American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 12

When he drove out in the wagon the next morning, he was only half convinced the sun had come up. A thick layer of dirty gray clouds lay between it and him. In that murky light, the snow covering the ground also looked gray and dirty, though most of it was freshly fallen. Under the wagon's iron tires, the frozen ground was as hard-though by no means as smooth-as if it were macadamized.

As usual, U.S. soldiers meticulously checked the wagon before letting McGregor go on into Rosenfeld. He had nothing to hide, not here: all his bomb-making paraphernalia remained hidden in his barn. After he'd taken his revenge on Major Hannebrink, who'd ordered his son executed, the urge to make his deadly toys had eased.

The Yanks hadn't rebuilt the sheriff's station after he bombed it. All they'd done was clear away the wreckage. He smiled as he jounced slowly past the bare, snow-covered stretch of ground. It was not enough. Nothing could ever be enough to make up for losing Alexander. But it was something. It was more than most Canadians had, a lot more.

Rosenfeld was a far cry from the big city. It didn't hold even a thousand people. If two railroad lines hadn't met there, it might not have existed at all. Throughout the war, though, Americans had packed it to the bursting point, as it became a staging area and recuperation center for the long, hard campaign against Winnipeg.

Now, with just a small occupation garrison, it seemed much more nearly its old self than it had during the war years. People on the street nodded to McGregor. Why not? No need to bother avoiding his eyes. Alexander was two and a half years dead now: old news, to everyone but his family. No one knew McGregor had had his revenge. Had anyone known, the Yanks would have found out. They would have stood him against a wall, as they'd stood his son, and shot him down, too.

He hitched the horse on the main street in front of the post office. He couldn't have done that during the war; the Yanks had reserved the street for themselves. Digging in his pockets for some change, he went into the post office.

"h.e.l.lo, Arthur," said Wilfred Rokeby, the postmaster. He was a small, fussily precise man who wore his hair parted in the middle and plastered down to either side with some spicy-smelling oil. "Didn't expect to see you coming into town quite so soon."

"Ran out of kerosene sooner than I thought I would." McGregor set a couple of dimes on the counter. "Long as I'm here, let me have some stamps, too, Wilf."

"I can do that," Rokeby said. He peeled ten red two-cent stamps from a sheet and handed them to McGregor. They were ordinary U.S. stamps, adorned with Benjamin Franklin's fleshy portrait, but had the word MANITOBA MANITOBA overprinted on them in black. overprinted on them in black.

"At least we don't have to pay double any more, to help the singers and dancing girls come up here and perform for the Yankee soldiers," McGregor said, pocketing the stamps. "That was nothing but highway robbery."

"Things are are settling down a mite," the postmaster said. "I hear some fellow's going to come up from Minnesota and start us a new weekly paper when the weather gets better. Been a long time since that bomb in front of Malachi Stubing's place shut down the old settling down a mite," the postmaster said. "I hear some fellow's going to come up from Minnesota and start us a new weekly paper when the weather gets better. Been a long time since that bomb in front of Malachi Stubing's place shut down the old Register Register."

That bomb had not been one of McGregor's. He hadn't been in the bombing business back then. He had been in Henry Gibbon's general store when the bomb went off. The Americans had almost taken him hostage after the blast. Frowning, he said, "One more way for the Yanks to peddle their lies."

"That's so," Rokeby admitted, "but it'll be good to have the town news, too, and all the advertising. We've missed it. You can't say we haven't, Arthur."

"Well, maybe," McGregor said, but then, as if to rebut himself, he added, "Minnesota." Shaking his head, he turned and walked out of the post office.

The general store was half a block up the street, and on the other side. Henry Gibbon was wiping his hands on his ap.r.o.n when McGregor came inside carrying a large sheet-iron can. A hot stove gave relief from the chill outside. "Didn't expect to see you for another week or ten days, Arthur," the storekeeper said. He raised an eyebrow almost to what would have been his hairline had his hair not long since retreated to higher ground.

"Ran out of kerosene." McGregor set the can on the counter with a clank. "Want to fill me up again?"

"Sure will," Gibbon said, and did so with a large tin dipper. When he was through, he put the top securely back in place and held out his right hand, palm up. "Five gallons makes sixty-five cents."

"Would only have been half a dollar before the war," McGregor said. The fifty-cent piece and dime he gave Gibbon were U.S. coins, the five-cent piece Canadian. More and more of the money in circulation came from the USA these days.

"During the war, you'd have been out of luck if you didn't have your ration book," Gibbon said with a ma.s.sive shrug. "It's not as good as it was, but it's not as bad as it was, either."

He hadn't had a son killed. He could afford to say things like that. McGregor had, and couldn't. He started to head out the door, then checked himself. Gibbon might not know good and bad from the man in the moon, but he heard all the gossip there was to hear in Rosenfeld. "Has Wilf Rokeby got it straight? Is some fellow coming up from the United States to put out a paper here?"

"That's what I've heard, anyway," Gibbon answered. "Be right good to let folks know every week that I'm still alive and still in business."

"But a Yank," McGregor said. The storekeeper shrugged again. The notion didn't bother him. As long as he got his advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspaper, he couldn't have cared less what else went in.

With a grunt, McGregor picked up the can of kerosene and went back out into the cold. He started across the street. A motorcar's horn blared at him. He froze like a deer-he hadn't paid the least attention to traffic. If the automobile hadn't been able to stop in time, it would have run him down.

It halted with its front b.u.mper inches from him. It was a big open touring car, with a U.S. soldier who looked very cold driving and two men in buffalo robes and fur hats in the back seat. One of them looked older than G.o.d, with a beaky nose projecting from a wrinkled face. "Jesus Christ, I wanted to see what one of these little towns looked like," he said, his voice American-accented. "I didn't aim to kill anybody while I was doing it."

"Sorry, General Custer, sir," the driver said. His greatcoat didn't offer him nearly the protection from the bitter winter chill that a buffalo robe would have done.

"I think your wife had the right idea, sir," the younger man in back said. He was a porky fellow, porky enough that his blubber probably helped keep him warm. "You might have done better to stay on the train till we got up to Winnipeg."

"I'm supposed to be in charge of things," the old man said querulously. "How can I be in charge of things if I don't see for myself what the h.e.l.l I'm in charge of?" He shook a mittened fist at McGregor. "What are you standing there for, you d.a.m.n fool? Get out of the way!"

McGregor unfroze and took a few steps forward. The motorcar shot past him with a clash of gears; its tires spat snow up into his face. He stared after it. He'd learned about General Custer in school. During the Second Mexican War, he'd beaten General Gordon's British and Canadian army down in Montana, beaten it after the USA had agreed to a cease-fire. McGregor had a.s.sumed he was long dead till his name started cropping up in war news.

And now he was coming to Canada to be in charge of things? And not just to Canada but to Winnipeg, only a couple of days to the north even by wagon? McGregor hurried back to the wagon. Purpose had indeed leaked out of his life after he'd avenged himself on Major Hannebrink. Now, suddenly, it was back. This time, he wouldn't just be avenging himself. He'd be avenging his whole country.

Nellie Jacobs yawned, right in the middle of business hours. Edna laughed at her. "This is a coffeehouse, Ma," Nellie's daughter said. "If you're sleepy, pour yourself a cup."

"I've been drinking it all day long." Nellie punctuated her reply with another yawn. "I don't want another cup right now." She hesitated and lowered her voice so the couple of customers in the place wouldn't hear: "It hasn't tasted quite right, anyway. Did we get a bad batch of beans?"

"I don't think so," Edna Semphroch answered, also quietly. "Tastes fine to me. n.o.body's said anything about it, either, unless somebody went and complained to you."

"No," Nellie admitted. She yawned again. "Goodness! I can't hold my eyes open. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to go upstairs and lie down for a while."

Edna said, "Sure, go ahead, Ma. Leave me with all the work." Maybe she was joking. On the other hand, maybe she wasn't.

In the end, Nellie didn't go upstairs. A few more customers had come in, and sticking Edna with all of them didn't seem fair. She got through the day, though by the end of it she felt as if she had a couple of sacks of cement strapped to her shoulders. "Oh, Lord, I'm beat," she said over the ham steaks and string beans and fried potatoes that made up supper.

"You look it," Hal Jacobs said sympathetically. "What have you been doing, to make yourself so tired?" Her husband looked worried. "Do you think it is something you ought to see the doctor about?"

"I haven't been doing anything special," Nellie answered, "but today-no, the past few days-I've felt like I was moving under water."

"Maybe you should should go to a doctor, Ma," Edna said. "That ain't like you, and you know it ain't. You've always been a go-getter." go to a doctor, Ma," Edna said. "That ain't like you, and you know it ain't. You've always been a go-getter."

"Doctors." Nellie tossed her head. "They're all quacks. Half the time, they can't tell what's wrong with you. The other half, they know what's wrong but they can't do anything about it."

Neither her daughter nor her husband argued with her. If you had a broken arm, a doctor could set it. If you had a boil, a doctor could lance it. If you needed a smallpox vaccination, a doctor could give you one. But if you had the Spanish influenza, a doctor could tell you to stay in bed and take aspirin. And if you had consumption, he could tell you to pack up and move to New Mexico. That might cure you, or it might not. Doctors couldn't, and the honest ones admitted as much.

Nellie found herself yawning yet again. She covered her mouth with her hand. "Gracious!" she said. "I swear to heaven, I haven't felt this wrung out since I was carrying you, Edna."

The words seemed to hang in the air. Hal Jacobs' eyes widened. Edna's mouth fell open. "Ma," she said slowly, "you don't suppose...you don't suppose you're in a family way again, do you?"

"What a ridiculous notion!" Nellie exclaimed. But, when she thought about it, maybe it wasn't so ridiculous as all that. Her time of the month should have been...Her jaw dropped, too. Her time of the month should have come a couple of weeks before. She'd never thought of asking Hal to wear a French letter on the infrequent occasions when she yielded him her body. She hadn't even worried about it. She was far enough past forty that she'd figured having a baby was about as likely as getting struck by lightning.

She glanced cautiously up toward the ceiling. That was foolish, and she knew it. If a lightning bolt came cras.h.i.+ng through, she'd never know what hit her.

"Are you going to have a child, Nellie?" Hal Jacobs asked in tones of wonder.

"I think-" Try as she would, Nellie had trouble forcing out the words. At last, she managed: "I think maybe I am."

Edna burst out laughing. No matter how tired Nellie felt, she wasn't too tired to glare. A moment later, her daughter looked contrite. "I'm sorry, Ma," Edna said. "I was just thinking that, if you had a baby now, it'd be almost like I had a baby now, and-" She dissolved in more giggles.

Hal looked delighted and awed at the same time. Softly, he said, "With my first wife, I had two children, two little girls. Neither one of them lived to be three years old. Now G.o.d has given me another chance, when I never thought He would." He bent his head in thanks.

Nellie wasn't nearly so sure she felt thanks. She hadn't figured on taking care of a child again-not unless Edna had misfortune strike her in the shape of a man (and Nellie could think of no more likely shape for misfortune to a.s.sume). And then Nellie started to laugh in the same way Edna had. "It is is funny," she said. "It's funny now, anyways. Won't be so funny when the baby finally comes. I remember that." funny," she said. "It's funny now, anyways. Won't be so funny when the baby finally comes. I remember that."

"Oh, yes," Hal said. "I remember, too. It is much work. But you, Nellie, we must take the very finest care of you, to make sure everything goes on in exactly the way it should."

What he meant was, she was getting long in the tooth to have a baby. She couldn't get annoyed about that. For one thing, he'd put it very nicely. For another, she'd thought she was too long in the tooth herself.

Over a gap of half a lifetime, she remembered what bringing forth Edna had been like. Maybe, this time, she'd go to a hospital and have them stick an ether cone over her face. That was one other thing doctors were good for.

"Ma's a tough bird," Edna said with no small pride. She beamed at Nellie. Nellie could hardly recall her beaming before. "Aren't you, Ma?"

Before Nellie could answer, Hal said, "A woman in a delicate condition is in a delicate condition, which means she is...delicate, is what it means." He'd talked himself twice round a circle, hadn't said a single, solitary thing, and didn't realize it.

"I'll be all right," Nellie said. "This is something G.o.d meant women to do." And if that doesn't prove G.o.d is a man, I don't know what does. And if that doesn't prove G.o.d is a man, I don't know what does. She didn't feel like a tough bird, but she didn't feel delicate, either. What she mostly felt was tired. She didn't feel like a tough bird, but she didn't feel delicate, either. What she mostly felt was tired.

Edna said, "If you really are in a family way, Ma, why don't you go on upstairs? I'll do the dishes."

"Why, thank you, sweetheart." Nellie cherished every friendly gesture she got from Edna, not least because she didn't get that many of them. That she'd been watching Edna like a hawk for years never once entered her mind.

When she went upstairs and took off her corset, she sighed with relief. Before too long, she wouldn't be able to wear a corset any more. Her belly would stick out there for all the world to see. But she had a ring on the proper finger-she held up her hand to look at the thin gold circlet-so that was all right.

She sighed again when she lay down on the bed. She felt as if her bones were turning to rubber. She raised an arm and then let it flop limply to the mattress. She wasn't quite ready to fall asleep-though she knew she would be very soon-but she wasn't going anywhere, either.

Her eyes had just started to slide closed when Hal came into the bedroom. "I know we didn't think this would happen, Nellie," he said, "but it will be a blessing in our old age."

"I suppose so," Nellie said, not yet convinced but willing to be. She laughed once more. "I never thought I'd be a mother again at the age I am now."

"And I never expected to be a father," her husband answered. "You made me the happiest man in the world when you said you would be my bride, and you have made me the happiest man in the world since, too." Every hair in his mustache seemed to quiver with joy.

Nellie was a long way from the happiest woman in the world. A million dollars, a fancy house full of servants, and a rich, handsome husband for Edna would probably have turned the trick. But Hal was doing his best to make her happy, and she'd never had anyone do that before. "You're sweet," she told him. "Everything will be fine." Was she talking to herself as well as to her husband? If she was, who could blame her?

Hal said, "I shall have to get more business from the shop across the street."

"How do you aim do to that?" Nellie asked with genuine curiosity. The shoe-repair shop brought in a steady, reliable trickle of money. Building that trickle to anything more struck her as unlikely.

"I know what we need," her husband said: "another war and another invasion." He sighed. "Only the Confederates whose boots I made and mended would probably pay me in scrip, the way they did last time. But even with scrip, I made more from them during the war than from my regular customers before or after."

"I'd sooner be poor," Nellie said. Considering how she felt about money, that was no small a.s.sertion.

"So would I," Hal Jacobs said. "The United States have spent my entire life working to get even with the Rebels. Now that we have finally done it, I don't ever want them to have another chance to invade our beloved country. And, of course," he added, "now that our flag flies down to the Rappahannock, the Confederates would have a harder time reaching and sh.e.l.ling Was.h.i.+ngton than they did in the last two wars."

"I was just a little girl when they sh.e.l.led the city during the Second Mexican War," Nellie said. "I thought the end of the world had come." Her expression grew taut. "And then I went through 1914, and I was sure the end of the world had come. And then I went through the sh.e.l.lings and bombings during the last few months of the war, and by the time they were through, I was wis.h.i.+ng the end of the world would come."

"It was a very hard time," Hal agreed. "But you came through safe, and your lovely Edna, and so did I." He kissed her. "And now this! I never imagined it, but I am ever so glad it has happened."

Nellie wondered how glad he would be when she was bent over a bucket heaving her guts out. She remembered doing that for weeks and weeks when she was carrying Edna. She wondered how glad he would be when she was big as an elephant and couldn't find a comfortable position in which to sleep and had to get up to use the pot every hour on the hour. She wondered how happy he would be with the baby screaming its head off all night long three or four nights in a row.

She would find out. She glanced over at Hal Jacobs, who was gazing fondly at her. He'd made a better husband than she thought he would. Odds were he'd make a good father, too.

Nellie smiled. "If we have a little girl, you're going to spoil her rotten."

"I hope so!" Hal exclaimed. "And if we have a little boy, I expect to spoil him rotten, too. A son!" He blinked. Was he blinking back tears? "I never thought I might have a son. Never. Not for many, many years."

"Well, we don't know if you've got him yet," Nellie said. "We've still got a good many months to go before we find out." She yawned once more, enormously this time. "But I've only got a couple of minutes to go before I'm asleep." She closed her eyes, and discovered she didn't have even that long.

Jefferson Pinkard wished he could walk into a saloon and have himself a cold beer. He didn't feel like getting drunk, or so he told himself. He just wanted one schooner of beer, to take the edge off a bad mood. But Alabama had gone dry before the Great War. All the saloons were either padlocked and ankle-deep in dust or long since converted to some other way of separating a customer from his cash.

That didn't mean a thirsty man had to dry up and blow away. Some beer was sitting back in the icebox in Jeff's cottage. He didn't feel like going back there, though. He'd eyed Emily like a fox eyeing a henhouse ever since he came home from the war. That was more than a year and a half now: heading on toward two years. You couldn't keep watch every livelong minute of every livelong day.

Spring hadn't come to Birmingham yet, but it was on the way. The breezes weren't roaring down out of the freezing USA any more. They might not be very warm yet, but they blew off the Gulf of Mexico, wafting up a hint of Mobile, a hint of the subtropical, even though tree branches remained bare of leaves as skeletons were of flesh and all the gra.s.s on the lawns and in the parks was yellow and dead. Somewhere under the bark, somewhere under the ground, new life lurked, and would soon be bursting forth.

Maybe new life lurked somewhere under the ground for the Confederate States, too. If it did, Jefferson Pinkard couldn't sense it as he could the coming spring. He wanted renewal. The country needed renewal. He had no idea where to find it. n.o.body else in the CSA seemed to know, either.

Birmingham had been a fine, bustling city before the war. Now it just idled along, like a steam engine running on about a quarter of the pressure it needed. The steel mills remained busy, but most of what they made went north as reparations for the d.a.m.nyankees. No profit there for the foundry owners. And when they made no profit, the whole town suffered.

Some of the general stores and haberdasheries and furniture stores were recognizable only by the lettering on their windows, being empty, locked sh.e.l.ls of their former selves, almost as parched and dead as the deceased saloons with which they shared business blocks. Others still survived. On a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, though, they shouldn't have been surviving. They should have been thriving, full of steelworkers with money in their pockets to spend on a half-holiday.

Jefferson Pinkard had money in his pockets-more than two hundred dollars. "h.e.l.l of a lot of good that does me," he muttered under his breath. The way things were these days, you couldn't even get good and drunk on two hundred dollars. Maybe it was just as well the saloons were all deceased.

A man in a pair of denim pants and a s.h.i.+rt with one sleeve pinned up came out of a secondhand clothing store. Pinkard stopped short. Plenty of men in Birmingham these days had an arm gone above the elbow. But, sure enough, it was Bedford Cunningham, Jeff's best friend once upon a time.

"How are you today, Jeff?" Cunningham asked. He was as tall as Pinkard, and had been as burly when they were both down on the floor at the Sloss Works. Since being wounded, he'd lost a lot of flesh.

"All right," Pinkard answered shortly. He still remembered-he could never forget-what Bedford Cunningham and Emily had been doing when he'd walked into his cottage on leave. But if Bedford was here, he couldn't be back there doing anything with Emily now. That made Jeff somewhat better inclined toward him, enough so to ask, "What you doin' now?"

"I was heading over toward Avondale Park," Cunningham answered. "This new Freedom Party is holding a rally. I want to see what they have to say."

"Christ, Bedford, they're just politicians," Jeff said, now certain he had the excuse he needed not to go along. "You've heard one of 'em, you've heard 'em all. You've heard one of 'em, you've heard too many, too."

"These boys are supposed to be different," Bedford said. "They're the ones who've been banging heads up in Richmond, if you've been reading the papers." He essayed a small joke: "They've been banging heads up in Richmond even if you haven't been reading the papers."

As it happened, Jeff had been reading the papers, though not with so much attention as he might have. "Forgot the name of that outfit," he admitted. "I didn't know they got down here to Birmingham, either." He rubbed his chin. Bristles rasped; he needed a shave. "What the h.e.l.l? I'll come along with you." Curiosity about the new party outweighed dislike and distrust for his old friend.

People-mostly working-cla.s.s white men like Pinkard or his shabbier, out-of-work counterparts-straggled into the park and toward a wooden platform bedecked with Confederate flags. In front of the platform stood a row of hard-faced men in what might almost have been uniform: white s.h.i.+rts and b.u.t.ternut trousers.

"Don't reckon you want to pick a quarrel with those boys," Bedford Cunningham said.

"You wouldn't want to do it more than once," Jeff agreed. "They've all been through the trenches, I'll lay-they've got that look to 'em." Cunningham nodded.

On top of the platform prowled a thin man with lank brown hair. He kept looking out at the crowd, as if he wanted to launch into his speech but was making himself wait so more people could hear him. "He's seen the elephant, too," Bedford said. "That's what my grandpappy would call it, anyway."

"Yeah," Pinkard said. "Sure has." Even this long after the war, he usually had little trouble telling a combat veteran from a man who wasn't.

At last, unable to contain himself any more, the skinny man strode to the front edge of the platform. "Aren't you folks proud to be puttin' money in the d.a.m.nyankees' pockets?" he called in a harsh but compelling voice. "Aren't you glad to be workin' your fingers to the bone so they can put their mistresses in the fancy motorcars they build out of the steel you make? Aren't you glad the fools and the traitors in Richmond blow kisses to the d.a.m.nyankees when they send 'em our steel and our oil and our money? They didn't make those things, so why the devil should they care?"

"He's got something," Bedford Cunningham said.

Pinkard nodded, hardly noticing he was doing it. "Yeah, he does." He waved a hand. "Now hush up, Bedford. I want to hear what he has to say for himself."

"Do they remember, up there in Richmond, up there in the Capitol, up there in that whited sepulcher, do they remember we fought a war with the United States not so long ago?" the skinny man demanded. "Do they? Doesn't look like it to me, friends. How does it look to you?"