Breakthroughs

Blackford was silent even longer than Roosevelt had been when she put Wiggins’ proposal to him. She heard him sigh, start to speak, and then stop. At last, he said, “Much as I regret admitting it, I would advise you to keep Mr.-Wiggins’, was it?-visit to yourself. You might embarrass Teddy if you thunder what he did from the rooftops. You might, I say, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it. You’re too much likelier to embarrass us instead.”

Flora made automatic protest: “This is a capitalists’ war. If we can keep the workers and farmers of one country from slaughtering those of another in the sacred name of profit, how can we hold back?”

“Because the workers and farmers of the United States will be perfectly happy to slaughter those of the Confederacy and Canada as long as they win in the end.” Was Blackford mournful or cynical or both at once? Flora couldn’t tell. The congressman from Dakota went on, “A year ago, I would have told you to take it to the papers as fast as you could. A year ago, the war was going nowhere.”

“And because it was going nowhere, the Confederate States wouldn’t have come to anyone in Congress looking for a way out,” Flora said.

“Exactly.” Blackford paused for a moment, perhaps to nod. “But if you go to the papers now, with the war on the edge of being won, Roosevelt will crucify us and say we’re jogging his elbow-and I’m afraid people will believe him.”

“But-” Flora didn’t go on right away, either. She sighed instead; it seemed to be her turn. Then she said, “All right, Hosea; thank you. You may be right.” Only then did she realize she’d called him by his first name.

“I am right. I wish I weren’t, but I am,” he said, and changed the subject: “How is your brother doing?”

“He’s not going to die,” Flora answered. “He’s out of the woods, as far as that goes. He’s only going to be crippled for life, in this war that Teddy Roosevelt has brought to the edge of being won, this war where we don’t dare jog his elbow, this great, grand, glorious, triumphant war.” She hung up the telephone and, very quietly, began to cry.

TheGreatWar: Breakthroughs

When Luther Bliss unhappily released him from the Covington, Kentucky, city hall, Cinci

One thing he had seen since the USA drove the CSA from Kentucky: bureaucrats were far more numerous and far more thorough than their C.S. counterparts. That had a great deal to do with why he was standing in front of the Covington city hall in the middle of a long line of Negroes. He and they laughed and gossiped as the line moved forward. Why not? They were friends and neighbors; the new government of Kentucky had been summoning Covington’s Negroes to the city hall a few square blocks at a time.

“I tell you,” somebody behind him said, “this here go

“Ain’t doin’ nothin’ with us the white folks ain’t done to themselves,” somebody else answered.

“And they reckon they’s free,” the first speaker said, and shook his head.

“They ain’t free,” Cinci

Nobody answered, not straight out. A couple of people let their eyes flick toward a white policeman who was standing not far away. Cinci

As the line snaked forward, the man right behind Cinci

“Ain’t against the law, not like it used to be,” Cinci

Once Cinci

“What’s your name, boy?” a clerk snapped when he got to the head of the line.

“Cinci

Not soft enough. “Cinci-what?” the clerk demanded, even though Cinci

“Yes, suh, I can,” Cinci

“Family?” the clerk asked.

“My wife Elizabeth, my son Achilles,” Cinci

As if taking some small revenge for that, the clerk shook his head. “Not enough, boy. You got any other kin in town, any other kin at all, who haven’t been registered yet? Names and addresses both, mind you-you reckon I’m go

“My pa’s called Seneca. My mother’s name is Livia.” Cinci

“ Now we’re gettin’ somewhere,” the clerk said in sour satisfaction. He gnawed the pen some more, scribbled on the form in front of him, and went on, “All right, boy, what surname are you choosing for this lot of people here?”

Having hashed that out with his family ahead of time, Cinci

“Driver,” the clerk repeated. He seemed to weigh it on some mental scales, which finally came down on the side of approval. “Well, that’s not too bad. Anybody would’ve asked me, I’d’ve told him letting niggers own surnames was a pack of damnfoolishness, but nobody asked me. Even niggers have surnames in the USA, and we’re in the USA, so…” He shrugged, as if to show he wasn’t responsible for the policy he had to carry out.

“Makes it easier to keep tabs on us,” Cinci

“Did fine with passbooks for a hell of a long time,” the clerk said, but he brightened, if only fractionally. “Maybe you’re right.” He wrote some more, reading as he wrote. “Cinci

When you got right down to it, that was a pretty large thought. “You don’t mind me sayin’ so, I’d sooner carry around a name than a passbook.”

The clerk looked at Cinci

“Yes, suh,” Cinci