American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 21

"Give me some of the salve, and a bottle of that stuff, too," the sufferer said. He coughed some more and shook his head. "This is killing me. I can't even enjoy my smokes any more."

"Another thing you can do is, you can set a pot of water on the stove to boil, put in some of the salve, and breathe in the steam," Bartlett said. "That'll help clear out your lungs, too."

"Good idea," the fat man answered. His face took on a kind of apprehension that had nothing to do with his ailment. "Now-what do I owe you?"

"Two thousand for the salve," Reggie said. The customer nodded in some relief. Reggie continued, "The elixir, though, it's new stuff, like I said, and it's expensive: $25,000."

"Could be worse," the fat man said. He took three $10,000 banknotes from his wallet and shoved them across the counter at Bartlett. Reggie gave him three $1,000 banknotes in change. As the fat man tucked them away, he shook his head in wonder. "It's like play money, ain't it? Reckon I'm a millionaire, and a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of good it's doing me." He coughed again, then picked up the squat blue bottle of salve and the taller one of the elixir. "Much obliged to you, young fellow, and I hope these here give me some relief." As he headed for the door, he called a last word over his shoulder: "Freedom!"

Bartlett started violently. He had all he could do to hold his tongue, and indeed to keep from running after the fat man and screaming curses at him. "Christ!" he said. His hands were trembling.

Jeremiah Harmon looked up from the tablets he was compounding. "Something troubling you, Reggie?" He was in his late forties, with a brown mustache beginning to go gray, and so quiet Bartlett was always straining to hear him. That wasn't bad, not so far as Reggie was concerned. He'd walked out on McNally, his previous employer, because the man wouldn't stop riding him.

"Yes, sir," he answered. "That fellow who just left used the Freedom Party salute when he went out the door. I don't fancy those people, not even a little I don't."

"Can't say I do, either," Harmon said, "but I doubt they're worth getting very excited about." As far as he was concerned, nothing was worth getting very excited about.

"Lord, I hope you're right, but I just don't know," Bartlett said. "I watched their goons bust up a rally. They almost busted me up, too. That's not the only brawl they've gotten into-not even close. And now Richmond's got a Freedom Party Congressman. Makes me sick to my stomach."

"Bicarbonate of soda will do the trick there," Harmon remarked; he was a druggist down to the tips of his toes. After a moment, though, he realized Reggie had used a figure of speech. With a shrug, he went on, "My guess is, they're a flash in the pan. Having a few of them in Congress is probably a good thing. Once they show they're nothing but a pack of noisy windbags, people will wise up to them pretty fast."

Bartlett grunted. "I hadn't thought about it like that. Maybe you've got something there." He didn't take the Freedom Party seriously even now. When more people had a chance to see it in action, how could they take it seriously, either? "Sometimes the best thing you can do is let a fool prove he is one."

"That's right," Jeremiah Harmon said. A customer came into the store. Harmon bent to his work again. "Why don't you see to Mrs. Dinwiddie there?"

"All right. h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Dinwiddie," Reggie said. "What can I get for you today?" He thought he knew, but he might have been wrong.

He was right: Mrs. Dinwiddie answered, "I need a bottle of castor oil. My bowels have been in a terrible state lately, just a terrible state, and if I don't get something to loosen them up, well, I swear to Jesus, I don't know what I'll do. Explode, I reckon."

She went on in that vein for some time. She bought castor oil every other week; the purchases were regular as clockwork, even if her bowels weren't. Every time she bought it, she gave the same speech. Bartlett was sick of listening to it. So, no doubt, was Jeremiah Harmon. Since Harmon was the boss, he had the privilege of avoiding Mrs. Dinwiddie. Reggie didn't.

By the time she ran down, he was on much more intimate terms with her lower bowel than he'd ever wanted to be. "Well, I won't keep you any more," she said, having already kept him too long. She opened her handbag. "What do I owe you?"

"That's $15,000, ma'am," Reggie answered.

"It was only ten the last time I came in," she said sharply. He shrugged. If she didn't like the way prices jumped, she could take that up with Harmon. He figured out how much to charge. But, after grumbling under her breath, Mrs. Dinwiddie gave Bartlett a pair of $10,000 banknotes. He returned her change and the bottle of castor oil.

So the day went. It was something less than exciting, but it put money in his pockets. It put tens of thousands of dollars in his pockets. Those tens of thousands of dollars left him somewhat worse off than he had been before the war started, when he'd been making two dollars a day. Inflation made a bitter joke of everything he'd thought he knew about money.

He supposed that was one reason people voted for the Freedom Party and other outfits like it. They loudly proclaimed they had the answers to all the problems bedeviling the Confederate States. Proclaiming they had the answers was the easy part. Really having them, and making them work-that looked harder. That looked a h.e.l.l of a lot harder to him. But some people would buy castles in the air because they were short of beans on the ground.

When six o'clock rolled around, he said, "See you tomorrow, Mr. Harmon."

The druggist looked up in vague surprise. "Oh, yes, that will be fine." He made no move to leave himself. Reggie was just hired help, and could come and go as he pleased-so long as he pleased to be on time most of the time. The drugstore belonged to Harmon. He worked as long as he thought he had to.

Reggie put on his overcoat and went out into the cold. It wasn't too bad-no snow lay on the ground-but it wasn't anything he enjoyed, either. He walked quickly, his feet clicking along the sidewalk. As long as he kept moving, he didn't feel the chill too badly. And Bill Foster's flat, where he had a supper invitation, lay only a few blocks away.

Sally Foster opened the door. "h.e.l.lo, Reggie," she said. "Come in, get warm, make yourself at home. How are you today?"

"I've been worse," he answered, and heaven only knew that was true.

"Bill, hon," Sally called, "Reggie's here." She was a short, slightly pudgy blonde in her mid-twenties. For reasons Bartlett couldn't quite fathom, she thought well of him. He'd wondered if he would keep Bill Foster as a friend after Bill and Sally got married; a lot of men gave up their bachelor friends after they stopped being bachelors themselves. But Sally had gone out of her way to be cordial, and so the friends.h.i.+p stayed warm.

"h.e.l.lo, Reggie," Bill Foster said. Married life plainly agreed with him; he'd put on ten pounds, easy, since Sally started cooking for him. "Can I get you a little something to light a fire inside?"

"Thanks. I wouldn't mind," Reggie answered.

Foster took down a whiskey bottle and a couple of gla.s.ses. "Do you want water with that?" he asked. Sometimes Reggie did, sometimes he didn't.

Tonight, he didn't. "Pipes are rusty enough already," he said. Sally laughed. Maybe she hadn't heard it before. It was an old joke in the trenches, though, as Foster's resigned chuckle showed. When Reggie had the gla.s.s in his hand, he raised it and said, "Here's to a long walk off a short pier for Jake Featherston."

"Lord knows I'll drink to that," Bill said, and he did. So did Bartlett. Sure enough, the whiskey warmed him nicely. Foster said, "I'll drink to that any day, and twice on Sunday, as a matter of fact. But what made you come out with it just then?"

Reggie told him about the fat man with the cough who'd called out the Freedom Party's one-word slogan, and finished, "When he walked out, I was standing there wis.h.i.+ng I'd given him rat poison instead of his cough elixir."

"I've heard it, too," Bill Foster said. "It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, same as the noise of a sh.e.l.l coming in. You'd reckon people had better sense, but a lot of 'em don't."

"The other thing I wondered was whether he was just somebody who voted for the Freedom Party, or if he was one of the tough guys who put on white and b.u.t.ternut and go out looking for heads to break," Bartlett said. "He didn't look like the type, but you never can tell."

"They don't need very many ruffians," Foster said. "As long as folks think the fellows with the clubs are doing the right thing, they won't try and stop 'em. And that worries me more than anything."

It gave Reggie something new to worry about, too: "We can't even write our Congressman and complain. He'd likely send goons right to our door."

"What you can do," Sally said, "is come and sit down and have supper. Once you get some food in your bellies to go along with the whiskey you're pouring down, the world won't seem like such a rotten place."

Ham and applesauce and canned corn and string beans cooked with a little salt pork might not have changed the world, but Sally was right: they did improve Reggie's opinion of it. Peach pie improved it even more. He patted his stomach. He had no trouble understanding how Bill had put on weight. "You don't happen to have a sister, do you?" he asked Sally, knowing she didn't.

He'd pleased her, though; he saw it in her eyes. "You should have got married a long time ago," she told him.

He shrugged. "My mother says the same thing. She wants grandchildren. I never met a girl I felt like marrying." He shook his head. "No. That's not so. Before the war, I was sweet on a girl. But she wasn't sweet on me. She wasn't sweet on anybody, not back then she wasn't. I heard she finally married some Navy man after the war. Now, what was his name? I heard it. It's going to bother me if I can't remember." He paused, thinking hard. "Brantley? Buckley? No, but something like that...Brearley! That's what it was, Brearley. I knew I'd come up with it."

"Now, if you could just come up with a girl," Sally said.

"If I wanted to listen to my mother, I'd have gone to visit my mother," Reggie said. Everybody laughed. He held out his gla.s.s to Bill Foster. "You want to get me another drink? I know good and well my mother wouldn't." Everyone laughed again.

Sylvia Enos smoked in short, savage puffs. "That man!" she said.

Neither Sarah Wyckoff nor May Cavendish needed to ask about whom she was talking. "What did Frank do now?" Sarah asked.

"Felt me up," Sylvia snarled. "He hadn't bothered me for weeks, but this morning, all of a sudden, he grew more arms than an octopus. He came back to where I was working and he felt me up like I was a squash he was buying off a pushcart. I almost hauled off and belted him."

"You should have," Sarah said. "I would. I'd have knocked him into the middle of next week, too." With her formidable build, she could have done it.

May said, "He's been sniffing around Lillian for a while. He's probably been doing more than sniffing, too; she's a little chippy if I ever saw one." She sniffed herself, then went on, "But I haven't seen Lillian for the past couple days, and-"

"She quit," Sylvia said. "I heard one of the bookkeepers talking about it. She's moving out to California. It's good for your lungs out there."

"Well, if she quit, then Frank is going to be on the prowl for somebody new," May said. "We've watched it happen often enough now."

"Often enough to be good and sick of it," Sylvia said. "And I wish to heaven he wouldn't come sniffing around me. If he doesn't know by now that I don't feel like playing games, he's an even bigger fool than I think he is."

"He couldn't be a bigger fool than I think he is," Sarah Wyckoff said.

Sylvia took a big bite of her egg-salad sandwich. She wished she were a gigantic carnival geek, biting the head off of Frank Best instead of a chicken. Then she shook her head in bemus.e.m.e.nt. He really had to be on her nerves, or she would never have come up with such a bizarre mental image.

She said, "I wish I could find another job. But how am I even supposed to look for one when I'm here five and a half days a week? And jobs aren't easy to come by, not like they were during the war."

"It's a nasty bind to be in, dearie," May said. "I hope it turns out all right for you."

"The worst he can do is fire me," Sylvia said. "Then I will have time to look for a new job. When he gets to be like this, I almost wish he would fire me. You girls are dears, but I wouldn't mind getting out of this place."

"What makes you think it would be different anywhere else?" May asked. "You'd still have a man for a boss, and you know what men are like."

"Careful," Sarah said in a low voice. Frank Best strolled past and waved to the women at their dinner break. He doubtless thought his smile was charming. As far as Sylvia was concerned, it was so greasy, it might have been carved from a block of lard.

She lit a new cigarette. The foreman favored her with another oleaginous smile when he returned from wherever he'd gone. "Almost time to get back to the line," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Best." Sylvia looked forward to returning to work about as much as she looked forward to going to the doctor to have a carbuncle lanced. Sometimes, though, she had to go to the doctor. And, when the whistle blew, she had to go back and paint red rings on galoshes.

Frank Best left her alone for twenty minutes after that, which was about fifteen minutes longer than she'd expected. Then he came back toward her with a pair of rubber overshoes in his hand. The rings on them were perfect. Sylvia had made a point of painting perfect rings since he'd started bothering her again, to give him as little excuse as she could.

But, being the foreman, he didn't necessarily need an excuse. Sylvia dipped her brush in the can of red paint by the line and painted two more perfect rings on the galoshes in front of her.

"Tried to slip these by on me, did you, Sylvia?" Best asked. He thrust the overshoes in his hand at her.

"I don't see anything wrong with them," Sylvia said.

That turned out to be a mistake-not that she had any right course. "Here. Take a closer look," Best said, and stepped up right alongside her. He brushed her breast with his arm as he brought the galoshes up and held them under her nose. That might have been an accident-had he not been bothering her all morning.

She took half a step back-and knocked over the can of red paint so that most of it spilled on his shoes. That might have been an accident-had he not been bothering her all morning.

"Oh, Mr. Best!" she exclaimed. "I'm so very sorry!" I'm so very sorry I didn't think of that a long time ago. I'm so very sorry I didn't think of that a long time ago.

He jumped and hopped and used language no gentleman would have employed in the presence of a lady. He'd already proved he was no gentleman by treating Sylvia as if she were no lady. "You'd better watch yourself!" he said when something vaguely resembling coherence returned to his speech. "You'd better clean this mess up, and you'd better make sure nothing like it ever happens again, or you'll be out on the sidewalk so fast, it'll make your head spin."

"Yes, Mr. Best. I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Best," Sylvia said. The foreman stomped off, leaving a trail of red footprints.

Sylvia soaked up as much of the red paint in rags as she could. She got some on her hands, but none on her dress or s.h.i.+rtwaist-she was careful about them, where she hadn't cared at all about Best's shoes. She opened another can of paint and went right on giving galoshes red rings, too. If she hadn't done that, Best would have got another reason to come back and have a word with her.

As things worked out, he didn't speak to her for the rest of the day. That suited her fine. Women from all along the production line found excuses to come by and say h.e.l.lo, though. Under their breath, they found considerably more than h.e.l.lo to say, too. She got more congratulations than she'd had on any one day since Mary Jane was born. If any of the women had a good word to say about Frank Best, n.o.body said it where she could hear.

Sarah Wyckoff said, "That was even better than knocking his teeth down his throat, on account of it made him look like the fool he is."

May Cavendish added, "Now all the girls will be bringing paint to work, Sylvia, and it's your fault, n.o.body else's."

"Good," Sylvia said. May giggled.

When the closing whistle blew, Sylvia left the galoshes factory with a spring in her step that hadn't been there at quitting time for quite a while. She got her children off the school playground, and was far from the only mother doing so. The school didn't take care of children in the cla.s.srooms after teaching was done for the day, as it had during the war. But it did let kids play in the yard till their parents could pick them up. That was something, if not much.

"I'm frozen, Ma," George, Jr., said.

"Me, too," Mary Jane added. Half the time, she agreed with whatever her big brother said. The other half, she disagreed-violently. Sylvia never knew in advance which tack she would take.

"We'll be home soon," Sylvia said. "We've got the steam radiator, and I'll be cooking on the stove, too, so things will be nice and toasty. The more time you spend complaining here, the longer it'll be before you're back."

For a wonder, the kids got the message. In fact, they ran to the trolley stop ahead of her. She might have had a spring in her step, but they were children. They didn't need to spill paint on anybody to feel energetic.

After they all got back to the apartment, Sylvia boiled a lot of cabbage and potatoes and a little corned beef for supper. The vegetables were cheap; the corned beef wasn't. The children loved potatoes and ate cabbage only under protest. Sylvia had been the same way when she was small.

As long as she was boiling water for supper, she also heated some for the bathroom down at the end of the hall. The children were old enough now that she couldn't bathe them together any more. That meant going down the hall first with Mary Jane, then with George, Jr., and last by herself. By the time she got to use the tub, she could hardly tell any hot water had ever gone into it.

That meant she bathed as fast as she could. Then she got out, threw on a robe, wrapped her wet hair in a towel, and hurried back to her flat. It was just as well that she did; she found the children doing their best to kill each other. Size favored George, Jr., ferocity and long fingernails Mary Jane.

"Can't I leave the two of you alone for five minutes?" Sylvia demanded, despite the answer obviously being no no. She did her best to get to the bottom of what had started the brawl. The children told diametrically opposite stories. She might have known they would. She had had known they would. This time, she couldn't sort out who was lying, or whether they both thought they were telling the truth. With fine impartiality, she whacked both their bottoms. known they would. This time, she couldn't sort out who was lying, or whether they both thought they were telling the truth. With fine impartiality, she whacked both their bottoms.

"I hate you!" Mary Jane screamed. "I hate you even worse than I hate him him." She pointed to George, Jr.

Ignoring his sister, he told Sylvia, "I'm never going to speak to you again as long as I live." He'd made that threat before, and once made good on it for a solid half hour: long enough to unnerve her.

She went into the bedroom and looked at her alarm clock. "It's after eight," she said. "You both need to get ready for bed." That produced more impa.s.sioned protests from the children; George, Jr., abandoned silence so he could squawk his head off. It did him no good. In fifteen minutes, he and Mary Jane were both in bed, and asleep very shortly after that.

Sylvia sat down on the couch with a weary sigh. She would have to go to bed pretty soon herself. When she got up, all she had to look forward to was another day at the galoshes factory. Life was supposed to be better than that, wasn't it?

Life would have been better-she was sure of it-had George lived. Then he would have been going out to sea, true, and complaining about the drudgery when he was back on land. But, no matter how hard the work was, he'd liked it. Sylvia wouldn't have liked making galoshes even had Frank Best not bothered her whenever he wasn't bothering someone else. It was only a job, something she did to keep food on the table. She wished she could quit.

She sighed again. She was trapped. The only difference between her and a mouse in a trap was that her back wasn't broken...yet.

"If I had that limey submersible skipper here," she said, "I'd shoot him right between the eyes. What the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l was he doing in that part of the Atlantic?" She didn't own a pistol; George hadn't kept one in the flat. She would gladly have learned to shoot one, though, if she could have avenged herself on that Englishman. She shook her head. For all she knew, the King of England had pinned a medal on him. If there was any justice in the world, she had a devil of a time seeing where. was he doing in that part of the Atlantic?" She didn't own a pistol; George hadn't kept one in the flat. She would gladly have learned to shoot one, though, if she could have avenged herself on that Englishman. She shook her head. For all she knew, the King of England had pinned a medal on him. If there was any justice in the world, she had a devil of a time seeing where.

A nasty wind blew snow into Lucien Galtier's face. He pulled down his hat and yanked up the collar of his coat as he made his slow way from the farmhouse to the barn. His way had to be slow; because of the snow, he could hardly tell where the barn lay. But his feet knew.

He accepted Quebec winter with the resignation of a man who had never known and scarcely imagined anything different. Moving to a warmer climate had never crossed his mind. Quebec boasted no warmer climates. Besides, moving would have taken him off the land his family had farmed since the seventeenth century. He was less likely to leave his patrimony than he was to leave his wife, and never once in all the years since the priest joined them together had he had any thought of leaving Marie.

When he got to the barn, he let out a sigh of relief. The horse snorted, hearing him come in. It was not a snort of friendly greeting, in spite of all the hours of conversation that had pa.s.sed between the two of them as they traveled the roads around the farm. No, the only thing that snort meant was, Where's my breakfast, and what kept you so long? Where's my breakfast, and what kept you so long?

"Compose yourself in patience, greedy beast," Galtier said. The horse snorted again. It was not about to compose itself in patience, or any other way. It wanted hay and it wanted oats and it wanted them right this second.

He fed all the livestock and cleaned up the muck. By the time he was done with that, the muscles in the small of his back were complaining. Why didn't you send out Georges or Charles? Why didn't you send out Georges or Charles? was what they were complaining. He did do that a lot of the time, but they were busy elsewhere this morning. was what they were complaining. He did do that a lot of the time, but they were busy elsewhere this morning.

"And," he said, speaking to his muscles as if they were the horse, and therefore incapable of talking back, "I am not in my dotage. If I cannot do this work, what good am I?" But it was not that he couldn't do the work. It was that doing the work exacted its price these days, and the price went up with the years.

He went back out into the cold, back to the farmhouse. Once he got close to it, he whistled in surprise. Dr. Leonard O'Doull's Ford was parked by the house. Even though his son-in-law worked at the hospital on Galtier land, he didn't come to visit all that often. Lucien picked up his pace, to see why O'Doull had come today.

"Bonjour, mon beau-pere," O'Doull said, rising to shake his hand. Marie had already given the young doctor a cup of coffee and a sweet roll. O'Doull said, rising to shake his hand. Marie had already given the young doctor a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.