'God forbid!' Galtier broke in, and crossed himself.
'Yes. God forbid.' Leonard O'Doull nodded. 'So the world said in 1914. But God did not forbid. And so, if He should happen to be watching a football match again…' Lucien laughed at the delicious blasphemy. His son-in-law was not in a laughing mood. O'Doull went on, 'If that happens, how could I stay quiet here, attending to cases of measles and rheumatism? That would be a waste of everything for which I trained.'
The worst part of it was, what he said made sense to Galtier. Soberly-in spite of the applejack-the farmer said, 'All I can tell you is, may this not come to pass.'
'Yes. May it not, indeed.' O'Doull knocked back the rest of his drink. After he got over the coughing fit that followed-the stuff was too strong for such cavalier treatment-he said, 'Thank you for letting me share my darkness with you.'
'C'est rien,' Lucien replied. 'And it is nothing because who but you saw my darkness not so long ago?' Who but you caused it? he thought. But that wasn't fair, and he knew as much. O'Doull had only diagnosed the trouble Marie already had.
'Between the Action Franзaise and the Freedom Party and the Silver Shirts in England, the world is a nastier place than it was ten years ago,' O'Doull said. 'And in Russia, the Tsar seems to think the Jews cause all his problems, and no one seems to want to stay in Austria-Hungary except the Austrians and the Hungarians, and even the Hungarians are not so sure. And the Turks treat the Armenians as the Russians treat the Jews, and-'
'And you Americans hold down English-speaking Canada.' Galtier hadn't expected to say that. It just popped out. He wondered if his son-in-law would be offended.
But Leonard O'Doull only nodded. 'Yes. And that. Small next to some of the others, I believe, but no less real even so.' He got to his feet. 'And now I had better leave. If you ask me to have another drink, I'll say yes, and then I'll be too drunk to go back to Riviиre-du-Loup, and Nicole will be unhappy with me-and with you.' He gave a curiously old-fashioned bow, then made his way to the door, and to his motorcar.
Galtier wasn't going anywhere that night. He made himself another drink, and poured it all down. Maybe it helped him go to sleep. After O'Doull's dark fantasies, he needed all the help he could get.
When Sunday came, he drove into Riviиre-du-Loup to hear Mass. As he'd got into the habit of doing the past few months, he stopped at Йloise Granche's house to give her a ride into town. 'Bonjour, Lucien,' she said as he opened the passenger-side door of the Chevrolet for her. 'You look very handsome today.'
'I thank you… for not buying new spectacles any time lately,' he replied. She laughed. He went on, 'Now, I do not need spectacles of any sort to know what a pretty woman I am lucky enough to have with me.'
'How you do go on,' she said, but indulgently.
When they got to the church, Йloise saw some lady friends and went to chat with them. Lucien sat in the bosom of his family. Nothing could have been more decorous. Nicole said, 'How nice that you were able to bring Mme. Granche again.' Lucien nodded. The service started a moment later.
After taking communion, Galtier led Йloise Granche back to his auto. As they'd driven north, so they went south. When he stopped by the house, she said, 'Would you care to come in for a cup of tea?'
'Thank you. I'd like that. I can't stay long, though,' he replied.
They went inside. Everything was quiet and peaceful-and dark, for Йloise had no electricity. She turned. Lucien took her in his arms. A moment later, they were holding each other and kissing and murmuring endearments, for all the world as if they were a couple of youngsters discovering love for the very first time.
Laughing, exulting in his strength, Lucien lifted her into his arms and carried her upstairs to the bedroom. 'Be careful!' Йloise exclaimed. 'You'll hurt yourself.' He laughed some more. She said that every time. He hadn't hurt himself yet, and didn't seem likely to. And the soft feel of her made the way his heart pounded till he gently set her on the bed seem altogether worthwhile.
Before too long, his heart was pounding again, from an even more pleasurable exertion. 'Oh, Lucien!' Йloise gasped, urging him on. Her nails dug into his back. 'So sweet,' she murmured, eyes half closed. 'So sweet.'
Afterwards, he gave her a kiss as he lay beside her. His heart was still drumming, harder than it would have when he was a younger man. He had more trouble catching his breath, too, than he would have when he and Marie were newlyweds.
'One of these days,' he said, 'we should have Father Guillaume say the words over us.'
Women were supposed to be the ones who wanted such things, but Йloise shook her head, as she had several times before. 'Not necessary,' she said. 'Better if he doesn't, in fact. It would only complicate matters with both our families. If we marry, it turns into a question of patrimonies. If we don't, then this is… what it is, that's all. I like it better this way.'
Lucien set a hand on his chest and mimed complete exhaustion. 'I don't think I could like it better than this,' he said. Йloise laughed again. They laughed a lot when they were alone together. Neither one of them had done much laughing for a long time before. And that, to Lucien, mattered almost as much as the other.
Cincinnatus Driver wasn't an old man. No one-except his son, of course- could have accused him of being an old man. He was strong. His hair was- mostly-dark. He remained three years on the good side of fifty. None of that, though, had kept him from turning into a grandfather.
Karen Driver wiggled in his arms. He was getting used to holding a baby all over again. Karen weighed no more than a big cat, which is to say, nothing to speak of. He was getting used to the way she looked, too. Her skin was lighter than his, but not quite the coffee-with-cream color of Negroes with a fair amount of white blood. She had her mother's narrow eyes with the folds of skin at the inner corners, too.
'She's going to be beautiful,' Cincinnatus said. 'She's already beautiful.'
'Thank you,' Grace Driver said softly. Cincinnatus and Elizabeth had accepted her more readily than her folks accepted Achilles. The child helped and hurt at the same time. The Changs did love the baby, but Grace's mother blamed her for not having a boy… among other things.
Karen stopped wiggling, screwed up her little face, and grunted. Cincinnatus laughed. He had no trouble remembering what that meant. He handed her to her mother. 'She done made a mess in her drawers,' he said. He was just Karen's granddad. He didn't have to clean her up himself.
'I'll take care of her,' Grace said, and changed the baby's diaper.
Cincinnatus turned to his son. 'How you doin'?' he asked.
'I'm all right,' Achilles answered, more of Iowa than of Kentucky in his accent. Cincinnatus knew his son would have said the same thing if he were living on the street and eating what he could fish out of garbage cans. Achilles had his own full measure of the family's stubbornness. But he wasn't on the street; he continued, 'That clerking job of mine isn't what you'd call exciting, but I can pay my bills. I won't get rich, but I'm doing fine.'
'Good. That's good.' Cincinnatus had been on his own when he was younger than Achilles was now, but he hadn't had to worry about a family then. And a young black in Confederate Kentucky hadn't had the hopes and dreams of one in U.S. Iowa. Cincinnatus had been brutally sure he wouldn't, couldn't, get very far ahead of the game. Achilles could aspire to more. He might not get it, but if he didn't he'd have to blame himself as well as the system under which he lived. Down in the CSA, the system gave any Negro an easy excuse for failure.
'Let me have my grandbaby,' Elizabeth said, and reached for Karen. Elizabeth took to being a grandmother with none of the doubts about age and the like that troubled Cincinnatus. And Karen fascinated Amanda, who at fourteen was plenty old enough to help take care of her niece.
'How you doin' with your folks these days?' Cincinnatus asked Grace.
Before she could answer, Achilles said, 'Well, her daddy hasn't called me a nigger, but he sure has come close.'
'I didn't ask how you was doin' with Mr. Chang,' Cincinnatus said sharply. 'I asked how Grace was.'
'It is still hard,' she answered. 'It is still very hard, like Achilles said. My father and especially my mother are not modern people. They think of China all the time. They don't think we are all Americans. They don't think we are all the same.'
Achilles stirred at that. 'Pa doesn't think we're all the same, either. He thinks colored people are down at the bottom of the pile.'
'That ain't so,' Cincinnatus said.
'The… heck it isn't,' Achilles retorted.
'No.' Cincinnatus shook his head. 'I never said that, and I don't believe it. What I say is, white folks reckon black folks is on the bottom o' the pile. An' that's the Lord's truth. If you was old enough to recollect what it was
