XIV
Another Friday. Another payday. It wouldn’t be much of a check; Chester Martin knew as much. He’d been working six hours a day instead of eight for quite a while now, and not working at all on Saturdays. He should have enjoyed the extra time off. He would have enjoyed it a lot more if he’d had the money to do more things. As it was, fifty cents for a couple of cinema tickets once or twice a month made him and Rita worry. The evening out would mean beans for supper instead of liver and tripe—or, the way things were these days, it might mean potatoes and cabbage instead of beans.
I’ve still got a job, he thought as he inched toward the clerk who would give him his pay envelope. The clerk still had a job, too, and still had the faintly supercilious air he’d worn when times were good. Petty-bourgeois bastard looking down his nose at the proletariat, Martin thought sourly. Do you really believe the bosses can’t replace you, too?
Later on, he remembered that that had gone through his mind just before he got to the clerk and gave him his name and pay number. The clerk checked him off a long, long list, handed him the envelope, and all of a sudden didn’t seem so snotty any more. “Here you are, Martin,” he said, as if speaking in a sickroom.
What’s eating him? Chester wondered. He didn’t open the envelope till he got to the front door of the steel mill. A couple of galvanized iron trash cans stood there, to hold just such refuse. Martin pulled out the check and put it into the breast pocket of his overalls. He started to throw away the envelope when he noticed another piece of paper inside.
This one was pink.
Martin stood there staring at it, altogether unmoving, for at least half a minute. He’d known the same mix of numbness, disbelief, and swelling pain when he got wounded on the Roanoke front—never before, and surely never since.
He pulled out the second sheet of paper, hoping against hope it might be something else. It wasn’t. Come Monday, he didn’t have a job any more.
Other paydays, he’d seen stunned men holding pink slips here. You didn’t say anything. You didn’t look at them. Maybe that was cruel. Maybe it had a touch of, There but for the grace of God go I. But maybe it held a sort of rough kindness, too. If you didn’t look at your fellow workers who all at once weren’t working beside you, they could say anything, do anything, they chose, and not have to worry about losing face.
The only trouble with that was, Chester had no idea what to do with the license he had. What could he possibly say? Nothing would make any difference. He was gone, and the steel mill would go on without him.
At last, one thing did occur to him. “Fuck,” he said softly. He tore up the pink slip, dropped the pieces into a trash can, and walked out. He might as well have torn himself up and thrown himself away instead. After all, what was he but a disposable proletarian the capitalists who ran the mill had just disposed of?
That thought made him look up the street toward the Socialist Party hall. He almost started over there. If anybody knew what to do, if anybody could help him, he’d find what he needed there. But he shook his head before taking his first step in that direction. The hall could wait. It was only a trolley ride away (but, with no money coming in, was it only a trolley ride?), and Rita deserved to know first.
When the trolley rattled past the statue of Remembrance across from the city hall, Martin had to look away. He’d remembered. He’d helped the United States get their honor back. He’d paid in blood and pain doing it, too. But now, it seemed, the whole world had forgotten him—him and how many hundreds of thousands, how many millions, of others just like him?
He almost missed his stop, and had to scramble off at the last minute. The motorman, who’d started rolling, sent him a sour look as he braked again. Most of the time, Martin would have apologized. Now he hardly even noticed. He trudged off toward his apartment building, his feet scuffing through snow.
A man in a ragged overcoat came toward him from an alley. “Spare change?” the fellow said, and coughed. He’d probably been hatchet-faced when he was eating well. Now a man could wound himself on the sharp angles of cheeks and nose and chin.
Martin had always given what he could, even though he hadn’t had much. Tonight, he shook his head. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I just lost my job, too.”
“Just?” The hatchet-faced man’s scorn said there were degrees in misery, too, degrees Martin hadn’t yet imagined. “It’s been two years for me. I used to have a house and a motorcar. Hell, I used to have a wife. Enjoy it. You’re only a beginner.” He tipped his battered hat and walked away.
Shivering from more than the cold, Martin hurried into his building. He half feared another beggar would find him before he got up the steps, but none did. How long can we keep this place? he wondered as he turned the key in the lock. Is the next stop a Blackfordburgh?
Rita came to the door and gave him a quick, wifely peck on the lips. “How did it . . . ?” she began. Her voice trailed away as she got a real look at his face. Slowly, the blood drained from hers. “Oh, no,” she said. “You didn’t . . .” She stopped again.
“I sure as hell did,” Chester said. “Yes, I sure as hell did, and God only knows what happens now. Have we got anything to drink in this place?”
He knew they did. He took a bottle of bourbon—KENTUCKY PRIDE, NOW MADE IN THE USA, it said—from a cupboard and poured himself a glass. Very much as an afterthought, he added a couple of ice cubes.
When he started to put the bottle away, Rita said, “Wait a minute.” She made a drink for herself, too, though she added water as well as ice to the whiskey.
Martin raised his glass. “Cheers,” he said—the very opposite of what he meant. He drank. A good many steelworkers celebrated payday by going out and getting drunk. He’d never fallen into that habit. Tonight, though, he felt like killing the bottle, and whatever other bottles they had in the place. Why not? he thought. Why the hell not? It’s not like I’ve got to get up in the morning. Who knows when I’ll have to get up in the morning again?
“What are we going to do?” Rita said in a thin, frightened voice.
“Maybe one of us’ll find a job,” Chester answered. He didn’t mean that, either. He took another sip and shook his head. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t mean it as that he didn’t believe it. Rita had been looking ever since she lost her job, and hadn’t had any luck landing a new one. She hadn’t just searched for typist positions, either. Nobody seemed to be hiring anyone, even as a waitress or a salesgirl.
As for him . . . He wanted to laugh, but he hurt too much inside. He wondered if he even ought to bother trying other steel mills. They were all laying people off, not hiring. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a new face on the foundry floor.
Rita said, “What do we do if . . . if we can’t find a job? Neither one of us, I mean.”
“Why do you think I’m drinking?” he said, which seemed as complete a reply as anything else. A couple of swallows of bourbon later, he added, “My pop’s still working. We’ve got a place to stay, if we have to.”
He couldn’t imagine a worse humiliation than moving back in with his folks as he neared his own fortieth birthday—and bringing his wife with him. His father and mother would take them in. He was sure of that. But having to crawl back to them was the last thing he wanted.
He shook his head again. The last thing he wanted was to have nowhere at all to go, and to end up in a Blackfordburgh. Next to that, the prospect of trying to fit himself and Rita into the room that had been cramped for him alone didn’t seem so bad.
Rita said, “Maybe you can find something in some other line: construction or something like that.”
Even she sounded doubtful. Chester wanted to laugh again. Again, the pain was too much to let him. As gently as he could, he asked, “Hon, why would they want me when they’ve got real carpenters and whatnot coming out their ears?”
He didn’t expect his wife to have an answer for him, but she did: “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you’d work cheaper.”
“Oh.” He winced. It wasn’t because she was wrong. It was because she was right. And so much for Socialist solidarity among workers, he thought. If times got bad enough, if people got desperate enough, Socialist solidarity went straight out the window. A job now, no matter what the pay, counted for more than the damage taking that job did to labor’s ability to get better wages later.
His glass was empty. He filled it again. Again, he started to put away the bottle. Again, Rita wouldn’t let him. She poured herself another drink, too. After she’d taken a swallow, she said, “At least your father’s still got work.”
“Yeah,” Chester said. Rita’s father had worked in a cement plant for more than thirty years, except when he’d done his time in the Army during the Great War. That hadn’t stopped him from losing his job a few months before. He hadn’t been fired, or not exactly; the company had gone belly-up. He’d been able to land only odd jobs since, and worried about losing his house.
“How much exactly have we got in the bank?” Rita asked.
Their bank was still sound, where so many had gone under. If this mess had any sort of silver lining, that was it. “We can get by for a month or two, anyhow,” Martin answered. “We’d be better off if we’d never bought any stocks at all, dammit.”
“We were suckers,” his wife said. “Lots of people were suckers.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said bitterly. “Buy when the market was near the top, throw money away on margin calls when it went sour. And you’re right, honey—we aren’t the only ones.”
“Election’s coming up this year,” she said. “I don’t see how Hosea Blackford has a prayer of getting a second term.”
“I almost went to the Socialist Party hall before I came home,” Martin said. And then, proving the depths of his own despair, he asked, “Why the devil should anyone who’s out of work vote Socialist, though?”
“It wasn’t the Democrats who passed the relief bills,” Rita said. “They voted against most of them.”
“I know. But they say the crash never would have happened in the first place if they’d been running things.” Martin sighed. “Maybe they’re even right. Who knows?” Rita looked shocked. He held up a defensive hand. “I used to be a Democrat till after the war. My old man still is—you know that. I changed my mind when the bosses sicced the cops on us when we struck for higher wages. We needed worker solidarity then, and we needed the Socialists, too.”
“We still do.” Rita’s family had always voted Socialist.
Chester wasn’t so sure. Chester wasn’t so sure of anything just then, except that the bourbon was hitting him hard. “They’ve had twelve years,” he said. “Blackford’s had his whole term to get us back on our feet, and he hasn’t done it. Maybe the other side deserves a shot. How could it be worse?”
“You’d really vote for Calvin Coolidge?” his wife asked. The governor of Massachusetts again looked to be his party’s likely candidate for president.
“Right now, I don’t know what the hell I’d do,” Martin answered. “All I know is, I wish I still had my job. I wish I did, but I don’t. And God only knows what we’re going to do on account of that.” He waited to see if Rita would argue some more. He hoped she would—that might mean she’d seen a ray of hope he hadn’t. But she said not a word.
Rounding the Horn in the USS Remembrance felt like old times to Sam Carsten. “I came the other way, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, in the Dakota during the war,” he said as waves lifted and dropped the aeroplane carrier again and again.
“It’s easier going that way,” Lieutenant Commander Michael Watkins said. “The waves are coming with you instead of hitting you head-on.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam agreed. “I still don’t know how they ever got around this place against the wind in sailing ships.”
“It wasn’t easy—I know that,” Watkins said, snatching up his mug of coffee from the galley table as the Remembrance plunged into another trough. Sam did the same. The table was mounted on gimbals, but the pitching in the strait was more than it was designed to handle.
After another couple of rises and falls, Sam said, “I pity the poor fellows whose stomachs can’t take this.”
“That’s no joke,” Watkins said, and took another sip of coffee.
“I didn’t think it was, sir,” Carsten said. “Have you seen the sick-bay lists? It’s a good thing we don’t have to do any fighting in these latitudes, that’s all I’ve got to say.” He checked himself. “No, I take that back. Anybody else who tried to fight down here would have just as many seasick cases as we do.”
“True enough.” The other officer sent him a sly look. “But I’ll bet you don’t mind the weather a bit.”
“Who, me?” Sam tried to look innocent. Lieutenant Commander Watkins snickered, so he couldn’t have pulled it off. He went on, “Rounding the Horn in April—autumn down here, heading toward winter? No, sir, I don’t mind it one little bit. It’s the kind of weather I was made for. I can go on deck without smearing goop all over my face and my hands. I’m not burned. I’m not blistered. And we’re heading for the Sandwich Islands. I’m going to toast up there. I’ve been there before, and I know I’ll toast. So I’ll enjoy this while it lasts.”
He hadn’t intended to get so worked up, but he didn’t enjoy, never had enjoyed, owning a hide that scorched if the sun looked at it sideways. Watkins held up a hand. “All right. I believe you. Do you think we’re going to have to fight when we do get up there?”
“Me, sir?” Sam shrugged. “I’m no crystal-ball reader. No, we’re talking about the Japs, so I guess I should say I’m no tea-leaf reader.” Watkins made a face at him. He grinned, but then quickly became serious once more. “One thing I’ll tell you, though, is that a scrap with them won’t be any fun at all. I was aboard the Dakota when they suckered her out of Honolulu harbor and torpedoed her, and for the Battle of the Three Navies in the Pacific. They’re tougher than most Americans think, and that’s the truth.”
“We can whip ’em.” Lieutenant Commander Watkins sounded confident. “We can whip anybody, except maybe the High Seas Fleet—and the Kaiser’s got more things on his plate than us right now. What do you know about these Action Française people?”
“Sir, when I was on the O’Brien, we put in at Brest. I went into town to have a few drinks and look around, and I saw an Action Française riot. What they remind me of most is the Freedom Party in the CSA. They remember how things were back before the war, and they want to turn back the clock so they’re that way again.”
“Good luck,” Watkins said. “The Kaiser won’t let them get away with that, and we won’t let the damned Confederates get away with it, either. We’d better not, anyhow.”
“Yes, sir,” Carsten said. “But hard times mean parties like that get more votes, seems like. I don’t know what anybody can do about it. I don’t know if anybody can do anything.”
He was sorry when the Remembrance rounded Cape Horn and made her way up the west coast of South America to Valparaiso, where she refueled. He’d been there briefly in the Dakota during the war. Chile was a staunch U.S. ally, not least because Argentina, her rival, had close ties to England and the other great alliance system. Argentina outweighed Chile, but the peace held because the Argentines didn’t outweigh the United States and didn’t want to give them any excuse to meddle in South American affairs.
Valparaiso had grown in the years since Sam was last there. He saw no signs of damage from the great earthquake of 1906. The weather was mild, which meant he got sunburned. Then the Remembrance started north and west again, toward the Sandwich Islands. He sighed, went to the pharmacist’s mate, and drew himself yet another tube of zinc-oxide ointment.
“You don’t happen to carry this stuff in five-gallon tubs, do you?” he asked, not altogether in jest.
“Sorry, no.” Like most in his post, the pharmacist’s mate had no sense of humor.
A few days out of Valparaiso, the Remembrance changed course, swinging more nearly toward the north. “Change of plan,” Commander Martin van der Waal told Carsten. “Keep it under your hat for a bit, though, because the men won’t like it. You can forget about Honolulu. No bright lights. No booze. No fast women, not any time soon. We’re bound for patrol duty off the coast of British Columbia.”
Sam had fond memories of some of the fast women in Honolulu. Even so, he said, “That’s the best news I’ve had in months, sir. You ever eat one of those whole roasted pigs they cook in a pit in the Sandwich Islands? That’s what I look like when I’m stationed there—cooked meat, nothing else but. The coast of British Columbia . . . That’s not so bad.” He’d sunburned in Seattle, too, but only a little.
Van der Waal looked him over, then nodded to himself. “No, you wouldn’t be one to complain about going way north, would you? You’ve got your reasons.”
“You bet I do, sir.” Sam nodded. “But what’s the scuttlebutt about the change in plans? What’s going on off British Columbia?”
“We’ll be flying combat air patrol, keeping an eye out for the Japs and giving ’em hell if we catch any of ’em in the neighborhood,” Commander van der Waal replied. “I don’t know this for a fact, but I hear they’ve been trying to stir up the Canucks, get ’em to rebel again.”
“Bastards,” Carsten said without much rancor. Having gone to Ireland during the Great War, he knew that was how you played the game. But, frowning, he asked, “Why us, sir? They’ve got to have other aeroplane carriers closer to Canada than we were when we set out. Why not use one of them? We’re going the long way round, seems like.”
“Yes, there are other carriers closer,” van der Waal agreed. “They’re purpose-built ships, not a converted battle cruiser like the Remembrance. They carry more aeroplanes than we do. And they’re all going to the Sandwich Islands. So is a lot of the rest of the fleet—whatever we don’t leave behind in the Atlantic to keep an eye on the Confederates and the limeys.”
And the Germans, Sam thought. He lit a cigarette. “If they want the first team in Honolulu,” he said slowly, “then they think there really might be trouble with the Japs.”
“That’s the way it looks to me, too,” van der Waal said. “And that means we’re going to have to pay special attention to torpedo-damage drills on our way north. Nobody knows what the Japs have operating off the Canadian coast. It may be nothing. It may be a destroyer or two. Or it may be more, including submersibles. And destroyers can launch torpedoes, too—that’s their best hope against bigger ships, in fact.”
“Yes, sir.” Sam hoped he didn’t sound too resigned. It wasn’t that torpedo-damage control wasn’t important. He knew it was. He’d seen how important it was aboard the Dakota. Important or not, though, it wasn’t what he wanted to be doing. He’d come to the carrier hoping to work with aeroplanes or, that failing, to stay in gunnery, his specialty as a petty officer before he got promoted. Of course, what he wanted to do and what the Navy wanted him to do were two different beasts.
Van der Waal knew he was reluctant. He said, “This duty is vital to the ship’s security, Ensign—vital, I tell you.”
“Yes, sir,” Carsten said again. “I know that, sir.” He stifled a sigh. “I’ll do what ever you need, sir.”
“I’m sure you will. I appreciate it,” van der Waal said. “You make a solid officer, Carsten, and I’m pleased to have you under me. If you’d gone to Annapolis instead of taking the mustang’s route, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d made captain by now.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” Sam said. “I do appreciate that, believe you me I do.” A lot of what he was doing these days amounted to showing people what he might have done if he’d had better chances when he was younger. He shrugged. Those were the breaks. He hadn’t even thought about becoming an officer till years after the war. But I passed my exams very first try, he thought proudly. Some veteran CPOs had been trying for years, with no luck at all.
He went out on deck. This wasn’t Cape Horn, not any more. The air was warm. The sea was blue and calm. The sun shone bright. Sam sighed. You couldn’t have everything. He reached for the zinc-oxide ointment.
Berlin, Ontario, didn’t boast a whole lot of fancy saloons. The best one, as far as Jonathan Moss was concerned, was the Pig and Whistle, not far from the courthouse. He found himself having a couple of drinks with Major Sam Lopat, the military prosecutor. They weren’t sparring with each other in court today. They’d both ducked in to get warm; though the calendar declared it was April, a new blizzard had just left Berlin eight more inches of snow.
Hoisting a glass, Moss said, “Mud in your eye.”
“Same to you,” the U.S. officer said, and drank. “Of course, all the mud around here’s frozen into a cheap grade of cement.”
“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Moss drank, too. “Nobody in his right mind would come here for the weather, that’s for sure.”
“Nope. Nobody in his right mind would come here at all.” But then Lopat paused and shook his head. “I take that back, damned if I don’t. You’re here for a reason—you can’t very well practice occupation law in the USA. Two reasons, matter of fact, because you married that Canadian gal, too.”
“Yeah.” Moss didn’t mention that he’d gone into occupation law not least because even then he hadn’t been able to get Laura Secord out of his mind.
Lopat’s train of thought went down a different track, which was probably just as well. He said, “And everything’s going to hell all over the world, but you’re a civilian with a steady job. That’s nothing to sneeze at, either, not these days it’s not.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” Moss said, without grammar but with great sincerity. “I don’t know when it’s going to turn around. I don’t know if it’s ever going to turn around.”
“Tell you one thing.” The military prosecutor spoke with a glee unfueled as yet by whiskey. “Come November, old man Blackford can head back to Dakota, and nobody’ll miss him a bit. And with a Democrat in Powel House, things here in Canada will tighten up—and about time, too. You see if they don’t, Jonathan my boy.”
“If they tighten up any more, you won’t bother trying Canucks at all,” Moss said. “You’ll just give ’em a blindfold and a cigarette, the way it worked during the war.”
“What a liar!” Lopat said. “Some of the fast ones you’ve pulled off in military court, and you’re boo-hooing for the Canucks? Give me a break, for crying out loud!”
“Your trouble, Major, is that you think people spell prosecute and convict the same way,” Moss said. “That’s not how it works. Even in military court, a defendant’s entitled to a fair shake.”
“Most of the ones who come up before the court deserve to be shaken, all right,” Lopat said. “One of these days, you’re going to be sorry for getting so many of ’em off. You may be turning another Arthur McGregor loose on the world.”
“McGregor never went to court,” Moss snapped. “And there’s not a lawyer in the world who doesn’t have some clients he wishes he didn’t. But what can you do, for Christ’s sake? If you don’t give everybody as good a defense as you can, everybody’s rights go down the drain.”
“Some people deserve to be locked up, and to have the jailer lose the key,” Lopat insisted. “Or worse. How many people did McGregor end up killing? And a lot of ’em were just Canucks in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“McGregor deserved whatever happened to him—after he had his day in court,” Moss said. “Till you have a trial, you just don’t know. You people have tried to railroad a few Canadians in your time, and don’t try to tell me any different.”
Lopat snorted. “You’d say that, wouldn’t you? I’ve got news for you, though. Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.” He picked up his glass of whiskey, poured it down, and signaled for a refill.
“If you don’t admit that . . .” Moss threw his hands in the air. Of course Sam Lopat wouldn’t admit it. He was a lawyer, too. Expecting a lawyer to admit anything damaging to the point of view he was presenting was like wishing the Easter Bunny would hop across your lawn. You could do it, but it wouldn’t do you any good, and you’d spend a long time waiting.
Lopat underscored the point, grinning and saying, “I don’t admit one damn thing, Counselor. Not one damned thing.”
Moss finished his own drink, then got to his feet. “Fine. Don’t admit anything. I’m still going to whale the stuffing out of you when we go back to court tomorrow morning. For now, I’m heading home. See you in the morning.” He plucked his hat off the rack, stuck it on his head, and strode out of the Pig and Whistle in more than a little annoyance. How could you have a civilized discussion with a man who wouldn’t admit one damned thing and was proud of it?
That Lopat might think the same of him never crossed his mind.
His Bucephalus started reluctantly. He let out a sigh of relief when it did start. The battery was going, no doubt about it. Pretty soon he’d have to get a new one. Pretty soon he’d have to get a new, or at least a newer, auto, too. Too many things on the Bucephalus were breaking down. And the company had gone out of business in 1929, so parts were hard to come by and ever more expensive.
He parked it outside his block of flats and hoped it would fire up again in the morning. If it didn’t . . . If it doesn’t, I’ll walk in, he thought, and reminded himself to set the alarm clock half an hour earlier than usual to give him time to walk if he had to.
His key turned in the lock. “I’m home!” he called as he stepped in the door. He wondered how glad Laura would be to see him. She’d been happy enough to marry him, but neither of them had been particularly happy since. Moss listened. Silence. “I’m home, honey,” he said again, wondering what sort of trouble he was in.
But it turned out not to be that kind of silence. A moment later, noise came from the bathroom: the unmistakable sound of someone being sick. A moment after that, the water closet flushed.
Laura came out a minute or so afterwards. She looked distinctly green. “What happened, hon?” Moss asked. “Are you all right?”
“Better now,” she said, and made a face, probably at the nasty taste in her mouth. “In about eight months, we’ll know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
For a moment, that seemed a complete non sequitur. Then Moss’ jaw dropped. “You mean we’re—?”
She nodded. “Doesn’t seem to be much room for doubt any more. I’ve missed a month, and I’ve got morning sickness, even if it isn’t morning right now. We’re going to have a baby, sure enough.”
“That’s . . . wonderful,” Moss said. A good attorney was never supposed to be caught speechless. He went on, “But . . . how did it happen?”
His wife’s mouth quirked in a wry grin. “Very much in the usual way, I’m sure. It hasn’t happened any other way since the days of our Lord.”
He made a face at her. “I didn’t mean that. What I meant was, it’s a surprise.” He couldn’t think of the last time he hadn’t worn a safe when they made love.
“Those things aren’t perfect,” Laura said.
“Evidently not.” Moss shrugged and laughed. “If it’s a boy, we can call him Broken Rubber Moss. That has a ring to it, don’t you think? Or how about Prophylactina for a girl?”
“What I think—” Laura Moss didn’t, couldn’t, go on. What ever she’d been about to say, a giggle swallowed it. She tried again: “What I think, Jonathan, is that you’re dangerously insane.”
He bowed. “Your servant, ma’am. You’ve known that for a long time, I’m sure.”
“I certainly have.” She nodded. “There I was, with this mad Yank who kept coming to the farm. I didn’t want any mad Yanks coming to the farm.”
“I should hope not,” Moss said gravely. “You get into all sorts of trouble if you let those people anywhere near you. You might even end up married to one of them if you’re not careful, and after that anything can happen. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Laura echoed. She set one hand on her belly, though the pregnancy didn’t show and wouldn’t for months. “This was as much a surprise to me as it was to you, you know. I didn’t much want a child. Now . . . Now we’ll just have to make the best of it, won’t we?”
“I don’t know what else we can do.” Moss kissed her on the cheek.
When he tried to kiss her on the mouth, too, she pulled away, saying, “You don’t want to do that. I haven’t properly cleaned my teeth yet.”
“Oh.” Jonathan nodded. “Well, why don’t you, then?” While Laura went back to the bathroom, he hurried to the kitchen. The occasion really called for champagne, but they didn’t have any. Whiskey over ice would do the job well enough. He had the drinks ready by the time Laura came out again.
She took one. They solemnly clinked glasses and drank. Then Moss did kiss her. Her mouth tasted of liquor and toothpaste. She said, “I hope this won’t make me sick again.” After seeming to listen to something internal, she shook her head in relief. “No, I think it will be all right.” As if to prove it, she took another sip. “That’s good.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Jonathan drank some more, too. He raised his glass. “Here’s to us, and to . . . whom it may concern.”
“That’s pretty good. I like it a lot better than . . . what you said before.” Laura wouldn’t dignify it by repeating it.
“All right.” Moss made his drink disappear in a hurry. Along with what he’d had at the Pig and Whistle, it left him owlishly serious. He took his wife’s hands in his and said, “I do love you, you know. I always have.”
“You always called it love, anyhow,” she said. “I think for a long time it was just what any man feels when he’s been away from women for too long.”
Since she was bound to be right, he didn’t dignify that with a direct reply. Instead, he said, “Well, you can’t very well accuse me of that now.” As if to prove as much, he kissed her again. His hands resting on the swell of her hips, he continued, “And, since you can’t accuse me of that . . .” He kissed her once more, his lips hard against hers. One of his hands slid to her behind, to press her to him. Her own arms tightened around his back. As the kiss went on, she made a little wordless sound, almost a growl, in the back of her throat.
He lifted her off her feet. She let out a startled squawk: “Put me down! You’ll hurt your back!” She had a reasonable chance of being right; she wasn’t a small woman, and he was pushing forty. He ignored her all the same, carrying her off to the bedroom. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“What do you think?” He set her on the bed and got down beside her. His hand slid under her skirt and up her thigh to the joining of her legs. He rubbed there. Her legs slid apart to make it easier for him. He hiked her skirt up and pulled her underpants down, then went back to what he’d been doing.
She laughed. “I think you’re going to take advantage of me.”
“Damn right I am.” Jonathan unbuttoned his own fly. He was also going to take advantage of her being pregnant: if he didn’t have to worry about putting on a rubber, he didn’t intend to. He certainly liked it better without.
They both still wore most of their clothes when he went into her. She wasn’t quite so wet as he would have wanted, but having to force his way in added to his excitement. She wrapped her legs around him and bucked hard. “Come on!” she said as he squeezed and fondled her breasts through the thin cotton fabric of her blouse. As she kindled, she said a good deal more than that. She was the very model of a lady . . . except in the bedroom, when she was well and truly roused. Then anything could happen, and anything could come out of her mouth.
It hadn’t lately. The two of them had started taking each other for granted since they’d got married. Today, though . . . Today they thrashed on the bed and clawed at each other as they hadn’t done since he would drive up to Arthur and they’d picnic and then fornicate at her farmhouse outside the little town.
His own building pleasure driving him on, Moss rammed at her, not caring in the heat of the moment if he hurt her a little, too. By the way Laura yowled, she didn’t care, either. Suddenly, she arched her back, threw back her head, and let out a long, shuddering moan. At the same time, she squeezed him inside her, so tight that he couldn’t help but erupt.
“You’re rumpling me,” Laura said a moment later, pushing at him.
He shook his head and replied with lawyerly precision: “No, sweetheart, I just rumpled you.” She made a face when he gave her a kiss. He laughed, his weight still on her. “If I remember right, that has something to do with why we got married.”
“You think so, do you?” She pushed at him again, harder this time. He flopped out of her, which reminded him that, despite the fierce lovemaking they’d just enjoyed, he didn’t burn so hot as he had back in his twenties. Then he’d have been ready for a second round as soon as the first was over. Now . . . Now he’d wait for tomorrow, or maybe the day after. Laura gave him another shove, and twisted under him, too. “Let me up. Let me set myself to rights.”
“Oh, I suppose so,” he said. But he couldn’t keep wonder from his voice as he went on, “A baby. How about that?”
“Yes. How about that?” His wife’s voice softened, too. “It isn’t what I expected, but I’m glad it’s happened.”
“So am I.” He wondered if he meant it. He decided he did. “About time we put down some roots here.”
“I’ve already got roots here,” Laura said pointedly. She nodded, too, though. “It’s about time we were a family.”
“A baby,” Moss said again. “I wonder what he’ll see by the time he grows up.” The baby would be his age in the early 1970s. What would the world be like then?