“Here’s one for you,” Max said. “I wonder if we’ve got anybody who’s been in all three World Wars. A kid in the trenches in 1918, a captain in 1939 who somehow managed to live through it, maybe a colonel or a Generalmajor now.”
“It could be,” Rolf said. “Getting through the second one if you really fought, that’s the hard part. Somebody who was on garrison duty in Norway or Holland would have a better chance.” He hawked and spat. Anyone who didn’t see the Ostfront hardly counted as a soldier to him.
“The Tommies didn’t have as tough a war as we did,” Max said. “They’re bound to have people like that-maybe even a top noncom or two.”
Rolf only grunted. He’d come up through the ranks himself. But the men who stuck at senior sergeant were the ones who didn’t have any imagination. All armies needed people like that. They steadied the show and kept junior officers from doing anything too spectacularly stupid. But routine had a way of ruling what passed for their souls.
American guns fired back at the Russian artillery. Rolf had had to learn their reports during this war, whereas the Red Army’s artillery pieces were almost old friends. He’d known German guns even better, of course, but those hadn’t come to this party.
“It’s a bitch,” he said, “when we turn into a football pitch for two other sides to play on.”
“I told you-that’s what we get for losing twice before.” Max took out a fresh Lucky. “See? I’m stealing another smoke from you. Can I ask you something while I do it?”
“You can always ask. If I want to, I’ll tell you to go fuck yourself.”
“And that’s supposed to surprise me? What I want to know is, what are you doing here? This isn’t the Germany you fought for last time. It never will be, either. You know that, right?”
“Ja, I know it.” And I hate it, Rolf thought. But that was for him to know and for Max to guess at. He held out his hand for the cigarettes. Max flipped them back. After he’d started one, he continued, “No, it’s not the Fuhrer’s Germany. All that matters these days is getting by and making money. We want to be America, but we can’t. You know what, though? I don’t care. It’s still Germany, and I still love it.”
“Deutschland bleibt Deutschland,” Max said, and Rolf nodded-Germany did stay Germany. Max sketched a salute. “Well, we aren’t so far apart after all, are we?”
“Not on that,” Rolf said. Now Max nodded. Yes, there were a few-million-other things.
26
Along with Dolores and the rest of the women who typed and filed and answered the phones in the Shasta Lumber Company’s front office, Marian Staley walked down the long hallway to Mahogany Row. Each of them carried a copy of the ambulance petition from the Weed Press-Herald. Taking all the petitions together, they had several hundred signatures.
Dolores looked at the others. “Well, here goes nothing,” she said, and knocked on Carl Cummings’ door.
“What is it?” the executive said, his voice muffled by the barrier. Thus encouraged, Dolores opened the door. Seeing the crowd in the hall, Cummings raised an eyebrow. “Looks like Grand Central Station out there,” he remarked. “What’s going on?”
“Mr. Cummings, sir, you’ll have seen the petitions for an ambulance in the paper,” Marian said, hoping she sounded less scared than she felt. “We need-uh, Weed needs-ambulances for when bad things happen, so they won’t be as horrible as they were with poor Leroy van Zandt. We’ve all gathered signatures for these petitions, and we wanted to give them to you so you can see how the whole town feels about it.”
“That’s right,” Dolores said. The other four women nodded.
“If Shasta Lumber joins up with the other outfits in town, it won’t cost any of you too much money, and it’ll save lives for years,” Marian finished. “Who knows, Mr. Cummings, sir? One of them might even be yours.”
“So that’s what we’re here for,” Dolores put in. “We want to give you these here petitions, like Marian said. Just so you know, sir, I’ve got Doc Toohey’s John Hancock on mine. He thinks it’s a great idea, Doc Toohey does.”
She walked into the paneled office. The rest of the clerical workers followed her. One by one, they set the petitions on Cummings’ desk. That was also of mahogany, unlike the cheap painted-steel desks at the other end of the hall.
“I did know about the petition drive, yes. I couldn’t very well not know about it, could I?” Cummings paused to glance at some of the sheets of newsprint. Marian’s petition had, among other people’s, Dale Dropo’s signature, and Fayvl Tabakman’s, and Babs’ from the diner, and that of Miss Hamilton, who was Linda’s teacher.
“Have you, um, talked with people from the other lumber companies, sir?” Marian asked, that seeming more polite than barking So what are you going to do about it, you filthy capitalist, you?
“As a matter of fact, I have,” Carl Cummings said. Marian braced herself for what she feared was coming next. And you’re all fired, for having the gall to try to tell us what to do was what that boiled down to. The executive paused to light a Pall Mall, which only made her want to fidget more. After his first drag, he went on, “And we all think it’s the best idea anybody’s had for years. We know we’ve got a problem here. This lets us take a shot at fixing it without costing anybody too much. We’ve already started talking with an outfit down in Sacramento that sells ambulances. One ought to be here inside of a month.”
“You do?” Marian hardly believed her ears.
“You have?” Dolores sounded just as astonished.
“It will?” So did Claire Hermanson, who ran the switchboard.
“Absolutely,” Cummings said, and all at once he didn’t seem anywhere near so filthy to Marian. Still a capitalist, yes-who but a capitalist in Weed would have worn such an elegant gray pinstripe suit (or any kind of suit, for that matter: jeans and Pendletons were the usual menswear)? But maybe not one to spark a proletarian uprising. He nodded to Marian. “You know this Tabakman fellow who came up with the notion, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, still dizzy at how easy it had turned out to be. “We knew each other up in Washington before the bomb hit, and in the camp there afterwards.”
“Good for you. Good for him. He’s got a head on his shoulders-not like Dale Dropo.” Carl Cummings rolled his eyes. “That maniac thinks he can say whatever he wants because he runs the Press-Herald. He doesn’t understand that it’s a newspaper, doggone it, not a blackjack.”
Marian prudently kept her mouth zipped tight. Without the petitions in the Press-Herald, the lumber bosses might well have gone on thinking they could ignore what Weed needed. The blank forms in the paper must have been enough to get them going. They hadn’t waited for the ones full of signatures like those on Cummings’ desk.
“You’ve given us good news, Mr. Cummings, sir. Thank you.” Dolores still seemed flabbergasted, too. “I guess we’ll go back to work now.”
“Okay.” The executive nodded briskly. “Why don’t you close the door again on your way out?” He was already reaching for the telephone as the clerical staff beat a retreat.
Out in the hall, with the solid door closed behind them, the women clasped hands and hugged. “We did it!” Marian exclaimed. “We really did it! We went and belled the cat!”
“Yeah!” Claire Hermanson started back to her station. “I’m gonna call Doc Toohey. He’ll shit a brick when he hears, swear he will!” Marian wouldn’t have put it that way, not even after her spell at Camp Nowhere, but that didn’t mean she thought Claire was wrong.
At lunch, she headed for the diner to tell Babs the news. Babs had already heard, which wasn’t a shock, either. “That skinny Hebe made the big shots act like they weren’t jerks,” the waitress said. “Who woulda thunk anybody could?” She eyed Marian. “Tabakman, he’s sweet on you. You know that?”