Toward the middle of the afternoon, the woman who had hired her came into the factory hall and said, “May I see you for a moment, Mrs. Enos?”
“Of course. Let me finish this first, please.” Sylvia joined the pieces of leather together and tossed them into the box by the machine. Then she caught Gustav Krafft’s eye. Only after he nodded permission did she rise and accompany the hiring clerk. As she did, she said, “I hope nothing’s wrong.”
“You’ve done a very good job with us, as a matter of fact,” the woman said as they left the factory floor. If she noticed Sylvia was wearing mourning, she didn’t mention it. She waved her to a chair: the very chair in which she’d been sitting, in fact, when she was hired.
“Miss, could you please tell me what’s going on?” Sylvia asked.
“Yes, I will tell you,” the hiring clerk answered. “Like I said, all the reports on your work have been very good, and Krafft isn’t easy to please. But our orders have been cut because of peace, and we have men coming back, and you are one of our most recent employees. And so-”
“You’re letting me go,” Sylvia said dully.
“I am sorry,” the woman said. “I do feel bad about it, because you’ve worked out very well here.” That did Sylvia exactly no good. The woman who’d hired her went on, “I wish we could keep you, but business doesn’t allow it. And our brave men in uniform will be returning, looking for the jobs they-”
“ My brave man in uniform won’t be returning,” Sylvia broke in, “and my children and I will be going hungry because of this.”
“I am sorry,” the woman repeated. “I’ll be happy to give you the very best of good characters, which will surely help you get a position at a firm that is hiring.”
“But firms aren’t hiring,” Sylvia said. “Firms are letting people go. Firms are letting women like me go so they can hire men, like you said.” She sighed. “I’ll take that good character. It won’t do me any good, but I’ll take it.” What am I going to do now? she asked herself. What can I do now? The question was far easier to ask than to answer.
Cincinnatus was walking to the trolley stop when someone whistled behind him. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Lucullus, Apicius’ son, waving at him. He didn’t grimace-not on the outside where Lucullus could see. Instead, he waved. Lucullus came toward him at a heavy trot: he was on his way to putting on his father’s massive bulk.
“What you want?” Cincinnatus asked him. “Whatever it is, you better make it snappy, on account of I’m gonna be late for work if I miss this here trolley car.”
“Well, ain’t you high and mighty?” Lucullus said. He was getting his own man’s confidence; he wouldn’t have been so sharp with Cincinnatus a year before. “My pa says, he got to figure out whether to fish or cut bait with you pretty damn quick, an’you won’t like it if he decide he got to cut bait.”
“You tell your pa that if anything happens to me, I got myself a little book,” Cincinnatus answered. “First thing that happens after somethin’ happens to me is, that little book goes straight to Luther Bliss.” He’d been bluffing when he said that to Joe Conroy. He wasn’t bluffing any more. Anyone who tried to bring him down would go down with him.
Lucullus screwed up his face. He could see that. He was no fool; Cincinnatus would never have thought Apicius’-Apicius Wood’s-son could be a fool. He said, “My pa says you ain’t got the right attitude, Cincinnatus. You is for yourself ’fore you is for the people.”
“I take care of myself and I mind my business,” Cincinnatus said. “That’s all I want to do. That’s all I ever wanted to do. Anybody tries to keep me from doin’ that, he can get lost, far as I’m concerned. I don’t care who he is.”
“You do got the wrong attitude,” Lucullus said reproachfully. “If the proletariat ain’t united against the oppressors, it ain’t anything.”
“And what about if the party of the proletariat tries oppressin’ me?” Cincinnatus returned. Instead of answering, Lucullus made another sour face and strode off. Cincinnatus watched him go, then hurried on to the trolley stop. The Reds wouldn’t leave him alone for no better reason than that he asked them to. He knew that only too well.
He threw his nickel in the trolley fare box and went to the back of the car with something approaching relief. While he rode the trolley, as when he was driving a truck, nobody bothered him. He sometimes thought those were the only times when no one bothered him. Oh, every once in a while at home, but that wasn’t the same.
New graffiti marked several buildings along the trolley route. Some were blue X’s, others three horizontal lines of paint, red-white-red. Only after Cincinnatus had seen several of them did he realize what they were supposed to suggest: the Confederate battle flag and the Stars and Bars. The diehards were busy again, then. Others in Covington were bound to be quicker on the uptake than he was. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he saw a work crew splashing whitewash over one of those blue X’s. No, the Yankees didn’t miss a trick.
Somehow, Cincinnatus was not surprised to find Luther Bliss waiting at the trolley stop where he got off. The chief of the Kentucky State Police didn’t get on the trolley, either. He fell into step beside Cincinnatus as the Negro headed toward the shed where Lieutenant Straubing’s crew gathered at the start of each new run.
“Mornin’, Mr. Driver,” he said, irony in his voice at addressing a Negro by his surname. “Hope I won’t take up too much of your precious time today.”
“Mornin’ to you, Mr. Bliss,” Cincinnatus answered. “I hope you won’t, too, suh. I don’t know nothin’ more’n I did last time we talked, and the Army gets powerful riled if I’m late to work-it don’t matter how come.”
Bliss gave him a nasty glare. He’d mentioned the Army on purpose; it was the one institution that had more power in Covington than Bliss’ secret police. After a couple of silent strides, the chief said, “I’ll make you a deal-you tell me who punched that bastard Kennedy’s ticket for him and you’ll never see my face again. That’s a promise.”
Cincinnatus laughed in the aforementioned face. “You don’t know who done it, an’ the Reds don’t know who done it, an’ the Confederate diehards don’t know who done it, an’you all reckon I know who done it. Only thing I know about Tom Kennedy is that I used to work for the man.”
He knew a great deal more than that. He also knew Luther Bliss did not know how much he knew. Had the secret policeman known that, Cincinnatus would not have been heading in to work. He would have been in jail, or more likely dead.
Bliss did know he wasn’t telling everything. “You only knew Kennedy because you worked for him, what was he doing on your doorstep better than two years later?”
“Damned if I know,” Cincinnatus answered. “He got shot before he could tell me anything. Maybe he was running from the Kentucky State Police.”
“Not right then, I don’t reckon,” Bliss said. “If he was running from us, he’d have been stupid to run to you, because he must’ve known we were keeping an eye on you, too. And whatever else you could say about the goddamn son of a bitch, Tom Kennedy wasn’t stupid.”
Bliss was undoubtedly right-nobody harassing Cincinnatus was stupid. Cincinnatus didn’t say anything about that. The less he said, the better the chance the Kentucky State Police chief would give up-give up for the time being, anyhow-and go away. But Bliss, with his odd eyes the color of a hunting dog’s, stuck with him like a hunting dog on a scent. Side by side, they approached the shed where Lieutenant Straubing’s drivers gathered.
Straubing was waiting outside. “Good morning, Cincinnatus,” he said. “You’ll have to tell your friend good-bye here.”
“Good-bye, friend,” Cincinnatus said at once, smiling in Luther Bliss’ direction.
Now Bliss laughed at him. “You don’t get rid of me that easy. I have some more questions that need answering.”