“Thanks-I think,” Cade said. The sergeant laughed, for all the world as if he were joking.
Behind the lines, more American guns started going off. Those were 155s, with plenty of range to strike the smaller Chinese pieces. As the 105s had before them, they stopped firing sooner than Cade would have liked. Yes, ammunition here was in short supply. Everything here was in short supply-everything except Red Chinese soldiers. With that on his mind, Cade warily lit another cigarette.
–
Marvin Finch had a swimming pool in his back yard. Even in Southern California, that was an uncommon luxury. When Aaron Finch took Ruth and Leon over to visit his brother’s family, he looked at that pool with a proprietary air. And well he might have. When he moved in with Marvin right after the war, digging that pool was part of his rent.
He still had the shovel he’d used. About a third of the blade was worn away. He intended to keep it as long as he lived, as a reminder of the hard work he’d done.
Marvin was a couple of inches shorter than he was, and stockier, too. He had a double chin and a comfortable little pot belly. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and smoked a pipe. He had a million schemes, none of which had paid off the way he’d wished they would. He could talk anybody into anything…for a little while. After that, his charm wore thin. Aaron reflexively liked him-they were brothers, after all-but he’d learned to keep a hand on his wallet when Marvin started charming.
“No hatchet today, hey?” he said when he opened the door to let in Aaron and Ruth and Leon.
“I dunno. Got any wood you need chopped?” Aaron didn’t let on that Marvin irked him. The accident was forty years old now, and Marvin hadn’t forgotten it. He never forgot anything anybody did to him.
He squatted down in the front hall and tickled Leon. Leon giggled. He thought Marvin was great. Of course, he wasn’t quite two, so his judgment left something to be desired.
“Hello, Aaron. Hello, Ruth,” Sarah Finch said. Olivia’s mother was a washed-out woman in her early forties. She’d been a Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Arkansas. Then she met Marvin, fell in love with him…and vanished into his shadow. If you gave him half a chance, he’d do that to you.
“Hi, Sarah,” Aaron said. He liked Marvin’s wife. By all the signs, he liked her better than Marvin did. Of course, he didn’t sleep in the same bed with her.
He squeezed Ruth’s hand. If he hadn’t been living with Marvin, he never would have met her. That made him more forgiving than he would have been otherwise.
“Is Roxane here yet?” Ruth asked Marvin. Roxane Bauman was her first cousin, the gal who’d introduced her and Aaron. She was married to a working but not enormously successful actor named Howard Bauman. Their politics were very pink, almost if not altogether red.
Aaron hadn’t seen them since the war started. Just before it did, Bauman had had to testify in front of the Un-American Activities Committee. Aaron wondered what they thought of Stalin now. That ought to be interesting…one way or another.
While Aaron wondered, his brother nodded. “They’re out back by the pool,” Marvin said. “I made a pitcher of martinis.”
Odds were he’d fixed martinis more because they were in than because he particularly liked them. As far as Aaron knew, he didn’t, but that was his style. Aaron drank beer because he liked beer. Ruth didn’t drink a whole lot of anything, but when she did it was beer or scotch.
There was beer in the icebox. Marvin didn’t go out of his way to be a bad host; sometimes it just happened. Aaron opened one for himself. He looked a question at his wife. She nodded, so he got her one, too. That she felt the urge probably said something or other.
They went out to the back yard. Olivia had outgrown the swing set there. Leon was just getting old enough to enjoy it when somebody big pushed him.
Caesar ran up, barking. Leon shrank back against Ruth. Ducks and chickens were okay, but Caesar scared him. Well, the dog outweighed him at least two to one. Caesar was a German shepherd who seemed in training to turn wolf. He had a mouthful of large, pointed teeth, and liked showing them off. He wasn’t mean-he’d never bitten or anything-but he wasn’t exactly friendly, either.
Aaron petted him. He deigned to wag his tail and trotted off, satisfied that he’d protected the household. Aaron and Ruth and (cautiously) Leon walked back toward the pool.
Howard Bauman was swimming. Aaron thought he was nuts, or else part polar bear. May or not, that water was cold. Roxane stretched out on a chaise longue. She had the same narrow chin and black hair as Ruth, but the rest of her face didn’t look much like her cousin’s. She had a higher opinion of her own cleverness than Aaron thought she’d earned.
She greeted him with, “How does it feel to be a hero to the plutocrats?”
“Give me a break,” he said. “I caught the Russian when he parachuted down in front of me. What do you think I should’ve done? Run him over?”
“Maybe you could have helped him,” she said.
“I did help him. I gave him to the cops. He didn’t get lynched the way some of their flyers did.” Aaron knew that wouldn’t do him any good. When Roxane said helped, she meant bought him a ticket to Moscow.
“Terrible violation of the Geneva Convention,” she said. “I don’t want to think about what our police have done to him.”
“Chance you take when you drop an A-bomb on somebody,” Aaron said dryly. “You and Howard are lucky you’re still here to give the Ivans a big hand.” The Baumans lived in Hollywood-luckily for them, on the western edge of Hollywood. Their apartment building hadn’t fallen down, and they hadn’t got a lethal dose of radiation.
“We started dropping the atom bombs,” Roxane said.
“They invaded South Korea,” Aaron said. “None of the rest of this would have happened if that didn’t.”
“Our puppet government there is full of people who collaborated with the Japs,” Roxane retorted. “They should have gone to jail. Instead, they were running a country-well, we called it one, anyway.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Ruth asked. She couldn’t stand arguments, which made Aaron wonder why she’d ever come to visit Marvin.
Aaron didn’t say anything back at Roxane. For a wonder, she let it go, too. Howard Bauman came out of the pool and, dripping, made a beeline for the martini pitcher. It stood in a big bowl of ice, so the martinis would stay cold without getting diluted. Howard poured himself about half a liver’s worth of booze. He was good-looking in a not especially Jewish way; he had a head of brown hair so thick, it was almost a pelt.
“How’s it going, Aaron?” he asked. He had his politics, too, but, unlike Roxane, he didn’t always try to ram them down your throat.
“Not as much work as I’d like,” Aaron answered.
“Boy, I hear that,” Howard said.
“I guess you do.” Aaron didn’t feel like quarreling. He had trouble getting as much work as he wanted because Blue Front was hurting as much as any other outfit that tried to sell things to people these days. Howard had trouble because he just wasn’t that great an actor. Pointing out the difference might have influenced some people, but it wouldn’t have won Aaron any friends. He kept his mouth shut.
Marvin came out and poured himself a martini almost as generous as Howard Bauman’s. “Is everybody having a good time?” he asked.
“No,” Leon said. He was still doing that. This time, it made all the grown-ups laugh.
Howard Bauman stood there drinking and dripping on the concrete deck (which Aaron had poured and leveled). No, the breeze off the hills wasn’t what anyone would have called warm. Some of the refugees from the bomb were living in tents up there, getting by by hunting and begging and stealing.
“How come you’re not turning into an ice cube yourself?” Aaron asked Howard.
“Antifreeze.” Bauman raised the martini glass and made sure his radiator wouldn’t boil over. He wasn’t shivering. His teeth didn’t chatter. Maybe he even meant it.