Free Blood and Iron by Harry Turtledove Page A

at all.
    And so even now, with the war over for half a year, Negroes remained in some of the places they had taken during the war: they’d gained experience. Pinkard couldn’t argue against experience, not when he’d just been griping about Billy. And Vespasian, who was in his forties, didn’t get uppity the way a lot of younger blacks did. As far as the work went, he made a good enough partner. Jeff still felt uncomfortable working beside him.
    He didn’t quit. He’d have felt a lot more uncomfortable unemployed. Steel was all he knew. If he got a job at another foundry, he had no guarantee he wouldn’t be working with another Negro, and one harder to get along with than Vespasian. He didn’t care to move out of Sloss company housing, either (though he wished he didn’t live next door to Bedford any more). He endured.
    He never once wondered what Vespasian thought of working next to him.
    At shift-changing time, the steam whistle blew a blast that cut through the rest of the din on the floor like a hot knife through pork fat. “See you in the mornin’, Mistuh Pinkard,” Vespasian said.
    “Yeah,” Jeff answered. “See you.”
    They clocked out separately, and left the enormous foundry building separately, too. It wasn’t the way it had been, when Pinkard and Bedford had sometimes gone home to their side-by-side yellow cottages with their arms draped over each other’s shoulders. Vespasian didn’t have a yellow cottage. His cabin was painted primer red, which was cheaper.
    Some of the white men going home waved to Pinkard, as did a couple coming onto the evening shift. He waved back. He was always glad to see familiar faces. He didn’t see that many. Shift changes reminded him how little remained the same as it had been in 1914. Being reminded hurt.
    His breath smoked as he hurried home. They’d had snow the week before, which wasn’t common in Birmingham. On top of everything else, it had been a hard winter. The grass was yellow-brown and dead. Somebody sneezed not far from Jeff. He hoped it was from a cold, or from a tickling mustache hair. The Spanish influenza was killing men who’d lived through all the bullets the damnyankees aimed at them—and killing their wives and mothers and children, too.
    In spite of the cold, Fanny Cunningham was standing in front of her house, gossiping with the woman who lived on the other side of her from the Pinkards. She waved to Jeff as he walked by. He waved back, calling, “How’s Bedford doing?”
    “Right good,” she answered. “He’s been cheerful the whole day through.”
    “Glad to hear it,” Pinkard said. He was especially glad to hear Fanny had had her husband under her eye the whole day through.
    She said, “You don’t come over like you used to, Jeff. Bedford’d be powerful pleased to see more of you.”
    Jefferson Pinkard didn’t answer that. He waved again, almost—but not quite—as if to say he’d think about it, then headed up the walk to his own cottage. He hesitated before opening the door. He had to do it, though, if he intended to go inside. When at last he did, the savory smell of stewing pork made his mouth water.
    “That you, darlin’?” Emily called from the kitchen.
    “It’s me, all right,” Jeff said.
    Emily came out, a smile on her face. She had a barmaid’s good looks and a barmaid’s good buxom figure and hair of a bright shade somewhere between red and gold. Now that she wasn’t working in a munitions plant any longer, she was letting it grow out. Now that she was out of the plant, too, the jaundice working with cordite had given her was gone, leaving her rosy and altogether desirable.
    Jeff took her in his arms. She pulled his face down to hers. Her lips were greedy against his. She’d always been greedy for loving. When Jeff hadn’t been there to give it to her…That was when he’d become a less than happy man.
    “What did you do today?” he asked her after they broke apart.
    “Usual kinds of things,” she