On the TV screen, talking heads blathered about Virginia's brilliant counterattack. Beckie watched Mr. Snodgrass watching as much as she watched the TV herself. He looked much less happy than she'd thought he would. Then an announcer said, "Damage to Parkersburg is believed to be minimal," and she understood. He didn't care about Parkersburg for its own sake. He just didn't want the fighting to hurt Mrs. Snodgrass.
The phone rang. Mr. Snodgrass jumped. He took it off his belt. "Hello?" he said, and then he jumped again. "Oh, hello, Doctor! How is she?" The Ohioans were jamming cell-phone calls, but evidently not all of them. And then Mr. Snodgrass' shoulders slumped. He looked as if he'd been kicked in the face. "Thank you ... Thank you for letting me know, sir. You stay safe now, you hear?" He clicked off. He didn't really need to say what he said next, but he did anyway: "She's ... gone." He didn't sound as if he believed it.
"I'm so sorry," Beckie said.
"God will take care of her," Gran said. She got to her feet and pointed at Ted Snodgrass. "You stay there." She went into the kitchen with a more determined stride than Beckie could remember seeing from her.
Where would he go? Beckie wondered. He took off his glasses and pulled out a pocket handkerchief to wipe his streaming eyes. "What am I going to do without her?" he asked, which was a question without an answer. Then he said, "How can I even bury her? I'm on the wrong side of a stinking battle line." That was probably another question without a good answer—maybe without any answer at all.
"I'm sorry," Beckie repeated, feeling how useless words were. "She was a nice lady," she added, which was also true and also inadequate.
"She was . . . everything to me," Mr. Snodgrass said. "Now I've got nothing, and nothing left to live for."
"Here." Gran came back, carrying a glass half full of amber liquid. Ice cubes clinked inside. She thrust it at Mr. Snodgrass. "Drink this, Ted."
"What is it?" Beckie asked.
"A double," Gran answered briskly. Beckie's jaw dropped. Gran didn't usually approve of drinking. Her husband had drunk a lot when he was alive. (Beckie thought she would have drunk, too, if she were married to Gran.) But she went on, "Go on, Ted. It won't make you feel much better, but it'll put up a kind of a wall for a little while." She sounded like someone who knew what she was talking about.
And if she'd told Mr. Snodgrass to go up on the roof and flap his arms and crow like a rooster right then, chances were he would have done that, too. He finished the drink sooner than Beckie thought he could. She'd tasted whiskey before, and didn't like it. But when he got to the bottom of the glass, he said, "Thank you kindly, Myrtle. Most of the time, people who say they need a drink just want one. That one, I really needed."
"Drinks are for bad times more than they're for good ones, I think," Gran said.
"Wouldn't be surprised." Mr. Snodgrass blinked a couple of times. He still didn't look happy, or anything close to happy. But he didn't quite look as if he'd walked in front of a truck any more, either. He nodded to Gran. "I hope you stay well, you and Rebecca."
"And you," Beckie said before Gran could stick her foot in her mouth and spoil the moment. She didn't know Gran would do something like that, but it was the way to bet.
"Me?" Mr. Snodgrass shrugged. "Who cares about me at a time like this? I don't even care about me right now."
"Well, you should. You have to watch out for yourself," Beckie said.
"Nobody'll do it for you," Gran put in.
Sure as the devil, that was the wrong thing to say. Mr. Snod-grass clouded up. "Not now, anyway," he said.
Beckie gave her grandmother a look that Gran didn't even notice. Of course she doesn't, Beckie thought. She couldn't even come right out and say Gran was a jerk. Gran wouldn't listen. And even the truth got you a name for disrespecting your elders. You couldn't win.
More artillery boomed—off in the distance, yes, but not nearly far enough away. That was especially true because these were incoming rounds, not ones fired by the Virginians. Beckie could tell the difference now. There was one bit of knowledge she'd never imagined she would have. She wouldn't have been sorry to give it back, but life didn't work that way. Too bad.
Then she heard the rumble of diesel engines and the clatter of tracks. Route 14 was only about half a kilometer from the house, and the noise was easy to make out. "What's going on?" she said. "They just went through here a couple of days ago. Now it sounds like they're coming back."
"It does, doesn't it?" Mr. Snodgrass seemed eager to think about anything except what had just happened to him.
"Something will have gone wrong," Gran said. That was just about her favorite prophecy. And here it was much too likely to be true.
Watching the—the armored fighting vehicles, that was what Mr. Brooks called them—fall back through Elizabeth made Justin scratch his head. "Something's gone wrong," he said. "It must have."
"Pretty good bet," Mr. Brooks agreed. "But what? They weren't under what you'd call heavy pressure or anything. Why pull back?"
"Beats me," Justin said. "What do you want to do, ask them?"
To his amazement, the coin and stamp dealer headed for the door. "Why not? Maybe they'll tell us."
"Maybe they'll shoot us, you mean," Justin said. But he followed. He didn't want Mr. Brooks to think he was afraid, even if he was.
"Why should they?" the older man said as he walked outside. "We're just ordinary citizens of Virginia, going about our lawful business and trying to find out what our very own soldiers are doing. It's a free state, isn't it? Except for the sales tax, I mean."
"Funny," Justin said. "Funny."
Mr. Brooks ignored him. He waved to somebody standing up in the cupola of a tank—and yes, by now Justin recognized tanks and could tell them from the other armored behemoths that clanked through Elizabeth. "Where are you guys going?" Mr. Brooks yelled, pitching his voice to carry through the racket. "Y'all just got here." If he laid the accent on a little thicker than he might have, well, so what?
"We've got to pull back," the real Virginian said—sure enough, he didn't mind talking to a civilian.
"How come?" Mr. Brooks asked in a civilian-sounding way.
The soldier in the tank—they called them trackforts or mobile pillboxes in this alternate—cussed. He swears like a trooper, Justin thought. Then the fellow said, "Blacks went and rose up back in the cities. We've got to go and squash them before we can give those Ohio rats what they deserve."
Mr. Brooks swore, too, the way a real Virginian would have when he got news like that. Justin was very impressed. "What are we supposed to do here?" Mr. Brooks asked.
"Best you can till we get back," the tankman answered.
Justin and Mr. Brooks trotted down the street to keep up with him. "What's going on in Charleston?" Justin called. If Mr. Brooks could do it, he could, too. "My mother's down there," he added, in case the soldier thought he was a spy. It was even true.
"Don't know much. There's some shooting—I've heard that," the soldier said. "Like I told you, just hang on. We'll be back." He waved as the tank clattered away. The pavement on Route 14 was taking a devil of a beating.
"Well, we might have known they'd play that card," Mr. Brooks said.
Justin hardly paid any attention to him. "There's fighting in Charleston!" he exclaimed.
Mr. Brooks nodded. "I heard what he said." He set a hand on Justin's shoulder. "Your mom's a smart woman. She'll know how to stay out of trouble."
"Sure she will—if she has the chance," Justin said. "But what if she was out shopping somewhere or something when the shooting started? She wouldn't have a chance then." Seeing everything that could go wrong was much too easy.
"Even when bullets start flying, they miss most of the time," Mr. Brooks said. "If that weren't so, I'd've been holding a lily for a long time now." He looked past Justin, probably looking back into another timeline a long time before.