American empire: blood and iron by Harry Turtledove
Author:Harry Turtledove [Harry Turtledove]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Histoire
ISBN: 9780345405661
Published: 2002-06-25T19:12:33+00:00
Cincinnatus Driver looked back at the house in which heâd lived his whole married life. He looked around at the Covington, Kentucky, neighborhood in which heâd lived his whole life. There was a last time for everything, and this was it.
He cranked the engine. The shabby old Duryea truck thundered into life. It didnât give half the trouble it usually did, as if it too were glad to shake the dust of Kentucky from its tires. Cincinnatus hurried back to the cab.
There sat Elizabeth, Achilles on her lap. âWe ready?â Cincinnatus asked as he slid in behind the wheel. In one way, it was a foolish question: everything they owned and aimed to take along was behind them in the bed of the truck. In another way, though, it was the question, and Cincinnatus knew it. He still didnât know whether he and his family were ready to abandon everything theyâd ever known in the hope for a better life.
Ready or not, they were going to do it. Elizabeth nodded. Achilles yelled âReady!â at the top of his lungs. Cincinnatus put the truck in gear. He waited for the engine to die or for something else dreadful to happen. Nothing did. Smooth as if it were ten years newer, the Duryea began to roll.
As Cincinnatus turned out of Covingtonâs colored district and onto Greenup, Elizabeth said, âI do wish your ma and pa decided to come along with us.â
âI do, too,â he answered. âBut theyâre set in their ways, like folks can get. I ainât gonna worry about it much. Once we find a place, you wait and see if they donât come after us.â
âMaybe they will,â his wife said. âI hope they do. Wonât be so lonesome if they do, thatâs for sure.â
âYeah.â If Cincinnatus had let his hands drive the truck for him, he would have gone on to the waterfront. Heâd been heading there, walking or taking the trolley or driving the truck, since the early days of the war. But he wasnât going to head there any more. Instead, he took the suspension bridge north across the Ohio River and over into Cincinnati.
âThe United States,â Elizabeth said softly.
Cincinnatus nodded. Oh, Kentucky was one of the United States these days, but in many ways Kentucky still seemed as it had when it belonged to the Confederacy. That was the biggest reason Cincinnatus had decided to better his luck and his familyâs elsewhere. He wasnât going to wait around holding his breath till he got the vote and other privileges whites in Kentucky took for granted.
Back in the days before the war, heâd spent a lot of time looking across the Ohio. Negroes didnât have it easy in the USA. He knew that. Had he not known it, he would have got his nose rubbed in it during the war. A lot of men down from the United States thought they had to act like slave drivers to get any kind of work out of Negroes. But not
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