Walk in Hell

"Good," the U.S. lieutenant said. "In that case, my accounts'll stand paying you a buck six bits. How does that sound?"

Before the war-that phrase again-$1.75 a day had been white man's wages, and not the worst white man's wages. It was a good deal more than Tom Ke

"Good," Lieutenant Straubing answered. "Glad to hear it. I can use people who know what they're doing."

Cinci

After Cinci

The clerk slid papers across the desk at him. "Make your mark here to show all this information is correct and complete. Lieutenant, you'll witness it for him."

Cinci

Tom Ke

Before long, blacks from the wharves were loading crates into the back of Cinci

The trucks rumbled out of Covington before nine o'clock. The front was between Lexington and Richmond, Kentucky: about a four-hour trip. A little more than halfway there, they rolled past the Corinth Monument, which commemorated Braxton Bragg's victory in late 1862 that had brought Kentucky into the Confederacy. Bragg's statue was gone from its pedestal these days, and the pedestal itself plastered over with fresh, crisp three-eagles posters. The USA aimed to keep as much of Kentucky as it had seized.

Laborers, mostly black but some white, unloaded the trucks. Some of what those had brought would go to the front in small wagons, some on muleback or on man's back. Cinci

He got back into Covington with his headlamps on. Straubing paid off the drivers himself. Some got $1.50, some $1.75, some two dollars even. One of the two-dollar men was black. Nobody raised a fuss.

Money jingling in his pocket, Cinci

"Well, I'll be damned if I want to see them," Cinci

Three eagles glared out at Flora Hamburger from every other wall as she walked to the Socialist Party offices. She glared right back at them. She was sick to death of wartime propaganda. What worried her most was that the Democrats were getting better at what she'd thought of as a Socialist specialty.

Other posters (some with text in Yiddish as well as English; the government didn't miss a trick) exhorted people to buy the latest series of Victory Bonds, to use less coal than their legal ration (which was, most of the time, not big enough as it was), to take the train as little as they could (which also saved coal), to turn back glass bottles and tin cans, to give waste grease to the War Department through their local butcher shop, to…she lost track of everything. Anyone who tried to do all the things the posters urged him to do would go mad in short order.

But then, the world already seemed to have gone mad.

Here and there, among the eagles and the handsome men in green-gray and the women who had to be their wives or mothers, Socialist Party posters managed to find space. Keeping them up there wasn't easy. As fast as boys went round with pastepots and brushes, Soldiers' Circle men followed, tearing down anything that might contradict what TR wanted people to think today.

PEACE AND JUSTICE, one of the Socialist posters said. A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE WORKER, shouted another. A good many copies of that one stayed up; some of the Soldiers' Circle goons took it for a government-issued poster. Stealing the opposition's slogan was always a good idea.

Fewer Soldiers' Circle men prowled the Centre Market than was usually so. And, most uncommonly, none loitered in front of Max Fleischma

"Good morning, Mr. Fleischma

"Today, not so bad," the butcher answered. "Last night-" He rolled his eyes. "You've seen the 'turn in old grease' posters?" After pausing to see if Flora would nod, he went on, "Last night, just as I was closing up shop, one of those Soldiers' Circle mamzrim brought in a gallon tin-of lard."

"Oy!" Flora exclaimed. That was more nastily clever than the Soldiers' Circle usually managed to be. A gallon of pig's fat in a kosher butcher shop…

"Oy is right," Fleischma

"I can complain to the City Council about that kind of harassment, if you'd like me to," Flora said.

But the butcher shook his head. "Better not. If one of them does it one time, a kholeriyeh on him and life goes on. If you give the idea to a whole great lot of them, it will happen over and over for the next six months. No, better not."

"It shouldn't be like that," Flora said. But she'd spent enough time as an activist to know the difference between what should have been and what was. Shaking her head in sad sympathy with Max Fleischma

People were still coming into the Socialist Party offices, which meant the chaos wasn't so bad as it would be later in the day. She had time to get a glass of tea, pour sugar into it, and catch up on a little paperwork before the telephones started going mad.

"How are you this morning?" Maria Tresca asked.

"I've been worse-little Yossel slept through the whole night," Flora answered. "But I've been better, too." She explained what the Soldiers' Circle man had done to Max Fleischma

Maria was Catholic, but she'd spent enough time among Jews to understand what lard in the butcher shop meant. "It's an outrage," she snapped. "And he probably went out to a saloon and got drunk afterwards, laughing about it."