Quartet for the End of Time (5 page)

A
LDEN HAD REMAINED CURIOUSLY
calm while his father spoke, but now two bright spots appeared on his cheeks. How dare you, he said quietly—when, after only a moment's triumphant pause, the Judge at last began to tackle his food, which for some time had been growing cold on his plate. How dare you talk about “fairness,” Alden said. I don't believe that, for all your talk—about the meaning of words, and your pride in the fact that once—
once
, the Kellys, too,
worked
for a living—that you yourself have the slightest idea—

But he did not have time to finish. Slamming both fists onto the table now, and knocking his plate back so that a newspaper, which had been concealed beneath, fell to the floor, the Judge had already risen. Alden continued to speak—his voice trembling with fear now, as well as indignation: what that word means, he managed. The Judge towered above them all, his face dark and swollen with rage. Again, he hit the table with his fist. The silverware bounced. A water tumbler poured its contents across the tablecloth, leaving a dark, temporary stain.

You—the Judge said. Glaring across the table toward his son. But then something strange occurred. He became, suddenly, unsteady on his feet, and where his face had darkened with rage it was now blanched of color as a vague panic fluttered across it. After one uncertain moment, in which it was unclear to anyone—least of all, it seemed, to the Judge himself—what had happened, or was about to happen next, he sat down again, looking stunned. His wife's eyes had remained riveted on him from the moment of his first shout. They did not look panicked or alarmed, only frightened in the way that they always
looked frightened when something unexpected happened. The same expression had crossed her face, for example, only moments before, when she had exclaimed in unrestrained horror at the sight of Alden's semi-masticated food.

No one spoke. The Judge's breath, though raspy and audible, soon regulated itself, and it seemed that the crisis—if one had indeed occurred—had passed. Sutton glanced briefly at Alden, then away.

That, the Judge said bitterly. Right there, is the problem. You think if you give a thing a different name it changes that thing. You call them lazy, dishonest, you call them misjudged and underrepresented. At the end of the day it amounts to the same thing. Ten thousand lazy, dishonest, misjudged, and underrepresented men threatening to overthrow the very principles upon which this country has been founded. Oh, sure, you can put a different shine on things for a while. But you know how quickly it's going to wear off? You know how long you're going to look good with that shine on you?

But I wonder—the Judge cleared his throat. I'm serious now, he said. It's a question that's been plaguing me. Do any of your friends down there in the swamps really understand what it is they're after? It's kept me up nights. Do they, I wonder—the Judge said—even know what it is they're asking? A bonus, my boy, is just another “name” we gave to the most basic sort of life insurance policy back in '24! Payable at death— or 1945—whichever for these poor lads comes first. Do they understand that, I wonder? All of those boys are worth more dead than alive! Insurance, see. It's a thing, like anything, you buy into. Something you
earn
. A calculated investment in chance—a commodity like any other.
Bonus.
If you're looking to define your terms, you might want to start with that one. And here's a hint, which you might pass on to your friends. Pressing for the payout now means the amount of money due is only a
small proportion
of the money
that would be
paid out in 1945. That's how it works! The very principle of economics!

The Judge began to chuckle. Alden, who had remained silent all that time, betrayed himself only by two small red squares, which had once again inflamed themselves on his cheeks.

S
UTTON COULD NO LONGER
clearly remember when what had once been mere playacting became something more. There had, at one time, been only what seemed to her the same endless battle waged in the back room, where they had played, before their mother established herself more permanently there. Sutton was, for the most part, assured an integral part in the world Alden created for them, because she was always willing (so aware was she at all times of how ultimately expendable she was—it was, in the end, always
Alden's
world) to take the less glamorous roles. She was endlessly taken for prisoner, locked behind a complicated network of their mother's chair cushions, or publicly executed—her head dangling over the edge of a tipped chair. But she was never troubled on these occasions because she would, of necessity, be revived almost instantly—in order to serve as a messenger or, on rare occasions, an officer or even a general in the tireless operations of Alden's imagination. It was so gradual, when it happened—that the imaginative battles gave way to real ones—that, at first, Sutton hardly noticed the transition at all. Hardly realized that the pamphlets Alden had begun to bring home (which he first read to her out loud, then left out around the house, in order—when they were not first prudently removed by their mother or Germaine—to be discovered by the Judge), or the copies of
The Militant
(which he had, on occasion, with the same glint in his eye with which he had launched all his previous campaigns, pressed into her hands) belonged to the
real
world. When she did realize it, it struck her as a great loss, not only to herself personally, but also to the world that she and he had once inhabited—so happily—together. By contrast, what little she knew of the “real” world seemed rather limited in scope and possibility.

Still—like any child of a certain age—she had no choice in the end but to follow him there.

A
ND SO, THE FOLLOWING
Sunday, she went again with Alden down to the camps, which she found quite transformed even from the week before.

It was not just her imagination, Alden told her. The camp had certainly spread. New shelters lined the makeshift streets (each named for a different state of the Union), constructed from scrap metal and whatever else could be salvaged from the mountain of refuse that rose—the highest point in the vicinity—from the Anacostia Flats. As more and more men flooded in, the mountain diminished, and the city grew. Boxes, rusted frames and bedsprings, old barrels, sinks, fence stakes, scraps of lumber, bits of wrecked cars—all were hauled away and transformed into the homes and headquarters of the Bonus Army. There was a veteran from Ohio, for example, Alden told her, who lived inside an oil drum, and twin brothers from Tennessee who shared a piano box—A
CADEMY OF MUSIC
still stamped in big letters on its side. A grizzled veteran from Delaware—who, it was rumored, had been a Confederate messenger in the Civil War—slept in a burial vault mounted on a rusted trestle.

At the intersection of Washington and Oregon their progress, already slow, was stalled completely. A fight seemed to have broken out, and around it a large crowd gathered. Alarmed, Sutton willed Alden to retreat, but he pressed on, instead, and Sutton had no choice but to follow. Soon, however—to her great relief—it became clear that the fight was contained within a makeshift ring; that the immovable crowd was merely jostling for position from which point they might observe the undersized contenders: two small boys, around the ages of nine or ten.

When finally they'd managed to pass—pressing their way along the crowd's outermost edge—their route continued to be so meandering, and their progress so slow, that after a while Sutton began to suspect they had lost their way. Alden, however, continued to push steadily on, and she did not detect in him the least apprehension; not even, indeed, when they turned a corner and death itself loomed up to meet them!

It was true: there, at the corner of Idaho and Maine, an open coffin stood upright before them, blocking their way. Inside was a dead man dressed in a crumpled black suit. Though the mood of the crowd was
more lively than Sutton knew to be proper for funerals, this did not immediately surprise her. Perhaps they were Catholics, she reasoned. But just as she did, the dead man sneezed loudly, and the crowd erupted in shouts of laughter. It was only a stunt, Alden explained. Now—too late—Sutton was able to see this quite clearly. Above the “dead man” a signboard even advertised the fact in plain letters: the man was in the process of being “buried alive.” All the while, another man passed a hat, declaring that, in contrast to the “dead man,” it was now time to “rise up!” Were the good men, he shouted, who had risked their lives for their country over in France now going to simply “turn over and die,” let the government “bury them”? Occasionally the “dead man” would raise a stiff arm from the grave. Hear, hear! he would shout. Or else: I should not have died in vain! Still otherwise, for humorous effect, he would simply sneeze or yawn— his body convulsing vigorously before once again reassuming the rigid posture of death.

Not long after they left the “dead man” behind, they turned a final corner and arrived at their destination. So unprepared by this point was Sutton to arrive anywhere at all that she did not recognize the tent they had visited the week prior until they were upon it, until she herself nearly stumbled over the boy, Douglas, who—perched on a crate outside the tent—was whittling away at a stick of dry wood.

She'd surprised him, too. Now he jumped up and grinned—first at Sutton and Alden, and then at the pot Alden carried, which contained the remains of their afternoon meal.

A
FTER THEY
'
D EATEN
, J
OHN
and Arthur lit pipes of tobacco, which filled the tent with smoke, and soon all the men, Alden along with them, began to talk among themselves, just as they had the week before.

After a while, Aida tossed Sutton a look and grinned.

Douglas, she said, why don't you take Sutton outside? Then, nodding toward two empty buckets by the tent door, she added: Water to collect.

Douglas stood up, nodding, his hair falling in front of his eyes.

Uncertain at first, Sutton stood up, too, then followed Douglas to the door.

T
HE WATER HOSE WAS
connected to a fire hydrant about a hundred yards away. They had to wait half an hour or more in a line that stretched approximately the same length. A large man with whiskers, who— dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, none too neat or clean—wore six military medals strung in a row on his breast pocket, oversaw the operation with a genuine air of authority, making certain everyone waited their turn.

Sutton was not permitted to carry either pail on the homeward journey. Douglas took them both, one in each hand, so that his muscles strained and blue veins stood out on his forearms. He walked stiffly, each step checked by the counterweight of a heavy pail. When they arrived back at the tent, Douglas deposited both where they had found them, just inside the tent door, but did not himself go inside. He sat down on the same overturned crate he'd been perched on when they'd first arrived, picked up the stick he'd been whittling, and examined it silently for a while.

Sutton did not know if she should leave him—go inside, with the rest—or remain.

Before she could decide, Douglas looked up. He squinted at her past the glare of the afternoon sun. I'll show you something, he said.

All right.

They walked together through the crowded streets to where the shacks gave way at the edge of the camp. Here they encountered only a scattered pup tent or two, and a few chained dogs docilely finishing off some scraps of a meal. Then they left even these behind. Finally, there was only an empty stretch of grass, and then more grass—giving way only at that farthest point, after which nothing (least of all their own fields of vision) could stretch farther, to a stand of trees. Here Douglas drew up short and turned back—nodding in the direction they had come. Below them, the camp spread in patches of reds and grays. Here and there they could make out an American flag, tugging impatiently at
its strings, or a wisp of smoke, rising vertically over the landscape—like the thin tail a cloud makes when you know it is going to rain. They stood, looking out over the camps together like that for some time, observing the patchwork pattern the streets made, which had been invisible to them below.

It struck her, then—funny how she hadn't thought of it before. How the world they overlooked was, in that moment—as perhaps in any other—just as foreign to Douglas as it was to her. How he was no more than a child, really. He could be no more than—what? Twelve. Thirteen at the most. She felt a sudden tenderness toward him at the thought of it.

Do you miss it very much? she asked—surprising them both. Where you come from, I mean, she added. Almost by way of apology now.

Douglas pushed the hair from his eyes, and squinted into the distance as though looking for the answer there. Then he dropped his gaze, shrugged, and said nothing.

Well, Sutton said quickly—trying to in some way reestablish the boundary she now felt certain she had crossed. It … can't last forever, can it?

But even as she said it, she felt the words snag at something otherwise indiscernible in her mind. She did not want, she realized then, for any promise to be finally met—any solution finally found. For things to return—on account of it—to the way they had been before the Bonus Army had come. Before she had marched with Alden through the twisted streets of the camps, seen men raised from the dead, cradled the child of an Indian in her arms …

Anyway, said Douglas abruptly, interrupting her train of thought, we won't be goin' back.

Sutton looked up sharply.

What? she said. Why's that?

Again Douglas shrugged and dropped his gaze.

Once we get our bonus, he said, my dad and me. We're gonna buy us some land—in Virginia, maybe. Or Tennessee. After that, we'll send for Momma. Isn't one of us goin' back to Kansas now.