Breakthroughs

still standing in front of him, he forgot Sylvia existed. “Next.”

Luxuriating in an afternoon without the children and with a job in hand, Sylvia went out and bought a couple of shirtwaists and a skirt in the new style that daringly left the ankles bare. It was advertised as saving fabric for the war effort. That, she was convinced, had nothing to do with why only a couple were left on the rack. People finally felt victory in the air, and wanted to bust loose and go a little wild.

She took her purchases home before going out again to pick up the children. That was another small extravagance, but she would have plenty of nickels coming in to make up for the extra one she was spending on trolley fare. Both George, Jr., and Mary Jane looked forlorn, with the marks of the chicken pox still upon them, but they had been certified as noncontagious. Several of George, Jr.’s, classmates were down with the disease, as well as another girl Mrs. Dooley cared for.

After supper, the children were playing and Sylvia washing dishes when someone knocked on the door. “Who’s that, Mama?” Mary Jane said.

“I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “I’m not expecting anyone.” Apprehension filled her as she went to the door. Opening it, she breathed a silent sigh of relief to find no Western Union messenger standing there, but rather Isabella Antonelli. “Come in,” Sylvia exclaimed. “Have you eaten? Can I make you coffee?”

As the children stared at the woman who was a stranger to them, Mrs. Antonelli said, “Coffee will be fine. I have eaten, yes, thank you. I am not very hungry anyhow.”

The two women sat at the kitchen table and chatted. When they didn’t pay much attention to George, Jr., and Mary Jane, the children gradually stopped gaping at Isabella Antonelli. Sylvia was sure she hadn’t come to talk about the weather or even the high price of coal. Whatever was on her mind, she would get to it when she was ready.

Eventually, she did: “Mr. Winter asked me to marry him the other day.”

“That’s wonderful!” Sylvia said, at the same time thinking, Better you than me. “Have you set a day yet?”

“He wants it to be in about six months,” Isabella answered. Slowly, deliberately, she set both hands above her navel. “That is about five months later than I would like.” Her meaning was unmistakable. Sylvia’s eyes widened. The widow Antonelli nodded, adding, “He does not know this yet. What do I do?”

“Oh.” Sylvia understood why Isabella had not gone to her family. Even if she was a widow, they would have pitched a fit. All the Italians she’d ever met were like that. After some thought, she said, “I think you’d better tell him.”

Panic filled Isabella Antonelli’s face. “And what if he leaves me? I do not know if he wants a child.”

“Dear, doesn’t he have one whether he wants one or not?” Sylvia asked, to which Isabella gave a miserable nod. Or you could look for an abortionist, Sylvia thought. But she had no idea how to go about finding one; she’d never needed to, for which she heartily thanked God. She never would have advised anyone to do anything so flagrantly illegal, anyhow. And Isabella was Catholic, which would have made the suggestion worse than illegal in her eyes.

“That is so,” she said now. Her fingers spread, there on her belly.

“He’d better know,” Sylvia said. “It is his business, too, after all. I think he’ll do what’s right.” She was by no means sure the canning-plant foreman would, but…“If he doesn’t, do you want to have him around anyway?”

“With a bambino coming, I want someone around,” Isabella said in a firm voice. “I think you are right, though. He is a good man. He will do what is right. Grazie. Thank you.” She rose, kissed Sylvia on the cheek, and was gone before Sylvia could say good-bye-or anything else.

“Why did she come over here, Mama?” George, Jr., asked.

“To talk,” Sylvia answered absently. “Why don’t you and your sister get ready for bed?” She ignored the howls of protest that brought. Better you than me, Isabella, she thought again. Better you than me.

Wearily, Jefferson Pinkard and the rest of his regiment marched out of the front lines. Wearily, he groused with his buddies about how criminal it was to leave them at the front for so long without a breather. “What I reckon it is,” Sergeant Albert Cross said, “is that Richmond done forgot we was even here, so of course they forgot to send anybody out to take our goddamn place.”

A couple of people laughed: relatively recent replacements, most of them, who were innocent enough to think that was meant as a joke. “This Texas prairie sure as hell is the ass end of nowhere,” Pinkard muttered. “Wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit if everybody forgot about us.”

“To me, the country does not look so bad,” Hipolito Rodriguez said. Pinkard grunted; next to the chunk of Sonora Rodriguez had tried to farm, the west Texas prairie was liable to look pretty good, which, when you got down to it, was a frightening thought. The stocky little Sonoran went on, “And the Yankees, Jeff, the Yankees, they don’t forget about us.”

Pinkard grunted. Nobody could deny that. The U.S. advance wasn’t going fast-the United States didn’t have as many men in Texas as they needed, either-but it was and remained an advance. Nobody talked about throwing them back on Lubbock any more. The most anybody would talk about was halting their advance, and talk outran reality there, too.

Sergeant Cross said, “Damn me to hell and toast my toes over the fire if it ain’t gonna feel good not to get shot at for a while.”

“Si, es verdad,” Hip Rodriguez said. “Muy bueno.”

“Yeah,” Pinkard said, because Rodriguez expected him to say something like that. He didn’t mean it, though. He suspected his pal knew he didn’t mean it. Rodriguez had enough tact for any other dozen soldiers Jeff had ever met. Jeff wanted to be in the trenches. He wanted to be in the Yankee trenches, killing Yankees. When he was doing that, he didn’t have to think about anything else.

Replacements came forward to fill the trenches Pinkard and his comrades were leaving. It was a black unit, with white noncoms and officers moving the men along. “Mallates,” Rodriguez said, shaking his head. “You know, down where I was living, I didn’t hardly never see no niggers, not till I come into the Army.”

“Isn’t like that in Alabama,” Jeff said. “ ’Bout as many of ’em back home as there are white men.” Didn’t have to bring niggers down into Sonora, with greasers there already. But he didn’t say that out loud, and hoped Hip didn’t know he thought it. Rodriguez was a good soldier and a good guy-a good friend-even if he was a greaser.

On they trudged, toward the tiny hamlet of Grow, Texas, whose dusty main street, all of two blocks long, made a liar of the cockeyed optimist who’d named the place. Most of the buildings along those two blocks had been turned into saloons. Texas was officially dry. Where soldiers were involved, people looked the other way.

Some of the barmaids-most of the barmaids-sold more than beer and whiskey, too. Up above every saloon were several small rooms in constant frantic use. That sort of thing did not officially exist, either. Jeff had never felt the urge to go upstairs in any place like that, of which he’d seen a good many. A few shots of whiskey, maybe some poker-that had been plenty.

He didn’t know what the hell he’d do now. Along with most of his pals, he went into a saloon that called itself the Gold Nugget. When they got inside, Sergeant Cross said, “They should have named this place the Cow Pie.” He didn’t walk out, though. None of the other dives in Grow was any different. Sawdust on the floor, a bouncer with a bludgeon on his belt and a sawed-off shotgun by his chair, the stink of sweat and booze and the barmaids’ cheap perfume…they all came with saloons in Grow and in any of scores of little towns behind both sides of the line from the Atlantic to the Gulf of California.

Somebody from another unit got out of a chair while Jeff was standing by it. He threw his backside into it before anyone else could. A barmaid wiggled through the crowd of soldiers trying to crowd up to the bar. Their hands roamed freely till she almost decked one of them with a roundhouse slap.

“I ain’t apples, boys,” she said. “You got to pay before you pinch the merchandise.”

She spoke good English, but her accent reminded Pinkard of Hip Rodriguez’s. So did her chamois-colored skin and black, black eyes. Most of the barmaids were of Mexican blood. A few were black. Jeff didn’t see any white women at the Gold Nugget, though some did work in the other saloons in Grow.

When the barmaid finally got over to him, he ordered a double shot of whiskey and gave her a dollar, which would have been outrageous before the war and was too damned expensive now. Pinkard wasn’t one of the ones who groused about that, though-what the hell else did he have to do with his money except spend it on hooch and