American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (78 page)

  “She’s fine,” Nellie said. “I’ll bring her Saturday. She wants to see you, but what with school and all now that New Year’s is gone. . . .”

  “School is important,” Hal said. “What could be more important than school?” He stopped to gather breath again. “Maybe it’s better . . . she doesn’t see me . . . like this. Let her . . . remember me . . . like I was when I was stronger.”

  “Oh, Hal.” Nellie had to turn away. She didn’t want her husband to see the tears stinging her eyes. All she cared about was making sure he stayed as happy and comfortable as he could till the end finally came.

  A man in the row of beds facing Hal’s lit a cigarette. Hal said, “Do you know what I wish?” Nellie shook her head. He lifted a bony hand and pointed with a forefinger that still showed a yellowish stain. “I wish I had one of those, that’s what. They won’t let me smoke . . . on account of this oxygen gear . . . Fire, you know.”

  “That’s terrible.” Nellie rose. “I’m going to see if I can’t get ’em to change their minds.” As far as she was concerned, cigarettes were more important for Hal than oxygen right now. The oxygen helped keep him alive, yes, but so what? Cigarettes would make him happy as he went, for he was going to go.

  Out at the nursing station, a starched woman of about Edna’s age, shook her head at Nellie. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jacobs,” she said, not sounding sorry in the least, “but I can’t deviate from the attending physician’s instructions.” Nellie might have asked her to commit an unnatural act.

  “Well, who is the attending physician, and where the devil do I find him?” Nellie asked.

  “His name is Dr. Baumgartner, and his office is in room 127, near the front entrance,” the nurse answered reluctantly. “I don’t know if he’s in. Even if he is, I don’t think you can get him to change his mind.”

  “We’ll see about
that
,” Nellie snapped. She hurried off to room 127 with determined strides. Dr.

  Baumgartner was in, writing notes on one of his patients. He was in his late thirties, and wore the ribbon for a Purple Heart. Above his collar, the side of his neck was scarred. Nellie wondered how far down the scar ran and how bad it was. Shoving that aside, she told him what she wanted.

  He heard her out, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jacobs, but I don’t see how I can do that. They don’t call cigarettes coffin nails for nothing.”

  “What difference does that make?” Nellie asked bluntly. “He’s dying anyhow.”

  “I know he is, ma’am,” Baumgartner answered. “But my job is to keep him alive as long as I can and to keep him as comfortable as I can. That’s what the oxygen is for.”

  “That’s what the cigarettes are for,” Nellie said: “the comfortable part, I mean.” Before Dr. Baumgartner could answer, an ambulance came clanging up to the front door of the hospital.

  The physician jumped to his feet and grabbed a black bag that sat on a corner of his desk. “You have to excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “There might be something I can do to help there.”

  “We aren’t done with this argument—not by a long shot we’re not,” Nellie said, and followed him as he hurried out of the office.

  To her surprise, policemen rushed in through the entrance ahead of the men getting a stretcher out of the back of the ambulance. Some of them had drawn their pistols. Most people shrank away from them in alarm. Dr. Baumgartner eyed the pistols with the air of a man who’d known worse. “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.

  “Come quick, Doc,” one of the policemen told him. “Do what ever you can. He’d gotten out of the bathtub, they tell me, and he was shaving when he keeled over.”

  “Who’s
he
?” Baumgartner asked. “And since when does an ambulance need a squad of motorcycle cops for escort?”

  “Since it’s got Calvin Coolidge in it, is since when,” the policeman answered. “He keeled over, like I say, and nobody’s been able to get a rise out of him since.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Nellie said. Nobody paid any attention to her. The stretcher-bearers brought their burden into the hospital. Sure enough, the president-elect lay on the stretcher, his face pale and still.

  Dr. Baumgartner knelt beside him. The doctor’s hand found Coolidge’s wrist. “He has no pulse,” Baumgartner said. He peeled back an eyelid. “His pupil doesn’t respond to light.” He took his hand away from Coolidge’s face. The president-elect stared up with one eye open, the other closed. Nellie could see what Dr. Baumgartner was going to say before he said it: “He’s dead.” Baumgartner’s expression and voice were stunned.

  “Can’t you do anything for him, Doc?” a cop asked. “That’s why we brung him here.”

  “You’d need the Lord. He can raise the dead. I can’t,” Dr. Baumgartner answered, still in that dazed voice. “If I’d been standing next to him the minute it happened, I don’t think I could have done anything.

  Coronary thrombosis or a stroke, I’d say, although I can’t begin to know which without an autopsy.”

  “Coro—what?” The policeman scratched his head. “What’s that in English?”

  “Heart attack,” Baumgartner said patiently. “That’d be my guess. Without a postmortem, though, it’s only a guess.”

  “What happens next?” Nellie asked. “He was president. I mean, he was going to be president. Now . .

  .” She looked down at the body, then quickly turned away. “Close his eye, please.” While Baumgartner did that, the policeman said, “Yeah, what the hell—’scuse me, lady—do we do now? We never had nothin’ like this happen before. That damn Blackford—’scuse me again—better not get to be president on account of he finished second. That wouldn’t be right, not after Cal here kicked his . . . tail.”

  “No, no, no. It doesn’t work like that.” Dr. Baumgartner shook his head. “The electoral college met yesterday, so the results are official. The vice president–elect becomes president-elect, and then he becomes president on the first of February.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” the cop said. “Thanks, Doc.”

  And Nellie might have been the first one to taste the name and title the whole United States would know before the day was up: “President Herbert Hoover.” She paused in thought, then slowly nodded and repeated the words. “President Herbert Hoover.” She paused again. “I like the sound of it.”

 
A
long with her daughter, Mary Jane, Sylvia Enos crunched through snow to stand on the Boston Common and pay her last respects to Calvin Coolidge. George, Jr., would have come with them, too—Sylvia was sure of that—but his fishing boat was bringing in cod out on Georges Bank. For a moment, she wondered if he even knew. Then she shook her head, feeling foolish. The
Whitecap
had a wireless set aboard, so he was bound to.

  Like her and Mary Jane, most of the people in the square wore black. It seemed all the more somber against the snow. Up on a rickety wooden platform, a newsreel photographer swung his camera over the crowd.

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” Sylvia said. “He wasn’t an old man—he was only sixty.” Mary Jane gave her an odd look. But then, Mary Jane was only twenty, and to twenty sixty was one with the Pyramids of Egypt.

  Sylvia knew better, and wished she didn’t. She went on, “And it doesn’t seem fair he died before he could be president, especially when we’ve been stuck with Socialists the past twelve years.”

  “Hoover is a Democrat, too,” Mary Jane said. But then, before Sylvia could, she added, “But he’s not from Massachusetts.”

  “He certainly isn’t,” Sylvia said. “Born in Iowa, then on to California . . .” She sighed. “He’s from about as far from Massachusetts as he can be and stay in the USA.”

  “He’s—” Mary Jane broke off as heads swung toward a string of black autos approaching the State House behind a phalanx of motorcycle policemen. “Here comes the funeral procession.” A hearse carrying Coolidge’s mortal remains led the cortege. Behind it came an open limousine in which sat President-elect Hoover. Behind his autos were a stream of others, all full of dignitaries civilian and military. When the hearse halted, an honor guard of soldiers, sailors, and Marines lifted Coolidge’s flag-draped casket from it and set the coffin on a temporary bier whose black cloth cover was half hidden by red-white-and-blue bunting.

  “I wish Pa could have got a funeral,” Mary Jane said suddenly. “Not a fancy one like this, but any kind of funeral at all.”

  “You were a little girl when the Confederates torpedoed his ship,” Sylvia said. “And he was away at sea so much before that. Do you remember him at all?”

  “Not very much,” her daughter answered. “But I do remember one time when he was home on leave and he kept telling my brother and me to go to bed. I didn’t much like that then, so I guess it stuck with me.”

  Sylvia’s face heated despite the chilly weather. A sailor home on leave wanted his children to go to bed so he could, too—with his wife. Sylvia’s own life had been empty that way since George was killed. She sighed, exhaling a cloud of fog. When she had wanted a man, poor Ernie hadn’t been able to do anything about it. That seemed so horribly unfair, it made her want to cry from sheer frustration. She couldn’t do that now. Instead, she lit a cigarette. It helped take the edge off what ever bothered her.

  “Look.” Mary Jane pointed. “Hoover’s going to make a speech.” Sure enough, the new president-elect get out of his limousine and, black top hat on his head, made his way towards a podium set up beside the catafalque on which Calvin Coolidge’s remains rested.

  Wires ran from the podium back into the State House. Microphones sprouted from it: one to amplify Hoover’s words for the crowd actually there, the rest to send those words across the United States by wireless. An announcer (who also wore a somber black suit) waited behind the podium to introduce him.

  The man reached out and shook Hoover’s hand. They spoke for a moment, too far away for the microphones to let anyone hear their words. Then the announcer stepped up to the podium and said,

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the new president-elect of the United States, Mr. Hoobert Heever.”
 Did I hear that?
 Sylvia wondered. Beside her, Mary Jane let out a small, startled giggle. Others rose from the crowd, too, so Sylvia supposed her ears hadn’t tricked her after all.

  If Herbert Hoover noticed his name being butchered, he gave no sign of it. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, people of the United States, I would give anything I own not to stand here before you today in this capacity. I wish with all my heart that Governor Coolidge were still the president-elect, and that he, not I, would take the oath of office as president on February first of this year.” A polite round of applause followed. Sylvia joined it. She didn’t see what else Hoover could say. With his round, blunt-featured face and strong chin, he looked very determined—he put her in mind of a bulldog ready to sink its teeth into something and not let go no matter what.

  He continued, “Since fate has thrust me into the highest office in the land, I pledge to you today that I will to the best of my ability continue the policies on which Governor Coolidge campaigned and which the American people overwhelmingly chose in the election two months ago. We shall go forward!” More applause. Again, Sylvia clapped along with everybody else. Again, she didn’t see how Hoover could say anything else, but he said what needed saying well.

  “Ever since this crisis struck our country almost four years ago,” he went on, “the Socialist administration has tried every quack nostrum under the sun to set things right, but not a single treatment has worked. To our sorrow, we have seen that only too clearly. Governor Coolidge campaigned on the Democrats’ fundamental belief that business has seen altogether too much regulation these past twelve years and that, if left to itself, it would find its own way out of the mire in which it finds itself. I believe this with all my heart, and it will be the guiding principle of my administration.” Again, people clapped their hands. Again, Sylvia was one of those people. She had no great love of businesses; they’d treated her like dirt in the years after the war. But whatever the Socialists had done hadn’t worked. The whole country could see that—the whole country had seen that. Maybe what Coolidge had proposed and what Hoover now promised would be better. Sylvia didn’t see how it could be much worse.

  Hoover plugged ahead with his speech: “We are currently engaged in an unfortunate war. By now, the Empire of Japan has plainly seen it cannot subvert the United States of America’s hold on the territories we conquered at such cost during the Great War. Japan has also seen that we are ready to respond strongly to any challenge facing us. Any time the Japanese are ready to seek an honorable peace, I shall listen to their proposals with great attentiveness.”

  “What does that mean?” Mary Jane whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvia whispered back. The war had cost both sides some ships. After hitting Los Angeles, Japanese bombing aeroplanes had attacked the Sandwich Islands from carriers, but they were spotted on the way in, did little damage, and took losses from U.S. fighters based near Pearl Harbor. If neither side could hurt the other much, why go on fighting? Maybe Hoover hoped the Japs would figure that out for themselves.

  The president-elect stuck out his formidable jaw. “Regardless of that, our first goal is restoring prosperity at home. Conditions are fundamentally sound. The fundamental strength of the nation’s economy is unimpaired.” Hoover shook his head; maybe he hadn’t meant to use variants of the same word in back-to-back sentences. He gathered himself. “Thanks to the American system of rugged individualism, we shall certainly prevail over any and all obstacles.

  “Governor Coolidge epitomized that system. I promise you here today that I shall do everything I can to walk in his footsteps. With God’s help, we
will
triumph over adversity. And if it does not defeat us, it will make us stronger in the end. We are a great nation. The burden that has fallen on my shoulders leaves me awed and humbled. I know Governor Coolidge would have succeeded. All I can do is my best. With God’s help again, that will suffice. Thank you, and may He bless the United States of America.” He stepped away from the podium and walked over to the catafalque. There, very solemnly, he took off his top hat and bowed to Coolidge’s casket. The soldiers and sailors and Marines who’d borne the coffin from the hearse saluted. Hoover returned the salute; he’d done his two years as a conscript well before the turn of the century, and had been a major in engineering during the war.