As long as the Whigs ruled in Richmond, cool heads prevailed. The Whigs did what they could to rebuild. The Confederate States enjoyed a modest prosperity. The United States weren’t sorry to see that prosperity—or its modesty. The Freedom Party howled outside the door, but who was mad enough to invite it in?
Then came the worldwide collapse. Where cool heads had failed, hotheads prevailed. No one in the USA had imagined Featherston could actually win an election. Flora knew she hadn’t. The very idea had struck her as meshuggeh.
But, crazy or not, Featherston had gone about doing what he’d promised all along he would: getting even. If anyone in power in the USA had believed he would be giving orders one day, War Department budgets would have looked different through the 1920s.
A few Democrats had screamed bloody murder about the way the budgets looked. They’d proved right, even if some of their own party reckoned them reactionaries at the time. They had been reactionaries. Some of them, crowing on the floor of Congress now, were still reactionaries, and proud of it. But even reactionaries could be right once in a while. After all, a stopped clock was right twice a day.
Those Democrats, damn them, had picked something important to be right about. Flora hated admitting they had been right all the more because she thought them wrong about so many other things.
She’d been wrong here. She hated admitting that, too. She’d done it, though. It hadn’t won her much respect from the Democrats. She hadn’t expected it to.
“I think the AA is hotter than it was when the war started,” Joshua said, bringing her back to the here and now.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I hope you are.”
“I’m not sure I hope I am,” her son answered. “If the Confederates get shot at more, they won’t hit their targets so much.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Flora said.
Joshua shrugged. “Well, maybe. But if they don’t hit their targets, they’d want to hit something before they get out of here. That means they’re liable to drop their bombs any old place.”
“Oh, joy,” Flora said.
Not far away, a man muttered, “Oh, shit,” which amounted to the same thing.
Flora had already accused her son of belonging to the General Staff. He got proved right here with alarming speed. A stick of bombs came down right in the neighborhood. Flora didn’t know all that much about earthquakes, but this felt the way she imagined an earthquake would. She cast a frightened eye at the ceiling, wondering if it would stay up.
It did. The lights went out for a couple of minutes, but then they came back on. Everybody in the cellar let out a sigh of relief when they returned. “Isn’t this fun?” a woman said. Several people laughed. With a choice between laughing and shrieking, laughing was better.
After that, the bombs hit farther away. The Confederate bombers lingered over Philadelphia for more than an hour. Their bases weren’t far away. Antiaircraft guns and searchlights and fighters hunting through the black skies of night were not enough to drive them off or even to slow them down very much. Every so often, one or two of them would crash in flames. What was that, though, but the cost of doing business?
The all-clear sounded. Yawning and sleepily cursing the Confederates, people went up to their flats. The air in the stairwell smelled of sweat and smoke.
Fire-engine sirens wailed, some nearer, some farther away. Flora had just opened the door to the flat she shared with Joshua when a big boom only a few blocks away made things shake all over again. “That was a bomb!” she said indignantly. “But the Confederates went away.”
“Time fuse.” Her son’s voice was wise. “That way, people and stuff come close, and then it blows up.” He did his teenaged best to sound reassuring: “Don’t worry, Mom. We’ve got ’em, too.”
“Oh, joy,” Flora said again, in the same tone and with the same meaning as she’d used down in the cellar. Wasn’t that a lovely piece of human ingenuity? It lay there quietly to lure more victims into the neighborhood, then slaughtered them. And the USA and CSA both used such things. Whoever had invented them had probably got a bonus for his talents.
She would have liked to give him what he really deserved. The Geneva Convention probably outlawed that, though.
Lying down, she looked at the alarm clock’s luminous dial, the only light in the bedroom. Half past three. She said something more pungent than Oh, joy under her breath. It could have been worse. She knew that. It could have been better, too.
She yawned and stretched and tried to get comfortable and also tried to free her mind from the fear she’d known. That wasn’t easy. She looked at the alarm clock again—3:35 now. Why did the dots by the numbers and the lines on the hour and minute hands glow? Radium—she knew that. But why did radium glow? Because it did; that was all she knew. Somewhere, there were probably scientists who could give a better explanation. She hoped so, anyhow.
She yawned again. Somewhat to her surprise, she did fall back to sleep. More often than not, she couldn’t. She wasn’t the only one doing without, either. Half the people in Philadelphia seemed to be stumbling around with bags under their eyes these days. If the Confederates cut off coffee imports, the city would be in a bad way.
When the alarm went off not quite three hours later, she felt as if another bomb had exploded beside her head. The first time she tried to make it shut up, she missed. The second time, she succeeded. Yawning blearily, she got out of bed.
Coffee, for the time being, she had. She made herself a pot. Joshua’s snores punctuated the wet blup-blup of the percolator. He didn’t have school and he didn’t have a job. He could sleep as long as he wanted. Flora marveled at that as she fried eggs to go with the coffee. Sleep as long as you wanted? Till Joshua, no one in her family had ever been able to do that. What else could more clearly mark an escape from the proletariat?
She dressed, went downstairs, and hailed a cab. The driver was a man with a gray mustache and only two fingers on his left hand. “Congress,” she told him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and put the elderly Buick in gear. “You a Congressman’s wife, ma’am?”
“No,” Flora said. “I’m a Congresswoman.”
“Oh.” The cabby drove on for a little while. Then he said, “Guess I just killed my tip.” Flora said neither yes nor no, though the same thought had crossed her mind. The driver went on, “Any way you can make ’em pass a law to get me back into the Army? I can still shoot in spite of this.” He held up his mutilated hand. “Stinking recruiting sergeants just laugh at me, though.”
“I’m sorry,” Flora told him. “I can’t do much about that. The Army knows what it needs.” There was something strange for a Socialist to say. It was true all the same, though. They rode the rest of the way into downtown Philadelphia in glum silence.
Every day, Flora saw more damage to the city where she’d lived the second half of her life. A woman sat on the sidewalk with three little children and a dog. The children clung to odds and ends of property—shoes, framed pictures, and, ridiculously, a fancy china teapot. Flora knew what that meant: they’d lost everything else. They weren’t the only ones, or anything close to it.
“Here you are, lady,” the cab driver said, pulling to a stop in front of the Congressional building. “Fare’s forty cents.”
Flora gave him a half dollar. She hurried up the stairs. Even as she did, though, she wondered why. Congress wouldn’t change things much now. It was up to the men in green-gray and butternut.
Chester Martin and Harry T. Casson approached the table from opposite sides. Chester wore his usual workingman’s clothes. Casson was natty in a white summer-weight linen suit. The builder could have bought and sold the labor organizer a dozen times without worrying about anything but petty cash.
Despite their differences, they sat down side by side. Martin stuck out his hand. Casson shook it. Flashbulbs popped, even though nothing much had happened yet. Casson reached into an inside pocket and took out a sheet of paper and
some glasses. Setting those on his nose, he looked at the waiting reporters and said, “I’d like to read a brief statement, if I might.”
“Why are you making this deal with the construction workers’ union?” a reporter called.
“Well, that’s what the statement’s about,” the builder said. He glanced down at the typewritten sheet. “In this time of national emergency, the only enemy we have is our foreign foe. There is no place now for strife between labor and capital. Since that is obviously true even to those who have disagreed about other issues before, I have decided to sign a contract with the union at this time. Peace at home, war with the Confederate States and their allies.” He folded the paper and looked at Chester. “Mr. Martin?”
“We’ve been working toward this moment for a long time.” Chester had no notes. He felt like a hick next to the smooth Casson, but they sat here as equals. “A fair wage for a day’s work and decent working conditions are all we ever wanted. With this contract, I think we’re going to get ’em.”
Harry T. Casson pulled a gold-nibbed fountain pen from his breast pocket. He signed all four copies of the contract, then ceremoniously offered Chester the pen.
“No, thanks. I’ve got my own.” Martin had a plain steel nib, but it was plenty good enough for signatures. After he signed, he stuck out his hand again. Casson shook it. The flash photographers took more pictures.
“This is a great day for Los Angeles!” one of the reporters said.
He worked for the Times. “It’d be a better day, and it would have come sooner, if your paper hadn’t spent the last I don’t know how many years calling us a pack of lousy Reds,” Chester said. “I bet you don’t print that—I bet you pretend I never said it—but it’s true just the same.”
“I’m writing it down,” the reporter said. Men from the other, smaller, papers in town were writing it down, too. It would show up in their rags. Whether or not the guy from the Times put it in his piece, Chester’s bet was his editor would kill it before it saw print.
“How much will this help the war effort?” asked a man from the Torrance Daily Breeze, a paper that had given labor’s side of the class struggle a much fairer shake.
Chester nodded to Harry T. Casson, as if to say, You know more about that than I do. Chester wasn’t shy about admitting it, not when it was true. The builder said, “We hope it will help quite a bit. We think everything will go better now that we’re all pulling in the same direction.”
“Will the other builders settle with the union?” asked the reporter from the Breeze.
“I can’t speak for them,” Casson said, which was half true at most. “I hope they will, though. We’ve had too much trouble here for too long.”
“Amen to that,” Chester said. “I think we could have settled earlier—the union hasn’t made any secret about the terms it was after—but I’m awfully glad we’ve got an agreement at last.”
A man from the Pasadena Star-News asked, “With so many workers going into defense plants, how much will this deal really mean? Can the union keep its members? Except for war work, how much building will be going on?”
“You want to take that one?” Martin and Casson both said at the same time. They laughed. So did everybody else at the press conference. With a shrug, Chester went on, “Steve, to tell you the truth, I just don’t know. We’ll have to play it by ear and see what happens. The war’s turned everything topsy-turvy.”
“That about sums it up,” Harry T. Casson agreed. “We’re doing the best we can. That’s all anybody can do, especially in times like these.” He held up a well-manicured hand. “Thank you very much, gentlemen.”
Some of them still scribbling, the reporters got up from their folding chairs and headed off toward typewriters in their offices or towards other stories. “Well, Mr. Casson, we’ve gone and done it,” Chester said. “Now we see how it works.”
“Yes.” The building magnate nodded. “That’s what we have to do.” He took out a monogrammed gold cigarette case that probably cost at least as much as Martin had made in the best three months of his life put together. “Smoke?”
“Thanks.” Martin got out a book of matches that advertised a garage near his place. He lit Casson’s cigarette, then his own. The tobacco was pretty good, but no better than pretty good. He’d wondered if capitalists could get their hands on superfancy cigarettes, the way they could with superfancy motorcars. That they couldn’t—or at least that Casson hadn’t—came as something of a relief.
Casson eyed him. “And where do you go from here, Mr. Martin?”
“Me? Back to work,” Chester answered. “Where else? It’s been way too long since I picked up a hammer and started working with my hands again.”
“I wonder if you’ll get the satisfaction from it that you expect,” Casson said.
“What do you mean?”
“You said it yourself: you haven’t worked with your hands for a long time,” Casson answered. “You’ve worked with your head instead. You’ve got used to doing that, I’d say, and you’ve done it well. You’re not just a worker any more. For better or worse, you’re a leader of men.”
“I was a sergeant in the last war. I commanded a company for a while, till they found an officer who could cover it,” Chester said.
Harry T. Casson nodded. “Oh, yes. Those things happened. I was a captain, and I had a regiment for a couple of weeks. If you lived, you rose.”
“Yeah.” Chester nodded, too. He wasn’t surprised at what Casson said; the other man had the air of one who’d been through the mill. “Point is, though, I didn’t miss it when the shooting stopped. I don’t much like people telling me what to do, either.”
Casson tapped his ash into a cheap glass ashtray on the table. “Maybe not, but you’ve done it, and done it well. You’re in command of more than a regiment these days. Will the people you’re in charge of let you walk away? Will the lady who’s in charge of you let you do it?”
“Rita’s my worry,” Chester said, and Casson nodded politely. Rita hadn’t wanted him to start a union here. He remembered that. Why would she care if he went back to what he’d done before? If local president sounded grander than carpenter, so what? As for the other members of the union . . . “There’s bound to be somebody who can do a better job than I can.”
“You may be surprised,” Harry T. Casson said. “You may be very surprised indeed. You’ve been stubborn, you haven’t been vicious, and you’ve been honest. The combination is rarer than you’d think. I made a bargain with you in half an hour, once I decided I needed to. I wouldn’t even have dickered with some of your, ah, colleagues.”
“That’s flattering, but I don’t believe it for a minute,” Martin said.
“Believe it,” the magnate told him. “I don’t waste time on flattery, especially not after we’ve made our deal. What’s the point? We’ve already settled things.”
“I’m glad we have, too,” Chester said.
“Yes, well, this poor miserable old country of ours is going to take plenty more knocks from the damned Confederates. I don’t see much point in hurting it ourselves,” Casson said.
“Makes sense,” Chester said, and then, “Is Columbus really surrounded?”
“All I know is what I read in the newspapers and hear on the wireless,” Casson answered. “The Confederates say it is, we say it isn’t. But both sides say there’s fighting north of there. Draw your own conclusions.”
Martin already had. He liked none of them. He said, “I’m from Toledo. I know what holding on to Ohio means to the country.”
“I hope people back East do,” Casson said. “If they don’t, I think the Confederates’d be happy to teach them.” He grimaced, then tried a smile on for size. “Not much either one of us can do about that.”
“No, not unless we want to put on the uniform again,” Chester said. Harry T. Casson grimaced again, in a different way. Chester laughed, but not for long. “If Ohio goes down the drain, it could come to that. If Ohio goes down the dra
in, we’ll need everything and everybody we can get our hands on.”
He hoped Casson would tell him he was wrong, tell him that he was flabbling over nothing. He wouldn’t have agreed with the building magnate, but he hoped so anyhow. Casson didn’t even try. He just said, “You’re right. We’re a little long in the tooth, but only a little, and we’ve been through it. They’d put green-gray on us pretty damn quick if we gave ’em the chance.”
“I’ve thought about it,” Martin said.
“Have you?” Casson pointed a finger at him. “You’re mine now. I can blackmail you forever. If you don’t do what I say, I’ll tell that to your wife.”
“Rita already knows,” Chester said. That was true. He didn’t say anything about how horrified she’d been when she found out. He didn’t suppose he could blame her. Her dismay was probably the biggest single thing that had kept him from visiting a recruiting station. He didn’t say anything about that, either; it was none of Harry T. Casson’s business. He just took his copies of the agreement they’d signed. “I’d better get home.”
“You don’t have an auto, do you?” Casson asked.
“Nope.” Chester shook his head.
“That’s hard here,” the magnate said. “Los Angeles is too spread out to make getting around by trolley very easy.” Chester only shrugged. Casson went on, “I’d be happy to give you a lift, if you like.”
“No, thanks,” Chester said. “I took the trolley here. I can take it back. If you give me a ride, half the people in the union will think I’ve sold ’em down the river. And that’s liable to be what you’ve got in mind.”
The other man looked pained. “Times are pretty grim when a friendly gesture can get misunderstood like that.”
“You’re right. Time are pretty grim when something like that can happen,” Chester said. “But these are the times we’ve got. We’ve made a deal. I’m glad we’ve made a deal—don’t get me wrong. We’re class enemies just the same, and pretending we’re not isn’t going to change things even a dime’s worth.”
Settling Accounts Return Engagement: Book One of the Settling Accounts Trilogy Page 18