Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [97]
The lieutenant’s pudgy face slowly progressed from pink to a darkening crimson.
‘Watch your mouth, bud.’
‘Why?’ Joey asked pleasantly. ‘Is it because if I give the wrong responses you’ll lock me up in a stinking dump, lieutenant, with armed guards and maybe barbed wire to stop me breaking out?’
The officer’s voice was thick with held-in loathing.
‘A troublemaker like your fucking commie father. We know about Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. Pinko Pinkerton. The Washington riots. It’s all in the file.’
The unexpectedness of it rocked him. Dirt in the files about Ben? Ben the champ, the local hero, the patriotic sailor. But of course Ben had also marched on the Capitol. With bums and degenerates.
‘Yeah. Right.’
Joey kept it carefully conversational. ‘You’ve got in the file that he served in the navy? And went to Washington with the vets, right, lieutenant? Vets who fought to save people like you, lieutenant, and then found themselves homeless? My old man was in Washington because of his brother. My uncle Charlie would have marched, but his bones were buried someplace in France. He was killed, but at least he was shot by the enemy. The vets who won the war, who went to Washington because they were starving, they were shot by you guys. Orders of General MacArthur. That’s what they call irony, lieutenant.’
Voice strangled with rage, the man said, ‘I’m putting you down as double-no.’
Joey said with quiet savagery, ‘You don’t put me down as anything. I haven’t signed yet. I asked you a question. You haven’t answered it. You can put down I’m thinking about it.’
‘You gotta respond!’
‘Fine. You have a deadline? Is there a closing date for this? Show me where it says I don’t get to think about it first if I want. In this great country of ours am I still allowed to do that?’
At the door, he paused. ‘I’ll let you know.’
Joey would sign the document, in due course. But pushing the lieutenant into apoplexy brought him a deep satisfaction.
Tule had become a dumping ground for dissident internees from other camps; a segregation centre. Each day brought new ways to show anger: the morning salute to the flag – ‘My Country ’tis of Thee’ – once sincere, now sung with bitterly ironic fervour. Anger lay like a minefield in the barracks, erupting in explosions of violence: Kazuo had seen one inmate, suspected of being an informer, beaten by his hut-mates; there were clashes with guards. And always, stories circulating.
‘Roosevelt’s reversed the policy.’
Joey looked up from his book.
‘What?’
‘Military service. We can volunteer.’
‘This is another rumour—’
‘No, it’s true.’
‘We’re not 4C enemy aliens any more? This has to be good news.’
‘You think?’
In the hut, late into the night, the others exchanged anxieties:
‘The whole thing could be a ploy.’
‘How, a ploy?’
‘To confuse us, set up guilt, fear, you name it.’
Joey lay, breathing evenly, sleep out of reach.
The trouble took various forms: meetings, disagreements of opinion, angry exchanges, unrest. A difference of opinion at a baseball game exploded into a riot, at first aimless, then vicious, as the soldiers intervened. The guards made creative use of baseball bats – ‘Hey, a ball game, and no balls needed!’. The crack of wood on skull lent a new dimension to the rules. Two strikes here and the player was not only out, but out for the count. In the mess hall there were overturned tables, smashed chairs and dishes; defiant slogans daubed on walls. An elderly man hurled himself at the barbed-wire fence in a silent declaration of despair. Ungentle guards pulled him free, tearing his clothing and flesh. Protest gatherings created mobs which spread into mass demonstrations. A fog of sour disaffection hung over the camp.
Then, weirdly, a counterpoint to the hostility, young men slowly began to come forward to sign up; some cynically, others in despair, volunteering for service to their country.
Ichir said wearily, ‘They want to prove they’re true Americans. For “they” read “we”.’
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