The Other Teddy Roosevelts

by Mike Resnick

  “I can’t give you any guarantees, sir. We came to fight a war, all right. But look around you, Mr. President—this isn’t the war we came to fight. They’ve changed the rules on us.”

  “There are hundreds of thousands of American boys in the trenches who didn’t come to fight this kind of war,” answered Roosevelt. “In less than an hour, most of them are going to charge across this sea of mud into a barrage of machine gun fire. If we can’t shorten the war, then perhaps we can at least lengthen their lives.”

  “At the cost of our own.”

  “We are idealists and adventurers, Hank—perhaps the last this world will ever see. We knew what we were coming here to do.” He paused. “Those boys are here because of speeches and decisions that politicians have made, myself included. Left to their own devices, they’d go home to be with their families. Left to ours, we’d find another cause to fight for.”

  “This isn’t a cause, Mr. President,” said McCoy. “It’s a slaughter.”

  “Then maybe this is where men who want to prevent further slaughter belong,” said Roosevelt. He looked up at the sky. “They’ll be mobilizing in another half hour, Hank.”

  “I know, Mr. President.”

  “If we leave now, if we don’t try to take that hill, then Wilson and Pershing were right and I was wrong. The time for heroes is past, and I am an anachronism who should be sitting at home in a rocking chair, writing memoirs and exhorting younger men to go to war.” He paused, staring at the hill once more. “If we don’t do what’s required of us this day, we are agreeing with them that we don’t matter, that men of courage and ideals can’t make a difference. If that’s true, there’s no sense waiting for a more equitable battle, Hank—we might as well ride south and catch the first boat home.”

  “That’s your decision, Mr. President?” asked McCoy.

  “Was there really ever any other option?” replied Roosevelt wryly.

  “No, sir,” said McCoy. “Not for men like us.”

  “Thank you for your support, Hank,” said Roosevelt, reaching out and laying a heavy hand on McCoy’s shoulder. “Prepare the men.”

  “Yes, sir,” said McCoy, saluting and riding back to the main body of the Rough Riders.

  “Madness!” muttered Roosevelt, looking out at the bloated corpses. “Utter madness!”

  McCoy returned a moment later.

  “The men are awaiting your signal, sir,” he said.

  “Tell them to follow me,” said Roosevelt.

  “Sir…” said McCoy.

  “Yes?”

  “We would prefer you not lead the charge. The first ranks will face the heaviest bombardment, not only from the hill but from the cannons behind the bunkers.”

  “I can’t ask my men to do what I myself won’t do,” said Roosevelt.

  “You are too valuable to lose, sir. We plan to attack in three waves. You belong at the back of the third wave, Mr. President.”

  Roosevelt shook his head. “There’s nothing up ahead except bullets, Hank, and I’ve faced bullets before—in the Dakota Bad Lands, in Cuba, in Milwaukee. But if I hang back, if I send my men to do a job I was afraid to do, then I’d have to face myself—and as any Democrat will tell you, I’m a lot tougher than any bullet ever made.”

  “You won’t reconsider?” asked McCoy.

  “Would you have left your unit and joined the Rough Riders if you thought I might?” asked Roosevelt with a smile.

  “No, sir,” admitted McCoy. “No, sir, I probably wouldn’t have.”

  Roosevelt shook his hand. “You’re a good man, Hank.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  “Are the men ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then,” said Roosevelt, turning his horse toward the small rise, “let’s do what must be done.”

  He pulled his rifle out, unlatched the safety catch, and dug his heels into his horse’s sides.

  Suddenly he was surrounded by the first wave of his own men, all screaming their various war cries in the face of the enemy.

  For just a moment there was no response. Then the machine guns began their sweeping fire across the muddy plain. Buck O’Neill was the first to fall, his body riddled with bullets. An instant later Runs With Deer screamed in agony as his arm was blown away. Horses had their legs shot from under them, men were blown out of their saddles, limbs flew crazily through the wet morning air, and still the charge continued.

  Roosevelt had crossed half the distance when Matupu fell directly in front of him, his head smashed to a pulp. He heard McCoy groan as half a dozen bullets thudded home in his chest, but looked neither right nor left as his horse leaped over the fallen Maasai’s bloody body.

  Bullets and cannonballs flew to the right and left of him, in front and behind, and yet miraculously he was unscathed as he reached the final hundred yards. He dared a quick glance around, and saw that he was the sole survivor from the first wave, then heard the screams of the second wave as the machine guns turned on them.

  Now he was seventy yards away, now fifty. He yelled a challenge to the Germans, and as he looked into the blinking eye of a machine gun, for one brief, final, glorious instant it was San Juan Hill all over again.

  ***

  18 September, 1917

  Dispatch from General John J. Pershing to Commander-in-Chief, President Woodrow Wilson.

  Sir:

  I regret to inform you that Theodore Roosevelt died last Tuesday of wounds received in battle. He had disobeyed his orders and led his men in a futile charge against an entrenched German position. His entire regiment, the so-called “Rough Riders”, was lost. His death was almost certainly instantaneous, although it was two days before his body could be retrieved from the battlefield.

  I shall keep the news of Mr. Roosevelt’s death from the press until receiving instructions from you. It is true that he was an anachronism, that he belonged more to the 19th Century than the 20th, and yet it is entirely possible that he was the last authentic hero our country shall ever produce. The charge he led was ill-conceived and foolhardy in the extreme, nor did it diminish the length of the conflict by a single day, yet I cannot help but believe that if I had 50,000 men with his courage and spirit, I could bring this war to a swift and satisfactory conclusion by the end of the year.

  That Theodore Roosevelt died the death of a fool is beyond question, but I am certain in my heart that with his dying breath he felt he was dying the death of a hero. I await your instructions, and will release whatever version of his death you choose upon hearing from you.

  —Gen. John J. Pershing

  ***

  22 September, 1917

  Dispatch from President Woodrow Wilson to General John J. Pershing, Commander of American Forces in Europe.

  John:

  That man continues to harass me from the grave.

  Still, we have had more than enough fools in our history. Therefore, he died a hero.

  Just between you and me, the time for heroes is past. I hope with all my heart that he was our last.

  —Woodrow Wilson

  ***

  And he was.

  1919:

  The Light that Blinds, the Claws that Catch

  The first and greatest love of Roosevelt’s life was his wife, Alice. He all but worshipped her, and when she died (on the same day, and in the same house, as his mother) he left New York, moved to the Dakota Bad Lands, and never allowed her name to be mentioned in his presence again.

  It’s no secret that I consider him our greatest and most accomplished American. And from time to time I wondered what his life would have been like had Alice lived. And finally I wrote the story.

  Like most of the Roosevelt stories, it ran in Asimov’s. This is its first appearance since then. It has certainly garnered less notice than any of my other Teddy stories, but it’s always been my favorite of them, and seems a fitting chronological end to his alternate historical career.

  ***

  “And when my heart�
�s dearest died, the light went from my life for ever.”

  —Theodore Roosevelt

  In Memory of my Darling Wife (1884)

  “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”

  —Lewis Carroll

  Through the Looking-Glass (1872)

  The date is February 14, 1884.

  ***

  Theodore Roosevelt holds Alice in his arms, cradling her head against his massive chest. The house is cursed, no doubt about it, and he resolves to sell it as soon as Death has claimed yet another victim.

  His mother lies in her bed down the hall. She has been dead for almost eight hours. Three rooms away his two-day-old daughter wails mournfully. The doctors have done all they can for Alice, and now they sit in the parlor and wait while the 26-year-old State Assembleyman spends his last few moments with his wife, tears running down his cheeks and falling onto her honey-colored hair.

  The undertaker arrives for his mother, and looks into the room. He decides that perhaps he should stay, and he joins the doctors downstairs.

  How can this be happening, wonders Roosevelt. Have I come this far, accomplished this much, triumphed over so many obstacles, only to lose you both on the same day?

  He shakes his head furiously. No!, he screams silently. I will not allow it! I have looked Death in the eye before and stared him down. Draw your strength from me, for I have strength to spare!

  And, miraculously, she does draw strength from him. Her breathing becomes more regular, and some thirty minutes later he sees her eyelids flutter. He yells for the doctors, who come up the stairs, expecting to find him holding a corpse in his arms. What they find is a semi-conscious young woman who, for no earthly reason, is fighting to live. It is touch and go for three days and three nights, but finally, on February 17, she is pronounced on the road to recovery, and for the first time in almost four days, Roosevelt sleeps.

  ***

  And as he sleeps, strange images come to him in his dreams. He sees a hill in a strange, sunbaked land, and himself riding up it, pistols blazing. He sees a vast savannah, filled with more beasts than he ever knew existed. He sees a mansion, painted white. He sees many things and many events, a pageant he is unable to interpret, and then the pageant ends and he seems to see a life filled with the face and the scent and the touch of the only woman he has ever loved, and he is content.

  ***

  New York is too small for him, and he longs for the wide open spaces of his beloved Dakota Bad Lands. He buys a ranch near Medora, names it Elkhorn, and moves Alice and his daughter out in the summer.

  The air is too dry for Alice, the dust and pollen too much for her, and he offers to take her back to the city, but she waves his arguments away with a delicate white hand. If this is where he wants to be, she will adjust; she wants only to be a good wife to him, never a burden.

  Ranching and hunting, ornithology and taxidermy, being a husband to Alice and a father to young Alice, writing a history of the West for Scribner’s and a series of monographs for the scientific journals are not enough to keep him busy, and he takes on the added burden of Deputy Marshall, a sign of permanence, for he has agreed to a two-year term.

  But then comes the Winter of the Blue Snow, the worst blizzard ever to hit the Bad Lands, and Alice contracts pneumonia. He tries to nurse her himself, but the condition worsens, her breathing becomes labored, the child’s wet nurse threatens to leave if they remain, and finally Roosevelt puts Elkhorn up for sale and moves back to New York.

  Alice recovers, slowly to be sure, but by February she is once again able to resume a social life, and Roosevelt feels a great burden lifted from his shoulders. Never again will he make the mistake of forcing the vigorous outdoor life upon a frail flower that cannot be taken from its hothouse.

  ***

  He sleeps, more restlessly than usual, and the images return. He is alone, on horseback, in the Blue Snow. The drifts are piled higher than his head, and ahead of him he can see the three desperadoes he is chasing. He has no weapons, not even a knife, but he feels confident. The guns they used to kill so many others will not work in this weather; the triggers and hammers will be frozen solid, and even if they should manage to get off a shot, the wind and the lack of visibility will protect him.

  He pulls a piece of beef jerky from his pocket and chews it thoughtfully. They may have the guns, but he has the food, and within a day or two the advantage will be his. He is in no hurry. He knows where he will confront them, he knows how he will take them if they offer any resistance, he even knows the route by which he will return with them to Medora.

  He studies the tracks in the snow. One of their horses is already lame, another exhausted. He dismounts, opens one of the sacks of oats he is carrying, and holds it for his own horse to eat.

  There is a cave two miles ahead, large enough for both him and the horse, and if no one has found it, there is a supply of firewood he laid in during his last grizzly-hunting trip.

  In his dream, Roosevelt sees himself mount up again and watch the three fleeing figures. He cannot hear the words, but his lips seem to be saying: Tomorrow you’re mine…

  ***

  He runs for mayor of New York in 1886, and loses—and immediately begins planning to run for Governor, but Alice cannot bear the rigors of campaigning, or the humiliation of defeat. Please, she begs him, please don’t give the rabble another chance to reject you. And because he loves her, he accedes to her wishes, and loses himself in his writing. He begins work on a history of the opening of the American West, then stops after the first volume when he realizes that he will have to actually return to the frontier to gather more material if the series is to go on, and he cannot bear to be away from her. Instead, he writes the definitive treatise on taxidermy, for which he is paid a modest stipend. The book is well received by the scientific community, and Roosevelt is justifiably proud.

  ***

  This dream is more disturbing than most, because his Alice is not in it. Instead an old childhood friend, Edith Carow, firm of body and bold of spirit, seems to have taken her place. They are surrounded by six children, his own daughter and five more whom he does not recognize, and live in a huge house somewhere beyond the city. Their life is idyllic. He rough-houses with both the boys and the girls, writes of the West, takes a number of governmental positions.

  But there is no Alice, and eventually he wakes up, sweating profusely, trembling with fear. He reaches out and touches her, sighs deeply, and lies back uncomfortably on the bed. It was a frightening dream, this dream of a life without Alice, and he is afraid to go back to sleep, afraid the dream might resume.

  Eventually he can no longer keep his eyes open, and he falls into a restless, dreamless sleep.

  ***

  It is amazing, he thinks, staring at her: she is almost 40, and I am still blinded by her delicate beauty, I still thrill to the sound of her laughter.

  True, he admits, she could take more of an interest in the affairs of the nation, or even in the affairs of the city in which she lives, a city that has desperately needed a good police commissioner for years (he has never told her that he was once offered the office); but it is not just her health, he knows, that is delicate—it is Alice herself, and in truth he would not have her any other way. She could read more, he acknowledges, but he enjoys reading aloud to her, and she has never objected; he sits in his easy chair every night and reads from the classics, and she sits opposite him, sewing or knitting or sometimes just watching him and smiling at him, her face aglow with the love she bears for him.

  So what if she will not allow talk of this newest war in the house? Why should such a perfect creature care for war, anyway? She exists to be protected and cherished, and he will continue to dedicate his life to doing both.

  ***

  He has seen this image in a dream once before, but tonight it is clearer, more defined. His men are pinned down by machine gun fire from atop a hill, and finally he climbs onto his horse
and races up the hill, pistols drawn and firing. He expects to be shot out of the saddle at any instant, but miraculously he remains untouched while his own bullets hit their targets again and again, and finally he is atop the hill, and his men are charging up it, screaming their battle cry, while the enemy races away in defeat and confusion.

  It is the most thrilling, the most triumphant moment of his life, and he wants desperately for the dream to last a little longer so that he may revel in it for just a few more minutes, but then he awakens, and he is back in the city. There is a garden show to be visited tomorrow, and in the evening he would like to attend a speech on the plight of New York’s immigrants. As a good citizen, he will do both.

  ***

  On the way home from the theater, two drunks get into a fight and he wades in to break it up. He receives a bloody nose for his trouble, and Alice castigates him all the way home for getting involved in a dispute that was none of his business to begin with.

  The next morning she has forgiven him, and he remarks to her that, according to what he has read in the paper, the trusts are getting out of hand. Someone should stop them, but McKinley doesn’t seem to have the gumption for it.

  She asks him what a trust is, and after he patiently explains it to her, he sits down, as he seems to be doing more and more often, to write a letter to the Times. Alice approaches him just as he is finishing it and urges him not to send it. The last time the Times ran one of his letters they printed his address, and while he was out she had to cope with three different radical reformers who found their way to her door to ask him to run for office again.

  He is about to protest, but he looks into her delicate face and pleading eyes and realizes that even at this late date he can refuse her nothing.

  ***

  It is a presumptuous dream this time. He strides through the White House with the energy of a caged lion. This morning he attacked J. P. Morgan and the trusts, this afternoon he will make peace between Russia and Japan, tonight he will send the fleet around the world, and tomorrow…tomorrow he will do what God Himself forgot to do and give American ships a passage through the Isthmus of Panama.