The Victorious opposition

They're go

He wished his mother were in better shape than she was. He could have sent his father and her train fare, and they would have ended up in Des Moines not long afterwards. As things were, with her sinking ever deeper into her second childhood, he knew he would have to go down to Covington to help his father bring her out. Elizabeth wouldn't like it-he didn't like it himself-but he saw no way around it.

He pulled into the railroad yard at a quarter to seven, yawning despite all the coffee. When he jumped out of his trunk and hurried over to see what cargoes he could pick up, first one railroad dick and then another waved to him. He was accepted here. He belonged. He never remembered In-longing in Covington-certainly not in any part of it where he bumped up against white men. The first conductor whose train he approached greeted him with, "Hey, Cinci

"Not bad, Jack," he answered. He never would have called a white man in Covington by his first name. "What you got?"

But Jack felt like gabbing. "Four more years of Smith," he said. "I'm happy. My son got conscripted not long ago, and I don't want him getting shot at. I saw too goddamn much of that myself twenty-five years ago."

That gave Cinci

By the way Jack blinked, he'd no more thought about that than Cinci

Cinci

"Furniture," Jack said, and Cinci

He was, too. Plenty of things held back a colored man: fewer in the USA than in the CSA, but still plenty. Adding laziness on top of everything else would only have made matters worse. Cinci

His back ached when he pulled up to the apartment building that night, but the money in the pocket of his overalls made the ache seem worthwhile. He opened the mailbox in the lobby, crumpled up the advertising circulars, and winced when he saw a letter with a Covington postmark and the sprawling handwriting of his father's neighbor. News from Covington was unlikely to be good. Because he wished he didn't have to find out what the letter said, he carried it upstairs without opening it.

When he walked in, Amanda was doing homework. He smiled at her. Go

From the kitchen came the crackle and the mouth-watering smell of frying chicken. Cinci

"Letter from Covington."

"Oh." She understood his hesitation, but asked the next question anyhow: "What's it say?"

"Don't know yet. Ain't opened it," he said. The look his wife sent him was sympathetic and impatient at the same time. He tore off the end of the envelope, took out the letter, unfolded it, and read. By the time he got to the end, his face was as long as the train from which he'd taken off furniture.

"What is it?" Elizabeth asked.

"I got to git down there. Got to do it quick," Cinci

Elizabeth sighed. Then hot fat spattered, and she yipped and jerked back her hand. She said, "I reckon maybe you do, but, Lord, I wish you didn't."

"So do I, on account of Ma and on account of I don't want to go back to Kentucky, neither," Cinci

He bought a round-trip train ticket, knowing he would have to get oneway fares for his parents in Covington. He sent the neighbor down there a wire to let him know when he'd be getting into town. Then he stuffed a few days' clothes and sundries into a beat-up suitcase and went to the railroad station to catch the eastbound train.

It pulled into Covington at eleven that night. The neighbor, Menander Pershing, stood on the platform with his father. Cinci

"Ain't none o' them Kentucky State Police this time," Seneca Driver said. He'd been born a slave, and still talked like it. After so long hearing the accents of the white Midwest, Cinci

Cinci

"Don't want trouble from nobody," his father said. "I minds my business, an' I don't git none."

"Ain't too bad," Menander Pershing added. He was about Cinci

U.S. soldiers were searching some passengers' bags as they left the station. The men in green-gray waved Seneca and his companions through without bothering. It might have been the first time in his life when being colored made things easier for him. The soldiers didn't think Negroes would back the Freedom Party no matter what. They were likely to be right, too.

Menander Pershing's auto was an elderly Oldsmobile, but its motor purred when he started it. Getting in, Cinci

"Well, she sleepin' now. That's how I come away," his father answered. "You see in the mornin', that's all." He wouldn't say anything more.

Even by moonlight, the house where Cinci