Chester Martin liked playing football. He liked it in the snow, and he liked it here in springtime, too. In that, he was very little different from anybody else in the United States. In New England and New York, a few people still enjoyed baseball, a game that had briefly flourished in the couple of decades before the War of Secession. Even there, though, football was king.
He pulled on his leather helmet. Being a burly steelworker, he played in the line on offense and defense. In the trenches, people called that these days. The comparison wasn't far-fetched. Plenty of times, he'd wished for a bayoneted rifle to hold off whatever charging rhinoceros the other team aimed at him. And not a game went by when he didn't wish he were wearing a green-gray steel pot on his head instead of mere leather.
Albert Bauer played beside him in the line. Bauer pointed to their opponents, a team of bruisers in dark blue wool shirts. "Here we go, Chester," he said. "Legal revenge for everything the police have given us since the end of the war—and before that, too."
"You don't need to fire me up, Al. I'm ready now." Martin looked down at his own shirt, which was bright red. "We licked 'em in the presidential election, and we licked 'em again in the Congressional election last year, and we've licked 'em a few times on the gridiron, too. I figure we can do it again."
"That's the proletarian spirit," Bauer said. "Don't take them lightly, though. The enemies of progress fight hard, even if their cause is doomed. They will lose the war. They can win the battles."
On one sideline, steelworkers' friends and families gathered to cheer their gladiators. Sue Martin waved to Chester. He waved back. On the other sideline stood friends and relatives of the cops. A stranger couldn't have guessed which side was which. Seeing how ordinary policemen's families were never ceased to surprise Martin.
The two referees were newspapermen; they'd covered both sides, and both sides trusted, or rather distrusted, them about evenly. They waved the team captains over to them and flipped a silver dollar. The cop let out a happy little grunt; he'd guessed right. "Give us the ball," he said.
"Yeah, give it to 'em in the balls," a steelworker said. He grinned, but it was a sharp-toothed sort of grin.
Martin held the ball upright with his finger as the kicker booted it down the field—the park, actually—toward the cops. Then he was on his feet and running as hard as he could. A policeman ran toward him, yelling in a language that didn't sound like English. Martin lowered a shoulder and knocked him sprawling. The first hit always felt good. He banged into a couple of other policemen before two of his teammates brought down the fellow with the ball.
When he lined up at right tackle, the cop playing opposite him looked familiar. "Have I seen you someplace before?" Martin asked.
Before the cop could answer, the center snapped the ball back to the quarterback, who stood waiting for it. The cop gave Martin a body block that took him out of the play, though the run gained only a yard or two. Then he helped him up. "I dunno. I been playing football for a while, same as most guys."
"I don't think that's it," Martin said. "Where'd you fight in the war?"
Another play intervened. This time, Martin spun past the blocker in dark blue and flattened the fullback behind the line of scrimmage. The fullback accused him of unsavory practices. He laughed.
"I was in Kentucky with the First Army—Custer's men," the cop answered with no small pride as they took their places once more. "Then I got sent to Utah, to put down the Mormon uprising. After that, I fought in Arkansas. How about you, bud?"
Before Martin could answer, the ball was snapped again. The quarterback booted it away in a quick kick. It rolled dead deep in the steelworkers' territory. Now it would be Martin's turn to try to hold the cop away from the ball carrier.
"Me?" he said as he took his stance. "I was in Virginia the whole time—on the Roanoke front till I got wounded, then up in the north."
The cop charged at him. Martin managed to hold his own. Even while he held the policeman at bay, he was puzzled. He was almost sure he'd seen the broken-nosed face in front of him twisted with fury while the policeman aimed a gun at. .. at. ..
He laughed. "What's funny?" the cop asked.
"I'll tell you what's funny," Martin answered. "You tried to shoot me a couple-three years ago, I think."
"Oh." The policeman frowned. Then he also started to laugh. "You should have been wearing a goddamn red shirt then, too. I would have hit what I was aiming at."
The ball flew back to the steelworkers' quarterback. He retreated till he stood more than five yards behind the line, then let fly with a forward pass. An end caught it and ran another ten yards before being dragged down from behind.
One more pass a couple of plays later moved the ball deep into the cops' territory. From there, the steelworkers pounded it into the end zone, running straight at their opponents and defying them to bring down the ball carrier. They were, Martin realized as he took the measure of the opposition, a little heavier and bigger and a little younger than their opponents. He smiled, thinking they would have an easy game and punish the policemen who had given them so much trouble on the picket line.
On the try for the point after the touchdown, he knocked the cop across from him over on his back. The steelworkers' kicker drop-kicked the ball through the uprights for the extra point.
"Smash 'em!" Sue yelled as the steelworkers trudged back to their side of the field for the kickoff.
"Of course we'll smash 'em!" Chester Martin yelled back. One of the referees tossed him the ball. He knelt down and held it for the kicker to send it down the field to the policemen. He didn't think he was bragging or doing anything but telling the truth. How could the cops compete against bigger, younger men?
Before long, he found out. One of the halfbacks on the policemen's team was nothing special to look out: a skinny little fellow with a blond Kaiser Bill mustache. But when he got the ball, that scrawny halfback was quick as a lizard and twisty as a snake. He did most of the work on the cops' drive, and capped it by sprinting into the end zone on a pretty fifteen-yard run.
Martin's tongue was hanging out from chasing him. "Jesus," he panted as both sides lined up for the cops' try for the point after touchdown. "If I had a gun right now, I wouldn't shoot you." He nodded to the policeman who'd fired during the labor unrest. "I'd shoot that miserable son of a bitch instead. He's trying to give me a heart attack."
"Yeah, Matt's dangerous," the cop agreed. "You try taking a shot at him, I figure it's about even money he dodges the bullet."
"Maybe," Martin said. "Have to bring along a machine gun, then, and see if he can dodge that." The cop chuckled and nodded. They both understood the weapons of war, even if they'd stood on opposite sides of the barricade. The policemen's drop-kick was also good, and knotted the game.
It swayed back and forth all afternoon. The steelworkers had size and youth and a quarterback who threw enough to keep the policemen from doing nothing but storming forward to stop the run. The cops had nothing but Matt. All by himself, he kept them in the game, tackling pass receivers on defense and running like the wind whenever the policemen had the ball. He never wore down. Martin started to wonder whether he was human or mechanical. However many times he got smashed to the dirt, he rose again as if nothing had happened. Even his mustache stayed unruffled, which made Chester all the more suspicious.
In the end, the steelworkers won, 27-23. Martin made himself a minor hero, falling on a fumble in the closing moments to ensure that the cops couldn't come back. After shaking hands with the policemen, he limped off the field, covered in glory and sweat and mud and bruises. He still had all his front teeth, which made him unusual on the team.
He took off his helmet and ran a hand through his damp, matted hair. "Whew!" he said. "This is supposed to be fun, they tell me. I feel like I've been slammed by a triphammer a couple dozen times."
His sister gave him a hug. "You were wonderful, Chester." She wrinkled her nose. "You don't smell so wonderful, though."
"If you were out there, you wouldn't smell so wonderful, either," Martin retorted. He stretched. It hurt.
His father said, "It's a different game nowadays, with all this throwing. Might as well be baseball, if you ask me. When I was playing, back around the time you were born, we just ran. That was a real man's game, if you ask me."
"Sure it was, Pa," Chester said. "Nobody had helmets then, and—"
"Nobody did," Stephen Douglas Martin broke in.
"Nobody had helmets," Martin repeated, "and the ball was solid steel, and the field was a mile and a half long and half a mile wide and uphill both ways, too, and everybody on the other side was always ten feet tall and weighed seven hundred pounds, and even dead men had to stay in the game—and run the ball, too. That's how they played it in the old days."
"And you are a heartless whippersnapper, and I ought to turn you over my knee and whip you black and blue," his father said, rolling his eyes. "But you're already black and blue, I expect. And you're wrong—dead men didn't have to stay in. They changed that rule in my father's day."
Laughing, they helped Sue and Louisa Martin spread out the picnic feast that had come along in a wicker basket. Steel-workers and policemen wandered back and forth, talking about the game and sharing food and beer and other potables. It was as if the two groups had never clashed anywhere save in a friendly game of football.
Chester gnawed a drumstick. When Matt, the fast halfback on the policemen's team, walked by, Martin held up a bottle of beer to get him to stop. The lure worked as well as a worm would have with a trout. "Thanks," Matt said, and sat down beside him. "I'd sure as the devil sooner drink with you than have you jump on my kidneys like you were doing all day long."
"Like heck I was." Martin had finally got used to watching his language again when his mother and sister were around. "Most of the time, I was flat on my fanny watching you run by."
They bantered back and forth, each making the other out to be a better football player than he really was. Then Matt got up and headed off to chin with somebody else, just as if he'd never clubbed a striking steelworker in all his born days. And Martin waved when he went, just as if he'd never kicked a cop. Everything in the park was peaceful and friendly. Chester Martin liked that fine.
It couldn 't be plainer that no Negro ever born has got what it takes to be a true citizen of the Confederate States of America. Jake Featherston's pen raced across the page. One of those days, Over Open Sights would be done, and everyone in the country would realize he'd been telling the truth all along.
Anyone with half an eye to see can understand the reasons for this. They are—Before Jake could set down what they were, his secretary came back into his inner office. "What do you want, Lulu?" he growled; like any writer, he hated interruptions.
"Someone to see you, Mr. Featherston," she said.
"Who is it?" he asked. "I don't want to see any reporters right now." Fewer reporters wanted to see him these days, too. That worried him, but not enough to make him feel friendly right this second.
"It's not a reporter, sir," Lulu answered. "It's General Jeb Stuart, Jr."
"What?" Jake had trouble believing his ears. As far as he was concerned, Jeb Stuart, Jr., was the author of all his troubles. Who else had made sure he would stay a sergeant as long as he stayed in the Army? Jeb Stuart, Jr., blamed him for the death of Jeb Stuart III. Jake blamed Jeb Stuart, Jr., for suppressing an investigation that might have given warning of the great Red uprising. And now the general wanted to see him? Slowly, Jake said, "Well, I reckon you can bring him on in."
Jeb Stuart, Jr., was in his late fifties. He looked very much like an older version of his handsome son, save that he wore a neat gray chin beard rather than the little strip of hair under the lower lip Jeb Stuart III had affected. After cautious greetings, Stuart said, "You're probably wondering why I've called on you now, after pretending for so long that you and the Freedom Party and all the insults you've thrown at me don't exist."
Jake did his best to sound dry: "I'd be a liar if I said it hadn't crossed my mind—and I'm no liar."
"You say that. I wonder if even you believe it." Stuart looked at him. No—Stuart looked through him. He'd had upper-crust Confederate officers give him that look a great many times. It showed without words that they relegated him to the outer darkness: he wasn't quite a nigger in their eyes, but he might as well have been.
It also made Featherston want to punch those upper-crust Confederates right in the face. "You've got anything to say, say it and then get the hell out," he snapped. "Otherwise, just get the hell out."
"I intend to say it. You needn't worry about that," Jeb Stuart, Jr., replied. "I came to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?" Jake echoed. "Why? Are you leaving? If you are, it's about ten years too late, but good riddance anyway. I'm sure as the devil not going anywhere."
To his surprise, Stuart smiled. "I know you're not. You're not going anywhere at all in the Confederate States of America, not in politics, not any more you're not. And so, Sergeant Featherston"—he laced the title with contempt—"good-bye." He waved, a delicate fluttering of the fingers.
Jake laughed in his face. "Go ahead and dream, General." He showed what he thought of Stuart's title, too. "You fancy-pants boys won't be rid of me that easy." He couldn't help a nasty stab of fear, though. Nothing had gone right for him or the Freedom Party since Grady Calkins took a Tredegar out to the Alabama State Fairgrounds and shot down Wade Hampton V
Stuart might have picked his pocket for that very thought. "People know what the Freedom Party is now, Featherston: a pack of murdering ruffians. They'll run your henchmen out of Congress in a few months, and you'll never, ever be president of the Confederate States. And for that, believe me, I get down on my knees and thank God."
"Go ahead and laugh," Featherston said. "The fellow who laughs last laughs best, or that's what they say. I fought the damnyankees till I couldn't fight any more, and I reckon I'll keep on fighting the traitors here the same way." Not for the life of him would he let Jeb Stuart, Jr., see how closely his words reflected Jake's own nightmares.
"There are no traitors, damn you," Stuart said.
"Hell there aren't," Featherston returned. "I'm sitting across the desk from one. God damn you, that nigger Pompey, your son's body servant, was as Red as he was black. They were going to take him away and grill him, but your precious brat didn't want 'em to, and they didn't. Who stopped 'em? You stopped 'em, that's who. If that doesn't make you a traitor, what the hell are you?"
"A man who made a mistake," Stuart answered. "I don't suppose you've ever made a mistake, Featherston?"
"Not one that big, by Jesus," Jake said.
Stuart startled him again, this time by nodding. "It couldn't have been much bigger, could it? It ended up costing me the life of my only son."
"It cost a lot more than that," Featherston said. "It cost thousands dead, by God. If any one thing cost us the war, that was it. And all you do is think about yourself I reckon I ought to be surprised, but I ain't."
"You don't know what I think, so don't put words in my mouth," Jeb Stuart, Jr., said. Slowly, sadly, he shook his head. "I blamed you for my son's death, you know."
"I never would have guessed," Jake said with a fine sardonic sneer. "That's why I spent the next year and however long commanding a battery and staying a sergeant. I could have been in the Army for the next five wars—hell, the next ten wars—and I never would've had more than three stripes. Thank you very kindly, General goddamn Stuart, sir."
He wanted to fight with Stuart. He would have loved to spring out of his chair, smash the general to the floor, and stomp him. Every muscle quivered. Give me an excuse, he said silently. Come on, you son of a bitch. Give me even apiece of an excuse.
But Stuart only looked sad. "And that was the other half of my mistake. Yes, I blocked your promotion. It seemed the right thing to do at the time, but it turned out wrong, so wrong. If you'd ended the war a lieutenant or a captain, would you ever have done what you did with—and to—the Freedom Party?"
Featherston stared at him. That question had never crossed his mind. He tried to imagine himself without the smoldering resentment he'd carried since 1916. For the life of him, he couldn't. That endless burning inside was as much a part of him as his fingers.
He said, "It's a little fucking late to worry about that now, don't you reckon?"
"I do. I certainly do." Stuart got to his feet. "And it's a little fucking late to worry about you, Featherston. You're yesterday's news, and you won't be tomorrow's. You don't need to get up for me." Jake hadn't been about to get up for him, as he must have known. "I can find my own way out."
"Don't come back, either," Jake snarled.
Leaving the inner office, Jeb Stuart, Jr., got the last word: "I wish you the same." He closed the door behind him.
With another snarl, this one wordless, Jake snatched up his pen and began to write furiously. He filled two pages in Over Open Sights in something less than half an hour. But even venting his anger through the growing book was not enough to satisfy him. He slammed his pad shut, threw it into his desk, and locked the drawer that held it. Until he was ready for it to see the light of day, it wouldn't.
He sprang up and paced the inner office like a caged wolf. The Party would lose ground when elections came, and they were only four months away. He saw no way around it. The trick was going to be holding as much as he could—and making people think the Freedom Party would be a force to reckon with in elections after 1923. He'd known it wouldn't be easy long before General Stuart stopped by to gloat.
He wished he could talk with Roger Kimball. But Kimball was dead, and the damnyankee woman who'd murdered him had got off scot-free. That was one more on the list he'd already started compiling against President Mitchel. "Go ahead, kiss the USA's ass," he muttered.
He wished he could talk with Anne Colleton, too. He valued her money, he valued her sense of theatrics, and he valued her brains. But she didn't value him or the Freedom Party any more. Of all the defections he'd had to endure over the past year, hers might have hurt most.
Since he couldn't talk with either of them, he telephoned Ferdinand Koenig. "Jeb Stuart, Jr.?" his former running mate exclaimed. "Well, isn't that a kick in the head? Stopped by to gloat, you say?"
"That's just what he did," Jake answered. "Said the Party was as good as dead and buried, God damn him to hell."
"Don't take it too much to heart," Koenig said. "If he's as right about that as he was during the war, we're in fine shape."
"Yeah!" Featherston said gratefully; he hadn't thought of it like that. "You've got a good way of looking at things, Ferd."
"Don't reckon you'll let us down, Sarge," Koenig answered. "I remember where we were back in 1917, and I can see where we are now. Maybe we haven't climbed all the way to the top of the mountain, but we'll get there."
Thousands of Party stalwarts might—would—have said the same thing. But Jake set no special stock in what stalwarts said. They weren't stalwarts because they were long on brains. They were stalwarts because they were long on muscle and short on temper. Ferdinand Koenig was different. He not only had good sense, he wasn't embarrassed about showing it.
"Of course we'll get there," Jake said, sounding more confident than he felt. "Just have to come through this November without getting skinned."
"Figure we will?" Koenig asked.
"That's the question, all right," Jake allowed. He let out a long, slow sigh. "We'll get hurt some. We'll have to put the best face on it we can, and then we'll have to start building toward 1925. We can't afford to waste a minute there. I only hope to God we don't lose so much, people won't take us serious any more." With Kimball dead and Anne Colleton gone, Ferdinand Koenig was the only one to whom he would have said even so much.
Koenig answered, "You never can tell, Sarge. Folks don't think we matter so much now that money doesn't burn a hole in their pockets if they leave it in there more than a minute and a half, but who knows how long that'll last? Who knows what all's liable to go wrong between now and 1925?"
"That's right," Jake said, smiling for the first time since Jeb Stuart, Jr., had left. "That's just right. With the Whigs running things, they will go wrong, sure as the sun comes up tomorrow." He hung up feeling better, but only for a little while. Would anything be left of the Freedom Party when a chance to rule came round at last?
"Mama!" Clara Jacobs screeched from what had been the storeroom. "Little Armstrong just tore up the picture I was drawing!'" She was almost four, more than twice the age of her little nephew. But Armstrong Grimes, even as a toddler, gave every sign of being hell on wheels. He takes after Edna, Nellie thought. I bet Merle Grimes was a nice man even when he was a little boy. She had such a good opinion of almost no one else in the male half of the human race; the more she got to know her son-in-law, the more he impressed her.
Fortunately, the coffeehouse was almost empty. She could hurry back to the old storeroom and mete out punishment. Armstrong hadn't just torn up Clara's picture; he'd made a snowstorm of pieces out of it. He was happily sticking one of those pieces in his mouth when Nellie yanked it away from him, upended him over her knee, and walloped his backside. "No, no!" she shouted. "Mustn't tear up things that don't belong to you!"
Her grandson howled. Since he was wearing a diaper that shielded his bottom, Nellie knew she wasn't hurting him much. The spanking made an impressive amount of noise, though, as did her yelling.
"Now," she said, "are you going to do that any more?"
"No," little Armstrong answered. Nellie wiped his nose, which was dripping yellowish snot. She didn't believe him. For one thing, he was heading toward the age where he said no every other time he opened his mouth. For another, a toddler's promise lasted only till he forgot he'd made it, which meant anywhere from two minutes to, in extraordinary circumstances, an hour or so.
"You be good, you hear me?" Nellie said.
"No," Armstrong Grimes answered. That was neither defiance nor ignorance, only the first thing that came out of his mouth.
"I'm good, Mama," Clara said, so virtuously that Nellie expected to be blinded by the halo about to spring into being above her head.
"Of course you are—when you feel like it," Nellie told her own daughter. "Pick up those scraps, and don't let him eat any more of them. Don't let him eat your crayons, either."
"I won't, Mama." Clara turned to her nephew. "You see? You can't have anything." Thus made forcibly aware that he was being deprived, Armstrong started crying again. Nellie had to spend more time soothing him before she could go out front again.
Edna was supposed to come get her son at half past three; she'd left him with Nellie so she could do some unencumbered shopping. She didn't show up till a quarter after four. "Hello, Ma—I'm sorry," she said in a perfunctory way. "How crazy did he drive you?"
"Crazy enough," Nellie replied. "I was thinking he reminds me of you." Edna laughed, but Nellie wasn't joking. She went on, "Please come get him when you say you will. I've got enough to do keeping up with Clara and the coffeehouse. Put Armstrong in there, too, and I start climbing the walls."
Edna sniffed. "I take care of Clara for you sometimes, and you don't hear me complaining about it."
"Oh, I do sometimes," Nellie said. "And besides, when you take care of the children, that's all you do. You have Merle to make a living for you. I've got to make my own living, and this place won't run by itself"
Before Edna could answer, Armstrong picked up something from the floor and started chewing on it. He bit Edna when she stuck her finger in his mouth to get it out. She finally did—it was a nasty little clump of hair and dust—and then whacked him a lot harder than Nellie had done. He wasn't crying now because he was angry or frightened; he was crying because his bottom hurt.
"You've never been fair with me," Edna said.
And here we go again, Nellie thought. One more round in the fight that never stops for good. She said, "You think being fair means doing whatever you want. I've got news for you, dearie— it doesn't work that way."
"I've got news for you, Ma—you never do what I want." Edna glared. "You do as you please, and what pleases you most is doing whatever you think will make me maddest."
"Why, you little liar!" Nellie snapped, as she might have at Clara. But Edna's charge held just enough truth to sting more than it would have had it been made up from whole cloth. "And you were the one who was always sneaking around behind my back. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"I had to sneak around behind your back. You wouldn't let me live any kind of life in front of your face," Edna said.
"I don't call living fast and loose any kind of a life." To forestall her daughter, Nellie added, "And I ought to know, too. I found out the hard way."
"Yeah, and you've been frozen up ever since on account of it," Edna said, another shot with all too much truth in it. "I got what I was looking for in spite of you, and do you know what else? I like it just fine." She carried her son out of the coffeehouse, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows.
"Why is my big sister angry?" Clara asked from the door to her playroom. "If I slammed a door like that, I'd get a whipping."
"Edna's too big to get a whipping." Under her breath, Nellie mumbled, "No matter how much she needs one."
That slammed door also drew Hal from across the street. "You had another quarrel with Edna," he said. It was not a question.
"Well, what if I did?" Nellie said. "I don't suppose I would have, if she'd come and gotten her brat when she was supposed to."
Exercising her temper proved a mistake. Clara started chanting, "Armstrong is a brat! Armstrong is a brat!"
"Stop that!" Hal Jacobs said sharply, and, for a wonder, Clara stopped it. She listened to her father more often than to her mother, perhaps because Hal gave her fewer orders than Nellie did.
Nellie sighed. "I wish Edna would pay as much attention to you as Clara does." She sighed again. "I wish anyone would pay attention to me."
"I always pay attention to you, my dear," Hal said.
That was true. It was so true, Nellie had come to take it for granted in the years since she and Hal got married. Because she took it for granted, it no longer satisfied her. She said, "I wish Edna would pay attention to me."
"She is a grown woman," Hal said. "With a little luck, she is paying attention to her own husband now."
"It's not the same," Nellie replied in a sulky voice.
"No, I suppose it is not," Hal admitted. "But it is good that she should pay attention to someone, I think. And Merle Grimes is a young man worth paying attention to."
"I know he is. I was thinking the same thing myself earlier today," Nellie said. "But he's not her mother, and I am." She shook her head, discontented with the world and with Edna. "That's probably why she doesn't pay attention to me."
"Yes, it probably is," Hal said. "When I was becoming a man, I paid as little attention to my mother and my father as I could get away with."
Nellie had hardly known her own father. When she'd got away from her mother at an early age, it was to go into the demimonde. Hal didn't need to know any more about that than whatever he'd already found out. Nellie said, "But Edna isn't becoming a woman. By now, she is one, like you said. Shouldn't she have figured out that I know what I'm doing by now?"
"Maybe," Hal said. "But maybe not, too." He looked at Nellie with amused affection. "She has a stubborn streak as wide as yours. I wonder where she could have gotten it"
"Not from me," Nellie said automatically. She needed a moment to recognize the expression on her husband's face. Hal Jacobs was doing his best not to laugh out loud. Again, Nellie spoke automatically: "I'm not stubborn!" Hal let the words hang, the most devastating thing he could have done. Nellie's face went hot. She said, "I'm not that stubborn, anyway."
"Well, maybe not," Hal said; he should have been a diplomat in striped trousers, not a cobbler and sometimes spy. He went on, "You are my dear wife, and I love you exactly the way you are."
"You're sweet." That was usually another automatic reply. This time, Nellie listened to what she'd just said. "You really are sweet, Hal. I'm glad I married you. I was scared to death when you asked me, but it's worked out pretty well, hasn't it?" If she sounded a little surprised, she could hope her husband didn't notice.
If he did, he was too much a gentleman to show it. "The best five years of my life," he said. "Being here with you, and being here to watch Clara grow up . .." His face softened. "Yes, the best years of my life."
With more than a little surprise, Nellie realized the years since the war had been the best of her life, too. She'd made more money when the Confederates occupied Washington, but she'd been worried and afraid all the time: worried about what Edna would do, afraid Bill Reach would tell the whole world what he knew, worried and afraid the U.S. bombardment would blow her and Edna and the coffeehouse to hell and gone.
Now Edna was married, Bill Reach was dead, and the country was at peace. And living with Hal Jacobs hadn't proved nearly so hard as she'd feared. "I love you, Hal," she exclaimed.
Saying it surprised her: it seemed an afternoon for surprises. And discovering she meant it surprised her even more. Hearing it made her husband's face light up. "I love it when you tell me that," Hal said. "I did not know I could be more happy than I already was, but now I am."
"I'm happy, too," Nellie said. By the way all the stories were written, she should have been in love with her husband before she married him, instead of finding out she was five years later. Well, she thought, it's not like I've lived a storybook life. She tried to remember if she'd ever told Hal she loved him before. Once or twice, maybe, in a dutiful fashion, as she occasionally gave him her body. But the words hadn't come from her heart, not till today.
Perhaps Hal sensed something of the same thing. He walked up to her and gave her a kiss a good deal warmer than the pecks that usually passed between them. She returned it with more warmth than usual, too. For once, she didn't mind the gleam that came into Hal's eye. The idea of making love while kindled suddenly struck her as delicious, not disgusting.
But Clara was still playing not far from one of the tables, and a customer chose that moment to come in. Can't have everything, Nellie thought as she walked over to ask the man what he wanted. She looked around. No, she couldn't have everything— she wouldn't be rich as long as she lived, for instance. What she had, though, was pretty good.