"I'll tell my father you said so," Flora said. She walked up the stairs of the apartment house that seemed so familiar and so strange at the same time.

Following her, Blackford said, "Go ahead. He'll take it the right way. He has better sense than half the people in the Cabinet, believe you me he does."

"Considering what goes on in the Cabinet, that's not saying so much," Flora answered. Her husband rewarded her with a gust of laughter. She laughed, too, but a little ruefully: the scent of cooking cabbage was very strong. "I don't think this building is ready for the vice president of the United States."

"Don't worry about it," he said, laughing again. "Compared to the farm I grew up on, it's paradise-a crowded paradise, but paradise. It's got running water and flush toilets and electricity. The farm I grew up on sure didn't, not that anybody had electricity back then."

"This building had gas lamps up until a few years ago," Flora said. It did not have an elevator; she and Blackford walked upstairs hand in hand.

Knocking at the door to the flat where she'd lived so long seemed strange, too, but it also seemed right: she didn't live here any more, and never would again. When the door swung open, David Hamburger was the one with his hand on the latch. His other hand held the cane that helped him get around.

Flora embraced her brother carefully, not wanting to make him topple over. David shook hands with Hosea Blackford, then shuffled through a turn and walked back to the kitchen table. Each slow, rolling step on his artificial leg was a separate effort, each a silent reproach against the war that, though more than six years over, would echo through shattered lives for most of the rest of the century.

Blackford shed his coat; the October evening might have had a nip to it, but the inside of the flat was warm enough and to spare. "Here, I'll take that," Flora's younger sister Esther said, and she did.

"Chess?" David asked. He pulled out the board and pieces even before Blackford could nod.

"I'll take on the winner," Isaac said. The younger of Flora's brothers wore in his lapel a silver Soldiers' Circle pin inscribed 1918-the year of his conscription class. She thanked heaven that he, unlike David, hadn't had to go to war… and wished to heaven he wouldn't wear that pin. Soldiers' Circle men could be almost as goonish as the Freedom Party's ruffians down in the Confederate States. But he did as he pleased in such things. He was a man now, and let everyone know it on any excuse or none.

"Hello, Aunt Flora!" Yossel Reisen said. Coming home so seldom, Flora was amazed at how much her older sister's son grew in between times. He'd been a baby when she went off to Congress, but he was in school now. He added, "Hello, Uncle Hosea!"

"Hello, Yossel," Hosea Blackford answered absently, most of his attention on the board in front of him. He played well enough to beat David some of the time, but not too often. He'd already gone down a pawn, which meant he probably wouldn't win this game.

Abraham Hamburger came in from the bedroom, puffing on his pipe. He hugged Flora, then glanced at the chess board. Setting a hand on Blackford's shoulder, he said, "You're in trouble. But you knew that when you decided to marry my daughter, eh? If you didn't, you should have."

"Papa!' Flora said, indignation mostly but not altogether feigned.

"He's not kidding, dear," Blackford said. "You know he's not." Since Flora did, she subsided. Her husband started a series of trades that wiped the board clear like machine-gun fire smashing a frontal assault. By the time the dust settled, though, he was down two pawns, not one. Stopping David from promoting one of them cost him his bishop, his last piece other than pawns. He tipped over his king and stood up. "You got me again."

David only grunted. He grunted again when Isaac took Blackford's place. Before he and his brother could start playing, Sophie stuck her head out of the kitchen and announced, "Supper in a couple of minutes."

"We'd better wait," David said then.

"Ha!" Isaac said. "You're just afraid I'd beat you." But he scooped his pieces off the board and put them in the box. He and David had been giving each other a hard time as long as they'd been alive.

Sophie came out with plates and silverware. Behind her came Sarah Hamburger with a platter on which rested two big boiled beef tongues. While Sophie and Esther and Flora set the table, their mother went back into the kitchen, returning with another platter piled high with boiled potatoes and onions and carrots.

"Looks wonderful," Hosea Blackford said enthusiastically. "Smells wonderful, too."

Isaac gave him a quizzical look. "When I was in the Army, a lot of… fellows who weren't Jews"-he'd caught himself before saying goyim to his brother-in-law-"turned up their noses at the idea of eating tongue."

"All what you're used to, I suppose," Blackford said. "When I was growing up on a farm, we'd have it whenever we butchered a cow-or a lamb, for that matter, though a lamb's tongue has a skin that's tough to peel and so little meat, it's almost more trouble than it's worth. I hadn't eaten tongue for years before I first came here."

"I knew then you liked," Sarah Hamburger said, "so I make." Her English was the least certain of anyone's there, but she made a special effort for Blackford.

Over supper, Esther said, "What is it like, being vice president?" She laughed at herself. "I've been asking Flora what it's like being in Congress ever since she got elected, and I still don't really understand it, so I don't know why I should ask you now."

"Being in Congress is complicated, or it can be," Blackford answered. "Being vice president is simple. Imagine you're in a factory, and you have a machine with one very expensive part. If that part breaks, the whole machine shuts down till you can replace it."

"And you're that part?" Esther asked, her eyes wide.

Blackford laughed and shook his head. "I'm the spare for that part. I sit in the warehouse and gather dust. President Sinclair is the part that's hooked up to the machine, and I hope to heaven that he doesn't break."

"You're joking," David said. He studied Blackford's face. "No, I take it back. You're not."

"No, I'm not," Blackford said. "Flora has heard me complain about this for as long as I've had the job. I have the potential to be a very important man-but the only way the potential turns real is if something horrible happens, the way something horrible happened to the Confederate president last year. Otherwise, I haven't got much to do."

Abraham Hamburger said, "This Mitchel, down in the Confederate States, seems to be doing a good job."

"He does indeed," Blackford said. "I'm not telling any secrets when I say President Sinclair is glad, too. If the regular politicians in the Confederate States do a good job, the reactionaries don't get the chance to grab the reins."

"A kholeriyeh on everybody in the Confederate States," David muttered in Yiddish. Blackford glanced at Flora, but she didn't translate. She didn't blame her brother for feeling that way. Because of what the Confederates had done to him, she could hardly keep from feeling that way herself.

Her father nodded at what Blackford had said. "These Freedom Party mamzrim remind me of the Black Hundreds in Russia, except they go after Negroes instead of Jews."

"Not enough Jews in the Confederate States for them to go after," Isaac said. "If there were more, they would."

"That's probably true," Flora said, and Blackford nodded. Flora's laugh sounded a little shaky. "Funny to think of anybody going after anyone instead of Jews."

"It is, isn't it?" Isaac said. "People do it here, too, even though there are more Jews than Negroes in the USA. It makes life easier for us than it would be otherwise."