Still—like any child of a certain age—she had no choice in the end but to follow him there.
AND SO, THE FOLLOWING Sunday, she went again with Alden down to the camps, which she found quite transformed even from the week before.
It was not just her imagination, Alden told her. The camp had certainly spread. New shelters lined the makeshift streets (each named for a different state of the Union), constructed from scrap metal and whatever else could be salvaged from the mountain of refuse that rose—the highest point in the vicinity—from the Anacostia Flats. As more and more men flooded in, the mountain diminished, and the city grew. Boxes, rusted frames and bedsprings, old barrels, sinks, fence stakes, scraps of lumber, bits of wrecked cars—all were hauled away and transformed into the homes and headquarters of the Bonus Army. There was a veteran from Ohio, for example, Alden told her, who lived inside an oil drum, and twin brothers from Tennessee who shared a piano box—ACADEMY OF MUSIC still stamped in big letters on its side. A grizzled veteran from Delaware—who, it was rumored, had been a Confederate messenger in the Civil War—slept in a burial vault mounted on a rusted trestle.
At the intersection of Washington and Oregon their progress, already slow, was stalled completely. A fight seemed to have broken out, and around it a large crowd gathered. Alarmed, Sutton willed Alden to retreat, but he pressed on, instead, and Sutton had no choice but to follow. Soon, however—to her great relief—it became clear that the fight was contained within a makeshift ring; that the immovable crowd was merely jostling for position from which point they might observe the undersized contenders: two small boys, around the ages of nine or ten.
When finally they’d managed to pass—pressing their way along the crowd’s outermost edge—their route continued to be so meandering, and their progress so slow, that after a while Sutton began to suspect they had lost their way. Alden, however, continued to push steadily on, and she did not detect in him the least apprehension; not even, indeed, when they turned a corner and death itself loomed up to meet them!
It was true: there, at the corner of Idaho and Maine, an open coffin stood upright before them, blocking their way. Inside was a dead man dressed in a crumpled black suit. Though the mood of the crowd was more lively than Sutton knew to be proper for funerals, this did not immediately surprise her. Perhaps they were Catholics, she reasoned. But just as she did, the dead man sneezed loudly, and the crowd erupted in shouts of laughter. It was only a stunt, Alden explained. Now—too late—Sutton was able to see this quite clearly. Above the “dead man” a signboard even advertised the fact in plain letters: the man was in the process of being “buried alive.” All the while, another man passed a hat, declaring that, in contrast to the “dead man,” it was now time to “rise up!” Were the good men, he shouted, who had risked their lives for their country over in France now going to simply “turn over and die,” let the government “bury them”? Occasionally the “dead man” would raise a stiff arm from the grave. Hear, hear! he would shout. Or else: I should not have died in vain! Still otherwise, for humorous effect, he would simply sneeze or yawn— his body convulsing vigorously before once again reassuming the rigid posture of death.
Not long after they left the “dead man” behind, they turned a final corner and arrived at their destination. So unprepared by this point was Sutton to arrive anywhere at all that she did not recognize the tent they had visited the week prior until they were upon it, until she herself nearly stumbled over the boy, Douglas, who—perched on a crate outside the tent—was whittling away at a stick of dry wood.
She’d surprised him, too. Now he jumped up and grinned—first at Sutton and Alden, and then at the pot Alden carried, which contained the remains of their afternoon meal.
AFTER THEY’D EATEN, JOHN and Arthur lit pipes of tobacco, which filled the tent with smoke, and soon all the men, Alden along with them, began to talk among themselves, just as they had the week before.
After a while, Aida tossed Sutton a look and grinned.
Douglas, she said, why don’t you take Sutton outside? Then, nodding toward two empty buckets by the tent door, she added: Water to collect.
Douglas stood up, nodding, his hair falling in front of his eyes.
Uncertain at first, Sutton stood up, too, then followed Douglas to the door.
THE WATER HOSE WAS connected to a fire hydrant about a hundred yards away. They had to wait half an hour or more in a line that stretched approximately the same length. A large man with whiskers, who— dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, none too neat or clean—wore six military medals strung in a row on his breast pocket, oversaw the operation with a genuine air of authority, making certain everyone waited their turn.
Sutton was not permitted to carry either pail on the homeward journey. Douglas took them both, one in each hand, so that his muscles strained and blue veins stood out on his forearms. He walked stiffly, each step checked by the counterweight of a heavy pail. When they arrived back at the tent, Douglas deposited both where they had found them, just inside the tent door, but did not himself go inside. He sat down on the same overturned crate he’d been perched on when they’d first arrived, picked up the stick he’d been whittling, and examined it silently for a while.
Sutton did not know if she should leave him—go inside, with the rest—or remain.
Before she could decide, Douglas looked up. He squinted at her past the glare of the afternoon sun. I’ll show you something, he said.
All right.
They walked together through the crowded streets to where the shacks gave way at the edge of the camp. Here they encountered only a scattered pup tent or two, and a few chained dogs docilely finishing off some scraps of a meal. Then they left even these behind. Finally, there was only an empty stretch of grass, and then more grass—giving way only at that farthest point, after which nothing (least of all their own fields of vision) could stretch farther, to a stand of trees. Here Douglas drew up short and turned back—nodding in the direction they had come. Below them, the camp spread in patches of reds and grays. Here and there they could make out an American flag, tugging impatiently at its strings, or a wisp of smoke, rising vertically over the landscape—like the thin tail a cloud makes when you know it is going to rain. They stood, looking out over the camps together like that for some time, observing the patchwork pattern the streets made, which had been invisible to them below.
It struck her, then—funny how she hadn’t thought of it before. How the world they overlooked was, in that moment—as perhaps in any other—just as foreign to Douglas as it was to her. How he was no more than a child, really. He could be no more than—what? Twelve. Thirteen at the most. She felt a sudden tenderness toward him at the thought of it.
Do you miss it very much? she asked—surprising them both. Where you come from, I mean, she added. Almost by way of apology now.
Douglas pushed the hair from his eyes, and squinted into the distance as though looking for the answer there. Then he dropped his gaze, shrugged, and said nothing.
Well, Sutton said quickly—trying to in some way reestablish the boundary she now felt certain she had crossed. It … can’t last forever, can it?
But even as she said it, she felt the words snag at something otherwise indiscernible in her mind. She did not want, she realized then, for any promise to be finally met—any solution finally found. For things to return—on account of it—to the way they had been before the Bonus Army had come. Before she had marched with Alden through the twisted streets of the camps, seen men raised from the dead, cradled the child of an Indian in her arms …
Anyway, said Douglas abruptly, interrupting her train of thought, we won’t be goin’ back.
Sutton looked up sharply.
What? she said. Why’s that?
Again Douglas shrugged and dropped his gaze.
Once we get our bonus, he said, my dad and me. We’re gonna buy us some land—in Virginia, maybe. Or Tennessee. After that, we’ll send for Momma. Isn’t one of
us goin’ back to Kansas now.
There was no hint in the words, or in the way that Douglas spoke them, as to whether what he’d told her made him happy or sad. Because of this, Sutton did not know how to respond; whether she herself should seem pleased or dismayed by the news. Before she had time to consider the matter any further, however—or say anything at all—Douglas had turned. For the first time, he looked at her directly.
If I tell you something, he said—his voice low and urgent now—will you promise— But here he paused, glancing quickly away. Will you promise, he began again (his voice softer and steadier now) not to tell; I mean (again, he looked at her; his blue eyes flashed) not another living soul?
Sutton nodded. Then, because he was not looking at her, and said nothing: Of course, she said.
It’s … the Indian. John, Douglas said. He’s—he’s murdered a man. I saw it. We all did.
Color had begun to creep into his cheeks and now he shook his head, so that his hair fell like a shroud, and it was difficult to read his features.
Sutton could feel the beat of her own heart in her throat.
When? she said. Where?
Slowly, then, pausing often in order either to correct or further obscure the details, Douglas related what he could of the incident he now recalled. It had been the first evening he and Chet and his father, who had traveled together all the way from Beloit, Kansas, had ever laid eyes on the man. They’d been Washington-bound; had just stopped off in East St. Louis for something to drink and a meal. He had hardly noticed it at first, Douglas said; had no idea how the fight had begun. But he did see (they all did, he said) how it ended. The dead man’s body carried away, in the arms of six men.
And John?
Gone. Fled first of anyone. Then the police came; we all fled. It wasn’t ’til the next day we fell in with him—John. And Aida. By pure accident, see.
And had they been followed?
No, Douglas said. He supposed they had not. As far as he could tell, the Indian was in no danger now. And it had never been mentioned— not once, so far as he knew—between them. What had happened that night. Everyone else, he supposed—his own father, even—had forgotten it had even occurred.
Somehow, though (Douglas said), he himself could not get the thing out of his mind.
SHE CONFRONTED ALDEN THAT evening.
John’s a Red, she said. That’s how come you go down to see him all the time.
She did not know how she knew this—and, in truth, was not absolutely sure that it was so, until the expression on Alden’s face confirmed it.
Douglas, she told him. And Arthur. Chet, probably. They don’t know he’s Red—I’m sure of it. And I’d hate to think (her voice trembled with a sudden conviction she hadn’t known, until that moment, she felt) that— she continued—in not knowing, they should be placed in any danger.
By now Alden had collected himself. What gave you this idea? he asked. What did you hear?
I don’t need—Sutton snapped—to be told what I can just as well see for myself.
In any case, Alden said, they’re better not to know.
Alden, Sutton said. He’s killed a man. Douglas saw him—they all did. With their own eyes.
Douglas said that?
Silence.
Alden shook his head. You keep whatever you heard to yourself, he said. It may not be true, of course—but if it is … He paused. He must have had his reasons.
Reasons? Sutton asked. What reasons?
But Alden had already turned away.
WITH SCHOOL OUT, SUTTON WENT DOWN TO THE CAMPS WHENEVER SHE COULD— even without Alden’s company now. And nearly always when she went, she walked with Douglas out to the far end of the camp where they could see it spread below them in its patchwork of reds and grays. She pressed him when she could: Had he noticed anything about the Indian’s behavior that might be considered in any way … unusual? But Douglas was reluctant to speak of the Indian again. And, despite her fears, there was no sign that either Alden or the Indian, rarely seen together, were involved in anything beyond what had been officially sanctioned by Waters—or that their sympathies (never once, at least in her hearing, voiced out loud) threatened either Douglas, Arthur and Chet in particular—or, more broadly, the “all-American” intentions of the Bonus Army as a whole. Perhaps—Sutton considered—even Douglas’s story about the Indian had been nothing more than—not a lie, exactly, but somehow a stretching of the truth. Some way of expressing his own abstract fears (young as he was, and so far away from home) through some concrete, easily transmittable form.
BY THAT TIME —THE BEGINNING of June—twenty thousand veterans had arrived in Washington, or were on their way. Railroad workers added empty boxcars to trains in order to accommodate the steady stream of men who continued to arrive from every corner of the country, often with whole families in tow. Despite—or because of—persistent rumors of Communist infiltration into the camps, the city’s residents opened their homes, and donated to the cause what little they could: food, clothing, even money when there was any to be had, and (the one thing of which, in those days, everyone seemed to have plenty) time. Volunteers flooded into Camp Marks to help distribute the food supplied by private donors like Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean. The Salvation Army set up a huge green tent, replete with a small lending library, and a letter-writing station where veterans were encouraged to write home or to the government. (The addresses of several congressmen, including Judge Kelly, were posted along the inside tent walls, along with the recommendation that each man might: “Write, and tell your story!”)
And always, there was music. Brass bands, and the “official” Bonus Expeditionary Force orchestra played regularly, gathering massive crowds. But there was always an ad hoc band playing somewhere—on whatever instruments had been carried from home, or otherwise fashioned from the junk heap that continued to rise from the flats—though now at a diminishing angle. There was always somebody singing and stomping along to “My Bonus Lies Over the Ocean” or “God’s Tomorrow Will Be Brighter than Today.”
But the exuberant optimism that abounded in the camps during those first weeks couldn’t—and didn’t—last. Despite the support they received, as the population grew it became increasingly difficult to keep everyone fed. Soon it was hunger more than anything else that the veterans felt—and shared with one another.
Accordingly, on the ninth of June, the police officer S. J. Marks, whom, like Glassford, everyone knew to be sympathetic to the veterans’ cause (it was for him, indeed, the camp had been named), personally invited the men to return to wherever it was they had come from.
We’ve got trucks, Marks had roared—indicating the one in which he stood, and the others that, just then, were drawing up behind.
He waited several long seconds, but there was no reply. The veterans stared ahead, then, nervously, at one another. Finally, it was Marks himself who broke the silence. He cleared his throat and tipped his hat to the crowd.
I suspected as much, he shouted. And I don’t blame you! I hope you stay and get your bonus!
ON ANOTHER AFTERNOON NOT long after that, a priest named Father James flew in from Pittsburgh. Sutton and Alden had just arrived with the remnants of their previous night’s meal, and whatever else they could reasonably take from underneath the nose of Germaine, who—it was clear—was well past the beginning stages of noticing something. Unable to push their way through the crowd that had gathered, they never managed even a single glimpse of Father James—but they heard his message clearly. Everyone did.
Stick it out, boys! he yelled, his voice booming through a megaphone. Don’t let them back you down!
Thousands of veterans were still on their way, he told them: their numbers would only grow. By the time the whole thing was over, the preacher promised them, the Bonus Army was sure to stand one million strong.
If they won’t give you this little bonus, he roared, offered you because your wartime pay was less than common labor—well, then, turn them out o
f office! If they turn you away … go home and organize against them! Send men who want to look after the people, he shouted—not the five hundred millionaires who currently control our national wealth!
Around them, veterans screamed and cheered.
Will you promise me this? shouted Father James.
Everyone, including Alden, roared back in the affirmative.
Will you, Father James shouted—raising his voice, and his arms in their military dress skyward, and pumping a fist into the empty air—as God is each and every one of our witness, will you make this solemn promise to me today?
Quartet for the End of Time Page 4