The Man with the Iron Heart

President Truman had a high, raspy, annoying voice. Diana McGraw had never really thought of it that way till after Pat got killed, but she sure did now. Of course, for the past couple of years Truman had been saying things she didn’t like and didn’t agree with. That made a difference, whether she thought so or not.

“We will carry the President’s radio address live at the top of the hour,” the radio announcer said, sounding as proud as if Truman were Moses about to read the brand new Ten Commandments on his station.

Even stolid Ed snorted at the fellow’s tone. “Are we supposed to get excited, or what? It’s not like Truman can do a Fireside Chat or anything.”

“Not likely!” Diana exclaimed. “When FDR said something, you wanted to believe him. Whenever Truman opens his mouth, you know he’s going to lie to you. That’s all he knows how to do.”

The radio filled up most of the time till the top of the hour with commercials. In a way, Diana supposed that was good: it meant there were plenty of things to buy again. During the war, a lot of normal stuff had been unavailable-and a lot of ads went away. Diana had to admit she hadn’t missed them. Now the stuff was back, and so were the pitchmen trying to convince people it was wonderful. Everybody knew the war was over…except the stubborn Missouri mule-no, jackass-in the White House.

At last, and precisely as if he were selling soap or cigarettes, the announcer said, “And here is the President of the United States!”

A long electric hiss. A burst of static, cut off almost instantly. Then Harry Truman’s voice came out of the radio speaker: “Good evening, my fellow citizens. The Nazis still lurking in Germany have proved again how dangerous they are. Laughing at the very idea of justice, they flew a C-47 into the building where their captured leaders would have gotten a fairer trial than any they gave their countless victims. This C-47 was hijacked in the air. As best we can determine, the American pilot and copilot were both callously murdered. The Nazis seem to have been able to smuggle extra explosives onto the airplane. We are still investigating how they did it.”

“Because somebody who should’ve kept his eyes open was asleep at the…darn switch,” Ed McGraw said. “Anybody can see that.”

If anybody can see it, why did you say it? Diana wondered-one more thought she wouldn’t have had before a death in Germany turned things upside down and inside out for her. All she said out loud was a quick, “Hush. I want to hear him.”

“Much as we wish they weren’t, the Nazi fanatics are still dangerous,” Truman went on. “Because they are, our soldiers need to stay in Germany until we can be sure the country will stay peaceful and democratic-that’s ‘democratic’ with a small ‘d’-after we go home.”

“They wouldn’t be fighting if we weren’t there to give them big, fat, juicy targets!” Diana burst out.

“Some people will say the fanatics wouldn’t still be fighting if we weren’t in Germany,” Truman said, as if he were sitting in the kitchen with the McGraws.

Ed chuckled and lit a cigarette. “They oughta put you in the White House, babe.”

“How could I do worse?” Diana said. “It wouldn’t be easy.”

“The Republican Party in Congress seems to feel that way,” Truman said.

“Not just Republicans! Not even close!” Diana said hotly.

“It would be nice if the world were so simple. Or it would be nice if the Republicans weren’t so simple.” Truman wouldn’t-didn’t-miss a chance to throw darts at the opposition. “But the fact is, the Nazis have a long history of attacking anybody and everybody they can reach. The world knows that, to its sorrow.”

“We’ve got the atom bomb. They don’t,” Diana said.

“If we run away from Germany, the first thing the Nazis will do if they get back into power is start working on an atom bomb,” the President said. “They will deny it. They will swear on a stack of Bibles that they would never do anything like that. They told the same lies after World War I, and look what happened to the people who believed them then-the Lindberghs and the Liberty Lobby and the rest of the fools.

“And the second thing the Nazis will do if, God forbid, they get back into power is start working on a rocket that can reach the United States from Germany,” Truman said. “They had one on the drawing board when V-E Day came and made them shelve their plans. If they build a transatlantic rocket with an atom bomb in its nose, nobody is safe any more. Nobody. Not a single soul. Not anywhere in the world.”

“Yeah, yeah, enough with the Buck Rogers bull…manure,” Ed said. “If pigs had wings, we’d all carry umbrellas.” Diana smiled at him. He might not be exciting, but his heart was in the right place. His head, too.

“Do the Republicans in Congress see that?” Harry Truman answered his own question: “They don’t. They might as well be ostriches, not elephants, the way they’ve stuck their heads in the sand. They flat-out refuse to put any money in the budget for keeping our armed forces in Germany. Without money, we will have to start bringing troops home.”

“Good!” Diana said. “That’s the idea! We should have done it a long time ago. If we had, maybe…Pat’d still be alive.” Her voice roughened at the last few words; she still couldn’t talk about him without wanting to cry.

“I know, hon,” Ed said softly, and he sounded husky, too.

There on the radio, Truman kept chattering away: “An old proverb talks about being penny wise and pound foolish. It’s so old, it goes back to the days before our independence. Nowadays, we’d understand it better if it talked about penny wise and dollar foolish. The point of it is, you’re making a mistake if you only worry about what’s right in front of you and not about what happens half a mile or a mile or five miles farther down the road. And that’s exactly what the Republicans who are starving our forces in Germany are doing.”

“My…heinie!” Diana had heard an awful lot of bad language the past couple of years. She’d used more of it herself than she ever did before. But she still tried not to when Ed could hear her.

He chuckled now, knowing-of course! — what she hadn’t said. “Way to go, babe. You tell ’em.”

“They won’t listen to me,” Truman said sadly.

“That’s ’cause they’ve got better sense than you do!” Diana also had a lot of practice talking back to politicians on the radio.

This time, the President didn’t seem to listen to her. “Trouble is, they’re Republicans, and that just naturally means they aren’t what you’d call good at listening,” he continued. “All the same, they’d better hear this, and hear it loud and clear. If they make us clear out of Germany, if they make us leave long before we really ought to, what happens afterwards is their fault. They’ll be responsible for it. I know the situation we have now isn’t very pretty. What we’ll get if we go their way will be worse. And they will be to blame for it.”

A Bronx cheer didn’t count as cussing. Diana sent the radio the wettest, juiciest raspberry she could. Ed laughed out loud.

“I wish I didn’t have to tell you things like this,” Harry Truman said. “But, unlike some people I could name, my job is to tell you what’s so, not what sounds good or what might get me a few extra votes. Thanks. Good night.”

“That was the President of the United States, Harry S Truman,” the announcer said, as if anybody in his right mind didn’t already know.

“He’s full of…malarkey,” Diana declared as Ed turned off the radio.

Her husband laughed again. “You better believe it.” He bent down and gave her a kiss. Then he nuzzled her neck. “So to heck with him for a little while, anyways.”

“Yeah. To heck with him.” Diana went upstairs to the bedroom willingly enough. You needed to keep a man happy every so often. She didn’t have anything against Ed. When it was over and he turned on the nightstand lamp so he could find his cigarettes, he had a big, sloppy grin plastered across his face. Diana made herself smile, too. She’d just started to warm up when, too soon, it was over. Was that happening more and more these days, or was she simply noticing more?

Because she didn’t want to make Ed angry or upset, she didn’t say anything about it. He finished the cigarette, gave her a tobacco-flavored kiss, then got up to use the bathroom and brush his teeth. Five minutes later, he was snoring.

Diana lay there in the darkness. It should have been better than this, shouldn’t it? Once upon a time, it had been better than this, hadn’t it? Hadn’t it?

She was a long time sleeping.

Lou Weissberg wondered what the hell Brigadier General R.R.R. Baxter’s initials stood for. There they were, three R’s in a row on the nameplate on Baxter’s desk. Readin’, ’Ritin’, ’Rithmetic Baxter? It seemed as likely as anything else. A company-grade officer couldn’t very well come right out and ask a general something like that. Lou