'Right now, it's the only game in town. Maybe things will change later on. I don't know. You'll see more of that than I do.' Potter's hair was nearer white than gray these days. 'But if you go on feeling sorry for yourself and sleeping in the square, maybe get drunk so you don't have to think about things, who wins? You? Or the USA?'
'I need to think about that,' the vet said slowly.
Potter rose from the bench. 'You've got time. Don't take too long, though. It's out there. Grab with both hands.' He never would have had to say that to Jake Featherston. Jake always grabbed.
And look what it got him. Look what it got all of us. Clarence Potter walked back toward the street the way he'd come, trying to step just where he had before. Again, nothing blew up under him. But how much difference did that make now? Jake Featherston had blown up his whole country.
F lora Blackford loved the smell of a kosher deli: the meaty odors of salami and corned beef harmonizing with the brine and vinegar of the pickle barrel and contrasting with the aromas of bagels and fresh-baked bread. Philadelphia had some decent delis, but you needed to go back to New York City for the real thing.
Her brother waved from a table in the back. David Hamburger had a double chin these days. His brown hair was thinning and going gray. Flora was graying, too. She thought the thirty years just past would have grayed anybody, even if they'd somehow happened in the blink of an eye.
'Don't get up,' she called as she hurried over to David.
'I wasn't going to. It's too much like work,' he said. The artificial leg he'd worn since 1917 stuck out in front of him, unnaturally straight. 'Good to see you. You still talk to me even though we won for a change?'
'Maybe,' Flora said. They both smiled. David had been a Democrat, and a conservative one, ever since he got hurt. Violence had done its worst to him, so he seemed to think it would solve anything. After this round of war, that seemed less foolish to Flora than it had before. Sometimes nothing else would do.
She sat down. A waiter came up. 'Nu?' he said. She ordered corned beef on rye and a bottle of beer. David chose lox and bagels with his beer. The waiter scribbled, scratched his thick gray mustache, and went away.
'How are you?' Flora asked. 'How's your family?'
'Everybody's fine. Me, I'm not too bad,' her brother answered. 'How's Joshua doing?'
She told him what Joshua had said about not being able to give anyone the finger with his left hand. David laughed an old soldier's laugh. Flora went on, 'He's lucky, I know, but I still wish it never happened.'
'Well, I understand that,' her brother said. 'I've had a pretty good life, taking it all in all, but I sure wish I didn't stop that one bullet.' David sighed. 'I'm lucky, too. Look at poor Yossel-the first Yossel, I mean. He never got to see his son at all.'
'I know,' Flora said. 'I was thinking about that every minute after Joshua got conscripted. But he wanted to join. What can you do?'
'Nothing,' David answered. 'Part of watching them grow up is figuring out when to let go. When Joshua got old enough for conscription, he got too old for you to stop him.'
'He told me the same thing,' Flora said ruefully. 'He wasn't wrong, but what did it get him? A stretch in the hospital.'
'And an idea of what the country's worth,' David said. The waiter brought the food and the beer. David piled his bagel high with smoked salmon and Bermuda onion and ignored the cream cheese that came with them. Flora thought that was perverse, but no accounting for taste. David Hamburger proved as much, continuing, 'Now that he's bled for it, he won't want to let it get soft.'
Flora had seen reactionary signs in Joshua since he got wounded, and didn't like them. Tartly, she answered, 'You don't have to get wounded to love the United States or be a patriot.'
Her brother was busy chewing an enormous mouthful. He washed it down with a swallow of beer. 'I didn't say you did,' he replied at last. 'But you sure don't see things the same way after you catch one.'
Now Flora was eating, and had to wait before she could say anything. 'Putting on the uniform doesn't turn everybody into a Democrat. Plenty of Socialist veterans-quite a few of them in Congress, in fact.'
'I know, I know,' David said. 'Still, if they'd sat on that Featherston mamzer before he got too big to sit on-'
'Who was President when Featherston took over?' Flora asked indignantly, and answered her own question: 'Hoover was, that's who. The last time I looked, Hoover was a Democrat.'
'Yeah, yeah.' David did his best to brush that aside. 'Who gave away Kentucky and Houston? Al Smith was no Democrat, and he handed the Confederates the platform they needed to damn near ruin us.'
'That was a mistake,' Flora admitted. 'The trouble was, nobody here really believed Featherston wanted a war. The Great War was so awful for both sides. Why would anybody want to do that again?'
'He didn't. He wanted to win this time. And he almost did,' her brother said. 'He wanted to get rid of his shvartzers, too. Who would have believed that? You were ahead of everybody there, Flora. I give you credit for it.'
'Sometimes you don't want to be right. It costs too much,' Flora said. 'Nobody in the USA wanted to let C.S. Negroes in when he started persecuting them. The Democrats were worse about it than the Socialists, though.'
'All right, so we didn't have things straight all the time, either,' David answered. 'Dewey'll do a better job of holding down the CSA than La Follette would have.'
'That's the plank he ran on. We'll see if he means it,' Flora said.
David laughed. 'Was there ever a politician you wouldn't say that about?'
'I can think of three,' Flora replied. 'Debs, Teddy Roosevelt, and Robert Taft. When they said they'd do something, they meant it. It didn't always help them. Sometimes it just left them with a bull's-eye on their back.'
After a moment's thought, David nodded. 'And two more,' he said: 'you and Hosea.'
'Thank you,' Flora said softly. 'I try. So did Hosea-and he never got the credit for it he deserved.' He never would, either, and she knew it, not when the economic collapse happened while he was President. After a pull at her beer, she went on, 'I'll give you another one: Myron Zuckerman.'
'He was an honest man,' her brother agreed.
Flora nodded. 'He was. And if he didn't trip on the stairs and break his neck, I never would have run for Congress. My whole life would have looked different. I would have stayed an organizer or worked in the clothing business like the rest of the family.'
'Zuckerman's bad luck. The country's good luck.'
'You say that, with your politics? You'll make me blush. It's only because I'm your sister.' Flora tried not to show how pleased she was.
'Hey, I disagree with you sometimes-well, a lot of the time. So what? You are my sister, and I'm proud of you,' David answered. 'Besides, I know I can always borrow money from you if I need it.'
He never had, not a penny. Flora had always shared with her parents and sister and younger brother, but David stubbornly made his own way. I'm doing all right, he would say. It seemed to be true, for which Flora was glad.
He grinned at her. 'So what does it mean, what we've been through since the Great War started? You're the politician. Tie it up for me.'
'You don't ask for much!' Flora exclaimed. Her brother laughed. He picked up his beer bottle, discovered it was empty, and waved for another one. Flora drank from hers. If she was going to try to answer a question like that, she needed fortifying. 'Well, for starters, we've got the whole United States back, if we can ever stop the people in the South from hating us like rat poison.'
'Since when do they like us that much?' David said: a painfully true joke. He went on, 'We can hold them down if we have to, them and the Canadians.'
'A Negro who got out of the CSA before the Great War said that if you hold a man down in the gutter, you have to get into the gutter yourself,' Flora said. 'Do we want to do that?'
'Do we want the Confederate States back in business? Do we want them building superbombs again?' David asked, adding, 'The one they used almost got you.'
'I know,' Flora said. 'Don't remind me.'
'Well, then.' By the way David said it, he thought he'd proved his point.
But Flora answered, 'Do we want our boys down there for the next fifty years, bleeding a little every day? It would be like a sore that won't heal.'
