Page 61 (2/2)

"It came for us’"

"Oh, very dramatic, dear"

"But it has come for us, hasn’t it? You’ve seen the measures we’ve taken--the measures we’ve been forced to take" Heat the far side of town, and filled with the reain and burned, then buried

"The war is over, and that’s cause for celebration, isn’t it? We’re living at the beginning of a brave new age--a new era of cooperation against a co your ue"

"It is an epilogue of a sort," he said defensively "The end of the conflict--the reunification of the United States of America"

"The ink on the treaty is scarcely dry, and here you go spilling more of it You’ve earned some time to rest, and I wish you’d take it"

He shook his head and bit his tongue, not saying aloud what he suspected at the bottoht So; he felt it when he shen he woke in the night after nightmares of hands clenched around his throat He sensed it in the weight he’d lost, and in the weakness he felt upon standing

Julia would’ve called it old age, but it was so he’d shared with no one but the physician Nelson Wellers--who now visited him weekly, for a chat and some brandy And for an examination, after Julia went to bed

Wellers saw it, too, and had offered prescriptions and suggestions, but not nosis or hope

Perhapsat all, for in son a frontier as the moon, or the bottom of the ocean But in truth, Grant did not expect to find medical treatment He only wished to tell so, and to have that secret kept so long as it needed keeping

He had withdrawn his bid for the presidency, and forfeited the Noveh word in the papers and on the taps suggested he’d win in a landslide, after the tale of his exploits at the Lincoln co general of legend rising one last tiainst treason and treachery

The public ate it up, and if anything, this feather in his cap did e than he cared to admit He did not want their cheers, because he did not deserve them He’d coe, but not prevent it The fault was his Not the credit

If he hadn’t been the president, he ht’ve even been able to take action sooner His authority had never coth of his tactics and his "great brass balls" … as the air pirate--and now foron Hainey had so eloquently put it

Grant was glad the office was finally someone else’s problem Now the freshly rebuilt United States rested in the hands of Rutherford B Hayes, a lawyer froreeh hopes that the country’s restoration ed well and wisely now that the battlefields had fallen silent, the casualties were buried, and everyone lived under the saain

"Well," Julia said, droith the war story, however you tell it You’ve kept the ladies in it, haven’t you? I --but I hope you recounted their troubles They were no less brave than you"

"How could I tell the tale without them? They helped us save the Union, from opposite sides of the line"

"And I hope you’ve left in the bit about the pirates"

"The crew of the Free Crow, to be certain, and its captain--the last of the Macon Madmen I left that part in, too, for the sake of spice"

"He must’ve been little more than a child when the jailbreak happened" Then, as if it’d only just occurred to her, she blurted out, "And they were going to hang a child? How barbaric"

"Hang him, shoot hiuely, of the notorious incident of thirty-five years previous Nine colored men convicted of arson and murder on spurious evidence and sentenced to die In prison, they revolted, escaped, and scattered to the four corners of the earth Only tere ever recaptured Grant had drawn the story out of Hainey over whiskey one night; they had traded war tales and dirty jokes, and somber silences wherein their eyes did not meet