"We'll hold Washington," Kincaid said. "President Wilson said it was our capital by rights, and we'll keep it. President Semmes says the same thing, so that's how it'll be." He thrust out his already prominent chin, as if to stay the Yankee hordes with the granite contained therein.
Nellie thought about mentioning the jawbone of an ass, but forbore. What she did say was, "You Confederates have said a lot of things that haven't come true. What makes you think this'll be any different?"
"Don't you rag on him, Ma!" Edna said shrilly.
When Nellie heard that tone of voice from her daughter, she knew the game was lost. Edna would do whatever Edna intended doing, and nothing and nobody would stop her. My God, Nellie thought. How am I going to explain this to Mr. Jacobs? The daughter of a spy for the United States running off and marrying a Confederate officer? He'd never trust Nellie again.
Edna, of course, hadn't the slightest idea Nellie was a spy for the USA. A good thing, too, Nellie thought. She'd never imagined life could get so complicated. Knowing it was weak, she tried a new card: "Suppose I say no?"
Kincaid didn't answer, which told Nellie the card was even weaker than she'd thought. He'd seemed so polite, she'd hoped a refusal might make him go away. Edna did reply, firmly: "Ma, we'd run off. Nick knows this chaplain-he told me so." Kincaid blushed again, but after a moment nodded. Edna went on, "You can't stop us, and you know it. You got to sleep sometime."
"You'd leave me to run the coffeehouse all by my lonesome?" Nellie asked, shifting with the changing breeze as adroitly as a politician. "It's too much for one person. It's too much for two people, sometimes."
"Hire yourself a nigger," Edna told her. "Ma, you know you're making good money. You can hire a couple of niggers, easy."
Again, that was probably true. Kincaid said, "Edna, honey, when we get back down into my country"-he spoke as if to assure her the CSA was far superior to this benighted northern land-"you won't have to lift a finger. You'll have niggers doing all your work for you."
Nellie did laugh then. She couldn't help it. "Niggers doing all your work for you, Edna, on a lieutenant's pay?" she said. "Likely tell. Besides, aren't the Confederate States buzzing like a hornets'nest about how niggers aren't going to be like servants no more?"
"I don't reckon that'll come to anything," Lieutenant Kincaid said. He sounded none too confident, though, and he said not a word about how easy keeping Negro servants on a junior officer's pay would be. That relieved Nellie; she'd feared he would announce that his father owned a plantation stretching halfway across Alabama, and that what he got from the Confederate War Department was less than pocket change to him.
Before the argument-the losing argument, Nellie was convinced-could go on, the door to the coffeehouse opened. The bell above it chimed. A fierce smile of triumph lighted Edna's face. "Ma," she said sweetly, "why don't you go take care of Mr. Reach there?"
Not five minutes earlier, Nellie had wondered how life got so complicated. Now she wondered if God had decided to show her she didn't know what complicated meant. Sure as hell, there was Bill Reach folding himself into a chair at a table by the window. He looked the same as he always had since he'd returned, all unbidden, to Nellie's life: dark, unkempt clothes, stubbled chin and cheeks, bleary eyes.
As she went up to him, she heard Lieutenant Kincaid say, "I never did fancy that fellow, not from the first time I set eyes on him."
Edna giggled. "I think he's one of Ma's old beaus." Nellie's back stiffened.
"Hello, Little Nell," Reach said when Nellie reached his table. Edna giggled. Nicholas Kincaid chuckled. Nellie steamed.
Speaking very softly, she said, "If you ever call me that again, I will tell the Confederate occupying authorities exactly-exactly, do you hear me?-what you are."
Those bleary eyes widened. "Me? I'm not anything much," he said, but the certainty that usually informed his gravelly voice was missing.
"You heard me," Nellie whispered. "I don't ever want to see you round here again, either." In normal tones, she went on, "Now what'll it be?"
"Cup of coffee, couple fried eggs, and buttered toast," Reach said, his tone grudging. He smelled of whiskey.
"I'll be right back," Nellie told him.
As she started frying the eggs and toasting the bread, Lieutenant Kincaid said, "Ma'am? Can you give me your answer, ma'am?" He sounded plaintive as a calf calling for its mother.
"No," Nellie snarled. The Rebel officer looked as if she'd kicked him.
Edna set a hand on his arm. "It'll be all right, Nick. Don't you worry about it none. She's just my mother. She ain't my jailer, and she can't hold me back when I go with you." Not if I go with you, Nellie noted. When.
"I don't know what this world is coming to," she said, "when children don't pay any attention at all to the people who brought them into this world in the first place." Edna didn't answer. She kept staring at Lieutenant Kincaid as if she'd just invented him. Nellie sighed and slipped a metal spatula under the eggs to turn them in the pan. She repeated what she'd said a moment before: "I don't know what this world is coming to."
Lieutenant Kincaid leaned over and pecked Edna on the lips. He set his hat back on his head, tipped it to Nellie, and went out of the coffeehouse whistling "Dixie" loudly and off-key. "Isn't he wonderful?"
"No," Nellie snapped. A couple of other Confederate officers came in. Nellie pointed their way. "You take care of them." She slid the eggs out of the frying pan, took the toast from the rack above the fire in the stove, spread butter on it, poured coffee, and carried Bill Reach his breakfast. "Here you are. That'll be a dollar ten."
He winced slightly, but laid down a dollar and a quarter. "Don't worry any about the change," he said. He spread salt and pepper liberally over the eggs before he began to eat. Then he looked up at her. "Back in those days, I didn't know you could cook, too."
She glared. "Do you think I won't turn you in?" she said in a low, savage voice. "You better think again. My daughter is going to marry a Confederate officer." And then, to her helpless horror, she began to cry.
"Are you all right, Ma?" Edna came rushing over. She looked daggers at Bill Reach. "What'd he do?" Hearing that, the two Confederate officers jumped to their feet. They were nothing if not gentlemen.
Nellie waved everyone away. "It's all right," she insisted. "I'm just-happy for you, that's all." She'd told Edna a lot of lies for the foolish girl's own sake. After so many, what was one more?
Doubtfully, Edna retreated. The Rebs settled back into their seats. In a half-apologetic mumble, Bill Reach said, "Hal told me not to come around here any more."
"Then why didn't you listen to him?" Nellie said. She sat down at the table with Reach, which made Edna stare in surprise but succeeded in convincing the Confederates nothing was wrong.
"Now that I found you, I can't stay away from you," Reach answered. He started to reach out to set his hand on hers, but stopped when she made as if to pull away. He sighed, then coughed. "All these years, all that water over the dam, and I never forgot even a little of what we did, and I knew it had to be the same for you."
She wanted to cry some more, or maybe scream. If he'd been mooning after her since before Edna was born…that made him crazy, was what it did. Try as she would, she had trouble remembering him at all from those long-ago days. Just another face, just another cock-But nowadays, he was the USA's number-one spy in Washington. She wondered if the people to whom he fed his information knew he was on, or over, the ragged edge.