Walk in Hell (78 page)

A few party workers called out protests, but most only nodded, as when a doctor delivers a diagnosis grim but expected. “We carried New York,” three people said at the same time, as if that were a consolation prize.

“We aren’t carrying any of the other big states, though,” Bruck said, looking at a map of the USA. “And, now that the returns from west of the Mississippi are coming in, it doesn’t look like we’re going to carry enough of the Midwest and the West to make up for that.”

“Foolishness,” Flora said. She’d been saying the same thing since the beginning of the war. For the life of her, she didn’t understand why more people didn’t feel the same way. “If you have a mine that doesn’t give you any gold, why spend more money on it?”

Along with everyone else in the room, her mother and father, both sisters, and the younger of her two brothers nodded at that. She wished David Hamburger had been there to nod, too. But he was down in Virginia now. That filled Flora with dread. Yossel Reisen had gone down to fight in Virginia, too, and never came back. His little son slept in Sophie’s arms.

A telephone rang. Herman Bruck picked it up. He scribbled numbers on a piece of foolscap, then hung up. “New returns from City Hall,” he announced in a loud, important voice, cutting off Maria’s reading of results from farther away. “Latest returns for our district…Miller, 6,482; Hamburger, 7,912. That’s the biggest lead we’ve had tonight.”

Howls of glee filled the air. Benjamin Hamburger’s pipe sent up smoke signals. He looked over at Flora, smiling broadly around the pipe. “This is a fine country. Never doubt it for a minute. This is a fine country,” he said. “I came here with the clothes on my back and not a thing more, and now I have not a son but a daughter—a daughter, mind you!—in the Congress of the United States.” More cheers rose.

“Angelina would be proud of you,” Maria Tresca said quietly. She added, “And if the results hold, you can keep your brother out of any danger.”

“I can, can’t I?” Flora said in some surprise. The War Department would likely pay attention to the wishes of any member of Congress, even a young woman from the opposition. The War Department might even pay special attention to her wishes, in the hope that, by doing as she wanted, it could influence her vote on matters pertaining to the war.

And, in making that calculation, the War Department might prove right. All at once, leading by fifteen hundred votes, Flora contemplated the differences between running for office and being in office. The Socialists down in Philadelphia often compromised on issues Party regulars back home would sooner have seen fought to a finish. They’d compromised on war credits back in the summer of 1914, and Flora was far from the only one who wished they hadn’t.

Now came her turn in the barrel. Would she have to make deals with the Democratic majority? Could the Socialists and the few surviving Republicans do anything to slow down Teddy Roosevelt’s juggernaut?

Then she asked herself another question: if she used her Congressional office to protect David, wasn’t she taking for herself one of the privileges of the elite that Socialists from Maine to California decried? But if she didn’t do what she could to keep her brother out of harm’s way and something (God forbid!) happened to him, how could she ever look at herself again? Was her ideology more important, or her family?

Asking the question gave her the answer. In a sudden burst of insight, it also gave her a clue to something that had puzzled her since the war began: why Socialists the world over, in Germany and Austria-Hungary and England and Canada and France and the USA, and even in unprogressive countries like Russia and the Confederate States, rushed to their nations’ colors when ideology should have made them stand together against the madness.

Blood is thicker than water
. Was the cause of the nation, of kith and kin, more urgent than the rarefied summons of Socialist egalitarianism? It was a dismal notion, but made an alarming amount of sense.

A Western Union messenger brought her out of her reverie with a new batch of telegrams. When he saw who was taking them from him, he smiled and said, “I hope you get elected.”

“Thank you,” she said, startled. He was developing his ideological awareness early on; he wouldn’t be able to vote for another six or seven years.

“What’s the latest?” four people called at once.

Flora started opening telegrams. “Senator LaFollette is out in front in Wisconsin,” she said, which drew cheers. A moment later, she added, “And Senator Debs is sure to carry the presidential race in Indiana; he’s leading three to two.” Noise filled the Socialist Party offices again. Flora was pleased, too, but if Debs couldn’t carry his own home state, what was the point in having him run?

Herman Bruck was studying the map, the slow trickle of incoming returns, and a couple of sheets of paper filled with calculations. “If things go on like this,” he announced, “I think we’ll pick up about a dozen seats in the House and two, maybe three, in the Senate.”

That brought a fresh wave of applause. Bruck’s calculations had been pretty good during the Congressional elections of 1914. That made Flora think she could place some confidence in them now.

“Roosevelt repudiated!” somebody shouted. Somebody else let out a real war whoop, almost a Rebel yell.

“It’s not enough,” Flora said, and, being almost a congresswoman, got instant attention from everyone. “It’s not enough,” she repeated. “If the people had wanted to repudiate TR, to repudiate him properly, I mean, they would have elected Debs. And another couple of senators and another handful of congressmen—”

“And congresswomen!” Maria Tresca broke in.

“—Aren’t enough to matter,” Flora went on, as if her friend hadn’t spoken. “The Democrats still have a big majority in both houses. TR can jam any bill he likes right down the country’s throat, and we can’t stop him. There aren’t enough progressive Democrats to join us in a united front and keep him out of mischief. We’ve done something this year—a little something. When 1918 comes, we have to do much more.”

She got some applause for that impromptu speech. She also got some thoughtful silence, which struck her as even more important. The Socialist Party had some notion of the shape of this election now. They had to look ahead, to see where they could go next.

A phone rang. Herman Bruck answered it. He waved for quiet, which meant he was getting fresh returns. After he wrote them down, he shot a fist into the air in triumph. “Miller, 8,211,” he announced. “Hamburger, 10,625. He’ll never come back from that.”

Sarah Hamburger had been sitting, watching election night with interest but without much visible concern. Now, though, deliberately and with great dignity, she got up, walked over to her daughter, and embraced her. Tears ran down the older woman’s cheeks, and the younger one’s as well.

A few minutes later, the telephone rang again. Again, Herman Bruck answered it. After a moment, he waved, put a finger to his lips. Then he waved again, this time for Flora. “It’s Daniel Miller,” he said.

Silence fell in the offices as Flora walked over to the telephone. She took the earpiece from Herman and leaned close to the mouthpiece. “Hello?”

The Democratic appointee to Congress sighed in her ear. “I’m calling to congratulate you, Miss Hamburger,” he said. “The latest returns do seem to show that you have won this seat. That being so, I don’t see much point in wasting everyone’s time by not admitting the obvious.”

“Thank you very much, Congressman Miller,” she said. He was being gracious; she would return the favor. All around her, the Party workers started cheering once more, understanding why Miller had to be calling.

She tried waving them to silence, as Herman Bruck had done. It didn’t work. Now that they’d gained what they worked so long and hard to accomplish, they weren’t going to be quiet for anybody, not even their own candidate. Hearing the racket, Daniel Miller managed a chuckle. “Enjoy it, Miss Hamburger,” he said. “I wish it were mine. If there’s anything I can do to help you in the next couple of months, I’m sure you know how to reach me. Good night.” He hung up.

“He’s conceded,” Flora said, also setting the earpiece back on the hook. She didn’t think any of her colleagues heard her. It didn’t matter. They already knew. So did she. She was going to Congress.

The best thing—Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell sometimes thought it was the only good thing—about getting back to General Staff headquarters was the maps. Nowhere else in all the world could he get a better idea of how the war as a whole was going. Looking at them, one after another, he thought it was going pretty well. War Department cartographers had already amended national boundaries on the maps to show Kentucky as one of the United States.

Captain John Abell came into the map room. Morrell nodded to him. That Abell still
was
a captain filled Morrell with a sense that there might be justice in the world after all, no matter how well life attempted to conceal it.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Colonel Morrell,” Abell said—coolly, as he said everything coolly. That Morrell was now a lieutenant colonel seemed to fill him with a sense that there was no justice in the world.

“Morning,” Morrell agreed. The use of such polite formulas let even men who didn’t care for each other find something safe to say, and no doubt often kept them from going after each other with knives. Morrell didn’t need to look very hard to find something else safe: “With TR on the job for another four years, we’ll have the chance to make these end up looking the way they should.” He waved to the maps.

“So we will,” Abell said. “Debs would have been a disaster.”

“This is already a disaster,” Morrell said. Abell looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking Turkish. To the General Staff officer who’d spent the whole war in Philadelphia, the conflict was a matter of orders and telegrams and lines on maps, nothing more. Having almost lost a leg himself, having seen men bleed and heard them scream, Morrell conceived of it in rather more intimate terms. He went on, “It would be an even worse disaster if we dropped it in the middle, though. Then we’d just have to pick it up again in five years, or ten, or fifteen at the most.”

“There is, no doubt, some truth in that.” Abell sounded relieved, at least to the degree he ever sounded much like anything. “We have the tools, and we can finish the job.”

“Hope so, anyhow,” Morrell said. “The Canadians are in a bad way, and that’s a fact. If we knock them out of the war, that will let us pull forces south and give it to the CSA with both barrels.”

“If the Canadians had any sense, they would have long since seen they were fighting out of their weight.” Abell scowled at the situation maps of Ontario and Quebec. “They’re as irrational as the Belgians.”

Morrell shrugged. “They’re patriots, same as we are. If the Belgians had rolled over, our German friends would long since have got to Paris. If the Canadians had rolled over, we wouldn’t just be in Richmond—we’d be in Charleston and Montgomery by now.”

“I believe you’re right about that, sir.” A light kindled in Abell’s pale eyes. “We may get there yet, in spite of everything.”

“Yes,” Morrell said, and the word sounded…hungry. “We’ve owed the Rebs for a long time, and now, maybe, we can finally pay them back.”

Abell smiled. So did Morrell. They distrusted each other, being as different as two men could be while both wearing the uniform of the United States. But no matter how different they were, they shared the U.S. loathing for the Confederate States of America.

“Two generations of humiliation,” Abell said dreamily. “Two generations of those drawling bastards telling us what to do, and giving us orders out of the barrel of a gun. Two generations of their hiding behind England’s skirts, and France’s, knowing we couldn’t fight them and their friends all at the same time. We tried it once, and it didn’t work. But we have friends of our own now, so the Confederates have to try to take us on by themselves this time, and it’s turning out to be a harder job.”

Morrell walked over to the map that showed how things stood on the Maryland front. The cartographers had left on the map the Confederate advance to the Susquehanna, as if it were the high-water mark of a flood. And so, in a way, it had been—if the Rebs had got to the Delaware instead, the war would look a lot different now.

But that high-water mark was not what had drawn Morrell’s attention. These days, western Maryland was cleared of the invaders. One day soon, U.S. forces would cross the Potomac and carry the war into the Confederate States. Fortunes changed, and so did the enemy’s responses. Thoughtfully, he said, “I wonder how much trouble their nigger troops are going to cause.”

“That is the wild card,” Abell admitted. “Those black units will be riddled with Reds, so we can dare hope they won’t fight hard. And, after all, they are only Negroes.”

“The French have had pretty good luck with their colored soldiers,” Morrell said. “Guderian was telling me the Germans don’t like facing them for beans. When they attack, they put everything they’ve got into it, and they don’t want to be bothered with prisoners, either.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that, too,” Abell said. “But I’ve also heard they’ve got no staying power to speak of. That’s what the Rebs will need, being on the defensive as they are. They’re in no position to attack us. Even if the Canucks stay in the fight, the initiative is in our hands.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Morrell said. “If the Rebs stand on the defensive, they’ll lose. We’ll hammer them to death—and the voters just gave Teddy Roosevelt four more years—well, two, anyhow, till the next Congressional elections—to do exactly that. If the Confederates want to stop us, they’ll have to do some striking of their own.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Lieutenant Colonel.” By the way Abell said it, he thought Morrell was out of his mind but, inexplicably being of two grades’ superior rank, had to be humored. “The maps make it difficult to see where they could hope to do so, however.”

“Maps are wonderful,” Morrell said. “I love maps. They let you see things you could never hope to spot without ’em. But they aren’t a be-all and end-all. If you don’t factor morale into your strategic thinking, you’re going to get surprised in ways you don’t like.”