Quartet for the End of Time (32 page)

W
HEN THEIR PLAN HAD
been settled, Cecil and Mick retired. Resting their packs against a miniature railroad tie, they themselves rested against their packs. From time to time, Cecil made a smacking noise as he sucked at his teeth, a habit of his that seemed to comfort him. Other than that, there was only the rumbling sound of voices in the distance, interrupted from time to time by the clanking of tin cups or the creaking of machinery as people settled into their makeshift homes for a final time, or scraped from the profitless bottom of an empty bowl. Peace descended over the camp, but not, despite his best efforts, over Douglas's heart. With every attempt to calm his nerves, they only quickened; his thoughts raced more wildly; his blood pounded more and more insistently in his veins.

When he could bear it no longer, and everyone but himself and Cecil (who continued, from time to time, to gently smack at his teeth) seemed to have long ago drifted to sleep, he approached the older man.

I—I can't go, he hissed. Leaning in, so that he spoke almost directly into Cecil's ear.

As was his custom, Cecil had pulled his hat down low. Now he adjusted it so that he peered out at the boy with one eye. When he saw Douglas staring back, his own eyes wide and frightened, he again adjusted his hat so that now it sat squarely on his head and he could easily regard the boy.

Ah— he began, shaking his head.

And then Douglas knew. He knew, and Cecil knew. That he— Douglas—
would
go. That he would depart, along with Cecil and the
rest of the Cadons come morning. That he was as helpless as Curly was to the insistent chance with which he had and would continue to be blown farther and farther from the course that his father or himself had intended or desired.

Ah— Cecil said again, and again he shook his head slowly. But surely your daddy won't think to look for you here, where no man is or will be? Imagine (he said) staying—all alone. Ducking the blows of the mayor as he swings at you from his merry-go-round. If, instead, you come on along with us, and the rest of the army; return to Washington in the fall … why, it's there (the older man promised, pulling his hat down again, low over his eyes) that your daddy'll find you.

—

T
HE TRAINS WERE DANGEROUS NOW
—
ESPECIALLY TRAVELING EAST
. They were often stopped; arrests were made. For a while men were happy enough to turn themselves in at the stations, just to wind up in jail for the night and get a hot meal—but soon enough the jails were full, and nobody gloated anymore over the food, or anything else they might acquire over the course of a night there.

They stuck to the roads instead. Got what rides they could; climbed on the backs of wagons, or stood on the edge of a truck if the load was full, for a couple of miles. More often than not, though, they walked. Douglas was grateful for the boots his father had procured for him what now seemed so long ago. They were still comfortable and firm, and despite the fact that he was always hungry, he had grown at least an inch over the course of the summer, and his feet were not as loose inside them as they had been before. The other men were not so lucky. Once, Mick even offered to buy Douglas's boots for the promise of his share of bread for a week, but Douglas turned him down flat and after that kept his boots on all the time, even while he slept—though Mick, along with the rest of the Cadon clan, was trustworthy and kind.

T
OWARD THE END OF
August they arrived at Harrisburg—a junction where the road met the Susquehanna River and split, going one way, south toward Baltimore, or the other, toward Bethlehem. A hundred or more veterans, who had arrived some days ahead of Douglas and the Cadons, had already set up camp in an unused factory yard and posted a guard at the “gate”—two busted tractor tires—to control the flow, and quality, of the BEF men who came and went. They had not touched their papers (which they still kept, as always, folded in the breast pockets of their shirts) since they had been inspected some weeks before by the cousins. It was a pleasure to take them out, now, among friends.

Cecil swore to the guard, on behalf of them all, that they were not Reds; that they neither subscribed to nor supported those or any other sabotaging measures that might be used against the Bonus Army; and then they all swore allegiance to Waters, and their ultimate loyalty to the army itself. After that, they were ushered through the “gates” and—their spirits high—began to set up camp next to a former sergeant major, Dudley Sterns, who had led his men in the Big Push at Chateau-Thierry in 1918, and described to them in some detail, as they tightened the pegs on their tarp, those last hours before they “went over the top,” when something began to shift within the men in his charge, and in himself. Something so deep, Sterns said, it is often mistaken as having very little to do with men. And it's true, the sergeant major said—his big chest thrust forward in his quality overcoat, which he wore even on that warm September night—it is indeed a thing apart, the thing that a man feels, as he lets go of his last pretensions to a singular life; as he gives himself—his own life—back to the source, and becomes, in the moment he does so, a man among men; which is to say,
more than a man
; which is to say, a great surge, instead, of
energy and power—

It was from the sergeant major, too—later that evening—that they first heard the news that the officer, Shinault, who had shot and killed two men on the day of the July riots, had himself been shot and killed. A
week before—mid-August, Sterns said—he had entered a house on Front Street SW in Washington. He had been shot twice: once in the stomach, once in the head. He'd died instantly. On this much there was very little argument. The rest of the details, however, as they soon learned, significantly varied—depending on whom you spoke to, and when. Most agreed, however, that Shinault had ended up at the house as a result of a domestic dispute between a colored man and his wife. It was the colored man, they said (a certain Willie Bullock, member of the BEF) who had shot Shinault—departing, afterward, through the front door, then swiftly disappearing without a trace. Others, though, maintained it was the
wife
who had done it—and a scattered few supposed it was a third party, yet to be accounted for; that the whole thing had been only later blamed on the colored man due to his (rather loose) affiliations with the army, with obvious intent to undermine the BEF.

Two days later the police had two black men in custody—both named Willie Bullock. Neither, however, turned out to be the right man.

—

D
OUGLAS STAYED ON WITH THE
C
ADONS AT
H
ARRISBURG FOR TWO
weeks before they continued on together—following the river south until they reached the railway line. It being too risky to ride, they followed the track on foot. Though the going was slow, they had plenty of company, and the closer they came to the city, and fell into step alongside more and more Bonus men, the more Douglas felt certain that—just as Cecil had promised—he would soon be reunited with his father there.

But when they arrived in mid-November, there was no sign of either Chet or his father. Together, Cecil and Douglas traveled the length of the city, inquiring at every Bonus camp they found—but no one ever had any news to share. And as the days passed and still they came no closer to learning anything of his father at all, Douglas began to find his mind occupied less and less with thoughts of finding him. Instead— more often that not; for a reason he could not entirely explain—it was
toward Sutton his thoughts began to turn. Wasn't he (he thought), after all, just as likely to run into her on those streets as he was his father—or anyone else? The more he thought of it, the more likely it seemed, and the more likely it seemed, the more he thought of it. The more he remembered (and so acutely that, when the memory came—always as though from nowhere—he had to stop in his tracks, nearly, in order to catch his breath) the way she had spoken to him that first afternoon they'd walked together to the edge of the camp. Her voice soft—almost shy.

Do you miss it very much?

Something about the way she had said it; the way she had looked at him then.

But it was foolish to think of such things. And anyway (he reminded himself) it was Alden, not Sutton, who might be of some help to him now. Alden—who had been there. Who knew for a fact that his father was (except for a single, wayward blow) an innocent man; that somewhere along the line a terrible mistake had been made—which, once perceived, might easily be corrected.

This was, at any rate, what he believed most of the time. Other times—a creeping doubt entered his mind. What if the Indian had finally been caught? If his father's association with him had been discovered? What if his own bag, found that night at the scene of the crime—his father's name stitched in red letters on its side—had been used as evidence against him? He shuddered with shame at the thought of it. But why, then—he considered—if this was the case, would he himself, or Chet, or any of the others not also be detained? And how could a man be held for long, or indeed any time at all, for a crime he had merely witnessed—in which he himself had no part? (This, though, would always send his thoughts directly to the boots on his feet—the mystery of their acquisition ablaze, suddenly, like a hot flame inside him. What if the barman back in Kansas City—? If Jim—?)

But no. He stopped himself. This couldn't all—he reasoned—be about a single pair of boots. Inevitably, then, the thought would briefly flash into his mind: so, what if his father really
was
a Red—as the cousins had suggested? But
no
. It was impossible. He did his best to push the
thought—and any other—from his mind. His father was
innocent
. A thing to which Alden—like himself, and anyone who knew him—could easily attest.

But he found as little trace of Alden as he found of Sutton or of his father on the streets of Washington that fall. And when, in early December, he and Cecil approached the courthouse, having at last exhausted every corner of the city—along with the memories of all the veterans, shopkeepers, layabouts, and even schoolchildren who crossed their path—they had even less luck there. No record existed—Douglas was told—of his father or himself having ever been detained there at all.

After that, they stopped looking. But still … All through the rest of that fall, and into the winter, Douglas continued to expect his father, and (until they left Washington; he couldn't help it)
Sutton
, to arrive. It could be at any moment, he told himself, over and over again. He—or she— might, suddenly, just …
be there
. Arriving, unannounced; in the same way that all things, and every moment (even as they are anticipated) always come.

—

D
ECEMBER PASSED SLOWLY
,
AND MORE OR LESS WITHOUT EVENT
. J
UST
after Christmas—his every effort having met with overwhelming defeat—Waters shifted his attention to the spring. Then he moved his troops north, near Albany; Douglas and the Cadons followed.

The Bonus Army could only grow! he promised them. After a winter of training, it would rival any of the world's armies in size and skill— and when it came to sheer determination, it would surpass them all! There would be no
way
, come spring, for Congress to refuse them: by June 1933, Waters vowed, the Bonus Army would march again down Pennsylvania Avenue, one million strong.

B
UT DESPITE THESE PROMISES
, a cold apathy crept into the Albany camp. Even Cecil became quiet as the winter wore on. He no longer hooted like an owl, interrupting the fights of other men to start one of his
own. He grew thin. First just like the rest of them—like a man who has had too little to eat for too long—but then it was different from that. By February, when it came time to divide what little they had managed to procure for a meal at the end of the day, he politely refused his portion. More for you men, he'd say. Then, when they continued to look at him, their food suddenly unswallowable in their throats: I'll come round.

But he did not, and, in the middle of February, he died—sitting upright against a tree at the edge of the camp. It was Curly who found him. He stood out at the edge of the lot one day and howled like a dog— from pure instinct, everyone supposed. Because, like a dog, he failed to understand the great distance that had been introduced between himself and the dead man, and kept tugging at Cecil by the hand as if he could wake him. But one thing he did know as well as everyone else: something was terribly wrong that could not be set right. Poor Curly could not be comforted and continued to moan all night long, and it helped the rest some to have their sorrow spoken out loud like that, in the wild and impenitent tongue of a half-wit. It made it easier to say nothing themselves, and they buried Cecil like that, almost silently, and never said among them any but the most necessary words.

—

B
Y THE BEGINNING OF
M
AY
,
EVERY NEWS REPORT IN THE COUNTRY
was already announcing that (just as Waters had promised them) ten thousand veterans were, once again, on their way to Washington. Maybe more.

Even when this did not prove true—when it became clear that the Bonus Army had in fact, over the winter, dramatically dwindled in size; that they did not, nor would not now, stand ten thousand, let alone one million strong, the newspapers, Waters, and even the government itself continued—out of either fear or desire—to say that they would.

In a way, then, it continued to be true. In the way that any promise is true. There were always more troops coming—hovering just beyond,
and therefore blurring the edges of what was, within each moment, certain and known. So that, in Douglas's mind, ever afterward—even when the Bonus Bill had been passed for many years and every dime of it spent and forgotten, and all of it had been turned under the wheels of time so finally as to seem as though it had never occurred at all—the Bonus Army was still approaching. Barely visible—an indistinct glow on the horizon: that point at which (as just beyond the last known curve in the road) everything drops away, finally, into darkness; becomes the limit of all things knowable and known.