Morozov stuck his head out of the cupola. Ninel still stood beside the tank, looking as if he’d just swallowed a big swig of vinegar. “Where do we find regimental HQ?” Konstantin asked him. He had to shout; the engine’s blatting seemed louder when thick steel didn’t shield him from it.
“Eight or ten kilometers up the road, in Dassel,” the tank-park sergeant shouted back, pointing to show the way.
“Spasibo,” Konstantin said. He relayed the instructions to Belitsky. The T-54 got moving. It occurred to Morozov that dear Ninel might be lying. But if a tank couldn’t take care of itself, what in this world could?
Dassel wouldn’t have been anything much before the Red Army overran it. It was even less now. The defenders had fought fiercely to keep Soviet troops out, the Russians just as ferociously to break in. It looked to have been bombed and strafed a few times, too. Only a handful of scrawny Fritzes skulked along the rubble-strewn streets.
But the headquarters did lie at the western edge of the shattered town. The CO seemed glad to see Konstantin, and even gladder to see his T-54. He was a major named Genrikh Zhuk. He’d likely been a junior lieutenant last time around. “Do you come from the tank park off to the east?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Morozov said. “Why?”
“How did you pry a real machine out of them instead of a retread?”
“I made a perfect son of a bitch out of myself, Comrade Major,” Konstantin answered. “I’ve been in one of those old crocks this war. Two would’ve been too many.”
“Sergeant, you’re my kind of man,” Zhuk said. “The more sons of bitches we’ve got, the better we’ll do.” They nodded to each other, both of them smiling.
23
Aaron Finch lifted paper bags from the shopping cart and put them into the Chevy’s trunk. Ruth tried to help, but he wouldn’t let her. “Keep an eye on Leon,” he said.
Keeping an eye on Leon was always a good idea. For the moment, he was still in the little makeshift seat by the cart’s handle. Look away from him for a second, though, and he was liable to go out headfirst before you looked back again.
“There,” Aaron said a minute later. He slammed down the trunk lid. “We’ve got groceries, and Vons has our money.”
Leon pointed to the big red letters that identified the supermarket. “Vons!” he said. “Vons!”
“He just read the sign.” Aaron could hear the disbelief in his own voice. But he’d seen it. He’d heard it.
“He sure did.” Ruth lifted Leon out of the shopping cart. Once she put him down on the asphalt, she held on to his hand to make sure he didn’t do anything she’d regret. “He’s a smart thing.”
“Smart!” Leon agreed enthusiastically. He didn’t know quite what that meant, but he’d heard it applied to himself a lot, and he thought it was something good.
“I feel like the hen that hatched the waddayacallit in that kid’s book we got him,” Aaron said.
“The Churkendoose!” Leon knew what you called it.
“He’s so smart, he’ll be rich. He can support us when we’re old,” Ruth said.
“If somebody doesn’t pinch his little head off before we get old, yeah,” Aaron said. His wife made a face at him. He used the key to open the Chevy-he was getting into the habit of locking it all the time. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
A couple of blocks from the Vons stood a big billboard that at the moment sported a smiling portrait of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Aaron thought McCarthy looked even scarier with a phony grin on his mug than with his usual scowl. The slogan beside his face said REPUBLICANS! VOTE MCCARTHY JUNE 3 FOR FREEDOM AND VICTORY!
“I want to climb up there in the middle of the night and paint a Hitler mustache on him,” Ruth said. “I can’t stand that man.”
“I never would have guessed,” Aaron said. His wife poked him in the ribs. He didn’t flinch; he wasn’t ticklish. As he stopped at a light-Ruth’s foot hit the imaginary brake, as usual-he went on, “That’s not what I was thinking.”
“Nu, what were you thinking?” she asked.
“I was thinking it’s a good thing Leon can’t read that yet because he doesn’t spot lies the way grown-ups do,” Aaron said.
“Don’t be silly,” Ruth told him. “If grown-ups could spot lies, McCarthy would be selling hot dogs from a pushcart, not running for President.”
That was so cynical, Aaron might well have come out with it himself. “Well, it’s not like you’re wrong,” he said. “But he can’t take California in the primary, or I don’t think he can. Looks like Earl Warren’s got it sewed up. The pro-Taft delegation that Congressman’s heading isn’t going anywhere, either.”
“I’m not worried about Taft. I don’t like him much, but he doesn’t scare me,” Ruth said. “McCarthy, now, McCarthy scares me. The worse the war gets, the more he scares me, too. Whenever something blows up, he gets more votes.”
She sounded like her cousin Roxane. Aaron started to say so, then thought better of it. For one thing, Ruth might well have been right here. For another, he was discovering, part of what went into staying happily married was not always saying the first thing that popped into your head. If it made your wife mad or hurt her feelings, you were better off keeping your big trap shut.
That wasn’t easy for a Finch to figure out. It was even harder for a Finch to do. Marvin liked using Sarah for a punching bag. His and Aaron’s father and mother had fought all the time till they finally separated. After staying single till he was middle-aged, though, Aaron had discovered he enjoyed domestic tranquility.
He turned left, right, and then left again. The last turn put him on the little street where the house was. He parked in front of it, set the hand brake, put the car in neutral, and killed the engine.
Ruth got out on the passenger side, then reached into the back seat to extract Leon. Leon plucked a dandelion on the front yard. “Flower!” he said. Just yesterday, it seemed, Leon had gone Flarn! because he couldn’t say it right. Now he could. Kids made you feel old, old, old.
His wife took Leon into the house. She left the front door open behind them. Leon knew he wasn’t supposed to run outside while his father brought in groceries. Ruth kept an eye on him just in case, but he really was good about that.
Aaron opened the trunk, picked up a bag of groceries with each hand, and carried the stuff into the house. Then he went back and did it again. When he came out for one more trip, he saw a Mexican-looking kid, maybe fourteen, quickly walking down the street with one of the sacks from the trunk.
“Hey!” Aaron yelled, and took off after him. Empty-handed, the kid would have got away with the greatest of ease. Burdened by the groceries he was swiping, he didn’t have the speed or the moves he needed. Aaron caught up with him just before the corner.
As he did, he wondered what would happen if the kid dropped the bag of groceries and pulled out, say, a switchblade. Aaron had a pocket knife in his pocket, but it was a tool, not a weapon. Against six inches of steel with a real point, a paper clip would have done about as much.
But the kid had no switchblade, just a scared, scrawny, miserable face. “I’m sorry, Mister,” he said, looking on the point of tears. “I been so hungry since the fuckin’ bomb came down an’ made us clear out….”
He’d probably lived in Chavez Ravine, just north of downtown. That had been a solidly Mexican, and terribly poor, part of town till the A-bomb fell. The people from there who’d lived through the blast had come farther north yet, into Glendale. Maybe this guy’s older brother was the so-and-so who’d made the family Nash disappear.
But how could you stay mad at a skinny fourteen-year-old who so badly needed the stuff he’d walked off with? Aaron tried. He couldn’t do it. “Give me back the groceries, son,” he said.
As the kid handed over the Vons bag, he really did start to snuffle. “Mierda,” he said, more to himself than to Aaron. “I can’t even steal right.”