This one was pink.
Martin stood there staring at it, altogether unmoving, for at least half a minute. He’d known the same mix of numbness, disbelief, and swelling pain when he got wounded on the Roanoke front—never before, and surely never since.
He pulled out the second sheet of paper, hoping against hope it might be something else. It wasn’t. Come Monday, he didn’t have a job any more.
Other paydays, he’d seen stunned men holding pink slips here. You didn’t say anything. You didn’t look at them. Maybe that was cruel. Maybe it had a touch of, There but for the grace of God go I. But maybe it held a sort of rough kindness, too. If you didn’t look at your fellow workers who all at once weren’t working beside you, they could say anything, do anything, they chose, and not have to worry about losing face.
The only trouble with that was, Chester had no idea what to do with the license he had. What could he possibly say? Nothing would make any difference. He was gone, and the steel mill would go on without him.
At last, one thing did occur to him. “Fuck,” he said softly. He tore up the pink slip, dropped the pieces into a trash can, and walked out. He might as well have torn himself up and thrown himself away instead. After all, what was he but a disposable proletarian the capitalists who ran the mill had just disposed of?
That thought made him look up the street toward the Socialist Party hall. He almost started over there. If anybody knew what to do, if anybody could help him, he’d find what he needed there. But he shook his head before taking his first step in that direction. The hall could wait. It was only a trolley ride away (but, with no money coming in, was it only a trolley ride?), and Rita deserved to know first.
When the trolley rattled past the statue of Remembrance across from the city hall, Martin had to look away. He’d remembered. He’d helped the United States get their honor back. He’d paid in blood and pain doing it, too. But now, it seemed, the whole world had forgotten him—him and how many hundreds of thousands, how many millions, of others just like him?
He almost missed his stop, and had to scramble off at the last minute. The motorman, who’d started rolling, sent him a sour look as he braked again. Most of the time, Martin would have apologized. Now he hardly even noticed. He trudged off toward his apartment building, his feet scuffing through snow.
A man in a ragged overcoat came toward him from an alley. “Spare change?” the fellow said, and coughed. He’d probably been hatchet-faced when he was eating well. Now a man could wound himself on the sharp angles of cheeks and nose and chin.
Martin had always given what he could, even though he hadn’t had much. Tonight, he shook his head. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I just lost my job, too.”
“Just?” The hatchet-faced man’s scorn said there were degrees in misery, too, degrees Martin hadn’t yet imagined. “It’s been two years for me. I used to have a house and a motorcar. Hell, I used to have a wife. Enjoy it. You’re only a beginner.” He tipped his battered hat and walked away.
Shivering from more than the cold, Martin hurried into his building. He half feared another beggar would find him before he got up the steps, but none did. How long can we keep this place? he wondered as he turned the key in the lock. Is the next stop a Blackfordburgh?
Rita came to the door and gave him a quick, wifely peck on the lips. “How did it . . . ?” she began. Her voice trailed away as she got a real look at his face. Slowly, the blood drained from hers. “Oh, no,” she said. “You didn’t . . .” She stopped again.
“I sure as hell did,” Chester said. “Yes, I sure as hell did, and God only knows what happens now. Have we got anything to drink in this place?”
He knew they did. He took a bottle of bourbon—KENTUCKY PRIDE, NOW MADE IN THE USA, it said—from a cupboard and poured himself a glass. Very much as an afterthought, he added a couple of ice cubes.
When he started to put the bottle away, Rita said, “Wait a minute.” She made a drink for herself, too, though she added water as well as ice to the whiskey.
Martin raised his glass. “Cheers,” he said—the very opposite of what he meant. He drank. A good many steelworkers celebrated payday by going out and getting drunk. He’d never fallen into that habit. Tonight, though, he felt like killing the bottle, and whatever other bottles they had in the place. Why not? he thought. Why the hell not? It’s not like I’ve got to get up in the morning. Who knows when I’ll have to get up in the morning again?
“What are we going to do?” Rita said in a thin, frightened voice.
“Maybe one of us’ll find a job,” Chester answered. He didn’t mean that, either. He took another sip and shook his head. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t mean it as that he didn’t believe it. Rita had been looking ever since she lost her job, and hadn’t had any luck landing a new one. She hadn’t just searched for typist positions, either. Nobody seemed to be hiring anyone, even as a waitress or a salesgirl.
As for him . . . He wanted to laugh, but he hurt too much inside. He wondered if he even ought to bother trying other steel mills. They were all laying people off, not hiring. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a new face on the foundry floor.
Rita said, “What do we do if . . . if we can’t find a job? Neither one of us, I mean.”
“Why do you think I’m drinking?” he said, which seemed as complete a reply as anything else. A couple of swallows of bourbon later, he added, “My pop’s still working. We’ve got a place to stay, if we have to.”
He couldn’t imagine a worse humiliation than moving back in with his folks as he neared his own fortieth birthday—and bringing his wife with him. His father and mother would take them in. He was sure of that. But having to crawl back to them was the last thing he wanted.
He shook his head again. The last thing he wanted was to have nowhere at all to go, and to end up in a Blackfordburgh. Next to that, the prospect of trying to fit himself and Rita into the room that had been cramped for him alone didn’t seem so bad.
Rita said, “Maybe you can find something in some other line: construction or something like that.”
Even she sounded doubtful. Chester wanted to laugh again. Again, the pain was too much to let him. As gently as he could, he asked, “Hon, why would they want me when they’ve got real carpenters and whatnot coming out their ears?”
He didn’t expect his wife to have an answer for him, but she did: “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you’d work cheaper.”
“Oh.” He winced. It wasn’t because she was wrong. It was because she was right. And so much for Socialist solidarity among workers, he thought. If times got bad enough, if people got desperate enough, Socialist solidarity went straight out the window. A job now, no matter what the pay, counted for more than the damage taking that job did to labor’s ability to get better wages later.
His glass was empty. He filled it again. Again, he started to put away the bottle. Again, Rita wouldn’t let him. She poured herself another drink, too. After she’d taken a swallow, she said, “At least your father’s still got work.”
“Yeah,” Chester said. Rita’s father had worked in a cement plant for more than thirty years, except when he’d done his time in the Army during the Great War. That hadn’t stopped him from losing his job a few months before. He hadn’t been fired, or not exactly; the company had gone belly-up. He’d been able to land only odd jobs since, and worried about losing his house.
“How much exactly have we got in the bank?” Rita asked.
Their bank was still sound, where so many had gone under. If this mess had any sort of silver lining, that was it. “We can get by for a month or two, anyhow,” Martin answered. “We’d be better off if we’d never bought any stocks at all, dammit.”
“We were suckers,” his wife said. “Lots of people were suckers.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said bitterly. “Buy when the market was near the top, throw money away on margin calls when it went sour. And you’re right, honey—we aren’t the only
ones.”
“Election’s coming up this year,” she said. “I don’t see how Hosea Blackford has a prayer of getting a second term.”
“I almost went to the Socialist Party hall before I came home,” Martin said. And then, proving the depths of his own despair, he asked, “Why the devil should anyone who’s out of work vote Socialist, though?”
“It wasn’t the Democrats who passed the relief bills,” Rita said. “They voted against most of them.”
“I know. But they say the crash never would have happened in the first place if they’d been running things.” Martin sighed. “Maybe they’re even right. Who knows?” Rita looked shocked. He held up a defensive hand. “I used to be a Democrat till after the war. My old man still is—you know that. I changed my mind when the bosses sicced the cops on us when we struck for higher wages. We needed worker solidarity then, and we needed the Socialists, too.”
“We still do.” Rita’s family had always voted Socialist.
Chester wasn’t so sure. Chester wasn’t so sure of anything just then, except that the bourbon was hitting him hard. “They’ve had twelve years,” he said. “Blackford’s had his whole term to get us back on our feet, and he hasn’t done it. Maybe the other side deserves a shot. How could it be worse?”
“You’d really vote for Calvin Coolidge?” his wife asked. The governor of Massachusetts again looked to be his party’s likely candidate for president.
“Right now, I don’t know what the hell I’d do,” Martin answered. “All I know is, I wish I still had my job. I wish I did, but I don’t. And God only knows what we’re going to do on account of that.” He waited to see if Rita would argue some more. He hoped she would—that might mean she’d seen a ray of hope he hadn’t. But she said not a word.
Rounding the Horn in the USS Remembrance felt like old times to Sam Carsten. “I came the other way, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, in the Dakota during the war,” he said as waves lifted and dropped the aeroplane carrier again and again.
“It’s easier going that way,” Lieutenant Commander Michael Watkins said. “The waves are coming with you instead of hitting you head-on.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam agreed. “I still don’t know how they ever got around this place against the wind in sailing ships.”
“It wasn’t easy—I know that,” Watkins said, snatching up his mug of coffee from the galley table as the Remembrance plunged into another trough. Sam did the same. The table was mounted on gimbals, but the pitching in the strait was more than it was designed to handle.
After another couple of rises and falls, Sam said, “I pity the poor fellows whose stomachs can’t take this.”
“That’s no joke,” Watkins said, and took another sip of coffee.
“I didn’t think it was, sir,” Carsten said. “Have you seen the sick-bay lists? It’s a good thing we don’t have to do any fighting in these latitudes, that’s all I’ve got to say.” He checked himself. “No, I take that back. Anybody else who tried to fight down here would have just as many seasick cases as we do.”
“True enough.” The other officer sent him a sly look. “But I’ll bet you don’t mind the weather a bit.”
“Who, me?” Sam tried to look innocent. Lieutenant Commander Watkins snickered, so he couldn’t have pulled it off. He went on, “Rounding the Horn in April—autumn down here, heading toward winter? No, sir, I don’t mind it one little bit. It’s the kind of weather I was made for. I can go on deck without smearing goop all over my face and my hands. I’m not burned. I’m not blistered. And we’re heading for the Sandwich Islands. I’m going to toast up there. I’ve been there before, and I know I’ll toast. So I’ll enjoy this while it lasts.”
He hadn’t intended to get so worked up, but he didn’t enjoy, never had enjoyed, owning a hide that scorched if the sun looked at it sideways. Watkins held up a hand. “All right. I believe you. Do you think we’re going to have to fight when we do get up there?”
“Me, sir?” Sam shrugged. “I’m no crystal-ball reader. No, we’re talking about the Japs, so I guess I should say I’m no tea-leaf reader.” Watkins made a face at him. He grinned, but then quickly became serious once more. “One thing I’ll tell you, though, is that a scrap with them won’t be any fun at all. I was aboard the Dakota when they suckered her out of Honolulu harbor and torpedoed her, and for the Battle of the Three Navies in the Pacific. They’re tougher than most Americans think, and that’s the truth.”
“We can whip ’em.” Lieutenant Commander Watkins sounded confident. “We can whip anybody, except maybe the High Seas Fleet—and the Kaiser’s got more things on his plate than us right now. What do you know about these Action Française people?”
“Sir, when I was on the O’Brien, we put in at Brest. I went into town to have a few drinks and look around, and I saw an Action Française riot. What they remind me of most is the Freedom Party in the CSA. They remember how things were back before the war, and they want to turn back the clock so they’re that way again.”
“Good luck,” Watkins said. “The Kaiser won’t let them get away with that, and we won’t let the damned Confederates get away with it, either. We’d better not, anyhow.”
“Yes, sir,” Carsten said. “But hard times mean parties like that get more votes, seems like. I don’t know what anybody can do about it. I don’t know if anybody can do anything.”
He was sorry when the Remembrance rounded Cape Horn and made her way up the west coast of South America to Valparaiso, where she refueled. He’d been there briefly in the Dakota during the war. Chile was a staunch U.S. ally, not least because Argentina, her rival, had close ties to England and the other great alliance system. Argentina outweighed Chile, but the peace held because the Argentines didn’t outweigh the United States and didn’t want to give them any excuse to meddle in South American affairs.
Valparaiso had grown in the years since Sam was last there. He saw no signs of damage from the great earthquake of 1906. The weather was mild, which meant he got sunburned. Then the Remembrance started north and west again, toward the Sandwich Islands. He sighed, went to the pharmacist’s mate, and drew himself yet another tube of zinc-oxide ointment.
“You don’t happen to carry this stuff in five-gallon tubs, do you?” he asked, not altogether in jest.
“Sorry, no.” Like most in his post, the pharmacist’s mate had no sense of humor.
A few days out of Valparaiso, the Remembrance changed course, swinging more nearly toward the north. “Change of plan,” Commander Martin van der Waal told Carsten. “Keep it under your hat for a bit, though, because the men won’t like it. You can forget about Honolulu. No bright lights. No booze. No fast women, not any time soon. We’re bound for patrol duty off the coast of British Columbia.”
Sam had fond memories of some of the fast women in Honolulu. Even so, he said, “That’s the best news I’ve had in months, sir. You ever eat one of those whole roasted pigs they cook in a pit in the Sandwich Islands? That’s what I look like when I’m stationed there—cooked meat, nothing else but. The coast of British Columbia . . . That’s not so bad.” He’d sunburned in Seattle, too, but only a little.
Van der Waal looked him over, then nodded to himself. “No, you wouldn’t be one to complain about going way north, would you? You’ve got your reasons.”
“You bet I do, sir.” Sam nodded. “But what’s the scuttlebutt about the change in plans? What’s going on off British Columbia?”
“We’ll be flying combat air patrol, keeping an eye out for the Japs and giving ’em hell if we catch any of ’em in the neighborhood,” Commander van der Waal replied. “I don’t know this for a fact, but I hear they’ve been trying to stir up the Canucks, get ’em to rebel again.”
“Bastards,” Carsten said without much rancor. Having gone to Ireland during the Great War, he knew that was how you played the game. But, frowning, he asked, “Why us, sir? They’ve got to have other aeroplane carriers closer to Canada than we were when we set out. Why not use
one of them? We’re going the long way round, seems like.”
“Yes, there are other carriers closer,” van der Waal agreed. “They’re purpose-built ships, not a converted battle cruiser like the Remembrance. They carry more aeroplanes than we do. And they’re all going to the Sandwich Islands. So is a lot of the rest of the fleet—whatever we don’t leave behind in the Atlantic to keep an eye on the Confederates and the limeys.”
And the Germans, Sam thought. He lit a cigarette. “If they want the first team in Honolulu,” he said slowly, “then they think there really might be trouble with the Japs.”
“That’s the way it looks to me, too,” van der Waal said. “And that means we’re going to have to pay special attention to torpedo-damage drills on our way north. Nobody knows what the Japs have operating off the Canadian coast. It may be nothing. It may be a destroyer or two. Or it may be more, including submersibles. And destroyers can launch torpedoes, too—that’s their best hope against bigger ships, in fact.”
“Yes, sir.” Sam hoped he didn’t sound too resigned. It wasn’t that torpedo-damage control wasn’t important. He knew it was. He’d seen how important it was aboard the Dakota. Important or not, though, it wasn’t what he wanted to be doing. He’d come to the carrier hoping to work with aeroplanes or, that failing, to stay in gunnery, his specialty as a petty officer before he got promoted. Of course, what he wanted to do and what the Navy wanted him to do were two different beasts.
Van der Waal knew he was reluctant. He said, “This duty is vital to the ship’s security, Ensign—vital, I tell you.”
“Yes, sir,” Carsten said again. “I know that, sir.” He stifled a sigh. “I’ll do what ever you need, sir.”
“I’m sure you will. I appreciate it,” van der Waal said. “You make a solid officer, Carsten, and I’m pleased to have you under me. If you’d gone to Annapolis instead of taking the mustang’s route, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d made captain by now.”
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