now. It's swell. Everything keeps going up and up and up. It's like coining money.'
'Did you see that Congresswoman Blackford is coming to town Saturday?' Rita asked.
'No, I missed that,' he answered. 'Do you want to go see her?'
'Sure? Why not? It'll be fun,' Rita said. 'And besides, she shows what a woman can do when she puts her mind to it.'
Although Chester wasn't sure he liked the sound of that, he said, 'All right,' anyhow, finding agreement the better part of valor. Then he added, 'Did I ever tell you that I-'
'Met Flora Blackford when she was still Flora Hamburger?' Rita cut in. 'Had her brother in your company during the war?' She shook her head. Her bobbed dark blond hair flipped back and forth. 'No. You never, ever told me that. I've never heard it, not even once. Can't you tell?'
'I can tell you're giving me a hard time,' he answered. She grinned. So did he.
Flora Blackford chose to speak near the Toledo city hall, in the shadow of the smaller copy of the great statue of Remembrance that stood on Bedloe Island in New York harbor. Chester found that interesting, even challenging. For more than a generation, remembrance had been the loudest drum the Democrats beat. For a nation twice defeated, twice humiliated, by the CSA and the Confederates' European allies, it was a drumbeat that had struck deep chords.
But now the Great War was eleven years past. The United States had won it. People still held Remembrance Day parades, but they didn't march with flags upside down any more. Having won, the United States were no longer in distress. And, ever since the Great War ended, the Democrats hadn't been able to find any other theme that resonated with the voters as remembrance had.
And now, here stood Flora Blackford under that great statue with the gleaming sword. By the way she stood there, she said Remembrance-and the Democrats-spoke to yesterday's worries, yesterday's needs. I'm going to talk about what you need to hear today-and tomorrow, she said without words, merely by standing there.
'We've come a long way the past eight years,' she said, 'but we've still got a long way to go. When President Sinclair was elected, you risked losing your job if you went out on strike. Some of you had lost your jobs. That can't happen any more, thanks to the laws we've passed.'
Chester Martin pounded his palms together. He'd fought company goons, and he'd fought the police who served as the big capitalists' watchdogs and hunting hounds. Next to what he'd been through in the trenches, those brawls hadn't been anything much. And if you weren't willing to fight for what you wanted, did you really deserve to get it? He believed in the class struggle. He believed in it all the way down to his toes.
When the applause died down a little, Vice President Blackford's wife went on, 'You know the Democrats never would have passed a bill like that, or like the one that gives workers the right to take leave without pay if there's a baby in the family or someone takes sick and then get their jobs back. They were in power from 1884 to 1920, and they still behave as though it's 1884.'
That drew not only applause but whoops of laughter. It also fit in very well with what Chester had been thinking not long before. Flora Blackford continued, 'And we tried to give you old-age insurance, too. We tried hard. But we couldn't quite manage that, because the Democrats had enough men in the Senate to tie up the bill with a filibuster. We've got to elect more Socialists. Friends, comrades, the presidency is important, but it's not enough, not by itself. We have to fight the forces of reaction wherever we find them. That's what the class struggle is all about.'
It wasn't how Martin imagined the class struggle. He took the phrase literally. He'd broken enough heads in his time to have reason to take it literally. He'd taken his lumps, too; the real problem with the class struggle was that the capitalists and their lackeys fought back hard. But the idea of carrying the struggle even to the halls of Congress held a powerful appeal for him.
'We don't need the enormous Army and Navy we had before the Great War, the Army and Navy that ate up so much money and so much of our industry,' Flora said. 'We've won the war. Now we can enjoy what we won. Factories can make goods for people, not for killing. We can spend our wealth on what we need, not on battleships and machine guns and barrels. We've fought our neighbors too many times. We can work toward living at peace with them now.'
That drew more loud cheers. Chester joined in them, but more than a little halfheartedly. This was the part of the Socialist platform that still graveled him. Still, Flora Blackford expressed it well. Maybe the 1920s were so prosperous because less money was going into weapons and fortifications and more into people's pockets. Maybe.
'Hosea Blackford will take us on toward the middle of the twentieth century,' Flora declared. 'Calvin Coolidge will drag us back into the nineteenth century. Which way do you want to go? The choice is yours-it's in the people's hands. I ask you not to turn your back on the future! I ask you to vote Socialist, to vote for Hosea Blackford for president and Hiram Johnson for vice president. Let Dakota and California show the rest of the country the way! Thank you!'
More applause-thunderous applause. Rita said, 'I can't wait for November.'
'Neither can I,' Chester agreed. That was how a good stump speech was supposed to work. It made the faithful eager. Men and women pushed forward, trying to get a word with Flora Blackford now that she'd come down off the platform. 'Come on,' Martin told his wife, and did some pushing himself, wondering if the vice president's wife would remember him.
He didn't really expect her to, and she didn't, not when she looked at him. But when he shouted his name at her, she nodded. 'You were David's sergeant,' she said.
'That's right, ma'am.' Chester grinned and nodded. 'And this is my wife, Rita.'
'Pleased to meet you.' Flora clasped Rita's hand. 'Will you vote for my husband on Election Day?'
'I sure will,' Rita answered. 'I was going to even before I heard you talk. But even if I'd been thinking about voting for the Democrats before, you would have made me change my mind.'
'Thank you very much,' Flora Blackford said. 'He needs all the votes he can get, believe me. We can't take anything for granted. If we do, we're liable to lose.'
'We'd better not,' Chester Martin said. Before Vice President Blackford's wife could answer, a fresh surge of people from behind pushed Rita and him away from her. Again, that was no surprise; he felt lucky to have talked with her at all. Turning to Rita, he asked, 'What do you think?'
'She's honest,' Rita said at once. 'If she is, it's a good bet her husband is, too. And she knew who you were as soon as you told her your name. That was something.' She proudly took his arm. 'You know important people.'
He laughed. 'Stick with me, kiddo, and I'll take you to the top.'
Rita laughed, too, but only for a moment. Then she sobered. 'You really do know important people, Chester. That might turn out to be important one of these days. You never can tell.'
'Maybe.' But Chester didn't believe it, not down deep. 'I don't think Flora Blackford's the sort of person you can use to pull strings. She was in Congress, remember, when her brother got conscripted, and she didn't pull any for him. He could have had some soft, safe job behind the lines-typist or driver or something like that. He could have, but he didn't. He went into the fighting, and he got shot. If she didn't help David Hamburger, she's not likely to help me.'
'That depends on what you'd need to ask her,' Rita answered. 'Like I said a minute ago, you never can tell.'
Somebody stepped on Chester's foot, hard. 'Ow!' he said. In the crowd, he couldn't even tell who'd done it. He pointed toward the trolley stop. 'Let's get out of here and go home before we get trampled.'
'Suits me,' his wife said. 'I'm glad we came, though. She made a good speech-and I found out what a special fellow I married.'
Martin started to tell her he was just an ordinary guy. He started to, but he didn't. If Rita wanted to think he was a special fellow, he didn't mind a bit.
F lora Blackford had waited out six elections to the House of Representatives. She'd been nervous every single time, though her New York City district was solidly Socialist and she'd had easy races after the first one. Now, for the first time since 1914, she wasn't running for Congress-but she was more nervous than ever.
Worrying about her husband's race proved more wearing than worrying about her own ever had. She hadn't been this anxious in 1924; she was sure of that. In 1924, Hosea Blackford hadn't headed the ticket. It probably hadn't won or lost because of anything he did.
