“Not a bad speech,” Esther said to Charlie. “How much did you do?”
“The line about being part of the world whether we like it or not, that was mine,” he said.
“Sounds like you,” she agreed.
“But the rest . . . I don’t know where the writing came from,” Charlie said. “The ideas are what he’s been talking about since we got into World War II. Except for the rockets, I mean. I don’t know who fed him that one, or whether he came up with it himself. But it’s pretty silly, wherever it came from.”
“I guess so.” Esther’s chuckles sounded nervous. “You never can tell with that Buck Rogers stuff, though, not any more. Who would have believed an atom bomb was possible before they dropped that one on Sendai?”
“Well, Trotsky would have, or he wouldn’t have had one ready to drop on Nagano,” Charlie said. Esther made a face at him. He spread his hands in half an apology. Even so, he went on, “I’ll believe in rockets that can go halfway around the world when one comes down on Washington.”
“If one ever does, God forbid, you won’t believe in it for very long.” Esther didn’t usually insist on getting the last word, but she did that time.
As he’d done every four years since 1940, Charlie stayed late at the White House on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. As she’d done every four years since 1940, Esther stayed home on election night. Sarah was fourteen now; Patrick was ten. She could have left them alone. But the less she had to do with Joe Steele and the men who did his bidding, the happier she was. Charlie didn’t even ask her to come any more. He knew how she felt. To not such a small degree, he felt the same way. But she had a choice. He didn’t. He’d made his choice not long after Joe Steele jugged Mike, and he’d had to live with it ever since.
“A whole generation has grown up knowing no President of the United States but Joe Steele,” a radio commentator said. He made sure he sounded as though that was a good thing. Had he sounded any other way, his mellow voice would have traveled the airwaves no more. In Joe Steele’s America, everybody made choices like that and lived with them . . . or didn’t.
New York went for the President. So did Pennsylvania. So, Charlie noted, did Maryland—whatever Kagan had done to fix things there after 1948, it had worked. Ohio didn’t, but Ohio was Taft’s home state. When Central Time Zone results came in, Illinois swung Joe Steele’s way, too.
“By the time the President completes the sixth term he now seems sure to win, he will have led the country for almost a quarter of a century,” the commentator said. “It will be many years before anyone comes close to that astonishing record.”
Robert Taft conceded a little before midnight. Joe Steele didn’t come down to celebrate with his crew. That was different from the way things had gone the past three times. Julius, the colored bartender, told Charlie, “He’s gonna take it easy tonight, suh. I did send a bottle o’ that nasty apricot brandy he likes to the bedroom for him and his missus.”
“That should work,” Charlie said. Yes, the boss was getting old. Julius had gray in his hair, too, and he sure hadn’t when Charlie first met him. And Charlie knew too well that he wasn’t any younger himself.
* * *
Midori oohed and ahhed when the Golden Gate Bridge loomed out of the fog. “So big! So beautiful!” she said.
“It’s something, all right. I remember when they finished it, almost twenty years ago now.” Mike realized this was the first glimpse of American soil—well, American ironmongery—he’d had in nearly half that time. He’d sailed out of San Diego in 1943, and here 1953 was only a month away. Time flies when you’re having fun, he thought vaguely. The trouble was, time also flew when you weren’t.
The freighter they’d boarded in Yokohama let loose with its foghorn. It had been sounding the horrible thing every couple of minutes for hours now. Other mournful blasts came out of the mist every so often. Mike hated the racket, but he did approve of not colliding with another ship.
He smiled at Midori. “Well, Mrs. Sullivan, I’ve seen a lot of your country. Now you’ve seen some of mine, anyhow.”
“Yes, Mr. Sullivan, that is true. Hai—honto.” She said the same thing in English and Japanese. Then she spread the fingers of her left hand. Her ring was just a plain gold band, but not even a ten-carat diamond could have sparkled in this gloom. Hey, it’s the thought that counts, Mike thought. And as long as she felt the same way, everything was fine.
After the freighter docked in San Francisco, they had to go through customs and Immigration and Naturalization. Mike had a manila folder to accompany his passport. It held papers that included his Army discharge, his official permission to marry a Japanese national, and records pertaining to his Purple Heart, all the oak-leaf clusters, and his Bronze Star. There was a note attached that Joe Steele himself had presented the Bronze Star—the first time his acquaintance with the President had ever been worth anything to him. Midori also carried an impressive collection of documents in English and Japanese, though hers was thinner than Mike’s.
“Everything seems to be in order,” the Immigration and Naturalization clerk said after he’d gone through it all. “However, I do need to check your passport number against one other list.” He started to turn his swivel chair towards a file cabinet.
Mike knew exactly what that list would be. “Don’t bother,” he said quietly. “It’s NY24601.”
“Ah, thank you.” The clerk nodded. “You do understand the restrictions imposed on former inmates of labor encampments?”
“Oh, yeah,” Mike said. “But it’s kinda hard to take a ship from Japan to Montana or Wyoming.”
“Indeed. If I give you ten days’ incoming authorization to remain outside the restricted zone for former inmates, will that be adequate?”
“That should be plenty. Thanks. I know where we’re gonna go, and yes, it’s inside the zone.” Mike had wondered how the authorities would handle an ex-wrecker. He might have known they would have procedures in place. He wasn’t the first of his kind to come home to the good old USA. He wouldn’t be the last, either.
“We’ll do it that way, then,” the clerk said. They had procedures, all right. One of the stamps he used on Mike’s passport had a number of days he could adjust as required. If Mike was still in San Francisco and had to show that passport more than ten days from now, his story wouldn’t have a happy ending.
For the time being, he said, “Can you point us to a hotel not too far from here? With luck, one close to a Western Union office? I need to send a couple of wires, let people know I’m back.”
The clerk mentioned a couple. One was only a block away. Mike and Midori walked there with their worldly goods. Midori stared at the streets, and at all the cars on them. “Everything is so rich, so wide, so open!” she said.
“Sweetie, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Mike told her.
She exclaimed again at the hotel room, which was bigger than her apartment in Wakamatsu. Mike went out and sent his telegrams. When he came back, he asked the desk clerk about nearby restaurants. He splurged and took Midori to a steakhouse.
How much she got amazed her all over again. “This is too much for three!” she said, which didn’t keep her from making a big dent in it. Mike finished what she couldn’t.
They had an American honeymoon at the hotel for a couple of days. Then they took a cab to the train station. Mike bought tickets. He hadn’t made much in his Army time, but he’d spent even less. He had plenty of money for now. Once he’d got the tickets, he sent one more wire.
By dumb luck, the train left in less than an hour. They went to their seats. The roomy car and big, snorting engine impressed Midori, too. She squashed her nose against the window as the train pulled out. After they left town and got out into the open, she mashed it even tighter.
“So much space!” she breathed after a while. “So much! I knew America was wide, but I h
ad no idea how wide. Our generals must have been crazy to think they could fight so much.”
She said the same kind of thing several more times as they rolled east. The more of America she saw, the bigger it seemed. The farther east they went, the colder it got, too, as they left the mild coastal climate behind. Snow, though, unlike broad open spaces with no people in them, Midori was used to.
They changed trains in Salt Lake City. Sunrise on the snow-covered salt flats outside of town was one of the most beautiful things Mike had ever seen. Midori was dozing, though, and he didn’t want to wake her.
From Utah, they went into Wyoming and crossed the Continental Divide. The prairie on the far side of the Rockies astonished the woman from Japan all over again. Then the conductor called, “Casper! All out for Casper!”
“That’s us, babe,” Mike said. He and Midori hurried out.
John Dennison waited on the platform. He might not have aged a day in the ten years since Mike had last seen him. A slow smile stretched across his face as he stuck out his hand. “Howdy, scalp,” he said.
* * *
Joe Steele took the Presidential oath of office for the sixth time on a cool, cloudy day. Chief Justice Prescott Bush administered it. Bush was as pliable a Chief Justice as even Joe Steele could want. He wasn’t a lawyer, but he was friendly and gregarious and smart enough not to say no to the man who’d appointed him.
At the lectern, the President fumbled with the text of his latest inaugural address. Charlie watched from the bleachers behind the lectern. These days, he always wondered how well Joe Steele would get through a public event. Sometimes he was fine. Sometimes, he wasn’t.
Today, he pulled himself together. It wasn’t a great speech, but he never gave great speeches. He gave speeches that got the job done. “Man’s power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages,” he said. “We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains. Nations amass wealth. Labor sweats to create—and turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities. Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet.
“The Reds know no god but force, no devotion but its use. They tutor men in treason. They feed upon the hunger of others. Whatever defies them, they torture, especially the truth.”
Charlie carefully didn’t wonder about accurate election returns from the last few years divisible by four, and from the ones divisible only by two. That took work, but he did it.
“Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark,” Joe Steele went on. “It confers a common dignity on the French soldier who dies in Indochina, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the American life given in Japan. The strength of all free peoples lies in unity; their danger, in discord. We face the Red threat not with dread and confusion, but with confidence and conviction.”
He waited for applause, and he got it. He went on to talk about the need to keep America prosperous and to boost trade around the world. And he finished, “Patriotism means equipped forces and a prepared citizenry. Moral stamina means more energy and more productivity, on the farm and in the factory. Love of liberty means the guarding of every resource that makes freedom possible. This is the work that awaits us all, to be done with bravery, with charity, and with prayer to Almighty God.”
He stumbled a little turning away from the lectern. He caught himself before he fell, though. He was shaking his head as he went to the limousine that would take him back to the White House. Getting old had to be a terrible business. You could feel your grip slipping day by day, but you couldn’t do anything about it.
Charlie didn’t go to any of the inaugural balls and banquets. He never had. Esther didn’t enjoy them. More to the point, she didn’t enjoy the people she would run into at them. Going to a ball by himself wasn’t Charlie’s idea of fun. It wasn’t like election nights. His absence at the social gatherings might be noticed, but he wouldn’t be missed.
After January 20, things went back to normal in a hurry. With so many under his belt, one more inauguration day was only a formality for Joe Steele. He kept the lid on at home and dueled with Trotsky by proxy around the world. Trotsky was no spring chicken, either—he was the President’s age, give or take a few months.
“I’m waiting for him to drop dead,” Joe Steele said at a meeting of his aides. He had held more of those the past couple of years than he’d been in the habit of doing before. Chuckling, he went on, “That place will fall to pieces as soon as his hand comes off it.”
No one wondered out loud what might happen to this place as soon as Joe Steele’s hand came off it. Anyone who did wonder out loud about such things wouldn’t stick around long enough to learn the answer.
Joe Steele called another one of those meetings on a bright almost-spring day in early March. The general in charge of U.S. forces near the Japanese demilitarized zone had complained that his troops didn’t have enough ammunition in reserve if the North Japanese came over the border. Eisenhower seemed to think General Van Fleet was worrying over nothing.
Even though the President had summoned his henchmen, he had trouble acting interested in what they said. He kept frowning and raising his left hand to rub behind his ear. Finally, Charlie asked him, “Are you all right, sir?”
The frown deepened into a scowl. “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head,” Joe Steele said. He started to bring up his left hand again, but never finished the gesture. His eyes widened, then slid shut. He slumped forward, his chin hitting the table hard.
His aides all jumped up, shouting and cursing. “Get him to the couch next door!” Scriabin said urgently. “And for Christ’s sake call Doc Pietruszka!”
Charlie helped carry the President out of the conference room. “Be careful,” Joe Steele muttered, half conscious at best. They laid him on the couch, as the Hammer had suggested. Mikoian loosened his tie. His breathing still sounded bad: slow and irregular and harsh. He looked bad, too. He was pale, almost gray. Charlie fumbled for his wrist to take his pulse. It felt weak and much too fast.
“What is it?” Kagan asked.
“I wasn’t counting, but I don’t think it’s good,” Charlie answered.
“What do we do now?” Mikoian said.
“Wait for Pietruszka and hope he can help,” Scriabin snapped.
By Mikoian’s expression, that wasn’t what he’d meant. “We’d better let Betty know,” he said.
Joe Steele’s wife waited with the aides, all of them shivering and numb, till Dr. Pietruszka got to the White House. It took less than fifteen minutes, but seemed like forever. Joe Steele had gone grayer yet by then. The aides described what had happened. The doctor took the President’s pulse and peeled back his eyelids to examine his pupils. “He’s had another stroke, a bad one this time,” he said. That answered whatever questions Charlie might have had about the headache a couple of years before.
“Is there any hope?” Mikoian asked.
Before Dr. Pietruszka could reply, Joe Steele groaned. He inhaled one more time. Then he simply—stopped. No one who saw him could doubt he was dead. To Charlie’s own horrified humiliation, he burst into tears.
XXVII
Charlie’s humiliation lasted no more than seconds. Then he noticed everyone in the room was sobbing with him. Betty Steele, of course, had every right to weep for her dead husband. But Dr. Pietruszka was crying, too. So were Stas Mikoian and Lazar Kagan, the one who’d boasted of being able to dance between drops of water and the other who seemed to have no feelings of any kind. And even Vince Scriabin’s rock of a face was a rock wet with tears. He took off his glasses so he could dab at his eyes with a handkerchief.
“What will I do?” Betty Steele wailed.
“What will the country do?” Mikoian asked. No one had an answer. For a day longer than twenty years, no one had had to wonder about the Unite
d States without Joe Steele at the helm.
A minute or so after that, a look of utter astonishment spread over Lazar Kagan’s broad face. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “My God!” he exclaimed, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, “Gottenyu!” A moment later, he explained why he was shocked enough to fall back into his childhood Yiddish: “Now look! That damned cowboy Garner is President of the United States!”
They stared at one another. For a day longer than twenty years, John Nance Garner had been the country’s spare tire. He’d lain in the trunk, in the dark, all that time. Now they had to bolt him into place and pray he hadn’t gone flat.
“How horrible,” Scriabin muttered. If Charlie hadn’t been only a few feet away from him, he wouldn’t have heard the words. Even if it creaked, the Constitution might need to start working again.
“We’d better call him.” By the way Mikoian said it, he would have been happier going to the dentist for a root canal without novocaine. But no one told him he was wrong. He called the Capitol. Wherever the Vice President was, he wasn’t presiding over the Senate. He called Garner’s Washington apartment—he had to look up the number, which showed how often he needed it. He spoke briefly, then put down the handset with a disgusted look. “He’s not there. It’s cleaning day, and I got the maid.”
A flashbulb went off inside Charlie’s head. “I know where he is!” he exclaimed. All the others in the room looked at him. Well, all but Joe Steele. Even dead, he seemed impossible to leave out of consideration. Charlie had to tear his gaze away from those set features before he could make himself walk out.
“Where are you going?” Kagan called after him.
“I’ll be back soon,” he threw over his shoulder, which both was and wasn’t an answer. Once he made it out of the room where Joe Steele had died, he moved faster. Even if he hadn’t, it would have made little difference. He wasn’t going far.
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