The Lacuna

“So, can’t they get their money now, if they fought in the war?”

“I’d have been there too, in the Argonne,” he said, suddenly turning pinkish, “if I could have been. Did your mother tell you I wouldn’t fight in the war?”

A subject to steer around. “What’s the soldier’s bonus supposed to be?”

Surprisingly, Father knew the answer: $500 a man. He is a bean counter for the government. Five hundred bucks for risking a life in the war, so they could begin a new one here. Congress turned them down, decided to pay out the bonus later when these men are old. So they’ve come here from everywhere, wishing to take the matter up with the president.

“Does Mr. Hoover mean to meet with them?”

“Not on your life. If they want to talk to him, they better use the telephone.”

May 14

Going with Bull’s Eye to the market, that first time, was like Mother’s first cigarette in the morning. Now every minute is a long piece of waiting, fidgeting out the minutes, pecking the desk, trying to think of something else until Saturday. Living in dread of not being asked again. On Friday nights the boys raise a cloud of stink in the barracks, throwing dirty drawers in satchels to get ready for the weekend, and then they fall down asleep. Leaving only the sound of one cricket ratcheting, a slant of puny moonlight. An hour or two for thinking: Billy Boorzai. Will he ask tomorrow? Or not?

Who cares. A person could prowl the library instead, in peace for once. Find some book that’s better than noisy K Street. Keeping up with that big rough-elbowed dodger is worse than American football. It takes forever to get anywhere, Bull’s Eye knows every third fellow he sees, not just boys but men of all sorts. And then has to renew the acquaintance with shoulder jabs and insults while the tagalong stands watching, like a pet dog. What does it matter if he asks or not?

June 17

The barracks have emptied; almost all the boys went home for summer, collected by servants in fancy carriages or mothers in horse-drawn taxis. It was entertaining to see which ones were rich or not. They all act like imperial kings when the parents aren’t here.

Tomorrow begins a real job, for pay. Pearl diving, Bull’s Eye calls it. Washing dishes in the mess hall. Father arranged it to cover board over the summer. But this afternoon, nothing yet to do in the empty barracks but take out every pair of pants from the foot locker and fold it up again. Or sit on the bed with The Odyssey. Until the head of Bull’s Eye appears around the door. All ears and smile, the half-bit haircut. “Heya bookworm. Too busy lollygagging, then?”

“Too busy for what?” The book claps shut.

“Noodle juice and cookies with Mrs. Hoover. Whatcha think, for what? An ankle excursion.”

“K Street?”

The smile disappears because the whole boy disappears. The Odyssey can be reopened to any page, it doesn’t matter which. And then he is back, that grin. The scion of a ruined family, delighted with himself. This hurts, an ache in the groin, wanting so badly to see that smile and follow it somewhere. It keens like Mother waiting for the next cigarette. That is how she loves men, too. It must be. But in this case, can’t be.

“What doesn’t kill you,” Bull’s Eye likes to observe while scrubbing pots in the mess, “will make you piss on your shoes.”

June 28

President Hoover asked the treasury secretary for a nickel to telephone a friend.

Secretary Mellon said, “Here’s a dime. Phone both of them.”

According to Bull’s Eye, two million Americans are on the road. Half are probably just boys, not lucky enough to scrub pots for three squares and a plunk. Or farmers. Radio repairmen, teachers, nurses, or they finished school and no job anywhere. “It gripes my soul, truly it does,” says Bull’s Eye. He is steamed about the relief bill passed by the Congress, then knocked right down by the president because it’s an Unexampled Raid on the Public Treasury. That was the news headline. Hoover says it’s no crisis, only depression, everyone down in the dumps feeling sorry for themselves. If the gloomy people would buck up and smile, this mess will go away.

July 16

Only twenty-two boys are taking summer classes, most of them living at home. In the long, echoing barracks it’s only Bull’s Eye and Pancho Villa in the two end beds, and all the others empty. It feels like a hospital at the conclusion of a plague.

Bull’s Eye has a friend living in the Bonus Army encampment. Nickie Angelino, a cousin of his mother’s from Pennsylvania. Sometimes Nickie can be tracked down in the tent village, sometimes not. There are so many there now, acres of humankind, and people living under tarpaper tend to move around a good deal. Everyone at the camp knows Nick Angelino though. Famously, he scaled the White House fence without arrest and left a gift on Hoover’s doorstep: his medals from the Argonne, and a picture of his family. Angelino has a girl he calls his wife, but she looks too young, in her thin, short dress. To cover her breasts she wears a green nobbled sweater, even in the heat. Their baby wears old shirts torn up for nappers. He was born last month, here in the encampment. The girl won’t talk about it.

The smell of the Bonus Expeditionary Force always comes first: cooking smells, latrine smells. Phew. A clock on the head from Bull’s Eye, for saying that.

“What? It stinks!”

“Nothing.” Bull’s Eye gets angry easily, at the camp.

“What nothing? You hit me.”

“Phew, says you. Here’s a hundred thousand men that served your country.”

“My country is Mexico.”

“Damn you.”

“Okay, they served our country.”

“And here’s their girls and kids with nothing and no place. All they want is what the government says they got coming. And you say phew.”

“Well, crap stinks. Even if it came from a hero’s ass.”

“You know what it said in the paper? The bonus marchers are not content with the pensions already received, although seven or eight times those of other countries. The New York goddamn Times.”

“What pensions already received?”

“None. They got no red cent so far, after discharge.”

“How could the newspaper say that if it’s a lie?”

“Lob. If the president lies, why wouldn’t they?” Bull’s Eye frowned, scanning the crowd for Nickie.

“How can the government refuse to pay, if they served?”