"Oh, yeah. I hear that real good," Cincinnatus said.
"Figured you did. You're a guy who busts his hump. You made something out of yourself, and that's pretty goddamn tough for somebody your color. Probably a lot easier to be a shiftless, no-account nigger the way most people expect."
"Know somethin'?" Cincinnatus said. The sergeant raised a questioning eyebrow. Cincinnatus explained: "Think maybe this is the first time I ever heard a white man say nigger an' I didn't want to punch him in the nose."
"Yeah, well, some colored guys are niggers. It's a shame, but it's true. And some Jews are kikes, and some Dutchmen are goddamn fuckin' squareheads-not me, of course." Konstam flashed a wry grin. "We got rid of all those assholes, we'd be better off. Good fuckin' luck, that's all I got to tell you. We're stuck with 'em, and we just have to deal with 'em the best way we know how."
"Like them Freedom Party goons," Cincinnatus said.
Sergeant Konstam nodded. "They fill the bill, all right. Only good thing about them is, we can shoot the fuckers if they step out of line. Nobody's gonna miss 'em when we do, either."
"Amen," Cincinnatus said. "If I was whole myself…" He didn't want to go on and on about his physical shortcomings, not when he was talking to a mutilated man. "My work was messed up after I got back from Covington. Ain't gonna get no better now."
"Remind me what line you were in."
"Had me a hauling business. Had it, yeah, till before the war. Damned if I know how to put it back on its feet now. Ain't got the money to buy me a new truck. Even if I did, I need somebody to give me a hand with loadin' an' unloadin' now."
"Got a son?" Konstam asked.
"Sure do," Cincinnatus said, not without pride. "Achilles, he graduated high school, an' he's clerking for an insurance company. He don't want to get all sore and sweaty and dirty like his old man. And you know what else? I'm damn glad he don't."
"Fair enough. Good for him, and good for you, too. Insurance company, huh? He must take after his old man, then-wants to make things better for himself any way he can. Maybe his kids'll run a company like that instead of working for it."
"That'd be somethin'. Don't reckon it'd be against the law up here, the way it would in the CSA. Don't reckon it'd be easy, neither. Achilles' babies, they're half Chinese."
Konstam laughed out loud. "Ain't that a kick in the head! Who flabbled more when they got hitched, you and your wife or your son's new in-laws?"
"Nobody was what you'd call happy about it," Cincinnatus said. "But Achilles and Grace, they get on good, and it ain't easy stayin' mad at people when there's grandbabies. Things are easier than they were a while ago, I got to say that."
"Glad to hear it." Dick Konstam whistled through his teeth. "I wasn't exactly thrilled when one of my girls married a Jewish guy. Ben hasn't turned out too bad, though. And you're sure as hell right about grandchildren." His face softened. "Want to see photos?"
"If I can show you mine."
They pulled out their wallets and went through a ritual as old as snapshots. If people had carried around little paintings before cameras got cheap and easy, they would have shown those off, too. Cincinnatus and the sergeant praised the obvious beauty and brilliance of each other's descendants. Cincinnatus didn't think he was lying too hard. He hoped Dick Konstam wasn't, either.
The sergeant stuck his billfold back in his hip pocket. "Any other problems I can solve for you today, Mr. Driver?"
He hadn't solved Cincinnatus' problem. He had to know it, too. But he had helped-and he sounded like a man who wanted to get back to work. "One more thing," Cincinnatus said. "Then I get out of your hair. How can I keep from wantin' to hide behind somethin' every goddamn time I hear a loud noise?"
"Boy, you ask the tough ones, don't you?" Konstam said. "All I can tell you is, don't hold your breath. That took me years to get over. Some guys never do. Poor bastards stay nervous as cats the rest of their days."
"Don't want to do that." But it might have more to do with luck than with what he wanted. Slowly and painfully, he got to his feet. "I thank you for your time, Sergeant, an' for lettin' me bend your ear."
"Your tax dollars in action," Konstam replied. "Take care of yourself, buddy. I wish you luck. You haven't been back all that long, remember. Give yourself a chance to get used to things again."
"I reckon that's good advice," Cincinnatus said. "Thank you one more time."
"My pleasure," the sergeant said. "Take care, now."
"Yeah." Cincinnatus headed for home. A work gang with paste pots were putting up red, white, and blue posters of Tom Dewey on anything that didn't move. HE'LL TELL YOU WHAT'S WHAT, they said.
They were covering up as many of Charlie La Follette's Socialist red posters as they could. Those shouted a one-word message: VICTORY!
Cincinnatus still hadn't decided which way he'd vote. Yes, the Socialists were in the saddle when the USA won the war. But they also helped spark it when they gave Kentucky and the state of Houston back to the CSA after their dumb plebiscite. The promise of that vote helped get Al Smith reelected in 1940.
The colored quarter in Covington was empty because of the plebiscite. If Cincinnatus wanted to, he could blame the auto that hit him on the plebiscite. Oh, he might have had an accident like that here in Des Moines chasing after his senile mother. He might have, yeah. But he did have it down in Covington.
How much did that count? He laughed at himself. It counted as much as he wanted it to, no more and no less. Nobody could make him vote for the Socialists if it mattered a lot in his own mind. Nobody could make him vote for the Democrats if it didn't. "Freedom," he murmured-in the real sense of the word, not the way Jake Featherston used it. Cincinnatus grinned and nodded to himself. "I'm here to tell you the truth." The truth was, he was free.
When he got back to the apartment, he found his wife about ready to jump out of her skin with excitement. Half a dozen words explained why: "Amanda's fella done popped the question!"
"Do Jesus!" Cincinnatus sank into a chair. When he left Des Moines not quite two years earlier, his daughter hadn't had a boyfriend. She did now. Calvin Washington was a junior butcher, a young man serious to the point of solemnity. He didn't have much flash-hell, he didn't have any flash-but Cincinnatus thought he was solid all the way through. "She said yes?"
Elizabeth nodded. "She sure did, fast as she could. She thinks she done invented Calvin, you know what I mean?"
"Expect I do." Thoughtfully, Cincinnatus added, "He's about the same color she is."
"Uh-huh." His wife nodded again. "It don't matter as much here as it did down in Kentucky, but it matters."
"It does," Cincinnatus agreed. That an American Negro's color did matter was one more measure of growing up in a white-dominated world, which made it no less real. Had Calvin been inky black, Cincinnatus would have felt his daughter was marrying beneath herself. He didn't know whether Amanda, a modern girl, would have felt that way, but he would have. Were Calvin high yellow, on the other hand, he might have felt he was marrying beneath himself. Since they were both about the same shade of brown, the question didn't arise. "When do they want to get hitched?" Cincinnatus asked.
"Pretty soon." Elizabeth's eyes sparkled. "They're young folks, sweetheart. They can't hardly wait."
"Huh," Cincinnatus said. It wasn't as if his wife were wrong. Whether he was ready or not, the world kept right on going all around him.
T he first thing Irving Morrell said when he got into Philadelphia was, "This is a damned nuisance."