Joe Steele

XIV

Not even a year after German troops marched into Austria, not even six months after German troops goose-stepped into the Sudetenland (and after the Führer swore he had no more European territorial demands), the Reich annexed Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech parts of what had been Czechoslovakia. The Slovak part became “independent” under a bunch of homegrown Fascists headed by a priest.

Charlie got the wire-service feeds in the White House, the same as he had while he was still working for the Associated Press. He pulled an atlas off the shelf in his little office and eyed the map of Central Europe. With the revisions, it didn’t look so good, not if you wanted the world to stay at peace.

A cigarette in the corner of his mouth, Stas Mikoian stuck his head into the office. “What are you looking at?” he asked.

“The next world war, that’s what,” Charlie answered gloomily.

“I hope it’s not as bad as that,” Joe Steele’s aide said.

“I hope so, too, but it damn well is. C’mere and see for yourself,” Charlie said. When Mikoian did, Charlie pointed to the map. “Look. Now the Nazis can put soldiers in Slovakia, not just the Sudetenland. With East Prussia, they’ve got Poland in the same kind of nutcracker they squeezed Czechoslovakia with after they grabbed Austria.”

Mikoian studied the Rand McNally, no doubt filling in the new borders for himself. He grunted thoughtfully. “Yeah, it looks that way to me, too. And if we can see it, the brass at the War Department will see it, too.”

That made Charlie grunt. Some of what had been the top brass in the Army and Navy had been shot for treason. Other officers were serving long prison terms. Still others were breaking rocks or cutting down trees or digging ditches or doing whatever else wreckers did in labor encampments. Newer, younger men Joe Steele trusted further-not that Joe Steele trusted anybody very far-sat in those emptied chairs. Were they smart enough to see such things? They’d damn well better be, Charlie thought.

But Stas Mikoian hadn’t finished: “And if we can see it, the brass in Paris and London can also see it. And the brass in Moscow, not that they wear much brass there.” Charlie nodded-the Reds had leveled things so thoroughly, even generals’ uniforms were hardly fancier than those of private soldiers.

Another thought crossed Charlie’s mind. “I bet they’re having spasms in Warsaw,” he said. “Poland grabbed a little chunk of Czechoslovakia, too, when Hitler moved into the Sudetenland. I wonder how they like the taste of it now. Talk about shortsighted!”

“You said it,” Mikoian agreed.

“What’s the boss going to do about it?” Charlie asked. Before Joe Steele’s aide could answer, the telephone rang. Charlie picked it up. “Sullivan.” He still sometimes had to remind himself not to add AP after his name.

“Yes.” That rasp belonged to the President. “Put together a draft for me. I want to let the people know that this latest German move pushes Europe closer to war. I want them to know that we have to move closer to being able to defend ourselves no matter what happens, but that I don’t want or aim to get drawn into a fight on the other side of the Atlantic. Got that?”

“Sure do.” Charlie had scrawled notes while Joe Steele talked.

“Then take care of it.” The phone went dead.

“Was that him?” Mikoian asked. Charlie nodded. The California Armenian gave forth with a crooked grin. “Well, now you know what he’s going to do about it, in that case.” He nodded and left. He probably expected his own call any minute, or that he’d have to respond to one that came while he was talking with Charlie.

That was how Joe Steele worked. He’d hand several people the same assignment, take what he liked most from each man’s work, stir those chunks together, and use them as his own. It gave him the best from each member of his staff. It also kept the men he relied on competing against one another for his favor. One thing he knew was how to wrap people around his finger.

Charlie ran two sheets of paper sandwiched around a carbon into his typewriter and started clacking away. He bore down hard on keeping America out of the fight. Going to war again in Europe was pure political poison, nothing else but. Joe Steele could-and did-do pretty much what he wanted inside the borders of the USA. Halfway through his second term, the Constitution was what he said it was. Anybody who didn’t go for that would soon be sorry. But not even the Jeebies could ship everyone who didn’t fancy a war to the closest labor encampment. Spacious as the encampments were, they couldn’t begin to hold all those people.

And Charlie bore down hard on what a lying, cheating SOB Hitler was. Kagan and Mikoian and Scriabin and whoever else was working on this would also emphasize that. Everybody knew Joe Steele couldn’t stand Hitler. You couldn’t go wrong calling him names.

Charlie wondered how much of his draft Joe Steele would use. He was the new kid on the block. He hadn’t been on the staff since Joe Steele was a Congressman nobody outside of Fresno-and not many people in the town-had ever heard of. In a way, having a fresh approach gave him an edge. But the old-timers often teamed up against him, as much to remind him he was new as for any reason important in and of itself.

Office politics worked that way. They did in a bank, at the Associated Press, and here in the most important office in the country. Sometimes Charlie remembered that, and didn’t let slights get him down. Sometimes, instead, he remembered that, if Joe Steele turned against him, firing was the least of his worries. If Joe Steele turned against him, it could be the firing squad. Or they could chuck him into a labor encampment and forget he was there. On days like that, he bit his nails and gnawed his cuticles till they bled.

On days like that, he also went to the watering hole near the White House, the one where the Vice President held court. Joe Steele never asked John Nance Garner for drafts of speeches. He never asked him what he thought about the great storm rising in Europe, or about the troubles that still dogged the United States.

And John Nance Garner wasn’t sorry that he didn’t. “I ain’t got a thing to worry about,” the Vice President declared one afternoon when he’d taken on enough bourbon to pickle his grammar. “Joe Steele don’t give a damn about me. Long as I stay out of the way and keep my trap shut and don’t kick up no trouble, he’ll leave me alone. You should be so lucky, Sullivan.”

“Yeah.” Charlie was morose that day. Joe Steele had talked about strikes, and how to keep the country producing in spite of them. He hadn’t used many of Charlie’s ideas. If Charlie had to guess, most of the ideas he had used came straight from J. Edgar Hoover, with maybe a few from Vince Scriabin. The speech hadn’t had any compromise in it, in other words.

The Vice President leered at him like a fox eyeing a bunny. “Just recall, son-you volunteered for this,” Garner said.

“Yeah,” Charlie said again, more morosely yet. Then he eyed Garner in turn. “Now that I think about it, so did you.”

“Uh-huh.” The Vice President’s sigh was so high-proof, it was a good thing he wasn’t smoking-he might have impersonated a blowtorch. “Too late to fret none about it now. You grab the tiger by the ears, you got to hang on for the ride. Long as you’re on his back, he can’t eat you.”

Joe Steele didn’t literally devour followers who displeased him. No, not literally. But when you had the most powerful job in the country and you took it three or four steps further than any other President had ever gone. . Maybe the times demanded that. Maybe the times conspired with Joe Steele’s nature. However that worked, even a metaphorical devouring could leave a man bloodied or dead.

Charlie held up his hand to ask for another drink.

* * *

It was summer-summer high in the Rockies. It got up into the sixties, sometimes into the seventies. Nights stayed chilly as the warmth of the day fled after sundown. Chilly, yes, but they didn’t drop below freezing.

Mike enjoyed the good weather, knowing it wouldn’t last. Even in summer up here, winter lay right around the corner. Winter always lay right around the corner. . except when it sprang out and clasped you in its frigid embrace.

One day at a time, though. Right around the corner didn’t mean here. He’d been in the labor encampment for a couple of years now. He had its measure, as much as anyone could. Even inside his own head, he was NY24601, wrecker, more often than he was Mike Sullivan, New York Post reporter.

He leaned on his axe, there in the woods. He was scrawny and dirty and shaggy and shabby. He also had harder muscles than he’d ever dreamt of, to say nothing of owned, before the Jeebies grabbed him. Nietzsche might’ve had it straight after all. What didn’t kill you honest to God did make you stronger.

Sometimes it did kill. Too many men had left the labor encampment in pine boxes. They couldn’t do the work. Or they couldn’t stand the food. Or they simply despaired. If you gave up, you didn’t last long.

“Spare any alfalfa?” Mike asked John Dennison.

The carpenter pulled out his tobacco pouch. When he did have some, he was always ready to share with friends. If they didn’t share in turn, they didn’t stay friends long. Mike understood that. “Get your paper ready,” Dennison said.

Mike tore a cigarette-sized piece off a wad of newspaper he kept in his pocket. He could wipe his ass on the rest when he had to shit. By what the papers printed these days, that was about what they were good for. They all sucked up to Joe Steele like you wouldn’t believe. Or, considering how many reporters were in labor encampments these days, you might believe it.

Even smoking, even wiping your ass, you had to watch yourself. If somebody finked on you for burning up a newsprint photo of Joe Steele or getting it brown and stinking, you’d do a stretch in the punishment cells. Insulting the President was a serious business.

John Dennison poured the cheap, harsh tobacco onto the paper. Machine-made cigarettes with the tasty stuff inside them were as good as money in the encampments. As often as not, they were too precious to smoke. This nasty junk just kept you from getting the no-cigarette jitters. That was all Mike cared about, that and the excuse for a short break.

Dennison rolled one for himself, too. He sucked in smoke, blew it out, and looked around. “By the time they turn us loose,” he said, “won’t be a goddamn tree left in this part of Montana.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mike said, and then, after a puff of his own, “If they ever turn us loose.”

“Sooner or later, they’ll get sick of us,” John Dennison said. “Wonder if I’ll know how to fit in anywhere but a place like this by then.”

“Mmm,” Mike said-not a happy noise. He’d had the same worry, and the one on its flip side: whether Stella would want anything to do with him once they did let him go back to New York City and civilization as he’d known it. Plenty of the wives of wreckers at the encampment had already divorced them. Some of those ladies had found new men, not caring to wait for their husbands to return.

And others had filed for divorce to cleanse their own names. If you were married to a wrecker, something had to be wrong with you, too, didn’t it? If you were looking for work, wouldn’t whoever was hiring pick somebody reliable instead? If your son was applying for college, wouldn’t they admit someone from a loyal household in his place? If you needed a loan, wouldn’t a bank decide you made a poor risk because you might go off to an encampment yourself?

Mike had no reason to believe Stella was anything but faithful and one hundred percent behind him. But he hadn’t heard from her for several months now. He didn’t know whether that was because the Jeebies were sitting on his mail (or just tossing it in the trash) or because his wife couldn’t find anything to say to him.

He didn’t spend every waking moment brooding about it. He wasn’t Hamlet, to brood about every goddamn thing that happened to him. Besides, during most of his waking moments he was too busy or too tired. Every so often, though, most often when he paused for a smoke, the worry bubbled back to the surface.

“What I really want to do,” Dennison went on, “is pay back the skunk who told the Jeebies about me. Yeah, that son of a bitch, he’s gonna have hisself an accident or three.”

“Mmm,” Mike repeated. Nobody’d needed to point him out to J. Edgar Hoover’s thugs. The way he’d gone after Joe Steele, he’d done everything but shine a searchlight on himself. He’d been asking for it, and he’d got it.

The trouble was, he hadn’t realized fast enough how much the rules had changed. Back in the old days-before Joe Steele’s first inauguration-the First Amendment still meant something. If you behaved as if it did when it didn’t. . you ended up on a mountainside in Montana, leaning on your axe while you smoked so you wouldn’t have to work for a few minutes.

A couple of hundred yards away, another lodgepole went over with a rending crash. A wrecker let out an excited yip. Some people could get worked up about whatever they wound up doing, even if it was only a short piss away from slave labor. Mike didn’t have that knack. They could make him do it, but they couldn’t make him get excited about it.

A guard came toward Mike and John Dennison. He was smoking a Camel; guards could burn their machine-mades whenever they got the urge. Sure as hell, the bastard looked at what was left of the wreckers’ roll-your-owns. Had he spotted Joe Steele’s mustache on either one, there would have been hell to pay.

Since he didn’t, he just said, “Okay, kids-playtime’s over. Get it in gear and knock down some wood.”

“Sure thing,” Mike said. You couldn’t tell ’em to piss up a rope. But you could look busier than you were. Slaves had known that trick before the Pyramids rose. In the outside world, most of the wreckers had been hard workers. Not here, not when they didn’t have to. What was the point? Mike didn’t see any at all.

* * *

Sometimes things happened too fast for outsiders to keep up with them. Watching Europe through August, Charlie had that feeling. Every day seemed to bring a new surprise, each one more horrible than the last.

Hitler shrieked about the Polish Corridor the way he’d shrieked about the Sudetenland the year before. It had belonged to Germany. Germans still lived there. The Poles were mistreating them. Therefore, the Corridor had to return to the Reich.

But the year before, he’d sold France and England his bill of goods. They weren’t buying this time around. The way he’d gobbled up Bohemia and Moravia after pledging he wouldn’t finally persuaded them they couldn’t believe a word he said. They told him they would go to war if he invaded Poland.

They still weren’t eager about it, though. In the war against the Kaiser, Russia had done a big chunk of the Entente’s dying. France and England wanted Russia on their side again, even if it was Red, Red, Red. They sent delegations to Moscow to sweet-talk Trotsky into bed with them.

Charlie had always thought Trotsky looked like a fox, with his auburn hair, his knowing eyes, his sharp nose, and his pointed chin whiskers. He listened to what the French and English diplomats and military envoys said-and what they didn’t or wouldn’t say. He listened, and he made no promises, and he waited to find out whether he heard from anyone else.

When he did. . At the start of the last week of August, Maxim Litvinov flew from Moscow to Berlin. The Jew ruling Red Russia sent his Jewish foreign commissar to the world’s capital of anti-Semitism. Litvinov and Ribbentrop put their heads together. The very next day, with Adolf Hitler beaming in the background, they signed a nonaggression treaty and an enormous trade package.

The news burst like a bomb in Paris and London. . and in Warsaw. Whatever the Russians would do, they wouldn’t fight to keep the Germans out of Poland. Russians didn’t think Poles were Untermenschen, the way the Nazis did. But an independent Poland affronted Moscow almost as much as it outraged Berlin.

Lazar Kagan was the first important aide Charlie ran into after the story broke. “What do we do about this?” Charlie asked him, feeling very much like a jumped-up reporter. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know.” Kagan sounded as stunned as Charlie felt. When Charlie realized the large, round man was thrown for a loop, too, something inside of him loosened. This wasn’t just too big for him. This was too big for everybody. After a moment, Kagan went on, “There’s probably nothing the United States can do except to tell France and England to stick to their guns. We’re too far away from what’s going on to influence Germany and Russia one way or the other.”

“I guess so.” Charlie hesitated, then asked, “Have you seen the boss?”

“Yes, I’ve seen him.” Kagan managed a nod. “He. . isn’t very happy.”

And that would do for an understatement till a bigger one rolled down the pike. If Charlie was any judge, none would any time soon. The two world leaders Joe Steele despised more than any others had suddenly made common cause. Charlie found one more question: “How long does he think Poland’s got?”

“Days. Not weeks-days,” Kagan answered. “The Poles say they’ll fight. It’s just a question of how well they can. They have a lot of men in uniform-a lot more than we do. Maybe Hitler has bitten off more than he can chew. Maybe.” He sounded like a man trying to talk himself into believing it but not doing very well.

“Okay. Thanks-I guess.” Charlie went back to his office and wrote a statement condemning the Nazis and Reds for joining in a pact “obviously aimed at the nation between them” and hoping that the remaining European democracies “would remain true to their solemn commitments.”

When Joe Steele spoke on the radio that night, he used Charlie’s phrases unchanged. Listening, Charlie felt satisfaction mixed with dread. Joe Steele had the air of a doctor standing outside a sickroom, going over things with the relatives of a patient who wouldn’t pull through.

But Sarah grinned and banged her Raggedy Ann doll on the coffee table. Charlie watched to make sure she didn’t bang her head on it-at not quite a year and a half, she didn’t have walking down pat yet. She also didn’t know what was going on across the Atlantic. Even if she had known, she wouldn’t have cared.

Plenty of much older Americans didn’t care, either. They or their ancestors had come here so they wouldn’t have to worry about Europe’s periodic bouts of madness. Another war, so soon after the last one? You had to be crazy to do something like that. Didn’t you?

Crazy or not, just over a week later Germany invaded Poland with tanks and dive-bombers and machine guns and millions of marching men in coal-scuttle helmets and jackboots. France and England sent ultimatums, demanding that Hitler withdraw. He didn’t. First one and then the other declared war.

But that was all they did. They didn’t attack Germany the way Germany was attacking Poland. There were a few small skirmishes along the Reich’s western frontier. Past that, nothing. Meanwhile, before the fighting farther east was more than a few days old, it grew crystal clear that the Poles were in way over their heads. Shattered by weapons and by doctrine they couldn’t start to match, they reeled back or charged hopelessly. Charlie read reports about mounted lancers attacking tanks.

“Yes, I’ve seen those, too,” Vince Scriabin said when he mentioned them. “It’s very brave, but it isn’t war, is it?”

“What would you call it, then?” Charlie asked.

“Murder,” Scriabin answered. He had on his desk just then a typewritten page full of the names of men condemned for wrecking and other kinds of treason. It was upside down, but Charlie could read things that way-a handy skill for a reporter to pick up. Scriabin had written HFP-all in red in the narrow margin above the names.

Charlie did his best not to shiver. HFP abbreviated Highest Form of Punishment. In other words, that was a page full of the names of dead men. On how many other sheets had Scriabin scribbled those same three ominous letters? Charlie had no idea, but the number couldn’t be small.

He didn’t see Mike’s name on the sheet. That was something: a small something, but something. If he had seen it, the sentence would already have been carried out. Nothing to do then but kill himself or take his best shot at killing Scriabin and J. Edgar Hoover and Joe Steele.

Well, he didn’t have to worry about that, thank God. All he had to worry about was a new world war. Next to what happened to his brother, it didn’t seem like so much.

Then, with Poland on the ropes, Trotsky jumped what was left of it from behind. His excuse, such as it was, was as cynical as anything Joe Steele could have come up with. He blandly announced that, since Poland had fallen into chaos, Red Army troops were moving in to restore order.

And to split the country’s corpse with Hitler. Nazi and Red officers shook hands at the new frontier (which Litvinov and Ribbentrop had agreed to in advance). A British cartoonist turned out what became a famous drawing of Hitler and Trotsky graciously bowing to each other over a body labeled POLAND. The smirking Führer was saying, “The dirty Jew, I believe?”, to which the smiling Red leader was replying, “The assassin of the workers, I presume?”

Joe Steele made a speech before the National Press Club. That wasn’t what it had been back in the day. If you didn’t like the President-if you insisted on saying you didn’t like the President-you weren’t at the banquet in a suit and tie or a tux. No, you were somewhere farther west, eating plainer grub and not much of it, and wearing less elegant attire.

Or, if you were less lucky still, you’d gone West for good. You’d shown up on one of those sheets that crossed Scriabin’s desk, or maybe Joe Steele’s, and the aide or the boss had written HFP on it, and that was all she wrote. You’d never come back to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Those were damn depressing thoughts to have while you were downing candied carrots and mashed potatoes and rubber chicken. Charlie tried to improve his attitude with bourbon. It helped some, even if he did stagger when he went to get his last couple of refills.

Attorney General Wyszynski introduced Joe Steele. That was enough to make the reporters pay attention all by itself. If you didn’t merely end up on a bureaucratic list, if you needed to be tried, Wyszynski and his pet prosecutors were the ones who would send you up the river.

Everyone applauded the President. Everyone watched everyone else to see how hard the others were applauding. Everyone tried to applaud harder than the people near him. You couldn’t just like Joe Steele. You had to be seen-and heard-to like him.

The President ambled up to the lectern. He had a rolling, deliberate walk that would have seemed more at home in a vineyard than in the corridors of power. Charlie didn’t expect much from the address, even if he’d helped draft it. Joe Steele was a decent speaker, but that was all he was.

He outdid himself that night. Maybe he was speaking from the heart. (Yes, Charlie knew some people denied that Joe Steele had a heart. Sometimes, he was one of those people himself. Sometimes, but not that night.) The President’s talk got remembered as the Plague on Both Your Houses speech.

“Half the troubles in our own country come from the Nazis. The other half come from the Reds,” he said. “Now they lie down together. They are not the lion and the lamb. They are two serpents. If we were lucky, each would grab the other by the tail. They would swallow each other up till nothing was left of either one. But we are not so lucky, and there are more players in the game than Germany and Russia alone.”

He paused to puff on his pipe. It stayed close at hand all the time, even when he was making a speech. “For the second time in a generation, war tears at the vitals of Europe. We will not let it touch us here. This fight is not worth the red blood of one single American boy. No one over there has a cause that was worth going to war for. No, gentlemen. No one. All they have in Europe are hate and greed.

“For the United States, for the land we all love, the greatest dangers lurk in insidious encroachments for foreign powers by fanatics. We must and we shall step up our vigilance against them-Reds and Nazis will both try to ensnare us. As long as we stamp them out at home, everything will go well here. And as long as we steer clear of Europe’s latest stupid war, everything will be fine-for us-there.”

He dipped his head and stepped back. The hand he’d got before the speech was pragmatic, politic. The one he got after it? The reporters meant that one. He’d told them what they wanted to hear, and he’d done it well. Later, Charlie decided the difference was something like the one between a stage kiss and a real kiss.

Sitting next to Charlie was the Los Angeles Times’ Washington correspondent. “He keeps talking like that, he won’t have any trouble getting a third term,” the man said. Chances were he meant it and wasn’t just currying favor. The Los Angeles Times was firmly in Joe Steele’s back pocket.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right,” Charlie said. He expected Joe Steele to run again, and to win again. Why wouldn’t he? Not just the L.A. Times was in his back pocket. These days, the whole country was.

* * *

News of the war reached the labor encampment, of course. Few men there got excited about it. They had more important things to worry about. Another Montana winter was coming on. If they didn’t do everything they could to get ready for it, they wouldn’t see spring.

A couple of scalps, guys who’d been in only weeks or months and still sometimes thought of themselves as free men, tried to volunteer for the Army. The Jeebies who ran the encampment only laughed at them. “The bastard said, ‘Why do you think the Army needs wreckers in it?’” one would-be soldier reported indignantly.

Mike listened. He sympathized. He didn’t get up in arms, though. You had to take care of Number One first. After more than two years, his old jacket had got too old and tattered for even the best tailor in the encampment to keep it in one piece. That didn’t necessarily mean they’d issue him a new one, though. Wreckers didn’t have to get replacements for such things. Who was to say they hadn’t wrecked the old, ratty ones?

He’d spent weeks running errands for a sergeant in the supply cabin. He’d buttered the man up as if he were basting a Thanksgiving turkey. He’d let the sergeant get a good look at the cotton quilting coming out at the elbows of his old jacket and at the seams across the back.

And he’d got a new one. The Jeebie had actually thrown the new one at him, growling, “Get your number on this, front and back, quick as you can. Make sure the ink dries so it doesn’t run.”

“I’ll do it!” he’d said happily. “Thanks!” And he did.

Now he had to keep that sergeant sweet with more small favors for another few weeks. He’d ease off a little at a time, so gradually that the sergeant didn’t notice. Or maybe he wouldn’t ease off at all. His boots were wearing out, too. A new pair would mean he didn’t have to plug holes with rags and cardboard to keep his toes from freezing.

From somewhere, John Dennison had got his hands on a wool watch cap, the kind they wore in the Navy. Jacket, pants, and boots were all uniform items. The Jeebies didn’t get their knickers in a twist about what you put on your head. Oh, they’d kick your ass for you if you wore a turban like Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik. But they’d cut you some slack if you didn’t do anything too stupid.

“What I really crave is one of those Russian fur hats with the earflaps,” John said. “But this is the next best thing.”

“You’re better off with what you’ve got, you ask me,” Mike told him. “If you put on one of those fur hats, sure as hell a guard’d steal it. The GBI doesn’t give them anything that nice.”

“Huh,” Dennison said thoughtfully. “Well, you’ve got somethin’ there. I didn’t look at it like that.”

Winter had some advantages. The latrines stank less. Flies and mosquitoes disappeared till the weather warmed up again. Even fleas grew less annoying for a while. Bedbugs and lice. . Bedbugs and lice didn’t care what the weather was like. They’d get you any which way.

A nearsighted wrecker used a sharp chunk of volcanic glass to carve louse combs out of wood. Mike got one with some tobacco. The craftsmanship was amazing; the comb looked as if a machine had shaped it. And the teeth were close enough together to rout lice from his hair and even to peel off nits. You couldn’t ask for a better tool.

Three days after he started using it, Mike suddenly burst out laughing in his bunk. “What’s so funny?” four or five other men asked, more or less in chorus. In the encampment, anything funny was precious.

He held out the elegant piece of woodcarving. “Look!” he said. “It’s a fine-toothed comb!”

A couple of wreckers swore at him. The others laughed along. But Mike kept staring at the carved marvel. Damned if it wasn’t a fine-toothed comb. Back in the days before bathtubs and showers grew common, people needed fine-toothed combs to fight back against the pests that lived on them. When you searched with one of those, what were you searching for? Lice, that was what.

He caught one, too, and crushed it between his thumbnails. He’d almost puked the first time he found a small, pale louse in his hair. Now all he felt was satisfaction when he killed one. Familiarity bred contempt, all right.

The encampment had other kinds of adventures besides pest control. There was mail call, for instance. The Jeebies didn’t let in everything everybody wrote to you-nowhere close-but they did let in some mail. You always wanted to hear from people you loved, even if a censor’s scratchouts sometimes showed you weren’t the first one to set eyes on what they wrote.

Mail call also had another side to it. It was a gamble. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost. If the bastard with the sack didn’t call your name, good form said you had to turn away without showing how disappointed you were. It was like not showing that a wound hurt you in the last war. . or, Mike supposed, in this new one. Since Stella’s letters stopped coming, he’d got good at it.

One cold day-a day colder than he would have thought possible with the sun shining brightly-the guard bawled, “Sullivan! NY24601!”

“I’m here!” Mike pushed his way through the other wreckers and held out a mittened hand. The Jeebie gave him an envelope, then called out another name and number.

It wasn’t a letter from anybody Mike knew. It was one of those cellophane-windowed envelopes businesses used. The return address was printed: Hogan, Hunter, Gasarch amp; Hume, with an address not too far from where he’d lived in the half-forgotten days before he came to Montana.

He opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. Hogan, Hunter, Gasarch amp; Hume turned out to be a firm of lawyers. And the letter turned out to be a notification of divorce proceedings against him. The cause was given as abandonment. In view of the circumstances, the letter finished, no alimony is sought in this case. A signature that might have been Gasarch’s lay under the typewritten words.

Mike stared at the piece of paper. Like so many wreckers’ wives, Stella’d had enough. She was getting on with her life without him. The Catholic Church didn’t recognize divorces. The state of New York damn well did, though. Stella might think about the world to come, but she lived in this one.

“Fuck,” Mike muttered, breathing out fog. No, he wasn’t the first guy here whose wife ran out of patience with being on her own. He knew he wouldn’t be the last. That didn’t make the hurt, the loss, or the sense of betrayal any easier to take. He crumpled up the paper and tossed it over his shoulder. It was too thick and firm to be good around a cigarette or for anything else.