Lucullus-Lucullus Wood, now that his father Apicius, like Cincinnatus, had taken a surname-was turning a pig's carcass above a pit filled with hickory wood and basting the meat with a sauce an angel had surely brought down from heaven. He nodded to Cincinnatus. "Ain't seen you here for a while," he remarked. "What you want?"

Cincinnatus stretched out his hands in the direction of the pit. For a moment, he wanted nothing more than to revel in the warmth that came from it: the weather outside held a promise of winter. "I want to talk to your pa," he answered as he began to warm up himself.

Lucullus made a sour face. "Why ain't I surprised?"

"On account of you know me," Cincinnatus said. "I'll be damned if I know how you can look like you done bit into a green persimmon when you're takin' a bath in the best smell in the world."

"Only thing I smell when you come around here is trouble," Lucullus said. He never missed a beat in turning the carcass or basting it.

With a bitter laugh, Cincinnatus answered, "That'd be funny, except it ain't. I get into trouble around here, it's trouble your pa put me in. Now"-he let his voice roughen-"can I see him, or not?"

Lucullus Wood was harder to lean on than he had been. He was twenty now, or maybe a year past, and had confidence in himself as a man. Even so, a show of determination could still make him back down. He bit his lip, then said, "That room in back I reckon you know about."

"Yeah, I know about that room." Cincinnatus nodded. "He in there with anybody, or is he by his lonesome?"

"By his lonesome, far as I know," Lucullus said. "Go on, go on. You barged in before. Barge on in again." Had his hands been free, he probably would have made washing motions with them to show that whatever happened next was not his fault. As things were, his expression got the message across.

Ignoring that expression, Cincinnatus went down the hall at the back of the Kentucky Smoke House till he got to the door he knew. He didn't barge in; he knocked instead. "Come in," a voice from within said. Cincinnatus worked the latch. Apicius Wood looked at him with something less than pleasure. "Oh. It's you. Reckoned it might be somebody I was glad to see."

"It's me." Cincinnatus shut the door behind him.

With a grunt, Apicius pointed to a battered chair. The proprietor of the Kentucky Smoke House looked as if he'd eaten a great deal of his own barbecue. If that was how he'd got so fat, Cincinnatus didn't think he could have picked a better way. "Well," Apicius rumbled, "what we gonna fight about today?"

"Don't want no fight," Cincinnatus said.

Apicius Wood laughed in his face. "Ain't many niggers in this town as stubborn as I am, but you're sure as hell one of 'em. We don't see eye to eye. You know it, an' I know it, too. When we get together, we fight."

Cincinnatus let out a long sigh. "I ain't enough of a Red to suit you, I ain't enough of a diehard to suit Joe Conroy, and I'm too goddamn black to suit Luther Bliss. Where does that leave me?"

"Out on a limb," Apicius answered accurately. "Well, say your say, so I know what we gonna fight about this time."

"What you think of the elections?" Cincinnatus asked.

"What the hell difference it make what I think or even if I think?" Apicius returned. "Ain't like I got to vote. Ain't like you got to vote, neither. Have to wait till after the revolution for that to happen, I reckon."

"Maybe not," Cincinnatus said. "Put 'em together, the Socialists and the Republicans got more seats in the House than the Democrats do. First time the Democrats lose the House in more'n thirty years. They lost seats in the Senate, too."

"Didn't lose a one here in Kentucky," Apicius said. "'Fore they let somebody here vote, they make damn sure they know who he vote for."

Cincinnatus refused to let the fat cook sidetrack him. "How much you work with the white Socialists before the elections?" he asked.

"Not much," Apicius said. "Ain't much to work with. Don't hardly have no homegrown white Socialists, and every one that come over the Ohio, Bliss and the Kentucky State Police got their eye on him. Don't want them bastards puttin' their eye on me any worse than they done already."

"How hard did you try?" Cincinnatus persisted. "Did you-?"

But Apicius wasn't easy to override, either. Raising a pale-palmed hand, he went on, " 'Sides, them white Socialists ain't hardly Reds. They're nothin' but Pinks, you know what I mean? They jaw about the class struggle, but they ain't pickin' up guns and doin' anything much."

"What you talkin' about?'* Cincinnatus said. "All these strikes-"

Apicius broke in again: "So what? Ain't much shootin' goin' on, not to speak of. When the niggers in the Confederate States rose up, that was a fight worth talkin' about. We'd have done the same thing here, certain sure, if the Yankees hadn't taken us out of the CSA by then. Did do some of it anyways."

That was true, and Cincinnatus knew it. He also knew something else: "Yeah, they rose up, sure enough, but they got whipped. Reds rise up in the USA, they get whipped, too. Got to be more to the class struggle than shootin' guns all the blame time, or the folks with most guns always gonna win."

"Not if their soldiers and their police work out whose side they really ought to be on," Apicius said. This time, he spoke quickly, to make sure Cincinnatus couldn't interrupt him: "Yeah, I know, I know, it ain't likely, not the way things is now. I ain't sayin' no different."

"All right, then," Cincinnatus said. "If it ain't all struggle with guns, we-you-ought to be workin' with the white folks, ain't that right?"

"You ain't been enough of a Red your ownself to tell me what I ought to be doin', Cincinnatus," Apicius said heavily.

"You don't fancy it, you don't got to listen," Cincinnatus returned. "Other thing you ought to be doin' is, you ought to start workin' to get black folks the vote. Ain't impossible, not in the USA."

"Ain't possible, not in Kentucky," Apicius said. "Some of the sons of bitches in the Legislature remember when they used to own us. You was born after manumission. You don't know how things was. When I was a boy, I was a slave. I don't know how to tell you how bad bein' a slave is."

"My pa was a slave," Cincinnatus said. "My ma, too. There's some states in the USA that let niggers vote. If we can't vote, we might as well still be slaves, on account of we ain't got no say in what happens to us."

"Yeah, and you know what states they are," Apicius said with a toss of the head. "They're states that ain't got more than about a dozen niggers, maybe two dozen tops, so havin' 'em vote don't matter one way or the other. Kentucky ain't like that. We got to vote here, we'd have us some say. What that means is, we ain't never gettin' the vote here. White folks won't let it happen."

That held an unpleasant ring of truth. Cincinnatus said, "If we can't win a fight and we can't win the vote, what good are we?"

"Damned if I know what good you are, 'cept to drive me crazy," Apicius said. "What I'm good for is, I make some pretty good barbecue."

Cincinnatus exhaled in exasperation. "If you don't try, how the devil you find out what you can do?"

"I go up on the roof at city hall, I don't need to jump off to know I land in the street," Apicius said. "What you want I should do, hand Luther Bliss a petition to ask him to tell the gov'nor to give us the vote? Not likely!" That not likely didn't refer to the orders the chief of the Kentucky secret police might give the governor. But Apicius could never sign such a petition, being unable to read or write.

"This here is one of the United States now," Cincinnatus said stubbornly. "You and me, we're citizens of the United States. We weren't never citizens of the Confederate States. We can try now. Maybe we don't win, but maybe by the time my Achilles grows up, he be able to vote."