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But just because Wilf hadn't talked didn't mean he wouldn't talk. When you were worried about your life, you couldn't be too careful, could you? Mary suddenly understood why robbers often shot witnesses. Dead men told no tales. It sounded like something straight out of a bad film-which didn't mean it wasn't true.

I have to think about this. Mary had been thinking about it for a while. Wilf Rokeby had been doing what the Yanks told him ever since they occupied Rosenfeld in 1914. That was a long time by now. He'd never shown any signs he was unhappy about cooperating with U.S. authorities. All he'd cared about was ru

That didn't mean he would go to the occupying authorities. But it didn't mean he wouldn't, either. Can I take the chance? Do I dare take the chance? The sky hadn't fallen. It hadn't, but it could.

Just then, the cat yowled and hissed. Alec yelled and started to cry. Mary stopped worrying about Wilf Rokeby. She ran into the front room to see what had happened. The cat crouched under the coffee table, eyes blazing. Alec clutched a scratched arm. He also clutched a small tuft of what looked like cat fur. Cause and effect weren't hard to figure out.

"Don't pull the kitty's tail," Mary said. "If you do, you can't blame him for scratching."

"I didn't," Alec said, but his heart wasn't in it.

Mary whacked him on the backside, not too hard. "Don't tell fibs, either."

He looked amazed. She could read his thoughts. How can she tell I'm lying? She almost laughed out loud. Alec hadn't had much practice yet.

There was a saloon not far from Cinci

The inside of the Brass Monkey was dim, but not cool. A couple of ceiling fans spun lazily, as if to show they were doing their best. Next to one of them hung a strip of flypaper black with flies in every stage of desiccation. Sawdust lay in drifts on the floor. The place smelled of beer and cigars and stale piss.

"What can I get for you?" the barkeep asked when Cinci

"Bottle of beer," Cinci

"Here you go." The barkeep took the beer out of the icebox behind him.

"Thank you kindly." Cinci

"Oh, yeah. I know." The barkeep fiddled with the white shirt and black bow tie that marked him for what he was. "Wish this here was looser. Feels like I'm cookin' in my own juice."

"I believe it." Cinci

A man about his own age sat on a stool at the far end of the bar. He had a whiskey in front of him. He knocked it back, his face working, and signaled to the bartender for another. "You sure, Menander?" the barkeep asked. "Somebody go

"Don't you worry about me none," Menander answered. "Just give me the damn whiskey, an' I'll give you the money. That's how it goes, ain't it?"

"Yeah. That's how it goes." The bartender sighed and gave him what he wanted. He gulped down the whiskey and set another quarter on the bar. The barkeep took it, but he sighed again. "Ain't like you to get shit-faced like this. You should oughta leave it to them what does."

"Ain't I earned the right?" Menander came back. "Do Jesus, ain't I earned the goddamn right?"

"Damfino." The bartender ran his rag along the countertop before setting another whiskey there. "What happen, make you wa

"Didn't they go an' haul my brother off to one o' them goddamn camps?" Menander said. "Ain't I never go

That made Cinci

"Do?" The other man stared blearily back at him. "He didn't do nothin'. What you need to do? Don't you just got to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Don't the ofays jus' got to reckon, We needs us another nigger? Ain't that how it goes?" Now he waved to the barkeep for support.

The bartender said, "I done heard all kinds o' things."

"I believe that," Cinci

He got a thin smile for a reward. "Yeah, a barkeep, he hear all kinds o' things," the bartender said. "But none o' what I hear tell about them camp places is good. You go in, you don't come out no more-not breathin', anyways. Menander, he ain't wrong about that there."

Slowly, Cinci

Menander put his head down on the bar and started to weep. Did that mean his brother had gone to Louisiana? Or did it only mean he'd drunk himself maudlin? Cinci

"We ought to do somethin' about that," he said instead.

He wasn't even sure Menander heard him. The barkeep did. He asked, "What you got in mind?"

Cinci

He started to tell the bartender all those things. He started to, but the words never passed his lips. Instead, after a thoughtful pull at his beer, he answered, "Well, now, I don't rightly know. We can't do a whole hell of a lot, don't look like to me."

The bartender polished the bar some more with his rag. It wasn't especially clean. If there was any dirt on the bar, he was just spreading it around, not getting rid of it. His face was expressionless, but barkeeps weren't supposed to show much of what they were thinking. Cinci

He'd never set eyes on the man behind the bar before coming back to Covington. Oh, maybe he had, but the man would have been a boy when the Drivers moved to Iowa. He didn't know him. That was what counted. That… and he could see how useful Confederate authorities would find it to have a black bartender letting them know which Negroes were getting uppity, and how.