Breakthroughs

the leg. “Dada!”

“Sounds more like a real word now,” Cincinnatus said, leaning forward over his son to kiss his wife. “Not jus’ babble, babble, babble, way it used to be.”

Then Achilles tugged on his trouser leg and spoke imperiously: “Up!”

Laughing, Cincinnatus lifted him. He was a lot lighter than crated rifles and munitions, and there was only the one of him, not unending loads in the back of the truck. When Cincinnatus remarked on that, Elizabeth snorted. “May only be the one,” she said, “but it sure enough seems like there’s about a hundred an’ ten of him sometimes.”

Cincinnatus carried the toddler into the house. He paused in the front hall and sniffed appreciatively. “What smells so good?”

“That beef tongue I bought at the butcher’s the other day,” his wife answered. “Your mother threw it in the pot with taters an’ onions while she was watching Achilles. And I’ve got some string beans and salt pork cookin’ up in there, too.”

“I knew I married you for some reason,” Cincinnatus said. Elizabeth stuck out her tongue at him. When she turned to go into the kitchen, he swatted her lightly on the backside. They both laughed.

Supper proved to be as good as it smelled, which wasn’t easy. Afterwards, happily replete, Cincinnatus played with Achilles while Elizabeth cleaned up in the kitchen. Achilles liked chasing a little rubber football. Whenever he tried to kick it, he fell on his bottom. He thought that was part of the fun.

After a while, he tried something different. Cincinnatus had been tossing the ball for him to chase. He went and got it and did his best to throw it back. It went up in the air and bounced off his head. As far as he was concerned, that was pretty damn funny, too.

While he got the ball and tried again to throw it to Cincinnatus, his father laughed and said, “I wonder if that’s how the Yankees got the notion of throwin’ the ball forwards when they play football.” In the Confederate States, passes toward the other side’s goal line were against the rules. Football in the United States, though, permitted forward passes that were hurled from at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage.

When Elizabeth finished the dishes, Cincinnatus lighted a cigar (a lousy cigar-tobacco had gone downhill since Kentucky’s forcible separation from the CSA) and read the evening newspaper Elizabeth had-with the white lady’s permission-brought home from one of the houses she cleaned. As usual, the paper claimed extravagant U.S., German, and even Austrian victories. Had a quarter of what the papers claimed been true, the forces of the Quadruple Alliance would have conquered the world ten times over.

Someone knocked on the door. Cincinnatus and Elizabeth both looked up in alarm. Not so long before, Tom Kennedy had knocked on the door like that-and died on the doorstep a moment later. Was it a neighbor wanting to borrow some molasses, or was it a ruse to get Cincinnatus to open the door and expose himself to someone crouched in the dark with a rifle?

Only one way to find out. “Who is it?” Cincinnatus asked warily. Before the war, he would have opened the door without asking. Before the war, the door might well have been open anyhow on a warm spring night, or Elizabeth and he might have been sitting out on the front porch.

A deep voice answered: “It sure as hell ain’t the Easter bunny, and it ain’t Father Christmas, neither.”

Cincinnatus opened the door. There stood Apicius, who was almost certainly the best barbecue cook in the USA. He might have been the best barbecue cook in the CSA, too, but the competition was stiffer there. As fit his trade, the big black man was big in all dimensions. Solid muscle lay under his fat. “You better come in,” Cincinnatus said. “I don’t reckon this is no social call.”

“And it ain’t,” Apicius said, squeezing past him. “I ain’t here on my business. I’m here on the business of the workers and peasants of the state of Kentucky.” His chuckle was wheezy. “And why ain’t you surprised?”

“Can’t imagine,” Cincinnatus answered, letting the cook precede him down the hall and into the front room. Apicius and Elizabeth greeted each other. Then she took Achilles back to the bedroom. As far as Cincinnatus was concerned, the less she involved herself in affairs of politics and the various undergrounds with which he was entangled, the better.

“You got the fine start to a family here,” Apicius said, and nodded at his own words. “Need yourself some more young uns, but that’ll come, that’ll come.”

“You didn’t come over here to jaw about my family,” Cincinnatus said. “Nothin’s gonna pry you away from the barbecue pit if it ain’t important.”

“That’s a fact,” Apicius said. “You never was a fool, Cincinnatus.”

“Yeah, go on and baste me with that big old long-handled brush o’ yours,” Cincinnatus said. “Then you put me over the fire an’ turn me on the spit.”

Apicius laughed, but he quickly sobered. “All right. I won’t waste your time. I won’t waste my time. What I got to know is this: whose man is you? I can talk with you if you is my man. I can talk with you if you is Tom Kennedy’s man. I-”

“You know what happened to him,” Cincinnatus broke in, his voice harsh.

“I know what. I dunno who done it, and I wish I did. But he still have folks left on his side.” Apicius waved a big, thick-fingered hand, as if to make Cincinnatus’ interruption disappear. “I can even talk with you if you is Luther Bliss’ man.”

Cincinnatus interrupted again: “I ain’t, but you’d be a fool to talk with me if I was. You don’ know how dangerous that Bliss is.”

“Hell I don’t,” Apicius said. “Ain’t no law says the forces of reaction can’t have people on their side who know what they’s doin’. But I can talk with you if you is Bliss’ man. Have to watch what I say, but I can talk. But if I don’t know whose man you is, Cincinnatus, how can I talk with you? I say somethin’, how do I know who hears it?”

Apicius’ point made perfectly good sense. Of all the factions still struggling in Kentucky, Cincinnatus had more sympathy for the Reds than for any other-the Reds were, after all, his own people. But a man who’d been struggling to reach what passed for the upper stratum of black society before the war didn’t completely sympathize with the Reds’ leveling aspirations, either.

The other side of the coin was that, if Apicius didn’t like the answer Cincinnatus gave him, no insurance company in the world would put a nickel on his life. With a sigh, Cincinnatus said, “I never wanted to be nothin’ but my own man. If that ain’t good enough for you, don’t talk with me at all-’cept to say thanks when I buy me some ribs.”

Apicius sighed, too. “You know too goddamn much to be your own man and nobody else’s. You is mixed up in this. Can’t get yourself unmixed, any more’n you can take the sugar out of the coffee once it’s in.”

That was probably true, too. Cincinnatus was about to say so when another knock came from the front of the house. Apicius’ had been ordinary. This one was brisk, authoritative. Whoever was out there expected to be let in right away, with no backtalk from anybody.

“Who?” Apicius whispered.

“Don’t know,” Cincinnatus whispered back. Apicius’ hand went to a trouser pocket: a pistol in there, no doubt. Cincinnatus wished he had one, too. For the second time that evening, he went to the door and called, “Who is it?”

“Queen of the May,” the man outside answered.

Everyone was giving smart answers tonight. Cincinnatus opened the door for Luther Bliss, wondering if he’d get caught in the cross fire between the chief of the Kentucky State Police and Apicius. A glance over his shoulder told him the Red leader had that pistol out and ready. But then, to his amazement, Apicius lowered it. “Evenin’, Luther,” he said.

“Evenin’, Apicius, you damn Red,” Bliss answered amiably. Cincinnatus stared from one of them to the other. They both laughed at him. Pointing to Apicius, Luther Bliss said, “I know who this son of a bitch is. I know what he stands for. Because I know that, he doesn’t worry me too much. I can handle him-reckon he thinks the same about me. You, though, Cincinnatus-who the hell are you? Who are you really working for?”

Apicius laughed again, louder this time. He pointed to Cincinnatus. “I come over here to find out the same damn thing, Luther-and I don’t care if you’s here or not. He still could be one o’yours.”

“Only man I work for is Lieutenant Straubing, who bosses my truck unit,” Cincinnatus said. “I ain’t nobody’s man but my own.” He looked from Apicius to Luther Bliss and back again. One thing was obvious: neither of them