The Grapple

Cinci

Cinci

Great flocks of metallically twittering starlings darkened the sky as they rose when Cinci

Back when Cinci

By the same token, he remembered starlings arriving in the area not long after the war ended. Some crazy Englishman brought them to the USA in the 1890s, and they’d moved west ever since. He wondered if they filled up some of the hole in the scheme of things that was left when passenger pigeons disappeared.

And then he had more urgent things to wonder about, like whether he’d live long enough to deliver the shells he was carrying in the back of his truck. The Confederates on the far side of the river went right on lobbing their own shells into the ruins of Cinci

Fountains of upflung dirt and smoke rose from not nearly far enough away. Cinci

The trucks in the convoy stayed well separated from one another. If a shell blew one of them to hell and gone, even one carrying munitions, the blast wouldn’t take out the trucks in front of and behind it. Everybody hoped it wouldn’t, anyhow.

He pulled to a stop in front of the city jail. A lot more than one shell had fallen on that squat, ugly building. The Confederates must have made a stand there. That made sense-a place designed to keep unfriendly people in would also be pretty good at keeping unfriendly people out.

When Cinci

“You ain’t so far wrong,” Cinci

“Suits me,” Waldo said. “The more jails they blow up, the happier I am. I’ve done stretches in too goddamn many of ’em. Never any big shit, but I like to drink, and when I drink I like to fight, and so…” His face showed that he’d caught a few lefts and rights, or maybe more than a few, as well as dishing them out. He sounded proud of his escapades. A moment later, in fact, he went on, “I wonder if they got any saloons open in what’s left of this town.”

“You sure you want to find out?” Cinci

Waldo thought it over. He nodded. “Makes sense. Thanks.” If he’d left it there, everything would have been fine. But then he added, “You’re pretty goddamn smart for a nigger, you know?”

The worst part was, he meant it for a compliment. “Thanks a bunch,” Cinci

A few more 105s came whistling in, but none of them burst close to where swarms of young soldiers unloaded the trucks. Watching them, Cinci

A second lieutenant who looked even younger than the soldiers doing pack-mule duty wandered through the unloading zone with a clipboard in his hands. It made him seem official, so official that Cinci

Then the young lieutenant talked to an officer who came down with the truck convoy. That made Cinci

“Driver!” the second lieutenant yelled, plainly reading the name from his clipboard. “Cinci

Alarm sleeted through Cinci

“My superiors need to talk with you,” the baby-faced officer said. He wore green-and-white arm of service colors on his collar, a combination Cinci

That made him feel better, not worse. He’d got out of Covington-and got out of its colored district-only a little while before. If the U.S. Army was looking for ways to use Covington’s Negroes, he had some ideas. He also had the names of people they could get in touch with-and names of people to stay away from at all costs.

Sentries in green-gray uniforms stood in front of what used to be an office building. The young lieutenant needed to exchange password and countersign with them before they let him in. Nobody trusted anybody these days. Cinci

A white-haired fellow in civilian clothes was talking with a lieutenant colonel and a major when Cinci

When Kentucky belonged to the USA between the wars, Luther Bliss headed the Kentucky State Police, an outfit that hunted Confederate diehards and black radicals with equal enthusiasm. Cinci

He nodded to Cinci

Cinci