American Front

Then, all at once, he sobered. Maybe the state trooper wasn't so crazy after all. If war came, no riverboats would come down the Ohio from the United States or up it from the Mississippi and the heart of the Confederacy. Both sides had guns up and down the river trained at each other. Without that trade, what would the dockworkers do? For that matter, what would Cinci

He looked toward the Ohio himself. One thing he wouldn't do, he figured, was try to run off to the United States, no matter how the trooper worried about that. In the Confederacy, there were more Negroes around than whites wanted (except when dirty work needed doing), so the whites gave them a hard time. In the United States, which had only a relative handful of Negroes, the whites didn't want any more-so they gave them a hard rime.

"Shit, even them big-nosed Jews got it better up there than we-uns do," Cinci

Wasn't any doubt he'd spent too long daydreaming in the truck, either. A big-bellied white man in overalls and a slouch hat came out of the warehouse office and shouted, "That you out there, Cinci

"Sorry, Mr. Goebel," Cinci

"Sorry, he says." Goebel mournfully shook his head. He pointed to a hand truck. "Come on, get those typewriters loaded. Last things I got in this warehouse." He sighed. "Liable to be the last Yankee goods we see for a long time. I ain't old enough to remember the War of Secession, but the Second Mexican War, that was just a little feller. This one here, it's liable to be bad."

Cinci

"If I was you, I'd get out of town," Goebel said. "My cousin Morton, he called me from Lexington yesterday and said, Clem, he said, Clem, you shake your fa

White folks take so much for granted, Cinci

The typewriters were heavy. The stout crates in which they came just added to the weight. Cinci

Clem Goebel had stood around without lifting a finger to help: he took it for granted that that sort of labor was nigger work. But he wasn't the worst white man around, either. When Cinci

"Thank you, sir. That's right kind," Cinci

"Go on, keep it," the warehouseman said. Cinci

A policeman in gray uniform and one of the tall British-style hats that always reminded Cinci

People-white people-cheered and waved as the cavalry went by. Some of them waved Maltese-cross battle flags like the one that flapped at the head of the squadron, others Stars and Bars like the sixteen-star ba

After the last horse had clopped past, the Covington policeman, reveling in his small authority, graciously allowed north-south traffic to flow once more. Cinci

He'd just pulled up in front of Tom Ke

"What are you doing lollygagging around like that, goddamn it?" Ke

"No, sir," said Cinci

"Didn't even spy it," Ke

"Try not to, sir," Cinci

"That's a fact," Ke

Cinci

Seeing he wasn't going to get anything more than that shrug, Ke