The Center Cannot Hold ae-2

by Harry Turtledove

  "Me? I don't know much. I have not been there, except in the Army," Thorstein said, confirming Cincinnatus' guess. The furniture-seller went on, "I tell you this, though: I think that man Featherston will bring trouble. He lies. How can you trust a man who lies? You cannot. And any man who comes on the wireless and says, 'I am going to tell you the truth'-well, what else can he be except a liar?" Behind bifocals, his ice-blue eyes flashed. Plainly, he was condemning Jake Featherston to some chilly hell.

  Cincinnatus wished getting rid of the man were that simple. But he nodded to Thorstein. Hating dishonesty of any sort, the Swede might also hate injustice of any sort. "I got me no quarrel with any o' that," Cincinnatus said.

  "How could anyone quarrel with it?" Olaf Thorstein sounded genuinely bewildered. "Is it not as plain as the nose on a man's face? And yet how could the people in the Confederate States have voted for the man if they saw it? They must not have seen it. This I do not understand."

  "Sometimes folk don't want to see," Cincinnatus said. "I reckon that had a lot to do with it."

  "But why would anyone blind himself on purpose?" Thorstein asked, seeming more bewildered still.

  Cincinnatus had asked himself the same question, more than once. He said, "Seems to me they got a choice. They can look square in the mirror and see how ugly they are, or they can be blind. Looks like they done picked what they aim to do."

  "Uh- huh." Olaf Thorstein chewed on that. At last, he asked, "And what would a Freedom Party man say about what you just said?"

  "Oh, that one's easy." Cincinnatus laughed. "Reckon he'd say I was an uppity nigger, a crazy nigger. Reckon he'd be right. When I used to live in the CSA, I wouldn't never've said nothin' like that. Colored fella livin' in the CSA got to be crazy to talk that way. But I been in the USA since 1914 now. This ain't no great place for black folks-don't reckon there's anywhere that's a great place for black folks-but you take it all in all an' it's a lot better than the Confederate States ever was. I got me a chance here-not a good one, maybe, but a chance. Down there?" He shook his head. "No way, nohow, not before the Freedom Party, an' not now, neither."

  Again, Thorstein thought before he spoke. "I have never heard a Negro talk so freely of these things," he said, and then shrugged. "How many Negroes are there in Des Moines for me to talk to?"

  "Not many. We're thin on the ground here. We're thin on the ground all over the USA," Cincinnatus said. And maybe that's why things are a little easier for us here, he thought. White folks in the USA don't like us much, but they ain't afraid of us like in the Confederate States. Not enough of us here to be afraid of.

  "I hope I have not delayed you too much," the furniture-store owner said. "I know you need as much work as you can get. Who does not, the way things are these days?"

  "It's all right, Mr. Thorstein. Don't you worry about it none," Cincinnatus said, for Thorstein really did sound concerned. "When I seen in the paper that that Featherston fella won, I was so upset, I didn't know what to do. Times gonna be hard for colored folks down in the CSA-gonna be real hard. Glad I got me a chance to talk about it some."

  He was less glad when he got back to the railroad yard just in time to see another driver go off with a choice load that might have been his had he returned five minutes earlier. But he got a load for himself half an hour after that, when a train full of canned salmon from the Northwest puffed to a stop. Several groceries were waiting for their fish, and he took them a lot of it.

  He was tired but happy-he'd made good money that day-when he got back to his apartment building and parked the truck in front of it. Joey Chang, the Chinaman who lived upstairs, was checking his mailbox when Cincinnatus walked into the lobby. "Hello," Cincinnatus said, affably enough. He got on well with Chang, who brewed good beer in a dry state.

  "Hello," Chang answered, his English flavored with an accent unlike any other Cincinnatus had heard. "We talk a few minutes?"

  "Sure," Cincinnatus said in some surprise. "What's on your mind?"

  "Your son Achilles ask my daughter Grace to go to the cinema with him," Chang replied. "What you think of this?"

  " Did he?" Cincinnatus said, and the other man solemnly nodded. Achilles had said he thought Grace Chang was cute. As Olaf Thorstein had remarked, there weren't that many Negroes in Des Moines. If Achilles found somebody he might like who wasn't a Negro… Well, if he did, what then? "What do you think of that, Mr. Chang?" Cincinnatus asked.

  "Don't know what to think," Chang said, which struck Cincinnatus as basically honest. He went on, "Your Achilles good boy. I don't say he not good boy, you understand? But he not Chinese."

  Cincinnatus nodded. He had similar reservations about Grace. He asked, "What's your daughter think?"

  "She is modern. She wants to be modern." Mr. Chang made it sound like a curse. "She says, what difference it make? But it makes a difference, oh yes."

  "Sure does," Cincinnatus said. The laundryman gave him a surprised look. Perhaps Chang hadn't thought a Negro might mind if his son wanted to take a Chinese girl to the cinema. After scratching his head, Cincinnatus went on, "Maybe we just ought to let 'em go out and not say anything about it. Going to the moving pictures together ain't like gettin' married. And if we tell 'em no, that'll only make 'em want to do it more to rile us up. Leastways, Achilles is like that. Dunno 'bout your Grace."

  "Her, too," Chang said morosely. "The more I do not like, the more she does. Modern." He made the word sound even worse than he had before. Now he screwed up his face. "Yes, maybe we do this. I talk to my wife, see what she say." By his tone, whatever Mrs. Chang decided would prevail.

  "Fair enough," Cincinnatus said. "I'll talk to Elizabeth, too-and to Achilles."

  His wife wasn't home yet. Neither was his son. After graduating from high school, Achilles was doing odd jobs and looking-along with so many others-for something more permanent. He got home before Elizabeth did, and set two dollars on the kitchen table, where Amanda sat doing homework. He was a good kid; he brought his pay home every day he worked.

  As casually as Cincinnatus could, he said, "Hear you're goin' to the pictures with Grace Chang." Amanda dropped her pencil.

  Achilles glared defiance. "That's right. What about it? I think some of the money I make ought to be mine to have some fun with. Don't you?"

  Having fun with the money wasn't the point. Having fun with Grace Chang was. But all Cincinnatus said was, "Reckon I do. It's all right with me. Just wish I'd've heard about it from you and not from Grace's pa."

  Set for a fight, Achilles didn't seem to know what to do when he didn't get one. "Oh," he said, and left his mouth hanging open. After a long moment, he added, "I figured you'd have a fit." Another pause, even longer. "Maybe I was wrong."

  "Maybe you was," Cincinnatus agreed. "No matter what you think, son, I ain't quite one o' them dinosaur things. Not quite." He waited out one more pause. At last, Achilles nodded. His agreement made Cincinnatus feel he'd done a few things right after all.

  T hanksgiving was supposed to be one of the happiest days of the year. When Chester Martin and Rita went to his parents' apartment for dinner, that was in the back of his mind. In the front of his mind was the chance to stuff himself till he was about ready to burst at the seams. The money his father had given him let his wife and him keep their own apartment and keep eating. It didn't let them keep eating well. He was sick of cabbage and potatoes and boiled noodles and day-old brown bread.

  "Turkey," he said dreamily as he and Rita got off the trolley and walked toward the block of flats where he'd lived so long. The weather was sunny but crisp-a perfect late November afternoon. " Roast turkey. Stuffing with giblet gravy." He'd eaten a lot of giblets since losing his job, but they belonged in gravy. "Mashed potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Rolls and butter. Pumpkin pie. Apple pie, too. Whipped cream."

  "Stop it, Chester," Rita said. "I'm going to drool on my shoes." A motorcar went by. Somebody inside waved. The Chevrolet parked in front of the apartment building. "There's your sister and her h
usband and little Pete."

  "I see 'em." Chester waved back. His brother-in-law, Otis Blake, worked in a plate-glass plant and still had a job. He'd never given Chester a hard time about losing his. He couldn't very well, not when his own brother was out of work.

  "Uncle Chester! Aunt Rita!" Pete Blake, who was five, hit Chester in the knees with a tackle harder than a good many he'd met on the gridiron.

  "Careful there, tiger." Martin ruffled his hair. "You almost knocked me on my can. You gonna be a tough guy when you grow up?"

  "Tough guy!" Pete yelled. Then he gave Rita a kiss. Either he wasn't so tough yet, or he knew a pretty girl when he saw one.

  Chester hugged Sue and shook hands with her husband. Otis Blake had his blond hair permanently parted in the middle by a scar from a scalp wound during the war. An inch lower and he wouldn't have been standing there. "How are you?" he asked now.

  With a shrug, Martin answered, "I'm still here. They haven't knocked me out yet."

  "Good," Blake said. "That's good."

  "Come on. Let's go up to the place," Sue said. She turned to Pete. "You want to see Gramps and Grandma, don't you?"

  "Gramps! Grandma!" Pete was enthusiastic about everything. Chances were he'd never heard of a business collapse. If he had, it meant nothing to him. Chester wished he could say the same.

  Wonderful smells filled his nose as soon as he walked through the door. When he saw his mother's face a moment later, he knew something was wrong no matter how good the odors wafting out of the kitchen were. She looked as if she'd been wounded and didn't want to admit it even to herself. After the hugs, after the kisses, Martin asked, "What is it, Ma? And don't tell me it's nothing, on account of I know that's not so."

  Sue and Otis exchanged glances. Whatever it was, they already knew. Louisa Martin spoke in a low voice, as if in a sickroom: "Your father's been laid off."

  Five words. Five words that changed-ruined-not just one life but at least two, maybe four. "Oh," Chester said, a soft, pained exhalation-he might have been punched in the stomach. Rita's lips skinned back from her teeth. Like her mother-in-law, she was trying to find out how much it hurt.

  Laid off. It hurt bad. Martin didn't need to find out how much. What, after all, was the difference between bad and worse? Not enough to matter.

  A toilet flushed. Out came Stephen Douglas Martin, rubbing his hands together. One look at Chester's face told him everything he needed to know. "So you heard already, did you?"

  "Yeah," Chester said harshly. "I heard. What are you going to do, Pa?"

  "Darn good question," his father replied. "Wish I had a darn good answer to go with it. Almost forty years at that place, and then-" He snapped his fingers. "I'm scrap metal. That's what I am now, scrap metal. Yesterday was my last day. But I tell you one thing: I'm going to have the best darn Thanksgiving anybody ever had, and you can take that to the bank." If Louisa and Sue and Rita hadn't been there, and especially if Pete hadn't, he might have expressed himself more pungently.

  "This is a fancy spread." Chester wouldn't say any more than that. Lurking behind the bland statement was a not-so-bland worry. If you're out of work, how can you afford it?

  Casually, Louisa Martin said, "Otis and Sue gave us a little help. Not much, just a little." Chester nodded. Otis was still working. The older Martins must have told him so they could make sure they got whatever help they needed for a proper holiday dinner.

  Knowing what Chester knew took some of the enjoyment away from the feast: it seemed too much like sharing a condemned man's last meal. But that didn't stop him from eating till he was groaningly full. When would his next chance to gorge himself on meat come? He had no idea. Like a savage in the jungle, he made the most of the chance he did have.

  About ten o'clock, Pete started getting sleepy and fussy. Sue and Otis took their son and some leftovers and headed back to their place. Chester had waited for that; he needed to speak to his parents without his sister and brother-in-law listening. He started, "Pa, the bosses had no business-"

  "No business?" Stephen Douglas Martin said. "Ha! Business is all they had, the… so-and-so's." Yes, he had trouble swearing in front of women.

  "What I meant was, we'll figure out something now that…" Chester's voice trailed away. He thought his father would know what he meant any which way. Now that the elder Martins had no money coming in, how could they afford to give anyone else a hand? They had to worry about keeping their own place.

  "Yes, we'll manage. One way or another, we'll manage," Rita said. She had the same stubborn pride as anyone born a Martin.

  Stephen Douglas Martin said, "I hear you two were talking about California."

  "Yes, that's true," Chester said. "There's no work in Toledo, or none to speak of. If you have a job, you're all right. If you lose one, though, you haven't got a prayer of finding anything new."

  "Thanks so much," his father said. "That's just what I wanted to hear."

  "I'm sorry, Pa. I'm sorry as… the devil. But that doesn't mean I wasn't telling the truth."

  "I know," his father said. "I sure wish it did, though."

  "What about California?" Rita kept her mind on business.

  "I'll tell you what," Chester's father said. "Louisa and I have some money set aside. They aren't going to throw us in the poorhouse right away, so you don't need to worry your heads about that. I know this is a hard place to find work, on account of you've both done everything you could, but you haven't had any luck. If I stake you two train tickets out West and enough money to keep you going a couple of months… well, what do you think about that?"

  "We'll pay you back," Chester said without even looking at Rita. "As soon as one of us gets something, we'll pay you back, a little bit at a time till it's all done."

  "You don't need to say that, Chester," his father said with a small smile. "If I wasn't sure of it, you think I'd offer?"

  "I don't know," Chester answered. "Depends on how bad you and Ma want to get rid of us, I guess."

  "Chester!" his mother said reproachfully.

  "California." Rita murmured the word. "Things are supposed to be good there, or as good as they are anywhere. They've got the farms, and they've got the moving pictures, and they've got all the people building houses for the people moving there for the other things."

  "And the weather," Chester said. "If we go to Los Angeles, we can kiss snow good-bye. I wouldn't miss it a bit, and that's the truth."

  "You ready to tear everything up by the roots?" Stephen Douglas Martin asked. "If you do this, I can't give you much more help till I'm back on my own feet." If I ever am hung unspoken in the air. He went on, "Don't want you winding up in a Blackfordburgh out there, even if you did vote for the fellow."

  "I voted for Coolidge and Hoover this time around," Chester said. Rita made a face at him. He made a face right back, and went on, "I held my nose, but I did it. But I don't think Hoover's exactly a ball of fire."

  "He's a ball of…" Now Rita seemed hampered in her choice of language. " I didn't vote for Coolidge," she added.

  "He's had most of a year to make things better. He hasn't done it," Louisa Martin said. "He hasn't done much of anything, not as far as I can see."

  "President Blackford did everything under the sun for four years in a row," Stephen Douglas Martin said. "He didn't make things better, either." Chester's father was a rock-ribbed-Chester sometimes thought a rock-headed-Democrat. He continued, "Look how the war with the Japs is winding down now."

  "Neither side ever wanted to fight that one all out, though," Chester said. "That's why it's winding down. It's not anything special Hoover's done."

  "They haven't dropped any bombs on his head, the way they did on Blackford's," his father retorted. He wagged a finger at Chester. "Still want to go to Los Angeles after that?"

  "Yes!" This time, Rita spoke up before Chester could. She sounded even hungrier for California than he was.

  "Thank you, Pa, from the bottom of my heart," Chester said.

&nbs
p; "If you get work, I may come out there myself," his father said. "Anybody who thinks I'd miss snow is crazy."

  "California," Rita said again, as if she expected to pan for gold and pull nuggets the size of eggs from a clear, cold mountain stream.

  "California," Chester echoed, as if he expected to go to Los Angeles and wind up a motion-picture leading man the day after he got there. He went on, "There are people who hop a freight for a chance like this." He had, every now and then, thought of being one of them. "I will pay you back, Pa. So help me God, I will."

  "I told you once, I wouldn't stake you if I didn't think you were good for it," Stephen Douglas Martin answered. "Only thing I worry about is how many people will be going out there, looking for whatever they can find."

  "At least there are things to find in California," Chester said. "This town is dying on its feet. I've lived here all my life, except for when I was in the Army, but I won't be sorry to say good-bye." He laughed. Sorry? He hadn't been so glad since the day the guns stopped and he realized he'd made it through the Great War alive.

  XX

  At three in the morning on an early December day when the sun wouldn't be up for hours and hours in Berlin, Ontario, Jonathan Moss thought wistfully of California or the Sandwich Islands or Florida or some other place with a halfway civilized climate. It was snowing outside. It had been snowing for a month. It would go on snowing till April, maybe May. He twisted in bed, trying to go back to sleep. Trust me to move out of Chicago for a place with worse weather, he thought. Most of the time, such musings carried wry amusement. Every so often, as tonight, they felt too much like kidding on the square.

  "There," Laura said from the other bedroom. "Isn't that better?"