American Empire: Blood and Iron - By Harry Turtledove Page 0,268

in the pockets of his bell-bottomed trousers. He wasn’t used to sauntering. When he went somewhere aboard the Remembrance, he always went with a purpose in mind, and he almost always had to hurry. Taking it easy was liberty of a sort he rarely got.

Half by accident, half by design, he came out onto the Boston Common: acres and acres of grass intended for nothing but taking it easy. If he wanted to, he could lie down there, put his cap over his eyes, and nap in the sun.

“No, thanks,” he said aloud at that thought. If he napped in the sun, he’d roast, sure as pork would in the galley ovens of the Remembrance. But there were trees here and there on the Common. Napping in the shade might not be so bad.

He headed for a good-sized oak with plenty of drooping, leafy branches to hold the sun at bay. Also heading for it from a different direction were a girl of nine or so, a boy who looked like her older brother, and, behind them, a woman with a picnic basket. Seeing Sam, the girl started to run. When she got to the shade under the oaks, she said, “This is our tree. You can’t have it.”

“Mary Jane, there’s plenty of room for us all,” the woman said sternly. “And don’t you dare be rude to a sailor. Remember, your father was a sailor.”

“Ma’am, if it’s any trouble, I’ll find another tree,” Sam said.

The woman shook her head. “It’s no trouble at all—or it won’t be, unless you make some. But if you made a lot of trouble, you wouldn’t have said you’d go someplace else like that.”

“I’m peaceable,” Sam agreed. If he hadn’t paid a call on the house where Isabella worked, he might have felt like making some trouble: she was a pretty woman, even if she looked tired. And she’d said the girl’s—Mary Jane’s—father was a sailor, which probably made her a widow. Sometimes widows missed what their husbands weren’t there to give them any more. As things were, though, Sam just sat down on the grass near the tree trunk, in the deepest part of the shade.

In a rustle of wool, the woman sat down, too, and took a blanket from the basket and spread it out on the grass. She started putting bowls of food on the blanket. While she was doing that, her son asked Sam, “Sir, did you know anybody who sailed aboard the USS Ericsson?”

“Can’t say that I did,” Carsten answered. Then his eyes narrowed as he remembered where he’d heard the name. “That ship! Was your father on her, sonny?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said. “And the stinking Rebs sank her after the war was over. That’s not right.”

“It sure as…the dickens isn’t,” Sam said, inhibited in his choice of language by the presence of the woman and little girl. “I’m awfully sorry to hear that. My ship got torpedoed once, by the Japs out in the Pacific. We didn’t sink, but I know we were just lucky.”

“And the Confederate skipper who sank the Ericsson is still walking around free as a bird down in South Carolina,” the woman said. “He murdered my husband and more than a hundred other men, and no one cares. Even the president doesn’t care.”

“If Teddy Roosevelt had won his third term, he’d have done something about it,” Carsten said. “If the Rebs didn’t hand that…fellow over, TR would have walloped the Confederate States till they did.”

“I think so, too,” the woman said. “If women had the vote in Massachusetts, I would have voted for Sinclair when he got elected. I’ve changed my mind since I found out about the Ericsson, though.”

“I bet you have,” Sam said. “One thing you have to give Teddy—he never took any guff from anybody.”

“No.” The woman pointed to the food. “Would you like some fried chicken and ham and potato salad? I made more than we can eat, even if these two”—she pointed at her children—“do put it away like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Are you sure, ma’am?” Carsten asked. If she was a widow, things were liable to be as tough for her as for the whore who’d gone down on her knees in front of him—tougher, maybe. But she nodded so emphatically, turning her down would have been rude.

He ate a ham sandwich and a drumstick and homemade potato salad and pickled tomatoes, and washed them down with lemonade that made him pucker and smile at the same time.