Joe Steele (39 page)

Esther wouldn't have minded. If she'd known what he was doing, she would have kissed him or maybe even dragged him off to the bedroom to show what she thought of it. But not even the Jeebies could pull what she didn't know out of her.

Sometimes Charlie remembered the days when he didn't need to worry about things like that. He also remembered millions of people out of work, and his own fears of winding up in a bread line. So parts of life were better now, even if other parts were worse. Life was like that. If you got something, you mostly had to give up something else.

Joe Steele wasn't going to give up the White House, not to the likes of Tom Dewey. Charlie was convinced the President would win an honest election, maybe not so easily as he had against Alf Landon, but without any trouble. With the apparatus he had in place, chances were he wouldn't lose even if he told people to vote for the other guy.

He seemed to feel the same way. He asked for only a few campaign speeches from Charlie. His theme, naturally, was winning the war and staying prosperous after peace came. None of that was exciting, but Charlie could see it was what he needed to say.

With time on his hands—and with his conscience none too clear in
spite of sending Thelma Feldman that C-note—he visited the watering hole around the corner from the White House more often than he had been in the habit of doing.

Every so often, he would run into John Nance Garner there. Garner was a drinker's drinker. He rarely seemed out-and-out drunk, but he rarely seemed sober, either. By all the signs, he started as soon as he got up and kept on till he went to bed. Not too much at once, but never very long without, either.

“Congratulations, sir,” Charlie told him one afternoon. “You're the longest-serving Vice President in American history.”

John Nance Garner glared at him. “Ah, fuck you, Sullivan. It don't mean shit, and you know it as well as I do.”

Since Charlie did know, all he could say was, “I didn't mean it like that.”

“Hell you didn't. It don't mean
shit
,” Garner repeated with mournful emphasis. “Only way it means shit is if I'm still around when Joe Steele kicks the bucket. And you know what else? That ain't gonna happen, on account of I'm more than ten years older'n he is, an' on account of I bet he's got a deal with the Devil, 'cause he just don't get no older.”

That wasn't true. Joe Steele was grayer and more wrinkled than he had been in 1932. But he hadn't aged as much as Garner since then. He also hadn't drunk as much. Charlie said, “I hope you both last a long time.” Garner had to be more pickled than he looked to talk at all about Joe Steele dying. You couldn't pick a less safe subject.

He must be sure I won't rat on him, no matter how plastered he is,
Charlie thought. That was a compliment, and not such a small one. It made Charlie feel better for the rest of the day.

When the election came, Joe Steele trounced Dewey. “I wish the President well,” Dewey said in his concession speech, “because wishing the President well means wishing the United States well, and I love the United States, as I know Joe Steele does.” Listening in the White House, Charlie glanced over at the President. Joe Steele didn't even smile.

It was over. Half of it was over, anyhow. Along with everybody else in Washington, Charlie had gone nuts with joy over reports from German radio that Adolf Hitler had died fighting against the Russians in the blazing ruins of Berlin. Shortly afterwards, Radio Moscow claimed he'd done no such thing—he'd blown out his own brains in his fortified bunker when it finally dawned on him that the Nazis wouldn't win their war and the
Reich
wouldn't last a thousand years.

A few days later, the Germans surrendered unconditionally. A reporter wound up in trouble for breaking the story before it became official. As an ex-reporter with a brother who'd got in trouble for what he'd reported, Charlie sympathized. He still thought the guy was a prime jerk, though.

Slippery to the last, the Germans tried to give up to the Americans and English but not to the Russians. On Joe Steele's orders, Omar Bradley told them they could do it the way the Allies wanted or they could go back to fighting everybody. They did it the way the Allies wanted. They even staged a second ceremony in Berlin for the Red Army's benefit. Marshal Koniev signed the surrender there for Leon Trotsky. The guns in Europe fell silent after almost six years.

Joe Steele went on the radio. “This is victory, victory in Europe, V-E Day,” the President said. “And victory is sweet, no doubt of that. It is all the sweeter because it came against such a cruel and heartless foe.”

Charlie grinned when he heard that. He'd suggested it. The reports on what the Nazis had done in their prison camps and their death camps still seemed impossible to believe. How could a famously civilized country go mad like that? But photos of skeletal corpses piled like cordwood had to be real. No one could be sick enough to imagine such things. No one except Hitler's thugs, anyhow. And they hadn't just imagined them. They'd made them real.

“And it is all the sweeter because it comes after so much pain and heartache,” Joe Steele went on. “And so we deserve to celebrate—for a little while. Only for a little while, though. Because our job is not done. Japan still fights against the forces of freedom and democracy.”

He could say that with a straight face, because Russia and Japan remained neutral to each other. Trotsky had promised Joe Steele and Churchill he would enter the war against the Japs. Of course he would—he wanted to grab as many goodies from the chaos convulsing Asia as he could. But he hadn't done it yet.

“Unless the Japanese follow the German lead and yield to our forces without conditions, we will treat their islands as we have treated Germany.” Joe Steele sounded as if he looked forward to it. “We will rain fire and destruction from the skies upon them. We will make a desert, and it will be peace. If the Emperor of Japan and his servants do not think we are determined enough to follow through, they are making the last and worst in a long string of disastrous mistakes. The fire-bombing of Tokyo month before last was only a small taste of what they have to look forward to.”

Charlie whistled softly. Beside him in the front room of their apartment, Esther nodded. Hundreds of B-29s had dropped tons of incendiaries on Tokyo in March. They'd burned—cremated was a better word—more than ten square miles in the heart of the Japs' capital. Tens of thousands died. Outside of Japan, nobody could be sure how many tens of thousands. Charlie didn't know if anyone inside Japan could be sure, either.

“So celebrate, Americans, but carry on. I know we will fight as well and as bravely in the Pacific as we did in Europe. I know that victory will be ours there as well,” Joe Steele said. “And I know our country will be a better place once peace returns. Thank you, and God bless America.”

“Like he said, one down, one to go,” Charlie said.

“The big one down, as far as I'm concerned. Hitler wanted the whole world, and he came too close to getting it,” Esther said. “I had cousins and aunts and uncles in Hungary. I don't know how many of them are still alive. I don't know if any of them are.”

“Mike's still in the Pacific somewhere,” Charlie said quietly. “If the Japs don't quit, we'll need an invasion that'll make the one in France look like a day in a rowboat on the Lake in Central Park.”

“There is that,” she said. “I hope he's all right, too. But that's all we can do, hope, same as with my kin. The Japs are never going to beat the United States, though, never in a million years. Hitler . . . If he'd flattened Trotsky fast, the way he tried, he might have got England, too. Then it would have been our turn. Oh, maybe not right away, but he wouldn't have waited real long.”

That all sounded disturbingly likely to Charlie. Likely or not, though, it wouldn't happen now. Because Hitler couldn't do what he'd wanted to do, other things would happen instead. Charlie said, “Instead of Hitler, Joe Steele's watching Trotsky and the Reds.”

“And Trotsky's worth watching.” Esther sounded sad. “Nothing big will happen between us and the Russians till we KO Japan. We need each other till then. After that, watch out.”

“Looks the same way to me.” Charlie smiled a crooked smile. “And now that we've tied up all the world's problems in pink string and put a bow on them, what do you say we make some lunch?”

“Sounds good,” Esther said. “We've still got some fried chicken from the other night in the icebox.”

“Yum! But what will you eat?” Charlie said. Laughing, she poked him.

*   *   *

M
ike gnawed on a D-ration bar. They were what the Army gave you to eat when you didn't have anything else. They were slabs of chocolate made to keep pretty much forever. They tasted something like a Hershey bar and something like a birthday candle. The wax or tallow or whatever it was made them chew like no chocolate bar you'd eat if you didn't have to.

Rain poured down. Mike's foxhole had six inches of water in it. It had
started raining on Okinawa several days earlier, just after soldiers and Marines had beaten back a Jap counterattack from the Shuri Line. By all the signs, it could keep right on pouring for the next week, too. The downpour didn't make the war move any faster.

He'd heard about men who drowned in foxholes like this. His other choice was to stand up. If he did, the Japanese soldiers still in the Shuri Line would shoot him. They'd given up most of Okinawa without a big fight, but they were hanging on ferociously here in the mountainous south. The Americans had to dig them out one foxhole, one strongpoint, one tunnel at a time—and to pay the price for doing it.

Tarawa. Saipan. Angaur. Iwo Jima. Now Okinawa. Gnawing away on the hard, waxy chocolate, Mike thought,
I am a fugitive from the law of averages
. He had a Purple Heart with two oak-leaf clusters. He couldn't imagine going through the fights he'd been through without getting hurt. The miracle was, he'd come through them without getting maimed for life or killed. Damn few of the guys he'd trained with outside of Lubbock were still in there fighting. They'd been used, and they'd been used up.

Miracles did happen, of course. They didn't always happen to the good guys, either. Hitler had been a runner during the last war. He'd taken messages from the officers to the front-line trenches and back again, the kind of thing you had to do before there were radios and field telephones in every company. The usual life expectancy for a runner was measured in weeks. Hitler had done it all through the war. He'd got gassed once, not too badly, but that was it.

And much good it did him in the end. He was sure as hell dead now, and the Nazis had thrown in the sponge. Mike had heard that just before the last Jap counterattack. He'd been dully pleased, and that was about it. The enemy in front of him was not in a surrendering mood.

Eventually, the rain would stop. Eventually, the fighting would pick up again. Eventually, in spite of everything the Japs here on Okinawa could do, they'd be exterminated. The Americans had too many men, too many guns, too many tanks, too many planes, too many bombs.

Suppose I'm still alive and in one piece when that happens,
Mike thought.
What comes next?

Motion seen from the corner of his eye distracted him. He swung his grease gun towards it. He'd picked up the submachine gun on Iwo. For the kind of close-quarters fighting the punishment brigade did, it was better than an M-1. If you sprayed a lot of lead around, some of it would hit something. That was what you wanted. (He'd also picked up his third stripe on Iwo, not that he cared.)

But this wasn't a Jap. “Jesus fucking Christ, Captain!” Mike burst out. “Get down in here! I almost drilled you!”

Luther Magnusson slid into the hole with him. He was all over mud. The Japs couldn't have seen him. But moving around above ground this close to the Shuri Line was dangerous. Machine guns and mortars meant they didn't have to see you to kill you. They could manage just fine by accident, or by that goddamn law of averages.

“Good,” Magnusson said. “I was looking for you.”

“Oh, yeah? How come?” A lot of the time, you didn't want an officer looking for you. But Magnusson was all right, even if he did still drink like a fish every chance he got. By now, they'd been through a hell of a lot, and a lot of hell, together. So many familiar faces gone. Magnusson was lucky, too, if you wanted to call this luck.

“Got something for you.” The captain pulled a brand-new twenty-pack of Chesterfields, the kind you bought in the States, out of his breast pocket. The cellophane around the paper kept them dry and perfect. “Here you go.”

“You didn't have to do that!” Mike yipped, which was an understatement. Magnusson had risked his life to deliver these cigarettes.

“No big deal,” he said. Considering life as they lived it, he might not have been so far wrong.

“Well, smoke some with me, anyway.” Mike draped a dripping shelter half over their heads so the downpour wouldn't drown their cigarettes. Magnusson's Zippo—painted olive drab to keep the sun from shining off the case and giving away his position—worked first time, every time. They puffed through a couple of fresh, fragrant, flavorful Chesterfields apiece. Then Mike said, “Those were terrific! Where'd you get 'em?”

Magnusson jerked his thumb back toward the north. “Took 'em from a
colonel—no P, natch. He didn't need 'em any more. I figured they might as well not go to waste.”

Yeah, real colonels got all kinds of goodies men in punishment brigades never saw. Fat lot of good that had done this one. He'd been brave to come up to the front with his men. Now he wasn't brave. Now he was just dead.

After one more cigarette, Mike asked, “How many of the old guys you think'll be left after we invade Japan?”

Magnusson looked at him. Along with being dirty, his face was also stubbly. So was Mike's. The closer you got to the front, the less time you had to worry about stupid things like how you looked. “You sure that's the question you wanna ask?” the captain said at last.

“Uh-huh.” Mike nodded. “It's what I was thinking about when you went and dropped in at my mansion here.” Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived in a mansion for real just about his whole life. And what had that won him? An end even nastier than most soldiers got, which was really saying something.

“Mansion, huh?” Mike squeezed a short chuckle out of Luther Magnusson. After a beat, the company CO went on, “Well, a few of us may still be hanging around. Or else none of us. Me, I'd bet on none, but I could lose. War's a crazy business.”

“Man, you got that right,” Mike said. “Okay, thanks. Pretty much the way I read the odds, too, but I wanted to see what somebody else thought. Other side of the coin is, we may all be gone before Okinawa's over with.”

Magnusson leaned toward him under the shelter half and kissed him on the cheek. Mike was so caught off guard, he didn't even slug him. “I couldn't resist,” the captain told him. “You say the sweetest things.”

Mike told him what his mother could do with the sweetest things. To manage all of it, she would have needed more native talent, as it were, and more stamina than God issued to your garden-variety human being. “In spades,” Mike added. “
You
can get off this fucking island with a Section Eight.”

“Nah.” More seriously than Mike had expected, Magnusson shook his head. “It's as near impossible as makes no difference for anybody from a
penal brigade to get a psych discharge. The way the head-shrinkers look at it is, if you weren't crazy already, you never woulda signed up for an outfit like this to begin with.”

“Oh.” Mike chewed on that, but not for long. He nodded. “Well, shit, it's not like they're wrong.” From behind them, American 105s threw death at the Shuri Line. A short round might take out this foxhole instead. Mike didn't waste time worrying about it. He couldn't do anything about it, so what was the point? The rain drummed down. He wondered if he could dig a little channel so it wouldn't get too deep in the hole. He pulled his entrenching tool off his belt. That, he might actually manage.

*   *   *

A
couple of weeks after the Army announced the fall of Okinawa, Charlie got a card from Mike, addressed to him at the White House. It was a dirty card, not because it had a naked girl on it but because somebody's muddy bootprint did its best to obscure the message.

Charlie had to hold the card right in front of his nose to read it. It was short and to the point.
Call Ripley!
it said.
Still here—believe it or not.
Underneath that was a scrawled signature and
NY24601
. Charlie laughed. In spite of himself, the card sounded like his brother. So did sending it where he had.

“That's good news!” Esther exclaimed when he showed it to her. “Nice somebody's getting some.” She and her folks weren't having much luck finding out if any of their Hungarian relatives survived. Magyar officials cared little for Jews. Their Red Army occupiers and overlords cared even less for letters from the United States.