy, as abstractions, not as human beings. Killing the enemy was what you did when you went to war. Blowing up men-people-who were just like you, who fell in love and drank beer and got sore backs and dug splinters out of their hands and played checkers… That was a different business. It had to be a different business. Mary couldn't see how anybody would want, or would even be able, to do that.

Had Major Hannebrink, the American officer who'd ordered her brother Alexander shot during the war, ever imagined him as a human being? Or had Alexander simply been the enemy to him? For a moment, Mary came close to understanding how the American could have done what he did, came close to understanding without hating.

For a moment, and for a moment only. She shoved that understanding away with all the force of the hate she'd nursed ever since the USA invaded her country in 1914. She saw Americans as the enemy, not as human beings at all. She saw them so, and intended to go right on seeing them so.

When she got back to the farmhouse, her mother sat at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea. "I heard the boom," Maude McGregor said.

Mary nodded. "I took out a stump," she said. "I'm getting the hang of it, I think."

"Are you?" Her mother's voice held no expression what ever. "And what will you do with it once you've got it?"

"It'll come in handy around the farm, Ma," Mary answered. "You know it will."

"Yes-as long as you only use it around the farm," her mother said. "That's what worries me. I know you too well."

I don't know what you're talking about would have been a lie, an obvious lie. "I don't intend to use it anywhere else," Mary said. That was a lie, too, but maybe not so obvious. Maybe.

Maude McGregor looked at her for a long time. "I hope not," she said at last, and then, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Yes, please," Mary said. Her mother fixed her one. She added milk and sugar herself, and sat down to drink it across the table from her mother. Neither of them said another word till the tea was done-or, for that matter, for several hours afterwards. When they did start speaking to each other again, it was quietly, cautiously, as if they'd had a knockdown, drag-out fight that might pick up again if they weren't careful.

That's silly, Mary thought. We didn't. Not even close. All we did was talk about that stump. To her mother, that stump seemed plenty. And Mary herself wasn't inclined to change her mind. Maybe that was what worried her mother.

They were still wary around each other a few days later, when they had to go into Rosenfeld to shop. Mary remembered checkpoints outside of town, where the Americans would carefully examine wagons and goods for explosives before letting them go on. Not now. The Yanks seemed to think her countrymen weren't dangerous any more. One day, she hoped to show them they were wrong. That too, though, would have to wait for another day.

Many more motorcars were on the road now than had been there when Mary first started going into Rosenfeld. They whizzed past the wagon, one after another. Some of the drivers, angry because they had to slow down to keep from hitting it, honked as they went by.

"I wish I were a man," Mary said. "I'd tell them what I think of them."

Her mother nodded. "Yes, I'm sure you would," she said. It did not sound like praise. Mary muttered to herself, but didn't rise to it.

When they got into Rosenfeld, her mother tied the horse to a lamppost. "Hardly any hitching rails left," Mary said.

"I know." Maude McGregor nodded again. "Automobiles don't need them. You go to the post office and get some stamps. I'll be in Henry Gibbon's store."

"All right." Mary hesitated, then plunged: "Do you want to go to the cinema afterwards? We haven't been in an awfully long time."

"Maybe," her mother answered. "We'll see how much I have to spend at the general store, that's all."

Mary wished she could argue more, but knew she couldn't, not when the argument involved money. Even the half a dollar two tickets would cost was a lot, considering how little the farm brought in.

Wilfred Rokeby stood behind the counter at the post office, as he had for as long as Mary could remember. She noticed with surprise that he'd gone gray. When had that happened? It must have sneaked up when she wasn't looking. He still parted his hair in the middle and slicked it down with some old-fashioned, sweet-smelling oil whose spicy odor she indelibly associated with the post office.

Only one other customer was ahead of her: a young man close to her own age, who had a huge swarm of parcels. The postmaster had to weigh each one individually and calculate the proper postage for it, then stick on stamps and write down the sum so he could get a grand total when he finally finished.

Seeing Mary, the young man waved her forward. "If you want to take care of what you need, go ahead," he told her. "I'll be here for a while any which way."

She shook her head. "It's all right. You were here first. I can wait."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Positive," she said. "Where are you sending all those boxes, anyway?"

"Winnipeg. My brother just moved up there, and he figured out this was the cheapest way to get his stuff up there with him. Of course, that means I have to stand here and go through this, but why should Bob care?" He grinned.

To her surprise, Mary found herself grinning, too. "Brothers and sisters are like that," she said, speaking from experience. "You might as well be a pack mule, as far as they're concerned."

"That's right. That's just right." Bob's brother-Mary still had no better name for him-nodded enthusiastically. "They always say they'll pay you back, and then they never do, or not enough." He paused to stoop and hand Wilfred Rokeby another package.

"Thank you, Mort," the postmaster said.

As if hearing his name reminded him Mary didn't know it, he said, "That's me-Mort Pomeroy, at your service." He touched the brim of his hat.

"Oh!" Mary said. She hadn't seen him before, or at least hadn't noticed him, but now she knew who his family was. "Your father runs the diner down the street from Gibbon's general store." With money so tight, she couldn't recall the last time she'd eaten there.

"That's me," he said again, and handed another package, a big, heavy one, to Rokeby. Then he turned back to her. "That's me, all right, but who are you?" He looked at her as if he were an explorer who'd just sighted a new and unimagined continent.

"I'm Mary McGregor." She waited.

"Oh," Mort Pomeroy said, in a tone very different from hers. He couldn't go on with something bright and chipper, as she had, something on the order of, Your father blew up Yanks. Then he blew himself up, too. He couldn't say anything like that, but his face told her he knew who her father was, sure enough. Who in and around Rosenfeld didn't know who Arthur McGregor was?

Too bad, she thought. Now he won't want to have anything to do with me, and he seems nice.

But, after giving Wilfred Rokeby yet another parcel-the next to last one-he managed to put the smile back on his face and say, "Well, that was a long time ago now, and it certainly didn't have anything to do with you."

He wasn't quite right. The only thing Mary regretted was that her father hadn't had more luck. But Pomeroy wouldn't know that, of course. And a lot of people in Rosenfeld still stared and pointed whenever she went by, and probably would for years to come. Someone trying to treat her kindly made a very pleasant novelty, especially when the someone in question was a good-looking young man. "Thank you," she whispered.

"For what?" He sounded honestly puzzled as he gave the postmaster the last package. That made her like him more, not less.

Rokeby went to work with pencil and paper. "Comes to nine dollars and sixteen cents, all told," he said.

"For postage? Can you imagine that?" Mort Pomeroy said, genially astonished, as he paid Rokeby. "I'll take it out of Bob's hide-if he ever finds a job, I will."

"Times are hard," Mary agreed. "Let me have seventy-five cents' worth of stamps, Mr. Rokeby, if you would."

"I can do that," he said, and gave her twenty-five stamps-postage had recently gone up from two cents to three. He put the three quarters she handed him into his cash box. She sighed. The extra twenty-five cents she had to spend on stamps would have paid her way into the theater. Now the money was gone-and gone into the Americans' pockets. One more reason to hate them, she thought.

"Are you in town by yourself?" Pomeroy sounded hopeful.

"I have to meet my mother at the general store," Mary said with much more regret than she'd expected to feel.

His face fell. "Oh. Too bad." He hesitated, then asked, "If I was to come calling on you one day before too long, would that be all right? Maybe you'd like to see a moving-picture show with me?"

"Maybe I would." Mary realized she ought to say more than that. "Yes, I'm sure I would."

"Swell!" Now the grin came back enormously. "I've got an auto. Can I pick you up Saturday night? We'll go to a film, see what else there is to do after that-a dance at the church, or something."

"All… all right." Mary sounded dazed, even to herself. No one had ever shown this kind of interest in her. Her past left her damaged goods. That had always suited her fine-up till this minute. She was ever so glad Mort Pomeroy didn't seem to care who her father was or what he'd done. "Saturday night," she whispered, and hurried out of the post office. Pomeroy and Wilfred Rokeby both stared after her.

C incinnatus Driver used a hand truck to haul crates of oatmeal boxes from his Ford to the market that had ordered them. "This here's the last load, Mr. Marlowe," he said, panting a little.

Oscar Marlowe nodded. "Yes, I've been keeping track of everything you've brought in," he answered. Cincinnatus believed him: the storekeeper was a thin, fussily precise man with a little hairline mustache so very narrow it might have been drawn on with a mascara pencil. He said, "I do appreciate how hard you've worked bringing it all in."

"It's my job, Mr. Marlowe," said Cincinnatus, who knew he would feel it in his back and shoulders tonight. Work that had seemed effortlessly easy in his twenties didn't now that he'd passed forty. He added, "Way things are these days, I got to do everything I can."

''Oh, yes." Marlowe nodded. He ran a pink tongue over that scrawny little excuse for a mustache. "I understand you completely-and agree with you completely, I might add. Even now, though, too many people don't seem to have figured that out. I'm always glad to see someone who has. Let me have your paperwork. The sooner I sign off, the sooner you can be on your way. I don't want to waste your time."

"Got it right here." Scipio handed him the clipboard.

"I expected you would." Marlowe scribbled his name on the forms, making sure he signed in all four necessary spaces. He and Cincinnatus leaned toward each other in mutual sympathy as he wrote. Their both being hardworking men counted for more than one's being white, the other black. The storekeeper said, "Here you are," and returned the clipboard to Cincinnatus.

"Thank you kindly, suh." Cincinnatus turned to leave.

He'd taken only a step or two before Marlowe said, "Here, wait a second." He went behind the counter where he kept his meat on ice, wrapped a package in butcher paper, and thrust it at Cincinnatus. "Take this home to your missus, why don't you? Marrow bones and a little meat-make you a good soup or a stew."

Cincinnatus wanted to say he couldn't possibly, but common sense won over pride. "Thank you kindly," he repeated, and touched the brim of his hap. "You didn't have to do nothin' like that, Mr. Marlowe."

"I didn't do it because I had to. I did it because I wanted to." The storekeeper sounded impatient. "If you work hard, you ought to know other people notice. And I do. I'm always glad to see you bringing me loads from the docks and the railroad yard."

"Much obliged." Cincinnatus touched his brim again, then took the package-it was nice and heavy-out to the truck and set it on the front seat beside him. He had one more delivery to make before he could go home with it.

His last stop wasn't at a grocery store, but at the offices of the Des Moines Register and Remembrance. The crates he unloaded there were large and heavy. "What is this thing?" he asked the man who took delivery.

"New typesetting machine," the fellow answered. "We'll get the paper out faster than ever."

"That's nice," Cincinnatus said obligingly.

"And we won't need so many compositors," the newspaperman added. Seeing that the word meant nothing to Cincinnatus, he chose a simpler one: "Typesetters."

"Oh." Cincinnatus hesitated, then asked, "What happens to the ones you don't need no- any — more? They lose their jobs?"

"That isn't settled yet." The newspaperman sounded uncomfortable now. He sounded so uncomfortable, Cincinnatus was sure he was lying. He went on, "Even if we do let some people go, we'll try to make sure they latch on somewhere else."

"Uh- huh," Cincinnatus said. How were they supposed to manage that, with jobs so hard to come by? He figured it for another lie, right up there with old favorites like The check is in the mail.

His skepticism must have shown in his voice; the man from the Register and Remembrance turned red. He said, "We'll try, goddammit. We will. What else can we do? We've got to save money wherever we can, because we sure as hell aren't making much."

For that, Cincinnatus had no good answer. He got his paperwork signed and went back to the truck. Outside the Register and Remembrance building, a couple of men were hanging a banner over the doorway. WIN WITH COOLIDGE IN '32! it said, and then, in smaller letters, A RETURN TO PROSPERITY! The Register and Remembrance was the Democratic paper in Des Moines. Its Socialist counterpart, the Workers' Gazette, had its offices across the street and down the block. Even though this was a presidential-election year, the Workers' Gazette displayed no banners extolling the virtues of Hosea Blackford. The paper seemed to want to forget about him.

It was only May. There was, as yet, no guarantee Calvin Coolidge would be nominated for a second run at the Powel House. It certainly looked likely, though; no other Democratic hopeful roused much excitement. Cincinnatus snorted when that thought crossed his mind. Coolidge was about as exciting as a pitcher of warm spit. But everyone thought he could win when November rolled around. To the Democrats, locked out of Powel House the past twelve years, that was plenty to make the governor of Massachusetts seem exciting.

Nobody, by all the signs, thought President Blackford had much chance to win a second term. But the Socialists had made no move to dump him from their ticket. For one thing, not even they were radical enough to jettison a sitting president. For another, no one else from the Socialist Party looked like a winner this year, either. Blackford wouldn't run again, win or lose. If things went as they looked like going, he could perform one last duty for the Party by serving as sacrificial lamb. That way, defeat would taint no one else.

Cincinnatus shrugged. Whom the Socialists ran was all one to him. He intended to vote Democratic; the Democrats took a harder line about the Confederate States than the Socialists did. He couldn't imagine any Negro in the United States voting any other way-which didn't mean some wouldn't.

When he got back to the family apartment, Elizabeth greeted him with, "How did it go today?" How much money did you make? was what she meant, of course.

Some of the tension slid out of her face when he answered, "Pretty well, thanks. How about you, sweetheart?"

"Ordinary kind o' day," his wife said with a weary shrug. "Got me two dollars and a quarter. Every little bit helps, I reckon."

Achilles looked up from the kitchen table, where he was writing a high-school composition. He said, "Classes let out next month. Then I'll be able to look for work without you pitching fits, Dad."

He itched to do more than he was doing. Cincinnatus knew as much. He said, "Workin' summers is one thing. Workin' instead o' schoolin' is somethin' else. You're sixteen-you got two years to go 'fore you get your diploma. I want you to have it, by God. It's somethin' nobody can't never taken away from you."

By Achilles' expression, he'd made a mess of his grammar. But then, at sixteen (and where had the years since he was born gone?) Achilles wore that look of scorn around him a lot of the time. Cincinnatus remembered wearing it around his own father when he was that age. Boys turning into young men banged heads with their fathers. That was the way things worked.

"If we need the money-" Achilles began.

"We don't need it that bad," Cincinnatus said. "This is the rest of your life we're talkin' about, remember." To his relief, his son didn't choose to push it tonight. Cincinnatus knew he'd be smart not to push the boy too hard about staying in school. Achilles liked school, and did pretty well. But if his father urged him to stay in and do well, that might be enough to turn him against it.

Amanda came in and gave Cincinnatus a hug. She was still young enough to love without reservation. She said, "I got all my words right on my spelling test today."

"That's good, sweetheart. That's mighty fine," Cincinnatus said enthusiastically. "Can't hardly do no better than perfect."

"How can you do better than perfect at all?" Amanda asked.

"You can't. I was just jokin' a little," Cincinnatus answered.

"Oh." Amanda wrinkled her nose. "That's silly, Daddy." Her accent held even more Midwest, even less Kentucky, than Achilles'. She'd been born here, after all. Everyone she'd ever heard, except for her parents, had that harsh, precise way of talking, with sharp vowels and every letter of every word pronounced. It still sounded strange and ugly to Cincinnatus, although he'd been here for going on ten years (not counting time in Luther Bliss' jail).

A delicious odor reached Cincinnatus' nose. "What smells good?" he asked.

"I'm stewing giblets with potatoes and tomatoes and onions," Elizabeth answered. "Butcher shop had 'em cheap."

"Cheap?" Cincinnatus said, thumping himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand. He hurried down to the truck and returned with the butcher-paper package he'd left on the front seat. "Soup bones. Oscar Marlowe gave 'em to me for nothin'. Reckon I'd forget my head if it wasn't on tight."

"Soup bones? That's wonderful! I'll do 'em up tomorrow." Elizabeth hurried to put the package in the icebox.

"Giblets. Soup bones." Achilles made a face that looked remarkably like the one his little sister had just made. "Not many people eat that kind of stuff."

Cincinnatus had grown up eating chicken gizzards and beef tongues and lungs and other cuts richer people thought of as offal. He took them for granted, as he always had. When times here in Des Moines were good, Elizabeth hadn't bought them so often, so Achilles noticed them more now than he would have otherwise. But Cincinnatus wagged a finger at his son. "Happens that ain't so," he said. "Plenty of people who was eatin' roast beef's eatin' giblets now, and glad to have 'em. I ain't just talkin' 'bout colored folks, neither. It's the same way with whites. I seen enough to know that for a fact. Reckon it's the same with the Chinaman upstairs, too. When times are hard, you're smart to be glad o' what you've got, not sorry for what you ain't."

Achilles said, "Somebody at school told me Chinamen cut up dogs and cats and use them for meat. Is that true, Dad?"

"I don't know," Cincinnatus answered. "I never heard it before, I'll tell you. Tell you somethin' else, too-don't you go asking the Changs about it, neither. They're nice folks, and I don't want you embarrassing 'em none, you hear?"

"I wouldn't do that!" Achilles sounded uncommonly sincere. A moment later, he explained why: "Grace Chang is in a couple of my classes. I think she's a cute girl."

That made Cincinnatus and Elizabeth exchange glances. Even if Cincinnatus had felt such a thing about a white woman in Kentucky, he never would have said so. But the Drivers weren't in Kentucky any more, and Grace wasn't white. What were the rules for Negroes and Chinese? Were there any?

Of course, just because Achilles thought Grace was cute, that didn't mean he was going to ask her to marry him, or even to ask her to go to a film with him. Just the same, a sensible father-a father who didn't want his boy beaten up or lynched-started worrying about these things as far ahead of time as he could. By Elizabeth's expression, she was worrying about them, too.

Before Cincinnatus could say anything about any of that, Achilles changed the subject: "Who are you going to vote for for president, Dad?"

"Whoever the Democrats run-looks like Coolidge now," Cincinnatus answered. Elizabeth nodded agreement. "Got to keep an eye on them Confederates." His wife nodded again.

Not Achilles. "If I could vote, I'd vote for the Socialists," he declared. "They don't care if you're black or white or yellow or red. They just want to know what you can do." And that declaration of political independence started a whole new argument, one that made Cincinnatus forget Grace Chang for the rest of the night.

"P ass the salt, Ma," Edna Grimes said, and Nellie Jacobs did. Her daughter sprinkled it on a drumstick. "This is awful good fried chicken." She took a big bite.

"Sure is, Mother Jacobs," Merle Grimes agreed. He turned to Edna. "You all right, honey? Everything staying down?"

Edna nodded. "Couldn't be better, Merle. Stomach isn't bothering me at all this time around." She yawned. "I still get sleepy a lot, though." She was three months pregnant; the baby would be born somewhere around New Year's Day, 1933. Suddenly, she pointed at her son. "For God's sake, Armstrong, I'm not too sleepy to miss you stuffing half a pound of mashed potatoes into your face all at once. Show some manners, or you'll find out you're not too big to paddle. Ten years old, and you eat like that? Jesus!"

"Sorry, Ma," Armstrong said, most indistinctly-maybe it hadn't been half a pound of mashed potatoes, but it hadn't missed by much. Across the table from him, Clara smirked. Aunt and nephew (which seemed silly, when only two years separated them) had never got along, not even when they were tiny.

Merle Grimes raised his glass of beer. "Here's hoping Cal sweeps the Socialists out of Powel House," he said. The Democrats wouldn't hold their convention for another month-they'd scheduled it for the Fourth of July-but Governor Coolidge's nomination now looked like a foregone conclusion.

"Amen," Nellie said, and drank. So did Edna. So did Hal Jacobs. Armstrong Grimes raised his glass of milk in imitation of the grownups. Clara made a face at him.

"That will be enough of that, young lady," Nellie said. Clara subsided. Armstrong laughed.

Edna said, "We're all Democrats, and it doesn't do us or Coolidge a bit of good. Hardly seems fair."

"It isn't fair," her husband said. "This is what we get for living in Washington, D.C. We're not a state, so we don't get to vote. Most of the government's been in Philadelphia for the past fifty years, but they can vote for president there and we still can't. There ought to be a law."

"It's been this way forever." Hal Jacobs paused to cough.

"You've lived here all your life," Merle said. "You're used to not voting. I grew up in Ohio. I like having my voice count for something. Losing my vote was the hardest thing about coming to live here."

"A lot of places, Ma and me wouldn't have had a vote up till a few years ago anyway." Edna had to raise her voice, because Hal coughed again. "Summer cold?" she asked sympathetically.

He shrugged. "I do not know." He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and coughed yet again. "I am having trouble shaking it, though, what ever it is."

Merle lit up, too. He blew a smoke ring, which made Clara and Armstrong laugh. Despite what he was doing, he said, "Maybe you ought to cut back, Father Jacobs. I always cough worse if I smoke a lot while I've got a cold-I know that."

Hal blew a smoke ring, too. With another shrug, he said, "I have been smoking since before the Second Mexican War-more than fifty years now. Cutting back is not that… easy." The interruption was for more coughs yet.

Merle Grimes' laugh was rueful. "Oh, I know. I always feel like I've been steamrollered if I don't smoke my usual ration."

"You're cross as a bear, too," Edna said.

"Blow another smoke ring, Pa," Clara said. He needed two tries before he could; a cough in the middle ruined the first one.

"You have been coughing a lot lately," Nellie said. "Maybe you ought to see a doctor, get yourself looked at."

"What will he tell me, dear?" her husband replied, taking a last drag at the cigarette and then stubbing it out. "He will tell me I am not so young as I used to be. I already know this, thank you very much. I do not need to pay a doctor money to find out what I already know."

Even at the start of the Great War- eighteen years ago now, Nellie realized with no small surprise; where had the time gone? — Hal's hair and mustache had been gray, his face lined. He hadn't seemed to change much in all the time since. Now, though, Nellie tried to see him as if she were just meeting him. He was close to seventy, and looked every year of it. His skin sagged on his face. He was a sallow color he shouldn't have been.

She actually blinked, wondering if she was seeing things that weren't there. But she wasn't. She looked at her husband again. It wasn't just that the changes had sneaked up gradually and she hadn't noticed. She was sure it wasn't. They'd come on lately. She didn't care for any of the thoughts following from that.

"Hal," she said, "I think maybe you really ought to see a doctor."

"Nonsense," he told her, and sounded very firm. He seldom talked back to her; in that (as in most ways, she had to admit), he made a most satisfactory husband. She decided not to push it, especially not at the supper table. Maybe it was just a summer cold, and he would get better.

But he didn't. The cough went on. He lost more flesh, and he'd never had that much to spare. His appetite dwindled. A couple of times, Nellie started to tell him to go to a doctor's office. Each time, she held back. She didn't want to be a nag, especially where he'd dug in his heels.

Then, just before the Fourth of July, he had another coughing fit, and she saw red on his handkerchief. "That does it, Hal," she declared, trying her best not to show how alarmed she was. "You get yourself to the doctor right this minute, do you hear me?"

If he'd argued, she would have dragged him by the heels. But he didn't. He only sighed and nodded and said, "Yes, maybe you are right. All the pep has oozed right out of me the past few months, feels like."

He made the appointment. Nellie made sure he kept it. When he got back, she said, "Well? What did he tell you?"

"Nothing yet, not really," he answered. "He took an X ray of my chest. I have to go back in a couple of days, after he gets the photograph developed. He will not charge me anything extra for the second visit."

"He'd better not, not when it's his fault," Nellie said, and then, anxiously, "Do you want me to come along with you, dear?" She didn't use endearments with Hal very often; that she did now showed how worried she was.

"Thank you, Nellie. You are very sweet." He was, as usual, polite-almost courtly-but he shook his head without hesitation. "I hope I am by now a grown man. Whatever the news may be, you can trust me to bring it home to you."

"You know I trust you," Nellie said. And that was true. She could rely on him absolutely. That was the rock on which they'd built the past going on fifteen years. Some people had passion at the bottom of their marriage. Nellie was pretty sure Edna and Merle did-and yet that marriage had almost come apart when Merle found out the soldier Edna had nearly married before him wore C.S. butternut, not U.S. green-gray. Trust mattered in any marriage.

What if Hal knew I killed Bill Reach? Nellie shoved that question down, as she always did. The only way two can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. That fit her and Hal's former spy boss-her former client in her much, much younger days in the demimonde-to a T. Edna's secret had got out, as Nellie had thought it would sooner or later. She would take her own to the grave with her.

Considering Hal's cough, she wished she hadn't thought of it like that.

When the day for the new doctor's appointment came, he put a CLOSED sign in the window of the cobbler's shop where he'd worked so long and walked on over: it was only three or four blocks to the office. Across the street in the coffeehouse where she'd worked so long (though not as long as Hal), Nellie watched him go. Her eyes kept coming back to the CLOSED sign. She didn't like the look of it. And she kept missing customers' orders, either not hearing what they wanted or bringing them the wrong thing even though she'd written down the right one.

Hal came back about an hour and a quarter after he'd left. He took down the CLOSED sign and went back to work. Maybe that meant everything was fine. Maybe it just meant he had a lot to do. Nellie didn't think he would come across the street right away and tell her if the news was bad. He wasn't like that. And she couldn't go ask him right away, because she was busy herself. If I keep making mistakes like I'm doing, though, I'll lose so many customers, I'll never be this busy again, she thought.

At last, she had a moment when nobody was in the coffeehouse. She hung up her own CLOSED sign, waited for a break in the traffic, and crossed the street. The bell over Hal's door jingled. He looked up from a new heel he was putting on. Spitting a mouthful of brads into the palm of his hand, he said, "Hello, Nellie."

She couldn't tell anything from his face or voice. She had to ask it: "What did the doctor say? What did the X ray say?"

"I have something unusual." He laughed, as if proud of himself. "The doctor said he has only seen it a few times in all the years he has been practicing."

"What is it?" Nellie didn't scream at him. She never knew why or how she didn't, but she didn't. She waited, taut as a fiddle string.

"It is called carcinoma of the lungs." Hal pronounced the unfamiliar word with care. He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one.

When he offered the pack to Nellie, she shook her head. "Not now. What the devil does that mean, anyway?"

"Well, it is like a-a growth in there," he said.

"A growth? What kind of a growth? What can they do about it?" The questions flew quick and sharp, like machine-gun fire.

Hal sighed. "It is a cancer, Nellie. They can aim more X rays at it, the doctor said. That will slow it down for a while."

"Slow it down… for a while," Nellie echoed. Her husband nodded. She knew what that meant, knew what it had to mean, but grasped for a straw anyhow: "Can they stop it?"

"It is a cancer," he repeated. "We can hope for a miracle, but…" A shrug. "Who knows why cancers happen? Just bad luck, the doctor said." He blew a smoke ring at the ceiling, as he had for Clara and Armstrong. Then, stubbing out the cigarette, he said, "I am not afraid of death, darling. I am afraid of dying, a little, because I do not think it will be easy, but I am not afraid of death. Death will bring me peace. The only thing I am sorry for is that it will take me away from you and Clara. I do not think many men have the last years of their lives be the happiest one, but I have. I feel like the luckiest man in the world, even now."

"Oh, Hal." Nellie hardly noticed the tears running down her face. "What are we going to do without you? What can we do without you? I love you. It took me a long time to figure that out-longer than it should have, you being the finest man I ever knew-but I do, and who knows? Maybe there'll be a miracle with the X rays." She grabbed for that straw again.

Hal's smile was gentle. "Yes, maybe there will," he said, meaning, not a chance. He brushed her lips with his. "With you and Clara, I have already had two miracles." Nellie shivered. She wasn't, couldn't be, ready for this. But who ever could? Ready or not, it always came.