Or, if you were less lucky still, you’d gone West for good. You’d shown up on one of those sheets that crossed Scriabin’s desk, or maybe Joe Steele’s, and the aide or the boss had written HFP on it, and that was all she wrote. You’d never come back to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Those were damn depressing thoughts to have while you were downing candied carrots and mashed potatoes and rubber chicken. Charlie tried to improve his attitude with bourbon. It helped some, even if he did stagger when he went to get his last couple of refills.
Attorney General Wyszynski introduced Joe Steele. That was enough to make the reporters pay attention all by itself. If you didn’t merely end up on a bureaucratic list, if you needed to be tried, Wyszynski and his pet prosecutors were the ones who would send you up the river.
Everyone applauded the President. Everyone watched everyone else to see how hard the others were applauding. Everyone tried to applaud harder than the people near him. You couldn’t just like Joe Steele. You had to be seen-and heard-to like him.
The President ambled up to the lectern. He had a rolling, deliberate walk that would have seemed more at home in a vineyard than in the corridors of power. Charlie didn’t expect much from the address, even if he’d helped draft it. Joe Steele was a decent speaker, but that was all he was.
He outdid himself that night. Maybe he was speaking from the heart. (Yes, Charlie knew some people denied that Joe Steele had a heart. Sometimes, he was one of those people himself. Sometimes, but not that night.) The President’s talk got remembered as the Plague on Both Your Houses speech.
“Half the troubles in our own country come from the Nazis. The other half come from the Reds,” he said. “Now they lie down together. They are not the lion and the lamb. They are two serpents. If we were lucky, each would grab the other by the tail. They would swallow each other up till nothing was left of either one. But we are not so lucky, and there are more players in the game than Germany and Russia alone.”
He paused to puff on his pipe. It stayed close at hand all the time, even when he was making a speech. “For the second time in a generation, war tears at the vitals of Europe. We will not let it touch us here. This fight is not worth the red blood of one single American boy. No one over there has a cause that was worth going to war for. No, gentlemen. No one. All they have in Europe are hate and greed.
“For the United States, for the land we all love, the greatest dangers lurk in insidious encroachments for foreign powers by fanatics. We must and we shall step up our vigilance against them-Reds and Nazis will both try to ensnare us. As long as we stamp them out at home, everything will go well here. And as long as we steer clear of Europe’s latest stupid war, everything will be fine-for us-there.”
He dipped his head and stepped back. The hand he’d got before the speech was pragmatic, politic. The one he got after it? The reporters meant that one. He’d told them what they wanted to hear, and he’d done it well. Later, Charlie decided the difference was something like the one between a stage kiss and a real kiss.
Sitting next to Charlie was the Los Angeles Times’ Washington correspondent. “He keeps talking like that, he won’t have any trouble getting a third term,” the man said. Chances were he meant it and wasn’t just currying favor. The Los Angeles Times was firmly in Joe Steele’s back pocket.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right,” Charlie said. He expected Joe Steele to run again, and to win again. Why wouldn’t he? Not just the L.A. Times was in his back pocket. These days, the whole country was.
* * *
News of the war reached the labor encampment, of course. Few men there got excited about it. They had more important things to worry about. Another Montana winter was coming on. If they didn’t do everything they could to get ready for it, they wouldn’t see spring.
A couple of scalps, guys who’d been in only weeks or months and still sometimes thought of themselves as free men, tried to volunteer for the Army. The Jeebies who ran the encampment only laughed at them. “The bastard said, ‘Why do you think the Army needs wreckers in it?’” one would-be soldier reported indignantly.
Mike listened. He sympathized. He didn’t get up in arms, though. You had to take care of Number One first. After more than two years, his old jacket had got too old and tattered for even the best tailor in the encampment to keep it in one piece. That didn’t necessarily mean they’d issue him a new one, though. Wreckers didn’t have to get replacements for such things. Who was to say they hadn’t wrecked the old, ratty ones?
He’d spent weeks running errands for a sergeant in the supply cabin. He’d buttered the man up as if he were basting a Thanksgiving turkey. He’d let the sergeant get a good look at the cotton quilting coming out at the elbows of his old jacket and at the seams across the back.
And he’d got a new one. The Jeebie had actually thrown the new one at him, growling, “Get your number on this, front and back, quick as you can. Make sure the ink dries so it doesn’t run.”
“I’ll do it!” he’d said happily. “Thanks!” And he did.
Now he had to keep that sergeant sweet with more small favors for another few weeks. He’d ease off a little at a time, so gradually that the sergeant didn’t notice. Or maybe he wouldn’t ease off at all. His boots were wearing out, too. A new pair would mean he didn’t have to plug holes with rags and cardboard to keep his toes from freezing.
From somewhere, John Dennison had got his hands on a wool watch cap, the kind they wore in the Navy. Jacket, pants, and boots were all uniform items. The Jeebies didn’t get their knickers in a twist about what you put on your head. Oh, they’d kick your ass for you if you wore a turban like Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik. But they’d cut you some slack if you didn’t do anything too stupid.
“What I really crave is one of those Russian fur hats with the earflaps,” John said. “But this is the next best thing.”
“You’re better off with what you’ve got, you ask me,” Mike told him. “If you put on one of those fur hats, sure as hell a guard’d steal it. The GBI doesn’t give them anything that nice.”
“Huh,” Dennison said thoughtfully. “Well, you’ve got somethin’ there. I didn’t look at it like that.”
Winter had some advantages. The latrines stank less. Flies and mosquitoes disappeared till the weather warmed up again. Even fleas grew less annoying for a while. Bedbugs and lice. . Bedbugs and lice didn’t care what the weather was like. They’d get you any which way.
A nearsighted wrecker used a sharp chunk of volcanic glass to carve louse combs out of wood. Mike got one with some tobacco. The craftsmanship was amazing; the comb looked as if a machine had shaped it. And the teeth were close enough together to rout lice from his hair and even to peel off nits. You couldn’t ask for a better tool.
Three days after he started using it, Mike suddenly burst out laughing in his bunk. “What’s so funny?” four or five other men asked, more or less in chorus. In the encampment, anything funny was precious.
He held out the elegant piece of woodcarving. “Look!” he said. “It’s a fine-toothed comb!”
A couple of wreckers swore at him. The others laughed along. But Mike kept staring at the carved marvel. Damned if it wasn’t a fine-toothed comb. Back in the days before bathtubs and showers grew common, people needed fine-toothed combs to fight back against the pests that lived on them. When you searched with one of those, what were you searching for? Lice, that was what.