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.
R ounding 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 Francaise 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 Francaise 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.
