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Cinci
Were there jobs for a middle-aged black man with a bad leg and a none too good shoulder? There, for once, Cinci
Elizabeth came back with a drumstick for his father, a thigh for him, and two more glasses of beer. “You holler if you want anything else,” she said. She swung her hips as she walked off. In some ways, Cinci
“Sure is good,” his father said, taking a big bite out of the chicken leg and washing it down with a sip of Mr. Chang’s homebrew. “They always said folks in the USA had it good. I see they was right.”
All he had to do was enjoy it. He didn’t have to worry about where it came from. For the past couple of years, Elizabeth had done that. Cinci
He’d hoped the government would help him out. No such luck. To those people, he’d been in Kentucky on his own affairs, and never mind that the plebiscite and its aftermath were what had stuck him there.
Amanda came into the apartment. She’d found work at a fabric plant, and her paycheck was helping with the bills now, too. She smiled at Cinci
“How are you, sweetheart?” he asked her.
She made a face. “Tired. Long shift.”
Seneca laughed. “Welcome to the world, dear heart. You better git used to it, on account o’ it go
“I suppose.” Amanda sighed. “I wish I could have gone on to college. I’d be able to get a really good job with a college degree.”
“Lawd!” The mere idea startled Cinci
“Even if you had started college, hon, reckon you would’ve gone to work anyways with things like they were,” Cinci
“I suppose,” his daughter said again. She went into the kitchen to say hello to Elizabeth. When she came back, she had a glass of beer in her hand.
Cinci
“I knew you were going to say that!” Amanda stuck out her tongue at him. “I knew it! I started about a year ago. I needed a while to get used to it, but I like it now.”
Cinci
She looked relieved. “I was afraid you’d get all upset, say it wasn’t ladylike or something.”
“Not me.” He shook his head. “How could I do that when your mama’s been drinkin’ beer a whole lot longer’n you’ve been alive?”
“You could have,” Amanda said darkly. “Some people think what’s fine for older folks isn’t so fine for younger ones.”
So there, Cinci
“When I was jus’ a li’l pickani
“Oh, yeah.” Cinci
He still didn’t remember the motorcar hitting him. The doctors had told him he never would. They seemed to be right. From what they said, lots of folks didn’t remember what happened when they had a bad accident. If his were any worse, they would have planted him with a lily on his chest.
“Glad you’re home, Dad,” Amanda said. Dad. There it was again. Down in Covington, she would surely have called him Pa. She had called him Pa for years. When had she changed to this Yankee usage? Whenever it was, he hadn’t particularly noticed-till he went away and came back and got his nose rubbed in it.
“I’m glad I’m home, too,” Cinci
He thought about the Brass Monkey again, and about Lucullus Wood’s barbecue place, and about his father and mother’s house, now empty and, for all he knew, standing open to the wind and the rain. And he thought about the barbed wire and the guards around Covington’s colored quarter. Autumn was coming to Des Moines, but winter lived in his heart when he remembered that barbed wire.
Allegheny. Monongahela. Beautiful names for rivers. Even Ohio wasn’t a bad name for a river. When you put the three of them together, though, they added up to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh hadn’t been beautiful for a long time. The way things looked to Tom Colleton, it would never be beautiful again.
The damnyankees were not going to give up this town without a fight. They poured men into it to battle block by block, house by house. Crossing a street could be and often was worth a man’s life. Barrels came in and knocked houses flat and machine-gu
Somebody not far away started banging on a shell casing with a wrench or a hammer or whatever he had handy. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Tom said, and grabbed for his gas mask. The weather seemed to have broken; it wasn’t so hot and sticky as it had been. But the gas mask was never any fun. If U.S. artillery was throwing in nerve gas, he’d have to put on the full rubber suit. He’d be sweating rivers in that even in a blizzard.