Swat Beaulieu, her father, blurted out “by now” as a constant native tease, rather a mastery of the moment with blunt “should haves” and closed with a signature “by now.” “You should’ve worn a dress by now,” and “You should’ve settled down by now,” and “You should’ve found a husband by now,” and “You should’ve had children by now,” and most recently, “You should’ve written books by now.”
By Now wore trousers, even as a child, and never owned a dress, except as an army nurse, but even then she wore trousers under the long dress uniform. She was nourished more by natural motion than by men, and would rather ride a good horse than run with a man, but she almost married once, and we forever teased her about the soldier who tracked her down on the reservation.
Le Caporal Pierre Dumont, an infantry soldier, followed her home from the Hindenburg Line in France. Nurse By Now had hoisted the wounded soldier onto a horse, and that lift, a memorable touch, became a fantastic romance for the lonely French soldier, and several months after the war he arrived healed and lusty that spring in search of our cousin on the White Earth Reservation. We pointed him in the direction of Bad Boy Lake. Pierre was enchanted by the romance stories he had read about natives and especially the mawkish novel René by François-René de Chateaubriand. Louisiana and Minnesota were distinctive states, of course, with only the Mississippi River as a connection, but that was close enough for the corporal to satisfy his wild romance with a native woman of a fur trade culture.
By Now would never marry, but she never hesitated to carry out the memory and lusty motions of the ancient fur trade with the French. The steady sound of his gratitude, and the rush of her laughter, created enough gossip to last a decade, but not the actual union. Pierre returned to his family fish market at Les Halles in Paris six months later, only hours after the second wicked snowstorm. He wailed that his bones were frozen, and he was terrified by the native stories about the Ice Woman.
Pierre wrote three postcards, nothing more.
By Now walked Treaty down to the river, and from there she could see in the distance the dome of the Capitol Building. Treaty waded in the shallow water, and pitched her head from side to side. Later, she rode back to the camp, and searched for a familiar face, or a practical place to stay for the night.
By Now talked to a boy with a pudgy dog about the word “Bonus” printed on the sides of a pet vest. She leaned over and asked the boy if Bonus was the actual name of his dog. The boy was shy and silent, but he was very excited and reached out to touch Treaty. She asked once more, and the boy said, “No, my dog is named Geronimo.” He always wanted to sit on the back of a horse. By Now asked his father for permission and then raised the boy on the back of Treaty. He held the reins, and By Now led Treaty slowly around The Hut. Pudgy Geronimo barked at the horse, but Treaty was steady and only moved her ears. Other boys gathered and wanted to ride, and two girls who were not shy about horses, and they were eager to ride. Treaty was gentle, more content in the camp of bonus veterans and their children than she had ever been in the stable at the Leecy Hotel.
By Now was relieved to see my brother and me at the library in The Hut. Star Boy and Plucky were nearby talking with a group of veterans. By Now moved slowly from behind and surprised me, and then Aloysius. I was reading a copy of Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos. We turned and shouted out her name loud enough for everyone to hear, and then we danced in the aisle of The Hut.
Treaty neighed close by.
The White Earth veterans moved to the high benches and waited in line for a meal that early afternoon. Plucky asked By Now about the long march from Bad Boy Lake, and she told several stories about the backyard veterans on country farms. They wanted to march with the Bonus Army but could not leave because there were crops to harvest and too much seasonal work on the farm.
Johnnie Eyespot, the nickname of one farm veteran, was ready to ride, walk, or bounce with the Bonus Army at Capitol Hill. He lost his right arm and eye in combat near Château-Thierry. He was badly scarred from shrapnel, she related, and yet he was eager to march with the bonus veterans, but could not find a horse to borrow. His labor was slight with one arm and one eye, and he wore a mask over the right side of his face with a huge blue eye painted on the crude beige canvas. By Now said she raised some money from several families for him to travel by train, and promised to look after the disabled veteran at the Bonus March in Washington. She had asked several veterans that morning about Johnnie Eyespot, but only one person remembered the farm boy with the owl eye and a canvas mask. Eyespot had been seen at an encampment near the bridge with other wounded veterans near Capitol Hill.
‹| 7 |›
ENEMY WAY
Star Boy captured the enemy way at first light, and for thousands of other veterans the rapture of a sunrise would ease the night memories of war. The crack of flares, artillery thunder, and the sound of machine guns came back at night with the turn of an eye. The deadly tone of voices and the bloody dance of enemy soldiers continued in the haze of nightmares, and with the torment of faraway curses, duties of death and shame.
The Bonus Army beat the count of war.
My cousin was decorated for bravery in combat, and when he returned to the reservation he goaded the federal agent to create a common way to honor the veterans who weathered the nightly scenes and scares of war.
The warm waves of first light became his solace of the enemy way. That silent motion of creation every morning carried away the nightly torments of combat, the fury of memory, the bloody rage and traces of enemy soldiers on his hands and face, and with every cue of military tributes.
Star Boy envisioned the enemy way.
William Hushka and other veterans were calmed that morning with a clear sunrise, a natural union of the bonus warriors. Some veterans were never out at dawn and yet were ready to envision the same favor and union at sunset. Hushka led us to a camp supper, and stories of the enemy way continued over slippery dumpling soup, chunks of potato, and a hard biscuit. We drank the gray broth and with our fingers scooped the rest.
Hushka rushed the supper stories to show us a perfect pile of bricks with a magical view of the sunset over the Federal Triangle and Pennsylvania Avenue. The red bricks were stacked in the shape of benches, and naturally we asked who built the park lounge. Shanks, an out of work bricklayer, created the contoured benches for a marvelous sunset. The bricks were set and fitted precisely for the comfort of veterans. He was an infantry sergeant who lost his left leg at Château-Thierry.
Shanks deserved the sunset bench of honor.
Plucky sat at the side, ready for the dusk.
The camp stories continued into the blue night.
Hushka was from the Republic of Lithuania, moved from Saint Louis to Chicago, and then served with the first combat units in France, and to boot he was one of the first veterans to arrive in the city. We became close friends that night, and he told generous stories about the secretive Walter Waters and the politics of the Bonus Expeditionary Force.
“Lithuania, how do you get there?” asked Plucky.
“Baltic Sea,” said Hushka.
“Savage kingdoms,” shouted Shanks. “Demons with royal banners, terrible place, my family, we were dirt poor and migrated to a farm of liberty in North Dakota to escape the demons of the German Empire.”
Hushka recounted the fear and hunger of outsiders, refugees in their own homeland before the Great War. “The Russian Empire, Prussia, and Habsburg Austria divided our country, and drove out thousands of Lithuanians.”
Plucky mentioned the Spanish, British, French, and Russians as rival stories of the cruelty of discovery and colonial occupation of native communities, but only the migrant versions of empire ruled that night.
“Americans are scared of communists,” said Shanks. “Europeans have always worried more about the border countries, the empires and fascists, than the heavy headed turnout of the Communist Party.”
“France is menaced by fascists and communists,” said Hus
hka. “Joseph Stalin and his cutthroats could wreck the country, every country, and who would care?”
“Léon Blum,” said Shanks.
“Germany would care,” said Star Boy.
“Japan, maybe,” said Plucky.
The sunset barely calmed the newcomers.
The stories about the cruelty and comedy of military commanders continued into the tender night, and nearby the money packer president was served dinner on precious porcelain with state sycophants at his side, and downed expensive and prohibited brandy in crystal glasses at the White House.
Star Boy and other decorated veterans were directed by the Bonus Army to wear their medals and decorations for bravery, the Distinguished Service Cross, and French Croix de Guerre. Walter Waters, high booted in a bow tie, was featured as commander in chief of the Bonus Expeditionary Force. The former sergeant from Oregon ordered decorated veterans to muster at the front of every march in the city.
Star Boy never boasted about his service or decorated civilian clothes with war medals, and he refused to march at the front of the column for any reason. He balked at the order because native veterans were not there to prove a rank or course of bravery, or display ribbons of courage at the front of parades. The heavy memories and tributes of war were personal, not patriotic cavalcades.
Premier Waters posed as a politician.
I was the leader of our foursome native platoon the next morning. We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and Eleventh Street to the Navy Yard, and over the river on a wooden drawbridge to Anacostia Flats. The name of the river and place was derived from Nacotchtank, the natives who once lived and traded in the area, and scarcely survived the diseases of discovery, colonial removal, the catch and catechism of missionaries, and outright murder. Centuries later the traces of natives continued as mysterious veterans in the capitol city of a constitutional democracy. The Nacotchtank natives were embodied in our memory and the history of the Bonus Army at Anacostia Flats.
Blue Raven and Star Boy abruptly turned around in anger at the entrance to the encampment because veteran guards demanded discharge documents to prove we were veterans. Communists were not allowed at the camp, and the dumb guards believed the absence of documents would reveal covert agents of the Soviet Union.
Plucky demanded that the guards prove that they were actually veterans. “I think you might have been touched by the commies on your way to the latrine,” shouted Plucky. The guards were flustered and backed away, probably worried that we were either police or military inspectors.
Blue Raven was on the drawbridge when we shouted out that the problem had been resolved. “Alas, the gate chief ruled we were not real commies,” said Plucky. “He said we didn’t dress like the renegades.” The police had scared veterans into believing that some gang of commies was about to take over the camps. There was no way to tease the guards, no easy native mockery or play to reveal the stupid notions of a revolution at a dusty camp of veterans. Plucky raised his fedora to the guards, and so we did the same, a native tease of haute couture and hat dissent.
“Commies wear red underwear,” declared Plucky.
“Caps are subversive,” said Star Boy.
“Communists never wear fedoras, a dead give away,” said Blue Raven. “You know, commies wear flat hats, hide in trees, very nervous out in the open, and they set out to sabotage every wooden drawbridge in the country with safety matches.” The guards waved to enter the camp.
“Indians, many around these parts?” asked Plucky.
“Only some from Oklahoma,” said a guard.
“Indians own this place, you know, so you better get your ass ready to return our land,” said Plucky. “You have no right to guard our land, and you owe us back rent, roughly three thousand months for stupid squatting without a native license.”
“Glassford told us to guard the camp,” said a guard.
“We want our back rent bonus,” shouted Blue Raven.
“Yes, we want our native land bonus,” we shouted over and over at the nervous guards. “Give us our native bonus, this is our homeland.”
Anacostia Flats was a vast realm of transient veterans encamped in canvas tents, wooden shanties, slanted covers, and motorcars. Several thousand veterans mingled on the dusty roads, and more shelters were erected from scraps of lumber and canvas since we crossed the drawbridge. Plucky saluted the veterans and children as we wandered around the nests and hovels of the Bonus Expeditionary Force.
Circus tents, tiny tents, pitched boards, arbors, and curved boughs, or city wickiups, were crowded together at the camp. The Hut, a huge green canvas cover near the entrance, was started by the Salvation Army. The Sallies hovered around the library, and they were eager to give away cigarettes to veterans.
Plucky had small wide feet and was lucky to find a pair of comfortable shoes at The Hut. My brother found a light blue medicine bottle, the size of a puppet head, and scraps of tan and black cloth in a ragbag of giveaways. I looked at books in the library, mostly fiction, but we were only visitors at the camp.
Nearby a skinny entrepreneur sold hats, pans, shirts, tires, and much more, and there were other unusual scenes at every turn on the dusty tracks. “Alfred Steen, Bonus Soldier,” was printed at the bottom of a “burial case.” The veteran in a white shirt and tie was stretched out on a raised platform, and with this notice, “The most of us will be dead by 1945.” The sign was an obvious reference to the passage of the Tombstone Bonus.
One barber cut hair on a dusty pathway, and names of the states were painted on posters, poles, and car doors. The Stars and Stripes waved at every dusty bend and warren of shanties in the camp. The hundreds of prominent flags were enough to scare the commies out of the country. “Maryland Vets,” a large poster was set on top of the highest pole, and the camp was settled mostly by states. “Ogden Utah” was painted on the side of a car.
By Now had asked the same shy boy about the name of his pudgy dog with “Bonus” painted on a vest. We asked too, “Is that the name of your dog?”
“No, sir, my dog ain’t no bonus.”
“So, what’s his name?”
“Geronimo,” the boy whispered. He was worried about the name, surrounded by four natives, and turned toward his father. Plucky leaned over and cuddled Geronimo. The dog wheezed, and we moved to the next state circle of veterans, heard the freight train tales, country march stories, hunger jokes, dugout humor, the uncut names of generous citizens on the bonus road, and then returned to the happy checkers players on the high benches near the library.
The Hut was covered and more spacious, and a good place to rest before we returned for supper at the Federal Triangle. I searched once more the titles of used books, old novels, travel stories, classical histories, and picture books of circus freaks. I found an early edition of The Odyssey, and a copy of Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos. The First World War novel was published ten years earlier, a year before we left the reservation a second time and returned to Paris.
Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College and then served as a driver in the Ambulance Corps, along with many other young writers who avoided the military. I knew that much from newspaper stories, and he started to write about the war when he read Le Feu, a war novel by Henri Barbusse, the fierce veteran who first turned to lofty pacifism and then marched with the French Communist Party. I leaned against the book table and read at a glance a few scenes and some character chatter in the Three Soldiers, and was not taken away, but my criticism as a combat veteran was probably unfair because the war had ended more than a decade earlier. The novel was mostly dialogue, soldierly jargon, and with class clumsy accents. The slight notice of war noise and devastated landscapes would easily convince most veterans that the author was not a trench soldier, but an educated spectator or ambulance driver.
A Sally moved around the circus tent with absolute ease, and her casual manner turned the canvas cover into a home, parlor, and a library. She helped veterans write letters, and smiled when she noticed me standi
ng nearby with a copy of Three Soldiers. “John Dos Passos was here today,” she said, “writing something about the camps and working on a new book about big money.” Dos Passos had looked over the same stack of books, she told me, and even his own novel.
Plucky saw Dos Passos near a Model A Ford talking to several veterans from Pennsylvania. We gathered around and listened to the conversation with Anthony Oliver and two other veterans. Anthony, a bricklayer, drove from Belle Vernon at the end of the school year with his seven year old sons, Nick and Joe. The boys were boxers and staged fights at the camp. Anthony mentioned that Pelham Glassford, the superintendent of police, and seven or more officers, played baseball with the veterans, and the regular games were one of the high points at Anacostia Flats.
Blue Raven opened his shoulder case to show Nick and Joe the three hand puppets, but he only steadied the two tin heads, Herbert Tombstone and Pozark Commie. The boys were amused when the puppets butted heads, and my brother encouraged the boys to actually say a few words for the hand puppets, only a word or two. “Butt your own head,” said Pozark Commie. “Don’t smoke,” Nick said for Herbert Tombstone.
My brother raised a black cape and small blue medicine bottle and created Wizard Oil, a new hand puppet with jerky head motions. He spit in the dust, and with a muddy finger touched a mouth, horns, two eyes, and a curved smile on the blue face. The new puppet had just the right camp cures for cramps, headache, neuralgia, and toothaches, and to heal a lame back. The boys watched closely and backed away when my brother warned in a muted voice, “Wizard medicine no good for camp boys,” and the blue head bowed and turned to the side. The boys were not shy but unsure about a native veteran who created crude hand puppets with rags, bottles, and tins.
Château-Thierry was mentioned, a catchword of the deadly war, in a conversation about the ambulance service and wounded soldiers stacked on the side of muddy roads. Dos Passos seemed at ease with the veterans, and he turned every combat notice around to lambaste the politicians and generals who carried out the war.
Native Tributes Page 6
