"Mr. Pinkard has voted," one of the elderly precinct workers said, and Pinkard felt proud at having done his democratic duty.
He walked home still suffused with that warm sense of virtue. If you didn't vote, you had no one to blame but yourself for what happened to the country-unless, of course, you were black, or a woman. And one of these years, the way things looked, they'd probably let women have a go at the ballot box, no matter what he thought about it. He supposed the world wouldn't end.
Emily came out onto the porch as he hurried up the walk toward the house. "Hi, darlin'!" he called. Then he saw the buff-colored envelope she was holding.
3
Lieutenant Nicholas H. Kincaid raised a forefinger. "Another cup of coffee for me here, if you please," the Confederate cavalry officer said.
"I'll take care of it," Nellie Semphroch said quickly, before her daughter Edna could. Edna glared at her. Half the reason Kincaid came into the coffeehouse the two women ran in occupied Washington, D.C., was to moon over Edna, his eyes as big and glassy as those of a calf with the bloat.
That was also all the reason Nellie tried to keep Edna as far away from Kincaid as she could. She'd caught them kissing once, and who could say where that would have led if she hadn't put a stop to it in a hurry? She shook her head. She knew where it would have led. She'd been down that path herself, and didn't intend to let Edna take it.
Edna filled a cup with the blend from the Dutch East Indies that Kincaid liked, set the cup on a saucer, and handed it to Nellie. "Here you are, Ma," she said, her voice poisonously sweet. She knew better than to argue out loud with Nellie when the coffeehouse was full of customers, as it was this afternoon. That didn't mean she wasn't angry. Far from it.
Nellie Semphroch glared back at her, full of angry determination herself. Given a generation's difference in their ages-a short generation's difference-the two women looked very much alike. They shared light brown hair (though Nellie's had some streaks of gray in it), oval faces, fine, fair skin, and eyes somewhere between blue and green. If Nellie's expression was habitually worried, well, she'd earned that. In this day and age, if you were an adult and you didn't have plenty to worry about, something was wrong with you.
She carried the steaming cup over to Lieutenant Kincaid. "Obliged, ma'am," he said. He was polite, when he could easily have been anything but. And, when he dug in his pocket, he put a real silver quarter-dollar on the table, not the Confederate scrip that let Rebel officers live like lords in the conquered capital of the USA.
Outside in the middle distance, a sudden volley of rifle shots rang out. Nellie jumped. She'd been through worse when the Confederates shelled Washington and then fought their way into town, but she'd let herself relax since: that had been well over a year ago now.
"Nothin' to worry about, ma'am," Kincaid said after sipping at the coffee. "That's just the firing squad getting rid of a nigger. Waste of bullets, you ask me. Ought to string the bastards up. That'd be the end of that."
"Yes," Nellie said. She didn't really like talking with Kincaid. It encouraged him, and he didn't need encouragement to come around. But Confederate soldiers and military police were the only law and order Washington had these days. The Negro rebellion that had tried to catch fire here hadn't been against the CSA alone; a good part of the fury had been aimed at whites in general.
Kincaid said, "Those niggers were damn fools-beg your pardon, ma'am-to try givin' us trouble here. Places where they're still in arms against the CSA are places where there weren't any soldiers to speak of. They take a deal of rooting out from places like that, on account of we can't empty our lines against you Yankees to go back and get 'em. But here-we got plenty of soldiers here, coming and going and staying. Why, we got three regiments comin' in tonight, back from whipping the Reds in Mississippi and heading up to the Maryland front. And it's like that every day of the year. Sometimes I don't think niggers is anything but a pack of fools."
"Yes," Nellie said again. Three regiments in from Mississippi, going up to Maryland. Hal Jacobs, who had a little bootmaking and shoe-repair business across the street, had ways of getting such tidbits to people in the USA who could do something useful with them.
"Bring me another sandwich here, ma'am?" a Confederate captain at a far table called. Nellie hurried over to serve him. Despite the rationing that made most of Washington a gray, joyless place, she never had trouble getting her hands on good food and good coffee. Of themselves, her eyes went across the street for a moment. She didn't know exactly what connections Mr. Jacobs had, but they were good ones. And he liked having the coffeehouse full of Confederates talking at the top of their lungs-or even quietly, so long as they talked freely.
"You had a ham and cheese there?" she asked. The captain nodded. She hurried back of the counter to fix it for him.
Nicholas H. Kincaid was not without resource. He gulped down the coffee Nellie had given him and asked for another refill while she was still making the sandwich. That meant Edna had to take care of him. Not only did she bring him the coffee, she sat down at the table with him and started an animated conversation. The person to whom she was really telling something was Nellie, and the message was simple: I'll do whatever I please.
Seething inside, Nellie sliced bread, ham, and cheese with mechanical competence. She wished she could haul off and give her daughter a good clout in the ear, but Edna was past twenty, so how much good could it do? Why don't young folks listen to people who know better? she mourned silently, forgetting how little she'd listened to anyone at the same age.
She took the sandwich over to the captain, accepted his scrip with an inward sigh, and was about to head back behind the counter when the door opened and a new customer came in. Unlike most of her clientele, he was neither a Confederate soldier nor one of the plump, clever businessmen who hadn't let a change of rulers in Washington keep them from turning a profit. He was about fifty, maybe a few years past, with a black overcoat that had seen better times, a derby about which the same could be said, and a couple of days' stubble on his chin and cheeks. He picked a table near the doorway, and sat with his back against the wall.
When Nellie came over to him, he breathed whiskey fumes up into her face. She ignored them. "I thought I told you never to show your face in here again," she said in a furious whisper.
"Oh, Little Nell, you don't have to be that way," he answered. His voice, unlike his appearance, was far from seedy: he sounded ready for anything. His eyes traveled the length of her, up and down. "You're still one fine-looking woman, you know that?" he said, as if he'd seen right through the respectable gray wool dress she wore.
Her face heated. Bill Reach knew what she looked like under that dress, sure enough, or he knew what she had looked like under her clothes, back when she'd been younger than Edna was now. She hadn't seen him since, or wanted to, till he'd shown up at the coffeehouse one day a few months before. Then she'd managed to frighten him off, and hoped he was gone for good. Now-
"If you don't get out of here right now," she said, "I'm going to let these officers here know you're bothering a lady. Confederates are gentlemen. They don't like that." Except when they're trying to get you into bed themselves.
Reach laughed, showing bad teeth. It looked like a good-natured laugh-unless you were on the receiving end of it. "I don't think you'll do that."
"Oh? And why don't you?" She might be betraying Rebel information to Hal Jacobs, but that didn't mean she'd be shy about using Confederate officers to protect herself from Bill Reach and whatever he wanted.
But then he said, "Why? Oh, I don't know. A little bird told me-a little homing pigeon, you might say."