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"Me? I don't know much. I have not been there, except in the Army," Thorstein said, confirming Cinci
Cinci
"How could anyone quarrel with it?" Olaf Thorstein sounded genuinely bewildered. "Is it not as plain as the nose on a man's face? And yet how could the people in the Confederate States have voted for the man if they saw it? They must not have seen it. This I do not understand."
"Sometimes folk don't want to see," Cinci
"But why would anyone blind himself on purpose?" Thorstein asked, seeming more bewildered still.
Cinci
"Uh- huh." Olaf Thorstein chewed on that. At last, he asked, "And what would a Freedom Party man say about what you just said?"
"Oh, that one's easy." Cinci
Again, Thorstein thought before he spoke. "I have never heard a Negro talk so freely of these things," he said, and then shrugged. "How many Negroes are there in Des Moines for me to talk to?"
"Not many. We're thin on the ground here. We're thin on the ground all over the USA," Cinci
"I hope I have not delayed you too much," the furniture-store owner said. "I know you need as much work as you can get. Who does not, the way things are these days?"
"It's all right, Mr. Thorstein. Don't you worry about it none," Cinci
He was less glad when he got back to the railroad yard just in time to see another driver go off with a choice load that might have been his had he returned five minutes earlier. But he got a load for himself half an hour after that, when a train full of ca
He was tired but happy-he'd made good money that day-when he got back to his apartment building and parked the truck in front of it. Joey Chang, the Chinaman who lived upstairs, was checking his mailbox when Cinci
"Hello," Chang answered, his English flavored with an accent unlike any other Cinci
"Sure," Cinci
"Your son Achilles ask my daughter Grace to go to the cinema with him," Chang replied. "What you think of this?"
" Did he?" Cinci
"Don't know what to think," Chang said, which struck Cinci
Cinci
"She is modern. She wants to be modern." Mr. Chang made it sound like a curse. "She says, what difference it make? But it makes a difference, oh yes."
"Sure does," Cinci
"Her, too," Chang said morosely. "The more I do not like, the more she does. Modern." He made the word sound even worse than he had before. Now he screwed up his face. "Yes, maybe we do this. I talk to my wife, see what she say." By his tone, whatever Mrs. Chang decided would prevail.
"Fair enough," Cinci
His wife wasn't home yet. Neither was his son. After graduating from high school, Achilles was doing odd jobs and looking-along with so many others-for something more permanent. He got home before Elizabeth did, and set two dollars on the kitchen table, where Amanda sat doing homework. He was a good kid; he brought his pay home every day he worked.
As casually as Cinci
Achilles glared defiance. "That's right. What about it? I think some of the money I make ought to be mine to have some fun with. Don't you?"
Having fun with the money wasn't the point. Having fun with Grace Chang was. But all Cinci
Set for a fight, Achilles didn't seem to know what to do when he didn't get one. "Oh," he said, and left his mouth hanging open. After a long moment, he added, "I figured you'd have a fit." Another pause, even longer. "Maybe I was wrong."
"Maybe you was," Cinci
T hanksgiving was supposed to be one of the happiest days of the year. When Chester Martin and Rita went to his parents' apartment for di
"Turkey," he said dreamily as he and Rita got off the trolley and walked toward the block of flats where he'd lived so long. The weather was su