The Center Cannot Hold

VII

As far as Cincinnatus Driver was concerned, the worst part of prison was getting used to it. After a while, Luther Bliss stopped interrogating him, which meant he didn't get beat up very much any more. Hardly anything happened to him any more, in fact. He sat in his cell with nothing to do, except for the one hour a week when he was led out to exercise, as a beast might have been.

Outside the gray stone walls of the prison, time was passing. What did Elizabeth think, back in Des Moines? What did Achilles think? How big was the boy these days? Cincinnatus struggled to remember his face. Did Amanda remember him at all? He was starting to doubt it.

Only the weather told him the season of the year. He never saw a newspaper, or anything else with print on it. He began to wonder if he still remembered how to read and write. That thought provoked him to bitter laughter. Read and write? Hell, I'm startin' to wonder if I still recollect how to talk. Days at a time would go by when he never said a word to anyone.

The guards did not encourage conversation, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. When they gave orders, it was always, "Come here, nigger," "Go there, boy," or "Stand aside, nigger." They didn't want to hear Cincinnatus say, "Yes, suh." They just wanted him to do as he was told. He did it. He'd tried not doing it a couple of times. The results of that had proved more painful than they were worth.

He'd also tried protesting that he was a citizen of the United States, and nobody, not even Luther Bliss and the Kentucky State Police, had any business holding him like this. The results of that had proved even more painful than those of the other.

If I wasn't colored, they wouldn't be able to get away with it, no matter what they think I done. That had run through his mind more times than he could count. He did his best not to dwell on it. Its truth was all too obvious. He'd thought things would be better in the USA than they had been when Kentucky was part of the CSA. Maybe not.

But, in spite of all this, maybe. In the Confederate States, Negroes who made trouble often just stopped living. However much Luther Bliss wanted Cincinnatus on ice, he hadn't dug a hole and put his body in it. Sometimes Cincinnatus wondered why not.

On a hot, muggy afternoon in what he reckoned was the middle of summer, three guards came to his cell door. Two of them drew pistols and pointed them at him, while the third turned a key in the lock and opened the cell. Then that fellow jumped back and yanked his pistol from its holster, too. "Come along with us," one of the guards said.

"Where?" Cincinnatus' voice creaked with disuse, and with fear. This wasn't exercise time or mealtime. Maybe that hole in the ground waited for him after all.

"Don't give us no back talk, boy, or you'll be sorry for it," the guard snapped. "Get moving."

Cincinnatus did, thinking, They can kill me here as easy as anywhere else, and then take my body wherever they need to. He wanted to run. His legs had that light-as-a-feather feel panic could bring. He was sure he could outrun these three big-bellied white men. But he was also sure it would do him no good. Nobody outran a bullet.

They took him not to the room where they'd questioned him before but to an office in one of the prison's corner towers. He supposed it was the warden's office, but the man behind the desk was, inevitably, Luther Bliss. Bliss had light brown eyes, like a hound dog's. At the moment, those eyes were as sad as a hound dog's, too.

When Cincinnatus came in, the chief of the Kentucky State Police turned to the other man in the room, an older fellow who sat in a chair off to one side. "See, Mr. Darrow? Here he is, sound as a dollar."

"Whose dollars are you talking about, Bliss?" the old man-Darrow? — demanded. "The Confederates', after the war?"

Oh, sweet Jesus, Cincinnatus thought. Bliss is going to lock him up and throw away the key. But Bliss didn't do anything except drum his fingers on the desktop. If he was angry, he didn't show it past that-which made Cincinnatus take another long look at the man named Darrow.

He had to be close to seventy. His skin was grandfather-pink. His jowls sagged. He combed thinning iron-gray hair over the top of his head to make it cover as much ground as it could. But his gray-blue eyes were some of the sharpest-and some of the nastiest-Cincinnatus had ever seen.

After coughing a couple of times, he pulled his wallet from a vest pocket. He looked down at a photograph in it, then over to Cincinnatus. "You are Cincinnatus Driver," he said, sounding surprised. "I wouldn't've put it past this sneaky son of a bitch"-he pointed to Luther Bliss-"to try to sneak a ringer by me, but I guess he figured I'd spot it."

Again, the world didn't end. All Bliss said was, "I resent that, Mr. Darrow."

"Go right ahead," the other white man said cheerfully. "I intended that you should."

Plaintively, Cincinnatus said, "Will somebody please tell me what's going on?"

"My pleasure," said the old man with the ferocious eyes. "I'm Clarence Darrow. I'm a lawyer. I've got a writ of habeas corpus with your name on it. That means you get out of jail. If you've got any brains, it also means you get the hell out of Kentucky."

"My God." Cincinnatus understood the words, but he wasn't sure he believed them. He wasn't sure he dared believe them. He said, "I didn't think nobody could get me out of here."

"Sonny, there's something you have to understand: I'm a good lawyer." Darrow spoke with a calm certainty that compelled belief. "I'm a damn good lawyer, matter of fact. This petty tyrant here"-he pointed at Luther Bliss again, and again Bliss didn't rise to it-"kept thinking I wasn't, but he's not so smart as he thinks he is."

"I know who's my country's friend and who ain't," Bliss said. "What do I need to know besides that?"

"How to live by the rules you say you're protecting," Clarence Darrow answered. The head of the Kentucky State Police snapped his fingers to show how little he cared about them. Darrow had been blustery before. Now he got angry, really angry. "What's the point of having a country with laws if you get around 'em any time you happen not to care for 'em, eh? Answer me that."

But Luther Bliss was not an easy man to quell. "This here's Kentucky, Mr. Darrow. If we played by the rules all the time, the bastards who don't would get the jump on us pretty damn quick, and you can bet on that. Half the people in this state are Confederate diehards, and the other half are Reds."

He exaggerated. From what Cincinnatus remembered of the days before he'd moved north, he didn't exaggerate by much. Darrow said, "If nobody in this godforsaken place wants to live in the USA, why not give it back to the Confederates?"

Cincinnatus gaped-he'd never heard anyone except a diehard say such a thing. Mildly, Bliss replied, "You know, Mr. Darrow, advocating return to the CSA is against the law here."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Darrow said. "Wouldn't be one bit surprised. The law it's against is unconstitutional, of course, not that you care about the Constitution of the United States."

"Here's your nigger, Mr. Darrow." Bliss' air of calm frayed at last. "Take him and get the hell out of here. Or don't you think I could fix up a cell with your name on it right next to his?"

"I'm sure you could," Darrow said. "And I'm sure you could make it very unpleasant for me. But I'm sure of something else, too-I'm sure I could make it even more unpleasant for you if you did."

By the sour look on Luther Bliss' face, he was sure of the same thing. It didn't make him very happy. "Get out," he repeated.

"Come along, Mr. Driver," Clarence Darrow said. "Let's get you back to civilization, or what passes for it in the United States these days." He grunted with effort as he heaved himself to his feet. Cincinnatus needed a heartbeat to remember the surname belonged to him. He hadn't grown up with it, and people didn't use it very often. And nobody'd called him by it since he'd landed here. Dazedly, he followed the white lawyer.

Not till they got into the motorcar that had brought Darrow to the prison and the driver was taking them away did Cincinnatus turn to the lawyer and say, "God bless you, suh, for what you done there."

"I don't believe in God, any more than I believe in Mother Goose," Darrow said. "Foolish notion. But I do believe in justice, and you deserve that. Everyone deserves that."

Cincinnatus had known some Reds who said they didn't believe in God. With them, he'd always thought that was a pose, or that they substituted Marx for God. With Clarence Darrow, it was different. The man spoke as if he needed no substitute for the Deity. Cincinnatus sensed that, but couldn't fully fathom it. He said, "Well, God believes in you, whether you believe in Him or not."

Darrow gave him an odd look. "You've got grit, son, if you can joke after you get out of that place."

"I wasn't jokin', suh," Cincinnatus said. They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension. Cincinnatus asked, "How'd you even know I was stuck there, suh, to come and get me out?"

"Your wife finally raised a stink that was big enough for me to notice it," Darrow answered. "It took her a while, because people in the USA don't want to notice a colored woman even when she's screaming her head off. But she kept at it. Remarkable woman. Stubborn as a Missouri mule."

"Yes, suh," Cincinnatus said happily. "God bless Elizabeth, too." Clarence Darrow let out a long, rasping sigh. Cincinnatus took no notice of it. He went on, "But even if you knew I was in trouble, how'd you get Luther Bliss to turn loose o' me? That's one ornery man."

"That's one first-class son of a bitch, is what that is," Darrow said. "Even after I got the court order, he kept denying he'd ever heard of you. But I managed to persuade a judge otherwise-and here you are."

"Here I am," Cincinnatus agreed. Seeing farms and woods out the window, not stone and concrete and barbed wire, made him feel like a new man. But the new man had old problems. "What do I owe you, suh?" Lawyers didn't come cheap; he knew that. Even so… "Whatever it is, I pays it. May take me a while, you understand, but I pays it."

Darrow's grin displayed crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. "Your wife told me you'd say that. You don't owe me a dime-I did your case pro bono publico." He saw the Latin meant nothing to Cincinnatus, and added, "For the public good."

"That's mighty kind of you, suh, but it ain't right," Cincinnatus said. "I want to pay you back. I owe you."

"Your wife said you'd say that, too," Clarence Darrow told him. "But there's no need-I'll make more from publicity than you could pay. If you must, pay the favor forward-do something good for someone else. Bargain?"

"Yes, suh-so help me God," Cincinnatus said.

"More of that claptrap." Darrow sighed. "Well, never mind. I hope you know better than to stick your nose back into Kentucky again?"

"Long as my folks ain't poorly for true, sure," Cincinnatus answered. "That's what got me here before. I be more careful 'bout the message nowadays, but if I reckon it's so, what choice have I got but to come?"

Clarence Darrow gave him a long, measuring stare. The lawyer delivered his verdict in one word: "Fool."

C oal smoke pouring out the stack, the train hurried toward the Salt Lake City station. Sparks flew as the brakes ground its iron wheels against the iron rails that carried it. Colonel Abner Dowling would rather have been somewhere, anywhere, else than on the platform waiting for that train to pull in. By the expression on his mustachioed face, General Pershing felt the same way.

"No help for it, though," Dowling murmured, more than half to himself.

He hadn't been quiet enough. But Pershing only nodded and said, "He has earned the right to do as he pleases."

"I know that, sir," Dowling answered. "I just wish he would have pleased to do something-anything-else."

"Yes." Pershing nodded again. "There is that, isn't there?"

The train stopped right at the platform. Dowling had irrationally hoped against hope that it wouldn't, but would keep right on going. The leader of the military band gathered on the platform caught Pershing's eye. Pershing looked as if he wished the fellow hadn't. At last, reluctantly, he nodded. The band leader either didn't notice the reluctance or thought it wise to pretend he didn't. With a proud flourish, he began to wave his baton. The band struck up "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

No sooner had the vaunting music begun to blare forth than the door to one of the Pullman cars opened. Out came a bent ancient whose mustache and what Dowling could see of his hair-he always wore a hat, to keep the world from knowing he was bald-were a peroxided gold, defying time. A woman of about the same years followed him onto the platform.

"Well, Autie," she sniffed, "they are giving you a proper welcome, anyhow."

"What's that, Libbie?" The old man cupped a hand behind his ear.

"I said, they're giving you a proper welcome," she repeated, louder this time.

"Can't hear a thing over that music. At least they're giving me a proper welcome."

Colonel Dowling and General Pershing both stepped forward. They both saluted. They chorused, "Welcome to Utah, General Custer." Dowling was lying in his teeth. He would have bet Pershing was doing the same.

"Thank you. Thank you both," Custer said. He stiffly returned the salute, even though, having at last retired from the U.S. Army after more than sixty years of service, he wore a somber black suit and homburg. Three years before, he'd been as vigorous as a man in his eighties could be. Now… Dowling found himself surprised, dismayed, and surprised at being dismayed. He'd always thought-sometimes despairingly-that George Armstrong Custer was the one unchanging man on the face of the earth.

Here at last, he saw it wasn't so. The retired general was visibly slower, visibly more feeble. Some spark had gone out of him since his retirement, and he seemed to know it.

Libbie Custer, by contrast, remained as she always had. "Hello, Colonel Dowling," she said with a smile that showed white false teeth. "It's good to see you again. Now that Autie and I are civilians, may I call you Abner?"

"Of course," Dowling answered, though he'd always hated his Christian name.

Meanwhile, General Pershing was shaking hands with Custer and exchanging polite and, no doubt, insincere compliments. During the Great War, Pershing's command had been just to the east of Custer's. Pershing's Second Army had captured Louisville and generally pushed south faster than Custer's First-till Custer decided he knew more about barrels than anyone in the War Department… and, against all odds, turned out to be right. From things Pershing had said since Abner Dowling came to Utah, he still couldn't figure out how Custer had pulled that off.

At the time, Dowling had been sure Custer's lies to Philadelphia would get the general-and, not so incidentally, himself-court-martialed and sent to Leavenworth to do hard labor for the rest of their lives. Instead, his superior had ended up the USA's greatest military hero since George Washington, and Dowling, by reflected glory, had ended up a minor hero himself.

Custer said, "Are you keeping the Mormons here on a tight rein, General? I hope to heaven you are, because they will cause trouble if they get half a chance."

"Things have been tolerably quiet, anyway," Pershing answered. "They don't shoot at our men any more. Taking hostages worked pretty well for the Germans in Belgium, and for us in Canada and the CSA, and it works here, too. The Mormons may want us dead, but they don't want their friends and neighbors and sweethearts going up against a wall with a blindfold."

"And a cigarette," Custer added automatically, but he shook his head before anyone could correct him. "No, the Mormons don't even have that to console themselves. Poor devils. Nothing wrong with tobacco."

Libbie sniffed. Custer had been smoking and drinking and cursing ever since the disappointments of the Second Mexican War, and she still hated all three.

"It does work, cigarette or no," Pershing said. "We even quelled trouble with polygamists down in Teasdale by taking several hundred hostages and making it ever so clear we'd do what we had to do if trouble broke out."

Dowling wanted to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand and go, Whew! because of that. He didn't, but he wanted to. Instead, he said, "General, Mrs. Custer, your limousine is waiting just outside the station. If you'd be kind enough to come with me…"

They came. They didn't remark upon-perhaps they didn't notice-the sharpshooters on the roof of the station. More riflemen were posted in the buildings across the street. Custer had served as General Pope's right arm in the U.S. occupation of restive Utah during the Second Mexican War. Mormons had long memories, as everyone had found out in their uprising during the Great War. Someone might still want to take a potshot or two at Custer for what he'd done more than forty years before, no matter how many hostages' lives it cost his people.

The limousine carried more armor than an armored car. Even the windows were of glass allegedly bulletproof. That was one more thing Dowling didn't want to have to put to the test.

As they drove along the southern perimeter of Temple Square, Custer pointed to the ruins there and said, "That's a bully sight-their temples to their false gods pulled down around their ears. May they never rise again."

"Er, yes," Dowling answered, wondering when he'd last heard anyone-anyone but Custer, that is-say bully. Hardly at all since the Great War ended; he was sure of that. The old slang was dying out with the people who'd used it. Custer still lingered. Now, though, Dowling could see he wouldn't go on forever after all.

As old men will, Custer still dwelt on the past. "Do you know what my greatest regret is?" he asked.

"No, sir," Dowling said, as General Pershing shook his head.

"My greatest regret is that we didn't hang Abe Lincoln alongside the Mormon traitors he was consorting with," Custer said. "He deserved it just as much as they did, and if we'd stretched his skinny neck the Socialists never would have got off the ground-I'm sure of that."

"I suppose we'd have Republicans instead," Pershing said. "They'd be just about as bad, or I miss my guess." He was twenty years younger than Custer, which meant he'd been a young man the last time the Republican Party had amounted to anything much. It was a sad shadow of its former self, and had been ever since Abraham Lincoln took a large part of its membership left into the Socialist camp at the end of the Second Mexican War.

Custer sniffed and coughed and rolled his eyes. Plainly, he disagreed with General Pershing. For a wonder, though, he didn't come right out and say so. Abner Dowling scratched his head in bemusement. Had Custer learned tact, or some semblance of it, at the age of eighty-six? There might have been less likely things, but Dowling couldn't think of any offhand.

Odds were that Libbie had poked him in the ribs with her elbow when Dowling didn't notice. As the great man's longtime adjutant, Dowling had long since concluded Libbie Custer was the brains of the outfit. George put on a better show-Libbie, in public, was self-effacing as could be-but she was the one who thought straight.

Outside General Pershing's headquarters, guards meticulously checked the limousine, front to back, top to bottom. At last, one of them told the driver, "You're all right. Go on through."

"Thanks, Jonesy," the driver said, and put the motorcar back into gear.

"Still as bad as that?" Custer asked. "Will they blow us to kingdom come if we give them half a chance?"

"We hope not," Pershing said. "Still and all, we'd rather not find out."

"They don't love us, and that's a fact," Dowling added.

"Good," Custer said. "If they loved us, that would mean we were soft on them, and we'd better not be soft. If we let them up for even a minute, the Mormons will start conspiring with the limeys or the Rebs, same as they did in the last war and same as they did forty-odd years ago, too."

There was another obsolete word. Only men of Custer's generation still called the Confederates Rebels, and men of Custer's generation, these days, were thin on the ground. The armored limousine stopped once more, this time inside the secure compound. A company stood at stiff attention, awaiting Custer's inspection.

The retired general didn't notice them till a soldier held the door for him and he got out of the automobile. When he did, he tried to straighten up as he made his slow way over to them. He reminded Dowling of a fire horse put out to pasture that heard the alarm bell once more and wanted to pull the engine again. Around soldiers, he came alive.

Most of the men there in the courtyard were conscripts, too young to have served in the Great War. They still responded to Custer, though, grinning at his bad jokes and telling him their home towns when he asked.

In a low voice, General Pershing said, "He looks like he wishes he were still in uniform."

"I'm sure he does, sir," Dowling answered, also quietly. "The Socialists practically had to drag him out of it." He clicked his tongue between his teeth, remembering. "That was an ugly scene."

"Those people…" Pershing shook his head. "It's not for us to meddle in politics, and I know that's a good rule, but there are times when I'm tempted to say exactly what's on my mind."

"Yes, sir," Dowling said.

At the banquet that evening, Custer ate with good appetite and drank perhaps two glasses of white wine too many. Afterwards, Libbie told him, "Time to get to bed, Autie." She might have been talking to a child that had stayed up too late.

"In a moment, my dear," Custer answered. Before struggling to his feet once more, he turned to Dowling and said, "Do you know, Major, there are times since they took the uniform off me when I simply feel adrift on the seas of fate. Once upon a time, I mastered the helm. But no more, Major, no more. This is what the years have done."

Dowling couldn't blame Custer for forgetting his present rank and using the one he'd had when they served together during the war. "Yes, sir," he said, and then, "I'm sorry, sir." To his amazement, tears stung his eyes. Custer had lived too long, and knew it. Could any man suffer a worse fate? Dowling shook his head. He doubted it.

"God bless you, Major," Custer said. He let his wife, still competent as always, lead him out of the dining hall. One of those tears slid down Dowling's cheek. He would have been more embarrassed-he would have been mortified-if he hadn't seen that General Pershing's face was wet, too.

In a way, sitting in the Socialist Party offices in New York's Fourteenth Ward took Flora Blackford back to the days when she'd been Flora Hamburger. Waiting for the latest batch of election returns made her remember how nervous she'd been when her name first appeared on the ballot ten years before.

In another way, though, coming back reminded her how much things had changed. She didn't get back from Philadelphia all that often, even though the two cities were only a couple of hours apart by train. She didn't hear Yiddish spoken all that often any more, either; she had to stop and think and listen to understand. What had been her first language was now on the way to becoming foreign to her.

A telephone rang. Herman Bruck picked it up. He'd been sweet on Flora while she still lived in New York City, and maybe his smile had a wistful quality to it when he looked at her now. On the other hand, maybe it didn't. He had a four-year-old of his own, and a two-year-old, and a six-month-old besides. That was bound to be more than enough to keep anybody busy.

He scribbled something on a pad on his battered old desk. "Latest returns in our district-Hamburger, uh, Blackford, 9,791; Cantorowicz, 6,114." Cheers filled the office. The Democrat, Abraham Cantorowicz, wasn't quite a token candidate, but he hadn't had any great chance of winning, either. The Congressional district whose borders roughly corresponded to those of the Fourteenth Ward had been solidly Socialist since before the turn of the century.

On Flora's lap, Joshua Blackford began to fuss. He was sleepy. At not quite one, he was up well past his bedtime, and in a strange place besides. She was surprised he hadn't started making a racket before this.

The telephone rang again. Again, Herman Bruck picked it up. Then he laid his palm against the mouthpiece and said, "Flora, it's for you. It's Cantorowicz."

More cheers-everyone knew what that had to mean. Flora passed her son to her husband. "Here-mind him for a few minutes, please," she said.

Hosea Blackford took the toddler. "This is what the vice president is for," he said with a laugh. "He takes over so somebody else can go do something important."

That got two waves of laughter-one from those who followed it in English and another after it got translated into Yiddish. Flora made her way to the telephone. "This is Congresswoman Blackford," she said.

"And you'll have two more years of being a Congresswoman," Abraham Cantorowicz told her. "I don't see how I can catch you, and what's the point in waiting to make this call after the handwriting goes up on the walls? Another election, another Democrat calling to concede. Congratulations."

"Thank you very much. That's gracious of you," Flora said. "You ran a strong campaign." He'd run as well as a Democrat in this district could.

"Someone had to be the sacrificial lamb-we weren't about to let you run unopposed," Cantorowicz answered. "We will keep fighting for this district, and we'll win one of these days."

"Not soon, I don't think," Flora answered.

"Maybe sooner than you think," her defeated opponent answered. "Will you run for reelection when your husband runs for president?"

Flora sent Hosea Blackford a look half startled, half thoughtful. She knew perfectly well he was thinking of running in 1928. Upton Sinclair almost certainly wouldn't seek a third term. The only president who'd ever run a third time was Theodore Roosevelt. He'd won the Great War, made himself twice a national hero-and lost anyhow. The United States weren't ready for one man ruling on and on.

"You aren't saying anything," Cantorowicz remarked.

"No, I'm not," Flora told him. "We still have a couple of years to worry about that."

"Maybe you should run anyway," the Democratic candidate said. "If he loses and you win, you'd still be able to support your family."

"I don't think we'd have to worry there," Flora answered coolly. She wasn't kidding. Hosea Blackford was a talented lawyer with years of government connections. He would have no trouble making his way even if-God forbid! — he lost the election. Flora wasn't sure she liked that in the abstract; whom a man knew shouldn't have mattered so much as what he knew. But that didn't change reality one bit.

When I first went into Congress, I would have tried to change reality. I did try to change reality, and I even had some luck, she thought. She took pride in being called the conscience of the House. But ten years there had taught her some things were unlikely to change in her lifetime, or her son's, or his son's, either, if he had a son.

Cantorowicz said, "Well, I hope you have to worry about it. But you don't want to listen to that right now. You want to celebrate, and you've earned the right. Good night."

"Good night," Flora told him. The line went dead. Silence had fallen in the Socialist Party office. Everyone was looking at her. She put the phone back on the hook and nodded. "He's conceded," she said.

Cheers and whoops shattered the silence. People came up and shook Flora's hand and thumped her on the back, as if she were a man. The racket woke up Joshua, who'd fallen asleep in Hosea's lap. The little boy started to cry. Hosea comforted him. Before long, he fell asleep again, his thumb in his mouth.

Someone knocked on the door. Eventually, one of the men in the office heard the noise and opened it. There stood Sheldon Fleischmann, who ran the butcher's shop downstairs. He looked a lot like his father, Max. The elder Fleischmann had quietly fallen over behind his counter one day, and never got up again. Like his father, Sheldon was a Democrat. Flora doubted he'd voted for her. Even so, he was carrying a tray of cold cuts, as Max had done more than once on election nights.

"You don't need to do that," Flora scolded him. "You're not even a Socialist."

"I try to be a good neighbor, though," Fleischmann answered. "That's more important than politics."

"If everyone thought that way, we'd hardly need politics," Hosea Blackford said.

His flat Great Plains accent stood out among the sharp, often Yiddish-flavored, New York voices in the office. Sheldon Fleischmann's gaze swung to him in momentary surprise. Then the butcher realized who he had to be. "You're right, Mr. Vice President," he said, giving Blackford a respectful nod. "But too many people don't."

"No, they don't," Blackford agreed. "I did say if."

"Yes, you did," Fleischmann allowed. " Mazeltov, Congresswoman." He chuckled. "I've been saying that so long, it starts to sound natural."

"And why shouldn't it?" Challenge rang from Flora's voice.

Had the butcher said something about women having no place in Congress, Flora would have exploded. She was ready to do it even now. But his answer was mild: "Only because there are a lot of men in Congress, ma'am, and just a couple of women. You do say what you're used to."

Flora couldn't very well argue there, however much she might have wanted to. She nodded. "All right," she said. "I suppose I'll let you get away with that."

By the relief on Sheldon Fleischmann's face, he felt as if he had got away with it. " Mazeltov again," he said, and went downstairs once more.

In the office, Herman Bruck was talking with Maria Tresca. Maria was one of the few Italians in the overwhelmingly Jewish Fourteenth Ward. She'd also been a thoroughgoing radical even before her sister was killed in the Remembrance Day riots of 1915. For as long as Flora could remember, Maria had stood foursquare for the proletariat and against the power of big capitalists. Now, though, she listened attentively as Bruck said, "Amalgamated Mills is a very solid firm. They make fine-quality goods, and I think their stock is going to go straight through the roof. I got fifteen shares when it was at thirty-two last month, and it's already gone up five and a half points."

When it came to cloth, he knew what he was talking about. He was a master tailor from a family of tailors, and always dressed as if he made five times as much as he really did. Flora wasn't much surprised when Maria Tresca gave back a serious nod. But she was surprised when strongly Socialist Maria offered a stock tip of her own: "I just bought five shares of Central Powers Steel in Toledo. They landed that new contract for the Great Lakes fleet, and they may split two for one soon."

"Central Powers Steel, eh?" Herman Bruck's round face grew alert. "I'll have to look into that."

"You're both buying shares in the stock market?" Flora knew she sounded amazed. She managed to keep from calling it speculating, though that was what it was.

Bruck looked faintly embarrassed, but he said, "I've made a lot of money the last year and a half-that's how long I've been in. And you only need to put up ten percent of the money when you buy on margin, so it's a lot cheaper than it seems."

"It's a lot cheaper as long as the market goes up," Flora said. "If it comes down, you need to pay more money or lose your shares."

"It's gone up for a long time now," Bruck replied. "I don't see why it should do anything else all of a sudden."

Flora wasn't sure how to answer that, or even if it had an answer. She turned to Maria Tresca. " You're putting money into Wall Street? You, of all people?"

"Yes, some," Maria answered defiantly. "If capitalism can make a secretary rich, let's see it happen. I hope it can. And if it can't"-she shrugged-"I'm not putting in more than I can afford to lose."

"Well, that's good," Flora said. "I can think of a lot of people who aren't being so careful, though."

"What we need is more regulation of the market, to keep cheats and swindlers from having their way with people," Maria Tresca said. "I don't know too much about what goes on in the stock market, but that looks pretty clear to me. Some of those people will yank the shirt off your back and then sell it to you."

Sadly, Flora answered, "I think you're right, but getting the legislation through Congress is a different story. The Democrats are against it, and so are the Republicans. And more than a few Socialists have made so much money in the market, they think it's the goose that lays golden eggs, too."

She looked over at her husband. He held their sleeping son, all his attention, for the time being, resting on the little boy. But Flora knew Hosea also had money invested in Wall Street. She didn't know exactly how much; he'd never talked much with her about that. Socialism in Dakota was altogether a milder thing, a more natively American thing, than it was here in New York City. What was shocking from Herman and Maria would have been nothing out of the ordinary for Hosea Blackford, though he and they belonged to the same party. He'd never cared to rub Flora's nose in the ideological differences between them.

But if even thoroughgoing Socialists were buying and selling stocks, where had those differences gone? Would you use your own money to try to make a killing in the market? Flora asked herself. She didn't think so, even now, but she admitted to herself that she wasn't sure.

Are you a capitalist? Do you want to be a capitalist? It was like asking herself if she wanted to become a Christian. Very much like that, she realized-Socialism was about as much an article of faith with her as was Judaism. And yet… If I can provide for my family, why not? But that was the question: could she? One thing she'd learned in school still seemed true-what went up had to come down. Herman Bruck didn't seem to believe that any more. For his sake, and the sake of many more like him, Flora hoped the rules had changed since she'd got out of Public School Number 130.

R ain pattered down on Hipolito Rodriguez's farm outside of Baroyeca. Here in the south of Sonora, winter rains were less common than those that came off the Gulf of California in the summertime. Rain at any season came seldom; were it not for the streams and ditches bringing water down from the mountains into the valley near whose edge Baroyeca sat, the town, the farms around it, and the silver mine close by couldn't have survived.

Chickens hopped in surprise when raindrops hit them. They pecked at the puffs of dust the raindrops kicked up. Maybe they thought those puffs were bugs. Rodriguez wasn't sure what, if anything, went through their minds. He could think along with the rest of the livestock; the mule, though a powerful animal, was as evil as any beast ever born. But trying to think like a hen was more trouble than it was worth. The pigs seemed brilliant next to hens.

Dark gray clouds rolled down from the northwest. The day was chilly, as chilly as it ever got near Baroyeca. Rodriguez was glad to stand close by the fire in the kitchen. His wife patted cornmeal into tortillas. Looking up from her work, Magdalena said, "Do you know what we need, Hipolito?"

"No. What?" Rodriguez answered.

"We need a stove," his wife said. Most of their conversation was in Spanish, but the key word came out in English. She went on, "A good iron stove would cook better than I can with an open fire. It would pay for itself, too, because it would save fuel. It would even keep the kitchen warm on days like this, because less heat would go up the chimney. And I think we can afford one."

"A stove?" Rodriguez also said it in English. He scratched his head. Magdalena had always cooked over an open fire. So had his mother. So had everyone, he supposed, for as long as his ancestors had lived in Baroyeca. But times weren't what they had been back in the old days. He knew that. Cautiously, he asked, "How much would a stove cost?"

"Twenty-seven dollars and sixty cents," Magdalena said without a moment's hesitation. "I saw just the one I want in the Henderson and Fisk catalogue." Henderson and Fisk was a leading Confederate mail-order house, and had been since before the Great War. Only after the currency stabilized again, though, had its catalogues started coming to places as remote from the concerns of most of the CSA as Baroyeca. Magdalena went on, "It's called the Southern Sunshine cook stove, and it will do everything I need." Again, the name of the stove came out in English.

"A stove," Rodriguez said musingly. "I'd bet a lot of women in Baroyeca itself don't cook on stoves." Changes filtered down to southern Sonora more slowly than almost anywhere else in the CSA, and the Confederate States had been founded on the principle that change was a bad idea.

"I'm sure you're right," his wife agreed. "But I don't care. We have the money. We even have the money for the stovepipe to take the smoke outside-another eighty-five cents."

If she said they had it, they had it. She kept track of finances with an eye that watched every penny. Even when the money went mad after the Great War, when a billion dollars had been nothing much, Magdalena had stretched things as far as they would go. The patron had never had cause to complain about the Rodriguezes. The patron… "Does Don Gustavo's wife cook on a stove?" Rodriguez asked.

Magdalena let out a dismissive snort. "Dona Elena doesn't cook at all. They have a cook of their own, as you know perfectly well." But it was a serious question. If the patron didn't have an iron stove in his house, what would he think of a peasant family's getting one? Seeing the worry on Hipolito Rodriguez's face, Magdalena said, "Don't worry. I found out. Dona Elena's cook does use a stove."

"All right. Good. Very good." Rodriguez didn't try to hide his relief. Things weren't so rigid in the CSA as they were down in the Empire of Mexico, and they weren't so rigid now as they had been in his father's day, but he didn't want to offend Don Gustavo even so. Better safe than sorry, he told himself. To his wife, he said, "Next time I go to town, I'll send the order to Henderson and Fisk."

"Good, yes." Magdalena nodded. "And then the railroad will bring the crate, and then we will have a stove."

A hamlet like Baroyeca would never have had a railroad connection if not for the mine close by. In plenty of places in Sonora and Chihuahua, the last leg of the journey from merchandiser to customer would have been by rattling wagon (or possibly, these days, by rattling truck). But not here. The trains that took out precious metal could bring in a stove from Birmingham.

The mine also meant Baroyeca boasted a post office, a few doors down from La Culebra Verde. The Stars and Bars floated above the whitewashed adobe building. When Rodriguez went in, Jose Cordero, the postmaster, put aside the newspaper he'd been reading. He was a plump man with a small mustache and with his hair parted on the right and greased immovably into place. "And what can I do for you today?" he inquired. "Postage stamps?"

"No, senor. I have some," Rodriguez replied politely; by virtue of his office, the postmaster was a person of consequence. "I wish to purchase a postal money order, and to send the money to Henderson and Fisk." He spoke with a certain amount of pride. Not every farmer could scrape together the cash for such a purchase.

Cordero's answering nod was grave, for he recognized as much. He made a small ceremony of taking out the book of money orders. "What is the amount?"

"Thirty-one dollars and seventy-six cents," Rodriguez said; that included the stove, the stovepipe, and third-class freight. He set banknotes and coins on the counter till he had exactly the right amount.

The postmaster counted the money, then nodded again. "Yes, that is correct for the order itself," he said. He filled out the money order, then added, "You must also know, of course, there is a fee of thirty-two cents for the use of the order."

Rodriguez winced. He hadn't sent a money order in so long, he'd forgotten that one-percent fee. He fished in his pockets. He had some change lurking there; he'd intended to visit La Culebra Verde after sending away for the stove. He found a quarter and a dime. Jose Cordero solemnly gave him back three cents. He sighed. He couldn't buy a beer for that. Then he found another dime. He brightened. He could go to the cantina after all.

"How long will the stove take to come?" he asked.

"Ah, is that what you're getting? Good for you," the postmaster said. "How long?" He looked up at the ceiling as he made mental calculations. "My best guess would be three weeks or a month. You should light a candle for every day sooner than three weeks."

"Gracias, senor," Rodriguez said. That was about what he'd thought. Now he could use Cordero's authority when he told Magdalena.

"El gusto es mio," Cordero replied. Rodriguez didn't think the pleasure really was his, but he always spoke politely. He went on, "I hope your wife gets much use and much enjoyment from it. My own Ana has had a stove now for several years, and she would never go back to cooking over an open fire. The stove is much cleaner, too."

"I had not thought of that, but I'm sure it would be." Rodriguez hid a smile. He'd done a little bragging, and the postmaster had responded with some of his own. That was the way life worked.

"It is," Cordero said positively. "You've spent a lot of money, but you won't be sorry for it." He sounded as if he were giving a personal guarantee.

"Without doubt, you have reason." Rodriguez inked a pen, scrawled the name of the mail-order form on the envelope, put in the order form and the money order, and handed Cordero the envelope.

The postmaster looked embarrassed. "Personally, I would gladly send it for nothing. You understand, though, I cannot be my own man in this matter: I am but a servant of the Confederate government. I must ask you for five cents more for the stamp that shows you have paid me postage."

With a sigh, Rodriguez realized he hadn't brought a stamp of his own along. He passed Cordero the dime he'd found, but eight cents wouldn't let him go into the cantina. Before the war, beer had been five cents, but it was a dime nowadays. No help for it, though. He watched the postmaster put the envelope in the bin of mail that would leave Baroyeca. Once it was there, he left the post office.

Standing on the board sidewalk, he sighed again. No point in going into La Culebra Verde when he had no money to buy. He thought little of men who sat around in there hoping to cadge drinks from their more prosperous friends and neighbors. He didn't want to be one of those freeloaders himself. But he didn't want to turn around and head straight back to the farm, either. What point to that? He didn't escape from it often enough to care to go home as fast as he could.

What to do, then? He looked up and down Baroyeca's main street- Calle de los Estados Confederados — wondering which shops he could visit without drawing sneers from the proprietors. A man with eight cents in his pocket couldn't buy much. He jingled the coins. Because of the pennies, they did sound like more.

His eyes snapped back to a building at the far end of the street. It had stood empty since the weekly newspaper folded in the middle of the great inflation. Now, he saw, it was empty no more. A couple of bright new words were painted on the front window. From his angle, he couldn't make out what they were. He ambled toward the building, still jingling his few paltry coins.

Before long, he could read the words. He stopped in surprise and pleasure, a grin spreading over his face. FREEDOM! the window shouted, and below that, in slightly smaller letters,?LIBERTAD! As he got closer still, he could make out the much smaller words under the big ones: Freedom Party Headquarters, Baroyeca, Sonora. Everyone Welcome.

Everyone welcome? Hipolito Rodriguez's grin got wider. He stopped fooling with the coins and went in.

Inside, a blond man with his hair cut short like a soldier's clattered away at a typewriter. Rodriguez didn't scowl, but he felt like it. From what he'd seen in the Army, a lot of white Confederates looked down on Sonorans and Chihuahuans almost as much as they did on Negroes-unless the Sonorans and Chihuahuans had money, of course. He laughed a sour laugh. The eight cents in his pocket didn't qualify.

But this fellow startled him. "Buenos dias. Como esta Usted?" he said in pretty good Spanish. It plainly wasn't his first language, but he managed more than well enough. " Me llamo Robert Quinn," he went on, "Represento el Partido de Libertad en Baroyeca. En que puedo servirle?"

"Hello, Mr. Quinn," Rodriguez said in English to the man who represented the Freedom Party in Baroyeca. "I do not know what you can do for me. I came in because I saw you were here and I wanted to find out why."

"Bueno. Excelente," Quinn continued in Spanish. "Como se llama, senor?"

Rodriguez gave his name. He added, "Why does the Freedom Party have an office here?" He couldn't imagine the Radical Liberals or the Whigs opening a headquarters in Baroyeca. The town simply wasn't big enough.

But Quinn said, "Para ganar elecciones."

"Having an office here will help you win elections?" Rodriguez returned to Spanish, since the Freedom Party man seemed comfortable in it. "How?"

"We did well here in 1925-we elected a Congressman from this district," Robert Quinn replied in the same language. "We intend to do better still this year. After all, in 1927 we will elect a president. With God's help-and some from the voters-it will be Jake Featherston."

"I have only eight cents right now," Rodriguez said, not mentioning the thirty-odd dollars he'd just sent to Birmingham. He kept quiet about that on purpose. Was this truly a party that might do a poor man some good? He'd find out. "With eight cents, how can I help you?"

Quinn didn't laugh at him or tell him to go away. Instead, seriously and soberly, he began to explain exactly what Rodriguez could do for the Freedom Party, and what the Party might do for him. He talked for about ten minutes. By the time he finished, Rodriguez was sure he would go on voting Freedom as long as he lived. That wasn't all he was sure of, either. He would go out and preach for the Party, too. He felt like one of the very first Christians in ancient days. He'd met a disciple, and now he was a disciple himself.

C olonel Irving Morrell hadn't heard the garrison in Kamloops, British Columbia, so animated, so excited, since he'd got there from Philadelphia more than a year before. He would have been happier, though, had something military sparked the excitement. But all the gossip centered on Chevrolet's proposed acquisition of the White Motor Company. White, as far as Morrell was concerned, made the best trucks in the world. No one seemed to care about that. What people were talking about was what the acquisition would do to the stock prices of the two companies.

By midafternoon, Morrell had had as much of that as he could take. "God forbid we should have to fight a war on a day when the market goes down," he said.

He was a colonel, which meant he outranked everyone who sat in the mess hall with him. At last, though, a captain named David Smith said, "Well, sir, you never can tell. It might make us meaner."

Silence fell. People waited to see how Morrell would take that. Ever since he'd come West from General Staff headquarters, he'd made a name for himself as a man no one sensible would trifle with. But Smith's line was too good to make him angry. He grinned and said, "Here's hoping, anyhow."

The mess hall relaxed. He could almost feel the soft sighs of relief that came from just about everyone. In Philadelphia, a lot of soldiers had spent a lot of time laughing at him. The officers here took him seriously. His record was too good to ignore, and a colonel's eagles carried a lot more weight in Kamloops than they had back at General Staff headquarters. That wasn't why he'd been so eager to get out of Philadelphia; he'd never cared one way or the other about being a big fish in a small pond. All he wanted were a job he liked and the chance to do it without anybody looking over his shoulder. He hadn't had those in Philadelphia. He did here.

Captain Smith decided to push it a little, adding, "Besides, sir, we'll never get rich on Army pay. If we're going to, wouldn't you rather have us playing the market than knocking over a bank?"

That went too far. Morrell got to his feet. He carried his tray of dishes toward the waiting cooks. Over his shoulder, he answered, "If you want to get rich, you don't belong in the Army in the first place. And if you're not in the Army, I don't give a damn what you're doing. No one held a gun to your head to make you put on this uniform, Captain. If you want to resign your commission, I'll be glad to help you with the paperwork."

Smith turned very red. He said, "No, sir. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that at all."

Morrell handed the tray to a man in an apron who'd drawn kitchen duty. Everyone eyed him, wondering how he would reply. He didn't want to get any deeper into the argument, so all he said was, "Remember why you did join, then, Captain."

As he left the hall, that silence returned. His leg twinged. It hadn't for a while. He'd been wounded when the Great War was young, and that was… Lord! he thought in surprise. That's heading toward thirteen years ago now. Where's the time gone?

He took his thick wool overcoat from its hanger and wrapped it around himself. Kamloops lay where the north and south branches of the Thompson River came together, in a valley near the foot of the Canadian Rockies. Even in Philadelphia, Morrell would have been glad to have an overcoat on most February days. There were days-and more than a few of them-in Kamloops when he would have been glad to have two of them.

Cold slapped his face when he went outside. He shoved his hands into the overcoat's pockets to keep them from freezing. The rolling country around the town was in summer a near desert of tumbleweed and sagebrush. Snow painted it white at this season of the year, and white it would stay for another couple of months.

Morrell sighed. His breath smoked, as if he'd exhaled after a drag on a cigarette. The flat land would have been ideal for testing barrels. He'd said so, too, in the very first report he sent back to Philadelphia. He wondered if anybody had read that report, or even bothered to take it out of its envelope. He had his doubts. No one, certainly, had acted on the suggestion, or even acknowledged it.

So far as he knew, no one in the USA was testing barrels anywhere else, either. He kicked at the snow, which flew up from his boots. Down in the Empire of Mexico, the machines the Confederate-backed imperialists used were at least as good as the ones he'd been experimenting with back at Fort Leavenworth before budget cuts shut down the program. The rebels didn't have barrels that could match them, and the rebels, by now, had just about lost the civil war.

He kicked at the snow again. The Ottoman Turks weren't massacring Armenians these days the way they had a few years before, but American intervention had nothing to do with that. Kaiser Wilhelm-who wasn't good old Kaiser Bill any more-had ignored U.S. protests, and so had Abdul Majid, the Ottoman sultan. They'd figured the United States had more urgent things to worry about closer to home, and they'd been right.

They made us look like a bunch of chumps, is what they did, Morrell thought as he walked toward his office. A horse-drawn garbage wagon rattled up the road toward him. He nodded to the men aboard it. The Canadian white wings pretended he didn't exist. They took money from the American occupiers, but that didn't mean they wanted anything else to do with them. Yes, the U.S. Army had snuffed out the latest uprising a couple of years before, but it didn't seem to matter. The Canucks were going to stay sullen for a long, long time to come.

How do we keep them from causing more trouble, next year or five years from now or fifteen years from now or fifty years from now? Morrell wondered. He wished he could talk to some German officers, even if things between the two greatest powers left in the world weren't so friendly as they had been up till the war ended. The Kaiser's men were occupying a hostile Belgium now, and they'd been occupying a hostile Alsace and Lorraine for more than fifty years. They had lots of practice at ruling territory that didn't want to be ruled.

Seldom had Morrell had a wish so promptly granted. When he got to the office building, his aide-de-camp, a lieutenant named Ike Horwitz, said, "Sir, there's a German officer waiting to see you. Said you saw action together during the war."

"Captain Guderian, by God!" Morrell exclaimed in delight. "He was an observer with my unit when we were fighting over by Banff, just a couple of hundred miles from here."

"Yes, sir," Horwitz said. "Only he's a lieutenant colonel now, if I remember German rank markings straight. Oh-and he's got an orderly with him, a sergeant."

Something in Horwitz's voice changed. Morrell needed a second to realize what it was. "You don't like the orderly?"

"No, sir," Horwitz said with more of that same stiffness.

"Why not?" Morrell asked curiously.

"He figured out I was a Jew," Horwitz answered. It probably hadn't taken much figuring; Morrell's aide-de-camp looked very Jewish indeed, with a nose of impressive proportions. "He didn't think I spoke any German-and I don't, not really, but Yiddish is close enough to let me understand it when I hear it."

"Oh," Morrell said. "Well, to hell with him. Guderian's not like that, I can tell you for a fact. He doesn't care one way or the other."

Lieutenant Horwitz nodded. "He told his orderly to keep quiet and mind his own business. I just sat here and minded mine."

"Good for you, Ike."

"I wanted to punch the bastard right in the nose."

"Don't blame you a bit. But you didn't, and that makes you a good soldier."

Horwitz's snort said he would sooner have been a bad soldier. Morrell went into his office. Heinz Guderian bounded up from a chair to shake his hand. Sure enough, the energetic German had a single gold pip on each fancy shoulder strap-a lieutenant colonel's insignia. His orderly sprang to his feet, too, and gave Morrell a crisp salute. The fellow wore an Iron Cross, First Class. That gave Morrell pause; it hadn't been easy for a noncom to win that medal. Second Class, yes-First, no. The man might be a son of a bitch, but he'd done something special during the war.

He spoke in German: "Excuse me, sir, but I know no English."

"It's all right," Morrell replied in the same language. "I can get along in German." His voice hardened a little. "And so can my aide-de-camp."

Lieutenant Colonel Guderian grimaced. His orderly was unabashed. "So he knows what I think of his kind, does he? Well, too bad. The world would be a better place if we got rid of the lot of them."

"Nonsense," Morrell said sharply. He thought, Damn fool sounds like Jake Featherston, except he's riding a different hobby horse.

The sergeant might have replied, but Guderian held up a hand and said, "Enough." His orderly had discipline; he fumed, but he subsided. Then Guderian switched to English: "This is not why I came to talk to you, Colonel Morrell."

"Well, what can I do for you, then?" Morrell asked.

"I was wondering if you could arrange for me a tour of occupied western Canada," the German officer said. "We are interested in the methods you Americans use to control the lands you have won… What is so funny, Colonel?"

"I'll tell you what's funny," Morrell answered when he got done laughing. "What's funny is, I was just wondering how you Germans held on to Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine. What we've been doing here hasn't worked out so well as we'd have liked. The Canadians still hate our guts. We smashed their last uprising, but they're liable to rebel again any old time. If you know a trick for keeping people quiet, I wouldn't mind learning it."

"What does he say, sir?" Guderian's orderly asked. With the air of a man humoring a subordinate who didn't really deserve it, Guderian translated. The sergeant made an almost operatic gesture of contempt. "It's simple," he declared. "Kill enough and you'll frighten the rest into giving in."

Guderian sighed. "Spater, spater," he said, and turned back to Morrell. "That's the only answer he knows-kill everything in sight."

"You don't get any arguments that way, anyhow," Morrell observed.

"No, nor any chance to put things right later," the German said. "So you Americans have no sure answers for this, either, then?"

"I'm afraid not. I'll be glad to set up your tour for you, but I don't think you'll see anything very exciting," Morrell answered. I'll make damn sure you don't see anything too very exciting, as a matter of fact, he thought. If you're looking for ideas from us, that means you need 'em badly. And if you don't get 'em, you'll have more trouble holding down your subjects if you ever wind up in a scrap with us.

"Thank you. I should perhaps let you know certain American officers are in Belgium now, trying to learn from us." Guderian smiled and shrugged. "Between us, your country and mine share the problems of the strong, nicht wahr?"

"Yes," Morrell said. And I bet our boys don't learn one damn thing from you, either, except where the officers' brothels are. He wagged a finger at the German. "Nobody's looking at what you're doing in the east, in Poland and the Ukraine?"

Heinz Guderian shook his head. "No, Colonel, no one looks there-and it is as well that no one does, too." His eyes swung toward his tough-talking orderly. "In the east, his methods prevail. Poland pretends to be a kingdom. The Ukraine…" He shook his head. "After all, they're only Slavs." He might have been a Confederate saying, After all, they're only niggers. Morrell smiled with half his mouth. Either way, God help the poor bastards on the receiving end.

At seventeen, Mary McGregor had got used to being taller than her mother. Her father, after all, had been a big man. She remembered that very well, though these days she had trouble calling up the memory of just what his voice had sounded like.

She also remembered when her mother's hair had been the color of a bright new penny. Now she couldn't help noticing how much gray streaked that once-bright hair. She hadn't noticed it as it spread; one day, it seemed, that gray had simply appeared, as if by magic.

But magic is supposed to be good, Mary thought, looking out across the fields she and her mother and her sister and whatever hired man they got for the spring would be planting soon. Soon, but not yet: snow, a deeper blanket than usual, still covered those fields. Winter had been hard, even for Manitoba.

Mary clenched her fists so that her nails dug into her palms. This far north, the growing season was short enough anyhow. A late spring could make harvest touch-and-go before frosts came again in early fall. If they didn't get a good crop…

Well, so what? Mary thought, and went out to tend the horse and the cow and the rest of the livestock in the barn. What if we've got no money and they throw us off the farm? She knew the family had relatives back in Ontario; her father had come west to Manitoba when he was a boy. But the McGregors weren't close to any of those kin. Mary'd never met a one of them. Would they take us in? Times were supposed to be even harder back there than they were here-not only had Ontario been fought over harder than Manitoba, the rebellion there had been worse.

We're on our own. Nobody cares whether we live or die. Mary shook her head. That wasn't true. The Americans hoped the McGregors died. They'd killed her brother, Alexander. They'd killed her father, too. Oh, yes, his own bomb, meant for General Custer, had been the actual means of his death, but he never would have become a bomber in the first place if the stinking Yanks hadn't decided Alexander was plotting against them and stood him against a wall.

Some of those dark thoughts faded away when Mary went into the barn. It was warmer in there, with the walls holding out the wind and holding in the animals' body warmth. Somebody from the city might have wrinkled his nose at the odor. Mary took it for granted; she'd smelled it all her life. And the work distracted her. She gave the horse and cow and sheep hay and put down corn for the chickens. Then she mucked out the stalls. The manure would go on the garden and on as much of the fields as it would cover.

She handled pitchfork and shovel with matter-of-fact skill. Her hands had thick bands of callus across the palms. Her nails were short and blunt and dirty. A dozen scars seamed her fingers and the backs of her hands-anyone who did a lot of work with sharp tools had accidents now and then. Every once in a while, she thought wistfully of a manicure, but how much good would it do? A day after she got it, she'd be back in the barn and out in the fields once more.

Hens squawked and tried to peck as she lifted them off their nests so she could gather eggs. One of them did more than try; the bird's beak drew blood. She gave it a baleful stare. "Chicken and dumplings," she whispered. "Fried chicken. Chicken soup." The bird looked back out of beady little eyes. It was too stupid to be afraid. It was only indignant at having its nest robbed-and, being a hen, would forget about that in short order.

Instead of taking the basket of eggs straight back to the house, Mary sat down for a moment to rest. She leaned back against an old wagon wheel that had been sitting in the barn ever since she was a little girl. The iron tire on the wheel showed red streaks of rust. The wheel had a couple of broken spokes. Not for the first time, she wondered why her father had left it there instead of either repairing it or getting what use he could from the wood and the iron. Letting things lie idle wasn't like him.

She shrugged. She'd never get the chance to ask him now. If she ever needed anything that wheel could provide, she wouldn't hesitate to take it. Or, if she had to, she thought she could fix it. She hadn't tried her hand at carpentry till her father died. As with so much else, she'd had to learn the hard way-several of the scars on her hands came from slips. But she could do things nowadays that would have amazed her a few years before.

With a sigh, she climbed to her feet again, picked up the basket, and headed back to the farmhouse. She blinked in surprise when she saw a buggy by the house. People didn't visit the McGregors very often. She walked faster, curious to see who'd broken the unwritten rule.

A couple of Fords sped past on the road that led to Rosenfeld. One was painted green-gray, which meant it belonged to the U.S. Army. The other was the more usual black. All the same, odds were it had a Yank inside. Even now, almost ten years after the war ended, not many Canadians could afford a motorcar. And most of the ones who can are a bunch of damned collaborators, Mary thought.

She opened the kitchen door. Her mother sat at a table drinking tea with another woman of about her own age, who was saying, "I tell you, Maude, it's a disgrace. I'm sure she and that Yank-" She broke off and smiled. "Hello, Mary. How are you?"

"I'm fine, Mrs. Marble, thank you." Mary laughed at herself, thinking she should have recognized the buggy.

"Tell me more, Beth," her mother said. "You can be sure Mary won't let it get to the wrong ears."

"Well, I didn't expect she would," Beth Marble answered, sipping her tea. She was a couple of inches shorter than Mary's mother, with shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, rather flat features, and a habitual expression of good humor. After picking up a shortbread wafer from the plate on the table, she did go on with her story: one more tale of a Canadian girl who'd lost her virtue to a fast-talking American with a fancy motorcar and with money in his pocket.

Mary listened with only half an ear. She hardly knew this girl, who lived even farther from the McGregors than did the Marbles, and she'd been hearing such stories ever since the days of the Great War. Only the details varied. The American conquest of Canada continued on many different levels. Soldiers occupied the land. American men seduced Canadian women. Newspapers printed only what the conquerors wanted the conquered to read. Films pounded home the same messages, as she'd seen at the Bijou. So did the wireless, not that she'd ever heard it. Canadian schools taught the U.S. view of history-a pack of lies, as far as Mary was concerned. Her parents had pulled her and Julia out of school when the Yanks changed the curriculum. Most children, though, had kept on going, and the Americans had been in charge of such things for quite a while now. How long till a whole generation forgot what being Canadian meant?

Mary put the eggs she'd gathered on the counter. She went over to the table. "May I have a wafer, Mother?" she asked, and took one when Maude McGregor nodded.

"Such lovely manners," Beth Marble said, and beamed at Mary's mother. "Both your daughters are so sweet and charming, Maude."

Do you know me at all? Mary wondered as she nibbled at the shortbread. I don't think so. In her own mind, she was as much a fighter against the American occupation as her father had been, more of a fighter than her brother had been-even if the Yanks had murdered him for his opposition to their rule. Sweet? Charming? She felt like pouring a cup of tea and then spilling it on their visitor, even if Mrs. Marble had meant well, as she surely had.

As much to make a point as because she really wanted it, Mary took another shortbread wafer, this time without asking permission. Mrs. Marble, engrossed in another bit of gossip-she did like to talk-failed to notice. Mary's mother did, and wagged a finger at her. From behind Beth Marble's back, Mary stuck out her tongue.

Her mother raised her teacup to her mouth to hide a smile, but her eyes danced above it. Carrying that second piece of shortbread away as booty, Mary went into the parlor.

Two steps in were more than enough to show her she'd made a mistake. Her older sister sat on the rocking chair in there, and Beth Marble's son Kenneth on the sofa close by. More plainly than words, Julia's look said the two of them didn't want any company.

Face heating, Mary mumbled, "I… I guess I'll go upstairs now. Hello, Kenneth."

"Hello, Mary," Kenneth Marble answered politely, but he kept his eyes on Julia as he spoke. He'd been coming to call for most of a year now, sometimes with his mother, sometimes without. He was the first young man who'd come to call on Julia since Ted Culligan broke off their engagement after her father's death. There were times over the past few months when Julia had got all dreamy and absentminded. Mary didn't take that for a good sign.

Up the stairs she went, fast as her legs would carry her. When she turned around and looked back, Julia and Kenneth were leaning towards each other. She sighed. She didn't know what Julia saw in him. He was only an inch or two taller than she, and, to Mary's eyes, nothing much to look at. Some actress had got a reputation as the girl with it. In Julia's eyes, plainly, Kenneth Marble had it. Mary still found it more bewildering than exciting.

She flopped down on her bed and started reading a copy of The Ladies' Home Journal she'd got the last time she went into Rosenfeld. The magazine showed her a whole different world, and not just because it came from the USA. Skinny girls in short dresses strode city streets, rode in motorcars, listened to the wireless, lived in apartments, used electric lights and telephones, and did all sorts of other things Mary thought herself unlikely ever to do. Even more than what they did, that they took it so completely for granted was daunting.

If it weren't for the recipes and patterns the Journal included, Mary's mother probably wouldn't have let it come into the farmhouse. Nothing could have been better calculated to make someone on a farm discontented with her life. This issue even had a story about flying to California for a holiday. Flying! For pleasure! The only aeroplanes Mary had even seen were the fighting scouts and bombers that had buzzed above the farm during the Great War. She couldn't imagine wanting to get into one of those.

The Journal also had an article about a journey on an ocean liner. Mary couldn't decide whether she found stranger the idea of a liner or that of the ocean itself. She'd never seen it, and didn't expect she ever would. Before she could read much of the article, a commotion broke out downstairs: Julia and their mother and Beth Marble sounded even more excited than the hens had when Mary rifled their nests.

She flipped the magazine closed and hurried down to see what had happened. She found her older sister in tears, with their mother and Mrs. Marble both embracing her. Kenneth Marble stood off to one side, a sickly grin on his face. Mary stared at him. Had he tried to…? With his own mother, and Julia's, in the next room? He couldn't have been that stupid. Could he?

Then Mary noticed both her mother and Beth Marble were crying and smiling at the same time. Maude McGregor said, "Kenneth just asked Julia to marry him, and she said yes."

"Oh." Mary couldn't have said anything more if she tried; she felt as if she'd been punched in the pit of the stomach. Even breathing was hard. The first thought that went through her mind was, How will we do the work if Julia moves away? Even with all three of them working flat out, it barely got done.

Despite her mother's smile, Maude McGregor looked worried, too. Mrs. Marble seemed oblivious to the glance that went between Mary and her mother. It wasn't her trouble, after all.

"This is the happiest day of my life," Julia said. Beth Marble burst into tears again. Mary congratulated her sister. What a liar I am, she thought.