Negroes in Des Moines-Negroes in the USA generally- were fond of saying that. They weren't even wrong; Cincinnatus had seen as much. Nevertheless… 'You don't know what you're talkin' about,' Cincinnatus said. 'Get down on your knees and praise the Lord on account of you don't, too. I seen both sides now. This here may not be heaven, but it ain't hell, neither.'
'Yeah, you say that every chance you get.' Sims breathed pepper and garlic into Cincinnatus' face. 'I can't argue with you. I never set foot inside the Confederate States. I do admit, I never heard of any colored fellow leaving the USA to go there.'
'It would happen,' Cincinnatus said. 'About every other year, it would happen. The papers in the CSA would always bang the drum about it, too, to make the niggers there-and the white folks, heaven knows-happy about how things was.'
'Happy.' Joe Sims chewed on the word as he'd chewed on his salami. 'How could you be happy, when you knew you were lying to each other down there?'
That was a better question than most of the ones about the Confederate States Cincinnatus heard up here. He had to think before he answered, 'Well, the white folks were happy 'cause they were on top. And us niggers? We were happy some of the time. I don't reckon you can get through life without bein' happy some of the time.' Cincinnatus crammed the rest of his own sandwich into his mouth. Indistinctly, he said, 'Let's see what they got for us to do. With a new young-un in the house any day now, I got to keep busy.'
'Got to stay out of there to get some rest once the baby comes,' Sims said with a reminiscent chuckle. 'I know all about that, damned if I don't. What are you and your missus going to call the kid?'
'Seneca if it's a boy-that's my pa's name,' Cincinnatus said. 'And Elizabeth's ma was called Amanda, so we'll name the baby thatifit'sagirl.'
'Those are good names.' Sims shut his dinner pail and got to his feet. 'Like you say, we have to keep busy. We don't, everybody goes hungry.'
Cincinnatus found enough work to put money in his pocket all through the afternoon. He went back to his apartment well pleased with himself. Elizabeth greeted him at the door with a kiss. 'Did you vote?' she demanded. 'Did you really and truly vote?' She wouldn't get her chance till the 1924 election, for Iowa women had only presidential suffrage.
'I really and truly voted,' Cincinnatus said, and his wife's eyes shone. Joe Sims might not understand what the franchise meant to him, but Elizabeth did. She waddled back toward the kitchen, her legs so wide apart, the baby she carried might almost have fallen out between them.
Achilles was doing homework at the kitchen table. He had a sheet of paper turned upside down in front of him: his spelling words, which he was supposed to be committing to memory. 'Orange,' he said. 'O-R-A-N-G-E. Orange.'
'That's good, son.' Cincinnatus made as if to clap his hands together. 'The better you spell, the smarter folks'll reckon you are. I don't spell near as good as I wish I did, but I know you got that one right.'
'It ain't… It's not'-Achilles carefully corrected himself- 'that hard once you get the hang of it.'
'You won't get any wrong on your test, then, will you?' Cincinnatus said.
'Hardly ever do,' his son replied. Had that not been the truth, Cincinnatus would have clouted him for his uppity mouth. But Achilles was doing very well in school, which made Cincinnatus proud. The boy's eyes went far away. 'Month. M-O-N-T-H. Month.'
'Supper,' Elizabeth announced. 'I ain't gwine try an' spell it, but I done cooked it an' it's ready.'
'Smells good,' Cincinnatus said. It tasted good, too: roast beef with buttery mashed potatoes and greens on the side. 'Turnip greens, ain't they?' Cincinnatus asked, lifting another forkful to his mouth.
'That's right,' Elizabeth said. 'Can't hardly get no other kind round these parts. Even black folks don't hardly seem to know about collard greens, an' they're better'n turnip greens any day of the week.' She paused, looked down at her swollen belly, and laughed. 'Babyjustkickme.'
'Pretty soon, the baby will be kicking Achilles,' Cincinnatus said. He and Elizabeth both laughed then, at their son's expression. Having a new brother or sister still didn't seem real to Achilles. It would before long.
Elizabeth returned to the earlier subject: 'Wish I had me a mess o' collard greens. You'd reckon everybody in the whole world'd know about collard greens, but it ain't so.'
'Turnip greens are fine,' Cincinnatus said. Elizabeth shook her head, stubbornly unconvinced. He reached out and patted her hand. 'Life ain't perfect, sweetheart, but it's pretty good right now.'
Where simple praise hadn't, that reached her. Slowly, she nodded. The baby must have chosen that moment to kick again, because she smiled and put both hands on her belly. 'Reckon you may be right.'
'Reckon I am,' Cincinnatus said. 'Buy me a newspaper tomorrow, find out who won the elections. Anybody win by one vote or lose by one vote, / made the difference. Never would have gotten to vote down in Kentucky. Didn't make no never mind whether the Stars and Bars or the Stars and Stripes was flyin' over the Covington city hall, neither-white folks was on top, and aimin' to stay there. Ain't like that here. Ain't quite like that here, anyway.'
'This here's a better place,' Elizabeth said quietly. Cincinnatus nodded. It wasn't a perfect place, but he didn't imagine there was any such thing. And, since he'd come from a worse place, a better one would do just fine.
When Anne Colleton opened the door to her hotel room for him, Roger Kimball took her in his arms. She let him, but only for a moment, and then pushed him away. She was strong, and she'd caught him by surprise to boot. He had to take a quick step back, and knocked the door closed before catching himself. 'What's going on?' he asked in no small annoyance.
'I didn't invite you up here for that,' Anne answered, her own voice sharp. He'd seen that grimly determined look in her eye before, but rarely with it aimed at him.
'Well, why did you ask me up, then?' he said: a serious question, seriously meant. Whatever else hadn't always been smooth with them, their lovemaking was something special. It always had been, ever since he'd seduced her the first night they'd met, on a train rolling down to New Orleans when the war was young.
'Why?' she echoed. 'To say good-bye, that's why. I owe you that much, I think.'
'Good-bye?' He stared at her, hardly believing he'd heard the word. 'Jesus! What did I do to deserve that?'
Now her eyes softened to sadness. 'You still belong to the Freedom Party. You still believe in the Freedom Party,' she said, her voice sad, too, sad but firm, like that of a judge passing sentence on a likable rogue.
'Of course I do,' Kimball answered. 'When I join something, I don't quit when the going gets rough. The damnyankees found out about that.' He'd never thought he would be grateful to Tom Brearley for breaking the news of the Ericsson^ but he was. Now he could talk about it. 'And I still say Jake Featherston's the only man who can get this country going again.'
'We are going again.' Anne walked over to the bed and picked up her handbag. Kimball was glad to watch her; her gray skirt, one of the new short ones, displayed most of the lower half of her calf-and her legs were worth displaying.
As she reached inside the handbag, he asked, 'What are you doing?'
'I'll show you.' She pulled out a banknote and held it up. 'Do you see that?' After Kimball nodded, she drove the point home: 'Take a good look at it. It's a one-dollar banknote. You haven't seen anything just like it since just after the war ended, not till this past fall you haven't. And it's still worth a real dollar, too '
'That's not all we need, dammit, not even close,' Kimball said furiously. 'We're naked to whatever the United States want to do to us.' He wished Anne were naked to whatever he wanted to do to her, but a different urgency filled him fuller. 'We've got no submarines, we've got no battleships, we've got no barrels- Christ, they don't even want us to have machine guns in case the niggers rise up again. You see the Whigs fixing any of that? I sure as hell don't.'
Anne put the banknote back in her bag. 'We will have all those things again,' she said. 'It may take longer than I'd hoped, but we'll have them. As long as the money stays good, we'll have them. And'-she took a deep breath-'we'll have them without murdering any more presidents to get them.'
'You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs,' Kimball said. 'I've broken plenty of eggs myself-and you've set up plenty to be broken.' That got home. Anne bit her lip and looked down at the floor. Kimball laughed. 'You know what you remind me of? Somebody who likes bacon but won't butcher a hog.'
'You are a bastard,' Anne said. 'I've known it for a long time, but-'
Roger Kimball loosed another loud, jeering laugh. 'Takes one to know one, I reckon. That's likely the only
