Joe Steele (38 page)

“Are they any less dead that way?”

“Um—no.”

“Well, then.” Instead of rubbing Charlie's nose in it some more, Esther changed the subject: “If we're finally on the Continent, that means we can see the end of the war, even if we can't touch it yet. And if the war looks won, that makes Joe Steele's chances for a fourth term better.”

“Looks that way, yeah.” Charlie figured Joe Steele would win the
election in November unless the Nazis invaded Massachusetts—maybe even then. He might not get the most votes, although, with the war going well and more jobs than there were people to fill them, he was likely to. But whether he did or not, he would be recorded as winning. The people who counted ballots were in his pocket. Or enough of them were, in enough places in enough states.

“Dewey for the Republicans this time?”

“Looks that way,” Charlie said again. “If their mustaches were running, Joe Steele's would win every state.”

His wife giggled. “You're right about that. Say what you want about Joe Steele, but he's got a real mustache. Dewey looks like a lounge lizard. You can't take him seriously.”

“I sure can't,” Charlie said. He suspected part of the problem was that he and Dewey were about the same age. He still wanted to think of the President as something like a father. A father couldn't be the same age you were.

Of course, Joe Steele was the kind of father who took his country behind the woodshed with a strap. You had a tough time loving a father like that. People had always had a tough time loving Joe Steele. But they respected him, and he kept them on their toes.

Sarah came in to hear the last of that exchange. She seemed bigger and more grown-up every time Charlie looked at her.
How did she get to be six?
he wondered with a father's bemusement. “What's a lounge lizard?” she asked.

Charlie and Esther looked at each other. “You used it,” Charlie said. “You explain it to her.”

“Thanks a lot.” Esther gave him a dirty look. She screwed up her face as she thought for a second. Then she said, “It's old-fashioned slang—”

“Are you and Daddy old-fashioned?” Sarah broke in.

“I wouldn't be a bit surprised,” Esther said, which set Charlie laughing. She went on, “It's old-fashioned slang for someone who hangs around in bars and thinks all the girls are in love with him because he's so wonderful.”

“But he really isn't?” Sarah wanted to make sure she had things straight.

“That's right.” Esther nodded. Charlie made silent clapping motions. She'd done better with the explanation than he could have.

Patrick wandered in after her. He was carrying a picture book. He climbed up into his father's lap and said, “Read!” At two, he still talked like a telegram—the fewest words that would get the job done.

“Okay,” Charlie said. “This is the story of Curious George and the Man with the Pink Pantaloons. They—”

He didn't get any further. “Read right, Daddy!” Pat said irately.

“Sorry,” said Charlie, who wasn't. He'd played this game with the book ever since they got it. It made things more fun for him and drove his kid bonkers. Who could ask for better than that? “Well, anyway, Curious George and the Man with the Orange Socks—”

“Daddy!”

“Okay, okay. Now the Man with the Yellow Hat”—Charlie waited for Pat to smile in relief, then sprang his sneak attack—“knew that George was a curious little hippopotamus, and he—”

“Daddy!”

*   *   *

M
ike smoked cigarette after cigarette as the amtrac rattled toward the next island. This one was called Saipan. The punishment brigade had spent more than six months waiting for another call. They had replacements for every casualty they'd taken on Tarawa. Mike wondered whether the new guys, who didn't know what they were getting into, were more or less nervous than the ones who'd lived through Tarawa and seen the kind of fight the Japs put up.

Mike didn't know the answer. He did know how nervous he was. The Japs wouldn't give up, no matter what. They fought till you killed them, and you had to be goddamn sure they were dead. You called them slanties and slopes and yellow monkeys so you wouldn't have to remind yourself they were men, and tough men at that.

Everything from destroyers to battleships to bombers had given Saipan a once-over the past few days. You wouldn't think an ant could have lived through that pasting, let alone an army. But they'd hit Tarawa with everything but the kitchen sink, too. As soon as soldiers got close enough for the
Japs to start shooting them, they did. Mike figured it would be the same way here.

He spat out the butt of one Camel and lit another. The best he could hope for, he figured, the absolute best, would be to lose something like a foot or an arm and not be able to fight any more. Otherwise, they'd keep throwing him in till he got killed or the war ended, and the war didn't look like ending any time soon.

Was it worth it?
he wondered.
If you had it to do over again, would you still have written those stories about Joe Steele?
Years too late to worry about it now, of course. One thing was plain: he'd underestimated how ruthless the man could be. He'd taken it for granted that the First Amendment and the whole idea of freedom of the press shielded him from anything a politician might do. He'd never dreamt he—or the country—would run into a politician who cared no more for the First Amendment than he did for the rest of the Constitution.

Then the amtrac's belly scraped on sand. The water drive stopped. The tracks churned. A bullet slammed into the steel, then another one. Mike stopped caring about the Constitution, too. All he cared about was living through the next five minutes—with luck, about living till tonight.

Down thumped the steel unloading door. “Get out!” yelled the sailors who crewed the ungainly beast. They wanted to get out of there themselves, and who could blame them?

Mike yelled like a fiend when he charged onto the beach. It wasn't to scare the Japs. It was to unscare him a little bit. He saw jungle ahead, more than he'd seen on Tarawa. That just meant the little yellow men here had more hiding places. They'd know how to use them, too.

Next to him, a guy from his squad folded up like an accordion and added his screams to the din all around.
That could have been me,
Mike thought. A bullet tugged at his trouser leg like a little kid's hand. It pierced the cotton, but not his flesh. If that was anything but dumb luck, he couldn't see what.

A couple of Americans with a machine gun sprayed bullets into the bushes ahead. You didn't want to run in front of them, or they'd shoot you, too. Mike swerved to the left.

A Jap with a rifle popped up out of nowhere right in front of him. They stared at each other in horror for a split second, then fired at the same time. They couldn't have been more than a hundred yards apart, but they both missed. Shooting when your heart was pounding two hundred beats a minute and your mouth was dry with fear was no easy test. The Jap frantically worked the bolt on his Arisaka. Mike just pulled the trigger again. The semiautomatic M-1 fired. The Jap clutched his chest. He managed to get off another shot, but it went wild. He fell back into whatever hole he'd popped out of.

Of course, if Mike's first shot had been the last one in the magazine, it would have popped out with a neat little clink—and the Jap would have plugged him instead. One more time, the luck of the draw.

He crawled up to where he could see the opening in the ground the Jap had come from. He threw in three grenades, in case the son of a bitch had company in there.

Fighter planes raked Saipan with heavy-caliber machine guns and rockets. Bombers dropped more high explosives on the Japs' heads. The fleet offshore kept pounding away with everything up to fourteen-inch guns. And the American soldiers had tanks and flamethrowers along with their other toys.

Tojo's boys had no air support. No warships gave them a hand. But Japan had owned Saipan since the end of the First World War. The Japs had dug in but good, and camouflaged all their bunkers and dugouts and strongpoints. Anybody who wanted them dead had to come kill them, and they commonly took a deal of killing.

Still, once the Americans got off the beach and into the jungle, it was only a matter of time, and of how big the U.S. butcher's bill would be. American officers used the punishment brigade instead of Marines where things were hottest. That was what punishment brigades were for.

Mike acquired a flesh wound on his leg, another on his arm, and an abiding hatred for all American officers except the ones in his outfit. His hatred for the Japs, oddly, shrank each day as he killed them and they tried to kill him. They were in the same miserable boat he was. They had to stand and fight. He had to go to them and fight. If you didn't go to them,
you either got shot on the spot by MPs who trailed the punishment brigade or you earned a drumhead court-martial and the services of a firing squad. If you went forward, you might make it. Mike went forward.

He lived. So did Luther Magnusson, despite a shrapnel gash along the side of his jaw. But the brigade, despite being built up again after Tarawa, melted away like a snowball in Death Valley.

Puffing greedily on a cigarette from a C-ration pack, Magnusson said, “I think the Germans are better professional soldiers than these guys. The krauts, they have the doctrine down like you wouldn't believe. Everybody does, generals down to privates. They know what to do, and they know how.”

“These guys, all they do is mean it,” Mike said. The wound on his arm didn't hurt, but it itched like a bastard. He scratched the bandage. You weren't supposed to do that, but everybody did.

“Yeah. That's about the size of it,” Magnusson agreed.

Just how much the Japs meant it, they saw a few days later. Japanese soldiers with nowhere left to go charged the Americans behind a great red flag. Anyone who could walk, wounded or not, armed or not, went to his death hoping to take some of the enemy with him. And, since Japan had held Saipan for so long, there were civilians on the island, too. Thousands of them leaped to their deaths from cliffs on the eastern coast rather than yielding to the Americans.

“What can you do with people like that?” Mike asked when it was finally over.

“Damned if I know.” After watching women throw children off a cliff and then jump into the Pacific after them, Captain Magnusson had the air of a man shaken to the core. Mike understood that; he felt the same way himself. It was like getting stuck inside a nightmare where you couldn't wake up and get away. As a matter of fact, combat in general was a lot like that. Luther Magnusson shook his head and spat. Quietly, he repeated, “Damned if I know.”

*   *   *

P
aris fell. Charlie heard there were practically orgies in the streets when the Allies entered the long-occupied French capital. The stories varied,
depending mostly on the imagination of who was telling them. The Germans in France skedaddled toward the
Reich
.

In Italy, the Allies ground forward. The Germans there were stubborn. They'd hold a line as long as they could, then fall back a few miles and hold another one. The rugged terrain worked for the defenders.

And the Russians! Trotsky's men drove the Nazis back over the frontier they'd had before the Eastern Front exploded. Finland bailed out of the war. Romania switched sides with treacherously excellent timing. Bulgaria bowed out, too. Sure as the devil, Trotsky was going to gobble up most of the Balkans. Red Army tanks rolled all the way to the Vistula, to the suburbs of Warsaw.

Hitler still had a few cards up his sleeve. When Slovakia rebelled, he squashed it before the Russians could help. And he stopped Hungary from asking for an armistice by kidnapping the admiral who'd run the landlocked country and putting in a passel of Hungarian Fascist fanatics horrible enough to satisfy even him.

But the writing was on the wall. Most of the world could see it, even if Hitler couldn't or wouldn't. The Allies were going to win the war. The Axis was going to lose. It would happen sooner, not later.

In the United States, anybody who wanted work had it, and was probably making more money than he (or she—especially she) ever had in his (or her) life. Quite a few people who might not have wanted work were working hard anyway, in one or another of Joe Steele's labor encampments. By now, those had been around long enough, most of the country took them for granted. Why not? Most folks knew somebody or knew of somebody who'd got himself (or, again, herself) jugged.

Tom Dewey rolled and sometimes flew across the country as if his pants, or possibly his hair, were on fire. He promised to do better with the war and less with the labor encampments than Joe Steele was doing.

He couldn't say much else. But it would have been hard to do better with the war than Joe Steele was already doing in the fall of 1944. Anyone who paid any attention at all to the headlines or listened to the news on the radio could see that. And the labor encampments were old news. People
took them in stride, the way they took bad weather in stride. You tried not to say anything stupid where some squealer could overhear it and pass it on to the Jeebies. And you got on with your life.

Charlie found Thelma Feldman's address in a New York City phone book. He put a hundred-dollar bill in an envelope with a sheet of paper folded around it so no one would know what it was. One Sunday, he told Esther he had to go in to the White House. Instead, he went to Union Station and took a train up to Baltimore. When he got there, he left the train station so he could drop the envelope in a streetcorner mailbox. Then he turned around and went back to Washington.

He didn't want the editor's wife to know from whom the money came. He also didn't want anybody from the White House or the GBI to know he'd sent it. That kind of thing wasn't illegal, which didn't mean it couldn't land you in the soup.