Blood and iron

Lucullus-Lucullus Wood, now that his father Apicius, like Cinci

Cinci

Lucullus made a sour face. "Why ain't I surprised?"

"On account of you know me," Cinci

"Only thing I smell when you come around here is trouble," Lucullus said. He never missed a beat in turning the carcass or basting it.

With a bitter laugh, Cinci

Lucullus Wood was harder to lean on than he had been. He was twenty now, or maybe a year past, and had confidence in himself as a man. Even so, a show of determination could still make him back down. He bit his lip, then said, "That room in back I reckon you know about."

"Yeah, I know about that room." Cinci

"By his lonesome, far as I know," Lucullus said. "Go on, go on. You barged in before. Barge on in again." Had his hands been free, he probably would have made washing motions with them to show that whatever happened next was not his fault. As things were, his expression got the message across.

Ignoring that expression, Cinci

"It's me." Cinci

With a grunt, Apicius pointed to a battered chair. The proprietor of the Kentucky Smoke House looked as if he'd eaten a great deal of his own barbecue. If that was how he'd got so fat, Cinci

"Don't want no fight," Cinci

Apicius Wood laughed in his face. "Ain't many niggers in this town as stubborn as I am, but you're sure as hell one of 'em. We don't see eye to eye. You know it, an' I know it, too. When we get together, we fight."

Cinci

"Out on a limb," Apicius answered accurately. "Well, say your say, so I know what we go

"What you think of the elections?" Cinci

"What the hell difference it make what I think or even if I think?" Apicius returned. "Ain't like I got to vote. Ain't like you got to vote, neither. Have to wait till after the revolution for that to happen, I reckon."

"Maybe not," Cinci

"Didn't lose a one here in Kentucky," Apicius said. "'Fore they let somebody here vote, they make damn sure they know who he vote for."

Cinci

"Not much," Apicius said. "Ain't much to work with. Don't hardly have no homegrown white Socialists, and every one that come over the Ohio, Bliss and the Kentucky State Police got their eye on him. Don't want them bastards puttin' their eye on me any worse than they done already."

"How hard did you try?" Cinci

But Apicius wasn't easy to override, either. Raising a pale-palmed hand, he went on, " 'Sides, them white Socialists ain't hardly Reds. They're nothin' but Pinks, you know what I mean? They jaw about the class struggle, but they ain't pickin' up guns and doin' anything much."

"What you talkin' about?'* Cinci

Apicius broke in again: "So what? Ain't much shootin' goin' on, not to speak of. When the niggers in the Confederate States rose up, that was a fight worth talkin' about. We'd have done the same thing here, certain sure, if the Yankees hadn't taken us out of the CSA by then. Did do some of it anyways."

That was true, and Cinci

"Not if their soldiers and their police work out whose side they really ought to be on," Apicius said. This time, he spoke quickly, to make sure Cinci

"All right, then," Cinci

"You ain't been enough of a Red your ownself to tell me what I ought to be doin', Cinci

"You don't fancy it, you don't got to listen," Cinci

"Ain't possible, not in Kentucky," Apicius said. "Some of the sons of bitches in the Legislature remember when they used to own us. You was born after manumission. You don't know how things was. When I was a boy, I was a slave. I don't know how to tell you how bad bein' a slave is."

"My pa was a slave," Cinci

"Yeah, and you know what states they are," Apicius said with a toss of the head. "They're states that ain't got more than about a dozen niggers, maybe two dozen tops, so havin' 'em vote don't matter one way or the other. Kentucky ain't like that. We got to vote here, we'd have us some say. What that means is, we ain't never gettin' the vote here. White folks won't let it happen."

That held an unpleasant ring of truth. Cinci

"Damned if I know what good you are, 'cept to drive me crazy," Apicius said. "What I'm good for is, I make some pretty good barbecue."

Cinci

"I go up on the roof at city hall, I don't need to jump off to know I land in the street," Apicius said. "What you want I should do, hand Luther Bliss a petition to ask him to tell the gov'nor to give us the vote? Not likely!" That not likely didn't refer to the orders the chief of the Kentucky secret police might give the governor. But Apicius could never sign such a petition, being unable to read or write.

"This here is one of the United States now," Cinci