Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [39]
She had hated this apartment, and now it felt precious: a warm place with a proper roof, a chair to read in, a lamp that shone on to the page. She thought of the shacks along the riverbank, the bitter women with their bird’s nest hair, the children without shoes, faces marked with grime and hopelessness. She thought of Joey. Ben said,
‘I’ll find us something better than this. When I get back from Washington. It won’t be long.’
He gave her the smile that had once turned her heart. He really meant it. She blinked rapidly, forcing back tears. They were about to pack up their remaining worldly goods; they were losing what they had learned to call home and she was swept with something between sorrow and terror. He reached out and took her hand but it lay limp in his, like a wounded bird.
18
Around three hundred men were gathered at the Portland railroad mustering yard by the time Ben arrived. It was a fine May morning, the heat of the sun tempered by a refreshing breeze. Some wore working clothes, others had put on their old army uniforms – the veterans’ Bonus Army, they were calling themselves, not altogether seriously. Quite a few had pinned medals to crumpled jackets.
‘Okay: anyone here got cash?’ Derisive laughter. Who was planning to buy a ticket?
They reckoned they had $30 between them, but to their surprise, Union Pacific loaded them into empty boxcars and sent them east. The flint-faced rail guards with truncheons and dogs were absent today.
‘They want us out, across the state line,’ Walt said cheerfully. ‘They don’t want trouble.’
‘We’re undesirables,’ Ben said.
‘Yeah, and that’s fine by me. Once we hit Washington we can sit tight till the Bonus Bill gets through.’ He called out to the crowd: ‘So no panhandling, no illegal drinking. And,’ a tired grin, ‘no radicalism – they’ll have us figured for communists.’
Rocking to the rhythm of the track, packed close, squatting shoulder to shoulder with strangers, breathing in their sweat, bad breath and noxious farts, Ben flexed his stiff limbs and cautiously changed position. As he folded his legs beneath him he relived a moment from a banished past: sitting cross-legged on a smooth tatami mat, Cho-Cho’s cool hands, the small sweetness of her body.
A world that seemed unimaginably clean and comforting. Through a slit in the side of the boxcar he glimpsed a brilliant, sunlit landscape speeding past, quite close but unreachable. His mouth was dry, his eyes stung. Did cattle feel this way? Was awareness unique to humans? These thoughts had not occurred to him before and seemed unhelpful now. In that other life Cho-Cho had bathed him, first washing off their mingled stickiness then leading him to the bath to steep in the steaming water, holding out fresh clothes.
‘Nice?’ Her invariable question.
Oh, how nice, he now acknowledged ruefully. He saw himself for a moment close-up as if through some telescope of time, swaggering into town, the bright young sailor, buying himself a good time, careless about who or what might be damaged in that fragile world. He saw something ugly – he shook his head as though brushing off flies, to shake away painful thoughts. Instead he brought up a picture of Nancy, whose body too had been sweet and smooth before the bad times, who wrinkled her nose beguilingly when she smiled.
With Nancy there was no ‘come here’, turn this way or that, lift higher, push harder. Cho-Cho’s creamy white flesh had invited violation. Nancy’s thighs were suntanned, firm from tennis and swimming; he held back from instructing her how to please him, or experimenting in ways to please her.
From his pocket he pulled a snapshot of Joey. As the intermittent light stabbed into the dark boxcar, he studied the tentative smile, the tilt of the head, the enquiring look. He should have paid more heed to the boy, done more stuff; he barely knew his