Blood and iron

But he hadn't wanted her. So far as she knew, he hadn't wanted any woman. She didn't think that made him a sodomite. It was more as if he poured all his energy into rage, and had none left for desire.

All that flashed through her mind in a couple of heartbeats: before her brother said, "If I don't see him or hear him again, I won't be sorry."

"As long as the money stays good, you probably won't," A

Tom nodded again. "Featherston's closest to sound on the niggers, no doubt about that. It's still worth a white man's life, sometimes, to get any decent work out of field hands. They'd sooner loll around and sleep in the sun and collect white men's wages for doing it."

"It won't ever be the way it was before the war," A

"I want another chance at the United States one day," Tom said. "Featherston was sound about that, too, but he wanted it too soon."

"Yes," A

"They don't," her brother remarked with no small pride. "We wrecked it during the fight for Washington "

"It's almost rebuilt," A

"We'll manage," Tom said. "Even if our soldiers don't get that far-and I think they will-we'll have plenty of bombing aeroplanes to flatten it-and Philadelphia, and New York City, too, I hope."

"Yes," was all A

As Tom was doing more and more often since coming home from the war, he thought along with her. "You really ought to get married one of these days before too long, Sis," he said. "You don't want to end up an old maid, do you?"

"That depends," A

"Men aren't like that," her brother protested. "We've got a way of knowing good sense when we hear it."

A

"Why wouldn't she believe that about me?" Tom asked with such a tone of aggrieved i

"Because it'd be lying?" she suggested, but that only made her brother angry. Changing the subject seemed like a good idea. She did: "When are you going to get married, anyhow? You were bothering me about it, but turnabout's fair play."

Tom shrugged. "When I find a girl who suits me," he replied. "I'm not in any big hurry. It's different for a man, you know."

"I suppose so," A

"How you do go on, Sis!" Tom said, turning red. A

"God must be a man," she said. "If God were a woman, things would work a lot different, and you can take it to the bank."

"I don't know anything about that," Tom said. "If you really reckon it's fun and jolly to go up out of a trench when the machine guns are hammering, or to hope you've got your gas helmet good and snug when the chlorine shells start falling, or to sit in a dugout wondering whether the next eight-inch shell is going to cave it in, then you can go on about what a tough row women have to hoe."

"I've fought," A

"Never mind," Tom said. "For now, it's over. We don't need to quarrel about it today. Might as well leave that for the generals- all of 'em'll spend the next twenty, thirty years writing books about how they could have won the war single-handed if only the fellows on their flanks and over 'em hadn't been a pack of fools."

He walked over to a cupboard and took out a couple of glasses. Then he yanked the cork from a bottle of whiskey on the counter under the cupboard and poured out two hefty belts. He carried one of them back to A

"Drinking to being here and able to drink isn't the worst toast in the world." Tom said. He raised his glass. A

A

He didn't. He bowed instead, as a gentleman would have done before the war. Not so many gentlemen were left these days; machine guns and gas and artillery had put them under the ground by the thousands, along with their ruder countrymen by the tens of thousands.

She raised her glass. "Here's to freedom from the Freedom Party!"

"Well, you know I'll drink to that one." Her brother suited action to word.

Again, the glasses emptied fast. The whiskey hit-A

"No, I don't reckon he'll be back. I don't reckon he'll be back at all," she said, and that called for another drink.

Sam Carsten was using his off-duty time the way he usually did now: he sprawled in his bunk aboard the Remembrance, studying hard. His head felt filled to the bursting point. He had the notion that he could have built and outfitted any ship in the Navy and ordered its crew about. He didn't think the secretary of the navy knew as much as he did. God might have; he supposed he was willing to give God the benefit of the doubt.

George Moerlein, his bunkmate, came by to pull something out of his duffel bag. "Christ, Sam, don't you ever take a break?" he said. He had to repeat himself before Carsten knew he was there.