wanted. After a moment, he found the right one: 'Fumes. Neighbors no smell fumes. For this, I trade plenty beer with fellow I know. You want more?'
'If you've got it to spare, I wouldn't mind another one. Don't want to put you to no trouble, though.'
'No trouble.' Mr. Chang took Cincinnatus' glass and disappeared into the kitchen again. When he returned, he had a refill, too. This time, Cincinnatus sipped cautiously instead of sending the hooch down the hatch. It was some kind of brandy, not whiskey, and strong enough to grow hair on his chest-or on Joey Chang's chest, which was a bigger challenge. 'Another baby,' Chang murmured, his eyes for a few seconds soft and far away. 'Grandfather again.'
'Yeah,' Cincinnatus said dreamily. Then he pointed at Mr. Chang. 'You'd like it a lot better if you saw the new baby when it comes-and if you saw the grandbaby you already got once in a while.'
'I know. I know.' Chang stared down into the glass he held. 'But Grace, she run off, she get married when we say no. She not do what her mother, her father say. She marry fellow who is not Chinese. Things hard on account of that.'
He was a little man, more than a head shorter than Cincinnatus. But he spoke with enormous pride. Reckon he'd say the same thing if I was white, too, Cincinnatus thought, bemused. He hadn't imagined a Chinaman could also look down his nose at whites. The mere idea broadened his mental horizon.
Mrs. Chang spoke, a sharp, singsong rattle of Chinese. Her husband answered in the same language, then returned to English for Cincinnatus' benefit: 'She say, we not angry because your boy colored fellow. We angry because Grace disobey us. For Chinese, this is very bad. Hard to forgive.'
'Don't know nothin' about that,' said Cincinnatus, who suspected Chang was lying some for politeness' sake, but wasn't quite sure. He went on, 'I do know you ain't just missin' out on Grace, though. You missin' out on your grandbaby. You gonna be missin' out on two grandbabies. Your pride worth all that?'
Now Mr. Chang spoke in Chinese-translating the question, Cincinnatus figured. Mrs. Chang answered right away. Again, her tone said everything Cincinnatus needed to know. You bet your life pride is worth it. That was what she'd told him, all right. Cincinnatus wondered whether Mr. Chang would show any backbone. From everything the Negro had seen, Mrs. Chang was the one who said, Jump, frog! Her husband asked, How high? on the way up.
But he said something more, and then something more, and then something more again. After his last sally, Mrs. Chang burst into tears. Embarrassed, Cincinnatus turned away. 'I better go,' he mumbled.
'All right, you go,' Mr. Chang said. 'But you see Achilles and Grace, you say they can come by here. We be glad to see them. This go on too long.' Mrs. Chang protested again. Her husband, for a wonder, overrode her. They were still arguing when Cincinnatus slipped out the door and went downstairs.
'Well?' Elizabeth asked when he walked into their apartment.
'Mr. Chang say they can come visit,' Cincinnatus answered, and his wife's face lit up. He raised a warning hand. 'Mrs. Chang ain't very happy about it. Pretty fair chance she make him change his mind.'
Elizabeth sighed. 'They's powerful proud folks,' she said. Cincinnatus walked over and gave her a kiss. She eyed him with as much suspicion as pleasure. 'What's that for?'
'On account of that's the very same word the Changs used when they was talkin' about themselves,' he said, 'and only a clever lady like you would figure it out all on her lonesome.'
'That a fact?' Elizabeth said. Cincinnatus solemnly nodded. She wagged a finger at him. 'I tell you a fact: you only talk so sweet to me when you want something-an' I generally know what it is you want.'
If she hadn't been smiling, the words would have flayed. As things were, Cincinnatus laughed. 'Sure enough, you got what I want,' he said. Elizabeth snorted. Cincinnatus laughed again. But, though he might have been trying to butter her up, he hadn't been lying. He hoped she felt the same way. She'd never given him any signs she didn't.
When he came home two or three days later, Elizabeth pointed to an envelope on the kitchen table. 'You got a letter from Covington,' she said. She hadn't opened it. She'd acquired her letters only after they came to Iowa, and still didn't read fluently. They also had a family rule that mail belonged to the person whose name was on the envelope, and to nobody else.
Cincinnatus eyed the envelope with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. His father and mother still lived in Kentucky, and they did write to him every so often-or rather, they had a literate neighbor do it, for they couldn't read or write. He was always glad to hear from them, and always suspicious when he did. Back in the 1920s, the Kentucky State Police had used a false message from them to lure him to Covington, and flung him into jail for sedition as soon as he got off the train.
He opened the envelope and took out the sheet of paper inside. He was frowning when he put it down. 'What's it say?' Elizabeth asked.
'He says Ma's startin' to forget things, act like she was a little child again.' Cincinnatus scowled at the letter. Up till now, Livia had always been the rock at which the family anchored. Seneca's health had been shaky now and again, but hardly ever hers. Tears stung Cincinnatus' eyes. This wasn't anything a doctor could fix, either; he knew that too well.
'That's hard to bear, sweetheart. That's right hard to bear,' Elizabeth said. Both her parents, though, were long dead, so her sympathy went only so far. Sudden anxiety sharpened her voice as she asked, 'He don't want you to go down there? He better not, after all you went through.'
'No, no.' Cincinnatus shook his head. 'He say my pa's managin' for now.' But then he shook his head in a different, more thoughtful way. 'Reckon maybe I could, though. Ain't no more Kentucky State Police to fling me in jail.'
'Sure ain't.' But that wasn't agreement from his wife. It was sarcasm. 'And there ain't on account o' the Freedom Party's runnin' things in Kentucky nowadays. Freedom Party fellers, they love to have another nigger come down to their state an' commence to raisin' trouble.'
'I wouldn't raise no trouble,' Cincinnatus said. 'All I'd be doin' was seein' my own mother while she's still on this earth.'
Elizabeth shook her finger at him as if he were a naughty little boy. 'You stay right here where you belong.'
'Ain't goin' nowhere. Already told you that. But things ain't as bad as you think in Kentucky, and that's the truth. Yeah, they got them Freedom Party fellers runnin' things now, but they can't do like they done down in the Confederate States-can't beat up all the folks who don't like 'em and keep them folks from votin'. They lose the next election, they's gone.'
'You goes down there, you's gone,' Elizabeth said. ' 'Sides, you goes down there, what's Amanda an' me supposed to do for money? It don't grow on trees-or if it do, I ain't found the nursery what sells it.'
'Even if I was to go, I wouldn't be gone long,' Cincinnatus said. 'It'd be to see my ma, say good-bye to her while she still know who I am. That kind of forgettin', it just gits worse an' worse. Somebody live long enough, he don't even know who he is, let alone anybody else.'
Elizabeth softened slightly. 'That's so,' she admitted, and hugged Cincinnatus. 'All right. We take it like it comes, see how she do. If you got to go, then you got to go, and that's all there is to it.'
She started to let go of Cincinnatus, but now he squeezed her. 'I love you,' he said. 'You're the best thing ever happen to me.'
'I better be,' Elizabeth said, 'on account of you don't know how to stay out of trouble on your own.' Cincinnatus wanted to resent that or get angry about it. He wanted to, but found he couldn't.
'No,' Alexander Arthur Pomeroy declared, like a tycoon declining a merger offer. Mary had just asked him if he wanted a nap. At two and a half, he was liable to mean that no, too, and to be fussy and cranky at night because he hadn't had it. One of these days before too long, he'd stop taking naps for good, and then Mary wouldn't get any rest from dawn till dusk, either. She looked forward to that day with something less than delight. Most of Alec's milestones had delighted her: first tooth, first step, first word. Last nap, though, last nap was different.
Of course, Alec might also have been saying no just for the sake of saying no. He did that a lot. From what other mothers said, every two-year-old went through the same maddening phase. Maddening though it was, it could also be funny. Slyly pitching her voice the same way as she had when asking him if he wanted a nap, Mary said, 'Alec, do you want a cookie?'
'No,' he said again, a pint-sized captain of industry. Then he realized he'd made a dreadful mistake. The
