The law here isn't any different from the law in Utah, and that's part of the USA.'
'Yes, and you Yanks were right on the point of letting it go back to being a regular part of the USA, too,' Harrison said.
'We were,' Moss said. 'Then that Mormon murdered General Pershing, and now it'll be another ten years before anybody so much as mentions making Utah a normal state again.'
'Nobody's murdered a military governor here,' Harrison said.
'That bomber tried, whatever his name was,' Moss answered. 'He tried twice, as a matter of fact. And there was the uprising a few years ago.' He felt like fortifying this cup of coffee, too, but he wouldn't, not with Harrison watching. 'I'm sorry. Whether you're right or wrong, you haven't got a Chinaman's chance of making an American court take you seriously.'
Edgar Harrison's eyes were gray as ice-and, at the moment, every bit as cold. 'What will your wife say, Mr. Moss'-he wouldn't use Jonathan's first name now-'when she finds out you don't want to help us toward our freedom?'
'I hope she'll say I'm the lawyer in the family, and I know what I'm doing,' Moss answered. 'That's what I hope. If she says anything else, well, that's between her and me, wouldn't you agree?'
'That depends,' Harrison said. 'Yes, indeed-that depends.'
Moss looked at him. 'Mr. Harrison, I think we're done here. Don't you?'
'Yes, I'm afraid we are,' the Canadian replied. 'I'm sorry you turned out to be just another goddamn Yank after all.' He got to his feet. 'Well, we have ways of dealing with that, too.'
Stung by the injustice of Harrison's words, Moss exclaimed, 'If it weren't for me, half the Canucks in this town would be in jail or dead.' The other man paid no attention, but turned on his heel and walked out the door. Only after he was gone did Moss wonder if his words had been more than unjust. He wondered if they'd held a threat.
C incinnatus Driver didn't like having to start over as he approached middle age. He'd spent the years since moving up to Des Moines getting his hauling business up to the point where it made a pretty good living for him and his family. He'd sold the beat-up old Duryea truck he'd driven to Des Moines from Covington, and bought himself a less beat-up, middle-aged White: a bigger, more powerful machine.
And then Luther Bliss had lured him back to Kentucky and thrown him into jail. Elizabeth had to sell the White to keep food on the table for his family and a roof over their heads. Cincinnatus had a little celebrity value when he got back. Thanks to that, he'd been able to get a new truck-well, actually, an old truck, a Ford that had seen a lot of better years-on credit. For a Negro, that was something not far from a miracle.
He'd kept up the payments, too. He'd never been afraid of work. If he had to get up before the sun rose and keep driving till long after it set, he would do it without a word of complaint. He had done it without a word of complaint.
And then the bottom fell out of the stock market. All of a sudden, fewer goods came into the railway yard. Fewer riverboats and barges tied up at the docks by the Des Moines River. But just as many hauling companies and independent drivers like Cincinnatus were fighting for less business.
One way to get it, of course, was to charge less for hauling. If, after that, you worked more hours still, you might make ends meet. You might-provided you didn't charge less than fuel and upkeep on your truck cost. Cincinnatus-and everybody else who drove a truck in Des Moines, and elsewhere in the country-collided head-on with that painful limitation.
'What am I supposed to do?' he asked Elizabeth one evening over supper. 'What can I do? Can't charge less now. Don't make no money at all if I charge less.'
'Don't make any money,' Achilles said. After so long in Iowa, he'd lost a good part of the Kentucky Negro accent Cincinnatus still kept. And, having entered his teens, he was inclined to look on everything his father did with a critical eye. He went on, 'I know you're not ignorant, Pa, but you sure do sound that way sometimes.'
In another year or so, he probably would have come right out and called Cincinnatus ignorant. Cincinnatus knew it, too; he remembered the hell-raiser he'd been at Achilles' age. This was what boys did when they started turning into men. 'I can't help it, son,' Cincinnatus said now, as mildly as he could. 'I talk the way I've always talked. Don't know no other-'
'Any other,' Achilles broke in.
'— way to do it,' Cincinnatus finished, as if his son hadn't spoken. 'And I'm talkin' about important stuff with your ma, stuff we got to talk about. Maybe your English teacher don't like the way we do it'-this time, he quelled Achilles with a glance-'but we got to hash it out just the same.'
'Your pa's right,' Elizabeth said. 'Things ain't easy.' Her accent was thicker than her husband's, but Achilles held his peace. She went on, 'I ain't been gettin' so much in the way of housekeeper's work lately, neither. Dunno what we gwine do. Like your pa say, dunno what we kin do.'
'Government talks about them makework jobs for folks who can't get nothin' else,' Cincinnatus said. Achilles stirred not once but a couple of times, but had the sense to keep his mouth shut. Maybe he does want to live to grow up, Cincinnatus thought. Aloud, he went on, 'Trouble is, I don't want one o' them. All I want is to go on doin' what I been doin', go on doin' that and make a living at it.'
Elizabeth nodded. 'I know,' she said. She didn't say she wanted to go on cleaning other people's houses, and Cincinnatus knew she didn't. What she did say made a painful amount of sense: 'We got to get the money from somewheres, though.'
'I know,' Cincinnatus said glumly.
'I could look for something,' Achilles said. 'Plenty of people hire kids nowadays, because they can pay 'em less than grownups.'
He was, of course, dead right. Cincinnatus shook his head even so. 'Ain't gonna let you do that unless things get a lot worse'n they are now. First thing is, you wouldn't bring in much money, like you say. And second thing is, I want you to get all the education you can. Down the line, that'll do you more good than anything else I can think of. We ain't in the Confederate States no more. No law against you goin' out and gettin' any kind o' work you're smart enough to do. There's even colored lawyers and doctors in the USA.'
So there were-a handful of each. Their clients were also colored, almost exclusively. Cincinnatus didn't dwell on that. He wanted his son ambitious, as he was. He'd done as well as he could himself to have the hauling business. Maybe, one of these days, Achilles would take over for him. But maybe, once the boy became a man, he would want something more-want it and be able to get it. So Cincinnatus hoped, anyway.
Amanda said, 'Wish you was-wish you were — home more, Pa.' She corrected herself before her older brother could do it for her.
'I wish I was, too, sweetheart,' Cincinnatus answered. After getting out of jail, he'd had to get to know his little girl all over again. By the time he came home, she'd nearly forgotten him. And he'd found there was a great deal to like in her. She had an even sweeter nature than Elizabeth's, which was saying a lot. But wishes and the real world had only so much to do with each other. 'I don't work, we don't eat. Simple as that. Wish it wasn't, but it is.'
It had always been as simple as that. Now, though, a new and dreadful simplicity threatened the old: even if he worked as hard as he could, as hard as was humanly possible, they still might not eat. That terrified him.
Snow was falling when he got up the next morning. He fired up the truck and headed for the railroad yard even so. He intended to get there early. Some truckers would let snow make them late. They were the ones who'd get what was left after the more enterprising men won the good assignments-or maybe the latecomers would end up with nothing at all.
When Cincinnatus saw how few trains had come into the yard, he thanked heaven he'd come as fast as he could. He got a choice load, too: he filled the back of the old Ford with canned fish from Boston-the mackerel on the cans looked absurdly cheerful-and set out to deliver it to the several grocery stores run by a fellow named Claude Simmons.
Some of the grocery boys who helped him unload the fish were no older than Achilles. One or two of them looked younger than his son. Down in the CSA, even white kids would have pitched a fit about working alongside a colored man. Nobody here complained. The boys seemed as grateful to have work as Cincinnatus was himself.
At one of the stores, Simmons himself signed off on the paperwork. He nodded to Cincinnatus. 'I've seen you delivering things here more than once, haven't I?' he asked.
'That's right, suh,' Cincinnatus answered.
