—
Another Jurassic tank park. Another tank-park sergeant smiling a smarmy, apologetic smile. Another dinosaur of a T-34/85. “Yob tvoyu mat’,” Konstantin Morozov said, and the way he said it warned he was ready to take the tank-park sergeant apart. “I ought to tear your head off and piss in the hole.”
“You shouldn’t talk that way,” said the tank-park sergeant, who’d obviously heard obscene suggestions from other tank commanders before Konstantin. “It’s a fine machine, and—”
“I don’t see you in the fucking antique,” Morozov broke in. “Some other chancreface gave us one before, and it got killed out from under us in nothing flat. Just lucky the bazooka hit the engine compartment, or we’d be pushing up daisies right now—and you’d give this cunt to some other dumb prick.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do—”
“I want you to give us a real tank, not a kiddy car. The Hitlerites built better tanks than this, and that was years ago.”
“Do you want to tell that to an officer, Comrade Sergeant?”
The question had cowed Morozov once. Not twice. “Bet your pussy I do, you assfucking whore.” Konstantin didn’t care what he said. Nothing a lieutenant or a captain could do to him was likely to be worse than sticking him in a T-34/85 again.
Biting his lip, the tank-park sergeant stomped away. When he came back, he came back not with a company-grade officer but with a gray-haired lieutenant colonel. Morozov’s crewmen looked ready to let the dirt swallow them. He didn’t worry about it. The man wasn’t going to shoot him on the spot.
“So what are you giving Ninel a hard time about?” the senior officer demanded.
Ninel! The tank-park sergeant had had good Red parents. In the aftermath of the glorious proletarian revolution, quite a few Soviet babies got tagged with Lenin’s name spelled backward. As far as Konstantin was concerned, though, it sounded precious if not swishy. And it had nothing to do with the price of sausage.
He spoke to what did: “What for, Comrade Colonel? Because my men and I don’t deserve to die in this hunk of junk, that’s what. Like I told your Ninel, we already had one of them smashed with us in it. I fought through the last war, sir. You want to see my scars? I had T-34/85s killed by the Hitlerites with tanks not half as good as what the enemy uses now. We go back into this clunker, it’s murder, nothing else but….Sir.”
The lieutenant colonel glowered. “I can have you court-martialed and shot inside of fifteen minutes, Sergeant.”
“Go ahead, sir. Whatever the pricks with the rifles do, it won’t be as bad as when a Pershing slams a round through my glacis plate. And the round will get through, too, because that armor might as well be tinfoil. It can’t keep anything out.”
“What makes you deserve a T-54 and not somebody else?”
“I’m a damn good tank commander, Comrade Colonel, that’s what. I’ve got a damn good crew. Give us a damn good tank so we have the chance to serve the Soviet Union the best way we can.”
“You’re living on borrowed time, Sergeant,” the officer rumbled.
“Tell me something I didn’t know, sir,” Konstantin replied with a laugh. “The Nazis have blown me up. So have the Americans. If I’d been any closer to an A-bomb, I wouldn’t be arguing with you now. But if you stuff me into this tin can”—he spat at the T-34/85—“all I’ve borrowed gets paid back right now.”
He wondered if he’d overplayed his hand. By the way Vazgen Sarkisyan’s eyes—and Demyan Belitsky’s, too—bugged out of their heads, they were sure he had. The lieutenant colonel studied him. The burn scar on the side of the man’s neck said he’d seen action himself, and probably been lucky to get out of a blazing tank.
He nodded to himself with the air of a man who’d made up his mind. “Ninel!”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel?” By the eager way the tank-park sergeant said it, he expected the next order to be Place these men under arrest! Konstantin more than half expected the same thing.
But the gray-haired lieutenant colonel said, “Put these men in a T-54. They won’t need the bow gunner. We’ll find a crew short a man for him.”
Ninel stared as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Comrade Colonel?”
“You heard me. Do it.” The officer waited.
“I serve the Soviet Union!” the tank-park sergeant choked out.
Konstantin clapped Ilya Goledod on the back. “Good luck, pal,” he said.
“Thanks,” Goledod said. “You, too.”
They squeezed each other. Goledod said his good-byes to the other men in the crew. Konstantin rounded on the tank-park sergeant. “Come on, Ninel. Give us something that may keep us alive for twenty minutes.”
“Take them to the one with Za Stalina! painted on the turret,” the lieutenant colonel said. Ninel’s face fell. If he’d planned to stick them with a lemon, he wouldn’t get the chance now.
The T-54 was…a T-54. It wasn’t new. Konstantin’s nose told him another crew had been in there before his—had, in fact, been killed in there. Kerosene smelled better than spoiling flesh and blood.
Juris Eigims peered through the magnifying gunsight. “Well, this is more like it,” he said. “I’ve got a chance of hitting what I aim at.”
“You never did get a shot off in the old sow, did you?” Konstantin said.
“Nyet.” The gunner shook his head. But then he held up a hand. “Wait! I was going to say, the rocket hit us before I could. But I did blast that guy who shot us on the way to the regiment. I didn’t fire at any enemy tanks, though.”
“Oh, yeah, the other asshole with the bazooka. I forgot about him. How did I do that?” But Morozov knew too well how he’d done it. He’d been in so many tight spots, he couldn’t keep track of them all any more. That had to be a bad sign. If it didn’t mean death was gaining on him, he couldn’t imagine what it would signify. Shaking his head, he used the intercom: “Fire this bastard up, Demyan.”
“I’ll do it, Comrade Sergeant,” Belitsky answered. That told Konstantin the system worked, which was more than it had in the T-34/85. The big diesel behind the fighting compartment started right away. It sounded smoother than the relic’s motor had. That was good, anyhow.
Morozov stuck his head out of the cupola. Ninel still stood beside the tank, looking as if he’d just swallowed a big swig of vinegar. “Where do we find regimental HQ?” Konstantin asked him. He had to shout; the engine’s blatting seemed louder when thick steel didn’t shield him from it.
“Eight or ten kilometers up the road, in Dassel,” the tank-park sergeant shouted back, pointing to show the way.
“Spasibo,” Konstantin said. He relayed the instructions to Belitsky. The T-54 got moving. It occurred to Morozov that dear Ninel might be lying. But if a tank couldn’t take care of itself, what in this world could?
Dassel wouldn’t have been anything much before the Red Army overran it. It was even less now. The defenders had fought fiercely to keep Soviet troops out, the Russians just as ferociously to break in. It looked to have been bombed and strafed a few times, too. Only a handful of scrawny Fritzes skulked along the rubble-strewn streets.
But the headquarters did lie at the western edge of the shattered town. The CO seemed glad to see Konstantin, and even gladder to see his T-54. He was a major named Genrikh Zhuk. He’d likely been a junior lieutenant last time around. “Do you come from the tank park off to the east?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Morozov said. “Why?”
“How did you pry a real machine out of them instead of a retread?”
“I made a perfect son of a bitch out of myself, Comrade Major,” Konstantin answered. “I’ve been in one of those old crocks this war. Two would’ve been too many.”
“Sergeant, you’re my kind of man,” Zhuk said. “The more sons of bitches we’ve got, the better we’ll do.” They nodded to each other, both of them smiling.
AARON FINCH LIFTED PAPER BAGS from the shopping cart and put them into the Chevy’s trunk. Ruth tried to he
lp, but he wouldn’t let her. “Keep an eye on Leon,” he said.
Keeping an eye on Leon was always a good idea. For the moment, he was still in the little makeshift seat by the cart’s handle. Look away from him for a second, though, and he was liable to go out headfirst before you looked back again.
“There,” Aaron said a minute later. He slammed down the trunk lid. “We’ve got groceries, and Vons has our money.”
Leon pointed to the big red letters that identified the supermarket. “Vons!” he said. “Vons!”
“He just read the sign.” Aaron could hear the disbelief in his own voice. But he’d seen it. He’d heard it.
“He sure did.” Ruth lifted Leon out of the shopping cart. Once she put him down on the asphalt, she held on to his hand to make sure he didn’t do anything she’d regret. “He’s a smart thing.”
“Smart!” Leon agreed enthusiastically. He didn’t know quite what that meant, but he’d heard it applied to himself a lot, and he thought it was something good.
“I feel like the hen that hatched the waddayacallit in that kid’s book we got him,” Aaron said.
“The Churkendoose!” Leon knew what you called it.
“He’s so smart, he’ll be rich. He can support us when we’re old,” Ruth said.
“If somebody doesn’t pinch his little head off before we get old, yeah,” Aaron said. His wife made a face at him. He used the key to open the Chevy—he was getting into the habit of locking it all the time. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
A couple of blocks from the Vons stood a big billboard that at the moment sported a smiling portrait of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Aaron thought McCarthy looked even scarier with a phony grin on his mug than with his usual scowl. The slogan beside his face said REPUBLICANS! VOTE MCCARTHY JUNE 3 FOR FREEDOM AND VICTORY!
“I want to climb up there in the middle of the night and paint a Hitler mustache on him,” Ruth said. “I can’t stand that man.”
“I never would have guessed,” Aaron said. His wife poked him in the ribs. He didn’t flinch; he wasn’t ticklish. As he stopped at a light—Ruth’s foot hit the imaginary brake, as usual—he went on, “That’s not what I was thinking.”
“Nu, what were you thinking?” she asked.
“I was thinking it’s a good thing Leon can’t read that yet because he doesn’t spot lies the way grown-ups do,” Aaron said.
“Don’t be silly,” Ruth told him. “If grown-ups could spot lies, McCarthy would be selling hot dogs from a pushcart, not running for President.”
That was so cynical, Aaron might well have come out with it himself. “Well, it’s not like you’re wrong,” he said. “But he can’t take California in the primary, or I don’t think he can. Looks like Earl Warren’s got it sewed up. The pro-Taft delegation that Congressman’s heading isn’t going anywhere, either.”
“I’m not worried about Taft. I don’t like him much, but he doesn’t scare me,” Ruth said. “McCarthy, now, McCarthy scares me. The worse the war gets, the more he scares me, too. Whenever something blows up, he gets more votes.”
She sounded like her cousin Roxane. Aaron started to say so, then thought better of it. For one thing, Ruth might well have been right here. For another, he was discovering, part of what went into staying happily married was not always saying the first thing that popped into your head. If it made your wife mad or hurt her feelings, you were better off keeping your big trap shut.
That wasn’t easy for a Finch to figure out. It was even harder for a Finch to do. Marvin liked using Sarah for a punching bag. His and Aaron’s father and mother had fought all the time till they finally separated. After staying single till he was middle-aged, though, Aaron had discovered he enjoyed domestic tranquility.
He turned left, right, and then left again. The last turn put him on the little street where the house was. He parked in front of it, set the hand brake, put the car in neutral, and killed the engine.
Ruth got out on the passenger side, then reached into the back seat to extract Leon. Leon plucked a dandelion on the front yard. “Flower!” he said. Just yesterday, it seemed, Leon had gone Flarn! because he couldn’t say it right. Now he could. Kids made you feel old, old, old.
His wife took Leon into the house. She left the front door open behind them. Leon knew he wasn’t supposed to run outside while his father brought in groceries. Ruth kept an eye on him just in case, but he really was good about that.
Aaron opened the trunk, picked up a bag of groceries with each hand, and carried the stuff into the house. Then he went back and did it again. When he came out for one more trip, he saw a Mexican-looking kid, maybe fourteen, quickly walking down the street with one of the sacks from the trunk.
“Hey!” Aaron yelled, and took off after him. Empty-handed, the kid would have got away with the greatest of ease. Burdened by the groceries he was swiping, he didn’t have the speed or the moves he needed. Aaron caught up with him just before the corner.
As he did, he wondered what would happen if the kid dropped the bag of groceries and pulled out, say, a switchblade. Aaron had a pocket knife in his pocket, but it was a tool, not a weapon. Against six inches of steel with a real point, a paper clip would have done about as much.
But the kid had no switchblade, just a scared, scrawny, miserable face. “I’m sorry, Mister,” he said, looking on the point of tears. “I been so hungry since the fuckin’ bomb came down an’ made us clear out….”
He’d probably lived in Chavez Ravine, just north of downtown. That had been a solidly Mexican, and terribly poor, part of town till the A-bomb fell. The people from there who’d lived through the blast had come farther north yet, into Glendale. Maybe this guy’s older brother was the so-and-so who’d made the family Nash disappear.
But how could you stay mad at a skinny fourteen-year-old who so badly needed the stuff he’d walked off with? Aaron tried. He couldn’t do it. “Give me back the groceries, son,” he said.
As the kid handed over the Vons bag, he really did start to snuffle. “Mierda,” he said, more to himself than to Aaron. “I can’t even steal right.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Holding the bag in the crook of his elbow, Aaron dug his billfold out of his back pocket. He pulled out a five and handed it to the kid. “Buy yourself some chow with this. Nobody should have to steal for food. Go on, beat it.”
The kid looked at the bill as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You don’t gotta do that, Mister!” he blurted.
“Never mind what I’ve gotta do. Get lost. Amscray,” Aaron said. The kid stuck the fin in the pocket of his faded, ragged jeans and took off like Jackie Robinson swiping second. No, Aaron never would have caught him if he hadn’t had a burden.
Shaking his head, he started back to the house. Ruth was standing on the walkway. She must have come out when he didn’t bring in the next load.
“What was that all about?” she asked as he drew near.
“A hungry kid,” he said, and hefted the sack. “I don’t care how hungry he is, he’s not gonna eat what we bought.”
“No, huh? How much did you give him there?”
She’d seen more than Aaron had figured. “Five bucks,” he answered sheepishly. He would have kept quiet about it, but he didn’t like to lie point-blank.
“That’s more than what’s in the sack is worth,” Ruth said, which was true. She started to laugh. “You’re such a softy! I didn’t think so when we got married, but I know better by now.”
As he had with the kid, Aaron tried to get mad. As he had then, he failed. How could he do it when she was so obviously right?
—
Marian Staley took a copy of the Weed Press-Herald from the stack on the counter at the Rexall. She slid the druggist a nickel. “There you go, Mr. Stansfield,” she said.
“Thanks,” he answered. “Want to read about poor Leroy, do you? That was a terrible thing.”
“Everybody in town is talking about it,” Marian said. Leroy van Zandt had driven a truck for Nat
ional Wood and Timber, another logging outfit based in Weed. He’d swerved on a twisting road to try to miss a deer, and gone down a steep slope. His rig caught fire when it hit the bottom. He dragged himself out of the upside-down cab, but not soon enough. He died in the back of Doc Toohey’s car on the way to the hospital in Redding.
Heber Stansfield pursed his lips. “He might’ve been lucky to peg out at the end, you know what I’m saying? If Doc had got him to the hospital, chances are he just would’ve suffered longer and then died.”
“I won’t try to tell you you’re wrong,” Marian replied. “But it’s still a crying shame there was no ambulance to pick him up and no hospital here to bring him to. That might have done him some good.”
The druggist nodded. “You don’t hardly got to read the Press-Herald now,” he said. “You and Dale Dropo, the two of you’re on the same page.”
“We need those things. I’m new in town, and I can see it. I’m not surprised the guy who runs the paper can, too,” Marian said. “The lumber-company bosses get rich off the loggers. They ought to take care of them better when they get hurt.”
“That’s a fact, and I won’t try and make like it isn’t,” Stansfield said. “But I will tell you, you better be careful who you say it to. It gets back to the people you work for, you won’t work for ’em no more.”
“I understand that. Oh, boy, do I ever!” Marian said. “They’ve got Weed sewn up tighter than Boeing did in Seattle before the bomb hit. But if nobody ever tells them what they need to hear, another Leroy van Zandt is just waiting to happen.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Heber Stansfield’s bespectacled stare reminded Marian of that of an old, old tortoise that had seen too much of this wicked old world. He went on, “But you got yourself a young ’un—pretty little thing, she is. You ever tell her the fairy tale about the mice what voted to bell the cat? They’re still waiting for a volunteer, an’ so’re we.”
On that cheerful note, Marian took the paper and the bottle of aspirin she’d gone in there to buy and walked back to the Studebaker, which was parked three stores down the street. Linda was waiting inside. She…
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