American Front

"Oh, I worked it out, Mr. Ke

He glanced over to Elizabeth. Her belly hadn't started to swell, certainly not to the point where anyone could notice it when she was wearing clothes. He was acutely aware of her pregnancy all the same. It made him less willing to take chances than he would have been a few months before, and far less willing to take chances than he would have been before he got married.

And so he said, "What did you do, Mr. Ke

"I don't want to tell you," Ke

That made a certain amount of sense. Most times, Cinci

"You won't buy a pig in a poke, not even from me," Ke

He meant guns. He had to mean guns, and maybe explosives, too. Under U.S. military law, the penalty, for that kind of thing was death. Soldiers had nailed up placards saying as much, all over Covington. Warnings appeared in the newspapers about twice a week. And if you harboured a gun ru

"You don't make it easy, Mr. Ke

He had just reached that conclusion when Elizabeth said, "Here, come on with me, Mistuh Ke

That relieved Cinci

Elizabeth opened the door to the pantry by the stove. It was full of sacks of potatoes and beans and black-eyed peas. Cinci

When Elizabeth started taking out the sacks, he quickly moved her aside and did it himself. That wasn't something he wanted his wife doing, not when she was in a family way. The sacks took up a surprising lot of room, all spread out on the kitchen floor.

Once he had them all out, he saw that several boards at the back of the pantry were rotten at the bottom. He hadn't noticed that before, but Elizabeth had. He stepped into the little cramped space and pulled at the boards. They came out with squeaks and squeals of nails, revealing a black opening behind them.

"God bless you both," Tom Ke

When she was done, she and Cinci

"All right." By her tone, Elizabeth was thinking the same thing. If they didn't sleep like the dead tonight, they'd shamble like the living dead tomorrow. Nothing to be done about that, not now.

After he'd blown out the lamp in the bedroom, Cinci

"I'll take care of that in the morning," Elizabeth answered around an enormous yawn. Cinci

Sure enough, the wham! wham! wham! in the middle of the night woke him out of deep, sound slumber. At first, groggy and confused, he thought it was hail pounding on the roof. Then he realized that, while it certainly was pounding, it was all coming from one direction: that of the front door.

"Soldiers," he whispered to Elizabeth. She nodded. He felt the motion rather than seeing it. Wham! Wham! Wham! He groped for a match, found the box, struck a light, and lighted the lamp he'd blown out. Carrying it, he went out and opened the front door.

An electric torch blazed into his face, blinding him. "You just saved your door, nigger," a Northern voice said. "We were go

"What you want?" Cinci

The Yankee officer, hard to see past that powerful torch, said, "You know a white man name of Tom Ke

"Yes, suh," Cinci

"You seen him any time lately?" the officer demanded.

Cinci

"Wish to Jesus he had," the officer said, so feelingly that Cinci

In they came. Cinci