He brushed a hand across the front of his dark blue uniform tunic. 'I surely did, Mrs. Enos. Work's not near as hard, and that's a fact. In the Navy, all I've got to do is cook.' His accent was two parts Boston, one part something that put Sylvia in mind of the CSA. He looked at George, Jr., and Mary Jane. 'Good God, but they've grown! Fine- looking children, Mrs. Enos.'
'Thank you,' Sylvia said, her voice shaky. Seeing an old friend of her husband's-and Charlie had been a friend, even if he was colored-here at this place where George had worked left her close to tears.
White solemnly nodded, perhaps understanding some of what was going through her mind. He said, 'I was right sorry when I found out George didn't come home from the war, ma'am.'
'Thank you,' Sylvia said again, even more softly than before. But then fury filled her, and she asked, 'Did you find out George was aboard the Ericsson?'
She didn't have to explain that to the Negro cook. No doubt she wouldn't have had to explain it to any Navy man. 'No, ma'am,' he said. 'I didn't know that. I think it's a crying shame we ain't going after the dirty rotten coward who sank that ship a… lot harder than we are.'
'So do I,' Sylvia said grimly.
'The president is lily-livered,' Mary Jane declared. She was just echoing her mother, but Sylvia didn't want her views aired in public. No, on second thought, maybe she did.
'Weren't a lot of people in the Navy who voted for Sinclair,' Charlie White said. 'Must have been an awful lot of people on dry land who did, though.'
'Yes,' Sylvia said. Then she remembered her manners. 'How's your family, Charlie? Everyone well?'
'Sure are, and praise the Lord for that,' the colored man answered. 'Got me a new little boy since I saw you last, I think. Eddie's going to turn two in a couple weeks.'
'Good for you,' Sylvia said. She and George might have had more children by now, if only… She pulled back from that. 'What are you doing on T Wharf now?'
'Same thing you are, I bet,' White said: 'buying fish. I'm chief cook on the Fort Benton-big armored cruiser. Sailors eat like pigs, you know that?'
'They're men,' Sylvia said, and Charlie White laughed. Sylvia wasn't sure she'd said anything funny. Men had appetites; women satisfied them. That was the way the world had always worked. Nobody'd ever bothered asking women what they thought of it. Men had power, too.
'Well, well, what have we got here?' someone said. 'Looks like old home week, or I'm a Chinaman.'
Sylvia knew that voice. 'Hello, Fred,' she said, turning. 'It's been a while.' Fred Butcher had been first mate aboard the Ripple. When Sylvia got a good look at him, she had to fight to keep her face straight. He was up in his fifties now, and his hair and Kaiser Bill mustache had gone snowy white. He'd put on weight, too, which shocked her even more: he'd always been skinny and quick-moving, like a lizard. Only his eyes, clever and knowing, were as she remembered. Fixing on them let her say, 'Good to see you,' and sound as if she meant it.
'Anything I can do for you folks?' Butcher asked, shaking hands with Charlie White. He'd always known the angles; a first mate who didn't know them couldn't do his job. 'You need fish, talk to me. I'm not going to sea any more; I'm a factor with L.B. Godspeed and Company. If I can't get it for you better and cheaper than anybody else on T Wharf, I'll eat my straw boater.'
'That would be funny,' Mary Jane said, and Butcher took off the hat and made as if to do it. She laughed. So did George, Jr.
'Godspeed's a good outfit,' Charlie White said seriously. 'They've been in business since not long after the War of Secession, haven't they?'
'That's right-used to be called Marston and Company,' Butcher said. 'So what can I do for you, Charlie? Cod? Halibut?'
'Five hundred pounds of each, for delivery to the Fort Benton at the Navy Yard,' White said. They haggled hard over the price. White gave Butcher no special deference either because of his race or from old association; business was business.
Sylvia's children were fidgeting by the time Fred Butcher said, 'All right, Charlie; that's a deal. Jesus, the way you jewed me down, anybody'd reckon you were spending your own money, not Uncle Sam's.'
'Things are tight these days,' White answered. 'My own boss'll be all over me if I don't watch every dime.'
'Well, you've done that, by God,' Butcher said. 'I'm liable to catch the dickens for giving you such a good deal.' Charlie White grinned proudly. Sylvia didn't believe Butcher for a minute; he'd never hurt himself or his firm. Nodding to her, Butcher asked, 'How about you, Mrs. E? You want a thousand pounds of fish, too? I'll give you the same deal I gave Charlie.' He winked at her.
'Give me the same price per pound for five pounds of good cod as you gave Charlie for five hundred, then,' Sylvia said at once.
Instead of winking, Fred Butcher looked pained. 'Come on, Mrs. E, have a heart. He gets a discount for quantity.' Then he seemed to listen to what he'd said a moment before. 'All right, already. We won't go broke over five pounds of cod. Come on down to Number Sixteen and I'll take care of you. You want to come, too, Charlie, see what you're getting?'
'You bet I do,' the Negro said. 'And if what you deliver ain't what I see now, Godspeed'll have some talking to do with the U.S. Navy. Like I say, it's a good company, but things like that can happen. I want to make sure ahead of time they don't.'
'I'll make sure of it,' Butcher promised. Charlie nodded, as if to say he'd check anyway. His ex-shipmate, unfazed, led him and Sylvia and her children along the wharf to Number 16. Sylvia got first choice, and picked a couple of fine young cod. When she started to open her handbag, Butcher waved for her not to bother. 'Now that I think about it, these are on the house.'
Sylvia couldn't have been more astonished if he'd burst into song. 'You don't have to do that, Fred,' she said. 'You were doing me a favor when you gave me a good deal. This is too much.'
'No, no, no.' The quick, decisive way Butcher shook his head reminded Sylvia of the dapper man he'd been only a few years before. 'I just recalled-George was on the Ericsson, wasn't he?' He waited for Sylvia to nod, then went on, 'Take 'em, then, and don't say another word about it. Times can't be easy for you.'
'They aren't,' Sylvia admitted. 'God bless you, Fred.' She dipped her head to Charlie White. 'Remember me to your wife, please.' As he promised to do that, she steered her children out of the Godspeed amp; Co. shop.
'That was nice of that man, Ma,' George, Jr., said.
'He used to sail with your father,' Sylvia answered. 'Now we'll have some good suppers with this fish.' And her budget, which was always tight, would have a little more stretch to it during the coming week. That was as well, because… 'There's one more thing I want to get while we're out. Come on, you two. We're going to Abie's.'
'Hurray!'' Sylvia couldn't tell whether George, Jr., or Mary Jane cheered louder. They both loved going to the pawnshop. Anything in the world-anything from anywhere in the world- was liable to be there. Sylvia remembered seeing a set of false teeth smiling at her from the front window one day. Next to that, who could get excited about something as mundane as a stuffed owl?
Abie Finkelstein, the proprietor of the pawnshop, looked rather like a frog. 'Hello, Mrs. Enos,' he said in a thick, not quite German accent. 'Vot can I do for you today? If your little children a piece candy from the bowl there on the counter take, I do not think I even notice.' At Sylvia's nod, George, Jr., and Mary Jane helped themselves. Finkelstein looked a question at Sylvia.
'I don't want any candy, thanks.' But that wasn't all of what he'd asked, not even close. She pointed to the items hanging on brackets on the wall behind him. 'Let me have that one, please.'
'All right.' He got it down. 'Everybody needs these days to be safe.'
'Yes,' Sylvia said. 'Everybody does.'
XVII
Cincinnatus Driver pulled into the Des Moines railroad yard well before six in the morning, well before sunup. Most of the year, he'd found, business there was better and steadier than along the riverfront. He missed going over
