The Lacuna

Bull’s Eye looked ready to murder. More men were roaring up from the main encampment by the river, they’d gotten wind and come running with bricks to defend their women and kids, and Glassford’s men returned fire with bullets. They weren’t even ashamed, scads of people saw them do it, the whole crowd was screaming. Like Cortés and the Aztecs: one side always better armed.

An ambulance sounded from far away, probably stuck. The mob was like an ocean now, shifting from side to side. Nothing could get through, the only thing running fast was rumors: Hoover had called up MacArthur to put on his whipcord britches, get down here with troops, and rout the Bonus Army. Half the city stood jammed together on the hottest day of the year; offices were letting out, all eyes watching to see what would happen to these women and men. They stood on the step of a wrecked building, clutching what was left of their lives in a wad at their bellies, and every shopper and businessman, idler and schoolboy felt a horror rise, wondering the same thing: Where can they go?

A grumbling sound like thunder seemed to come out of the street.

An out-of-breath newsboy grabbed the corner of a building as he came round it and flung himself against the wall, gasping. “It’s a tank!” he shouted. “The treads are turning the pavement into gravy!”

It seemed a fair time to leave, but escape was impossible. The front of the crowd began backing up from the street, shoving the rest of us against the window of a telegraph office, jammed between men in straw boaters and secretaries in point-heeled shoes. Two girls in cloche hats, one white hat and one black, stepped out of the door of the telegraph office and said, “Gee, what’s the story?” People were pouring out of buildings with nowhere to go, milling in the street across from the Bonus Marchers.

The cavalry arrived just then, clopping up the street. It was Major Patton. Probably he’d arrived ahead of MacArthur’s tanks because the horses could dodge around the stalled motorcars choking up Pennsylvania Avenue. The horses reared and pranced sideways, spooked by the crowd. Their riders had long sabers, held high in their right hands. Behind them came a machine gun detachment, audibly marching in step.

“Gee whiz,” said the white-hat girl again. Bayonets appeared, bristling above the heads of the crowd. People pressed back harder against the buildings as the tanks rolled up, their treads chewing the road as they came. The Bonus Marchers were lined up across the street, standing steady. Women struggled to hold babies, but all the men stood at attention, like the soldiers they are. They saluted the cavalry’s color guard, and one small ragged boy on a man’s shoulders pumped his own little flag in the air. A lady in the crowd of onlookers raised up a high shout and the whole throng took it up: Three cheers for our men who served, hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Patton’s horsemen wheeled and charged the crowd.

Everyone ducked and shoved, the white-hat girl screaming, stepping sideways with her pointed white shoe, stabbing like a knife, and everyone tumbled. “Pull her up quick!” Bull’s Eye said, helping from his side to drag her up by the elbows, but she seemed to be swooning. A man fell against her, someone else against the man, and then it was a whole smash-up of secretaries and bean counters. With flat hands pressed against the stone wall of the telegraph office, it was possible to inch back up to standing. Bull’s Eye began to swim with his elbows toward the street, while everyone else pressed back, and that was a good time to say so long to Bull’s Eye. Between the stone wall and the crush of shoulders, it was hard to breathe. Over the sea of heads and hats you could catch sight of cavalrymen leaning down from the waist, on their horses, flailing their saber blades against whatever was below them.

Against people. That hit with a shock. They were beating at the Bonus Army men and women with the razor-sharp blades of sabers.

Someone pushed into the near crowd with a bloody face, the meat of his cheek sliced back and bone shining. Roar after roar rose from the crowd in front, leaving those at the rear to guess and dread the cause of it. The cavalry men kept shouting to clear out, but the crowd shouted “Shame! Shame!” until it became a chant. The Bonus Army had linked arms to form a colonnade across the street, and the cavalry flung their horses through the line, snapping bones. The crowd howled, screams erupting with every charge of horsemen into flesh.

Bull’s Eye suddenly reappeared: “Come on!”

“We can’t get through. I’m smashed potatoes.”

Bull’s Eye swung open the door of the telegraph office and, like a magician pulling a scarf through a ring, yanked us both through the knot of people into the office. The people trapped inside all looked up, the same shocked face.

“Back to the alley,” Bull’s Eye yelled, but no one else made for it as he threaded through the desks and clerks to the washroom, climbed onto the radiator, and popped open the window. Outside, the alleyway was surprisingly empty. Trash heaps and crates of sodden lettuce, it must be a restaurant next door—it was a stench to beat the band. Not one other person had thought to escape from the melee by this route. Bull’s Eye turned south at a hard trot.

“School’s the other way.”

“Right!” he said, without slowing up.

A burning stench began to choke out the restaurant smell. “God,” Bull’s Eye croaked. “It’s gas. Come on, this way or we’re cooked.”

People came into the alley with hands over their faces, coming from the direction of the river. What followed was the sight of blindness itself coming on, and a feeling exactly like trying to breathe saltwater. Like swimming into the cave, the longest possible held breath. Every gulp of air tasted like poison. People were stumbling over trash heaps and people heaps. A newsboy curled like a fetus on his big stack of papers; suddenly the whole pile was old news.

“Come on,” Bull’s Eye said, “he’s not dead. You don’t die of gas.”

Bull’s Eye’s face was purple as liver, his eyes streaming tears, but he still moved at a clip that wasn’t easy to follow. An ambulance entered the alley, and people mobbed it. Between two buildings a tableau of the riot appeared: an infantryman pulling a blue bottle from his belt, uncorking it, and hurling it into the haze.

July 29

It’s all in the newspapers today. Bull’s Eye sat reading on his bed without a word, handing the papers over when he finished reading each part.

Gallinger Hospital filled to overflowing with the casualties. Any Bonus Marchers who made it to the Eleventh Street bridge joined the ones at the riverbank encampment. Mr. Hoover sent orders for troops to stop at the bridge, but MacArthur “couldn’t be bothered with new orders,” so he mounted machine guns on the bridge and led a column of infantry across the Potomac into the encampment. They set flaming torches to the canvas and pasteboard homes. Exactly as Cortés said it: Much grieved to burn up the people, but since it was still more grievous to them, he determined to do it.