In the morning, heartbreak began. His father had to introduce him to his mother; she didn't recognize him on her own. After she came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand, she looked at him and said, "Who are you?"

"I'm Cincinnatus, Ma," he said quietly, and felt the sting of tears.

As long as they stayed in the room together, she seemed to know who he was. When she left to go to the outhouse, though, she came back and looked at him as if she'd never seen him before in her life. As far as she knew, she hadn't. Fighting the stab at his heart, he introduced himself again.

"She like that," Cincinnatus' father said sadly. "She still know me all the time. She better, after all these years. But she don't know nobody else, not so it stick."

Cincinnatus pounded a fist into his thigh. "Damn!"

"Don't you talk like that, young man! I switch you if you cuss in the house!" For two sentences, his mother sounded just the way she had when he was thirteen. Hearing that damn might have flipped a switch in her head. Old things seemed more familiar to her than new ones. But then her eyes went vague again. She forgot her own annoyance. Seeing her forget might have been harder to bear than anything.

Or so Cincinnatus thought, till he too went out back to use the outhouse- a fixture he hadn't had to worry about for many years-and returned to find his father rushing out to get him. "She run off!" Seneca cried. "I go back in the kitchen for a minute, and she run off!"

"Do Jesus!" Cincinnatus exclaimed. "We got to find her." He and his father hurried out to the front yard. Cincinnatus looked left and right. No sign of her. "You go this way," he told his father. "I'll go that way. She ain't gone real far."

Off he went, quick as he could. When he got to a corner, he hesitated. Up or down? Either way might prove a dreadful mistake-and he had the chance for another one at every corner he came to. Swearing under his breath, he dog-trotted along the street. Each time he came to a corner, his curses got louder.

But luck was with him. He rounded one last corner and there she was, on the far side of the street, strolling along as if she knew just where she was going. "Ma!" Cincinnatus yelled. "Ma!" She paid no attention to him. Maybe she didn't hear. Maybe she'd forgotten a grown man could call her his mother.

Cincinnatus ran out into the street after her-and his luck abruptly changed. He remembered a squeal of brakes, a shout, and an impact… and then, nothing.

When he woke, he wanted that nothing back. One leg was on fire. Someone was taking a sledgehammer to his head. He opened his eyes a crack. Everything was white. For a moment, he thought it was heaven. Then, blearily, he realized it had to be a hospital.

He made a noise. A nurse appeared, as if by magic. He tried to talk. At last, after some effort, he succeeded: "Wha' happen?"

"Fractured tibia and fibula," she said briskly. "Fractured skull, too. When they brought you in a week ago, they didn't think you'd make it. You must have a hard head. You had to be nuts, running out there like that. The guy in the auto never had a chance to stop. And how are you going to pay your bills?"

That was the least of his worries. His wits didn't want to work. The injury? Drugs? Whatever it was, he tried to fight it. "Ma?" he asked. The nurse only shrugged. "Got to get out of here," he said.

She shook her head. "Not till you're better. And you aren't going anywhere for quite a while, believe you me you're not."

"Plebiscite," he said in dismay. The nurse shrugged again. Cincinnatus drifted back into unconsciousness. If he whimpered, it might have been pain and not fear. Pain was what the nurse took it for, anyhow. She gave him another shot of morphine.

Winter in Covington, Kentucky, was of positively Yankee fury. Anne Colleton didn't care for it a bit. But she didn't complain, either. She'd pulled every wire she could reach to get to be a Confederate election inspector. Now that she was here, she intended to make the most of it.

Disapproval stuck out like spines from the fat brigadier general who commanded the local U.S. garrison. He knew what was going to happen when the votes were cast on Tuesday. He knew, but he couldn't do one damned thing about it.

Anne disliked the idea of Negroes voting in the plebiscite as much as Brigadier General Rowling (she thought that was his name, but wasn't quite sure-he wasn't worth remembering, anyhow) disliked the idea of the plebiscite itself. She had grumbled about that.

Brigadier General-Rowling?-wouldn't listen. He said, "Your president agreed to it, so you're stuck with it."

She had no answer for that. What Jake Featherston said, went. "Let them enjoy it while they can, then," she said, "because they sure won't be doing any voting after Kentucky comes back where it belongs."

The U.S. officer scowled. She'd hoped he would. He said, "Maybe you'd like to go into the colored district yourself on Tuesday so you can see everything is on the up and up?"

"I'm not afraid, if that's what you mean," she said.

"Bully for you," said the fat man from the United States. Anne couldn't remember the last time she'd heard anyone say bully, even sardonically.

January 7, 1941, dawned clear and cold. Anne Colleton got up to see the sun rise to make sure she missed none of the plebiscite. Polls opened at seven. Polling places were officially marked by the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars flying in front of them-and unofficially by the armed U.S. soldiers who stood outside each one to make sure there was no trouble. Jake Featherston had offered to send Confederate soldiers into Kentucky and Houston and Sequoyah to help with that, but President Smith had told him no, and he hadn't pushed it. For the moment, they remained U.S. territory.

For the moment, Anne thought with a ferocious smile.

Both the USA and the CSA had poll watchers at every polling place. They checked the men and women who came in to vote against the lists of those who were eligible. Every now and then, they would argue. Both sides kept lists of contested voters. If the plebiscite turned out to be close, those lists would turn into weapons. In Kentucky and Houston, at least, Anne didn't think the vote would be close.

She did go into the colored part of Covington. Her motorcar flew the Stars and Bars from the wireless aerial. In most of Covington, people had cheered when they saw it. In the colored district… Anne wished she'd thought to take down the flag.

Some of the U.S. poll watchers in the colored part of town were Negroes: young men who'd grown up and got an education while Kentucky belonged to the USA. Because the voting rolls for Negroes were new and imperfect, they bickered constantly with their C.S. counterparts, and argued with them as if they believed they were just as good as whites. In the Confederate States, that would have been a death sentence.

One of the Confederate poll watchers said as much: "When this here state goes back where it belongs, you better recollect what happens to uppity niggers, Lucullus."

The Negro-Lucullus-looked steadily back at him. "You better recollect what happens when you push folks too far," he answered. "You push 'em so far they don't care if they lives or dies, why should they care if you lives or dies?"

"Talk is cheap," the white man fleered. Lucullus said not a word. Anne feared he'd won the exchange.

When she came out of the polling place-a little storefront church-she discovered her auto had a smashed windscreen (though they said windshield in the USA). Her driver was out of the motorcar, hopping mad and yelling at a U.S. soldier: "Why the hell didn't you stop that goddamn nigger? He flung a brick right in front of your nose, and you just stood there."

"I'm sorry, sir." The green-gray-clad soldier sounded anything but sorry. By his accent, he was from nowhere near Kentucky. "I didn't see a thing."