“What native songs do you sing?” asked Plucky.
“None,” she responded with no hesitation, and then explained that she was the editor of the collection not the actual author or translator of the native poems. “The poems are personal only because of my gratitude.”
“Why not Anishinaabe poems,” said Plucky.
“Frances Densmore translated and published those songs, as you probably know, and the book was published by the Bureau of American Ethnology,” said Eda Lou.
“Yes, we met her, and some of our relatives were the singers she recorded, as you probably know,” said Star Boy.
“Where are the natives?” asked Blue Raven.
“The Mohawks are out of work, and around here there are only the pretenders, but why would you ask me?”
I told her the story about the native tease and search for old Gray Face in Washington Square Park, “and at last only a gray chess player understood the tease and pointed at the statues of George Washington.”
“What else are you reading?” she asked me.
“Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe.”
“Yes, nostalgia for home and angels.” Eda Lou pointed at the second desk near the door and said, “There, you might want to know, that was his desk, and we shared the office for several years, but he left two years ago to write another novel.”
“Why nostalgia?”
“Southern strain of class, brands, and breeds, and not the struggle of immigrants,” declared the professor. “Not only southern angels, as you know, but the northern strain of manners and moods in Main Street and the shallow satire of bourgeois boredom in Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.”
“The Nobel Prize for manners and moods, the perfect notice of dopey class scenes,” I said, but she was apparently distracted by our presence and the talk about nostalgia in popular novels.
“Read Call it Sleep,” she whispered with emphasis and then raised the manuscript in one hand. “Leave the angel stories to the readers on cruise ships.”
Eda Lou became our platoon leader and marched four natives to the entrance of the building. She touched my face and handed Dawn Boy back to me, and rightly without an autograph as the editor.
Eda Lou returned to Call it Sleep by Henry Roth.
A few days later we read an advertisement in the New York Times that transatlantic rates on the French Line were “the lowest since 1914.” The fare was much less expensive than our first cruise ship passage to France. We could not decide on a date, only because we were at ease in our shanty the Liberty Trace, and with the memorable veterans in Hard Luck Town.
Friday, July 29, 1932, steady rain that morning and much heavier later in the day. The rainwater ran over the cobblestones and under our shanty. The Liberty Trace was home but public cover was more secure and necessary that day. Blue Raven was our platoon leader and we quick marched to the Third Avenue Elevated and doubled our pace to Fifth Avenue and the New York Public Library.
Star Boy headed directly to the newspaper room and a few minutes later he returned with the tragic news that two Washington policemen had shot and killed our good friend, William Hushka, and another bonus veteran, Eric Carlson, yesterday, Thursday, July 28, at a government building near the Federal Triangle. Hushka was shot in the heart, and he died in service to the Bonus Expeditionary Force.
Nothing personal about the bonus veterans would be remembered in a generation, nothing but the numbers of veterans in the Bonus March, the revised numbers of spectators, the tidy counts of politicians, presidents, and favors of insiders, and the generals who were always advanced in rank for chancy and deadly maneuvers, and the shooters who executed their duties, with a few names almost forgotten in memorial stories.
Naturally we worried about our friends, and that night over a dinner of potato, carrot, and beef bone soup with heavy dark bread, we shared the tragic stories with other veterans at Hard Luck Town. The veterans at the retreat saluted the memory of the bonus veterans who had been put to rout by young soldiers, and when the Stars and Stripes was folded we shouted out the names of William Hushka and Eric Carlson.
My head and shoulders were wet with rain, but we could not return to our shanty. We marched in silence for several hours that night and came to rest on the cold stone base of the statue of General Giuseppe Garibaldi, the warrior of independence, in Washington Square Park.
“Tonight is the end of our road as bonus veterans, and once more we need more than a sunrise to ease the enemy way,” said Star Boy.
“Liberty Trace was an adventure,” said Plucky.
“Hushka was our native brother,” said Star Boy.
“A native outsider,” said Blue Raven.
“Paris on the next boat,” shouted Plucky. He turned and repeated the declaration in my direction, and waited for the good word of our departure. We marched back to our shanty and in the light of a candle checked the schedules of ship departures.
July 30, 1932, we saluted the Stars and Stripes at reveille and then announced to the veterans that we would depart that day for France. We conferred the ownership of our shanty, the Liberty Trace, lock, stock, and totems, to the mayor, and granted him the right to pass on the shanty to the next veteran who arrived at Hard Luck Town.
Plucky hailed a taxicab that morning to West Fifteenth Street and Pier 57 near the National Biscuit Company. Taxi fares were hardly more than the subway because of the Depression, and drivers were eager to find passengers. The Ile de France was scheduled to depart at noon. We arrived two hours early and the dock was already crowded with passengers.
Star Boy slowly counted out three hundred and seventy dollars, less than a hundred dollars each, for the one way passage of four natives on the Ile de France. The regular single rate for tourist class was two hundred dollars.
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NIGHT OF TRIBUTES
By Now traveled with a haversack, an army blanket, and a pup tent. She painted a blue raven on one side of the shelter to honor her cousin, and a red cross on the other side. She camped on the dusty back roads near forests, fields, and riverbanks, and bivouacked overnight on farm porches and barns close enough to hear the breath of her trusty mount Treaty.
The National Mall was crowded so she pitched the pup tent near the street and ruins of Federal Triangle. The grass was thicker there, under the shade trees, and a natural place to rein Treaty. The pup tent was a station in the night, a port with no promise, but not a residence, and in a heavy rain she moved to an abandoned building nearby. The veterans were always ready to tease with an overnight invitation on a canvas covered straw bed, and she was always ready with a speedy retort, “Treaty, my horse, would eat your straw bed before you could get out of your pants.” The veterans teased her sometimes about sex only to hear the speedy original counters.
Army nurses learned how to divert fantasies.
The veterans gathered at breakfast and supper at more than thirty sites in the city, and the entire social muster was connected to meals, not tents. By Now was one of the few nurses in the Bonus Army, and she was the only veteran who lived in a pup tent. Most veterans pushed back the recollection of army pup tents and trenches, and built bold and stately tent mansions with large sections of canvas and other materials.
By Now, however, revised the pleasure of pup tents when she started to share the touch and tease of William Hushka, the migrant butcher and veteran from Chicago who was born in Lithuania. By Now and Hushka were always together at supper, and the gestures of stories were personal, and with a sense of irony the native nurse would tease the migrant every night on the brick bench at sunset. She mocked his accent, teased his gentle manner and tender touch as a butcher, and never mentioned the war. The constant murmur of their voices at every sunset was the show and motion of intimacy, and a pup tent was not the natural outcome.
Treaty neighed with the coos and murmurs.
Hushka never seemed to be in a hurry, and his stories were naturally slowed with the pleasures of memories, but the presence of a nati
ve nurse hurried his stories, hurried the vegetable talk at supper, and then slowed down on the brick bench for the sunset. He pretended to plead for the sunset to slow down, wait, wait another minute. That was the steady show for his native lover By Now Rose.
Treaty was content with the sweet grass under the shade trees on the boulevard, and every day she was mounted for familiar tours of the National Mall and the other campsites of the Bonus Army. Several times a week the children waited for the sound of the steady clop clop of heavy hooves on the wooden drawbridge to the Anacostia River.
Superintendent Glassford made similar rounds of the camps on his motorcycle, and Treaty turned her ears and recognized the sound of the engine at a distance. At every chance encounter, almost every day, the superintendent touched the wagon horse on the nose, and then ran his hand slowly down her neck.
“Treaty is a champion with the veterans,” Glassford said many times, and then he told stories about the horses at West Point, the United States Military Academy. By Now in turn told stories about her service as a combat nurse, and her loyal mount named Black Jack.
Hushka had many friends at the other camps, and he meandered that morning to Anacostia Flats. By Now mounted Treaty and trotted over the wooden drawbridge to the river. Treaty high stepped in the shallows, and then plunged her head into the cool water. By Now invited two or three children on each visit to mount Treaty and circle a row of shanties and The Hut.
Hushka talked with Anthony Oliver about a boxing event to support the Bonus Army, and then feigned a few punches with his boys Nick and Joe. Nearby, Alfred Steen was prepared to pose for a newspaper photographer in his sensational “burial case.” By Now mentioned that she had seen him earlier in the makeshift mausoleum, “the boast of a tombstone veteran.”
“Bonus Soldier” was printed at the bottom of the mock burial stage. Alfred wore a white shirt and tie, and he was stretched out on a raised platform over the notice, “The most of us will be dead by 1945.” The sign was an obvious reference to the delayed bonus. Congress had approved a bonus, a Tombstone Bonus, he repeated over and over, that would be delayed by twenty years. “We want employment not charity,” was another message printed on the simulated coffin. Alfred played out the tombstone scene with a great sense of humor.
Thursday, July 28, 1932, William Hushka, and another bonus veteran, Eric Carlson, were shot and killed near the Old Armory and the Federal Triangle. More than a hundred police were ordered to close that section in the morning, and later that afternoon the veterans moved to recover the area. Police were pelted with bricks, and two officers panicked in the mayhem and fired pistols at the veterans.
Hushka was shot in the heart and died alone in the ruins of bricks and dusty debris of the city. By Now had mounted Treaty in the morning and crossed the drawbridge to the river at Anacostia Flats. She mourned for months that she was not there to distract the police or to nurse her generous lover from Lithuania. She imagined his last tender glance, the bloody white shirt, and the last touch and slow whisper that summer afternoon.
Hushka must have been shot without cause, murdered by the police, because the veteran would never menace the police or anyone. William was always ready to march with dignity and shout out the matter and cause of veterans, and rightly protest for a cash bonus, but he would never threaten the police.
Hushka was an honorable veteran.
Superintendent Glassford waved to the veteran and migrant butcher almost every day as he toured the many camps on a motorcycle, and whenever he stopped near the Federal Triangle, they talked about the rage of Germany and the independence of Lithuania at the end of the First World War. Hushka was a migrant of destiny. He sold his butcher shop, gave the money to his wife, enlisted in the infantry, and served with one of the first units ordered into combat in France.
General Douglas MacArthur, the army chief of staff, and his aide in high tight boots, Major Dwight Eisenhower, commanded an armed military assault against the peaceful combat veterans. MacArthur ordered the soldiers to use tear gas and bayonets, chase the veterans out of the city, and then destroy with tanks and fire the huts, shacks, wickiups, and exotic shanties of the Bonus Expeditionary Force.
The Bonus March ended with the rout of veterans, but the shame of the president and soldiers would last forever. The veterans returned to homes, hovels, and abandoned boxcars, and lived with the truth stories of poverty and the camaraderie of veterans.
By Now and Treaty returned to the Federal Triangle that afternoon and on the way saw columns of armed soldiers near the Capitol Building. Later, tanks and soldiers with gas masks invaded the camps on the National Mall and burned every flagpole and trace of veterans down to ashes on the bare ground.
Later that night the army crossed the drawbridge and with bayonets the soldiers forced the veterans and their families to leave the camp and city. The soldiers set fire to Anacostia Flats, burned the Stars and Stripes as a political siege of vengeance, and destroyed the library at The Hut. That night the national capitol was a war zone, a siege of disgrace against the peace and humor of veterans, and the smoke lasted for several days. The stories of the military siege were told on the reservation, on dusty roads and in farm families, and around the world.
President Herbert Hoover dined alone that night, and must have witnessed the glow of fires on the National Mall and Anacostia Flats. General MacArthur invaded the camps of honorable and decorated war veterans only to protect the president from the inequities and desperate poverty of the Great Depression.
Tuesday, August 2, 1932, By Now was one of three veterans and the military honor guard present for the burial ceremony of Private William Hushka at Arlington National Cemetery. He was born in Lithuania in 1895, served in the Forty-First Infantry Division in France, and died as a veteran in the Bonus Army on July 28, 1932.
By Now touched each letter of his name engraved in the white stone, and then leaned close on the marker until sunset, a night of tributes. The director allowed her to stay overnight at the cemetery. At sunrise she mounted Treaty and returned on the same dusty roads back to the native tease and stories of Bad Boy Lake and the White Earth Reservation.
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RITZY MOTION
The Ile de France was pushed away from Pier 57 with the hurrahs of ritzy motion on Saturday, July 30, 1932, and then the luxury ocean liner steamed slowly down the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island.
Star Boy was our platoon leader for the departure, and we marched straightaway to the starboard deck and saluted twice the absence of a statue on Staten Island. A few smart tourists were curious about our tribute to the borough, and together we told stories about the ridiculous proposal of a giant statue of a native warrior with a war bonnet and peace pipe, and one bronze hand raised upright as a gesture of welcome to newcomers, migrants, tourists, and fugitives to the irony and liberty of the United States of America.
Some passengers remembered the news reports when President William Howard Taft, Rodman Wanamaker, and federal agents dedicated an enormous memorial monument and sculpture to the vanishing race. But the memorial had faded away by the start of the First World War. Star Boy pointed out the obvious irony that only the crazed notion of the bronze giant vanished without a trace.
The Indian Head nickel was struck by the United States Mint and issued for the first time to those who attended the groundbreaking political carnival of the National American Indian Memorial at Fort Wadsworth on February 22, 1913, including some thirty native leaders from reservations. The natives were advised to sign a treaty of civilization, but the great deal was nothing more than fealty and the concession of native territory and liberty.
The portly president and generous department store baron passed away, and not a trace of the memorial strategy remains, but the new nickels were in hand, easy change in any market, and the warrior natives never vanished.
We told the tourists on deck that afternoon that more than twenty thousand natives had served in the First World
War, mostly in the infantry, and their casualties were much higher than for other soldiers, and we honored the name of our cousin who had died in combat near Montbréhain and the Hindenburg Line.
Four natives in new gabardine trousers saluted the memory of Private Ignatius Vizenor, and then, as the mighty Ile de France churned ahead into the transatlantic waves, we explored the deck levels and salons and decided that the lower covered deck at the stern was our station, out of the flow of the tony tourists. The deck steward reserved four chairs and then pointed to the open overhead deck. He jiggled his head and described the seaplane catapult, an incredible cruise ship mail service. The plane was actually catapulted into the air over the ocean to deliver a few tourist postcards on land. The catapult mail service reduced the delivery time by one day, but was too expensive and lasted for only two years.
The art deco steamship was decorated with modern designs, easy curves, and ornamentations. Plucky opened his arms to the nude statues in the salon several times on our tours. There were two ordinary beds in our cabins, but some of the ritzy cabins were enhanced with elaborate contours, painted flowers, and graceful trees, and at every turn we might have oohed and aahed over the classy patterns of balance and manners on the ocean liner. Only the lifeboats were substantial and ordinary. The three funnels were painted hard red with a black banner.
The tourist class cabins were once considered second class, and the new class came with a reduction of fares to entice new passengers during the Depression. Truly, we were enticed by the price, and the service and meals were extraordinary on the voyage. Naturally, we compared the stately dinners in motion to the pot-au-feu of veterans on the cobblestones in Hard Luck Town.
Native Tributes Page 11