Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  The ensemble broke up, and began discussing the situation in smaller groups, in too many languages.

  A motorcycle rode into the square in a cloud of dust, and Sean Mallory dismounted. A man of many useful skills, Mallory had been running messages behind the front as it advanced across Texas, taking the occasional time out to dynamite a bridge or a bank building. Zapata liked the Irishman. He was another peasant, the British bootmark outlining his twinkling eyes. He didn't fuss with salutes or protocol, just handed over a despatch wrapped in oilskin. It had a wax seal Zapata recognised.

  "From Villa?"

  Mallory nodded, and he realised this was important news. How the rider knew what it was he carried was beyond Zapata, but the man was blessed with the luck of the Irish and a touch of the shining.

  Zapata tore the packet open, and read quickly. He had always been a good reader, although the American papers called him an illiterate. As he read, his peasant heart filled with joyous blood.

  Beria was talking to him, giving advice that sounded like an order, "...next, you should strike for Austin..."

  Zapata shook his head, and folded up the despatch from Villa. Beria looked at him with a cold fury.

  "We are at peace," Zapata said. "The frontier is here, under our feet, stretching from San Diego to Corpus Christi. We are in a no-man's-land. Behind us is the Republic of Mexico, ahead..." he tried to fit the new name into his mouth "...the United Socialist States of America."

  He handed the paper to Beria, to whom it was useless.

  "Villa has met with representatives of Mr. Debs, and North America is at peace. Your advice, Lavrenti, is no longer required. You must extend our thanks to your Tsar. By the way, General Huerta has been removed from his position, and I am now commander-in-chief of the armies of the Republic."

  The Germans were listening too. Carranza looked as if he had just bitten a chilli pepper. Mallory was grinning broadly.

  "Should your crowned heads still want someone to invade the USSA for them and overthrow its Revolution, I suggest they approach Canada. Gentlemen, good day and...adios"

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  Zapata walked away from the men in uniforms, past the canvas-winged airplanes and the battered tin lizzie. He would join Mallory in the cantina, and drink until he was insensible, then he would find a woman. It was a good day to be a peasant.

  Wednesday, July 4th, 1917.

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  The Red Special had arrived in the city over a week ago, bringing Debs, Hill, Sinclair, Elizabeth Flynn and the other leading lights of the Revolution. Sam had been in the crowd waiting at the station, a sergeant again in the militia of the Socialist Vanguard. The morning after the train had drawn up, and the fighting men of the SV had taken up positions around the city, linking up with the local Workers' Committee. Debs had walked up Capitol Hill, where both houses of Congress were still furiously in session, even if many Progressives and Republicans and not a few Democrats, were absent from their accustomed seats. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, at gunpoint, gave Debs the floor, and the new President, unanimously elected by the workers' committees, announced that the USSA was a reality.

  Of course, Debs had put off the "storming of the White House" for six days, just to hit today's date. There was no sense in future generations having two holidays so close together. One Big Revolution, One Big Holiday! In the last days, the message had finally sunk in. Until Debs's arrival, the conventional life of Washington had been continuing as normal, even if a few of the legislators' wives were offended to be called "comrade" by streetcar conductors. When Debs addressed a meeting at City Hall, where the capital's sole battle had been fought a few days earlier between the militia and a handful of reactionaries, he had made one of his more inspirational speeches, concluding with "we shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order." Sam's ears still rung with the applause.

  Now, the last palace of the robber barons was to fall. The masses were assembled, curiously quiet and orderly, on the White House lawn. Debs was there, and John Reed, Joe Hill, Upton Sinclair, Elizabeth Flynn, Frank Norris, Clarence Darrow, Helen Keller, Jack London. Big Bill Haywood and Theodore Dreiser were in California, but were there in spirit. Ernest Hemingway, now an officer in the SV, was leading

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  Back in the USSA

  Sam's detachment, his red sash around his waist like a cummerbund. The summer sun bore down on them all.

  Sam held his rifle with a sweaty grip. This was not like France. This meant something. The only casualty had been a railman killed by a comrade's dropped shotgun.

  Reed was on the platform, reminiscing about Kane's inauguration, repeating the old wives' tale about Lincoln crying.

  Then, it was time.

  Sam knew this was a ceremony, not a battle. The robber barons were long fled. Noah Cross was already in Switzerland, railing against the man who had "to be smuggled into America in a sealed container like a bacillus'! Many had preserved a portion of their fortunes in jewels or overseas holdings, and would henceforth be ornaments to the social seasons of London, Paris or Berlin. The crowned heads were still bogged down in their squabble, but that would not last. After all, they had a common cause in their enmity for the USSA. Even Kaiser Billy would throw in with the Tsar and the King to condemn the new regime across the Atlantic.

  For the first time in living memory, this country felt like the New World again. Someone was running up the new flag on the White House lawn. Stars, stripes, hammer and scythe.

  The lone figure strolled up to the White House, rifle in his hands. Sam knew Eddie Bartlett would be grinning, but with a genuine good humour this time. That was fit. This was a country for Eddie Bartlett and Jimmie Higgins now, not for John D. Rockefeller and Edward D. Stotesbury.

  Hemingway gave the order, and the detachment marched across the lawn to support Eddie. Many of the unit were survivors of the bloody holocaust of France.

  The doors were open, and Eddie pushed through, Sam and the men running after them, yelling. Their shouts echoed around the foyer. Outside, the masses were cheering again. Men and women flooded into the White House, and found it empty and abandoned. A few servants and guards surrendered immediately, and were absorbed instantly into the crowd.

  Eddie was lifted high on his comrades' shoulders and was laughing, tears rolling down his face. The kid had done good, Sam thought. The crowds made way for Debs and the other leaders, and they began to make speeches no one could hear for the applause. Debs got a few sentences

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  into his prepared address, then smiled and tore up his notes. He threw his hat in the air with the rest. Someone had found the White House's bootleg hoard and, although temperance was one of the planks of the SV, bottles were being passed around and cracked open.

  Hemingway got close and tapped his shoulder, serious amid the gaiety.

  "Sam," he said, "cut out a few of the sober men, and search the place. I won't feel secure until that's done."

  Sam understood. There might still be die-hards lurking, waiting for a chance to put a bullet into Debs or Eddie or Reed or one of the others.

  With a couple of tee-total Quakers, Sam started at the kitchens, and worked his way up. The White House had been abandoned in a hurry, and many offices were scattered with papers strewn at random. A few waste bins were full of ashes, and there were unfaded rectangles on the walls where paintings had been taken down. They found many of the paintings stacked at random on a landing, forgotten in the rush.

  The President's family had left for Canada months ago. Nothing had been heard from Kane on Capitol Hill since the Red Special hit town. Debs had had to accept a formal surrender from Vice-President Bryan.

  It was strange to prowl through these high-ceilinged rooms, to skim over the left-behind furniture, pictures, statues, files, clothes, fixtures, books, manuscripts. Presumably, Debs would move in within the month, and this would remain the centre of gov
ernment. But to Sam, this was a haunted house, long-abandoned, inhabited only by unhealthy memories. The robber barons were gone, he told himself. Things had changed.

  Opening a door into a drawing room, Sam saw a woman. She was hatless and in a plain dress, but there was a buckskin-fringed gunbelt around her hips, and she had a hogleg Colt in her hand. He recognised her, but she had forgotten him.

  Following Annie's eyeline, he saw the broken man, hunched and huddled as he squatted on a low stool, staring at a bauble in his hands. Annie had her gun on the former President, Charles Foster Kane.

  "So this was what we were fighting," he said.

  Kane looked up, eyes empty, and mumbled something none of them caught.

  "Hell," the sharpshooter said, putting her gun away, "there'll be a job for Charlie somewhere. He could be a gardener, or an usher at the opera house." She looked at Sam more closely. "The Pink, right?"

  He nodded. A smile spread on her face.

  "Funny how things come around," she said.

  They left Kane, and were surrounded by the noise of the celebrating crowd. They were singing now, one-half "The Internationale" the other half "Polly-Wolly-Doodle". Grizzled old railmen were sobbing like children. John Reed and Ernest Hemingway were embracing like lovers. Eugene Debs was clinking bottles with a one-eyed militiamen.

  Militia Sergeant Sam D. Hammett had done his duty. "Long live the Revolution," he shouted, "long live the USSA!"

  TOM JOAD

  fc

  1937

  "I was out this way before," Purvis said as they waited for the waiter to come back. "With the Drive Against Superstition and Perversion."

  Ness sipped on his coffee and decided not yet to allow himself one of his maximum daily allocation of three cigarettes. On the tiny table between them were the remains of Party Official dinners. His partner had wiped his plate clean enough to infringe the work rights of the train's dish-washer, but Ness had left half his steak and all his greasy potatoes. Purvis shook his head, remembering. "Bad business, the Drive," he commented. "Lot of folks vanished..."

  He had been jumpy since Utah. He took things personally.

  "Hell of a country," Purvis said, nodding through the window at the Red Star Special's jittering purple outline on the orange sands. The sun was so low the shadow elongated almost to the desert horizon.

  Ness shrugged.

  "It's right what they say about you, Eliot," Purvis said. "You're untouchable."

  The Official Class salon, twice the length of the adjoining ordinary dining car, was almost empty. Two Agriculture Committee Inspectors gorged themselves at the other end. A silent bird presumably assigned to watch them ate frugally and alone, pretending to read a book.

  Their waiter swayed along the car, a newspaper-wrapped package under his arm. He'd been impressed to learn the ugly little passenger in the oversized straw hat was Melvin Purvis, the Socialist Hero who took down People's Enemies like Dillinger and Floyd. He'd asked for Purvis's autograph, for his son who wanted to be an I-Man when he grew up.

  Back in the USSA

  With a modestly delighted grin, Purvis had scrawled his name to a good luck wish. The boy would need it: the only Negro in the FBI was the one who cleaned the Director's personal toilet. Purvis had whispered in the waiter's ear, pressing money—silver, not the paper reactionaries didn't trust—into the man's palm.

  "All part of the Master Plan," his partner now explained. Ness won his Socialist Hero citation through months of meticulous paper-work with the Department of Parasite Regulation, and had stood unarmed in the background while Prohibition Officers made the arrests that broke up Boston Joe Kennedy's Chicago bootleg ring. He understood Purvis's usual Master Plan involved firing a gun at someone until they were incapable of surrender, then posing for photographs with smoking weapon and a cigar over the bullet-riddled corpses.

  Purvis took the package. He skinned the paper away from a bottle-neck and held his purchase up to the light.

  "I got a pal on the Buffalo run," the waiter explained. "He brings in stuff from Canada."

  Purvis smiled. Ness didn't let his face show anything.

  "Nothing's too good for the Man Who Shot John Dillinger," the Negro declared.

  The agriculture officials and the poetry-lover eyed the hooch with fearful thirst. Sadly, Purvis handed the prize back.

  "Sorry, comrade," he said, "this is too good. What I want is the rot-gut every other joe gets."

  The waiter, plainly astonished, was disinclined to argue with the Man Who Shot John Dillinger.

  "Give this to those comrades over there with the compliments of the comrade with the book."

  Purvis grinned like a gnome as the Negro carried out his orders. One of the Agriculture Investigators coughed root-beer through his nose. The constant reader's eyes expanded like a fish's. Ness didn't laugh.

  Purvis glanced at the attentive diner's book, The White Ribbon. "I believe Comrade Pound's celebration of the Great Pullman Strike the finest poetry in the American language," he said too loudly. "How do you think he compares with the insidious reactionary Thomas S. Eliot?"

  The reader stuck his eyes to the page and stayed quiet. Purvis, having enjoyed his devilment, chuckled to himself.

  "Who's going to inform on us?" he asked. "Remember, we're the Federal Bureau of Ideology."

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  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  The waiter returned from the next car with a bottle of honey-coloured liquor. Purvis unscrewed the top and the stench of strong boiler-cleaner caught in Ness's nostrils. It stank worse than the Kennedy warehouse on Thirty-Eighth and Shields after the vats were smashed.

  "Ahh," Purvis said, wincing, "perfect."

  "Elko!" yelled the conductor from somewhere outside. "Elko, Arizona! One-hour stop!"

  The train slowed. Dying light fell on the shapes of a small town. A couple of horses, a moving jalopy, a line of wooden buildings, shabby-looking Indians, kids playing baseball.

  "Come on," said Purvis, "let's take a stroll."

  The train would take on fuel and water and change more rolling-stock. When they'd boarded in Chicago, thirty hours back, the Red Star had been a passenger-train, but few people had the permit to travel all the way to California. At every stop a passenger car was unhitched and replaced with freight wagons.

  Purvis stood, picking up his sack and tucking it discreetly into his arm. From his DPR days, Ness recognised the gesture of a Habitual Violator of the Prohibition Laws.

  They alighted on the platform. A poster by the ticket office showed the Chairman beaming, arm around a Girl Pioneer. "Forward for Socialist Youth." The artist, who'd omitted the jagged scar on his subject's cheek, somehow contrived to balance Capone's benevolence with a gleam suggestive of an unpaternal interest in the fresh-faced, clean-limbed blonde. Ness wouldn't be surprised to read soon that Norman Rockwell had been commissioned to provide a pictorial record of oil-drilling in Alaska.

  In an intricate, clanking ballet, railmen hitched a couple of cattle trucks. Purvis sauntered off, hooking his finger to indicate that Ness should follow. Beyond the train, well away from what little artificial light Elko provided, Purvis pointed into the dark. Ness could see nothing. Purvis put a finger to his lips, then cupped a hand to his ear. Beneath the hiss of steam and the calling of the railmen, he made out the sounds of men waiting. Not talking, but breathing heavy, concentrating. Out in the dark beyond the rail yard and the town, men were gathered.

  "Rail-rats," whispered Purvis. "Going our way."

  The Labor Mobility laws were designed to maximise the efficiency of a planned socialist economy, but every railroad in the country was overrun

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  Back in the USSA

  with hoboes. Ness once spent a week with a smart engineer, redesigning freight-cars to make it impossible to bum rides. They'd received commendations, but the report wound up under a pile.

  "When the train moves off, they'll come out and climb on," said Purvis. "We'll find ourselves a cosy cat
tle-wagon and have a drink with whoever turns up."

  Purvis walked towards the first car that had been hooked up. "Take off your tie," he said. "Muss up your clothes. Imagine you've been on the bum for a month. Hoover won't know unless you report yourself."

  "This isn't just a violation of FBI dress code. We're breaking laws it's our job to uphold."

  "Untouchable, there are such things as lousy laws. Even in the United Socialist States of America."

  Purvis slid over the door. An engineer walked past, swinging a lantern. Ness prepared to pull his badge to justify their trespass, but the railman smiled and bade them good journey.

  "Guys like him made the Revolution," said Purvis, dumping his sack into the car. "They know the difference between law and justice."

  He vaulted into the truck. Ness refused his offer of a hand up and climbed carefully. Inside, the car was filthy.

  "Welcome aboard, 'bo," said Purvis.

  Without thinking, Ness started to brush his knees. His partner chuckled. Getting the idea, Ness let his suit stay dusty.

  Besides whiskey of dubious parentage, Purvis's grocery bag contained a length of candle, two packs of cigarettes, old apples and some jerky. He took a few empty crates he found in the corner of the wagon, laid one in its centre, put out a couple more as chairs and arranged his table with the precision of the Plutocrats' Feast in Intolerance.

  "All aboaaard," shouted the conductor a hundred yards further up. The train shuddered into motion. Two men and a boy appeared inside the car, as though from nowhere. Ness wondered what the new smell was.

  "Shut the door," said Purvis to the younger man, a skinny, clumsy-looking fellow. "We got vittles we can share, but there ain't enough for too many."

  "I'll be dipped in dogshit!" exclaimed the man. "Gonna have us a rare old time, ain't we just?" Ness figured his accent for something Southern. Texan? "I thank you kindly, Mister."

  The man dropped his haversack and bedroll and drew up a packing case. The boy, who wore a golf cap twice the size of his head, stared at the

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  food. When the cap came off, a tangle of hair poured out and Ness realised "he" was a girl in her late teens. Purvis cut off a string of jerky with his pocket-knife and gave it to her. She bit in greedily and almost choked.