Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  Like all Americans over forty, Holley spoke as if he had known Al Capone personally.

  "Scarface and his cronies just took over the whole ball game in the '20s. Long, Luciano, Hoffa and—of course—'Executioner'Hoover. They were no better than the Robber Barons. Everyone was afraid of the rat-tat-tat through the door. The I-Men always came to take people away at four in the morning. Some got a bullet in the head after a big circus trial, some didn't even get a trial. The lucky ones disappeared to Alaska.

  "Just after the War, everything was rationed. Soldiers were coming back short a limb, if they came back at all. You know what casualties were like on the Japanese mainland. We didn't have it so bad because we lived in the country, but we went hungry a lot. We had to give up so much of our food quota to the Party. And one day every month was a

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  Day of Socialist Sacrifice when we didn't eat at all. But look at the newsreels, and see whether you think President Capone was losing any weight."

  "What about music?"

  "Music? I'll tell you what music was in those days: Mario fucking Lanza singing about agricultural machinery. And the movies weren't much better. All you'd get would be four-hour epics of the Revolution. They'd start by showing how bad things were under the Robber Barons, who were always played by Sydney Greenstreet or Oliver Hardy. Then the hero, usually played by Capone's pal George Raft, would make a half-hour speech and rouse the proletarian masses to a thrilling storming of somewhere or other choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Another speech, some opera, and that would be it. All us kids knew there was an I-Man in every theatre watching to see who didn't applaud loudly enough."

  "Was this in Texas?"

  "No. We were relocated during one of Capone's Reconstruction Drives. Just about the entire population of Lubbock was bussed North in '42, to work in munitions plants near Roseville, Kansas. Al was paranoid about putting anything strategically important near Mexico, just in case they threw in with the Axis. Dad worked on tanks for a while, and after the War, the plant turned over to tractors. We lived in a kind of ghetto, the Texan quarter. Texans took a lot of abuse. Everyone remembered the War of '17, and we were forever the State That Couldn't Defend Itself. As a pimply Texan kid with glasses, my early life wasn't exactly comfortable. Most of the other Texan boys were six-foot-wide football players, and I was a beanpole. That meant I was elected to be the butt of all the Texas jokes. At school, there was this one Kansas kid—Melvin Yandell, the son of the local Party Chairman—and he was always beating up on me, with his buddies Chick Willis and Philly Winspear."

  "And that made you a rebel?"

  "Hell no, that made me desperately want to make the team. I thought if I was a credit to the Revolution, all the crap would stop. I was kind of what these days they call a nerd. I became an enthusiastic member of the Pioneers of Socialist Youth of America. They'd be like your Boy Scouts, I guess, only tuned in to the Party. I was a real good little Communist. At the age of twelve, I was the youngest Section Leader in Kansas, and I was winning badges for everything. I had badges for basic, intermediate and advanced socialism, efficiency, personal hygiene, fieldcraft and Charles

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  H. Marx knows what else. My favourite was for Enemy Aircraft Identification. From silhouettes, I could tell a Sikorsky SI-51 jet fighter from a Supermarine Swift. If Churchill and the Tsar had ever decided to start World War Three, I was ready..."

  Holley laughed.

  "Let's put it this way, Mr. Lowe, I was a creep. I ate all the bullshit they fed us, then asked for seconds. The best thing about the Pioneers, though, was that I got to fly. I did my time in gliders and trainers at summer camp, and a corporal at Fort Baxter sometimes took me up in a spotter plane. Flying, yeah, that was the best. If I'd had better eyesight and didn't have music, I'd have been a pilot."

  It was hard to imagine the stringbean troubadour as an Ace of the Skies. He couldn't talk about flying without stretching his arms out like a little kid playing aeroplane.

  So, Lowe wondered, how did a good little communist turn into a semi-outlaw, a marginal who has spent most of his adult life damning the Party in song, keeping only one step ahead of the FBI?

  "What happened, Charlie?"

  Holley came in to land, and refilled their glasses.

  "It's kind of complicated. Dad gave me a beat-up old guitar for my sixteenth birthday and that changed things. Remember your first kiss?"

  Lowe did. Nicola Godsell. Churchill Day, 1968.

  "That's what my first guitar was like for me."

  His hands were strumming now, fingers moving fast.

  "By then, I was kind of growing out of the Pioneers anyhow. There was a thing that started me to thinking real hard. Just before I was sixteen. It shook everything up. It's funny now I come to think about it, because that was about flying, too. I can even tell you exactly when it was. Labor Day in 1951. That would make it the weekend of the first Monday in September. You know how, when you were a kid, the Summers were longer. This one had gone on forever..."

  "I'll settle your hash, you revisionist scum!" shouted Dick Tracy as he burst into the secret meeting of the Counter-Revolutionary Society for the Subjugation of the People. There was a gasp from Flabface, the last of the Robber Barons. Dick laughed his granite-jawed laugh as he surveyed the sorry crew.

  Charlie tensed, willing the fearless FBI agent to pull his trusty Colt .45 and plug the bad guys.

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  "That's as far as you go, I-Man," said the smooth, sardonic voice of Bette Davis. "That prod you're feeling in your back is a pistol, and I'm not scared to use it. Finger some clouds..."

  "Dick Tracy, Special Agent of the FBI is in a tight spot," said the announcer urgently as the staccato theme music rose. "Will Dick escape? And can he stop Flabface destroying New York with his death-ray? To find out, tune in to next week's thrilling episode of Dick Tracy, Special Agent of the FBI"

  "How do you like that, Dad?" said Charlie. "It just goes to show you can never trust a dame,"

  "That's a fine thing to say," replied his father, as he plugged his corncob with Victory Virginia. He switched off the radio and pulled his chair across the wooden floorboards to be nearer Charlie. He lowered his voice, so that Ma wouldn't hear him from the kitchen.

  "Listen, son, it's the big holiday weekend coming up, and you're getting about old enough to start finding out about, uh, dames for yourself. I got an idea..." He paused to put a match to the cheap tobacco, engulfing them in thick, stale-smelling smoke. "Your Dad may be dumb, but he ain't stupid, if that makes sense. I seen how young Peggy Sue next door's been looking at you these last few months."

  Charlie shrank into his chair, partly to escape the bitter fumes, partly because he had an idea what was coming next.

  He was scared. Not that a Pioneer would admit that to anyone.

  "She's a nice girl, Charlie. From a good Texan family, too. She's just about your age. Why don't you go next door and ask her if she'll go to the movies with you. They've got The Octopus playing down at the People's Palace. Sounds like a real good picture, and I bet that your Captain in the Pioneers has recommended you all go see it."

  That was true. Captain Rook said it was the duty of every Pioneer to catch The Octopus.

  "It's got Sydney Greenstreet as the Railroad King," his father was saying. "And Julius Garfinkle plays the union leader. Of course, if everything goes right you won't be looking at the screen much. Might even have to go back to see the movie."

  The kitchen door was shouldered open, and Mother came in, carrying Charlie's badge-festooned uniform jacket.

  "What plots are you two hatching behind my back?" she asked.

  Father grunted and retreated behind the Roseville Echo to read how his fellow worker-heroes had exceeded their annual targets.

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  "There you are, Charlie," said his mother. "I've sewed on your la
test badge and ironed the jacket. Historical Perspective, whatever next. Don't you get this messed up before the parade tomorrow. What are you doing this evening?"

  "I've got to go out," said Charlie. "The section is still a little rough on some of the drill. We've had a lot of young kids join in the last few weeks. I've got to practise them some more for the parade tomorrow."

  "Don't be back too late. You'll need a good night's sleep."

  His father put down the Echo and smiled. "Ella's right, Charlie. It'll be a big day tomorrow, with all those fliers coming to town. You know why they're coming? Because we exceeded all our production targets."

  Charlie's father turned the radio on again. It was not a good idea to miss President Capone's Friday evening fireside chat.

  The familiar, rough-edged voice, began. "Citizens, Workers, this is Chairman Al..."

  "Fireside chat!" said mother. "It'd be a fine thing to have a proper fireside instead of a rickety old stove. And as for you, Charlie, I think you're getting a little old to be still playing with the Pioneers. It's about time you started seeing girls. Why don't you ask Peggy Sue out to a movie...And just what are you grinning at, Lawrence Holley?"

  "I don't know how much you know about America, Mr. Lowe, but a Labor Day weekend is some big deal. Every town has its parades, and speeches and hoe-downs. It was an even bigger deal under Chairman Capone. Everyone I knew bought it outright. Except Mom, of course. She was a real old dissenter. She was taking the risks. She was First Aid officer at the tractor plant, and too good at it to be got rid of. Safety was kind of lax, and I had this idea that all kinds of gory accidents were happening that I wasn't being told about. They called my Mom a lifesaver, and cut her some slack. Dad respected Scarface Al, though. He was never a Party member, because Roseville couldn't have any Texan yellowstreaks on their team, but he eventually got to be a foreman at the plant. He kept his nose clean and half-believed all that bullstuff about the nobility of labour. And things like these famous fliers coming to town was proof to him that the Party cared about ordinary folks like us.

  "After Al died, we had Goldwater and Nixon in the White House. Then came the three old farts nobody took seriously because they were senile. They were only alive because they were plugged into the direct current. That's when my mother really went to town. Back in '83, she

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  was in a line at the Roseville General Store and cracked a joke about the shortages. Said what she wanted for her birthday was a pound of beefsteak wrapped in toilet paper. Someone squealed to the Sheriff and she ended up on charges of recidivism and aggravated hooliganism. She was eighty. All the neighbours clubbed together to pay her fine, then held a big party for her, and gave her a present of a pound of beefsteak wrapped in toilet paper.

  "Now where the hell had we got to? Labor Day weekend, 1951. All righty.

  "I couldn't sleep. When you're that age it's very important to appear real cool about everything. But I was bursting with excitement and pride. I was so wound up I could hardly pee. The Revolutionary Fraternity Squadron was coming to Roseville. I told you I wanted to be a pilot? Now, all my great heroes—every single one of them—were going to appear in my home town the following day. I'd been reading about this in the Echo and Socialist Youth Magazine for weeks and it still didn't sound true.

  "The RFS was an elite cadre. Only the most famous names in American aviation need apply. If the Wright Brothers had been around, they might just have qualified to pull the chocks away. First, there was Lieutenant Lafayette R. Hubbard. He'd been a barnstormer before the War, flew for the Navy during it, had sunk more submarines than rust, and had personally killed Tojo in single combat with his bare hands. Thrilling Air Battles had a great cover of him strangling the Jap while leaping out of a burning Workers' Victory Twin-Engine Fighter. That's what the record said anyway, and the record ought to know, because Hubbard wrote most of it himself. I'd read his stuff in Socialist Sky Aces, Blackhawk, and a dozen other officially approved pulps. And Hubbard, Mr. Lowe, was just the ground crew.

  "Then there was Major Joseph 'Bomber Joe' McCarthy. He had led the first carrier-borne attack on Japan with a squadron of B-25s. My favourite was Colonel Charles Lindbergh. He was famous as the first man to fly the Atlantic solo, but he had been a fighter pilot during the war, with 60 kills to his credit. I guess I liked him because he was something of a loner, like I was. The Lone Eagle, they called him. Who else? Oh yeah, General Mitch 'Duke' Morrison. He was the first American ashore at both Normandy and Iwo Jima and had also flown Warhawks with the Flying Tigers in China. A big Iowa farmboy with a grin that could crack pebbles, he was reputedly the toughest man in America, after J. Edgar Hoover.

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  "The leader was General Curtis LeMay. During the War, he was the great advocate of daylight precision bombing. At some point, he changed his opinion and took to snarling 'bomb 'em back into the Stone Age' and advocating a policy of wall-to-wall carpet bombing. Before the Invasion of Japan—you remember what a bloodbath that was—LeMay had supposedly disobeyed orders and personally lead a mission to drop incendiaries on a Black Dragon Cult suicide squad waiting to blow up the city, taking as many Yankee soldiers as possible with it. After his stylish flattening of Tokyo, Chairman Al presented the General with a pair of pearl-handled, silver-plated Wild West revolvers that he was rumoured to wear on all occasions."

  The sun was already high as Charlie met the rest of his section at 08:00 hours on Main Street. On a nearby piece of waste ground, he ran them through some last-minute drill with their wooden rifles, and straightened out a few caps and scarves before he formed them up into line and marched them off towards the edge of town. He was satisfied, and confident.

  They RV'd with Captain Rook and the three other sections out by the plant. None of the other sections were as well turned out as Charlie's boys. Pete Horowitz's section looked real sloppy: shorts not properly pressed, shoes and boots barely polished, unvarnished rifles held together with Utility Tape. Horowitz's Heroes couldn't dress a straight line if there was a year's ration of candy bars in it. For all that, it never seemed to bother Rook. Pete Horowitz, Kansas-born and good-looking, was the Captain's golden boy.

  Rook ordered them to parade files, pushed his wire-rims back, and called out the register. All 108 boys in the Roseville Company of the Pioneers of Socialist Youth, First Brigade, the Frank Nitti (2nd Kansas) Guards Division, were present and correct. Rook, a bachelor who taught Gym and Political Education at Roseville High, pulled himself up to his full five-eight, heaved in his stomach so hard Charlie thought his shorts would fall down, and gave them the obligatory pep-talk. It was familiar stuff about representing their community, showing due respect towards the heroes, and striving in all ways to follow the example of the selfless socialist patriots. For good measure, he added his usual little warning on the dire dangers of sexual incontinence.

  The Captain called come to attention, shoulder arms, right turn and march. Charlie expected that his section, since it was best turned-out, would take the point. But Rook ordered Pete Horowitz to lead off. Ah

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  well, fuck you very much Comrade Captain Porky Rook. He led his section off second, pacing his long legs carefully so the younger kids could keep in step.

  By now, everyone in town was also on the way to Baxter Field, the airstrip at the edge of Fort Baxter. Most people were on foot, some of the folk from the collective farms were coming in on donkey-carts or farm-wagons pulled by tractors. A group of Party officials from Tuttle Creek drove by slowly in a gleaming limousine.

  Once, the section was forced to scatter into the dirt at the side of the road when an old Haynes Roadster, driven at speed, brushed by, the horn honking the first line of the "Internationale" at them. Charlie heard someone yell "Texas toy soldier" at him, and he recognised the driver as Melvin Yandell. He dressed and talked like a hoodlum, but his Daddy was Osgood Yandell, the local Party Chairma
n. Yandell's sidekicks Chick Willis and Philly Winspear leaned out of the car as they passed to make the usual cracks about "Texas faggots in short pants". Charlie saw Yandell taking a crafty pull on a bottle as he drove past.

  Recently, the Yandell crowd hadn't been beating him up so often, but they had taken to cruising slowly through the Texan quarter on Summer evenings, calling out to the girls. According to the Thoughts of Chairman Junior Melvin, all Texan women were sex-starved because their men weren't capable, and he and his buddies were more than willing to step into the breach and do their duty for Kansas. Peggy Sue told Charlie that her older sister Patsy was staying in most nights, just to keep out of Melvin's way. One day, Yandell would cause some serious trouble...

  But Charlie was determined that nothing was going to spoil his day. As he marched his guys through the bunting-festooned gates of Fort Baxter —"Home of the 194th Socialist Infantry Regiment, Comrade Col J.T. Hall Commanding"—he snapped a perfect salute. The guards smartly returned the gesture. He ordered his guys, his men, to eyes right as an additional though not strictly necessary courtesy. The Sergeant at the gate, a Tennessee Comrade with Texan sympathies, whistled admiration. Marching at the head of his section, perfectly in time with his comrades, Charlie felt like a hero himself.

  The Pioneers formed up in front of a wooden grandstand erected for Party bosses, factory and collective farm representatives, and their families and hangers-on. To their right was the red carpet to the stand and to

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  Colonel Hall. Beyond the carpet was the regimental band, then the 194th itself. Already, it was getting hot, and Charlie's neck felt sweaty and gritty under his bandanna.