“We don’t necessarily have to give them any excuses.” Maria Tresca’s brown eyes flashed. “An
“I wouldn’t put anything past Teddy Roosevelt,” Bruck said darkly.
“As a matter of fact, I doubt TR would authorize anything like that,” Flora said. “He’s a class enemy, but he has the full set of upper-class notions about legitimate and illegitimate ways and means.” As a storm of disagreement washed over her, she held up a warning hand. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think there will be any provocations. His henchmen don’t worry about the niceties. But I don’t think the order for provocations comes straight from the top. Give the devil his due. Better-give him a good kick in the
That swung people back to her. Planning went on-the order of march for unions from all the different trades that would be joining up, and, as important, the order of the speakers. Bruck said, “Such a pity Myron won’t be here to tell the people the truth.”
Everyone sighed. For a moment, the mood in the offices went soft and sad. Congressman Zuckerman had been able to rouse a crowd almost the way a
Herman Bruck appointed himself to the podium. Flora bit down on her lower lip. Herman wouldn’t come close to Zuckerman as an orator if he lived twenty years longer than Methuselah. As far as she was concerned, Zuckerman dead was a better orator than Herman Bruck alive.
She was about to add her own name to the list to counteract Bruck (not that she would have put it so crassly) when he said, “And of course, to keep the ladies happy, we’ll have a woman speaker or two. Flora, why don’t you take care of that for us?”
She’d never had to get out the hatpin to stop him from feeling her up. She felt like pulling it from her hat now, though, and sticking it into him about three inches deep. The way he casually dismissed the importance of half the human race was, in a way, a worse violation than if he’d tried to squeeze her bosom. Maybe worse still was that he hadn’t the slightest idea of what he’d done.
“I’ll speak to the women,” she said through tight lips, “and to the men, too.”
“That’s fine,” Bruck said, nodding genially-no, he hadn’t a clue. She studied him-perfect coif, perfect clothes, perfect confidence. Inside, where it didn’t show, she smiled a hunter’s smile. Perfect target.
When she got home that evening, she found her mother and her younger sister, Esther, in tears. Little Yossel, her nephew, was in tears, too, but only in the ordinary, babyish way of things. “What’s wrong?” Flora exclaimed in alarm.
With trembling finger, her mother pointed to the supper table. There, among the advertising circulars, lay an envelope with a formidable heading:
The next line, set in slightly smaller type in the same hard-to-read font, said,
The envelope was addressed to David Hamburger.
“Oh, no,” Flora whispered. The older of her younger brothers had turned eighteen a few months before, and had dutifully enrolled himself at the local Selection for Service Bureau offices. The penalties for failing to enroll-and the rewards for informants-were too high to make any other course possible. Ever since then, the family had known this day might and probably would come. That made it no easier to bear on its arrival.
Benjamin Hamburger came in next. He spotted the envelope without prompting. He said nothing, but walked into the kitchen, filled a shot glass with whiskey, and knocked it back. He breathed heavily. After a moment, he filled the glass again and drained it as quickly as before. He often took one drink. Flora could not remember the last time he’d taken two.
The apartment was eerily silent when David walked in. As Flora had, he asked, “What’s wrong?” No one spoke, just as no one ever mentioned the Angel of Death. But the angel was there, mentioned or not. So was the envelope. No one had opened it; the Hamburgers never opened one another’s mail, and when it was likely to be a letter like this…David did the job himself. “They want me to report for my physical examination next Tuesday-the second,” he said.
Sophie had come in while he was opening the envelope. She still wore mourning for her husband. She began to wail as she had when she’d learned Yossel was dead. Nothing could console her. Her dismay set little Yossel, who had calmed down, to wailing again. That was the scene on which Isaac Hamburger walked in.
“It’ll be all right,” David said, over and over, perhaps trying to convince himself as well as his kin. “It can’t be helped, anyhow.” Where the other might well have been wrong, that, at least, was true.
Flora never remembered what she had for supper that night. While she was making final preparations for the May Day parade, her brother would be looking forward to getting poked and prodded by coldhearted men in white coats, intent on seeing how he would suit as cannon fodder. She found herself wishing he were pale and consumptive, not strong and ruddy and bursting with life. Life could burst, all right, so easily. The family had seen that.
She went into the office the next morning full of grim determination to keep countless other young men from having to face the danger her brother was all too likely to confront. That meant throwing all her energy into working with the groups taking part in the parade, and into working with the authorities to make sure it went off with as little interference as possible.
“We
Some of the answers she got from police captains and city bureaucrats were conciliatory, some ambiguous at best, and more than a few downright hostile. She did what she could to defuse those. Sighing late in the afternoon on the Saturday before the parade, she said, “I’ve made more compromises the past week than in all the time I worked here up till then.”
“It’s good training for Congress,” Maria Tresca answered. The look she sent toward Flora was speculative, to say the least. Flora didn’t answer, not in words, but her smile was jauntier than she would have thought possible, considering how tired she was.
Herman Bruck never noticed the byplay. He was busy, too-impressively, ostentatiously busy-drafting his speech.
May Day dawned warm and muggy, a day right out of July. More than a few men in the crowds lining Broadway sported straw hats instead of homburgs or caps, as if it truly were summer. The band at the head of the parade-not so fancy as the military bands that strutted down the avenue on Remembrance Day-struck up the “Internationale,” then the “Marseillaise,” and last the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Everyone cheered the national anthem; the other two brought mingled cheers and boos.
“The hell with the frogs, and the hell with their song!” somebody shouted.
“It’s a song of revolution,” Flora shouted back as she marched along. “It’s a song against tyranny and oppression, and for freedom. Don’t you think we need that?”
“They’re the enemy!” the heckler yelled to her.
“They’ve forgotten freedom,” she returned. Defiantly, she added, “And so have we.”
A few eggs flew out of the crowd toward the parade. The cops didn’t do anything about that. When somebody threw a bottle instead, though, they waded in, nightsticks swinging. Flora gave a judicious nod. Throwing eggs wasn’t that far from heckling, and the Constitution protected heckling no matter who did it. A bottle, now, a bottle was liable to be lethal.
One of the red banners the Socialists carried showed a bare-chested Negro carrying a rifle. REVOLUTION OF THE CSA-1915. REVOLUTION IN THE USA-19??.
“The Rebs put the niggers down!” That cry came out of the crowd at least twice every city block.
The Socialists were ready for it: “Does that mean you want us to act just like the Confederates?” Identifying U.S. actions with those of the hated enemy reduced all but the most politically savvy hecklers to confusion-better yet, to speechless confusion.
