“I wouldn’t do that!” Achilles sounded uncommonly sincere. A moment later, he explained why: “Grace Chang is in a couple of my classes. I think she’s a cute girl.”
That made Cincinnatus and Elizabeth exchange glances. Even if Cincinnatus had felt such a thing about a white woman in Kentucky, he never would have said so. But the Drivers weren’t in Kentucky any more, and Grace wasn’t white. What were the rules for Negroes and Chinese? Were there any?
Of course, just because Achilles thought Grace was cute, that didn’t mean he was going to ask her to marry him, or even to ask her to go to a film with him. Just the same, a sensible father—a father who didn’t want his boy beaten up or lynched—started worrying about these things as far ahead of time as he could. By Elizabeth’s expression, she was worrying about them, too.
Before Cincinnatus could say anything about any of that, Achilles changed the subject: “Who are you going to vote for for president, Dad?”
“Whoever the Democrats run—looks like Coolidge now,” Cincinnatus answered. Elizabeth nodded agreement. “Got to keep an eye on them Confederates.” His wife nodded again.
Not Achilles. “If I could vote, I’d vote for the Socialists,” he declared. “They don’t care if you’re black or white or yellow or red. They just want to know what you can do.” And that declaration of political independence started a whole new argument, one that made Cincinnatus forget Grace Chang for the rest of the night.
“Pass the salt, Ma,” Edna Grimes said, and Nellie Jacobs did. Her daughter sprinkled it on a drumstick. “This is awful good fried chicken.” She took a big bite.
“Sure is, Mother Jacobs,” Merle Grimes agreed. He turned to Edna. “You all right, honey? Everything staying down?”
Edna nodded. “Couldn’t be better, Merle. Stomach isn’t bothering me at all this time around.” She yawned. “I still get sleepy a lot, though.” She was three months pregnant; the baby would be born somewhere around New Year’s Day, 1933. Suddenly, she pointed at her son. “For God’s sake, Armstrong, I’m not too sleepy to miss you stuffing half a pound of mashed potatoes into your face all at once. Show some manners, or you’ll find out you’re not too big to paddle. Ten years old, and you eat like that? Jesus!”
“Sorry, Ma,” Armstrong said, most indistinctly—maybe it hadn’t been half a pound of mashed potatoes, but it hadn’t missed by much. Across the table from him, Clara smirked. Aunt and nephew (which seemed silly, when only two years separated them) had never got along, not even when they were tiny.
Merle Grimes raised his glass of beer. “Here’s hoping Cal sweeps the Socialists out of Powel House,” he said. The Democrats wouldn’t hold their convention for another month—they’d scheduled it for the Fourth of July—but Governor Coolidge’s nomination now looked like a foregone conclusion.
“Amen,” Nellie said, and drank. So did Edna. So did Hal Jacobs. Armstrong Grimes raised his glass of milk in imitation of the grownups. Clara made a face at him.
“That will be enough of that, young lady,” Nellie said. Clara subsided. Armstrong laughed.
Edna said, “We’re all Democrats, and it doesn’t do us or Coolidge a bit of good. Hardly seems fair.”
“It isn’t fair,” her husband said. “This is what we get for living in Washington, D.C. We’re not a state, so we don’t get to vote. Most of the government’s been in Philadelphia for the past fifty years, but they can vote for president there and we still can’t. There ought to be a law.”
“It’s been this way forever.” Hal Jacobs paused to cough.
“You’ve lived here all your life,” Merle said. “You’re used to not voting. I grew up in Ohio. I like having my voice count for something. Losing my vote was the hardest thing about coming to live here.”
“A lot of places, Ma and me wouldn’t have had a vote up till a few years ago anyway.” Edna had to raise her voice, because Hal coughed again. “Summer cold?” she asked sympathetically.
He shrugged. “I do not know.” He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and coughed yet again. “I am having trouble shaking it, though, what ever it is.”
Merle lit up, too. He blew a smoke ring, which made Clara and Armstrong laugh. Despite what he was doing, he said, “Maybe you ought to cut back, Father Jacobs. I always cough worse if I smoke a lot while I’ve got a cold—I know that.”
Hal blew a smoke ring, too. With another shrug, he said, “I have been smoking since before the Second Mexican War—more than fifty years now. Cutting back is not that . . . easy.” The interruption was for more coughs yet.
Merle Grimes’ laugh was rueful. “Oh, I know. I always feel like I’ve been steamrollered if I don’t smoke my usual ration.”
“You’re cross as a bear, too,” Edna said.
“Blow another smoke ring, Pa,” Clara said. He needed two tries before he could; a cough in the middle ruined the first one.
“You have been coughing a lot lately,” Nellie said. “Maybe you ought to see a doctor, get yourself looked at.”
“What will he tell me, dear?” her husband replied, taking a last drag at the cigarette and then stubbing it out. “He will tell me I am not so young as I used to be. I already know this, thank you very much. I do not need to pay a doctor money to find out what I already know.”
Even at the start of the Great War—eighteen years ago now, Nellie realized with no small surprise; where had the time gone?—Hal’s hair and mustache had been gray, his face lined. He hadn’t seemed to change much in all the time since. Now, though, Nellie tried to see him as if she were just meeting him. He was close to seventy, and looked every year of it. His skin sagged on his face. He was a sallow color he shouldn’t have been.
She actually blinked, wondering if she was seeing things that weren’t there. But she wasn’t. She looked at her husband again. It wasn’t just that the changes had sneaked up gradually and she hadn’t noticed. She was sure it wasn’t. They’d come on lately. She didn’t care for any of the thoughts following from that.
“Hal,” she said, “I think maybe you really ought to see a doctor.”
“Nonsense,” he told her, and sounded very firm. He seldom talked back to her; in that (as in most ways, she had to admit), he made a most satisfactory husband. She decided not to push it, especially not at the supper table. Maybe it was just a summer cold, and he would get better.
But he didn’t. The cough went on. He lost more flesh, and he’d never had that much to spare. His appetite dwindled. A couple of times, Nellie started to tell him to go to a doctor’s office. Each time, she held back. She didn’t want to be a nag, especially where he’d dug in his heels.
Then, just before the Fourth of July, he had another coughing fit, and she saw red on his handkerchief. “That does it, Hal,” she declared, trying her best not to show how alarmed she was. “You get yourself to the doctor right this minute, do you hear me?”
If he’d argued, she would have dragged him by the heels. But he didn’t. He only sighed and nodded and said, “Yes, maybe you are right. All the pep has oozed right out of me the past few months, feels like.”
He made the appointment. Nellie made sure he kept it. When he got back, she said, “Well? What did he tell you?”
“Nothing yet, not really,” he answered. “He took an X ray of my chest. I have to go back in a couple of days, after he gets the photograph developed. He will not charge me anything extra for the second visit.”
“He’d better not, not when it’s his fault,” Nellie said, and then, anxiously, “Do you want me to come along with you, dear?” She didn’t use endearments with Hal very often; that she did now showed how worried she was.
“Thank you, Nellie. You are very sweet.” He was, as usual, polite—almost courtly—but he shook his head without hesitation. “I hope I am by now a grown man. Whatever the news may be, you can trust me to bring it home to you.”
“You know I trust you,” Nellie said. And that was true. She could rely on him absolutely. That was the rock on which they�
�d built the past going on fifteen years. Some people had passion at the bottom of their marriage. Nellie was pretty sure Edna and Merle did—and yet that marriage had almost come apart when Merle found out the soldier Edna had nearly married before him wore C.S. butternut, not U.S. green-gray. Trust mattered in any marriage.
What if Hal knew I killed Bill Reach? Nellie shoved that question down, as she always did. The only way two can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. That fit her and Hal’s former spy boss—her former client in her much, much younger days in the demimonde—to a T. Edna’s secret had got out, as Nellie had thought it would sooner or later. She would take her own to the grave with her.
Considering Hal’s cough, she wished she hadn’t thought of it like that.
When the day for the new doctor’s appointment came, he put a CLOSED sign in the window of the cobbler’s shop where he’d worked so long and walked on over: it was only three or four blocks to the office. Across the street in the coffeehouse where she’d worked so long (though not as long as Hal), Nellie watched him go. Her eyes kept coming back to the CLOSED sign. She didn’t like the look of it. And she kept missing customers’ orders, either not hearing what they wanted or bringing them the wrong thing even though she’d written down the right one.
Hal came back about an hour and a quarter after he’d left. He took down the CLOSED sign and went back to work. Maybe that meant everything was fine. Maybe it just meant he had a lot to do. Nellie didn’t think he would come across the street right away and tell her if the news was bad. He wasn’t like that. And she couldn’t go ask him right away, because she was busy herself. If I keep making mistakes like I’m doing, though, I’ll lose so many customers, I’ll never be this busy again, she thought.
At last, she had a moment when nobody was in the coffeehouse. She hung up her own CLOSED sign, waited for a break in the traffic, and crossed the street. The bell over Hal’s door jingled. He looked up from a new heel he was putting on. Spitting a mouthful of brads into the palm of his hand, he said, “Hello, Nellie.”
She couldn’t tell anything from his face or voice. She had to ask it: “What did the doctor say? What did the X ray say?”
“I have something unusual.” He laughed, as if proud of himself. “The doctor said he has only seen it a few times in all the years he has been practicing.”
“What is it?” Nellie didn’t scream at him. She never knew why or how she didn’t, but she didn’t. She waited, taut as a fiddle string.
“It is called carcinoma of the lungs.” Hal pronounced the unfamiliar word with care. He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one.
When he offered the pack to Nellie, she shook her head. “Not now. What the devil does that mean, anyway?”
“Well, it is like a—a growth in there,” he said.
“A growth? What kind of a growth? What can they do about it?” The questions flew quick and sharp, like machine-gun fire.
Hal sighed. “It is a cancer, Nellie. They can aim more X rays at it, the doctor said. That will slow it down for a while.”
“Slow it down . . . for a while,” Nellie echoed. Her husband nodded. She knew what that meant, knew what it had to mean, but grasped for a straw anyhow: “Can they stop it?”
“It is a cancer,” he repeated. “We can hope for a miracle, but. . . .” A shrug. “Who knows why cancers happen? Just bad luck, the doctor said.” He blew a smoke ring at the ceiling, as he had for Clara and Armstrong. Then, stubbing out the cigarette, he said, “I am not afraid of death, darling. I am afraid of dying, a little, because I do not think it will be easy, but I am not afraid of death. Death will bring me peace. The only thing I am sorry for is that it will take me away from you and Clara. I do not think many men have the last years of their lives be the happiest one, but I have. I feel like the luckiest man in the world, even now.”
“Oh, Hal.” Nellie hardly noticed the tears running down her face. “What are we going to do without you? What can we do without you? I love you. It took me a long time to figure that out—longer than it should have, you being the finest man I ever knew—but I do, and who knows? Maybe there’ll be a miracle with the X rays.” She grabbed for that straw again.
Hal’s smile was gentle. “Yes, maybe there will,” he said, meaning, not a chance. He brushed her lips with his. “With you and Clara, I have already had two miracles.” Nellie shivered. She wasn’t, couldn’t be, ready for this. But who ever could? Ready or not, it always came.
XV
“Here you are, George,” Sylvia Enos said, setting a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her son. When his fishing boat was in port, she liked to stuff him. She was convinced the cook on the Whitecap was trying to starve him. Logic told her that was silly, especially since he’d grown into a strapping man, almost six feet tall and broad as a bull through the shoulders. Logic, sometimes, had nothing to do with anything.
“Thanks, Ma.” He slathered on salt and pepper and started to eat. With his mouth full, he went on, “You know what? When I went out to the Banks, I took along a copy of I Sank Roger Kimball. That’s a good book—that’s a really good book. You and that writer fellow did a . . . heck of a job.” The brief pause there surely meant he was changing what he might have said on the deck of the Whitecap. Sylvia smiled. She’d raised him right. He didn’t cuss in front of her—well, not much, anyhow.
“Thank you,” she said now. “You ought to thank Ernie, too. He did the real work. And he’s a brick, too—if it hadn’t been for him, we’d’ve lost our money when the bank went under. He didn’t have to come back and warn me about that, but he did.”
She turned away so her son wouldn’t see the look on her face. She didn’t know what her expression was, exactly, but she did know it wasn’t one she wanted George, Jr., seeing. She would have gone to bed with Ernie. She’d wanted to go to bed with him. And a whole fat lot of good that did me, she thought. Just my damned luck, the first time I really want a man since George got killed, to fix on one who couldn’t do me any good—or himself, either, poor fellow.
George, Jr., got up and poured himself more coffee—and Sylvia, too, when she pushed her cup toward him. He added cream and sugar, sipped, and said, “There’s a lot of stuff in there I never knew before.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sylvia answered. “That was nine years ago now. You were still a boy then.”
“When you put me and Mary Jane on the train to Connecticut, did you really think you’d never see us again?”
“Yes, I thought that. It was the hardest thing about what I did,” Sylvia said. “But no one was going to make that man pay for what he did to the Ericsson at the end of the war, and he deserved to.”
“But you would have paid, too.”
“I didn’t even think about what would happen to me. When I found out he was running around loose, I didn’t think about much of anything.”
“That must have been . . . very strange,” George, Jr., said. “A couple of fellows on the boat were in the Army during the war—they got conscripted before they could join the Navy, or else they weren’t sailors yet: I don’t know which. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Sometimes they tell stories. They talk about how they were going up against Confederate machine guns and they didn’t think they’d come back alive. It must have been like that for you, too.”
“Maybe.” Sylvia wasn’t so sure. If a man charged a machine gun, he had a chance of living—maybe not much of a chance, but a chance. Once she’d shot Roger Kimball, she was in the hands of the law, and she didn’t think she had any chance of escape at all. She hadn’t counted on having Confederate politics come to her rescue.
Her son said, “You have a book signing this morning?”
“That’s right. Every time I sign one, that’s fourteen and three-quarter cents in my pocket,” Sylvia answered. She couldn’t have figured that out herself from the murky language of the book contract she’d signed; Ernie had explained the way things worked.
“Call it fifteen cents.” George, Jr.’s, face got a fara
way look. He’d always been good in school. Sylvia wished he would have liked it more, would have got his high-school diploma instead of going to work on T Wharf. Years too late to worry about that, though. He went on, “If you sign twenty of them, then, that’s three dollars. That’s not a bad day’s wage.”
“I don’t know if I’ll sign that many of them,” Sylvia said, “but they’re buying the book—or I hope they are—from here to San Diego. We’ll see what it does, that’s all. The reviews have been pretty good.” That was Ernie’s doing, of course; the actual words on paper were his. But the story’s mine, Sylvia reminded herself. He couldn’t have written it if not for me. My name deserves to be on the cover, too.
“Might be just as well they took a while getting it into print,” her son said. “With the Freedom Party coming up again in the CSA, people here are liable to be more interested in what happened to one of its bigwigs back then.”
Sylvia blinked. That was true, and she hadn’t thought of it herself. George, Jr., had a man’s shrewdness. Well, fair enough—he was a man; he’d be old enough to vote in November. Has it really been more than twenty-one years since he was born? Sylvia didn’t want to believe that, but couldn’t very well help it.
The bookstore, Burke’s, wasn’t far from Faneuil Hall. No line stretched around the block waiting for her when she arrived. They did have a sign in the window saying she’d be there. That was good. She’d signed at two or three stores that hadn’t let anyone know she’d be there. As a result, she hadn’t signed much.
She took her place at a table near the door. The table held a dozen copies of I Sank Roger Kimball and a neat hand-lettered sign: MEET THE AUTHOR. A man in a suit that had seen better days came up to her and asked, “Excuse me, ma’am, but where’s the bathroom?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t work here,” Sylvia said. She’d already seen people paid no attention to signs. The man muttered something and went away.
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