Days flowed by, one after another. Winter along the Agano was tougher than it had been in New York City-storms blew down from Siberia one after another. But it was a piece of cake next to what it had been like in the Montana Rockies. Mike laughed at the men who complained.
He laughed more than he had since before the Jeebies took him. Next to being a wrecker in a labor encampment, next to hitting beach after beach in a punishment brigade, this wasn’t just good-this was wonderful. He hoped he’d remember how wonderful it was after he got more used to it.
* * *
For a little while after the war ended, Charlie had hoped real peace would take hold in the world. People had felt the same way after the First World War. They’d called it the War to End War. And they’d been all the more bitterly disappointed when history didn’t come to an end with the Treaty of Versailles.
Having seen his hopes blasted once, Charlie was less surprised when they came a cropper again. Trotsky really believed in world revolution, or acted as if he did. Red regimes sprouted like toadstools in Eastern Europe. Italy and France bobbled and steamed like pots with the lids down too tight. Korea and North Japan were good and Red, too. In China, Mao was ahead of Chiang on points, and looked to be getting ready to knock him out.
Before the war, J. Edgar Hoover’s GBI had chased Nazis, Reds, and people who were neither but didn’t like Joe Steele, all with about equal vigor. Now the Jeebies seemed intent on filling labor encampments with Reds. If you didn’t hold your nose and run away when you heard Leon Trotsky’s unholy name, you’d find out more about lodgepole pines than you ever wanted to know.
Charlie thought the USA would do better, both abroad and at home, if it looked at why so many people wanted to chuck out the governments they had and put in new ones, even if the new ones were Red. You could still think such things. J. Edgar Hoover had no mind-reading machines, though he might have been working on them. But if you opened your mouth. .
He tried to imagine saying something like that to Vince Scriabin. How long would he stay free if he did? As long as the Jeebies took to get to his office after the Hammer called them. Or maybe Scriabin would just grab some White House guards and handle it himself.
That cheered Charlie up so much, he knocked off halfway through the afternoon and headed for the bar near the White House where John Nance Garner drank away his terms. Sure enough, the Vice President was there smoking a cigarette and working on a bourbon.
“Well, hell, it’s Sullivan!” he said. “They let school out early today, Charlie boy?”
“Time off for bad behavior,” Charlie answered. He nodded to the bartender. “Let me have Wild Turkey over ice.”
“You got it, suh,” the Negro answered, and in a moment Charlie did. He sipped. This wasn’t one of the bad days where he had to get smashed as fast as he could, but he needed a drink or three. At least a drink or three.
John Nance Garner watched him fortify himself. With a small shock, Charlie realized the Veep had to be close to eighty. Drinking and smoking were supposed to be bad for you, weren’t they? He couldn’t have proved it by Garner, who was still here and still had all his marbles, even if he wasn’t what you’d call pretty.
“I expect the boss is gettin’ ready for term number five,” Garner said.
“Hasn’t he talked about it with you?” Charlie asked.
The Vice President guffawed. “You reckon I’d be tryin’ to find out if I knew? The less Joe Steele’s got to say to me, happier I am.”
“Shall I tell him you said so?”
“Shit, sonny, go ahead. It’s nothin’ he don’t know already. You think he wants to talk to me? If he did, he’d do more of it-I’ll tell you that.”
“Why-?” Charlie began, but he let the question die unasked.
“Why don’t he dump me if he feels that way?” John Nance Garner answered the question whether Charlie asked it or not: “On account of I don’t make waves. I don’t make trouble. I do what he tells me to do, and I don’t give him no back talk. He knows he don’t got to worry about me while he’s lookin’ some other way. Japan cornholed him but good while he was makin’ faces at Hitler an’ Trotsky. I just sit there in the Senate or I sit here in the tavern. He can count on that, an’ he knows it.”
It made sense-if you looked at it from Joe Steele’s point of view, anyhow. Hitler’s flunkies hadn’t disobeyed him till the war was good and lost. Trotsky’s henchmen were loyal or they were dead. Joe Steele needed people he could rely on, too. He didn’t need much from the Vice President, but what he needed John Nance Garner delivered.
What does he need from me? Charlie wondered. Words. The answer formed of itself. He’d given Joe Steele words, and the President had used the ones he wanted. But there was more to it than that. Putting Charlie in a White House office while Mike was in a labor encampment was the kind of thing that amused the President. It was a nasty sense of humor, but it was what Joe Steele had.
Charlie turned to the quiet man behind the bar. “Let me have another one, please.”
“I will do that, suh,” the barkeep said.
Wild Turkey was safer than thought. To keep from dwelling on Joe Steele’s sense of humor, or the part of it that had bitten him, Charlie asked the Vice President, “What do you think of all the fuss about the Reds?”
“They’re no bargain. Unless you’re a Red yourself, you know that. Trotsky says he wants world revolution, but what he’s really got in mind is all those revolutions dancing to his tune,” Garner replied, which was safe enough. Then he added, “Now, J. Edgar Hoover, he’s a nasty little pissant any way you look at him.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself. But Charlie lacked the nerve to come out and say so.
John Nance Garner must have seen the look on his face. The Veep laughed, coughed, and laughed some more. “They ain’t gonna take me away,” he said. “You reckon Joe Steele don’t know Hoover’s a nasty little pissant? Don’t make me laugh! ’Course he knows. But Hoover’s his nasty little pissant, like a mean dog that’ll lick the face of the fella who owns it. He don’t got to fret about him any more’n he’s got to fret about me.”
And what would the none too modest J. Edgar Hoover think of that? Charlie was curious, but not curious enough to find out. The less he had to do with the head of the GBI, the better off he’d be.
He bought some Sen-Sen on the way home that night, but it didn’t help. Esther screwed up her face when she kissed him after he walked in. “How many did you have before you got here?” she asked.
“A few,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“Are you?” She didn’t sound so sure. Jews were often harder on people who put it away than the Irish were. Shikker iz a goy. The gentile is a drunk. When you learned some Yiddish, you learned phrases like that. Esther when on, “You’ve been drinking more lately than I wish you were.”
“I’m okay,” Charlie said again. “Honest to Pete, I am. I’m holding the bottle. It isn’t holding me.”
“It hasn’t been. I don’t want it to start,” Esther said. “After a while, you can’t walk away from it. Maybe you should try while you’re still ahead of the game. I don’t mean quit cold-I don’t think you have to go that far. But you should cut back.”
“Well, maybe. Hard to do that in Washington, but I guess I can give it a shot.” If she wasn’t going to push it as hard as she might have, he wouldn’t dig in his heels the way he could have done. He kissed her again, saying, “You take good care of me, babe.”
She smiled against his cheek. “It’s a filthy job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
The kids hadn’t come out to say hello-a returning father wasn’t an inspiring spectacle-so he pawed her a little. She squeaked-softly, remembering that they were around. He said, “You want filthy, wait till later tonight.” He nibbled her earlobe.