American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (69 page)

  By Achilles’ expression, he’d made a mess of his grammar. But then, at sixteen (and where had the years since he was born gone?) Achilles wore that look of scorn around him a lot of the time. Cincinnatus remembered wearing it around his own father when he was that age. Boys turning into young men banged heads with their fathers. That was the way things worked.

  “If we need the money—” Achilles began.

  “We don’t need it
that
bad,” Cincinnatus said. “This is the rest of your life we’re talkin’ about, remember.” To his relief, his son didn’t choose to push it tonight. Cincinnatus knew he’d be smart not to push the boy too hard about staying in school. Achilles liked school, and did pretty well. But if his father urged him to stay in and do well, that might be enough to turn him against it.

  Amanda came in and gave Cincinnatus a hug. She was still young enough to love without reservation.

  She said, “I got all my words right on my spelling test today.”

  “That’s good, sweetheart. That’s mighty fine,” Cincinnatus said enthusiastically. “Can’t hardly do no better than perfect.”

  “How can you do better than perfect at all?” Amanda asked.

  “You can’t. I was just jokin’ a little,” Cincinnatus answered.

  “Oh.” Amanda wrinkled her nose. “That’s silly, Daddy.” Her accent held even more Midwest, even less Kentucky, than Achilles’. She’d been born here, after all. Everyone she’d ever heard, except for her parents, had that harsh, precise way of talking, with sharp vowels and every letter of every word pronounced. It still sounded strange and ugly to Cincinnatus, although he’d been here for going on ten years (not counting time in Luther Bliss’ jail).

  A delicious odor reached Cincinnatus’ nose. “What smells good?” he asked.

  “I’m stewing giblets with potatoes and tomatoes and onions,” Elizabeth answered. “Butcher shop had ’em cheap.”

  “Cheap?” Cincinnatus said, thumping himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand. He hurried down to the truck and returned with the butcher-paper package he’d left on the front seat. “Soup bones. Oscar Marlowe gave ’em to me for nothin’. Reckon I’d forget my head if it wasn’t on tight.”

  “Soup bones? That’s wonderful! I’ll do ’em up tomorrow.” Elizabeth hurried to put the package in the icebox.

  “Giblets. Soup bones.” Achilles made a face that looked remarkably like the one his little sister had just made. “Not many people eat that kind of stuff.”

  Cincinnatus had grown up eating chicken gizzards and beef tongues and lungs and other cuts richer people thought of as offal. He took them for granted, as he always had. When times here in Des Moines were good, Elizabeth hadn’t bought them so often, so Achilles noticed them more now than he would have otherwise. But Cincinnatus wagged a finger at his son. “Happens that ain’t so,” he said. “Plenty of people who was eatin’ roast beef’s eatin’ giblets now, and glad to have ’em. I ain’t just talkin’ ‘bout colored folks, neither. It’s the same way with whites. I seen enough to know that for a fact. Reckon it’s the same with the Chinaman upstairs, too. When times are hard, you’re smart to be glad o’ what you’ve got, not sorry for what you ain’t.”

  Achilles said, “Somebody at school told me Chinamen cut up dogs and cats and use them for meat. Is that true, Dad?”

  “I don’t know,” Cincinnatus answered. “I never heard it before, I’ll tell you. Tell you somethin’ else, too—don’t you go asking the Changs about it, neither. They’re nice folks, and I don’t want you embarrassing ’em none, you hear?”

  “I wouldn’t do that!” Achilles sounded uncommonly sincere. A moment later, he explained why: “Grace Chang is in a couple of my classes. I think she’s a cute girl.”
 That
made Cincinnatus and Elizabeth exchange glances. Even if Cincinnatus had felt such a thing about a white woman in Kentucky, he never would have said so. But the Drivers weren’t in Kentucky any more, and Grace wasn’t white. What were the rules for Negroes and Chinese? Were there any?

  Of course, just because Achilles thought Grace was cute, that didn’t mean he was going to ask her to marry him, or even to ask her to go to a film with him. Just the same, a sensible father—a father who didn’t want his boy beaten up or lynched—started worrying about these things as far ahead of time as he could. By Elizabeth’s expression, she was worrying about them, too.

  Before Cincinnatus could say anything about any of that, Achilles changed the subject: “Who are you going to vote for for president, Dad?”

  “Whoever the Democrats run—looks like Coolidge now,” Cincinnatus answered. Elizabeth nodded agreement. “Got to keep an eye on them Confederates.” His wife nodded again.

  Not Achilles. “If I could vote, I’d vote for the Socialists,” he declared. “They don’t care if you’re black or white or yellow or red. They just want to know what you can do.” And that declaration of political independence started a whole new argument, one that made Cincinnatus forget Grace Chang for the rest of the night.

 
“P
ass the salt, Ma,” Edna Grimes said, and Nellie Jacobs did. Her daughter sprinkled it on a drumstick.

  “This is awful good fried chicken.” She took a big bite.

  “Sure is, Mother Jacobs,” Merle Grimes agreed. He turned to Edna. “You all right, honey? Everything staying down?”

  Edna nodded. “Couldn’t be better, Merle. Stomach isn’t bothering me at all this time around.” She yawned. “I still get sleepy a lot, though.” She was three months pregnant; the baby would be born somewhere around New Year’s Day, 1933. Suddenly, she pointed at her son. “For God’s sake, Armstrong, I’m not too sleepy to miss you stuffing half a pound of mashed potatoes into your face all at once. Show some manners, or you’ll find out you’re not too big to paddle. Ten years old, and you eat like that? Jesus!”

  “Sorry, Ma,” Armstrong said, most indistinctly—maybe it hadn’t been half a pound of mashed potatoes, but it hadn’t missed by much. Across the table from him, Clara smirked. Aunt and nephew (which seemed silly, when only two years separated them) had never got along, not even when they were tiny.

  Merle Grimes raised his glass of beer. “Here’s hoping Cal sweeps the Socialists out of Powel House,” he said. The Democrats wouldn’t hold their convention for another month—they’d scheduled it for the Fourth of July—but Governor Coolidge’s nomination now looked like a foregone conclusion.

  “Amen,” Nellie said, and drank. So did Edna. So did Hal Jacobs. Armstrong Grimes raised his glass of milk in imitation of the grownups. Clara made a face at him.

  “That will be enough of that, young lady,” Nellie said. Clara subsided. Armstrong laughed.

  Edna said, “We’re all Democrats, and it doesn’t do us or Coolidge a bit of good. Hardly seems fair.”

  “It
isn’t
fair,” her husband said. “This is what we get for living in Washington, D.C. We’re not a state, so we don’t get to vote. Most of the government’s been in Philadelphia for the past fifty years, but they can vote for president there and we still can’t. There ought to be a law.”

  “It’s been this way forever.” Hal Jacobs paused to cough.

  “You’ve lived here all your life,” Merle said. “You’re used to not voting. I grew up in Ohio. I like having my voice count for something. Losing my vote was the hardest thing about coming to live here.”

  “A lot of places, Ma and me wouldn’t have had a vote up till a few years ago anyway.” Edna had to raise her voice, because Hal coughed again. “Summer cold?” she asked sympathetically.

  He shrugged. “I do not know.” He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and coughed yet again. “I am having trouble shaking it, though, what ever it is.”

  Merle lit up, too. He blew a smoke ring, which made Clara and Armstrong laugh. Despite what he was doing, he said, “Maybe you ought to cut back, Father Jacobs. I always cough worse if I smoke a lot while I’ve got a cold—I know that.”

  Hal blew a smoke ring, too. With another shrug, he said, “I have been smoking since before the Second Mexican War—more than fifty years now. Cutting back is not that . . . easy.” The interruption was for more coughs yet.

  Merle Grimes’ laugh was rueful. “Oh, I know. I always feel like I’ve been steamrollered if I don’t smoke my usual ration.”

  “You’re cross as a bear, too,” Edna said.

  “Blow another smoke ring, Pa,” Clara said. He needed two tries before he could; a cough in the middle ruined the first one.

  “You
have
been coughing a lot lately,” Nellie said. “Maybe you ought to see a doctor, get yourself looked at.”

  “What will he tell me, dear?” her husband replied, taking a last drag at the cigarette and then stubbing it out. “He will tell me I am not so young as I used to be. I already know this, thank you very much. I do not need to pay a doctor money to find out what I already know.” Even at the start of the Great War—
eighteen years ago now,
 Nellie realized with no small surprise; where had the time gone?—Hal’s hair and mustache had been gray, his face lined. He hadn’t seemed to change much in all the time since. Now, though, Nellie tried to see him as if she were just meeting him.

  He was close to seventy, and looked every year of it. His skin sagged on his face. He was a sallow color he shouldn’t have been.

  She actually blinked, wondering if she was seeing things that weren’t there. But she wasn’t. She looked at her husband again. It wasn’t just that the changes had sneaked up gradually and she hadn’t noticed.

  She was sure it wasn’t. They’d come on lately. She didn’t care for any of the thoughts following from that.

  “Hal,” she said, “I think maybe you really ought to see a doctor.”

  “Nonsense,” he told her, and sounded very firm. He seldom talked back to her; in that (as in most ways, she had to admit), he made a most satisfactory husband. She decided not to push it, especially not at the supper table. Maybe it was just a summer cold, and he would get better.

  But he didn’t. The cough went on. He lost more flesh, and he’d never had that much to spare. His appetite dwindled. A couple of times, Nellie started to tell him to go to a doctor’s office. Each time, she held back. She didn’t want to be a nag, especially where he’d dug in his heels.

  Then, just before the Fourth of July, he had another coughing fit, and she saw red on his handkerchief.

  “That does it, Hal,” she declared, trying her best not to show how alarmed she was. “You get yourself to the doctor right this minute, do you hear me?”

  If he’d argued, she would have dragged him by the heels. But he didn’t. He only sighed and nodded and said, “Yes, maybe you are right. All the pep has oozed right out of me the past few months, feels like.” He made the appointment. Nellie made sure he kept it. When he got back, she said, “Well? What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing yet, not really,” he answered. “He took an X ray of my chest. I have to go back in a couple of days, after he gets the photograph developed. He will not charge me anything extra for the second visit.”

  “He’d better not, not when it’s his fault,” Nellie said, and then, anxiously, “Do you want me to come along with you, dear?” She didn’t use endearments with Hal very often; that she did now showed how worried she was.

  “Thank you, Nellie. You are very sweet.” He was, as usual, polite—almost courtly—but he shook his head without hesitation. “I hope I am by now a grown man. Whatever the news may be, you can trust me to bring it home to you.”

  “You know I trust you,” Nellie said. And that was true. She could rely on him absolutely. That was the rock on which they’d built the past going on fifteen years. Some people had passion at the bottom of their marriage. Nellie was pretty sure Edna and Merle did—and yet that marriage had almost come apart when Merle found out the soldier Edna had nearly married before him wore C.S. butternut, not U.S.

  green-gray. Trust mattered in any marriage.

 
  What if Hal knew I killed Bill Reach?
 Nellie shoved that question down, as she always did.
The only
way two can keep a secret is if one of them is dead.
 That fit her and Hal’s former spy boss—her former client in her much, much younger days in the demimonde—to a T. Edna’s secret had got out, as Nellie had thought it would sooner or later. She would take her own to the grave with her.

  Considering Hal’s cough, she wished she hadn’t thought of it like that.

  When the day for the new doctor’s appointment came, he put a CLOSED sign in the window of the cobbler’s shop where he’d worked so long and walked on over: it was only three or four blocks to the office. Across the street in the coffeehouse where
she’d
worked so long (though not as long as Hal), Nellie watched him go. Her eyes kept coming back to the CLOSED sign. She didn’t like the look of it.

  And she kept missing customers’ orders, either not hearing what they wanted or bringing them the wrong thing even though she’d written down the right one.

  Hal came back about an hour and a quarter after he’d left. He took down the CLOSED sign and went back to work. Maybe that meant everything was fine. Maybe it just meant he had a lot to do. Nellie didn’t think he would come across the street right away and tell her if the news was bad. He wasn’t like that. And she couldn’t go ask him right away, because she was busy herself.
If I keep making mistakes
like I’m doing, though, I’ll lose so many customers, I’ll never be this busy again,
 she thought.

  At last, she had a moment when nobody was in the coffeehouse. She hung up her own CLOSED sign, waited for a break in the traffic, and crossed the street. The bell over Hal’s door jingled. He looked up from a new heel he was putting on. Spitting a mouthful of brads into the palm of his hand, he said, “Hello, Nellie.”

  She couldn’t tell anything from his face or voice. She had to ask it: “What did the doctor say? What did the X ray say?”

  “I have something unusual.” He laughed, as if proud of himself. “The doctor said he has only seen it a few times in all the years he has been practicing.”