Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [87]
‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself !’ he had declared once, giving new hope, a new deal to desperate people, Nancy among them.
Great days. A great man. But times change and men with them, and she was less easily persuaded by politicians today. He had earned their trust, then. Now he smiled and waved but not all of his loyal subjects were sheltered by his paternal wing: some were rounded up and shipped out to bleak corners of the land to languish behind barbed wire.
This grim Oregon neighbourhood was no jewelled route to glory, no road to Samarkand, but a glow of satisfaction came off the President’s countenance that she had observed on other politicians. It came with power, perhaps.
She had thought of FDR in earlier days as the true Democrat, a calm, philosophic prince, a Solomon dispensing wisdom, a good man; but ‘good’ could depend on where you stood, and why.
With the cheers of the crowd in her ears, for a dizzy moment it seemed to Nancy that Roosevelt had metamorphosed into a modern Tamburlaine, riding in triumph through the city.
Around her, arms and flags waved. The President smiled, raised his hand, a patrician salute acknowledging the populace. Nancy’s arms hung rigid by her side.
37
The names tantalised: Tule Lake, Klamath Falls and Link River . . . In strong winds the flow had been known to blow backwards, north into the lake, leaving the riverbed dry, the clay swirling, following the pattern of the vanished stream. The names tantalised, conjured up moisture, but all around was dust.
Guards checked the perimeter, bored, firearms loosely swinging. With dust coating their uniforms, pink flesh obscured by a sandy veil, they looked like figures of straw and clay, clumsily executed. High above the barbed wire the watchtowers loomed, machine guns turned inwards.
The soldiers disliked this term of duty; they disliked the enemy aliens, pale, fragile women, quiet children, sullen youths and small men whose lowered eyelids concealed their thoughts. The soldiers wished themselves elsewhere – in the real America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Or on the battlefield, where they could be shooting the bastards instead of checking them in and out for work projects or farm duty; counting numbers for sickbeds. Individually these people were weak as kittens, but among the guards it was a known fact that Japs could operate with the awe-inspiring team spirit of termites destroying a building. In that solidarity lay their strength. They needed watching.
The watchful eyes, the mistrust, fed a determination to simulate ‘real life’ to fight off despair. So there were baseball games, judo classes, basketball, chess, badminton, music – ‘Don’t miss the symphony concert, Tuesday!’ Joey learned to recognise the traditional festivals – cherry trees improvised from rags and twigs, lanterns from scrap metal, giant chrysanthemums out of wrapping paper. Older internees recited haikus by Basho. The young, defiantly modern, dressed up for Hallowe’en.
Joey continued to slip through the social net: he volunteered for necessary maintenance work, chatted to those who ate at the same table; listened to recitals, dropped in briefly at dances and went on an occasional date; but he was never part of a group.
Was it his imagination or did the conversation flower into vivacity when he left the table? He was not the only product of a mixed marriage – what Ichir called ‘half-breed kids’. But the others, less physically different, had assimilated painlessly, had been drawn into the community. Was it his fault or theirs? Nurture or the legacy of Pinkerton genes that kept him apart?
He read Nancy’s latest letter with its snippets of anodyne news, mention of a book she had read. His grandparents sent love; Mary increasingly frail but bearing up bravely.
‘And how goes it, Joey dear?