The Man with the Iron Heart

folks!” and flashed a thumbs-up. Diana wanted to kiss him. Not everybody hated them! She’d hoped that was true, but she hadn’t been sure.

A fat, middle-aged man stood on the sidewalk watching the demonstrators. Every time Diana turned around and got another look at him, he got hotter and hotter. Edna Lopatynski also saw it. “That fellow’s going to make trouble,” she said quietly.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Diana answered. “But what can we do about it?”

They went back and forth twice more before the fat man blew a fuse. “Commies!” he yelled. “Nazis!” He didn’t know which brush to tar them with, so he used both. Then he charged into them, fists flailing.

A woman squalled when he hit her. Another woman stuck out a foot and tripped him as he rampaged past her. A man sat on him and kept him from doing anything worse than he’d already done.

The Capitol police came over in a hurry this time, and came over in force. The fat man yelled obscenities. “I dink he boke by dose,” said the woman he’d hit. Her nose was sure bleeding: red spotted the front of her white blouse. Jack and the photographer from the News both took pictures of her.

“You can’t haul off and belt a lady like that, buddy,” one of the policemen said. “You’re under arrest.”

“Lady?” The fat man found several other things to call her, none of them endearments. Then he said, “You oughta haul her off to jail for doing crap like this. You oughta haul every goddamn one o’ these yahoos off to jail, and you oughta lose the key once you do.”

“They may be jerks, but they aren’t breaking any laws,” the flatfoot answered. “Assault and battery, now…” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “You should be ashamed of yourself. She ain’t even half your size.”

“A rattlesnake isn’t big, either, but it’s still poison.” The fat man had strong opinions.

So did Diana. She wanted to tell the cops to haul him off and lose the key. No matter what she wanted, she made herself go on marching without saying anything. The police didn’t like her. They wouldn’t appreciate her sticking her oar in. If she just let them do their job…

They did it. They got the fat man up onto his feet, cuffed his hands behind him, and led him away. He swore a blue streak all the way, which did him exactly no good.

“Bring our boys home from Germany!” Diana chanted. The other picketers joined her. Together, they made more noise than the fat man. Diana thought it was obvious they made more sense, too.

“Here you are, Congressman.”Gladys plopped the day’s papers onto Jerry Duncan’s desk.

“Thanks,” he said. “Could you bring me another cup of coffee, too? Can’t seem to get myself perking this morning.”

She grabbed the cup and saucer. “I’ll be right back.”

“Thanks,” he said again, absently this time. He was already starting to study the papers. You had to keep up with what was going on if you wanted any chance to keep your head above water. The New York Times came first. It was much more pro-administration than Jerry was, but had far and away the best coverage of foreign affairs.

Gladys brought back the fresh cup, steam rising from it. Jerry Duncan sipped without consciously noticing where the coffee’d come from. After the Times, he went through the Wall Street Journal for economic news, and the Washington Evening Star, the Post, and the Times-Herald to find out what was going on in his second home.

Those done, he reached for the Indianapolis News and the Indianapolis Times, then for the Anderson Democrat. You also had to stay current with what was going on in your district. If you decided Washington was your first home, not your second, the folks back in Indiana would likely throw you out on your ear next chance they got.

Right in the middle of the News’ front page was a photo of cops dragging off a wild-eyed fellow who could have dropped a few pounds, or more than a few. A woman with a picket sign and what looked like bloodstains on her face and on her blouse watched him go. Man arrested after attacking demonstrator, the caption said.

The story under the photo was almost studiously neutral. It identified the leader of the demonstration as “Diana McGraw, 48, of Anderson.” She was “moved to oppose government policy on Germany after her son, Patrick, was killed there in September, long after the formal German surrender.”

“Hmm,” Jerry said, and went to see what the Times had to say: it was the more liberal paper in town. Because it backed the Democrats, it looked down its nose at anyone presuming to protest against their polices. But even its tone was more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger. Its editorial said, “While we understand Mrs. McGraw’s grief and outrage, and those of other similarly afflicted, the United States must persist in its mission of returning Germany to civilization and democracy to Germany.”

As for the Anderson Democrat, it didn’t seem to know which way to jump. Its name told where its politics lay. On the other hand, Diana McGraw was a home town girl, doing something that got noticed beyond the home town’s borders-not easy, not if your home town was Anderson. “What would you do if it were your son?” she’d asked the Democrat’s reporter after the demonstration ended.

As far as Jerry was concerned, that was the sixty-four-dollar question. Even the Democrat and the Indianapolis Times seemed to understand as much. How could you condemn people who’d lost their boys in combat for wanting to know why? And wasn’t that all the more true when they’d lost boys in combat when there wasn’t supposed to be combat any more?

You might disagree with them-both papers plainly did. But you’d have a devil of a time calling them disloyal. A dead son gave someone carrying a picket sign a decided moral advantage.

Jerry realized he wouldn’t be the only Congressman reading these reports. Come to think of it, he might not have been the only Congressman Diana McGraw saw when she came to Washington. If he wanted to stay in front on this issue, he couldn’t sit on his hands. He had to stand up, or someone else would get ahead of him. His colleagues could and would draw the same conclusions he was drawing.

His own party desperately needed a club with which to clobber the Democrats. The other side had dominated Congress since the start of the 1930s. They’d just won the biggest war in the history of the world. That might set them up to keep winning elections forever if the GOP couldn’t find a shillelagh.

If over a thousand GIs dead since V-E Day weren’t a shillelagh…then the Republicans would never come up with one. Jerry started scribbling notes.

The House was debating a bill that would finish rationing by the end of the year. There wasn’t much debate, because nobody worth mentioning opposed the bill. The whole country hated rationing. The sooner it disappeared forever, the happier everyone would be.

When Jerry raised his hand that afternoon, then, he had no trouble getting the floor. Speaker Rayburn pointed his way and said, “The chair recognizes the gentleman from Indiana.” The wily Texan no doubt hoped Jerry would speak out against the bill. If a Republican wanted to commit political suicide, Sam Rayburn would gladly hand him a rope.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker.” Jerry liked the House’s ritual courtesies. “Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss a related kind of rationing-the rationing of our troops’ lives in Germany.”

Bang! Down came Rayburn’s gavel. “You are out of order, Mr. Duncan!”

“Our occupation policy is out of order, Mr. Speaker,” Jerry said.

Bang! “You are out of order, Mr. Duncan!” Rayburn sounded like God right after the children of Israel did something really stupid. If you could imagine God moon-faced and pouchy and bald, he looked like Him, too.

“Mr. Speaker!” “Point of order, Mr. Speaker!” The cries of protest came from a dozen Republican throats, maybe more. Jerry had wondered whether anyone else would back his play. There’d been a one-paragraph AP squib about the demonstration on page fourteen of the New York Times, nothing more. The same squib showed up in the Evening Star. The Times-Herald and the Post didn’t bother running it. Maybe the other Republicans had noticed anyhow.

Maybe Sam Rayburn had, too. He shook his head, glowering down from his high seat on the marble dais. “This has nothing to do with the measure under consideration, and the gentleman from Indiana knows it.”