One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  Also, there was that lovely little boy, Marceline’s son and Lanny’s nephew, who was allowed to sit up late in order to renew his memories of his suddenly-coming and suddenly-going uncle. Half Italian, one-quarter French, and one-quarter American, he had lovely dark eyes and eager intelligence. War did not frighten him, for he had never seen it; to him it meant gay-colored uniforms, and airplanes flying overhead, and stories of dramatic and delightful events. He listened to Lanny’s stories until he fell asleep and was put to bed.

  28

  The Paths of Glory

  I

  Up in a plane over the Atlantic Lanny Budd busied himself catching up with the news. In Marrakech he had bought New York newspapers and magazines that had come by air and cost a dozen prices. He read about the unending British battle for the delta of the Rhine, and about the American landing in the Philippines. There had been a three-days’ naval battle in Leyte Gulf, in which a good part of what was left of the Japanese fleet had been wiped out.

  Very pleasant indeed to be warm after being so wet and cold; very pleasant to refresh your mind after the boredom and ignorance of war. A hot political campaign was near its climax at home. Lanny had heard about it in the Army, but it had been something remote and hard to make real. He had applied for an absentee ballot, and had cast it, giving the address of his apartment in New York. Here and there he heard men talking about the campaign, but for the most part they left it to the folks at home, who had time for luxuries. In the Army you thought about getting in out of the wet, and getting a chance to put on dry socks and rub salve between your itching toes; then maybe about getting a bit of freshly baked bread or an egg that was real. What you wanted from home was a letter telling you that your wife hadn’t forgotten you, and that the baby had got over the croup, and that the interest on the mortgage had not been overlooked. Politics, hell! The politicians were getting themselves re-elected, and when the war was over they’d be helping the guys who had got rich out of the war and forgetting those who had been sitting in foxholes full of rain.

  When Lanny arrived at the La Guardia airport he called Baker, guessing that the summons had come from him. He was told that Baker was out campaigning with the President; when Lanny gave the code name, Traveler, he was given a telephone number in Boston and called there. It was Saturday, three days before election day, and that night the candidates one and all would be closing their campaigns at the biggest meetings their managers could assemble.

  The President’s confidential man said, “The Chief didn’t think you’d get here so quickly. He wants to see you right after election. He told me if you called to tell you to come to Hyde Park for supper on election night.”

  “Fine!” said the P.A.

  “Come early, because the returns begin to come in at about seven. Tonight we’re putting on a grand show in Fenway Park. All Boston will be here, except Beacon Street. Why don’t you fly up and take it in?”

  Lanny thought for a moment. “I’m just getting over a cold,” he said, “and it will be a raw night. I’ll take it over the radio.”

  II

  He got a morning paper, so as to see how the campaign was shaping up. Then he took a taxi and was driven to the little ferry which crosses Long Island Sound. From this it was only a short ride to Newcastle; and there was the family, always glad to welcome him, and to hear his stories of the world of blood and terror. There was Baby Lanny, now running about on sturdy legs, and no longer in doubt about this tall smiling man who called himself Daddy. The little fellow had been here ever since summer, with Agnes to take care of him and a nurse to help her; it was much better for him than being shut up in a New York apartment. There was a governess for the grandchildren and also a music teacher, three ladies who had their meals together in the breakfast room. Robbie and Esther always had everything exactly right—in spite of having to pay eighty-two per cent of their income to the federal government!

  When Lanny telephoned, Robbie left his office and came home in the middle of the afternoon to hear about the Budd-Erling planes in Europe and what the Army was saying about them. Incidentally, of course, he was interested in learning about Kurt and Emil, both of whom he knew; about Laurel and her writings; and about Jerry, and Raoul, and Beauty and her small family in Morocco. Lanny could talk more frankly now and told what he had seen and done in France; he still didn’t say anything about Marceline or about having been in Germany.

  Robbie talked about his family, and how things had been going. Robbie Junior had the flu, and Percy’s wife was expecting another baby. At the plant, production had reached its peak, and it was something to come and see; but already the head of the concern was starting to worry, for fear they were beating Hitler too fast and there might be a cancellation of orders. That led to politics, on which Robbie had been spending a lot of the firm’s money, listing it as advertising-imagine the Budd-Erling plane needing advertising with the news dispatches full of its exploits! Robbie said the election looked very close; the polls gave Roosevelt a tiny edge, fifty-one per cent, but that might not be enough. There was a still better chance of the Republicans carrying Congress, which would at least be a brake upon the insane extravagances of the New Deal. Under that head Robbie listed various kinds of “social security”; you could be sure that he wouldn’t list any purchases of military planes.

  Lanny remarked cautiously that he had been out of touch with politics for a long time. To that Robbie replied that Governor Dewey was making his closing speech that Saturday night at a mass meeting in Soldiers’ Field, Chicago, and the family would assemble in the drawing-room to listen over the radio. That would give Lanny a chance to hear the issues of the campaign carefully explained; and Lanny said he would see what he could do about attending. It was pathetic—for just thirty years Robbie Budd had been hoping and scheming to bring his firstborn to a proper set of political and economic beliefs. He had never succeeded and never would succeed, but he would go on trying.

  What Lanny did was what the schoolboys at St. Thomas’s Academy had been wont to call a “dirty Irish trick.” He saw Agnes Drury going out with the baby, and he went along. He explained to her that the family wanted him to listen to Thomas E. Dewey in Chicago, whereas he wanted to listen to Franklin D. Roosevelt in Boston. Did Agnes have her small radio set in her room? Agnes was slightly tinged with Pink sentiments—she could hardly have failed to be, having lived for years with Laurel Creston. She was tickled still pinker by the idea of committing this crime of lèse-majesté against the Budd tribe.

  She whispered the secret to the other governess and the music teacher, and the governess was willing to join her; the music teacher was afraid and went obediently to the drawing-room and listened respectfully while the Governor of the Empire State told a hundred thousand people in the great Chicago Stadium and perhaps a hundred times as many more over the radio that this election represented an effort to turn America over to the Communists. Meantime Lanny and the other two sat in Agnes’s room with the radio turned low, chuckling while they listened to the warm caressing voice of Lanny’s Boss telling an equally great audience that Governor Dewey in one city had threatened that the victory of the New Deal would mean the establishment of Communism in America, and in another city that it would bring about a monarchy in America. The Governor should have made up his mind which he wanted, for surely he couldn’t have both!

  It had become a fighting campaign, and this was a fighting speech. Roosevelt had been roused to indignation by the falsehoods told about him, and about his family, and even about his little dog Fala. The President’s four sons were all at the front, doing their duty, but that had not saved them from charges. The President himself had been accused of bringing on the war, and he answered that the war had been brought on by the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, and by the declaration of war against the United States by the German and Italian governments. He said that he had been reluctant to run for a fourth term, and had not cared much whether he was re-elected; but “since this campaign develope
d I tell you frankly that I have become most anxious to win.” The thunder of applause which this remark brought made it necessary for Lanny to turn the radio still lower.

  To the son of Budd-Erling this speech was thrilling, because he knew the ex-Governor of New York State so well and could visualize him and every detail of the scene. He had discussed the issues with him—long ago, before the campaign had shaped up, before the war had begun. This was Lanny’s fight, and had been since his boyhood, and he gloried in having a champion who could defend his cause before the whole world.

  Yet at the same time his heart ached for the tired, overdriven man, the cripple who was carrying the burden of the future upon his shoulders, and who had been goaded by his enemies into coming out and “taking the stump” in his own defense. Lanny had been reading accounts of him, traveling about the east and the northeast, and as far west as Chicago, addressing outdoor mass meetings at night, and speaking from his motorcar and from railroad platforms—this man who could not stand even for a few seconds on his heavy steel braces without pain. Campaigning was the American custom, and his supporters expected it; he himself enjoyed it, or insisted that he did; but what a ghastly strain upon a man who was Commander-in-Chief of armies, navies, and air forces all over the world, and had to carry on diplomatic negotiations that might decide the future of the world for centuries.

  III

  Lanny rested, played with the baby, and wrote letters to Laurel and to all his friends abroad. On Monday Robbie loaned him a stenographer, and he dictated letters having to do with his long-neglected art business. The fond father wanted to send out a hurry call to all Rotarians in Newcastle and have them come to a luncheon and meet this traveler from overseas. They would give him a circular piece of cardboard with his first name printed on it, and he would hang it on his buttonhole so that everybody would know what to call him; they would feed him and then call upon him for a speech, and when he told them that Hitler was on his way out they would cheer him lustily and pat him on the back. But Lanny didn’t want any publicity and wouldn’t have had his picture in the Newcastle Chronicle for anything he could think of.

  He had to face a reception of the Budd tribe; there could be no getting away from that. There were old ones—they lived to vast ages. Some were recluses, but they would come to meet Lanny in order to disapprove of him; some were quiet and scholarly, some were worldly and chirrupy; all were rich. There were young ones, male and female, and in-laws; some of these were modern and full of curiosity about a strange, left-handed relative who could travel all over the world in wartime and was full of evasions and suspected of unorthodoxy. Election eve, and he had already voted in the Army, but he wouldn’t say how he had voted—he just smiled and said he had forgotten.

  Election day morning he went and looked at the plant. It never stopped running, day or night, Sundays, holidays, even Christmas. There were three shifts of men and women; and enough in each shift so that one-seventh could be spared each day in the week; many of them slept in beds that never grew cold—one man got in as another got out. Some kind of aircraft rolled out of that plant every few minutes, and each one already had a load of high-octane gas in the tank; it went under its own power to the flight field, and after its engines had got warm it rose into the air and circled a few times and then disappeared, never to return.

  Lanny came back for lunch, and then put his belongings into the little car which he was accustomed to drive, and set out up the Newcastle River. He didn’t say where he was going—just a business engagement. It was a wintry day, there had been snow, and he was headed north into the Berkshire Hills, and then westward to the Hudson River. He took his time. The scenery was beautiful, not so different from that of the Moselle country, except that it was peaceful and still; no rumbling of guns and no heavy transport rushing over the roads; only farmers going to town with loads of straw or cordwood. Thank God for the peace of America, and pray that it might endure! The sun was shining and the squirrels were out, and tracks of rabbits and foxes gave life to the blanket of snow on the hills.

  So, towards sundown, Lanny came to the city of Poughkeepsie, the “Reed-Covered Lodge by the Little Water Place,” and turned north up the Albany Post Road, now a broad, paved highway. He came to the village of Hyde Park, made famous by its citizen known as the Squire of Krum Elbow. The Squire had come in that morning and had cast his ballot. Scores of reporters had been there to see what happened, and cameramen and newsreel machines. They had wanted him to pose; everybody had to pose—this was America! The voting had been by a machine, and it hadn’t worked the first time; an official had had to show the voter what was wrong. He didn’t tell how he had voted, but nobody would have much difficulty in guessing.

  The polls were still open, and Lanny stopped across the street and watched for a few minutes. There was an American flag on a staff before the old white frame town hall, the polling place, and a few people waiting in line—but no loitering, and no electioneering within a specified distance of the sacred spot. He had seen people fighting one another on so many parts of the earth’s surface, and how he longed to teach them this dignified and orderly way of settling their problems.

  IV

  Lanny drove on and came to the sentry box which had been set up at the entrance to the Krum Elbow estate. He gave his name to the officer on guard and was given a nod. A long drive lined with trees led to the gray house, part stone and part brick, with a semicircular portico in front. Several cars were parked in the ample drive, and Lanny added one more. A Negro man opened the door for him, and a secretary led him down a passage to the President’s study.

  Eight or ten people were there ahead of him, and the Chief said casually, “Hello, Budd. Make yourself at home.” It was “Budd,” not “Lanny,” and the P.A. understood that he was to be inconspicuous and semi-incog. If newspapermen asked about him, he would be “a friend of Mrs. Roosevelt.” The First Lady had a host of friends, and many of them were odd fish; they were not supposed to have political significance, and the less said about them the better. Lanny’s uniform did not make him conspicuous, for there were ten million in the Army now. He slid into a chair and sat watching and listening.

  His first thought was of the Chief’s appearance. His face was thin, and exhaustion was written in every line. He was playing the host graciously, as always, but what he did was an effort; he had put all he had into the battle with his foes. Presently he remarked, “We shall get all the answers tonight.” And the P.A. wondered if, deep in his heart, he might be longing for the answers to be no, so that he could sink back in his comfortable chair and rest. He told his friends of his love for this place, and how happy he would be to stay in it and write history.

  Seven years and four months had passed since Lanny had first sat in this spacious room and listened to the creator of the New Deal expounding his political philosophy: “Mr. Budd, I cannot go any faster than the people will let me.” Lanny had never forgotten his simile of a man driving a three-horse team, what the Russians call a troika. The first job of anybody who wanted to effect social changes was to stay in power, and for F.D.R. that meant guiding his three wild horses, keeping them from balking and getting in one another’s way; feeding them on patronage, keeping them in harness, and choosing a course they would consent to follow.

  Every four years he had to submit to the whole people the decision as to his competence as a driver. He had done it three times, and received a verdict of approval; today was the fourth, and pretty soon he would be getting the answers from some forty-eight million voters, who would say thumbs up or thumbs down on his conduct of the war and his competence to make the peace. There could be no halfway verdict; either it was Roosevelt and his party or it was his opponents, who had falsified so recklessly about him, and his friends and family, and even about the little black Fala, who now lay peacefully snoozing at his master’s feet, having no idea that this was one of the crucial days of history.

  The dining-room with its big table had been given over for
the night to men from the press associations, who received by telephone the telegrams which came from the President’s friends all over the country. The guests were served a buffet supper of scrambled eggs, and Lanny sat next to his hostess, telling her a little of what he had seen in France. She was a woman of tireless curiosity, also of tireless kindness. She was busy all of every day doing services for other people, and the excitements of the campaign hadn’t seemed to trouble her at all. She had set a new standard for “First Ladies,” one they would have a hard time living up to. She watched over her husband, guided the conversation, got the important people next to him and the bores away from him. It was a lesson in social tact to watch how she got people out of the room while the handicapped man was being shifted from his seat in the dining-room to his wheel chair, and then how she showed them paintings and other objects of interest to keep them from entering the study until he had been shifted from the wheel chair to his seat in that room.

  The radio was turned on, and the scattered returns began to come in, a precinct at a time. The President had a book in his lap, giving the votes of each city and state in previous elections, so that he could form an idea what the new returns indicated. Everybody was burning up with anxiety, but it wasn’t good form to show it; the way the excitement revealed itself was in mid-evening, when the returns were pouring in fast, and it was evident that the Chief was doing a shade better than the sample polls had promised.