On days like that, he also went to the watering hole near the White House, the one where the Vice President held court. Joe Steele never asked John Nance Garner for drafts of speeches. He never asked him what he thought about the great storm rising in Europe, or about the troubles that still dogged the United States.
And John Nance Garner wasn’t sorry that he didn’t. “I ain’t got a thing to worry about,” the Vice President declared one afternoon when he’d taken on enough bourbon to pickle his grammar. “Joe Steele don’t give a damn about me. Long as I stay out of the way and keep my trap shut and don’t kick up no trouble, he’ll leave me alone. You should be so lucky, Sullivan.”
“Yeah.” Charlie was morose that day. Joe Steele had talked about strikes, and how to keep the country producing in spite of them. He hadn’t used many of Charlie’s ideas. If Charlie had to guess, most of the ideas he had used came straight from J. Edgar Hoover, with maybe a few from Vince Scriabin. The speech hadn’t had any compromise in it, in other words.
The Vice President leered at him like a fox eyeing a bunny. “Just recall, son-you volunteered for this,” Garner said.
“Yeah,” Charlie said again, more morosely yet. Then he eyed Garner in turn. “Now that I think about it, so did you.”
“Uh-huh.” The Vice President’s sigh was so high-proof, it was a good thing he wasn’t smoking-he might have impersonated a blowtorch. “Too late to fret none about it now. You grab the tiger by the ears, you got to hang on for the ride. Long as you’re on his back, he can’t eat you.”
Joe Steele didn’t literally devour followers who displeased him. No, not literally. But when you had the most powerful job in the country and you took it three or four steps further than any other President had ever gone. . Maybe the times demanded that. Maybe the times conspired with Joe Steele’s nature. However that worked, even a metaphorical devouring could leave a man bloodied or dead.
Charlie held up his hand to ask for another drink.
* * *
It was summer-summer high in the Rockies. It got up into the sixties, sometimes into the seventies. Nights stayed chilly as the warmth of the day fled after sundown. Chilly, yes, but they didn’t drop below freezing.
Mike enjoyed the good weather, knowing it wouldn’t last. Even in summer up here, winter lay right around the corner. Winter always lay right around the corner. . except when it sprang out and clasped you in its frigid embrace.
One day at a time, though. Right around the corner didn’t mean here. He’d been in the labor encampment for a couple of years now. He had its measure, as much as anyone could. Even inside his own head, he was NY24601, wrecker, more often than he was Mike Sullivan, New York Post reporter.
He leaned on his axe, there in the woods. He was scrawny and dirty and shaggy and shabby. He also had harder muscles than he’d ever dreamt of, to say nothing of owned, before the Jeebies grabbed him. Nietzsche might’ve had it straight after all. What didn’t kill you honest to God did make you stronger.
Sometimes it did kill. Too many men had left the labor encampment in pine boxes. They couldn’t do the work. Or they couldn’t stand the food. Or they simply despaired. If you gave up, you didn’t last long.
“Spare any alfalfa?” Mike asked John Dennison.
The carpenter pulled out his tobacco pouch. When he did have some, he was always ready to share with friends. If they didn’t share in turn, they didn’t stay friends long. Mike understood that. “Get your paper ready,” Dennison said.
Mike tore a cigarette-sized piece off a wad of newspaper he kept in his pocket. He could wipe his ass on the rest when he had to shit. By what the papers printed these days, that was about what they were good for. They all sucked up to Joe Steele like you wouldn’t believe. Or, considering how many reporters were in labor encampments these days, you might believe it.
Even smoking, even wiping your ass, you had to watch yourself. If somebody finked on you for burning up a newsprint photo of Joe Steele or getting it brown and stinking, you’d do a stretch in the punishment cells. Insulting the President was a serious business.
John Dennison poured the cheap, harsh tobacco onto the paper. Machine-made cigarettes with the tasty stuff inside them were as good as money in the encampments. As often as not, they were too precious to smoke. This nasty junk just kept you from getting the no-cigarette jitters. That was all Mike cared about, that and the excuse for a short break.
Dennison rolled one for himself, too. He sucked in smoke, blew it out, and looked around. “By the time they turn us loose,” he said, “won’t be a goddamn tree left in this part of Montana.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mike said, and then, after a puff of his own, “If they ever turn us loose.”
“Sooner or later, they’ll get sick of us,” John Dennison said. “Wonder if I’ll know how to fit in anywhere but a place like this by then.”
“Mmm,” Mike said-not a happy noise. He’d had the same worry, and the one on its flip side: whether Stella would want anything to do with him once they did let him go back to New York City and civilization as he’d known it. Plenty of the wives of wreckers at the encampment had already divorced them. Some of those ladies had found new men, not caring to wait for their husbands to return.
And others had filed for divorce to cleanse their own names. If you were married to a wrecker, something had to be wrong with you, too, didn’t it? If you were looking for work, wouldn’t whoever was hiring pick somebody reliable instead? If your son was applying for college, wouldn’t they admit someone from a loyal household in his place? If you needed a loan, wouldn’t a bank decide you made a poor risk because you might go off to an encampment yourself?
Mike had no reason to believe Stella was anything but faithful and one hundred percent behind him. But he hadn’t heard from her for several months now. He didn’t know whether that was because the Jeebies were sitting on his mail (or just tossing it in the trash) or because his wife couldn’t find anything to say to him.
He didn’t spend every waking moment brooding about it. He wasn’t Hamlet, to brood about every goddamn thing that happened to him. Besides, during most of his waking moments he was too busy or too tired. Every so often, though, most often when he paused for a smoke, the worry bubbled back to the surface.
“What I really want to do,” Dennison went on, “is pay back the skunk who told the Jeebies about me. Yeah, that son of a bitch, he’s gonna have hisself an accident or three.”
“Mmm,” Mike repeated. Nobody’d needed to point him out to J. Edgar Hoover’s thugs. The way he’d gone after Joe Steele, he’d done everything but shine a searchlight on himself. He’d been asking for it, and he’d got it.
The trouble was, he hadn’t realized fast enough how much the rules had changed. Back in the old days-before Joe Steele’s first inauguration-the First Amendment still meant something. If you behaved as if it did when it didn’t. . you ended up on a mountainside in Montana, leaning on your axe while you smoked so you wouldn’t have to work for a few minutes.
A couple of hundred yards away, another lodgepole went over with a rending crash. A wrecker let out an excited yip. Some people could get worked up about whatever they wound up doing, even if it was only a short piss away from slave labor. Mike didn’t have that knack. They could make him do it, but they couldn’t make him get excited about it.
A guard came toward Mike and John Dennison. He was smoking a Camel; guards could burn their machine-mades whenever they got the urge. Sure as hell, the bastard looked at what was left of the wreckers’ roll-your-owns. Had he spotted Joe Steele’s mustache on either one, there would have been hell to pay.