“Six hundred pages.”
“Thirty cents,” he muttered, “and no returns.”
I continued to search the shelves and stacks for other titles, and decided to buy All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, published three years earlier, about the same time as Look Homeward, Angel. Biblo then handed me a copy of Light in August by William Faulkner. “Look at this novel, tricky talk about race, segregation, and ancestry, and some sort of curious class of outsiders in Mississippi.” The novel had just been published, and probably was much too expensive, but he would negotiate the price.
I was enchanted with the straight scenes on the first page of Light in August. Lena went to town “six or eight times a year” by wagon and wore her shoes, but “would not tell her father why she wanted to walk in instead of riding. He thought that it was because of the smooth streets, the sidewalks. But it was because she believed that the people who saw her and whom she passed on foot would believe that she lived in the town too.” That concise description alone was a trace of natural motion and tribute to liberty, and the very sentiments of natives in our family on the White Earth Reservation.
I tried to disguise my enthusiasm for the novel, set the two books aside, and changed the subject to the woman who read or stole books. Biblo, however, was a wise interpreter of gestures. He smiled and said, “I watched you read, drop the dopey pose, you like Faulkner.”
“That was my best pose, so how much?”
“Fifty cents, these are new books,” said Biblo.
“Manhattan and two new books for fifty cents, one about war and the other about liberty, now that is a very good deal in the Great Depression.”
My brother told several stories about Dummy Trout and the gift of two puppets, but we decided earlier not to show the Ice Woman to anyone until we arrived in Paris. Tannen was curious about puppets and turned the trickster over and closely examined the fedora, carved head, leather chaps, breechclout, and wooden penis. My brother never allowed anyone to enter a hand or manipulate the head or penis of the Niinag Trickster.
Tannen apologized and explained, “I understand the character of puppet diplomacy.” He paused, turned away, and then continued with stories about the puppet shows at the Modicut Puppet Theatre. Both Jacks were members of the Modjacot Shpeel Club, located near Union Square, only three blocks from the bookstore.
“Yiddish puppet theatre is very popular, and no one expected that religious and cultural satire of string puppets would find an audience,” said Tannen. Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler, he recounted, created the puppet theatre, but the owner of the building wanted to evict them because of legal permits for huge audiences. The puppets actually testified in court and the judge was so amused that he suggested the theatre become a club to avoid the legal restrictions on public theaters.
Jack Tannen raved about the Modicut Puppet Theatre, but he never considered natives with a tradition of puppets. Plucky mentioned the tin heads and tattered puppets that Blue Raven created during the march of the Bonus Army. “My favorite puppet was Herbert Tombstone, a rusty condensed milk can head and twine fingers, who talked nonsense about money, manners, and Andrew Mellon.”
“Where is the president now?” asked Biblo.
“Aloysius left him with two other puppets on seats in the House of Representatives,” said Plucky. “Believe me, that was a very sad day, and naturally the three puppets had to stay behind, Herbert Tombstone, Pozark Commie, and Wizard Oil, because that was the day the bonus ended with the sudden death of a great veteran, Congressman Edward Eslick.”
Biblo was excited and waved his hands, praised the creation of the tin head president, and with great gestures described Herbert Hoover in the Modicut Puppet Theatre. “Zuni and Yosl created five incredible string puppets with grotesque features in a great satire of Mohandas Gandhi, the salty nationalist, Ramsay MacDonald, the British prime minister, Léon Blum, the French prime minister, Vol Strit, the puppet of Wall Street, and masterfully, the pudgy face of President Herbert Hoover.”
Modicut was on tour in Russia and returned only a few weeks earlier, but there were no productions scheduled at the theatre. Yiddish or not we would attend any show of puppets in the city, and a few weeks later we visited the theater and my brother was inspired with features of the string puppets, the carved and plaster cast figures with moveable eyebrows and mouths. The hand puppets were not the same, and the gestures were created with a finger rather than a string, but audiences easily grasped the show of puppet stares and jerky moves.
Marc Chagall came to mind when we paged through a book of characters and puppets afloat on the page. Natives painted buoyant figures in bright colors a century earlier, in ledger books, and the ancient rock and cave art depicted magical scenes in motion, waves of natural motion.
Jack Biblo told my brother to stand and show the Niinag Trickster to the hungry in the daily breadlines around the city, to “make some new satire with tin head puppets and mock the politicians, and do something to amuse the poor who shuffle away half the day in a dreary line for a fast meal, soup, potatoes, and bread.”
Biblo was tired of the teases and directed us to depart for several breadlines, especially the McAuley Water Street Mission near the Brooklyn Bridge. Star Boy marched the platoon down Bowery through Chinatown to Pearl Street and Water Street. The breadline started in the gut and the hunger continued for several blocks. The McAuley Mission was easy to locate. The mission scene was downhearted, not a trace of familiar human motion on the slow and steady shamble to a daily meal. The tease and humor of a trickster puppet, or even a tin head commie or president, was not a conceivable scene that late muggy afternoon.
Jerry McAuley founded the New York Rescue Mission or the Helping Hand for Men in 1872. The mission provided a sense of solace for thousands of weary and lost souls, mean men on the run, and outcasts in search of trust and loyalty. Jerry, who earned the nickname, “Apostle of the Lost,” was born in Ireland, became a street criminal in America, and was transformed by Christianity in Sing Sing Prison. His conversion was so admirable that the governor pardoned the newcomer of faith to serve others, and so the vision of his mission has been counted out every day by the hundreds of people who have the courage to stand in line for a meal. No godly demands, liturgy, or duties to creation were necessary to receive the care of the mission. The mission was honored in the sermons of Norman Vincent Peale. McAuley died in 1884, and the grace of chance and station has been carried out in the name of the Apostle of the Lost.
McAuley Mission was the formal name on the large extended business sign at 316 Mission Street. The policeman at the door ordered us to the end of the line, but we told him we were there as volunteers. My sense of ordinary humor was overwhelmed by the silent desperation, and there was an absolute absence of a native tease, literary irony, or satire. The mission was one of the last docks of mercy.
Eugene O’Neill enacted characters of torment, and he might have created the poetic wounds and heavy realism of hunger, and the rush of silence in the first and last mission meals of the day. The want of others at the front of the line caught in my throat, and my words were choked when we met the superintendent of the mission. “Charity beats in every good heart,” he assured me, “but there were no duties at the mission that would advance your position in the wait for dinner.”
Fallacies overturn the charity.
Dummy Trout was mute by reason and lived with the native tease of puppets, diva mongrels, and the voices of great sopranos. She came to mind and slowly walked with me that afternoon back along the meal line. I tried to catch the eyes of every person for two blocks, but hunger dares not take the chance of care, a slight touch, or the unnatural tease of sympathy. The street glance of a strange eye might weaken the spirit of anonymity.
‹| 10 |›
LIBERTY TRACE
The mayor of Hard Luck Town was seated on a box near a fire hydrant, and slowly shaving his face. Blue Raven and Star Boy saluted the bare chested mayor and that was the
start of our new residence named the Liberty Trace near the East River in New York City.
Bill Smith was a sailor at heart, and with no ship or money at hand he had built the first shanty at the cobbled close of Tenth Street. The here and now town was near the river and the deserted shipyards, once a place of adventure and destiny on old Dry Dock Street.
Nellie the shanty mongrel panted at the side of the mayor. “She came from a respectable home somewhere to the cleanest jungle in the city,” he said and then patted her on the head. “Nell came down here to live, and won’t be shooed away.”
Five neighborhood boys gathered around the fire hydrant, splashed in the water, and listened closely to the mayor take the measure of four native strangers. The boys studied our shoes, the blue ribbons on our shirt panels, and pointed at the ledger art book my brother carried.
Mayor Smith wiped his face, smiled, and then started that morning with his stories as a sailor, three times around the world, and ended with down and out anecdotes about the old shipyards on the East River. The great circle of his knowledge was learned at sea, and lasted with stories on land, a steadfast mayor of lonesome veterans camped on the cobblestones. Suddenly he was silent and stared at me first, then at my brother and cousins over the fire hydrant.
“I once sailed with Indians from Puget Sound,” he said, and then turned toward the river. “They were brothers with high wave stories about ravens and bear walkers, and one story was about an Indian sailor who washed ashore in the last century and ended up as teacher of English in Japan.”
“Queequeg on the whaler Pequod,” teased Plucky.
“No, no, that was in the novel Moby-Dick.”
“Professor Ranald MacDonald,” said Blue Raven.
“Just, a weigh anchor story,” said the mayor.
“MacDonald was related to the Chinook,” my brother continued, “a native seaman and teacher with fur trade airs and graces that must have been a surprise to Commodore Matthew Perry.”
“Where are you boys from?” asked the mayor.
“White Earth Reservation,” said Plucky.
“Snowy country?”
“Northern Minnesota.”
“Well, make this your new reservation in the city,” he said and then pointed out a few other shanties at the end of the cobblestone close.
“This ain’t no reservation,” said Plucky.
“This is not paradise either, so build a slant shack or a house, plenty of loose metal and wood at the old docks and along the river, but remember we allow no commie talk, and we keep the place clean.”
“Yes, sir,” said Plucky.
“This is a trace of liberty,” said Star Boy.
The Stars and Stripes waved on a pole in front of his shanty, and the mayor explained that every resident salutes the flag at reveille and retreat, and the flag is folded away at night. “This is a camp of patriots.”
“Yes, sir,” said Star Boy.
“We share the rations,” said the mayor.
“Yes, sir,” said Blue Raven.
Hard Luck Town was also named Hard Luck on the River, and the residents were only men, mostly Irish and Polish war veterans we learned later, although that would never explain the easy order and camaraderie. Only the two hard luck street names divided the rough and ready veterans, Jimmy Walker Avenue and Roosevelt Lane.
Liberty Trace was constructed and christened late that afternoon with heavy boards hauled out of the murky river, discarded blocks, packing crates, warped plywood, some dunnage afloat, and corrugated sheet metal that we swiped from the abandoned shipyard nearby. The mayor loaned me a hand saw to cut the heavy planks, and at the same time my brother cut several thick blocks of wood into the size of puppet heads. The shanty was secure enough from the rain, but our beds, two thick planks slanted over the worn cobblestones, were only slightly more comfortable than a park bench.
The mayor decreed we were shanty citizens.
My brother painted abstract blue ravens on totem boards mounted on each side of the entrance. That hurried and crude shanty became our solace and sense of liberty in the city. The other veterans had built more modern shanties, much more secure, and some with cooking stoves. The veterans constructed military style toilets, enclosures around a sewer, and narrow trenches near a warehouse. Pissing in the street, however urgent, was not allowed, and not only because the many nearby families were curious about the shanties of single men in Hard Luck Town. Luckily there was a floating bathhouse for the nearby community on the East River.
Bill Smith had been the first to build a shanty only a few weeks earlier, and he became the obvious mayor of the new town. He introduced the idea of communal meals, and shanty citizens who found a few hours of work shared the money for food. The second night we contributed heavy beef bones and dried beans for a stew, day old bread, and cheese to the communal town dinner. There were about thirty veterans there at the time, and every day two or three more shanties were constructed.
Monday, July 4, 1932, the Hard Luck Town veterans saluted at reveille the Stars and Stripes. Independence Day was celebrated with the thunder of cannons, one shot for each state of the Union, and repeated at six military posts in the metropolitan area. We heard the distant cannon booms at Governors Island, but not the ceremonial cannons at posts in the Bronx, Queens, or Staten Island.
The thick planks inside Liberty Trace were twisted and uncomfortable, and we hardly slept more than an hour at a time. So we were on the road very early that morning in search of natives, and makeshift mattresses. We walked south of Houston Street. The city was almost hushed. We heard only the steady clatter of milk wagons, and the slow paces of early smokers. An old man perched on a fire escape coughed, and two boys waved as we walked down the narrow streets, past the laundries, tailor shops, and closed stores. Later, we meandered on Delancey Street back to Bowery and then down Bleecker Street.
Plucky was the platoon leader that morning, and we followed an ingenious street cleaner with a water tank and rotary squeegee drawn by two horses. The country scent of wet horse manure lingered on the streets. Plucky turned at Mercer Street and then at Waverly Place to the entrance of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Two older men were playing chess at that early hour, and the pesky pigeons waddled under the benches and pecked, and pecked, and pecked at nothing more than empty shadows. Weary and bearded men, some with hollow eyes, were stretched out on every bench in the park, and more were stranded in the wilted shrubbery waiting no doubt for the first glance of sunlight to ease the enemy way out of mind on that cloudy morning.
There were no traces of natives, not even a stray story about natives in the park or at New York University. The Bonus Army natives at the National Mall told me several times that night to ask about old Gray Face, a war veteran and regular native at Washington Square Park. No one had ever heard of Gray Face, or any natives, but at last one of the wise chess players pointed toward the two marble statues of George Washington on each side of the Memorial Arch. Yes, of course, we reached out to the stony gray president and then broke into wild laughter. Rightly we had been duped to carry out a trickster tease, and with the dopey trust that we might find natives in New York City.
Mayor Smith told me about the old street markets on Bleecker Street near Our Lady of Pompeii. The early church services on Independence Day had ended and parishioners were crowded around the vegetable carts. Star Boy bought carrots, cabbages, potatoes, onions, and rutabagas for a stew that night at the Hard Luck Town.
Blue Raven marched the platoon to more markets on Orchard and Essex Streets near Delancey Square. The Lower East Side was a constant rush of merchants, overcrowded tenements, and that grave sense of fault and frailty lingered in dark doorways, on rusty fire escapes, and on the grimy windows and pushcarts. Faces were badly worn, and the waves of misery reminded me of the war. So many bodies were wasted, hearts wounded by desertion, lungs weakened by poverty and disease. Young men wheezed, and old men panted on the streets.
Naturally we worri
ed about health and the curse of tuberculosis. The white plague was a common disease on reservations. The Lower East Side was one of the poorest reservations in the world, and we could never again escape the obvious observation, that we were the fortunate natives compared to most of the poor people on the streets.
Plucky had found a comfortable pair of shoes in The Hut at Anacostia Flats, and searched for durable trousers, but could not find the right size. He would not be seen with rolled, rough cut, or frayed pants. We passed several carts of pants and at last entered S. Beckenstein’s, World’s Largest Pants Matching House, on the corner of Delancey and Orchard. London Shoes was next door, and across the street Grosoff Bros Haberdashers. Less than an hour later we each had a new pair of fitted and cuffed beige cotton gabardine trousers. We had never owned tailored pants, not even in the infantry. The pleated sturdy style would be our smart uniforms on the streets of New York City and Paris.
The only bright colors on the street were fruits and vegetables on the carts, hardly ever the lovely hues of blue or red billows in motion, nothing truly bright. The colors must have been reserved in the shadowy rooms on the other side of the tuberculosis windows. The men dressed in black and white, and with black hats or gray fedoras. The women wore cloudy aprons and peasant dresses. Most of the boys romped barefoot in the streets.
Jewish peddlers sold food and sundries on pushcarts parked in double rows on Orchard and Essex Streets in front of storefront merchants. Signs for Osterover’s Smoked Fish, corsets, clothes, underwear, and eyeglass stores, with several signs printed in Hebrew. The vegetables were stacked on counters and carts. Women carried baskets and tin pails, and the negotiations were speedy and noisy.
Margaret, our mother, came to mind that morning at the street markets. She was a native herbal healer and used plants of various colors to cure, and to dye rose, mauve, and blue ribbons that she sewed to panels on our shirts. She was convinced that the display of color was protective and restored health, and she never hesitated to show her sons with at least a crease of natural color. We continued to wear the blue shirts our mother decorated with ribbons of color.
Native Tributes Page 9