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Show 108 "Listen, Karl, by the time the dancing starts, everybody'll be feeling too high to notice if you make mistakes." After loading Karl's hands with cookies, Andy guided him to one of the benches lining the walls. "Sit here. I'll sit with you." As he ate the cookies, which were delicious, Karl watched the bridal table. Toasts were being shouted in Slovak and drunk with laughter and sly glances at the bride and groom, who had been married eight hours earlier at a mass in Holy Trinity Church. Veronica blushed at the good-natured teasing; her husband Emil grinned sheepishly. Everyone grew sober, though, when the priest rose to lift his glass and pronounce, "Za Boha a narod." All the men stood and repeated with fervor, "Za Boha a narod." "Get up," Andy whispered to Karl. Both of them stood while the men raised their glasses to their lips and tossed back the contents "What were they saying?" Karl asked after they sat down again. "For God and country," Andy answered, "and believe me, when those men say 'country' they mean America. Slovaks are probably the most patriotic people in the whole U.S.A. That's why it makes me so dang mad, Karl, when the mill bosses call us union agitators and anarchists." Karl asked, "Andy, what's an anarchist? That's the second time I've heard the word, and I don't know what it means." "It's someone who wants to overthrow the government by violence," Andy explained. As if the word had conjured her, Yulyona Petrov drifted toward the bridal table. She spoke to Veronica, embraced her, and shook Emil's hand. |