The Best Alternate History Stories Of The Twentieth Century Part 8

She'd wolfed down about half a corned beef sandwich when the phone rang, and she flew up the stairs. "You're kidding. Ma.s.sachusetts already ? Oh wow! How's it look for Pennsylvania? I'm telling you, I think we're going to be lucky here, but I'm worried about the South..."

"You want another beer, Ron?" I asked my brother-in-law, who was turning red, pretending like he had swallowed something the wrong way and would choke if he didn't drink real fast. Personally, I think he voted for Wallace in the last election, but you can't pry the truth out of him about that with a crowbar.

We settled down to watch TV. Margaret and my sister Nance turned on the portable in the kitchen. I kind of hoped Stephanie would go in there, but she helped clear the table, then came in and sat beside me.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Maybe the kids were right and people were sick of the bombings, the deaths, the feeling that Vietnam was going to hang around our necks till we choked on it. But state after state went to McGovern... "There goes Ohio! Straight on!" Stephanie shouted, raising a fist.

I don't know when all h.e.l.l broke loose. One moment we were sitting watching John Chancellor cut to President Nixon's headquarters (and my daughter was doing this routine, like a Chatty Cathy doll, about Tri-cia Nixon). The next moment, she'd jumped up and was stamping one foot as she glared at her uncle.

"How dare you use that word?" she was saying to Ron, my brother-in-law. "They're not gooks. They're Asians. And it's their country, not ours, but we're destroying it for them. We've turned the kids into fugitives, the women into bar girls... and they all had fathers, too, till we killed them! What kind of a racist pig..."

"Who you calling a racist, little Miss Steff & Nonsense?" asked Ron. By then, he'd probably had at least two beers too many and way too many of my daughter's yells of "straight on." "Why, when I was in the war, there was this Nee-grow sergeant..."

"It's 'black'!" she snapped. "You call them black! How can you expect me to stay in the same house as this..."

She was out of the living room, and the front door slammed behind her before I could stop her.

"That little girl of yours is out of control," Ron told me. "That's what you get, sending her off to that sn.o.b school. OSU wasn't good enough, oh no. So what happens? She meets a bunch of radicals there and picks up all sorts of crazy ideas. Tell you, Joey, you better put a leash on that kid, or she'll get into real trouble."

I got up, and he shut up. Margaret came in from the kitchen. I shook my head at her: everything under control. I wanted to get a jacket or something. Stephanie had run out without her coat, and the evening was chilly.

"I'd teach her a good lesson, that's what I'd do," said Ron.

d.a.m.n! Hadn't I warned her, "I know you think it's funny calling your uncle Ronnie the Racist. But one of these days, it's going to slip out, and then there'll be h.e.l.l to pay." But she'd said what I should have said. And that made me ashamed.

"She shouldn't have been rude to you," I said. "I'm going to tell her that. But you know how she feels about words like that. I don't much like them either. Besides, this is her house, too."

Ron was grumbling behind my back like an approaching thunderstorm, when I went into the front hall, took out a jacket from the closet, and went outside. Steffie was on the stoop, her face pressed against the cold brick. I put the jacket over her and closed my hands on hers. They were trembling. "Don't rub your face against the brick, baby. You could cut yourself."

She turned around and hugged me. I could feel she was crying with anger and trying hard not to. "I'm not going in there and apologizing," she told me.

"Not even for me?" I coaxed her. There'd been a time she'd do anything in the world for her old dad.

She tried to laugh and cry together, and sounded like the way she used to gurgle when she was a baby.

"I'll promise not to start any fights," she said. "But I won't promise to keep quiet if..."

"I told him you shouldn't have been rude to an elder and a guest..."

She hissed like the teenager she wasn't. Not anymore.

"I also told him this was your house and you had a right to have your wishes respected, too. Now, will you come in and behave like a lady?"

"It's woman, Daddy," she told me.

I hugged her. "You know what I mean. Lady or woman, you're still my little girl. You're supposed to be for peace. Can you try to keep it in your own home?"

She looked up, respect in her eyes. "Ooh, that was a nice one," she told me.

"Then remember, tantrums don't win any arguments. Now, you go in. Maybe your mother needs help with the dishes."

"He ought to help," she muttered. "You do. It wouldn't hurt."

"No, it wouldn't." To my surprise, I agreed. "But if we wait for him to get off his b.u.t.t, your mother's going to be stuck with all of them."

The gift of her obedience hit me in the face like a cold wind when you've had too much to drink. My eyes watered, and the lights up and down Outlook Avenue flickered. Everyone was watching the returns. Some of them had promised to drop in later. The Pa.s.sells' younger boy had gone to school with Steff. He was the only boy on the street still in school, studying accounting. The Carlsons' middle son, who'd played varsity football, but always took time to coach our Bear, had left OSU and was in the Army. So was the oldest Bentfield, who'd been our paperboy. Fine young men, all of them. And the girls had turned out good, too, even Reenie, who'd got married too young.

Just a one-block street, but you had everything on it. Even a black family had moved in. Maybe I'd had my worries to start off with, but I was real proud we'd all greeted them like neighbors. On some streets when that happened, the kids dumped garbage on the lawn or TP'ed the house.

It was a nice street, a good block, and we'd all lived on it a long time. Nothing fancy, but solid. I wished my father could have seen my house. We'd come back since he'd lost everything in the Depression. But that's the way of it. Each generation does a little bit better than the last one and makes things a little easier for the ones next in line.

We've been five generations in Youngstown. I like to think our name counts for something. Now, this is sort of embarra.s.sing. I don't go to church much, but I looked out over that street and hoped, that's a better word for it, that my kids would make that name even more respected. My daughter, the whatever-she-wanted-to-be. A lawyer, maybe. And my son. Who knew? Maybe he'd come home and go back to school, and then this Amba.s.sador-I couldn't see my Bear as a diplomat, but...

"How many beers did you have?" I asked the sky, gave myself a mental shake, and went back in in time to watch President Nixon's concession speech. It wasn't, not really. You remember how close the race was against JFK. And the 1962 California election when he told the press, "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more."

I don't know. Man's a fighter, but he's not a good loser. I tell you, I don't know what a recount's going to do to this country just when we need a strong leader in place.

"Country's going to h.e.l.l in a handbasket," Ron grumbled. "I'm going home. Hey, Nancy? You going to yak all night? C'mon!"

After he left, my wife and daughter came back into the living room. Margaret brought out a pot of coffee.

Stephanie sat down to watch McGovern's victory speech. She was holding her mother's hand.

"I admit I am distressed at this demand for a recount at just the time when our country needs to be united. But I am confident that the count will only reaffirm the judgment of the great American people as the bombing has gone on, pounding our hearts as well as a captive nation, that it is enough!

"Now, I have heard it said," the man went on with s.h.i.+ning eyes, "that I do not care for honor. Say, rather, that I earn my honor where it may be found. Not in throwing lives after lives away in a war we should never have entered, but in admitting that we have gone as far as we may, and that now it is time for our friends the South Vietnamese to take their role as an independent people, not a client state. Accordingly, my first act as Commander in Chief will be..." his voice broke, "to bring them home. Our sons and brothers. The young fathers and husbands of America. Home."

Tears were pouring down the women's faces. I walked over to Margaret. All the years we've been married, she's never been one to show affection in front of the kids. Now she leaned her head against me. "Our boy's coming home!"

Stephanie's face glowed like the pictures of kids holding candles in church or the big protest marches. She could have been at McGovern headquarters; that school of hers has enough pull to put her that high, but she'd chosen to come home instead.

I put a hand on her hair. It was almost as silky as it had been when she was in diapers. Again, my hand curved around her head. It was so warm, just like when she'd been little. "Baby, it looks like you and your friends have won. I just hope you're right."

Something woke me early that morning. Not the house. Margaret's regular breathing was as always, and I could sense the presence of Stephanie, a now-unfamiliar blessing. I went downstairs, ran some water in the sink, and washed off the serving dishes Margaret had set to soak overnight. Nice surprise for her when she got up.

Of course, I wasn't surprised when the phone rang.

"Hey, Al," I greeted him. Drunk again. "What's the hurry? It's only six months, not five years between calls this time."

"How d'you like it, Joe?" he demanded. "Those little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds pulled it off. They don't want to go, so, by G.o.d, they stop the war. Can you believe it? Not like us, was it. I tell you, ol' buddy, we were suckers. Go where we were told, hup two three four, following orders like G.o.dd.a.m.n fools, and these kids change the rules on us and get away with it."

Maybe it would be better. Margaret and Steff had held hands and cried for joy. I had to believe it was better, that I wasn't just b.i.t.c.hing because other men's sons wouldn't have to go through what I had. I started to talk Al down like I had in Korea, but my heart wasn't in it.

The sky was gray. All the houses on Outlook were dark. Soon it would be dawn and the streetlights would go out, regular as an army camp.

But what were those lights going on? I levered up from my chair-d.a.m.n, my bones were creaking-and peered out. Lights on at Bentfield's? And, oh my G.o.d, Johnny Bentfield... no. Oh no. Not my son, thank G.o.d! Dammit, what kind of a man was I to thank G.o.d like that? Sometimes I make myself want to puke.

"Al!" I broke into his ramblings. "I gotta hang up now. Something's going on on the street."

"Probably a bunch of stoned kids, celebrating the new age. Well, they're welcome to it. Let 'em come running to me when it blows up in their faces. I'll laugh."

"Yeah, Al. Sure. But I gotta go."

Moving more quietly than I had since Korea, I slipped upstairs and slid open drawers for undershorts, slacks, a sports s.h.i.+rt. Very cautiously, listening to see if they'd wake up, I dressed in the bathroom, then left the house, moving as cautiously as if I were scouting out my own neighborhood. I sneaked over to Bentfield's and peered in the window. At least they didn't have a dog. If what I feared was true, they'd have more on their minds than listening for prowlers. And if I were wrong, please G.o.d, if I were wrong, they were good enough friends I could always make up something.

But they were in robes in the living room. Alma Bentfield sat hunched over, hands over her face, while Stan came in, gray-faced, with coffee. The two little girls clutched each other, too sleepy to feel yet how badly they were going to hurt.

G.o.d d.a.m.n! Just a little longer, and we'd have brought Johnny home safe. Someone must have called from Vietnam. Unauthorized. Don't ask me how.

I slipped out of their yard and back home.

"What's wrong?" Margaret's voice was sharp and came from outside Stephanie's room. She must have heard what she thought was a prowler, found me gone, and run to see if our daughter needed help.

"Better get dressed," I told her. "There's a light on at Bentfield's. I've had a crazy feeling. I went over and looked. It's about as bad as it can get."

My wife's face twisted, and she clenched her hands.

"I'll wake Steff, too," she said. "She's grown up enough to help out."

I went upstairs to change into a suit. It was almost time to get dressed for work anyhow. But long after I should have left, I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee. Margaret was cooking something. A ca.s.serole to take over, maybe. A knife fell into the metal sink. We both jumped and she spilled the milk she was pouring.

"s.h.i.+t!"

In twenty-five years of marriage, I don't think I'd ever heard her cuss like that.

She mopped up, and I poured myself another cup. I sat staring at the birds and b.u.t.terflies on the wallpaper mural she took such care of. Different from birds in Southeast Asia, that was for sure: nice tame birds and pale colors. They call it a green h.e.l.l there.

"It's time to go," she reminded me. I picked up the phone to call my office and tell my secretary I wouldn't be in just yet.

"Hope you're feeling all right," Mary-Lynn wished me, almost laughing.

"I'm fine," I almost snapped. No point taking it out on her. She'd gone to high school with my kids. I remember how old I felt the day I interviewed her-and found out that her mother had been my secretary when I'd started out in practice.

"That's good." She was almost singing. Guess she was relieved too about how the vote had gone. Her husband-the first one was no d.a.m.n good, but this guy seems to be treating her okay-would be coming home. Vet or no vet, he d.a.m.n well better be good to her. She's a nice kid, and besides, big as he is, I'll beat the c.r.a.p out of him.

I drank my coffee and looked out at the street till the olive-drab Army car I was expecting pulled up outside Bentfield's and the long-legged uniformed men strode up the neat walk to the front door. It opened, so reluctantly. All over the street, doors opened, and the women started coming out. Each one carried a covered bowl or baking dish.

Margaret kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were cold. Then she and Stephanie went out. My daughter carried the ca.s.serole. She had on her good clothes again and lipstick the color of bubble gum. It looked fake against her pale face, and I wanted to tell her to wipe it off, but I didn't. Her legs, under the short, dark skirt, looked like a little girl's, heading into the doctor's office to get a shot. It was Johnny Bentfield who'd gotten shot.

My womenfolk went to Bentfield's and the door shut behind them.

All down the street, cars pulled out of the driveways like we were escaping.

When I got home that night, Steffie was in her jeans again, sitting in the living room.

"You shouldn't sit in the dark." I switched on some lights.

"Mom's upstairs with a headache. Took two Fiorinal." Margaret never took more than one.

I headed for the liquor cabinet and pulled out the Scotch.

"I'll do that," said my daughter. She mixed me a double the way I like them. To my surprise, she poured a stiff one for herself.

"I don't know, kitten," I began.

"I'm legal," she said flatly. "And I was there. You weren't. G.o.d!" She sat down too fast and lifted her gla.s.s. But she knows better than to belt down good Scotch.

"You did the right thing," I praised her. She'd done a good job, the sort of thing nice women like the ones on our street do without even thinking about it.

She wrapped her arms about her shoulders and hunched in. In her jeans and works.h.i.+rt, she looked like a veteran of some army I'd never seen before. A vet who'd lost a buddy.

Finally, she looked up. The big brown eyes under their floppy bangs held my attention. "They brought her a flag. It was for John, they said. She didn't want to take it, but they put it in her hands. Her knees caved in, but she had to take the flag. We all sat around her. All day. Even after the soldiers left. They had other houses to visit. G.o.d d.a.m.n !"

"Don't swear, baby. It's not nice."

"Wasn't nice to be there. Or to have to be there. What if..."

"Don't think about it!"

What kind of a father was I, leaving her alone like that? But I couldn't help it. I got up and went outside to check the garage door. Saw a neighbor.

"You hear about Bentfield?" he asked. Carefully, he bent and broke a dead branch off the hedge that divides our property.

I nodded. "My daughter's pretty shook up."

"It's worse than that. Stan told me, and I'm not telling the family. It wasn't VC that got his boy. 'Friendly fire,' they call it. He was stationed in front of the regular troops and, well, someone screwed up."

That's what happens when you cut and run. You get stuck facing something even worse. I had to go in and face Steffie like nothing had happened. She wasn't crying, at least, but she'd turned the lights off again.

"You want dinner? Mom said to heat stuff up."

I shook my head.

"Me neither."

"Let's not tell her we skipped dinner. She'd get mad."

We sat in the dark for a long time. After a while, the house got chilly, and it was time to go to bed.

Well, Nixon had his recount. It was close. Even closer than when he'd lost against Kennedy. I don't know, if I'd have thought he'd be such a bad loser, maybe I wouldn't have voted for him the first time. And the grins on the faces of those guys who look like Ho Chi Minh's grandsons at the UN made me want to wipe them out with my fist.

"It's face, y'know," Al said. After all these years, he'd finally made it to Youngstown on a business trip. Some of us got together at his Holiday Inn. These days, Al sells steel pipe. Frankly, I think he drinks through them-the gut he's got on him now! "Now that we're pulling out, they don't respect us. Not that they ever did, all that much. Talk about yellow... I know who's yellow, those little yellow..."

"Al." Father Klein picked his beer bottle out of his hand. "You've had enough. We've all had enough."