Flora wanted to tell him that was nonsense. She couldn't, and she knew it. The best she could do was change the subject: "Let's talk about something else."

"Fine." Now her husband's grin showed real amusement. "Do you think this new professional football federation's going to last?"

That wasn't what she'd had in mind. "I don't care," she said tartly. "What I think is, it's disgraceful to pay men so much to run around with a football when so many people can't find work at all. Talk about a waste of money!"

"It's an amusement, the same as an orchestra is an amusement," her husband said. "Nothing wrong with them. We need them. Especially in hard times, we need them."

"An orchestra is worthwhile," Flora said. "A football game?" She shook her head.

"A lot more people go to watch the Philadelphia Barrels than to the Philadelphia Symphony," Hosea said.

Since that was true, Flora could only stick out her chin and say, "Even so."

"Amusement is where you find it," Hosea said. "I'm not going to be elitist and look down my nose at anything."

To a good Socialist, elitist was a dirty word. Flora tried to turn it back on her husband: "When the top football players make more than the president of the United States-and some of them do-they're the elitists."

"They asked one of them about that two or three years ago. Did you happen to see what he said?" Hosea Blackford asked. Flora shook her head. She paid as little attention to sports as she could. One of her husband's eyebrows rose. "What he told the reporter was, 'I had a better year than he did.' All things considered, how could anyone tell Mr. Gehrig he was wrong?"

"A choleriyeh on Mr. Gehrig!" Flora said furiously. "Nothing that happened was your fault."

That eyebrow lifted again. "The Party told that to the voters. We told them and told them and told them. And Herbert Hoover is president of the United States today, and here I am in Dakota. If you're there, it's your fault."

"It isn't fair," Flora said.

Hosea laughed out loud, which only made her angrier. "Joshua might try to use an argument like that, but you shouldn't," he said. "It's the way politics works. 'What have you done for me lately?' is the question voters always ask-and maybe it's the question they should always ask. Teddy Roosevelt won the Great War. They didn't give him a third term, though, because of all the strikes and unrest that came afterwards. That's how Upton got to be president-and how I got to be vice president, if you remember."

"I'm not likely to forget," she answered. "I was so proud of you. And I'm still proud of you, and I still think you ought to be president, not that… that lump of a Hoover."

"As a matter of fact, I agree with you. I think you're sweet, too," he added. "Unfortunately, fifty-seven percent of the voters in the United States had a different opinion, and theirs counts for more than ours." He sighed. "It was even worse in the Electoral College, of course."

"Not right," Flora muttered.

"What's not right, Mama?" That was Joshua, still in his flannel pajamas. He was yawning. From somewhere on one side of the family or the other, he'd found a taste for sleeping late. On the Lower East Side-or, for that matter, on a Dakota farm-he would have had to get up early whether he wanted to or not. As the son of a man first vice president and then president, he could usually sleep as late as he wanted to. Privilege is everywhere, Flora thought.

But she had to answer him: "It's not right that your father lost the election."

"Oh." Joshua tried to frown, but a yawn ruined it. "Why not? The other guys got more votes, didn't they?"

Hosea laughed. "That's it in a nutshell, Josh. The other guys got more votes."

Josh. Flora didn't like the one-syllable abridgement of a perfectly good name. Joshua Blackford was rolling, majestic. Josh Blackford sounded like someone who wore overalls and a straw hat. And if that's elitist, too bad, she thought. Hosea didn't see the problem.

"The point is, the other guys"-she used her son's phrase as if it had quotation marks around it-"shouldn't have got more votes."

Joshua muttered something under his breath. Flora thought she heard, "Stinking Japs." Without a doubt, the Japanese bombing of Los Angeles had been the last straw-or rather, the last nail in the coffin. If Joshua wanted to think his father would have won without that, he could. Flora wanted to think the very same thing. The only problem was, she knew better. Looking at the last nail in the coffin meant ignoring all the others, and there were a lot of them.

"You'll win again in four years, though, won't you, Father?" Joshua had a boy's boundless confidence in his father. He also had a boy's strange notions about the way time worked.

Neither of his parents said anything. Hosea Blackford would be too old to nominate in 1936, even if he'd never lost an election in his life. Since he'd lost the way he had, the Socialists would be trying their best to forget he'd ever existed.

"Won't you?" Joshua asked again.

"I like to think I would win against Mr. Hoover," Hosea said slowly. "He doesn't seem to me as if he's moving things in the right direction. But I don't know if I would want to run again, and I don't know if the Socialist Party would nominate me if I did. We would have to see how things look in 1936 before we could know."

Flora added, "The next election for president is almost four years from now. That's a long time."

"Especially in politics," her husband added.

Joshua nodded. He'd just turned seven; to him, four years were a very long time indeed. He said, " I think you still ought to be president."

"Thank you, son," Hosea Blackford said.

"I think the very same thing," Flora said, and ruffled Joshua's hair. He was dark like her, but otherwise looked more like his father, with a long face, prominent cheekbones, and a straight, pointed nose. He also had more of his father's temperament: he was steadier than Flora, and not given to sudden enthusiasms that took control of him for days or weeks at a time.

"Who do the Socialists have that could be any better than you, Dad?" he asked. He couldn't imagine anyone better. Flora ruffled his hair again. Neither could she. But she knew the practical politicians in the Socialist Party would have a different opinion-and Hosea really would be too old to run again in 1936. He probably would have been too old to run in 1932 if he hadn't been the incumbent.

"One way or another, everything will work out fine," she said. Joshua believed her. He was still only a little boy.

T he Remembrance steamed west across the Pacific, accompanied by three destroyers, a light cruiser, a heavy cruiser, and two battleships. Sam Carsten wished one of the battlewagons would have been the Dakota, but no such luck. His old ship was off doing something else; he had no idea what.

Repairs in Seattle had been as quick as the Navy yard there could make them. He did his best not to worry about that. Back during the Great War, the Dakota had been hastily repaired after battle damage-and her steering had never been reliable again. Her steering probably still wasn't reliable. So far as Sam knew, the Japanese torpedo hadn't damaged the Remembrance 's steering-but what had it damaged that hasty repairs might not discover? He hoped he-and the ship-wouldn't find out the hard way.

Commander van der Waal wasn't aboard. Broken ankles healed at their own pace; you couldn't hurry them. A new damage-control officer, a lieutenant commander named Hiram Pottinger, was nominally in charge of antitorpedo work. But Pottinger's previous service had been in cruisers. Sam knew the Remembrance backwards and forwards and inside out-literally inside out, after the torpedo hit off the Canadian coast. Most of the burden fell on his shoulders.

He'd led the sailors in the damage-control parties when things looked black. That had earned him respect he could have got no other way. It had also earned him thin new gold stripes on his cuffs; he'd been promoted to lieutenant, junior grade, for what he'd done. Glad as he was of the promotion, he could have done without some of the respect. He feared he would end up trapped in an assignment he'd never wanted.