A white man in an outfit almost identical to his own came over to the truck, clipboard in hand. 'How you doin', Cincinnatus?' he said.
'Not too bad, Lou.' Even after most of a decade in Des Moines, calling a white man by his first name still wasn't something Cincinnatus did casually. His upbringing in Confederate Kentucky ran deep. 'How's yourself?'
'Damn cold weather makes my wound ache.' Lou set a hand on his haunch. 'If I'd known getting shot in the ass would stick with me so long, I wouldn't've left it up there for them Confederate sons of bitches to aim at. I'd've stuck my head up instead-ain't like I got the brains to worry about gettin' 'em blown out.' He pointed to the truck. 'So what the hell you got for us this time?'
'Office furniture,' Cincinnatus told him.
' 'Bout time that shit started gettin' here,' Lou declared. 'All them fancy-pants bastards in there who waste our money been bellyachin' like you wouldn't believe about how their goddamn desk drawers squeak and they can't screw their secretaries on the old swivel chairs.' Lou respected nothing and nobody, least of all the elected and appointed officials of the great state of Iowa.
Cincinnatus, on the whole a straitlaced man, hadn't thought about screwing in a chair, swivel or otherwise. Now that he did, he liked the idea-provided he and Elizabeth could both be home at the same time while their children weren't, which might not prove easy to arrange. He got out of the truck with a clipboard of his own. 'I got papers for you to sign off on.'
Lou laughed and flourished his clipboard, which made the papers on it flutter. 'Listen, pal, this here is state business. I got more papers'n you do, and you can take that to the bank. Ain't nobody in the goddamn world got more papers'n you need to do state business, unless maybe it's them cocksuckers in Philly.'
Again, Cincinnatus knew nothing about the habits, sexual or bureaucratic, of Philadelphians. From other trips to the State Capitol, he did know how many papers he'd have to sign before his delivery was official. 'Let's get on with it,' he said resignedly, and signed and signed and signed. Lou went through the relative handful of papers on Cincinnatus' clipboard in nothing flat.
Once Cincinnatus had got to the bottom of Lou's pile of paperwork, he asked, 'What do they do with all these here forms?'
'Let the mice chew 'em up-what the hell you think?' Lou answered. He raised his voice to a full-throated bellow: 'Ivan! Paddy! Luigi! Get your asses over here, and get this crap outa my buddy's truck! You think he's got all day?' The workmen descended on the truck. Lou pulled a flask from his hip pocket-the opposite side from his war wound. 'Want a snort?'
Iowa was a dry state that took being dry very, very seriously. That didn't stop liquor from getting made there or smuggled in. Cincinnatus' experience was that it did keep good liquor from entering the state. The nip he took from Lou's flask did nothing to change his mind. 'Do Jesus!' he said when he recovered the power of speech. 'Tastes like paint thinner an' possum piss.'
'I'm gonna tell that to my brother-in-law,' Lou said, laughing. 'He cooked up the shit.'
'He don't like you in particular, or he don't like nobody?' Cincinnatus asked, still trying to get his breath back. Lou laughed again, and aimed a lazy mock punch at him. As lazily, he ducked. He tried to imagine himself sassing a white man like that back in Kentucky-tried and felt himself failing.
Lou asked, 'You got the whole kit and caboodle here, or is there more of this shit back on the train?'
'There's more, plenty more. Some o' them fellers should be bringin' it any time. Soon as you get me unloaded, I'm goin' back, see if I can get me another load.'
'I'll give you another slug of this stuff when you get back.' Lou patted the pocket with the flask.
'Damn good reason to stay away,' Cincinnatus said. Lou laughed yet again, for all the world as if he'd been joking.
J onathan Moss wasn't used to getting shaken awake at two in the morning. 'Wuzzat?' he said muzzily. He wasn't used to waking up under any circumstances without a steaming cup of coffee or three at his elbow to make the transition easier.
Laura's voice, however, turned out to do the job well enough: 'Jonathan, you'd better take me to the hospital now, because the pains are only four minutes apart, and they're getting stronger.'
'Jesus!' Moss sat bolt upright. 'Why didn't you tell me a while ago?'
His wife shrugged. 'I've watched plenty of cows and sows and ewes give birth. I know what happens, as well as you can till it happens to you. I wasn't going anywhere much. Now I am-and so we'd better get moving.'
'Right,' he said. They'd packed a bag for her a couple of days earlier. He had clothes draped over the chair, ready to throw on. As he got out of bed, he gave her a kiss. 'Congratulations, sweetheart. You're saving us some money.'
'I'm not doing it on purpose, believe me,' Laura said.
'I know.' The lawyerly part of Moss' mind operated automatically. 'But if Junior'd waited another week and a half, it would've been 1933, and then we couldn't write him off this year's taxes.'
Having doffed her long wool nightgown, Laura was putting on a long wool maternity dress. A tent would have had no more material and been no less stylish. She draped a coat over the dress; it was snowing outside. 'Somehow or other, taxes aren't my biggest worry right this minute,' she said, her voice as chilly as the weather.
Moss lit a cigarette and patted her on the bottom. 'Really, babe? Why is that, do you think?' She did her best to make her glare withering. He did his best not to wither.
Going downstairs was another adventure. He carried the case in one hand and held his wife's hand with the other. She had to pause on the stairs while a labor pain passed. He didn't want to think about what would happen if she fell. He didn't want to, and so he didn't. He did, however, let out a loud sigh of relief after they made it to the lobby, went down a few more stairs, and reached the sidewalk.
His breath would have smoked without the cigarette. When he inhaled, the air cut like knives. In conversational tones, Laura remarked, 'The auto had better start, don't you think?'
'What, you don't want to hang around waiting for a cab?' Moss said, which earned him another glare. He opened the Bucephalus' door and carefully handed her in, then flung the overnight bag onto the back seat.
He slid behind the wheel and slammed his door shut. That got him out of the icy wind. When he turned the key, he uttered something between a prayer and a curse. Past two on a cold winter night… Would the engine turn over?
The starter made a grinding noise. The engine didn't start. He tried again. Still no luck. 'Come on, you goddamn fucking son of a bitch,' he growled, wishing for a groundcrew man to spin the prop.
Laura looked down at her swollen stomach. 'Don't listen to him,' she advised the baby. 'Hold your hands over your ears. He's just a barbarous Yank, and he doesn't know any better.'
'I don't know any better than to keep driving this miserable old rattletrap,' Moss said, and twisted the key once more, with savage force.
Grind… Grind… Grind… He was about to throw up his hands in despair when the engine belched like a man after three quick beers. He came down hard on the gas, hoping, hoping… Another belch, and then a full-throated roar. Steam and smoke poured from the tailpipe.
'There is a God!' Moss shouted.
'I should hope so,' Laura said, 'and I doubt He's very amused at what you said a minute ago.'
'Too darn bad,' Moss said; now that the Bucephalus had started, he was willing to make his language less incandescent. But he didn't back down: 'I wasn't very amused with Him a few minutes ago, either.'
'Jonathan, I think-' What ever his wife thought was lost as another labor pain seized her. When she could speak again, she said, 'I think you'd better get me to the hospital as fast as you can.'
'I will,' he promised. 'I want to make sure the engine warms up before I put it in gear, though. If it quits on me, that would be.. not so good.' Laura nodded. They might argue about a good many things, but she wasn't going to disagree with that.
Even though the streets of Berlin were almost deserted, he drove with great care. Skidding on snow would have been bad any time. Skidding on snow while his wife was in labor was one more thing he didn't care to contemplate.
Beside him, Laura let out a sharp hiss. She couldn't say anything more for most of a minute. At last, she managed, 'I won't be sorry for the ether cone or what ever it is they give you to make the pain go away.'
'We're almost there,' he said. Nothing in Berlin was too far from anything else. He could have driven for quite
