"Your pa's right," Elizabeth said. "Things ain't easy." Her accent was thicker than her husband's, but Achilles held his peace. She went on, "I ain't been gettin' so much in the way of housekeeper's work lately, neither. Dunno what we gwine do. Like your pa say, dunno what we kin do."
"Government talks about them makework jobs for folks who can't get nothin' else," Cincinnatus said. Achilles stirred not once but a couple of times, but had the sense to keep his mouth shut. Maybe he does want to live to grow up, Cincinnatus thought. Aloud, he went on, "Trouble is, I don't want one o' them. All I want is to go on doin' what I been doin', go on doin' that and make a living at it."
Elizabeth nodded. "I know," she said. She didn't say she wanted to go on cleaning other people's houses, and Cincinnatus knew she didn't. What she did say made a painful amount of sense: "We got to get the money from somewheres, though."
"I know," Cincinnatus said glumly.
"I could look for something," Achilles said. "Plenty of people hire kids nowadays, because they can pay 'em less than grownups."
He was, of course, dead right. Cincinnatus shook his head even so. "Ain't gonna let you do that unless things get a lot worse'n they are now. First thing is, you wouldn't bring in much money, like you say. And second thing is, I want you to get all the education you can. Down the line, that'll do you more good than anything else I can think of. We ain't in the Confederate States no more. No law against you goin' out and gettin' any kind o' work you're smart enough to do. There's even colored lawyers and doctors in the USA."
So there were-a handful of each. Their clients were also colored, almost exclusively. Cincinnatus didn't dwell on that. He wanted his son ambitious, as he was. He'd done as well as he could himself to have the hauling business. Maybe, one of these days, Achilles would take over for him. But maybe, once the boy became a man, he would want something more-want it and be able to get it. So Cincinnatus hoped, anyway.
Amanda said, "Wish you was-wish you were -home more, Pa." She corrected herself before her older brother could do it for her.
"I wish I was, too, sweetheart," Cincinnatus answered. After getting out of jail, he'd had to get to know his little girl all over again. By the time he came home, she'd nearly forgotten him. And he'd found there was a great deal to like in her. She had an even sweeter nature than Elizabeth's, which was saying a lot. But wishes and the real world had only so much to do with each other. "I don't work, we don't eat. Simple as that. Wish it wasn't, but it is."
It had always been as simple as that. Now, though, a new and dreadful simplicity threatened the old: even if he worked as hard as he could, as hard as was humanly possible, they still might not eat. That terrified him.
Snow was falling when he got up the next morning. He fired up the truck and headed for the railroad yard even so. He intended to get there early. Some truckers would let snow make them late. They were the ones who'd get what was left after the more enterprising men won the good assignments-or maybe the latecomers would end up with nothing at all.
When Cincinnatus saw how few trains had come into the yard, he thanked heaven he'd come as fast as he could. He got a choice load, too: he filled the back of the old Ford with canned fish from Boston-the mackerel on the cans looked absurdly cheerful-and set out to deliver it to the several grocery stores run by a fellow named Claude Simmons.
Some of the grocery boys who helped him unload the fish were no older than Achilles. One or two of them looked younger than his son. Down in the CSA, even white kids would have pitched a fit about working alongside a colored man. Nobody here complained. The boys seemed as grateful to have work as Cincinnatus was himself.
At one of the stores, Simmons himself signed off on the paperwork. He nodded to Cincinnatus. "I've seen you delivering things here more than once, haven't I?" he asked.
"That's right, suh," Cincinnatus answered.
"You drive for yourself?"
"Yes, suh."
The grocery man studied him. "You do that just 'cause it's the way things worked out, or are you one of those people who can't stand taking orders from anybody? People like that, they start going crazy if they have to let somebody else tell 'em what to do, so they end up with a job where they work for themselves-either that or they really do go nuts. I've seen that happen a time or two."
With a shrug, Cincinnatus answered, "I don't reckon I'm like that. You ask somebody else, he might tell you different. But I think I just want to make a living, do the best I can for my family."
"You want a job with me?" Simmons asked. "Delivery driver, twenty-two fifty a week. You won't get rich, but it's steady." He pointed to the clipboard in Cincinnatus' hand. "What you're doing there, you're liable to starve on."
That held the unpleasant ring of truth. Even so, Cincinnatus didn't need to think very long before he shook his head. "Thank you kindly, suh, but I got to tell you no."
"Do you?" Simmons scowled. Cincinnatus got the idea not many people-and especially not somebody like a colored truck driver-told him no. He went on, "You won't tell me you clear twenty-two fifty a whole lot of weeks these days."
"No, suh." Cincinnatus admitted what he could hardly deny. "But what happens if I take the job with you, and things get worse like they look like they're doin' and then you let me go? I'd've been drivin' one o' your trucks, right?-not my own. Probably sell that. Then I'd really have to start at the bottom. I done that before. Don't want to have to try and do it again."
"Have it your way," the grocery man said with a shrug. "Don't expect me to ask you twice, that's all."
"I don't, suh. Didn't expect you to ask me once. Right decent of you to do it."
Suddenly, Simmons seemed less a boss and more a worried human being: "Do you really think it'll get that much worse? How could it?"
"How? Dunno how, Mr. Simmons," Cincinnatus answered. "But you ever know times that weren't so bad, they couldn't get worse?"
That seemed to strike home. "Go on, get out of here," Claude Simmons said, his tone suddenly harsh. "Here's hoping you're wrong, but"-he lowered his voice-"I'm afraid you're liable to be right."
Over supper that night, Cincinnatus asked Elizabeth, "Did I do the right thing? Twenty-two fifty steady money, that ain't bad. Ain't great, but it ain't bad."
"You done just right." His wife spoke with great authority. "Couple-three months, he forget why he took you on and he let you go. What kind of mess we in then? Way things is, leastways you know what you got to do to git by."
"I thought the same thing-the very same thing," Cincinnatus said. "We're in trouble now, but we'd be ruined if I took that job and I lost it. We'll go on the best way we know how, that's all."
"Can't get worse'n what it was when you was in jail," Elizabeth said.
"Hope to God it can't," Cincinnatus answered. He didn't know exactly how bad it had been for his family. But when he laughed, he didn't feel mirthful. "When I was in jail, I didn't have to worry none about where my next meal was comin' from. I knew I was gonna get fed. Wouldn't be much, an' it wouldn't be good, but I was gonna get fed."
He would have got beaten, too, but he didn't talk about that. It wasn't anything his family needed to know, and it wasn't relevant to the discussion. Elizabeth said, "One way or another, the Lord provide for us."
"That's right," Cincinnatus said. Clarence Darrow might not have believed in God, but he did. The confidence that God was keeping an eye on him even while he went through the worst of times in jail was hard to come by, but it had proved true. So he remained convinced, at any rate.