"No-odds are it's worse," Hosea answered. "I can't think of anything less welcome in a political party than a president who's just lost an election. After a while, I'll get to be an elder statesman, but right now I'm nothing but a nuisance." With a mournful shake of the head, he added, "By the the time I get to be an elder statesman, I'll probably be so elder, I'm dead."
"God forbid!" Flora exclaimed. No one in her family, no one among the immigrant Jews of the Lower East Side, spoke of death straight on like that. Words had power; to speak of something was to help bring it into being. The rational part of her mind knew that was nonsense, but the rational part of her mind went only so deep. Down underneath it, superstition still flourished.
"It's true," her husband said. "We both know it's true, even if you don't want to talk about it. I don't need to take out pencil and paper to know how old I am. I get reminded whenever I look in the mirror. I'd like to stay around long enough to see Joshua grow up, but how likely is that? I've already beaten the odds by lasting as long as I have."
"That's nothing but-" Flora began.
"The truth," Hosea finished for her. "You know it as well as I do, too. And if you don't, ask the next insurance salesman you happen to run into. He'll tell you what the actuarial tables say."
Flora wanted to tell him that was nonsense. She couldn't, and she knew it. The best she could do was change the subject: "Let's talk about something else."
"Fine." Now her husband's grin showed real amusement. "Do you think this new professional football federation's going to last?"
That wasn't what she'd had in mind. "I don't care," she said tartly. "What I think is, it's disgraceful to pay men so much to run around with a football when so many people can't find work at all. Talk about a waste of money!"
"It's an amusement, the same as an orchestra is an amusement," her husband said. "Nothing wrong with them. We need them. Especially in hard times, we need them."
"An orchestra is worthwhile," Flora said. "A football game?" She shook her head.
"A lot more people go to watch the Philadelphia Barrels than to the Philadelphia Symphony," Hosea said.
Since that was true, Flora could only stick out her chin and say, "Even so."
"Amusement is where you find it," Hosea said. "I'm not going to be elitist and look down my nose at anything."
To a good Socialist, elitist was a dirty word. Flora tried to turn it back on her husband: "When the top football players make more than the president of the United States-and some of them do-they're the elitists."
"They asked one of them about that two or three years ago. Did you happen to see what he said?" Hosea Blackford asked. Flora shook her head. She paid as little attention to sports as she could. One of her husband's eyebrows rose. "What he told the reporter was, 'I had a better year than he did.' All things considered, how could anyone tell Mr. Gehrig he was wrong?"
"A choleriyeh on Mr. Gehrig!" Flora said furiously. "Nothing that happened was your fault."
That eyebrow lifted again. "The Party told that to the voters. We told them and told them and told them. And Herbert Hoover is president of the United States today, and here I am in Dakota. If you're there, it's your fault."
"It isn't fair," Flora said.
Hosea laughed out loud, which only made her angrier. "Joshua might try to use an argument like that, but you shouldn't," he said. "It's the way politics works. 'What have you done for me lately?' is the question voters always ask-and maybe it's the question they should always ask. Teddy Roosevelt won the Great War. They didn't give him a third term, though, because of all the strikes and unrest that came afterwards. That's how Upton got to be president-and how I got to be vice president, if you remember."
"I'm not likely to forget," she answered. "I was so proud of you. And I'm still proud of you, and I still think you ought to be president, not that… that lump of a Hoover."
"As a matter of fact, I agree with you. I think you're sweet, too," he added. "Unfortunately, fifty-seven percent of the voters in the United States had a different opinion, and theirs counts for more than ours." He sighed. "It was even worse in the Electoral College, of course."
"Not right," Flora muttered.
"What's not right, Mama?" That was Joshua, still in his flannel pajamas. He was yawning. From somewhere on one side of the family or the other, he'd found a taste for sleeping late. On the Lower East Side-or, for that matter, on a Dakota farm-he would have had to get up early whether he wanted to or not. As the son of a man first vice president and then president, he could usually sleep as late as he wanted to. Privilege is everywhere, Flora thought.
But she had to answer him: "It's not right that your father lost the election."
"Oh." Joshua tried to frown, but a yawn ruined it. "Why not? The other guys got more votes, didn't they?"
Hosea laughed. "That's it in a nutshell, Josh. The other guys got more votes."
Josh. Flora didn't like the one-syllable abridgement of a perfectly good name. Joshua Blackford was rolling, majestic. Josh Blackford sounded like someone who wore overalls and a straw hat. And if that's elitist, too bad, she thought. Hosea didn't see the problem.
"The point is, the other guys"-she used her son's phrase as if it had quotation marks around it-"shouldn't have got more votes."
Joshua muttered something under his breath. Flora thought she heard, "Stinking Japs." Without a doubt, the Japanese bombing of Los Angeles had been the last straw-or rather, the last nail in the coffin. If Joshua wanted to think his father would have won without that, he could. Flora wanted to think the very same thing. The only problem was, she knew better. Looking at the last nail in the coffin meant ignoring all the others, and there were a lot of them.
"You'll win again in four years, though, won't you, Father?" Joshua had a boy's boundless confidence in his father. He also had a boy's strange notions about the way time worked.
Neither of his parents said anything. Hosea Blackford would be too old to nominate in 1936, even if he'd never lost an election in his life. Since he'd lost the way he had, the Socialists would be trying their best to forget he'd ever existed.
"Won't you?" Joshua asked again.
"I like to think I would win against Mr. Hoover," Hosea said slowly. "He doesn't seem to me as if he's moving things in the right direction. But I don't know if I would want to run again, and I don't know if the Socialist Party would nominate me if I did. We would have to see how things look in 1936 before we could know."
Flora added, "The next election for president is almost four years from now. That's a long time."
"Especially in politics," her husband added.
Joshua nodded. He'd just turned seven; to him, four years were a very long time indeed. He said, " I think you still ought to be president."
"Thank you, son," Hosea Blackford said.
"I think the very same thing," Flora said, and ruffled Joshua's hair. He was dark like her, but otherwise looked more like his father, with a long face, prominent cheekbones, and a straight, pointed nose. He also had more of his father's temperament: he was steadier than Flora, and not given to sudden enthusiasms that took control of him for days or weeks at a time.
"Who do the Socialists have that could be any better than you, Dad?" he asked. He couldn't imagine anyone better. Flora ruffled his hair again. Neither could she. But she knew the practical politicians in the Socialist Party would have a different opinion-and Hosea really would be too old to run again in 1936. He probably would have been too old to run in 1932 if he hadn't been the incumbent.
"One way or another, everything will work out fine," she said. Joshua believed her. He was still only a little boy.
T he Remembrance steamed west across the Pacific, accompanied by three destroyers, a light cruiser, a heavy cruiser, and two battleships. Sam Carsten wished one of the battlewagons would have been the Dakota, but no such luck. His old ship was off doing something else; he had no idea what.
Repairs in Seattle had been as quick as the Navy y
ard there could make them. He did his best not to worry about that. Back during the Great War, the Dakota had been hastily repaired after battle damage-and her steering had never been reliable again. Her steering probably still wasn't reliable. So far as Sam knew, the Japanese torpedo hadn't damaged the Remembrance 's steering-but what had it damaged that hasty repairs might not discover? He hoped he-and the ship-wouldn't find out the hard way.
Commander van der Waal wasn't aboard. Broken ankles healed at their own pace; you couldn't hurry them. A new damage-control officer, a lieutenant commander named Hiram Pottinger, was nominally in charge of antitorpedo work. But Pottinger's previous service had been in cruisers. Sam knew the Remembrance backwards and forwards and inside out-literally inside out, after the torpedo hit off the Canadian coast. Most of the burden fell on his shoulders.
He'd led the sailors in the damage-control parties when things looked black. That had earned him respect he could have got no other way. It had also earned him thin new gold stripes on his cuffs; he'd been promoted to lieutenant, junior grade, for what he'd done. Glad as he was of the promotion, he could have done without some of the respect. He feared he would end up trapped in an assignment he'd never wanted.
Martin van der Waal had always insisted it was an important assignment. Even had Sam been inclined to argue, the experience of getting torpedoed would have changed his mind. But he agreed with his injured superior. Important, antitorpedo work definitely was. That still didn't mean he cared to make a career of it.
He spent as much time as he could on deck. That meant more tinfoil tubes of zinc-oxide ointment, but he did it anyhow. Watching aeroplanes take off and land never failed to fascinate him. He got plenty of chances to watch, for the Remembrance flew a continuous air patrol. The Japanese Navy had ships out here, too, and who found whom first would have a lot to do with how any fight turned out. The way the arrester hook caught the cables stretched across the deck and brought a landing aeroplane to an abrupt halt still fascinated him.
One perfect morning, he was taking the air on the flight deck after breakfast when alarms began to sound. Klaxons hooting in his ears, he ran for his battle station, wishing it weren't deep in the bowels of the aeroplane carrier. He wanted to be able to see what was going on. As usual, the Navy cared not at all for what he wanted.
"What's the word, sir?" he panted as he came up to Lieutenant Commander Pottinger.
"Nothing good," his superior answered. "One of our machines spotted a whole flight of aeroplanes with meatballs on their wings heading this way."
"There's no Jap base within a couple of thousand miles of where we're at," Sam said. The light went on in his head before Pottinger needed to enlighten him: "We've found a Japanese aeroplane carrier or two."
The other damage-control officer shook his head. "Not quite. Their aeroplanes have found us, but we haven't found them yet."
"Heading back along their bearing would be a pretty good bet," Carsten said.
Lieutenant Commander Pottinger nodded. He was a tall, lean man with a weathered face, hollow cheeks, a long, narrow jaw, and a pointed nose. He looked like a New Englander, but had a Midwestern accent. "I expect you're right," he said. "This is liable to be a damn funny kind of naval battle, you know? We're not even in sight of the enemy's fleet, but our aeroplanes are going to slug it out with his."
As if to underline his words, one machine after another roared into the sky, the noise of the straining engines loud even several decks below the one from which the aeroplanes were taking off. "Long-range artillery, that's what they've turned into," Sam said. "They can hit when our battleships can't."
Pottinger nodded again. "That's right. Battleships are probably obsolete, though plenty of men will try and run you out of the Navy if you say so out loud." He made a disdainful noise. "Plenty of men likely tried to run people out of the Navy if they spoke up for steam engines and ironclads, too."
"I wouldn't be surprised." Sam had known more than a few officers who never stopped pining for the good old days.
Something burst in the water not far from the Remembrance. He felt the carrier heel into the sharpest turn she could make, and then, a moment later, into another one in the opposite direction. More bombs burst around her.
Hiram Pottinger might have been talking things over back on shore, for all the excitement he showed. "Zigzags," he said approvingly. "That's what you do against submersibles, and that's what you do against aeroplanes, too."
"Well, yes, sir," Carsten said. "That's what you do, and then you hope like hell it works. You get hit by a bomb, that could put a little crimp in your morning." He did his best to imitate his superior's nonchalance.
One-pounders and other antiaircraft guns on the deck started banging away at the attacking aeroplanes. So did the five-inch guns in the sponsons under the flight deck. The noise was terrific. They could reach a lot farther than the smaller weapons, but couldn't fire nearly so fast.
"I wonder what's going on up there," Sam said. "I wonder how nasty it is."
"It's no walk in the park," Pottinger said.
"I didn't figure it was, sir," Sam said, a little reproachfully. He'd seen plenty of nasty action-it didn't come much nastier than what he'd been through in the Battle of the Three Navies. A moment later, he realized Pottinger, if he'd ever been in a battle before, had probably gone through it down here.
Maybe this was harder. Carsten wouldn't have believed it beforehand, but it might have been true. When he was fighting a gun, he had some idea, even if only a small one, of what was going on. Here
… Here it might have been happening in a distant room. The only difference was, what happened in that distant room might kill him.
Later, he wished he hadn't had that thought at that moment. The Remembrance shuddered when a bomb burst on her flight deck. Lieutenant Commander Pottinger said, "Oh, shit," which summed up Sam's feelings perfectly. Then Pottinger added, "Well, time for us to go to work."
"Yes, sir," Carsten agreed.
That was how he got up to the flight deck in the midst of combat. He wanted to be there, but not under those circumstances. The flight crew were already doing what they had to do: manhandling steel plates across the hole the bomb had torn in the deck and doing everything they could to flatten out the torn lips of steel.
"Well done," Pottinger shouted. "We have to be able to land aeroplanes and get them in the air again."
"Yes, sir," Sam said again. His boss might be new to carrier duty, but he'd just proved he understood the essence of it. Sam went on, "They could have done a lot worse if they'd fused the bomb differently."
"What do you mean?" Lieutenant Commander Pottinger asked.
"If they'd given it an armor-piercing tip and a delayed fuse, it would have gone through before it blew up," Sam answered. "Then we'd really be in the soup."
"Urk," Pottinger said, which again matched Sam's thought.
Sam said, "They're like us: they're still learning what all they can do with aeroplanes and carriers, too."
An aeroplane with the red Rising Sun of Japan painted on wings and fuselage roared overhead, machine guns in the wings blazing. The engine was even louder than the guns; the fighter couldn't have been more than fifty feet above the deck. Bullets struck sparks from the new steel plates. Others smacked flesh with wet thuds. Men shrieked or crumpled silently. Streams of tracers from the Remembrance 's antiaircraft guns converged on the Japanese machine. For a dreadful moment, Sam thought it would get away in spite of all the gunfire. But then flames and smoke licked back from the engine cowling toward the cockpit. The fighter slammed into the sea.
"Scratch one fucker!" Sam shouted exultantly.
A sailor next to him was down and groaning, clutching his leg. Red spread over his trousers. "It hurts!" he groaned. "It hurts bad!"
"George!" Sam's exultation turned to dismay in the space of a heartbeat. He'd known George Moerlein ever since first coming aboard the Remembrance. Seeing him down with a nasty wound made Sam's stomach turn ov
er. By the way the petty officer was bleeding, he needed help right away. Sam tore off his belt and wrapped it around Moerlein's thigh above the bullet wound, tight as he could. "Give me a hand over here!" he yelled.
"Let's get him down to sick bay, sir," a sailor said. He helped Carsten haul George Moerlein up. Moerlein moaned and then, mercifully, passed out. As they hauled the petty officer towards a passageway, another Japanese fighter strafed the Remembrance. Bullets cracked past Sam and clattered off the flight deck. He breathed a sigh of relief when he had steel between him and the deadly chaos overhead.
As soon as he saw a sailor, though, he said, "Here, take over for me. Get this man below. I've got duty topside." He hurried back up to put his life on the line again, though he did his best not to think of it like that.
Off to starboard, one of the American destroyers was on fire from bow to stern and sinking fast. Boats and men in life jackets bobbed around her. Even as Sam watched, the destroyer rolled over and went to the bottom. In these waters, the bottom was a long, long way down. Sam shivered at how far down it was.
A bomb burst in the sea not far from the Remembrance, drenching Carsten and most of the others on deck. Even so, a sailor with wigwag signals guided an aeroplane to a landing. Maintenance men fueled it. Its prop started spinning again. Down the flight deck it rolled, bumping over the hasty repairs, and up into the air again.
"Didn't think we could do that," Sam said to Lieutenant Commander Pottinger.
"He must have been flying on fumes, or he never would have tried coming in," Pottinger agreed. "Lucky the Japs have let up a little."
"I wonder what we're doing to them," Sam said. "Worse than this, I hope. We'd better be, by God."
"Yes, we'd better be. But how can we know?" Pottinger said. "They're over the horizon. The only ones who have any real idea how the fight's going are our pilots."
"No, sir-not even them," Sam said. His superior raised an eyebrow. He explained: "They don't know what the Jap pilots are doing to us, just like the Japs can't be sure what we're doing to them. Maybe the fellows in the wireless shacks-ours and theirs-have the big picture. Maybe nobody does. Wouldn't that be a hell of a thing?"
The Center Cannot Hold ae-2 Page 63
