Blood and iron

"You won't get any wrong on your test, then, will you?" Cinci

"Hardly ever do," his son replied. Had that not been the truth, Cinci

"Supper," Elizabeth a

"Smells good," Cinci

"That's right," Elizabeth said. "Can't hardly get no other kind round these parts. Even black folks don't hardly seem to know about collard greens, an' they're better'n turnip greens any day of the week." She paused, looked down at her swollen belly, and laughed. "Babyjustkickme."

"Pretty soon, the baby will be kicking Achilles," Cinci

Elizabeth returned to the earlier subject: "Wish I had me a mess o' collard greens. You'd reckon everybody in the whole world'd know about collard greens, but it ain't so."

"Turnip greens are fine," Cinci

Where simple praise hadn't, that reached her. Slowly, she nodded. The baby must have chosen that moment to kick again, because she smiled and put both hands on her belly. "Reckon you may be right."

"Reckon I am," Cinci

"This here's a better place," Elizabeth said quietly. Cinci

When A

"I didn't invite you up here for that," A

"Well, why did you ask me up, then?" he said: a serious question, seriously meant. Whatever else hadn't always been smooth with them, their lovemaking was something special. It always had been, ever since he'd seduced her the first night they'd met, on a train rolling down to New Orleans when the war was young.

"Why?" she echoed. "To say good-bye, that's why. I owe you that much, I think."

"Good-bye?" He stared at her, hardly believing he'd heard the word. "Jesus! What did I do to deserve that?"

Now her eyes softened to sadness. "You still belong to the Freedom Party. You still believe in the Freedom Party," she said, her voice sad, too, sad but firm, like that of a judge passing sentence on a likable rogue.

"Of course I do," Kimball answered. "When I join something, I don't quit when the going gets rough. The damnyankees found out about that." He'd never thought he would be grateful to Tom Brearley for breaking the news of the Ericsson^ but he was. Now he could talk about it. "And I still say Jake Featherston's the only man who can get this country going again."

"We are going again." A

As she reached inside the handbag, he asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'll show you." She pulled out a banknote and held it up. "Do you see that?" After Kimball nodded, she drove the point home: "Take a good look at it. It's a one-dollar banknote. You haven't seen anything just like it since just after the war ended, not till this past fall you haven't. And it's still worth a real dollar, too "

"That's not all we need, dammit, not even close," Kimball said furiously. "We're naked to whatever the United States want to do to us." He wished A

A

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs," Kimball said. "I've broken plenty of eggs myself-and you've set up plenty to be broken." That got home. A

"You are a bastard," A

Roger Kimball loosed another loud, jeering laugh. "Takes one to know one, I reckon. That's likely the only reason we've put up with each other as long as we have-well, that and the screwing, anyway."

He'd hoped to anger her, but found he'd failed. She also laughed, and seemed to gain strength from it. "Yes, that and the screwing," she said. "I'll miss you. I'll be damned if I won't. But I won't miss the Freedom Party. Since you're staying in, I have to cut you loose. Grady Calkins showed me once and for all there's no controlling those people."

"I got into it thinking Jake Featherston needed controlling, too," Kimball said. "He doesn't. But the Yankees want to control him, and that's a fact."

"Featherston's clever," A

Kimball supposed it was natural she thought that way. She'd spent her whole life till the Red uprising controlling a plantation, controlling money, controlling everyone around her. Her ancestors had done the same thing for a hundred years before her time. She was, in fact, one of the aristocrats against whom Jake Featherston had campaigned.

With a shrug, Kimball said, "Well, yeah, a bigger egg than Jake wanted got busted, but you can't blame the whole Freedom Party for Calkins."

"Why can't I? Everyone else does," A

Uneasily, Kimball remembered keeping a stalwart in white and butternut from taking a shot at Ainsworth Layne when the Radical Liberal candidate spoke in Hampton Park. Even so, he said, "You're making-the whole country's making-it out to be bigger than it is. Sure, we've lost some folks for now on account of what happened down in Birmingham, but they'll be back."

A