“Yes, sir,” Lou said resignedly-he knew Frank was right.
“Besides,” the captain went on, “we aren’t fighting two separate wars against the fanatics. We’re fighting four. Well, we do work with the English some, but the French are almost as prickly as the Russians-and almost as rough on the Jerries, too.”
“I’ve heard that. Breaks my heart,” Lou said, which won him another wry laugh from Captain Frank. They weren’t the only American Jews who wouldn’t have been sorry to see their own government come down harder on the Germans it ruled, not by a long shot. Lou added, “French’re getting some of their own back for four years under the Nazis’ thumbs.”
“Sure they are,” Frank said. “But it still rubs me the wrong way when de Gaulle goes on about turning France into a great power again when it wouldn’t be diddly-squat if we weren’t propping it up.”
“Me, too,” Lou said. “He thinks he’s Napoleon-except he’s a big guy. I saw him once, when I was on leave in Paris. He’s gotta be six-three, maybe six-four.”
“Didn’t know that,” Captain Frank replied. “What I do know is, if we didn’t prop him up, Stalin would in a red-hot minute. De Gaulle knows it, too. It lets him bite the hand that feeds him, like.”
“As long as he takes a good, big chomp out of the fanatics, I don’t much care what else he does, not right now,” Lou said.
“We’re on the same page there-that’s for damn sure,” Howard Frank said.
When Diana McGraw went to Washington to talk to her congressman, she could hardly get over being there. The Capitol, the Washington Monument, the White House…Even though Pat’s loss was still fresh as a gash, she’d been a tourist, or partly a tourist, anyway. How could you help it the first time you came to the capital?
You couldn’t. But when you came back again, the scenery faded into the background. You had work to do. Right now, she didn’t feel like a PTA official. She felt like a third-grade teacher trying to get her class lined up and on the way to where it was supposed to go.
Like most of the people who were marching on the White House with her, she was staying in one of the hotels near Union Station. They weren’t after anything ritzy. Most of them couldn’t afford anything ritzy. Diana was paying for her trip out of donations from the cause, but even so…. They were a middle-class bunch.
Diana stood on the corner of Fourth and F, right by Judiciary Square. The U.S. District Court, the U.S. Court of Appeal, Juvenile Court, the Municipal Court, even the Police Court-and she cared about none of them. All she wanted to do was head west toward the White House and get on with things.
She looked down at the slim watch on her left wrist. “Where is everybody?” she exclaimed, her breath smoking. It wasn’t anywhere near as cold here as it was back in Anderson, but it wasn’t summer, either.
“Take it easy, Diana,” Edna Lopatynski said. Nothing rattled Edna. If Gabriel were to sound the Last Trump, she’d ask him to wait till she finished dusting. And she’d get him to do it, too. She went on, “It’s only half past eight-not even. We don’t start moving till nine…if we’re lucky. I bet none of these things ever gets going on time.”
“This one sure won’t,” Diana said fretfully. “I know we’re here early, but I expected more people would’ve shown up by now.”
“Nah.” The woman from Ohio shook her head. “The ones who show up real early are the organizers and the-well, I don’t like to call ’em fanatics, not with what’s going on in Germany, but you know what I mean.”
And Diana did. Edna’s calm good sense helped her make her own butterflies quit fluttering so much. Most of the regional leaders were here, and they were taking charge of the people from their areas. Or they were trying to, anyhow. Edna was right. Some of the ones who showed up early looked as if they’d rather be carrying rifles than picket signs. Diana hoped like anything that nobody’d stashed a pistol in pocket or purse. That wouldn’t be so good, which was putting it mildly.
Someone driving by shook a fist at the gathering crowd. Attorneys going into one court building or another stared at the ordinary-looking people with the signs on their shoulders. And a sizable contingent of Washington, D.C.’s, finest gathered to keep things peaceable-or maybe to arrest anybody who got the least bit out of line.
At nine on the dot, one of the policemen sauntered over to Diana. Before she could wonder how he knew she was in charge of things, he tipped his hat and said, “Time to get ’em moving, ma’am.”
“Not everybody’s here yet,” she protested.
The cop looked over the crowd. “You’ve got enough,” he said. “You’re all up and down F Street, and you’re starting to mess up traffic. The ones who can’t get out of bed quick enough know where they’re supposed to go, right?”
“Yes, but-”
“No buts. Get ’em moving, like I said, or I can write you up for blocking the streets here.” I can write you up had to mean I will write you up.
Diana considered. Several reporters were watching what went on. She recognized E. A. Stuart from Indianapolis (Ebenezer Amminadab! what a handle!). What would they say-what would they write? — if the police broke up the demonstration without letting it get started? But her people really were starting to spill into the street. Not all the car horns that blared at them were political. Some were just plain annoyed.
She looked a question at Edna Lopatynski. Edna nodded back. Diana nodded, too. She raised her voice: “Come on, folks! The President needs to find out what we think! So does the whole country! Let’s go show them!”
She started west, toward the White House, holding her sign high. HOW MANY DEAD IN “PEACETIME”? it asked. Behind her, Edna called, “Regional leaders, bring your people along!”
“We might as well be in the Army ourselves,” somebody grumbled.
If you were going to run something this size, you had to have organization. Otherwise, you only thought you were running it. But if all the people did whatever they wanted, what you really had was a mob.
Not quite a mile from the gathering place to Presidents Square. The gray, enormous Greek Revival Treasury Building, on the east side of the square, blocked the view of the White House. Better planning, Diana thought, would have kept something like that from happening. But better planning would have done all kinds of things-like winning the war sooner, and like making sure it was really over when it was supposed to be.
Diana looked back over her shoulder again. She wanted to see how many men she had here, especially men who’d fought in this war. She nodded to herself. Enough, she judged. Without them, people would think this was only a women’s movement. She was old enough to remember how much that had slowed the suffragettes.
E. A. Stuart trotted across the street toward her. A cop shook his nightstick. “I oughta run you in!” he boomed. “Jaywalkin’s against the law.”
“I’m a reporter,” Stuart answered, as if that freed him from obeying laws he didn’t happen to like. From what Diana had seen of reporters the past few months, it was liable to do just that. Stuart poised notebook and pencil. “How do you think things are going here, Mrs. McGraw?”
“Fine.” Diana was damned if she’d admit to any worries, no matter what. She asked a question of her own: “How can you walk and write at the same time?”
“Practice. Lots of practice.” When Stuart grinned, he looked like a kid. Then he got serious again: “What do you aim to accomplish today?”
“I want the President to know not everybody supports his policy in Germany. I want him to see the faces of the people whose sons and brothers and husbands he’s killed. I want the whole country to see them, too,” Diana answered. “I want everybody to know we’re not a bunch of nuts. We’re just ordinary people. If this happened to other ordinary people, they’d be out here, too.”