Her skipper decided it was time for her to get going, too. As soon as the Japanese bombers droned off to the west-back toward Jap-owned Formosa, Pete supposed-he ordered the lines cast off and the gangplank raised. Then he took her out of the harbor as fast as she would go. Nobody aboard had a bad word or, Pete was sure, a bad thought about that. If she stayed where she was, odds were she wouldn’t stay lucky a third time. All the old boring jokes about sitting ducks applied.
And Pete had more new buddies than Joe Orsatti. Go through a fight with a gun crew and you were all pals if you survived it. Jonesy-his first name was Elijah-went into the Pacific shrouded in cloth and weighed down by shell casings, along with half a dozen other dead men. The Boise raced south at upwards of thirty knots, looking for… Pete didn’t exactly know what. Whatever it proved to be, he hoped he’d come out the other side again.
JANUARY 20, 1941, was a miserable, frigid day in Philadelphia. Sleet made the roads anywhere from dangerous to impossible. Ice clung to power lines, too, and its weight brought some of them down. Peggy Druce wouldn’t have wanted to be without electricity in this weather. If you didn’t use coal, if you had an oil-fired furnace that depended on a pump, losing power meant that before long you’d start chopping up your furniture and burning it so you didn’t freeze to death.
Washington lay less than a hundred miles south, but it was conveniently on the other side of the cold front. Lowell Thomas assured his nationwide radio audience that it was in the forties, with clouds moving in front of the sun every now and then but no rain and certainly no sleet. Peggy, who hadn’t seen the sun since last Friday, was bright green with envy.
“We are here on this historic occasion to observe the third inauguration of President Roosevelt,” Thomas said in his ringing, sonorous tones. “This is, of course, the first time in the history of the United States that a President will be inaugurated for a third term. And, with the nation plunged into war little more than a week ago through the Empire of Japan’s unprovoked attacks on Hawaii and the Philippines, the President surely has a lot on his mind.”
Peggy wished Herb were sitting there beside her listening to the ceremony, too. Things weren’t so easy between them as they had been before she got back from Europe. She wished like hell some of what had happened there hadn’t happened. Those wishes did as much, or as little, good as ever. Still, she would have enjoyed what were sure to be his sarcastic comments about the ceremony farther south.
But her husband had taken the Packard in to his law office regardless of the slick, icy roads. He hadn’t called with tales of accidents, and neither had the police or a hospital, so Peggy supposed he’d made it downtown in one piece.
He was bound to have the radio on if he wasn’t with a client, and maybe if he was. Herb was always somebody who kept up with the news. Till Peggy got stuck in war-torn Europe, she’d wondered whether that had any point. She didn’t any more.
Lowell Thomas dropped his voice a little: “Ladies and gentlemen, Chief Justice Hughes will administer the oath of office to President Roosevelt. With his robes and his white beard, the Chief Justice looks most distinguished, most distinguished indeed. He also gave the President the oath at his two previous inaugurations.”
Only a few old men wore beards in these modern times. Well, Charles Evans Hughes was pushing eighty. He’d probably grown his before the turn of the century, decided he liked it, and kept it ever since. He’d come as close as a bad Republican turnout in California to unseating Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The world would be a different place if he had. Peggy wasn’t sure how, but she was sure it would be.
“Are you ready to take the oath, Mr. President?” Hughes sounded younger than he was, even if rumor said he would step down from the Court before too long.
“I am, Mr. Chief Justice.” No one who’d ever heard FDR’s jaunty voice could mistake it.
“Repeat after me, then,” Hughes said.
And the President-the third-term President-did: “I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
“Congratulations, Mr. President,” the Chief Justice said.
“They are shaking hands,” Lowell Thomas said quietly.
In the background, applause rose like the sound of surging surf. “Thank you very much,” Roosevelt said, and then again, a moment later, “Thank you.”
“He is holding up his hands to still the clapping,” Thomas noted. But the clapping didn’t want to still. Back in 1933, FDR’d said we had nothing to fear but fear itself. Well, we had other things to fear now, starting with Japanese planes and carriers and battleships and soldiers.
“Thank you,” Roosevelt said once more. Slowly, the applause ebbed. Very slowly: it was as if people didn’t want the President to go on, because if he did they would have to look out across the sea at the big, dangerous world. Into something approaching quiet, FDR continued, “Believe me, I do thank you, from the bottom of my heart. What greater honor can any man claim than the continued confidence of the American people?”
That drew more applause and cheers. Now, though, they quickly died away. “I am going to tell you the plain truth,” Roosevelt said, “and the plain truth is, things could be better. When I ran for reelection promising not to send American boys off to fight in a foreign war, I meant every word of it.”
Peggy coughed as she inhaled cigarette smoke. Nobody in the United States played a deeper political game than FDR. When he started going on about what a plain, simple fellow he was, that was the time to hold on to your wallet.
“But we have had war delivered to us no matter how little we want it.” The President let anger rise in his voice. “And our freedom is threatened not only in the Far East. Whoever wins the great European struggle, liberty will be the loser.”
He was bound to be right about that. Whether Hitler beat Stalin or the other way around, the winner would be big trouble for the rest of the world. Right now, with France and England trailing along in his wake because he’d pulled German troops out of France, the Nazi seemed to have the edge on the Red. But there could be more big switches after the one Daladier and Chamberlain had pulled. Nobody would know under which shell the pea lurked till all the sliding around stopped.
Some people suspected Roosevelt’s intentions, too. “No European war!” a man yelled, loud enough for Lowell Thomas’ microphone to pick it up.
Hitler hadn’t declared war on the United States. If he did, it would hurt his palsy-walsy relationship with the last two surviving Western European democracies. It wouldn’t do the Third Reich any good, either. Peggy’d spent much more time in Nazi Germany than she ever wanted. The Germans didn’t understand how strong the USA could be. But even the Fuhrer seemed to want to take things one step at a time.
“I do not intend to get us involved in a European war,” Roosevelt said firmly-so firmly, in fact, that Peggy got that wallet-clutching urge again. Did that yell come from a shill? Then the President proceeded to hedge: “I did not intend to get us involved in war against Japan, either. The only things I know for certain now are that the road ahead will be long and hard and dangerous, and that the United States of America will emerge triumphant at the end of that road.”
He got another hand then. Peggy remembered that, back in the days of ancient Rome, people used to keep track of how many times the Senate applauded the Emperor when he addressed it. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. Maybe Herb told her once upon a time-they’d rammed a big dose of Latin down his throat in high school and college. Somebody needed to keep track of the ovations in Washington today.