“They got VFW certificates they’re supposed to cash in. But now they have to wait ten more years, because of the bank crisis. That wasn’t the deal when they shipped out. If Congress can’t pay the soldiers, they shouldn’t be declaring war on the Krauts.”
“Gee whiz.”
“See those two behind the bread truck? They’re the men from the VA, checking papers on the people waiting for the free bread. They won’t turn a guy away anyhow. But they said it’s running ninety-four percent.”
“Ninety-four percent what? Certain your old man’s your dad?”
“Lob. I talked to them yesterday. That many have got Army or Navy discharge papers. Or wives of men with records. One in five disabled.”
Bull’s Eye decided to look in the warehouse district. Men with families are starting to move their broods up there now, into the old brick hulks on Pennsylvania, camping out in condemned buildings. Blue and white flags of laundry hung out of almost every warehouse window. Kids ran out of the big open doors, and so did smells: cooking, cabbage, the inside of a shoe. Bull’s Eye followed the bread wagon up Pennsylvania, hoping to spot Nickie in the crowd that pressed around the truck.
The bread comes from a bakery in New York, he says, a bunch of vets with jobs who got together and send it here for free. Even though the papers say these men are “rioters.” Unpatriotic to help rioters. If a reporter came down here, he might notice there isn’t any riot. Only Nick Angelino climbing the fence to leave a picture of his baby.
Angelino was located at last, carrying a loaf of bread and his wrapped-up son of about the same size. He tried to wave, looking as if he might drop one or the other. Bull’s Eye went loping to catch him. He loves Nick’s stories of riflemen and trenches and gas and men going blind in the war. The Argonne is a fantastic story these men all marched through together, and in the end it led here.
July 22
Summer more than half gone. Soon the Boy Army will return to take the place over again, making it loud. But for now the dormitory is still a camp for two tramps on the rods. Bull’s Eye pretends he’s a hobo, pulling out his Hoover flags, empty pockets turned inside out. Sometimes for a joke he covers himself with Hoover blankets, his newspapers. When it’s hot he sits on his bed with nothing on at all, pumping his muscles like a wrestler, talking half the night, smoking fags he’s pinched from the officers’ mess.
Tonight the moon is five days past full, bleeding white blood into the sky, C como Cristo. Nobody else, only Bull’s Eye, sitting there naked as Sally Rand, behaving as if he thinks he’s quite worth looking at, too. Eye to eye, holding that stare as he leans back against the wall. The moon lighting up the smoke over his head like storm clouds. Every place the light touches his skin, he is a statue made of marble. All but the hairs on his chest.
“Whaddayou staring at?”
“Nothing.”
“Go back to Mexico then.”
“All right, sure. It’s going to happen.”
Bull’s Eye stared. “When?”
“What do you care?”
He came over and sat on this bed, took the lit fag out of his mouth. “Smoke this. It makes you dizzy, but then you feel good.”
“Okay.”
But the dizziness was there already. Dizziness and ache. From seeing everything the moon was allowed to touch.
July 25
Staying on for fall term is contingent on passing the summer classes. Bull’s Eye says they should pay us more for pearl diving.
“We should go and march with the Bonus Army.”
Bull’s Eye laughs. “Tell it to Sweeney.”
July 28
Today was terrible. The end of summer term should be a fine day, and instead, people killed. If you ever think a day is fine, you weren’t paying attention. Probably somebody was getting clapped bloody while you ate your breakfast. It happened right in front of us. The heat was bad on K Street, but Bull’s Eye kept yelling to hurry up, into the thick of the encampment. Men standing on the back gate of the bread truck were passing out loaves into all those hands, like in the Bible. Loaves floating from hand to hand.
The encampment has changed shape all summer, it started at the riverbank but grew and swelled up into the warehouses on Pennsylvania, where the whole thing started today. With Bull’s Eye scooting right toward the fight, acourse, a moth to the candle, and there is no keeping up with him. But the moth at the candle dies. He survives every time. Yelling his head off that it was going to be a real sockdolager. It was the police superintendent on his blue motorcycle, sent down to kick the Bonus Army families out of the warehouses. They’re supposed to be tearing those down, to build more temples.
Bull’s Eye said Glassford’s in a jam. The superintendent. Hoover is on his neck for letting people get in the warehouses in the first place, and wants them kicked out today. Some people who’d been watching since early morning said two companies of marines in their helmets had already come to do the job, sent down there by Vice President Curtis—on trolley cars! And Glassford sent them back, ready to spit, because the vice president has no authority over military troops.
“Is that true?”
“Asking me? You seen me in government class?”
Now the superintendent was sweating in his brass-buttoned uniform, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead a lot as he talked with the Bonus Army men. His job on the line. But those families, on a worse line surely. The crowd of gawkers was growing. Two men in white suits arrived in a limousine, also sweating, and had words with Glassford, gesturing at the building. Bull’s Eye pushed to get closer, nearly tipping an old man with a shopping basket on his arm. The old man was mad as bugs, shouting at the police. Where was you in the Argonne, buddy? You wouldn’t have guessed the fellow had so much air in him.
Other people picked it up, shouting things too. “They risked life and limb in France! You’re running them out like dogs!” But mostly the crowd was quiet, waiting to see how it would go. A banner painted on a bedsheet furled out a second-story window: God Bless Our Home.
“All right then, we’re off to K Street,” said Bull’s Eye suddenly, and off he headed toward the A and P. For once, his magnet for trouble failed him, and he was putting sacks of corn grits in a crate at the back of the store when the showdown started. A woman came running in the front door screaming that Officer Glassford had been shot. Bull’s Eye took off at a lope. The story changed many times before we could get to the scene: Glassford was dead, or else he wasn’t. He’d finally ordered the area cleared, and got hit with a brick thrown out a window of the warehouse. That was how it went, people talking and running for the scene, and at the warehouse it was bedlam. Women streaming out the door carrying cookpots and children, a lot of crying and screaming. Some Bonus Army men lay bloody in the street. Shot, maybe dead.