The Victorious Opposition (27 page)

“All right, all right, all right.” Mary Jane’s smile had a wry twist to it. “I can’t make you do anything. After all,
I’m
not
your
mother.”

Sylvia laughed. She hadn’t dreamt she’d be able to. But she did. Her daughter’s company and some strongly fortified coffee made the terror she’d felt not long before seem distant and unreal.

A few days later, she had a visitor who surprised her. Joseph Kennedy simply showed up, assuming she’d be glad to see him. “Good day, Mrs. Enos,” he said, and tipped his hat to her. “I hope we can rely on you to help get out the vote for Hoover and Borah.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after our . . . quarrel last year,” Sylvia said.
And I hoped I wouldn’t.

He shrugged. “State Democratic headquarters reminded me how useful you’ve been. The Party comes first.” By his face, he wished it didn’t.

“I wondered whose side you’d be on this year,” she remarked.

“Why?” Kennedy asked, in real surprise now. Then he laughed. “You mean because Al Smith is a Catholic, and so am I?” Sylvia nodded. Kennedy laughed again, louder this time. “My dear lady, the Pope is infallible. I believe that. Al Smith? If Al Smith were the Pope, I’d kiss his ring. Since he’s not, I’m going to do my best to kick his . . . fanny.”

Knowing it would be useless, Sylvia said, “Mr. Kennedy, I’m not your ‘dear lady,’ and I don’t want to be.”

“Well, Mrs. Enos, that’s as may be,” the Democratic organizer said. “I’ll tell you this, though: I have no idea what you see in that miserable hack of yours.”

He’d made that crack before. “I told you, Ernie’s no hack,” Sylvia said. “He’s a
writer
!”

Kennedy shrugged again. “If you say so.” His dismissive tone said he wasn’t about to change his mind. But he went on, “Never mind bedfellows, then. We’ll keep this to politics. You’ve been helping the Democrats for a long time. Do you want another Socialist president now?”

“Well, no,” Sylvia admitted. “You’ll pay the same as you have the past couple of elections?”

“Of course,” Kennedy answered, as if insulted she needed to ask. “I told you you’d been good. We pay for what we get.”

If state headquarters tells us to,
she thought. Still, the money was better than she could get any other way. Royalties from
I Sank Roger Kimball
were skimpy these days. There’d been talk of putting it out as one of the newfangled paperbound pocket books, but that hadn’t happened yet, and she didn’t know if it would. “It’s a deal—as long as you keep your hands to yourself.”

Joe Kennedy sighed. “You drive a hard bargain, Mrs. Enos, but yes, that’s a deal.” He held out his hand. Warily, Sylvia took it. She knew the only reason he stayed interested in her was that she stayed uninterested in him. But she couldn’t stomach giving in to get him out of her hair.

The Democrats trotted her out at a rally near T Wharf a few days later. Party faithful listened as she told them this was no time to let a Socialist, someone who was bound to be soft on the Confederate States, take up residence in Powel House. The crowd clapped in all the right places. Because they did, Sylvia needed longer than she would have otherwise to realize her speech was falling flat.

Four years earlier, the Democrats, who’d lost three presidential elections in a row, had been hungry—more than hungry; desperate—to reclaim Powel House. And they’d done it, even if Calvin Coolidge had dropped dead before he could take the oath of office. But Hoover hadn’t proved any better at fixing the collapse than Socialist Hosea Blackford had before him. And he was about as exciting as oatmeal without sugar. He was earnest. He worked hard. It wasn’t enough.

Even before the last round of applause faded, Sylvia thought,
The Democrats are going to lose this time.
The feeling—no, the certainty—was irrational, but no less real for that.

Her eyes met those of Joe Kennedy, who stood on the platform with her. He was still clapping, but his smile seemed held on his face by force of will alone.
He knows,
she realized.
He’s slimy, but he’s not stupid. Yes, he knows.

He gave back a shrug, as if to say,
This is my job, and I’m going to do it as well as I can no matter what happens.
Sylvia nodded in reply; that was something she understood. She could respect Kennedy the political operator, no matter what she thought about Kennedy the man.

As she stepped down from the platform, a new realization came to her. The election still lay a couple of months ahead. She was going to have to be a professional herself all through that time, going up on platforms and saying what needed to be said in spite of what she thought would happen in November. That wouldn’t be easy. It might be harder than anything she’d ever tried before.

Her back stiffened.
I don’t care whether it’s easy or not. If Joe Kennedy can do it, so can I.

C
arl Martin was just starting to creep. Every minute or so, he’d forget how to move and flop down like a jellyfish. At six months, that didn’t bother him. He thought it was funny. He’d try again after a while, when he remembered how to make his elbows work, and try to find something on the floor and stick it in his mouth. “Bwee!” he said proudly.

“You tell ’em, kid,” Chester Martin agreed. He was pretty proud of his son, though he sometimes wondered how any baby ever lived to grow up. Some of the things Carl did, and of course did without thinking about them. . . . You had to watch him not just every minute, but every single second.

As if to prove the point, the junior member of the Martin family headed for a book of matches that shouldn’t have been on the floor in the first place. Carl didn’t want a cigarette. He wanted to find out what matches tasted like. Chester grabbed them before his son could. Carl clouded up and started to cry.

“You can’t eat matches,” Chester said. “They aren’t good for you.”

Telling something like that to a six-month-old, naturally, did no good at all. Carl kept on crying. And, because he was crying, he forgot to hold his head up. When it came down, he banged it on the floor. That really gave him something to cry about.

“What now?” Rita called from the kitchen.

Chester explained, as best he could over his son’s din. He picked up the boy and cuddled him. The crying subsided. Chester pulled out his hankie and wiped snot off Carl’s face. Carl didn’t like that. He never did.

To distract him, Chester turned on the wireless. They’d bought the set not long after the baby was born. They couldn’t quite afford it, but Rita had wanted it badly. Feeding the baby meant being up in the middle of the night a lot. She wanted it to stay dark then, to keep Carl from waking up. Listening to music or news or a comedy show was better than sitting there all alone in the quiet.

Somebody knocked on the door. “There’s Sue and Otis and Pete,” Chester said.

“Oh, God, they’re early!” Rita said. “Well, let ’em in. The fried chicken’ll be done in about fifteen minutes.”

When Chester’s sister and brother-in-law and nephew came in, Sue exclaimed over the baby: “How big he’s getting!”

“He’s still tiny,” said Pete, who at nine seemed to be shooting up like a weed himself, all shins and forearms and long skinny neck.

Otis Blake pointed to him. “I think this one’s going to be a giraffe when he grows up.”

Sue shook her head. “No, he won’t. Giraffes eat vegetables.” Pete made a horrible face at the very idea.

Having company over made Carl forget he’d been crying and stare about wide-eyed. Chester wondered, not for the first time, what babies made of the world. It had to be confusing as hell. He put his son down, went into the kitchen, and pulled four bottles of Burgermeister out of the icebox. He set one on the counter by Rita, who was turning chicken pieces, and brought the others out for himself and Sue and Otis.

His brother-in-law raised his beer in salute. “Here’s to California,” he said.

“I’ll drink to that, by God,” Chester said, and did. “This place has saved my life. Back in Toledo, I’d still be out of work.”

“Oh, yes.” Blake nodded vigorously. “Back in Toledo, I was out of work, too. I’m not making as much as I did back there when I had a job—”

“Unions here aren’t what they were in Toledo,” Chester broke in.

“I’ve seen that,” Otis Blake agreed. “It’ll come, I think. But I’m working, and I’m not broke or on the dole. The way things have been since the stock market went south, I can’t complain.”

“That’s what years of hard times have done to us,” Chester said. “They’ve made us satisfied with less than we used to have. It’s not right.”

“What can we do about it, though?” his sister asked.

Before Chester could answer, Rita called, “Supper’s ready!” He felt like a prizefighter saved by the bell, because he didn’t know. He remembered the years when he’d eaten chicken gizzards and hearts because he couldn’t afford anything better. He’d even started to like them. Too often, though, he couldn’t afford them or beef heart or tripe or any of the other cheap meats. He remembered plate after plate of noodles or potatoes and cabbage, too.

Now, though, he grabbed himself a drumstick. The crispy skin burned his fingers. “Ow!” he said. Along with green beans and fried potatoes, it made a tasty meal—and he could leave the gizzard and heart and neck to Pete, who, since he’d started eating them as a kid, remained convinced they were treats. Later, when Chester saw everybody else had plenty, he also snagged a thigh. After juicy dark meat, giblets weren’t worth talking about, let alone eating.

Rita put Carl in his high chair and gave him small bits of food along with his bottle. He wound up wearing as much as he ate. He usually did. Pete watched in fascination. Sue said, “You used to eat that way, too.” The boy shook his head, denying even the possibility.

After apple pie, Rita made coffee for the grownups. Carl got fussy. She changed him and put him to bed. Otis Blake lit a cigarette. “Who are you two going to vote for when the election gets here?” he asked.

“Hoover hasn’t done anything much,” Chester said.

“Hoover hasn’t done anything, period,” Rita said. “
I’m
voting for Al Smith. I don’t know about him.” She pointed at her husband. She still hadn’t fully forgiven him for backing away from the Socialist camp in 1932.

He said, “I expect I’ll vote for Smith, too. The only thing that bothers me about him is that he’s never looked outside New York before now. I’m not sure he’s tough enough to spit in Jake Featherston’s eye if he has to.”

His brother-in-law scratched his head. He had a wide, perfect, permanent part in the middle of his scalp; had the bullet that made it been even a fraction of an inch lower, Sue would never have got the chance to meet him after the war. He said, “Don’t you think we need to worry about the USA more than we do about the CSA?”

“Not if another war’s brewing,” Chester said.

“Featherston fought in the last one,” Blake said. “He couldn’t be crazy enough to want to do that again. Besides, he’s firing generals. Remember? That was in the paper this past summer.”

“That’s true. It was,” Chester admitted. “I said I’d probably vote for Smith. I probably will.”

“Me, too,” Sue said. “Our folks are the only Democrats left in the family.”

Otis Blake snorted. “Yeah, they’re still Democrats even though your dad hasn’t got a job and can’t get one.” He and Chester had both sent Stephen Douglas Martin money whenever they could afford to.

The Blakes didn’t stay late. It was a Sunday night, with school ahead for Pete and work for Otis. After they left, Rita washed the dishes. Chester, who also had work in the morning, turned on the wireless before getting ready for bed. He found a news show.

“President Hoover vowed today to keep Houston in the United States regardless of Confederate pressure in the state,” the announcer said. “He also accused Governor Smith of having too soft a policy on the Confederate States. ‘Such well-meaning foolishness got the United States into trouble in the past two Socialist administrations,’ Hoover said. ‘I don’t intend to go down that mistaken road. We must be strong first. Everything else springs from that.’ ”

Chester grunted. Foreign policy was the only area where he favored the Democrats’ platform over the Socialists’. He shrugged. When you got right down to it, what happened in the USA counted for more than what happened outside. He’d voted against his class interest four years ago, and he’d spent most of the time since regretting it. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

The newscaster went on, “When asked for comment on the president’s remarks, Governor Smith said, ‘It’s hard to keep people in a country where they don’t want to stay. You would think the United States had learned that lesson after the War of Secession, but the present administration seems as thick-headed there as it does everywhere else.’ ”

Take that,
Martin thought. He wasn’t sure he agreed with Al Smith, but he liked the way the governor of New York came back swinging hard when Hoover attacked him. The announcer went on to talk about the dust storms that were picking up the soil of drought-ridden Kansas and Sequoyah and Houston and blowing it east, so the dust came down in New York City and even on the decks of ships out of sight of land in the Atlantic. The winds blew from west to east, so the dust storms didn’t directly affect Los Angeles, but Martin had seen in newsreels how dreadful they were.

And farmers from the afflicted states were giving up any hope of bringing in a crop on their bone-dry farms. A lot of them were coming west by train or in rattletrap motorcars, looking for whatever work they could find. Two or three men who spoke with a twang had joined Chester’s construction crew. They worked hard enough to satisfy even the exacting Mordechai, who thought anybody who didn’t go home limp with exhaustion every night was a lazy son of a bitch.

Rita came out of the kitchen in the middle of the football scores. Since moving west himself, Chester had become passionately devoted to the fortunes of the Los Angeles Dons, the local franchise in the West Coast Football League. The Seattle Sharks, unfortunately, had smashed the hometown heroes, 31–10.