American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (12 page)

  That made most of the men around him grin and wave and call out agreement. Socialists filled the Toledo steel mills, as they filled so many factories. After the postwar strikes, the Socialist Party had gained more ground than at any time since the 1880s.

 
  Funny,
 Martin thought as he hurried out of the big building to catch a streetcar to his polling place and his home.
I saved Teddy Roosevelt’s life when he came into
the trenches to see what the war was like.

 
Well, maybe I did—I sure made him get down when the Confederates started shelling us.
 He had a letter from Roosevelt, written after he got wounded. He intended to keep that letter forever. But he was a Socialist all the same.

  A streetcar clanged to a stop. That wasn’t his route. Then the right one came. He climbed aboard, throwing five cents in the fare box. A lot of the passengers looked like him: tired, grubby men in overalls and heavy shoes and collarless shirts and cloth caps. He had sandy hair and a pointed nose to distinguish himself from most of the rest. The odor of perspiration filled the streetcar. Even in November, Toledo factory workers had no trouble breaking a sweat.

  The American flag flew in front of the elementary school that housed his polling place. The new stars in the canton that represented Kentucky and Houston gave it a pattern he still hadn’t got used to. The polling place itself was in the school auditorium, which was full of seats too small for grown-up backsides. Martin smiled, remembering the days when he’d sat in chairs like that.
I’d never killed
anybody then,
 he thought, and the smile slipped.

  He had to wait in line to get his ballot. Lots of men—and women, who could vote in presidential elections in Ohio—lined up to get their ballots. “Here you are,” the clerk said when he came to the front of the line. “Take the first available voting booth.” He sounded bored. How many times had he said those identical words since the polls opened this morning? Too many, by all the signs.

  A pretty woman a few years younger than Chester Martin pushed aside the curtain that kept her ballot secret and came out with the folded paper in her hand. They did a little accidental dance, each trying to get around the other, and were laughing by the time she went past him and he made his way into the booth.

  He voted quickly. He put an X by the names of Upton Sinclair and Hosea Blackford, then went on to vote for the other Socialist candidates. He wasn’t altogether happy with the way the Party had handled the Canadian uprising; had he been in charge of things, he would have taken an even stronger line than President Sinclair had.
Why did we
fight the war, if we coddle the Canucks once it’s done?
 But the Socialists were his party, he was making good money, and there were plenty of jobs. He wasn’t about to abandon the Party over foreign policy. He went down the line, from Congressman to state officials, voting the straight ticket.

  After he’d finished, he handed the clerk the ballot. The fellow ceremoniously stuck it in the locked ballot box, declaring, “Chester Martin has voted.” Martin felt proud, as if his vote had singlehandedly saved the country. He knew how silly that was, but couldn’t help it.

  He hurried out of the auditorium, out of the school. His family’s flat was only four blocks away. He’d intended to walk it and save himself five cents, but seeing the pretty woman at the streetcar stop made him change his mind. “Did you vote for President Sinclair?” he asked, fumbling in his pocket for a nickel.

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” she said. That made him grin with relief; he wouldn’t have wanted much to do with a staunch Democrat. He didn’t think he would, anyhow. She added, “He’s the only one I could vote for, of course. I don’t think that’s right.”

  “I don’t, either,” Martin said, more sincerely than otherwise. “My sister gets to vote for the first time today, and that’s all she gets to mark: one square. It really doesn’t seem fair.” They chatted, waiting for the streetcar. He found out her name was Rita Habicht, and that she was a typist for a company that made galvanized pipe. He gave her his own name just when the trolley clattered up.
Slow down,
 he thought as it rattled along the tracks.
Slow down, dammit.
 But it didn’t. In no time at all, the streetcar got to his stop.

  He let it start up again without getting off. “Have you got a telephone?” he asked.

  She hesitated. Then she took a scrap of paper from her handbag, wrote on it, and gave it to him.

  “Here.”

  He tucked it into the front pocket of his overalls. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll call you.” He did leave at the next stop, and had to walk most of a mile back in the direction from which he’d come.

  “What took you so long?” his younger sister asked when he finally came through the door. Sue had a sharp nose much like his, but her hair was brown, not sandy. Without waiting for an answer, she went on,

  “I got to vote. It took forever, but I got to vote.” She’d been just too young at the last presidential election.

  “Good for you, Sis.” Chester gave her a hug. “I remember how that felt—the first time, I mean.”

  “What took you so long coming home?” Sue asked again.

  “Trolley went past the stop, and I had to walk back,” he answered.

  She looked at him. “It must have gone a long way past the stop, for you to be as late as you are.” He could feel himself turning red. His sister started to laugh. “You’re blushing!” she exclaimed, as she might have done when they were both children. She wagged a saucy finger at him. “Was she pretty?” He looked down at the carpet, and at the woven flowers and birds he’d seen every day for years without really looking at them. “Well . . . yeah,” he mumbled.

  Now Sue stared. “You’re not doing that just to drive me crazy,” she said. “You really did meet somebody.”

  “I met her at the polling place, matter of fact,” Martin said. “We got to talking, and we seemed to like each other all right, and I got a telephone number from her.”

  “Will you call her?” Sue asked.

  “I’d be a fool not to, don’t you think?” he answered.

  The door opened behind him. His father came into the flat. “What would you be a fool about this time, Chester?” Stephen Douglas Martin asked. He was an older version of his son, also a steelworker, and a man who’d stubbornly remained a Democrat.

  “I’d be a fool to think I could say anything without you making a crack about it,” Chester replied.

  His sister said, “He met a girl.”

  “Happens to a lot of people,” his father observed. “Well, to a lot of fellows, anyhow.” He turned to Chester. “Come on, boy, tell me more. Who is she? What does she do? How did you meet her? Why didn’t you tell me about it sooner?”

  “How could I tell you about it sooner when it only just now happened?” Martin asked in some irritation.

  “Her name’s Rita. She’s a typist. I met her at the polling place. There. Are you happy now?”

  “I don’t know.” His father looked as surprised as his sister had. “This all sounds pretty sudden.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Chester said. “I didn’t propose to her. All I did was ask for her telephone number.”

  “Ask for whose telephone number?” his mother asked. Louisa Martin had heard her husband come in, where she hadn’t heard her son. She hurried out from the kitchen to give them both a peck on the cheek.

  Chester told the whole story over again for the third time. By then, he’d started to feel as if it had happened to somebody else. His mother exclaimed. So did his father, in chorus with her. They sounded pleased and dubious at the same time.

  At the supper table, over a pork roast stuffed with cabbage, his mother said, “It really is about time you settled down, son, and started raising a family of your own.” He rolled his eyes. “I haven’t even asked if she wants to go to a picture show with me, and you’ve already got me married off.”

  “You shouldn’t rush into things with a girl you just met,” his father said.

  He could have pointed out that he
wasn’t
rushing into anything. He could have, but he didn’t. What point? Neither his father nor his mother would pay the least attention. He was sure of that. He changed the subject: “I wish we had one of those wireless machines. Then we could find out who’s winning the election tonight without waiting for the morning paper.”

  “They’re so expensive,” his mother said.

  “They’re less than they were last year,” Chester said.

  “Maybe they’ll be still less next year, or the year after that,” his mother said. “If they are, maybe I’ll think about getting one. But I’ve got better things to do with a few hundred dollars right now than to put them into a cabinet that sits there and makes noise all the time.”

  “It’s not just noise, Mother,” Sue said. “It’s music and people talking and all sorts of exciting things.”

  “I think it’s nothing but a fad, myself,” Stephen Douglas Martin said. “After all, once you’ve heard a band playing John Philip Sousa marches once, how many more times are you going to want to?”

  “You could hear something different the next time,” Chester said.

  “Yes, but are there enough different new things to put on the wireless every hour of the day, every day of the week, every week of the year?” His father shook his head. “I don’t think so.” Since Chester had no idea whether there would be or not—and since he didn’t think his father had any idea, either—he didn’t argue. He said, “I could go over to the Socialists’ hall and find out.”

  “Well, if you want to,” his mother said, her tone suggesting she would sooner he stayed.

  In the end, he did stay. He’d already put in a long, hard day, one made longer and harder by voting and by walking back to the flat after he’d met Rita Habicht. He went to sleep in his cramped little bedroom.

  Whenever he thought about how crowded things were, he remembered three years of sleeping in the trenches, sometimes under rain or snow. Compared to that, this didn’t look so bad.

  In the morning, newsboys hawked papers with big, black headlines: SINCLAIR REELECTED! They shouted out the same thing. Chester felt like cheering; his father, no doubt, would be irate. His father could lump it, for all of him.
Four more years to show the country what we can do,
 he thought, and went off to his own dangerous, backbreaking job whistling a cheery tune.

 
C
incinnatus Driver was sure he was the happiest black man in Des Moines, Iowa. Des Moines didn’t have a whole lot of black men in it, happy or otherwise, but he would have bet he led the parade. The reason he was a man with a song in his heart was simple: he’d just found the perfect Christmas present for his son, Achilles.

  The tin fire engine was a foot and a half long, with rubber tires, a ladder that went up almost a yard, a bell that made a godawful racket, and half a dozen lead firemen. He was sure Achilles, who was nine, would play with it not just for hours but for weeks. Grinning, he carried it over to the clerk behind the cash register.

  “That’ll be a dollar and ninety-nine cents,” the woman said briskly.

  “Here y’are, ma’am.” Cincinnatus gave her two dollar bills. His accent was softer than the sharp local English; along with his family, he’d left Covington, Kentucky, not long after the war ended. He’d hoped he’d left his troubles behind him. So far, his hopes looked like coming true.

  “Here’s your change.” The clerk handed him a penny. She smiled. “I hope your little boy enjoys it.”

  “Thank you kindly, ma’am.” Cincinnatus smiled, too. He wouldn’t have got so much politeness from a white woman in Covington. He might not have got it here, either. He’d seen that—some places, they wouldn’t sell him things till they saw his money. But, on the whole, Negroes didn’t have too hard a time in Des Moines. They were thin enough on the ground here to be reckoned a novelty, not a menace.

  Still smiling, Cincinnatus took the fire engine out to his truck. The machine was a beat-up White of Great War vintage. Cincinnatus had driven such snorting beasts all through Kentucky and down into Tennessee during the war, in the service of the U.S. Army. Now he worked on his own behalf—and a White made in 1916 or 1917 was, by the end of 1924, something less than it had been.

  He didn’t care. The truck was a lot better than the spavined Duryea he’d driven from Covington to Des Moines. It held a lot. He was able to make a good many repairs on it himself; he’d had practice. And, when he couldn’t fix the truck, he’d found a mechanic who was both cheap and competent: an immigrant from Italy for whom a black man was but one wonder of a wonder-filled America.

  He cranked the engine to get it to turn over.
One of these days, I’m going to put a self-starter in this
machine.
 He’d had that thought before, too. But the motor hadn’t had a chance to cool down, so cranking it was easy. He got behind the wheel, trod on the clutch, put the truck in gear, and drove off.

  Night fell as he made his way to the northwestern side of town. The White was of recent enough vintage to have electric headlights and not acetylene lamps; he could turn them on from the cabin, and didn’t have to get out and fiddle with matches.

  The truck wheezed to a stop in front of the apartment building where his family lived. The motor shook and coughed a couple of times after he took out the ignition key, then fell silent. He got out. Wrapping the toy fire engine in some burlap, he carried it into the building.

  In the lobby, Joey Chang, who ran a laundry and whose family lived on the floor above Cincinnatus, nodded to him and said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, Joey,” he answered, doing his best to hide a smile. The Chinaman seemed as exotic to him as a mere Negro did to an Italian immigrant. There might have been a couple of Chinese in Covington back when it was part of the CSA. On the other hand, there might not have, too. He’d never eaten chop suey before coming to Des Moines. He liked Chinese food. It was cheap and good and something out of the ordinary.