The Center Cannot Hold

VIII

To Anne Colleton's ears, J.B.H. Norris' drawl sounded harsh and ignorant. But the Texas oil man had proved a sharp operator in spite of that backwoods accent. "Hope you'll see fit to invest in our operation here, ma'am," he said, tipping his hat to her. The Stetson, with its high crown and wide brim, also told her she wasn't in South Carolina any more.

She was near the banks of the Brazos River, northwest of Fort Worth. And she had questions that went beyond profit and loss. She pointed west. "That new Yankee state of Houston isn't very far away. What happens if there's another war? How are you going to keep U.S. soldiers and aeroplanes from wrecking everything you've got?"

"Ma'am, you'd do better asking Richmond about that than me," Norris answered. "If they hadn't given up so much last time, we wouldn't need to fret about it now."

"Yes, but they did, and so we do." Anne slapped at something. The mosquitoes were coming out early this afternoon. It wasn't quite so muggy as it would have been back home, but it would do.

J.B.H. Norris said, "Don't quite know what to tell you about that, except I don't think a war's coming any time soon."

"No," Anne said bleakly. "I don't, either. We're too weak."

"That's about the size of it," Norris agreed. "At least President Mitchel has the sense to see it. That Featherston maniac would get us into a fight we can't hope to win."

"I used to like him better than I do now, but he hasn't got any real chance of getting elected, anyway," Anne said. "So I'm a Whig again. Some people don't much like that, but I've never much cared for what people like or don't like." She changed the subject, but only a little: "What do you think of the Supreme Court ruling that lets Mitchel run again?"

"Well, the Constitution says a president serves the six-year term he's elected for, and then he's done." Norris shrugged. "President Mitchel didn't run for the job-he got it when that Calkins bastard-pardon me, ma'am-killed President Hampton. So I suppose it's only fair to let him try and win it again on his own. And Calkins was one of those Freedom Party fools, so I'm not surprised the Supreme Court gave it to Featherston right between the eyes."

"Yes, that occurred to me, too. Featherston frightened people-powerful people-a few years ago. Now they're going to make him pay for it." Anne Colleton's smile had a certain predatory quality, enough so that J.B.H. Norris flinched when she turned it on him rather than the world at large. She went on, "I do thank you for showing me around. You've given me a lot to think about-more than I expected when I came out to Texas, in fact. I may well put some of my money here once I get home."

Norris beamed. "That'd be wonderful. We can use the capital, and I'm not lyin' when I tell you so." He scratched his cheek with his left hand. Only then did Anne notice his ring finger was just a stump. A war wound? Probably. A lot of men had such small mutilations. He added, "If you're heading back East, you'd better not waste a lot of time. From what the papers say, the flood in the Mississippi Valley just keeps gettin' worse and worse."

"I know." Anne had been reading the papers, too. Anger roiled her voice: "And it's hurt us so much worse than it hit the damnyankees. If they hadn't stolen Kentucky and that piece of Arkansas from us, it wouldn't have hurt them much at all. Cairo, Illinois, got flooded." She rolled her eyes. "Cairo, Illinois, never was any sort of a place to begin with. But we've had Memphis and Little Rock just drowned, and the levees in New Orleans were holding by this much"-she held thumb and forefinger close together-"when I went through Louisiana on my way here."

"May not be so easy gettin' back," Norris warned.

"Why not?" Anne said. "Most of the bridges over the Mississippi are still standing."

"Yes, ma'am." The oil man nodded again. "The bridges over the Mississippi are still good. They're the big, strong ones, and they were built to take whatever the river could throw at 'em. But what about the bridges on the way to the Mississippi? An awful lot of them'll go down, I bet. I may be wrong, but that's sure enough how it looks to me."

Anne muttered something under her breath. It wasn't quite far enough under, for J.B.H. Norris' gingery eyebrows leapt upwards. He'll never think of me as a lady again, Anne thought, and did her best not to giggle. Well, fair enough, because I'm damn well not. Worry wiped out the temptation to laugh. "You're dead right, Mr. Norris, and I wish I'd thought of that myself. Please take me back to my hotel. I can't afford to waste much time, can I?"

"No, I don't reckon you can," Norris said. "Wish I could see more of you, but I know how things are. Car's right over there." He pointed to a middle-aged Birmingham outside the shack that did duty for an office.

How does he mean that? Anne wondered. Spend more time with me, or see me with my clothes off? Ten years, even five years, before, she would have had no doubt. But she wasn't so young as she had been. I'm just as picky as I ever was, though, maybe pickier. That's likely why I haven't got a husband yet. Nobody suits me. Maybe Tom was right. I've been on my own too long.

The ride back to Fort Worth took close to three hours. A blowout halfway there didn't help. J.B.H. Norris fixed it with the aplomb of one who'd done it many times before-and what driver hadn't? — but it still cost a half hour Anne wished she could have got back. She checked out of the Dandridge as soon as Norris stopped the motorcar in front of the hotel. Then she hurled her luggage into a cab and made for the train station across town.

Before the war, she would have had a colored servant, or more than one, taking care of her. No more. And she didn't miss them, either. She'd discovered she was more efficient than anyone whose main aim was to do as little as possible. That had proved oddly liberating, where she would have expected losing servants to do just the opposite.

But the time lost to the blowout rose up to haunt her at the station. "Sorry, ma'am, but the eastbound express pulled out of here about twenty minutes ago," the clerk in the ticket window said. "Next one doesn't leave till ten tonight."

"Damnation," Anne said. "Can I take a local and connect with another express east of here sooner than that? I do want to beat the flood if I can; I have to get back to South Carolina."

"I understand, ma'am. Let's see what I can do." The clerk flipped through schedules so complex, God would have had trouble understanding them. People in line behind Anne surely fumed at the delay. She would have, had she been back there and not at the front. At last, with an unhappy half smile, he shook his head. "Sorry, ma'am, but no. And I've got to tell you, there's no Pullman berths left on the ten o'clock train. You'll have to take an ordinary seat. I'll refund the difference, of course."

"Damnation," Anne said again, this time with more feeling. She'd be a frazzled wreck by the time she finally got back to St. Matthews. But if she didn't leave as soon as she could, heaven only knew when she would get back. "Give me whatever you can, then."

"Sure will." The clerk handed her a ticket and several brown Confederate banknotes. "Your train will be leaving from Platform W. It's over that way." He pointed. "Follow the signs-they'll take you straight to it. Hope everything turns out all right for you."

"Thanks." Anne waved for a porter to handle her suitcases. The colored man put them on a wheeled cart and followed her to Platform W. She bought food there, and a cheap novel to while away the time till the train got in.

It was late. By then, Anne had stopped expecting anything else. It didn't arrive till half past one. She'd put the novel aside an hour earlier, and was trying without much luck to doze in a chair. The car to which she was assigned didn't even have compartments, only row after row of seats bolted to the floor. The man who sat down next to her was so fat, he encroached on her without meaning to. He hadn't had a bath any time recently. She gritted her teeth. Nothing she could do about it, though. As soon as the train pulled out of Fort Worth, the fat man threw back his head, fell asleep, and began snoring like a thunderstorm. That added insult to injury. Anne felt like jabbing him with a pin.

Unable to sleep herself, she stared glumly out the window at the night. Only blackness met her eye, blackness and an occasional handful of lights burning in the small towns at which the express didn't stop. She almost resented the lights, which put her in mind of fireflies. Blackness suited her mood much better.

The express did stop at Dallas. Anne understood the need, but hated the delay. The fat man beside her scarcely stirred. He didn't wake up. After what seemed forever but was by her watch forty-five minutes, the train rumbled east again. Presently, Anne had to use the toilet. She took more than a little pleasure in waking her seatmate to get by, though she sounded polite. By the time she returned, he was snoring again. She woke him once more. It did no good to speak of. He fell back to sleep, while she stayed awake.

Marshall was the next stop, near the Louisiana border. By the time the train left, the sky ahead was getting light. Morning had come by the time the express got into Shreveport, on the Red River. The Red was flooding, too, but not enough to delay the train any worse.

Monroe, Louisiana, on the Ouachita, was the next scheduled stop-by then, Anne had the schedule all but memorized. But the express didn't make it to Monroe. First, Anne saw tent cities on high ground, where people who'd escaped the floodwaters were staying till someone did something more for them. Then, as the ground got lower, mud and water covered more and more of it. The air was thick and humid and full of the stink of decay. At last, the train had to stop, for the simple reason that going forward would have meant going underwater. The tracks were laid on an embankment that raised them above the surrounding countryside, but that finally stopped helping.

"What do we do now?" Anne asked the conductor.

"Don't rightly know, ma'am," he answered. "I reckon we'll back up and try and find a way around-if there is one. Don't rightly know about that, either. Only other thing we can do is wait for the water to go down, and Lord only knows how long that'd take."

Trying to hold in her anger, she snapped, "Why didn't you find out in Shreveport that the way would be flooded?"

"On account of it wasn't when we left Shreveport," the conductor said. "Ma'am, this here is a… heck of a bad flood, worst anybody's seen since Hector was a pup. An' it just keeps gettin' worser an' worser."

He'd fought not to swear in her presence. Now she fought not to swear in his. After what seemed a very long time, the train shuddered into motion-backwards. It crawled that way till at last it came to a cross track. Anne felt like cheering when it started moving ahead once more.

But it didn't go far. Before long, the encroaching floodwaters blocked its path again. This time, Anne did curse, and didn't care who sent her shocked looks. By the time the train had made three or four false starts, everyone in the car was swearing. It didn't help.

Yet another tent city sprouted like a forest of giant toadstools outside the whistlestop hamlet of Anabell, Louisiana, where the express was balked again. "How are those people going to eat?" someone asked. "If trains have trouble getting through…"

It was a good question. It got an answer even as Anne watched. An aeroplane landed in a field only a couple of hundred yards from the train. The pilot started throwing out sacks of flour and flitches of bacon. A great light blazed in Anne's mind. "Let me off the train!" she told the conductor. "This instant, do you hear me?"

"What about your luggage?" he asked, blinking.

"To hell with my luggage," she said. The conductor tapped the side of his head with his index finger, but did as she asked. She ran over to the aeroplane, waving and calling, "Can you fly me over the Mississippi and past the floods to where I can catch another train east?"

"Maybe I can, lady," the pilot answered, shifting a plug of tobacco in his cheek. "Why the devil should I?"

"I'll pay you three hundred dollars," she said. "Half now, half when we land."

That wad of tobacco shifted again. She wondered if he'd swallow it, but he didn't. "Lemme finish unloading," he said around it. "Then you got yourself a deal." Half an hour later, the biplane bumped across the soggy field and threw itself into the air. Anne Colleton whooped with delight. She'd never flown before, and wondered why not. Three hundred dollars was a small price to pay for this kind of fun-and for the money she hoped to make when she got home.

F loodlights glared into Jake Featherston's face, so that he couldn't see the crowd in the New Orleans auditorium. He didn't care; he'd made enough speeches so that he didn't need to see the people out there to know what they were thinking. "Good to be back here," he said. "This is the town where I was nominated six years ago. We did pretty good then, we did. And we'll do better this time, you just wait and see if we don't!"

"Freedom!" The roar came from over a thousand throats. Featherston grinned fiercely. That sound hit him harder than a big slug of hooch. Its absence was the one thing he hated most about making speeches on the wireless-it felt as if he were shouting at a bunch of deaf men, and he couldn't tell if he was getting through or not. This speech was going out over the wireless, too, and it would go complete with shouts of approval and excitement from the crowd.

This is the way it ought to be, he thought, and resumed: "People say we're gonna have trouble electing me. People say that, but they don't always know what the devil they're talking about. And you tell me, friends-haven't the Confederate States got themselves enough trouble already?"

"Yes!" people shouted, and, "Hell, yes!" and, "You bet!" One woman cried, "Oh, Jake!" as if they were in bed together and he'd just given her the best time she'd ever had in her life.

His grin got wider. Maybe he'd have a flunky look for her after the speech was done. And maybe he wouldn't, too; he couldn't afford to get too much of a reputation as a tomcatting man, not when so many people who went to church every Sunday were likely to vote Freedom. He hated compromise, but that was one he'd had to make.

"Haven't we got ourselves enough trouble?" he said again. "Folks, I tell you, the Whigs have been carrying the ball too long. They've been carrying it too long, and now they've gone and dropped it." He slammed his fist down on the podium.

More applause from the crowd. Cries of, "Tell 'em, Jake!" and, "Give 'em hell!" rang out over the general din. They might have been listening to a preacher on the revival circuit, not an ordinary politician. Jake Featherston wasn't an ordinary politician, which was both his greatest weakness and his greatest strength.

"They've gone and dropped it," he repeated-again, as a preacher might have. "What else would you call it when here in the middle of July, a good month after the flood finally started going down, the Confederate States of America have still got more than half a million people-half a million, I tell you, and I'm not lying; it's what the Confederate Red Cross says-living in tents? If that's not a shame and a disgrace, you tell me what it is."

A lot of those people, maybe a majority, were colored cotton pickers who worked for white plantation owners in what differed from slavery in little more than name. More often than not, Jake would have gloated at their suffering. But if he could use them as a club with which to beat the present administration, he would.

He went on, "Up in the USA, there's not a soul still stuck in a tent. Oh, I know they didn't get hurt as bad as we did, but it makes a point. When the Yankees need to get things done, they up and do 'em. When we need to get things done, what happens?" He threw his arms wide in extravagant disgust. "Not a damn thing, that's what! I tell you, folks, you're just lucky New Orleans didn't go out to sea, on account of the government in Richmond wouldn't've done a thing-not a single, solitary thing-to stop it if it had."

That drew more applause: baying, angry applause. They know I'm telling the truth, he thought. Being a Whig meant doing as little as you could to get by.

The line wasn't in the text of his speech, but he used it, adding, "Folks say that works all right. Maybe it did, once upon a time. But this here ain't no fairy tale, and we haven't got no happy ending. People, we need a government in Richmond that'll stand up on its hind legs and do things.

"Who stumbled into the war? The Whigs! Who let the niggers stab us in the back without even knowing they were going to? The Whigs! Who went and lost the war? The Whigs!" Now the crowd shouted out the name of the CSA's longtime ruling party with him. He rolled on: "Who let the damnyankees steal Kentucky? The Whigs! Who let 'em steal Sequoyah? The Whigs! Who let 'em cut Texas in half? The Whigs! Who let 'em take northern Virginia away from us? The Whigs! I fought in the Army of Northern Virginia, and I'm proud of it, but the Yankees have taken the place away from us. And who let the Yankees tell us what we could do with our Army and Navy? Who left us too weak to fight back when those bastards started throwing their weight around? The Whigs again!"

He slammed his fist down on the podium. The crowd in the hall roared. They might have been so many coon dogs taking a scent. Featherston took a scent from them, too. If he didn't make a crowd hot and sweaty, he wasn't doing his job. His nose told him he was tonight.

"They've done everything they could to tear this country down," he went on. "Now they had their day once. I give 'em that. Jeff Davis was a great president. Nobody can say different. So was Lee. So was Longstreet. But that was a long time ago. We had friends back then. Where are our friends now? The Frenchmen have the Kaiser on their back. England's trying to keep from starving every year. We're on our own, and the Whigs are too damn dumb to know it. God helps the people who help themselves. And as long as the Whigs hang on in Richmond, God better help us, 'cause we'll need it bad!"

That got him a laugh. He'd known it would. He understood that it should. But it wasn't funny to him. The contempt and hatred he felt for the Whigs-for all the Confederate elite, including the second- and third-generation officers who'd done so much to lose the Great War-were big as the world. They hadn't given him a chance to show what he could do, no matter how right he'd been. In fact, they'd scorned him all the more because he'd been right.

Just see what I do if I win this election, you sons of bitches, he thought. Just you see then.

Meanwhile, he had this speech to finish: "If you want to go on the way the Confederate States have been going, you vote Whig," he thundered. "If you want your country to go straight down the toilet, that's the way to vote." He got another laugh there, an enormous one. He continued, "The Supreme Court says you can keep on having just what you've had-and aren't you lucky?" Their day would come, too. He'd promised himself that. "But if you want change, if you want strength, if you want pride-if you want to be able to look at yourselves in the mirror and look the USA straight in the eye, y'all vote…"

"Freedom!"

The shout from the crowd, more than a thousand voices speaking as one, made his ears ring. He threw up his hands. "That's right, folks. Thank you. And remember-no matter what else you do, fight hard! "

More applause shook the hall as he stepped away from the podium. The house lights came up, so he could see the people he'd been haranguing. He waved to them again. "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" they chanted, over and over again. The rhythmic cry rolled through him, rolled under him, and swept him along on its crest. He'd read somewhere that in the Sandwich Islands the natives rode waves lying or even standing up on flat boards. He supposed that was true. If it weren't true, who could make it up? He felt something like that now, buoyed up by the crowd's enthusiasm.

As he went offstage, the bodyguards and other men who'd come west from Virginia with him pumped his hand and told him what a great speech he'd given. "Thanks, boys," he said, and then, "For Christ's sake, somebody get me a drink!"

Louisiana had never surrendered to the siren song of prohibition. He could drink his whiskey here without shame or hypocrisy. It seared his throat and sent warmth exploding out from his middle. As soon as he emptied the glass, somebody got him a fresh one.

He sipped the second drink more slowly. Got to keep my wits about me, he thought. Not everybody was going to like the speech as well as his flunkies had.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than a tall, blond, handsome man in a suit that must have cost plenty came up and shook hands with him. "You gave 'em hell out there tonight, Jake," he said, a Texas twang in his voice.

"I thank you kindly, Willy," Featherston answered. Willy Knight had headed up the Redemption League, an outfit with goals much like those of the Freedom Party, till the bigger Party enfolded it. He wasn't the best number-two man around, mostly because he still had thoughts of being number one.

"Damn good speech," agreed Amos Mizell. He led the Tin Hats, the biggest Confederate veterans' organization. The Tin Hats weren't formally aligned with the Freedom Party, but they shared many of the same ideas.

"Thank you, too," Jake Featherston said. Mizell wore the ribbon for a Purple Heart on his shirt. "You were out there, same as me. You know how the Whigs sold us down the river. You know how they've been selling us down the river ever since."

"Sure do." Mizell nodded. "What Willy and I aren't so sure of, though, is whether you're the fellow who's going to kick 'em out on the street where they belong."

"No, huh?" Featherston looked from one of them to the other. "You boys felt like that, how come you didn't try and keep me from getting the nomination last month?" He wanted his enemies out there in the open where he could see them and smash them, not lurking in dead leaves like a couple of rattlesnakes.

"Wouldn't've been much point to that, on account of we'd've lost," Willy Knight said. "We'll see how you do come November, and we'll go from there. You really think you're going to win?"

Featherston made an impatient, scornful gesture. "That's to keep the troops happy, and you know it as well as I do. I'm hoping I finish ahead of the damn Rad Libs, and that we hold our ground in Congress. I think we can do that." He hoped the Freedom Party could do that. Before the great flood, he wouldn't even have bet on so much. But the flood had shown that the Whigs weren't so slick as they thought they were, and that they didn't respond well in emergencies. Some voters, at least, would see the light.

Knight and Mizell looked at each other. "All right, Jake," Knight said at last. "That sounds fair. If the Party does that well come fall, we'll keep on backing your play. But if we take another hammering, the way we did in the last couple of Congressional elections, everybody's gonna have to do a lot of thinking."

"I carried the Freedom Party on my back, God damn it," Jake growled.

"Nobody says you didn't, so keep your shirt on." Willy Knight was a bigger man than Featherston, but Jake, in a fury, was a match for anybody. Knight knew it, too. Still speaking placatingly, he went on, "Moses took the Hebrews out of Egypt, but he wasn't the one who got 'em into the Promised Land."

Amos Mizell nodded. "If the Party's vote slips again, the Tin Hats will have to think about getting what we want some other way."

Featherston had thought he wanted enemies openly declared. Now he had them, and wished he didn't. "And I suppose the two of you will try and screw me over so we don't get what I said we would."

They almost fell over themselves denying it. "As long as we do what you said we'd do, we're still in business," Knight said. "If we fall down now, who knows if there'll be any pieces worth picking up later on? We're still with you."

"You'd better be," Jake said. "Let's see what happens in November, then, and afterwards." Knight and Mizell both nodded. Featherston shook hands with each of them in turn. And if you bastards think I'll let go without a fight even if things do go wrong, you're a hell of a lot dumber than I think you are.

In the Terry, the colored district of Augusta, Georgia, Election Day meant next to nothing. Only a handful of Negro veterans of the Great War were registered to vote. To most people, it was just another Tuesday.

As usual, Erasmus was in his fish store and restaurant when Scipio walked in. Scipio got himself a cup of coffee to drink while sweeping up the place. His boss was setting newly bought fish on ice in the counter. Scipio said, "What you think? De Whigs gwine win again?"

"Dunno," Erasmus said with a shrug. "Them or the Rad Libs, don't matter one way or t'other. Long as it ain't that goddamn crazy man." He threw a crappie into place with more force than he usually used while handling fish. That Election Day meant next to nothing didn't mean it meant nothing at all.

"Dat Featherston buckra, he ain't gwine do nothin' much," Scipio said.

"Better not," Erasmus answered, and slammed down a gutted catfish. "That son of a bitch win, everything's even tougher for us niggers. And things is tough enough as they is."

Voice sly, Scipio said. "You ain't got it so bad. You owns your house free an' clear-"

"I ain't stupid," Erasmus said, and Scipio nodded. His boss had been damn smart there. He'd paid off his mortgage just when inflation was starting to ravage the CSA, when he'd had a pretty easy time accumulating the money he needed but before Confederate dollars became nothing but a joke. The bankers had taken the money, even if they'd been unhappy about it. A few weeks later and they would have refused him. "I ain't stupid," he repeated. "I'm smart enough to know I ain't got it easy long as I's a nigger in the CSA."

He was right about that. Scipio didn't need to be a genius to understand as much. He said, "No, you ain't got it easy-I takes it back. But you has it worse-all us niggers has it worse-if dat Featherston, he win." Working for Anne Colleton had given him a feel for the way Confederate politics worked. Again, though, he didn't need to be a genius to find the truth in what he'd just said.

"Not so many parades with them goddamn white men in the white shirts an' the butternut pants yellin', 'Freedom!' this year," Erasmus observed. "They ain't been tryin' to bust up the other parties' meetin's, neither, like they done before. They walkin' sof' again."

"Don' want to remind nobody what that one buckra done," Scipio said. "But too many folks, dey recollects any which way."

"Hell, yes," Erasmus said. "Thing of it is, Freedom Party, they needs the white folks to be stupid, or else to act stupid on account of they scared. Now, Lord knows the white folks is stupid-"

"Do Jesus, yes!" Scipio said, as if responding to a preacher's sermon.

"But they ain't that stupid, not unless they's scared bad," Erasmus went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "Things ain't too bad for 'em right now-money's still worth somethin', most of 'em's got jobs-so they ain't gwine vote for no Jake Featherston, not this year they ain't. That's how I sees it, anyways."

"Way I sees it, you should oughta write fo' de newspapers," Scipio said, not intending it as any sort of flattery. On the contrary-he'd read plenty of editorials about what was likely to happen that didn't sum things up anywhere near so neatly as his illiterate but ever so shrewd boss had managed in a couple of sentences.

Erasmus lit a cigarette. He blew out a cloud of smoke, then said, "You bangin' your gums on all this politics so as you kin git out o' workin'-ain't that right, Xerxes?"

"Oh, yassuh, Marse Erasmus, suh." Scipio laid on his Low Country accent even thicker than usual. "Ah ain't nevah done one lick o' work, not since de day you hire me. Ah jus' eats yo' food an' drinks yo' coffee an' steals yo' smokes." He held out his hand, pale palm up, for a cigarette.

Laughing, Erasmus gave him one, then leaned close so Scipio could get a light from the one he already had in his mouth. He'd just taken his first drag of the morning and coughed a couple of times when the first customer of the day came in, calling for coffee and ham and eggs and, instead of grits, hash browns. Erasmus got busy at the stove. Scipio got busier doing everything else. They stayed busy all day long. When Scipio finally went home, Erasmus was still busy. Scipio sometimes wondered whether his boss ever went to bed.

And when Scipio got back to his roominghouse, he heard splashes and squeals from the bathroom at the end of the hall. He also heard Bathsheba's voice, rising in ever-growing exasperation and wrath. He smiled to himself. Antoinette was going on two years old now, and an ever-growing handful to bathe.

A few minutes later, Bathsheba carried the baby into the room. Antoinette, swaddled in a towel, saw Scipio and said, "Dada!" in delight. Scipio's wife looked wetter than the baby did. She also looked a lot less happy.

"What de matter, sweetheart?" Scipio asked. "Givin' 'Toinette a bath ain't dat hard. I even done it my ownself a time or two." He spoke as if that were some enormous accomplishment. In his mind, it was. He hadn't heard many fathers talk about giving their children even that much in the way of care.

But Bathsheba's baleful stare made him stop with his mouth half open. "The baby shit in the damn tub," she said bleakly.

"Oh," Scipio said. "Aw… golly." The first expression of sympathy that came to mind wouldn't have been to Bathsheba's liking, not just then.

Instead of saying anything, Scipio went to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of moonshine. Georgia was officially dry, but contraband liquor wasn't hard to come by. He poured his wife a stiff drink, and a smaller one for himself. Holding out the glass to Bathsheba, he said, "Here you is. Reckon you done earned dis here."

"Reckon I did." She poured down half of it. Then she puffed out her cheeks and exhaled violently. "Whew! Dat's nasty stuff." Scipio was inclined to agree. He'd always preferred rum even to good whiskey, and the murky yellowish fluid in his glass bore a closer relationship to paint thinner than it did to good whiskey.

Antoinette saw her parents drinking something, and naturally wanted some, too. Bathsheba fixed her a bottle. Then she started making supper. Since the room had only a hot plate for cooking, everything took a while. Scipio was glad for the chance to sit down and play with his little girl and talk with his wife and drink the moonshine and let it relax him.

"Buckra ladies I was cleanin' for, they all talkin' 'bout the election today," Bathsheba said. "Dunno why. They can't vote any more'n us black folks kin."

Bills allowing women's suffrage showed up in the Georgia Legislature almost every session. They got tabled or voted down with monotonous regularity. Even so, Scipio asked, "Who dey say dey husbands vote fo'?"

"Whigs, mostly." Bathsheba knew why he was worried, and added, "That Featherston fella, don't reckon he gwine go nowhere much."

"Do Jesus, hope you right," Scipio answered.

Bathsheba took lamb chops out of the pan and started frying potatoes in the grease they'd left behind. "Got me somethin' more important to tell you, anyways."

"What dat?" Scipio asked as he stuck a little bite of lamb in Antoinette's mouth. The baby made a face, but ate the morsel. Scipio gave her another one.

Bathsheba pointed at her. "Reckon she gwine have herself a little brother or sister come summertime."

"I was wonderin' about dat my ownself," Scipio said as he got up to give her a hug. "Didn't t'ink you monthlies, dey come." Her breasts had been tender lately, too, and she'd started falling asleep early in the evening.

As if to prove he was right, Bathsheba yawned. She laughed a moment later. "Better sleep now. When the new young 'un come, ain't never gwine sleep again."

"We gots to find a bigger place, too," Scipio said. The room they had was intended for one. It was tolerable for two, provided they got on well-which Scipio and Bathsheba certainly did. With three in it, there wasn't room to swing a cat. With four… Scipio thought about that. With four people in this room, there wouldn't have been room to bring in a cat, let alone swing it.

"What you reckon Antoinette make o' the new baby?" Bathsheba asked.

"She ain't gwine like it," Scipio answered. "Young chillun, dey don' never like no new baby in de fambly. But she git over it. She have to. Dey allus does. Jus' sometimes take longer, is all."

Bathsheba nodded. "Reckon you's right." She yawned again. "I gots to get to sleep. Come here, 'Toinette. Time we both go to bed."

The baby didn't want to. She was convinced she'd miss something. Some evenings she was right, others wrong. Tonight, she fussed and fumed-and then got up the following morning not just ready but eager to play. Scipio was the one who, yawning, went out to face the day.

He paid his five cents for a copy of the Constitutionalist on his way to Erasmus' place. Newsboys shouted of Burton Mitchel's victory as president of the Confederate States. "President Mitchel reelected!" they yelled. A Confederate president wasn't supposed to get reelected, but the Supreme Court said this didn't count. No matter what the Supreme Court said, the newsboys knew what was what.

The Whigs had won easily this time, nothing like their razor-thin victory in 1921. The Freedom Party took Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas, the Radical Liberals Arkansas and Chihuahua. Sonora still looked too close to call. Everywhere else, the people had voted Whig.

Scipio read that with more relief than he'd felt for a long time. Life in the CSA was hard enough for a black man any time. He imagined going to bed one morning and waking up to discover Jake Featherston was president. The mere idea chilled him worse than the cool November morning.

He methodically worked his way through the election stories below the headlines. The Freedom Party hadn't taken quite so many lumps as he would have liked to see. It had lost one Senator, but gained a pair of Congressmen-maybe three, because one of the races in Texas remained very tight.

"I may not be going to the Gray House next March," the Constitutionalist quoted Featherston as saying, "but we'll make ourselves heard in Congress, and in state houses all over the country. We aren't about to go away, no matter how much the Whigs wish we would. We're just reloading for the next round of the fight."

He'd lost. He hadn't come close to winning. But he still sounded confident right was on his side, and that he'd win one of these days. He reminded Scipio of nothing so much as Cassius and the other colored Reds who'd formed the ill-fated government of the Congaree Socialist Republic and dragged him into it. Their faith in the dialectic had kept them going through thick and thin. Jake Featherston sounded like a man with the same kind of faith.

He'd kill me if I could tell him so, Scipio thought. The Reds would kill me, too-if they weren't already dead themselves. No, neither side here would see its resemblance to the other. That didn't mean the resemblance wasn't there.

The Reds had proved wrong-dead wrong-about the dialectic. With any luck, the Freedom Party would prove just as wrong. That thought heartened Scipio. He tossed the Constitutionalist into a trash can and hurried to work. Erasmus would skin him if he was late.

T he first time Sam Carsten had seen the Remembrance — going on ten years ago now, which struck him as very strange-he'd thought her the ugliest, funniest-looking ship in the U.S. Navy, or, for that matter, in anyone else's. She'd started out life intending to be a battle cruiser, but had had her design drastically revised while she was a-building. Back in those distant days not long after the Great War, nobody had seen a ship with a flight deck so she could launch and land aeroplanes.

Now, as Sam returned to the Remembrance, she still looked strange. He shook his head as the boat neared the carrier. No, that wasn't right. She looked strange all over again, but for different reasons this time. By now, the Navy had three aeroplane carriers that had been built for the purpose from the keel up. They were a lot more capable than the Remembrance, which looked like the hybrid she was.

She may not be pretty, but she gets the job done, he thought. The boat from the O'Brien came alongside. Sailors up on the Remembrance lowered a rope ladder. Carsten shouldered his duffel bag.

"Good luck, sir," one of the sailors said. "You're going from a little fish to a big one."

"Thanks, Fritz," Carsten answered. He grabbed the ladder and swarmed up it, as if boarding with intent to take the ship rather than to serve in her. He knew a lot of eyes were watching him. If he acted like a gouty old man on the way up from the boat, they'd treat him with less respect than if he did his best impression of a pirate.

As he scrambled up onto the Remembrance 's broad, flat deck, a sailor leaped forward and grabbed the canvas duffel bag. "Let me take that for you, sir," the fellow said. By his tone, Carsten had passed his first test.

A lieutenant commander strolled up at a more leisurely pace. Sam stiffened to attention and saluted. "Permission to come aboard, sir?" he said formally.

"Granted." The other officer returned his salute. Then he smiled. "My name is Watkins, Ensign. Michael Watkins. Do I understand this is your second tour aboard the Remembrance?"

"Pleased to meet you, sir. Yes, sir, I've spent some time on her before," Carsten answered. "But that was a while ago-I was just thinking about how long it seems-and I was only a petty officer in those days."

"Oh, really? I didn't know that." Watkins' voice gave no clue as to what he thought about it, either. "So you're a mustang, eh? Up through the hawse hole?"

Sam nodded. "That's me." Not a whole lot of men jumped from rating to officer. He supposed he should have been proud of himself. Hell, he was proud of himself, when he had time to think about it.

"I'm going to ask you one question, Carsten, and I hope you won't take it the wrong way," Lieutenant Commander Watkins said. Sam nodded. He had a pretty good idea what the question would be. And, sure enough, Watkins asked, "You do remember you are an officer now, I hope?"

Carsten nodded again. "I do my best, sir." He'd seen a couple of other mustangs-both of them men fifteen or twenty years older than he was-who'd been promoted during the war for bravery too conspicuous to ignore. Both of them acted as if they were still CPOs. He understood that-they'd got set in their ways long before their promotions-but he didn't try to imitate it.

He seemed to have satisfied Watkins. "Fair enough, Ensign," the Remembrance 's officer said. "I'll take you to your quarters. Dougherty, follow us."

"Aye aye, sir," said the sailor who had Sam's duffel bag. He was redheaded and freckled and very fair.

"Pharmacist's mate still carry plenty of zinc-oxide ointment and such?" Sam asked him.

Dougherty gauged his pale blond hair, blue eyes, and pink, pink skin. "Well, yes, sir," he answered. "Don't know how much you'll need it, though, in January off Baltimore." He jerked his chin toward the gray, cloudy sky.

"You never can tell. I'll burn damn near anywhere," Carsten said. The sailor smiled, Sam thought in sympathy. Dougherty certainly looked as if he too would burn under any light brighter than a kerosene lantern's.

Lieutenant Commander Watkins opened a steel door. "Here you are, Ensign," he said, flipping on a switch to turn on the lamp inside the cabin. As he stepped back to let Sam see in, he apologetically spread his hands and added, "Sorry it's so small, but it's what we've got."

"That's all right, sir," Sam said. "It's a lot more room than I had my last tour aboard her. They still triple-deck the bunks, don't they?" He waited for Watkins to nod, then went on, "And I served in one of the five-inch gun sponsons, so I didn't have any room there, either."

"Ah." Watkins started to nod and let that go, but then his gaze sharpened. "Were you aboard Remembrance when she took fire off Belfast?"

"I sure as hell was, sir," Carsten answered. "A shell killed two men in my crew. Only dumb luck none of the fragments got me."

"Well, well," Lieutenant Commander Watkins said. "I wonder if we have any men still aboard who served with you."

"Been five years, sir. I haven't seen any yet, not that that proves anything," Sam said. "I'd like to say hello if I do, but I don't suppose I could do much more than that, could I?"

"I wouldn't think so, Ensign," Watkins told him. "This is part of what I meant when I asked if you remembered you were an officer." Sam nodded; he'd figured that out for himself. Watkins stepped back. "I won't keep you any more-you'll want to get settled in, I'm sure. I hope to see you and talk with you more later on."

"Thank you, sir." Carsten saluted.

"My pleasure." Watkins returned the salute. "Come along, Dougherty," he said, and walked on down the corridor.

Sam closed and dogged the door to his cabin. He'd been telling the truth when he said it was spacious compared to his previous accommodations on the Remembrance. That didn't mean he had much room. If he stood with arms outstretched, he could touch the gray-painted metal walls with his fingertips. The cabin held a bunk, a steel chest of drawers bolted to the opposite wall, a steel desk, a chair, and a tiny washbasin with a steel mirror above it. All that left him just about enough room to put his feet down, provided he was careful doing it.

Stowing his worldly goods, such as they were, didn't take long. Then he went out on deck once more. The O'Brien, having delivered him, steamed away, smoke pouring from her four stacks. The Remembrance pushed south through heavy seas. The rolling and pitching didn't bother Sam. He'd always had good sea legs and a calm stomach; his Achilles' heel was his pale skin.

Back toward the stern, a couple of mechanics worked on an aeroplane. The machine looked sleeker and more powerful than the modified Great War-vintage aeroplanes that had flown off the Remembrance during Carsten's last tour aboard her. I'd better bone up on what the differences are, he thought.

He didn't get to stand around watching for very long. A respectful petty officer soon came up to him and whisked him over to the office of a gray-haired commander named van der Waal. "What do you know about minimizing damage from torpedo hits?" the other officer demanded.

"Sir, I was aboard the Dakota when the Japs put a fish into her off the Sandwich Islands, but I didn't have anything to do with damage control there," Sam answered.

"All right, that's a little something, anyhow," van der Waal said. "You've experienced the problem firsthand, which is good. That's more than a lot of people can say. Does it interest you?"

"No, sir. Not a whole lot," Carsten said honestly. "I served a gun before I was an officer, and I'm interested in aeronautics, too. That's how I came aboard the Remembrance during my first tour here."

"Naval aeronautics is important. I'd have a hard time telling you anything different, wouldn't I, here on an aeroplane carrier?" Commander van der Waal's craggy face creased in unaccustomed places when he smiled. But he quickly turned serious again. "But so is damage control. The Japs aren't the only ones who've got submersibles, you know." He looked south and west, in the direction of the CSA.

"The Confederates aren't supposed to have 'em!" Sam blurted.

"I know that. And I know we send inspectors up and down their coast to make sure they don't," van der Waal told him. "But I'd bet they've got a few anyhow-and we haven't been inspecting as hard as we might have the past few years. The budget keeps going down, and President Sinclair wants to get along with everybody. And the British still have some boats, and the French might, and we know perfectly well that the Japanese do. And so does the German High Seas Fleet. And so, Ensign…"

"I see your point, sir," Sam said, knowing he couldn't very well say anything else. "If that's what you want me to do, I'll do it." He couldn't very well say anything but that, either. Then he dredged up a childhood expression: "But if I had my druthers, it's not what I'd do."

Van der Waal chuckled. "Haven't heard that one in a while. You gave up your druthers, you know, when you put on the uniform."

"Really, sir? I never would have noticed." Some men would have wound up in trouble after talking back to a superior officer that way. Carsten did have a knack for not getting people angry at him.

Commander van der Waal said, "Well, we'll see what happens. You'll start out in my shop, because I do need a man to back me up. If another opportunity comes along and you want to take it, I don't suppose I'd stand in your way. Fair enough?"

"More than fair enough, sir. It's damn white of you, matter of fact." Sam saluted. Most officers would have grabbed him and held on to him, and that would have been that. "Thank you very much!"

"I don't want a badly disaffected man serving under me. It's not good for me, it wouldn't be good for the officer in question, and it's not good for the ship." Van der Waal nodded briskly. "For now, you're dismissed."

Sam saluted again and went out on deck. He spied a knot of sailors at the starboard bow. They were all pointing in the direction van der Waal had-toward the Confederate States. Carsten looked that way himself. He had no trouble spotting the Confederate coast-defense ship steaming along between the Remembrance and the shore.

Like one of the U.S. Navy's so-called Great Lakes battleships, the Confederate warship was only about half the size of a real battlewagon. She'd carry a battleship's guns, but only half as many of them as, say, the Dakota. She wouldn't have the armor or the speed to take on a first-class battleship, either. And she and her three sisters were the biggest warships the C.S. Navy was allowed to have.

What does her skipper think, looking at the Remembrance? Carsten wondered. He could sink her if they fought gun to gun; the aeroplane carrier had nothing bigger than five-inchers aboard. But they wouldn't fight gun to gun, not unless something went horribly wrong. And how would that Confederate captain like to try shooting down aeroplanes that could drop bombs on his head or put torpedoes in the water running straight at his ship?

He wouldn't like it for hell, Sam thought. His grin stretched wide as the Atlantic. He liked the idea just fine himself.

N ellie Jacobs was keeping one eye on the coffeehouse and the other on Clara's arithmetic homework when Clara's half sister, Edna Grimes, burst into the place. That Clara was going on eight years old, and so old enough to have homework, surprised Nellie. That Edna should come bursting in astonished her.

Then Nellie got a look at her older daughter's face, and astonishment turned to alarm. "Good heavens, Edna! What's wrong?" she asked. "Are you all right? Are Merle and Armstrong?"

"Armstrong is a brat," Clara declared. Anything might have distracted her from the problems in her workbook. The mention of her nephew-who was only a couple of years younger than she was-more than sufficed.

Only a couple of customers were working on coffee and, in one case, a sandwich. Business would pick up after government offices closed in another forty-five minutes. Nellie hoped it would, anyhow. It had been a slow day-whenever snow fell in Washington, it tied the city in knots.

Nellie expected Edna to go into one of the back rooms before saying whatever was on her mind. That way, the men wouldn't be able to eavesdrop. But her daughter said, "Oh, Ma, I don't know what to do! Merle's found out about Nick Kincaid!"

"Oh," Nellie said, and then, "Oh, Lordy."

"Who's Nick Kincaid, Edna?" Clara asked.

"He was a… a fellow I used to know, a soldier," Edna answered. "I was going to marry him, maybe, but he got killed in the war."

That told Clara enough to satisfy her. It didn't say everything there was to say on the subject, not by a long chalk. Edna had certainly been about to marry Lieutenant Nicholas H. Kincaid; she'd been walking down the aisle with him when U.S. artillery fire tore off his head. The other thing she'd neglected to tell her half sister was that Kincaid had been a soldier, all right, but one who fought for the Confederate States.

"Well, dear," Nellie said, as coolly as she could, "you knew this was liable to happen one of these days." She was, if anything, amazed it hadn't happened sooner.

Edna said, "When it didn't happen for so long, I reckoned it never would. And you know how Merle is, how he always put me on a pedestal."

Most men, Nellie was convinced, put women on pedestals so they could look up their skirts. But she found herself nodding. Merle Grimes was different-or had been different. He'd lost his first wife during the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Since meeting Edna and falling in love with her, he'd made as good a husband as any woman could want-better than Edna deserved, Nellie often thought.

Edna never would have gone up on that pedestal if Merle (who had a Purple Heart-a U.S. Purple Heart) had known everything-or even most things-about Nick Kincaid. What he would have thought had he known Kincaid had got Edna into bed… Nellie shied away from that. Sometimes the quiet ones were the worst when they did lose their tempers. Even finding out Edna's former fiance had worn butternut and not green-gray was liable to be enough.

"What am I gonna do, Ma?" Edna wailed.

"How'd he find out?" Nellie asked.

"This fellow from the CSA came into his office for some kind of business or other." Now Edna had the sense to keep her voice down; one of the men drinking coffee had leaned forward to snoop a little too obviously. She went on, "They both wore Purple Heart ribbons, dammit-you know how the Confederates give 'em, too. And they got to talking soldier talk: where'd you fight, how'd you get hurt, that kind of thing."

"And?" Nellie asked.

"And one thing led to another, and they got to liking each other," Edna said. "And Merle said how he'd married a Washington gal, and that was the closest thing you could get to marrying a gal from the Confederate States. And the other fellow said that was funny, on account of his cousin had almost married this Washington gal who worked in a coffeehouse when he was here on occupation duty during the war."

"Uh-oh," Nellie said.

Edna nodded bitterly. " Uh-oh is right. Merle said his wife-me, I mean-was working in a coffeehouse when he met her, too. And they went and talked a little more, and they figured out they were both talking about the same gal. And I got this phone call from Merle, and I didn't like the way he sounded, not for beans I didn't, and so I left Armstrong with Mrs. Parker next door-he was playing with her boy Eddie anyways-and I came over here."

"All right, dear," Nellie said. "I may not be much, but I'm what you've always got, and that's for sure." Edna nodded, biting her lip and blinking back tears. There had been times when Nellie hoped she would never see her daughter again, not a few of them when Edna was fooling around with the late Confederate Lieutenant Kincaid. But Edna was what Nellie had, too, and always would be. It wasn't that she didn't love Clara, but her younger daughter often felt more like an afterthought or an accident than flesh of Nellie's flesh. Of course, Edna had been an accident, too, but that was a long time ago now.

"What am I gonna do, Ma?" Edna asked again.

"Just remember, sweetie, your husband ain't the only one in the family who's got himself a medal," Nellie said. "He starts going on about you selling out your country, you hit him over the head with the Order of Remembrance. For heaven's sakes, Teddy Roosevelt put it on you his very own self."

"That's true." Edna brightened a little. "That is true." But then she turned pale. She pointed out through the big glass window in front. "Oh, Jesus, Ma, there he is."

"Nothing bad's going to happen," Nellie said, though she knew she couldn't be sure of any such thing. Edna's husband was a quiet fellow, yes, but…

The bell above the door chimed cheerily as Merle Grimes walked into the coffeehouse. The rubber tip on his cane tapped against the linoleum floor. Behind the lenses of his spectacles, his eyes had a blind, stricken look, as if he'd had too much to drink, but Nellie didn't think he was drunk.

He nodded jerkily to her before swinging his gaze towards Edna. "When you weren't home, I figured I'd find you here," he said. She nodded, too. Grimes gestured with his cane. By the way he aimed it at Edna, Nellie thanked God it wasn't a Springfield. What came out of his mouth, though, was only one more word: "Why?"

Before Edna could say anything, Nellie told Clara, "Go upstairs. Go right now. This is grownup stuff." Clara didn't argue. Nellie's tone got through. Her younger daughter took her homework and all but fled.

"On account of if I told you I was… friendly with a Confederate soldier back in them days I thought I'd lose you, and I didn't want to lose you," Edna answered. "I didn't want to lose you on account of I love you. I always have. I always will."

It was, Nellie thought, about the best answer her daughter could have given. But when her son-in-law said, "You lied to me," Nellie knew it was liable not to be good enough. "You lied to me," Merle Grimes repeated. It might have been the very worst thing he could think of to say. "I thought I knew you, and everything I thought I knew… I didn't know."

One of the customers got up and left. A moment later, more reluctantly, so did the other one. Nellie went to the door behind him. She closed it in the face of a woman who started to come in. "Sorry-we're closed," she told the startled woman. She flipped the sign in the window to CLOSED, too. That was going to cost her money, but it couldn't be helped.

When she walked back behind the counter, Edna was saying, "-so sorry. But that was before I knew you, Merle, remember. I've never done nothing to make you sorry since, so help me God I haven't."

"I'd have believed you yesterday, because I'd've been sure you were telling me the truth," her husband said. "Now… How do I know it's not just another lie?"

"Edna wouldn't do nothing like that, Merle," Nellie said. "You think about that, you'll know it's true." She liked Merle Grimes enough to want to do everything she could to keep him in the family. Even if she had her problems with Edna, her son-in-law was the kind of man who tempted her to forget her low opinion of half the human race.

She didn't mollify him, though. The look he gave her was colder than the weather outside. "You must have known about this Kincaid fellow, Mother Jacobs-you couldn't very well not have. And you never said a word about him to me. So why should I believe you, either?"

"We said Edna had a fiance during the war, and that he got killed," Nellie said. "Is that the truth or isn't it?"

"It's less than half the truth," Merle Grimes said stubbornly. "That's the best way I know how to lie-tell the part of the truth that goes your way, and leave out everything else."

He was right, of course. That was the best way Nellie knew how to lie, too. She said, "The man's dead, Merle. He's more than ten years dead now. You can just forget about him. Everybody else has."

Grimes shook his head. "That's not the point. What's more, you know it's not the point, Mother Jacobs. The point is that he was a.. darned Confederate, and that Edna never told me about that. I've tried to take care of her and Armstrong. I've saved money. I've bought stocks. If she had told me, I don't know what I'd've done. Washington was occupied, after all. Those things happened. But trying to sweep 'em under the rug afterwards…" He shook his head again. "No."

Nellie didn't like the grim finality in his voice. Tears trickled down Edna's face. Sweet Jesus, she really thinks she's going to lose him right here and now, Nellie thought, fighting against panic of her own. She may be right, too.

Before she or Edna could say anything, the bell over the door chimed again. In came Hal Jacobs. "I saw you put out the CLOSED sign from across the street," Nellie's husband said. "Why so early?"

"We're having a-a family discussion, that's why," Nellie answered.

"I've found out about Nicholas Kincaid, Father Jacobs," Merle Grimes said, sounding even harder than he had before. "I've found out all about him."

"Have you?" Hal whuffled out air through his gray mustache-almost entirely white now, in fact. "I doubt that. Yes, sir, I doubt it very much."

"What do you mean?" Grimes demanded. "I know he was a Confederate officer. I know he was going to marry Edna till he got killed. And I know she never told me what he was. What else do I need to know?"

As far as Nellie could see, that was plenty. But Hal Jacobs said, "The other thing you need to know is what Teddy Roosevelt knew, God rest his soul-Edna and Nellie were both spies during the war, working with me and Bill Reach, God rest his soul, too, for I'm sure he's dead." Nellie was even surer, but her secrets, unlike Edna's, were unlikely to come out. Her husband went on, "Whatever Edna told you-and whatever she didn't, too-she asked me about first, because of what we were doing. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Behind his spectacles, Grimes' eyes widened. "I… think I may, sir," he answered. Unconsciously, he straightened towards, if not quite to, attention. But then his gaze swung back to Edna. "Don't you think almost marrying a Confederate went too far?"

Oh, she went further than that, Nellie thought. Wild horses wouldn't have dragged the words from her, though. And Edna did a splendid job of picking up the cue Hal had given her. "I didn't almost marry him on account of I was a spy," she replied. "But Washington was occupied, like you said yourself. And Hal asked me not to talk about anything that went on that had to do with the coffeehouse and spying even a little bit, just to be on the safe side. So I didn't."

Hal had never asked her to do any such thing. He knew that, and so did Nellie, and so did Edna herself. But Merle Grimes didn't know it, and he was the one who counted here. "All right," he said after a long, long pause. "We'll let it go, then. God knows I do love you, Edna, and I want to be able to love you and trust you the rest of my days."

Edna did the smartest thing she could have: instead of saying even a word, she threw herself into Merle's arms. As the two of them embraced, Nellie caught Hal's eye. Thank you, she mouthed silently. Her husband gave a tiny nod and an even tinier shrug, as if to say it wasn't worth getting excited about. They'd been married for almost ten years. Till that moment, Nellie had never been sure she loved him. She was now.

H ad Lucien Galtier not cut himself, he might not have found out for some little while that his life was about to change. It wasn't a bad wound, like the time when he'd laid his leg open with an axe. But he was sharpening a stake that would support some green beans when spring came, and the knife slipped, and he gashed himself between thumb and forefinger.

" 'Osti," he hissed. "Calisse de tabernac." He put down the knife and the stake, pinched the lips of the wound shut, and went to the house to get a clean bandage. He hoped that would do the job, and that he wouldn't need stitches. If he did, though, he was reasonably sure he could get them for nothing. There were advantages to having a doctor for a son-in-law, even if Leonard O'Doull would tease him for being a clumsy old fool even as he sewed him up. Lucien hurried up the stairs, quietly wiped his boots on the thick, soft mat in front of the kitchen door, and went inside.

Marie was sitting at the kitchen table, one hand on her belly, tears running down her face.

"Marie?" Galtier whispered, his own cut forgotten. His right hand dropped to his side. Blood started dripping on the floor. "Qu'est-ce que tu as?"

"It's nothing," she said, springing to her feet with as much dismay and guilt as if he'd caught her in the arms of another man. "Nothing, I tell you. What have you done to yourself? You're bleeding!"

He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his left hand. "This is truly nothing," he said. "A slip of the knife, that's all. But you.. "

Marie might pause during her day's work for a cup of tea. Never, in all the years he'd known her, had she paused because she was in pain. That was literally true; she'd gone on working till ridiculously short stretches of time before she bore her children, and she'd got back to work after each birth much sooner than the midwife said she should. For her to hold herself like that and weep was… The end of the world was the first thing that occurred to him.

An instant later, he wished he'd thought of a different comparison.

"I think it could be that we both should see our beau-fils," he said.

Marie shook her head. "It's nothing," she insisted. "I'm just.. tired, that's all."

Hearing her say that frightened him as badly as seeing her sit there crying. He knew she must have been tired at times through their close to thirty-five years of marriage. She was a farm wife, and she'd raised six children. But she'd never admitted it, not in all the time he'd known her, not till now.

"Here." He went to the closet and got her a coat. "Put this on, my dear. We are going into town, to talk with Leonard O'Doull."

"I don't need to see the doctor," Marie insisted. "And how can you drive the motorcar with your poor hand hurt?"

To keep her from going on about the hand, he let her bandage it, which she did with her usual quick competence. As long as she was taking care of him, she seemed fine. But, once she'd done the job, she argued less than he'd expected when he draped the coat over her shoulders. "Come on," he said. "Our son-in-law will tell you why you are tired, and he will give you some pills to make you feel like a new woman."

"It could be that you are the one who feels like a new woman," his wife retorted. But, that gibe aside, she kept quiet. She let him lead her out to the Chevrolet and head for town. Her acquiescence worried him, too.

Leonard O'Doull's office was on Rue Frontenac, not far from the Eglise Saint-Patrice on Rue Lafontaine-the church over which Bishop Pascal no longer presided. Dr. O'Doull's office assistant exclaimed when she saw the bloody bandage on Lucien's hand. "He's vaccinating a little boy right now, Monsieur Galtier," she said. "As soon as he's done, he'll see you."

But Lucien shook his head again. "It's not me he needs to see. It's Marie."

That made the office assistant start to exclaim again. Just in time, she thought better of it. "Sit down, then," she said. "He'll see you both soon."

A howl from the part of the office out of sight of the waiting room told Galtier exactly when the vaccination was completed. A couple of minutes later, a city woman in a fashionably-even shockingly-short dress came out with her wailing toddler in tow. Normally, Lucien would have eyed her legs while she paid the assistant. That Marie was sitting beside him wouldn't have stopped him. That Marie was sitting beside him not feeling well did.

Their son-in-law stuck his head out into the waiting room as soon as the city woman and her son left. Like his assistant, he saw Lucien's bandage and wagged a finger. "What have you gone and done to yourself now?" he asked with mock severity. "Don't you think I get tired of patching you?"

Again, Galtier said, "I didn't come to see you on account of this scratch. Marie is not well."

"No?" Dr. O'Doull became very serious very fast. He almost bowed to his mother-in-law. "Come in, please, and tell me about it." As Marie rose, O'Doull nodded, ever so slightly, to Lucien. "Why don't you wait here?"

"All right," Galtier said. He knew what that meant. His son-in-law would have to look at, perhaps even have to touch, parts of Marie only Lucien would normally look at and touch. He could do that much more freely if Lucien weren't in the room with the two of them. Galtier understood the necessity without liking it.

He buried his nose in a magazine from Montreal. All the articles seemed to talk about ways in which the Republic of Quebec could become more like the United States. Galtier was far from sure he wanted Quebec to become more like the USA. The people writing the magazine articles had no doubt that was what Quebec should do.

Every so often, he noticed he was reading the same sentence over and over. It wasn't because the sentences sounded so much alike, though they did. But he couldn't stop worrying about what was going on on the far side of that door.

After the longest half hour in Galtier's life, Marie came out again. Dr. O'Doull came out with her, saying, "Please sit here for a moment, if you would." She nodded and sat down beside Lucien. O'Doull continued, "Mon beau-pere, I would speak with you for a few minutes. Come in, please."

"Very well." Galtier didn't want to get up. He wanted to stay there beside Marie. But he saw he had no choice. "Is everything as it should be?" he asked his son-in-law.

"Well, that is what I want to talk to you about," O'Doull answered.

Numbly, Galtier walked to the door. Dr. O'Doull stood aside to let him go through. Galtier had thought he was afraid before. Now his heart threatened to burst from his chest at every beat. O'Doull waved him into his own personal office. Lucien sat in the chair in front of the desk.

His son-in-law opened a desk drawer. To Galtier's surprise, he pulled out a pint bottle of whiskey. "Medicinal," O'Doull remarked as he yanked out the cork and took a swig. He held out the bottle to Galtier. "Here. Have some."

"Merci." Lucien drank, too. It wasn't very good whiskey, but it was plenty strong. He coughed once or twice as he set the bottle on the desk. O'Doull corked it. With a smile that might have come straight from the gallows, Galtier asked, "And now, mon beau-fils, have you a bullet for me to bite on?" He'd forgotten all about his cut hand.

And so had Leonard O'Doull, which was an even worse sign. "If I did, I'd give it to you," he said. "Your wife has a… a mass right here, in her belly." He put his hand on his own belly, on the spot that corresponded to the one Marie had been holding when Galtier had walked into their kitchen, a little more than an hour before.

"A mass," Galtier echoed. Dr. O'Doull nodded. He had surely used the mildest word he could find to give Lucien the news. Though Galtier hadn't had much schooling, he needed only a moment to figure out what the younger man was talking about. "A tumor, do you mean?"

"I'm afraid I do," his son-in-law answered, as gently as he could. "She should have an X ray. It is possible she should have a surgical operation."

"Possible? Only possible?" Lucien said. "What does this mean?"

"It depends on what the X ray shows," O'Doull answered. "She told me she first began feeling this pain a year and a half or two years ago, though it was less then. That means it could be-God forbid, but it could be-that there has been some… some spread of the mass. If the X ray shows there has… In that case, there would be less point to an operation."

In that case, an operation would do no good, because she would die anyway. Again, Lucien didn't need his son-in-law to explain that to him. He forced his mind away from it. "She had this pain for two years?"

"So she told me," Dr. O'Doull replied.

"And she said nothing? She did nothing? In the name of God, why?"

O'Doull sighed, uncorked the whiskey bottle once more, and took another drink. "I've seen this before among you Quebecois. Why? Maybe because you hope the pain will go away by itself and you won't need to go to the doctor. Maybe because you simply refuse to let pain get the better of you. And maybe because you're just too busy to get out of the house and into town to do what needs to be done."

Slowly, Galtier nodded. Any or all of those reasons could have fit Marie. He didn't think he had the nerve to ask her. Even if he did, he doubted he would get a straight answer. "Is it that you can take this X-ray picture?" he asked.

"No. I have no X-ray machine here," O'Doull answered. "She will have to go to Quebec City, to the capital. If she has the operation, she will have to have it there, too."

"All right. We will do that, then." Lucien didn't hesitate, even for a moment. He wondered how much the required treatment would cost. He wished he hadn't bought the Chevrolet. If he had to, though, he could sell it. Marie mattered more than money, and that was all there was to it. He did ask, "This operation, it will cure her?"

His son-in-law's shrug was more weary and worried than Gallic. "Without knowing what the X ray will show, without knowing what the surgeon will find, how can I answer that? Be fair to me, please."

"I'm sorry." Lucien bent his head and rubbed his eyes. "Let me ask you a different question, then. You have been a doctor for a good many years now. From what you see, from what you know, what do you think the chances are?"

Leonard O'Doull's lips skinned back from his teeth in what wasn't a smile. "I wish you hadn't asked me that, because now I have to answer it. From what I have seen, from what I know… I wish things were better, mon beau-pere. That's all I can say. I wish things were better." He made a fist and brought it down on the desk.

"I will pray," Galtier said. Here lately he'd been thinking he'd got ahead of life. His laugh held only bitterness. No one ever got ahead of life, not for long, and life had just reminded him of it. Why wasn't it me? he wondered. Dear God, why didn't You take me instead? That question had no answer. It never would.