Good Hope Road: A Novel (34 page)

They turned to look at the Capitol. Flames were leaping from the burning camps. A savage, upside-down sunset, lit from below, staining the pristine stucco of the buildings.

The forced evacuation of all the camps in downtown Washington continued through the evening, supervised by the immaculate figure of General MacArthur himself.

‘The American flag means nothing to me after this!’ an onlooker called in disgust.

The General turned to the soldiers nearby. ‘Arrest that man if he opens his mouth again,’ he ordered.

Anacostia • 28 July 1932

he areas around the Capitol remained thick with troops and police even after all the camps downtown had been cleared. So many of the side streets and so much of the avenue had been cordoned off that it took Jim and Madeleine hours to return to where the truck was parked.

Getting Madeleine back to her mother at the hotel would have been a marathon undertaking that evening. ‘I’m coming with you to Anacostia,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll call Mama from there.’ Jim did not argue, loath as he was to let her out of his sight and deeply anxious to get back to Anacostia and find his father.

Yet again, the 11th Street Bridge was thick with men, women and children making their way across to the Anacostia Flats. Unlike the jaunty, upbeat throngs that Jim recalled from not a month ago, however, these crowds presented a grim spectacle. The bright note of hope that had so singled out the Bonus marchers was replaced with a weary, worn-out defeat. Gone were the rough hewn ‘Bonus or Bust!’ banners. Gone, the hand-painted signs exhorting the country to do right by their doughboys. Even the flags, once so proudly brandished, were missing, reduced to ashes along with the rest of the downtown camps.

Men trudged with bowed heads, carting what remained of their meagre belongings as they led their families away, towards what, they no longer knew. Nobody spoke, not even the children, their tear-stained cheeks streaked with dirt and soot. They made virtually no sound as they walked, a silent, beaten-down procession retreating into the dusk.

‘I wish we could offer more of them a ride,’ Madeleine said tearfully. The truck was already filled with as many of the evacuees as they could fit. Two men were squeezed into the cab, one practically sitting atop the other. The bed of the truck was packed with men and their families, with more veterans cloistered silently on the running boards at either side.

‘Like dogs, the Government treated us,’ one of the veterans in the cab said bitterly. ‘Like a dog that you feel sorry for and take in for a while. You pet it for a bit and feed it table scraps, but it just ain’t prettied enough, what with its fleas and all. So you throw it out into the streets once more.’

They stopped first at the rooms where Jim and the Major were staying. The landlady was pale as she let them in. ‘You poor dears,’ she said, as she took in their smoky, dishevelled countenances. ‘We heard about it on the radio. You poor dears,’ she said again, and her lips trembled.

‘Has my father been by?’

To Jim’s profound relief, she nodded. ‘He came in a while ago. Asked for you soon as I opened the door. Limping something bad he was and the eye . . .’ She gestured at her left eye. ‘Still, he insisted on leaving at once for the camp. Said to tell you if you came in that he’d be at the registration tent.’

Madeleine placed a call to her mother to assure her she was fine. The taciturn landlord stopped them as they left. ‘I’ve got some fruit you can take with you,’ he said gruffly. ‘There’ll be hungry children in the camp.’ He loaded them up with apples, a crate of oranges and all the milk he had in the grocery downstairs.

A gibbous moon was rising as they set out once more into the night. As she took in its spare, apathetic shine, Madeleine was reminded for an instant of looking at a reflection in the Major’s mirror. She raised her face to it, feeling suddenly drained, letting its cool light sift over her skin. She wondered at its beauty, at the nonchalant elegance it cast over the affairs of men and the pathos so far below. There was a sudden stinging at the back of her eyes, a lump in her throat at the unfairness, at the cruel beauty of the world.

She reached for Jim’s hand, glad of the warmth of his fingers as they closed over her own.

The Major glanced anxiously again towards the entrance of the registration tent. Jim ought to have been here by now. At least there’d been no word of additional casualties since the afternoon, neither among the veterans nor the civilian onlookers.

A pall of despondency hung over the crowded tent, lines of veterans

with deadened eyes waiting quietly to be registered. A sharp taste rose in the back of the Major’s throat as he took in their slack, defeated faces, his mind filling anew with images from that afternoon. His eye began to twitch again. He pressed his pocket square against it, willing himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

He continued with the registration of the family clustered about the table, having volunteered his services at the tent as the first of the evacuated veterans had begun to arrive in Anacostia. The little daughter of the family stood silently watching as he completed the forms and handed back the discharge papers to her father. The Major wished he had something to offer the child, an apple, candy, something. He smiled tentatively at her and she looked away, down at the floor, clutching a small, hand-me-down doll in her arms. Her father wearily lifted her up, and placing an arm around his wife’s shoulders, led them from the tent.

The Major looked towards the entrance again, and there, at last was his jackass son, striding through the tent flaps, Madeleine following behind. A flood of relief washed over the Major, so strong that his hands started to tremble. He masked it at once, capping his pen with more force than was necessary and demanding to know just where they’d been all this while and why the devil they’d taken so long.

Connor came over to slap Jim on the shoulder. ‘You come to help us out too? The Major’s been signing in folks all evening.’

‘Is there room for everyone? What about food?’ Madeleine asked.

Connor removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘We’ll make do.’ He gestured at the provisions they’d brought. ‘That’ll help, a bit.’ He tried to smile, but it was a poor attempt. ‘We’ve made do in the past, we’ll do so again.’

Jim and the Major glanced at the lines of veterans and their families snaking out the tent, but said nothing in response.

On the other side of the 11th Street Bridge, General Douglas MacArthur had just called a debriefing meeting. The troops had taken a well-deserved rest after the evacuation, and he’d waited until all the horses were taken care of, and the men fed, before summoning the officers on duty.

He stood before them now and calmly revealed that the operation was not yet complete. Contrary to what they’d been led to believe, the troops would not be returning to base just yet.
All
the camps in the Washington area were to be evacuated that night, the city rid of every last one of the Bonus marchers.

They were to move across the bridge to Anacostia.

If Major Patton was surprised to hear the order, he gave no sign. In less than ten minutes, the cavalry had saddled up and was on the march again, the infantry following closely behind.

It was after 9 p.m. when they crossed. The veterans sharing a weary smoke near the stanchions froze as they saw them approach, then, galvanised into action, they flung their cigarettes to the ground and raced to the camp.

‘The soldiers are coming! They’re coming!’

Here too
? Heads whipped around in shock, necks craning fearfully in the dark towards the direction of the bridge. A woman started to cry, quietly at first and then with increasingly hysterical sobs as her husband tried to comfort her.

‘They’re going to clear out Anacostia as well,’ the Major said, as the realisation dawned on him. He rose to his feet, filled with a hollow, impotent anger. ‘They’re going to clear out all the veterans from Washington.’

‘They want us out of Anacostia?’ Connor asked disbelievingly. ‘But . . .’ He took off his hat, looking around the tent in bewilderment as he raked a hand through his thinning hair. ‘Why? There’s no buildings here to evacuate, there was nothing and nobody here but mud and mosquitoes when we first came. They want us gone from here too?’

Slowly, he shook his head from side to side, as if to clear it. ‘Well,’ he said bitterly, his face turning red, ‘if it’s a fight they’re after, they’ll get one alright. We’ll fight!’ Connor roared suddenly. ‘We’ll stay right here and fight! Let’s show them some of what we showed the Boche back in ’18!’

A wild cheering rose at his words and all hell broke loose, men rushing about, grabbing chairs, shovels, tent poles, whatever was at hand to use as a makeshift weapon.

The Major smacked his cane across the desk, the sound ricocheting around the tent like a pistol shot. ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he snapped, and they halted as one at the authority in his voice. ‘Fight with what? Sticks and stones? Those soldiers were armed to the teeth this afternoon. The cavalry. The infantry. Goddamn tanks! There are women and children here, or have you forgotten?’

The call to action was abandoned. Fury turned to resignation, then grinding defeat as it began to sink in to the men that they were licked, that they’d reached the end of the road.

The Bonus March was over.

A delegation of veterans went to where the troops had halted near the camp. They were given permission to approach a gleaming black staff car, where they asked General MacArthur for enough time so that the veterans and their families were at least able to leave with some dignity.

The General granted their request. However, the evacuees would be allowed only an hour. One hour, no more; after that, the troops would move forward.

One hour
.

The camp surged to life, veterans rushing frantically about in the dark, gathering families and possessions as the troops outside continued to fall into position. Tanks were stationed at either end of the bridge to deter traffic. A massive searchlight was assembled and aimed at the camp. A cone of light began to illuminate the shacks, so bright that it blotted out the moon, bleaching wood and cardboard alike to bare bone. Slowly, it moved from left to right, capturing in its white, blinding eye a veteran trying frantically to start his ancient jalopy here, a woman there, throwing clothes and a few chipped dishes into a battered suitcase, a child clasping a toy, his eyes still heavy with sleep.

The designated hour drew to a close with the camp still far from being empty. Slowly the searchlight swung, picking out husbands panting under the weight of mattresses and box springs, shouting at their wives to go on, hurry, quick, with the children. Families too poor to own a car, and with children too young to run very far or fast were rushing towards the garbage dump behind the camp for somewhere to wait out the night.

The Major turned to Connor, Angelo and the other veterans, offering to house for the night as many as would fit in the rooms where Jim and he were staying.

Connor shook his head. ‘I want to watch,’ he said slowly. ‘We’ll leave like they want, but I’m watching every last thing that these yellow bastards do to our camp. Jim,’ he asked, ‘will you drive us?’

Jim drove through the Anacostia neighbourhood, where residents had started to gather on the sidewalks, watching with morbid fascination as the troops readied themselves. He parked on a small bluff directly overlooking the camp as the first of the infantry marched in.

The soldiers paused at the first row of shanties, flinging open doors and shattering the flimsy windows with the butts of their rifles as they made sure that they were empty. Wadding newspaper into corners, they then set the shacks alight. The flames licked tentatively at the walls, sparked along the doors, grew bolder. With a great whooshing sound, the shelters collapsed, going up like tinder.

From row to row they went, systematically razing the camp to the ground. The replica of the White House, the lean-to with the carefully painted white picket fence, countless barrels, many with mattresses still inside – all of it, up in flames. They broke the jaunty, hand-painted wooden signs and threw them on the fires. The paint blistered in the heat, the words melting, erased into nothing. Scores of American flags burned too, Old Glory, writhing in the flames.