Good Hope Road: A Novel (19 page)

‘It’s Charles Lindbergh’s son!’ Madeleine protested, startled. ‘The poor little thing, not even two years old, and kidnapped!’

The Major paused to stare at her, eyes cold and glittering like two chips of blue ice. ‘Indeed. Dashing Mr Lindbergh, hero aviator, beloved of the public. His son snatched from his very crib in the middle of the night. Why shouldn’t this country be transfixed for weeks? It isn’t as if there’s anything else of consequence going on, is there?’

Madeleine flushed. ‘I—’

‘That’s not what she meant,’ Jim interjected. He stepped forward to gather up the pages of the newspaper, a casual, seemingly nonchalant gesture that nonetheless inserted him between his father and Madeleine. ‘The Bill still has to go before the Senate,’ he repeated evenly. ‘It still has a shot.’

The Major shut himself away in the library all that morning, emerging only as Jim and Madeleine were headed out, to hand Jim a thick, cream-coloured envelope.

‘Give it in when you get into town.’

Jim pocketed the envelope without comment.

‘What is it?’ Madeleine asked curiously, as she climbed into the truck.

‘Nothing.’

‘A letter? Give it in where?’

He said nothing, starting to whistle instead as he guided the truck down the drive. Deciding it was too beautiful a day to pout, she tamped down the flare of irritation. Besides, she’d see soon enough for herself, she thought.

She started to hum, keeping tune with his whistling. Reaching over, he affectionately massaged the nape of her neck.

The church bell was calling out the hour as they rode into town, the old bell pealing faithfully over the surrounding hills, past shingled roof and painted barn. The sun caught its massive frame as it swung back and forth, infusing it with changeling litheness. Everywhere, the hop and twitter of birds, in budding branches and blooming shrubs. The black locust by the malt shop had flowered, the perfume from the creamy white racemes wafted delicately through the open windows of the store.

Old Asaph and Jeremiah were sitting at a table, spooning down their sundaes as Jim and Madeleine entered. They turned around to regard her with an unabashed and guileless curiosity.

‘Madeleine Scott,’ Jim said by way of offhanded introduction. Her eyes danced at the way he stood right beside her, close enough to stake indisputable claim and belie the casualness of his words.

At the general store, Clara Dalloway bustled from behind the counter to kiss them both on the cheek. ‘The Major, how is he?’ she asked, as was her habit.

Jim shrugged. ‘Fine,’ he said, as usual.

He’d loaded the groceries and they were pulling out of the lot when Madeleine asked at last – ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

‘Nope.’

‘He asked you to mail that letter.’ She waited. ‘Are you going to say anything about it at all?’

They drove in silence. She rolled down the window and cupping her chin in her hand, stared outside, hurt by his reticence.

He glanced at her, then looked back at the road. ‘He didn’t mean the post office,’ he finally offered. ‘He wanted me to hand it in at the office of the
Gazette
.’

‘So why didn’t you? And what is it anyway?’

‘Because they’re not going to print it, that’s why. It’s the same article, pretty much, that he’s been sending in there for years, and nobody’s interested.’

‘What does he write about? The war?’

‘No, not the war. He never talks about the war. The Bonus Bill. For years now, he’s been writing about it, but no one wants to hear.’ He drummed his hands on the steering wheel. ‘“Too much of a downer,” the editor at the
Gazette
said, all those times that I tried to give it in, “tell him to write something upbeat.”’

Abruptly, Jim turned off the road and up a dirt track. She held on to the handle of the door as the truck jolted over the stones.

‘Come on,’ he said, stopping under a pine tree. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

‘I want to read it.’

He hesitated, briefly, before handing over the envelope. She slid a finger under the flap and pulled out the monogrammed sheets inside.

Since time immemorial, ever since man invented empire and war, this has been the conundrum faced by nations worldwide: what to do with the returning soldier?

Whether in Roman times with Sulla’s returning hordes, or in Elizabethan days, when wandering soldiers were outlawed from the City of London on pain of death, governments have long regarded the returning veteran as a public oddity at best. At worst, an untenable drain on the exchequer and a direct threat to the safety and stability of their administration.

Our doughboys left for the Great War under the flutter of the Stars and Stripes, amidst cheers many thousand-fold strong. When they returned, plenty were the parades, the fetes, the grand welcome-home galas.

Then everybody forgot.

War, once it ends, whether in resounding victory or grim defeat, is a shameful truth best abandoned; the men who return from the Front, an inconvenience.

A dead or disabled soldier is labelled a hero and he, or his widow, is issued some form of government ‘support’. It is rarely enough. What price on the loss of one’s limb, of an eye, or worse?

And what of those others, the men who return from war whole in body but altered in ways the civilian world cannot begin to understand?

Our doughboys shipped overseas for the pittance of $1.25 a day, less than they would have earned had they stayed home. They fought hard and they fought strong, but when they returned, it was to a nation all too eager to forget. The jobs they held before the war had long been filled, their hard-won experience on the battlefield of little worth in peacetime.

All our boys are asking for under the Bonus Bill is fair compensation for the time served overseas, in other words, for rightfully earned
back pay
. This is no ‘bonus’ that these men seek, this isn’t charity that the nation must find within itself to donate. This is rightful
payment, promised and owed
to each of these men for their service. A debt, owed by every man, woman and child of this free and proud nation. It ought to have been paid in full in 1918 when the war ended. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even paid in 1924, when the notion of a ‘bonus’ was first brought into law.

It has been fourteen years since the war ended. This is blood money we are sitting on. Blood money, and it must be paid today.

‘They won’t print this?’

‘We’re in the middle of a depression, you know,’ Jim said lightly. He rubbed absently at a smudge of dirt on the windshield. ‘Folks aren’t interested in this stuff, not with things the way they are. No jobs to be had, banks failing, all those shenanigans on Wall Street . . . Nobody wants to hear about veterans and their dues.’

‘My father knows people in publishing.’

‘He tried sending around his articles.’ Opening the door, Jim hopped to the ground and, coming around to her side, swung her down. ‘He tried, and then gave up; it’s nothing but a fool’s errand now with the
Gazette
. He tells me to submit a piece, I don’t, but tell him that I did. When the newspapers come, he checks to see if it’s been published, which, of course, it never is. In time, he writes another piece, and there we are again.’ He shook his head. ‘Come on,’ he said, effectively ending the discussion as he strode into the woods.

Madeleine followed, so lost in thought over the Major and his letters that when they broke through the tree line, the tumble of the river was a surprise.

‘Here,’ he said, and she stood beside him, directly across from a large outcrop of rock, its shoulder thrusting over the water. ‘Look familiar?’ She shook her head, brow furrowing.

‘Look up, at the skyline. Does that help?’

Shading her eyes, she looked into the cotton-candy sky. ‘What am I looking for?’ she asked, puzzled, when something about the view held her. She turned to look upriver, and down, and saw how, if she were seated in the back of a low-flying plane, a clutch of balloons in her hand, that outcrop of rock might appear familiar.

She laughed, a low, throaty sound. ‘Poor Freddie. He was quite shocked you know.’ She slipped her arms about Jim’s waist, tilting her head to look at him. ‘You were rude,’ she stated matter-of-factly.

‘It was loud.’

He folded his arms around her and she rested her cheek against his chest.

‘It makes me sad, your father’s letter.’

He said nothing, bending to gently kiss the top of her head.

She buried her face deeper in his shirt, breathing him in, his heartbeat steady as the river chuckled and spun beside them.

‘Why balloons?’ he asked suddenly.

She smiled. ‘Why not?’

The Lindbergh kidnapping remained headline news as the month unfolded. A sighting here, proved false, ransom paid there, to no avail. Increasingly though, Madeleine found herself searching through the papers for news of the Bonus Bill, tracking its progress as it made the rounds of Capitol Hill. It continued to make its way through hearings and petitions, getting passed all the way to the Senate, where it was ultimately defeated.

Still, encouraged by even this modicum of progress, veterans across the country began to rally. The notion originated, some said, in Oregon, others, San Francisco – a decision to march to Washington and petition en masse for the reconsideration of the bill. Wherever it began, the idea rapidly gathered momentum, amplifying as it spread, shooting sparks down shanty towns and the coal dust of mining camps, streaking across the prairies to the shores of the mainland.

The Bonus Bill. It fired the imagination of these men past the flush of youth, come to grips with the realisation that perhaps the best of their lives now lay behind them. Most were out of work, many had been for some time. They’d tried, moving their families from town to town in search of a job, any job. As the Depression took firm root, however, their efforts had withered. They sat around, watching ashamed as their wives took in washing in order to make ends meet. On Sundays, they found some pretext or the other to skip out for a few hours, so they wouldn’t have to face the humiliation of relatives and well-wishers stopping by after church with handouts. Some skipped out on their families altogether, joining the army of hoboes that crisscrossed the country aimlessly.

Worn down by the struggle to earn a living, and deeply scarred by their inability to provide, they were galvanised into action now by a single, electric thought:
A march to the very seat of the Government, a petition for their rights, in person, that surely nobody would be able to deny
.

Grabbing at the sense of purpose this allowed them, this illusion of control over their lives, all across the country, veterans began to move. In twos and threes, in groups of twenty or more, on foot, in beat-up jalopies, hitching rides on hay wagons and packed into deadhead passenger trains and freight cars. Some with empty sleeves, others leaning on canes, still others with rough, slap-dash patches over a sightless eye. Veterans were strung out along the dirt paths and paved roads, about the railroad tracks and hills of the nation like some extraordinary human chain. Men travelling alone, family men with wives, children and thin, downy-haired babies in tow, all headed in the same direction: Washington.

It caught the attention of the nation in a way that the Bonus Bill itself had never been able to: an army of down-on-their-luck doughboys, congregating hopefully at the very seat of government. The press dubbed it the Bonus Expeditionary Force, the bastard child of the AEF – the American Expeditionary Force – that had shipped out so dashingly to war in 1917. Housewives baked pies and cakes for these Bonus boys, handing them out as the veterans passed through their little towns. At countryside sidings, farmers drew up horse carts loaded with whatever they could offer: sacks of potatoes with field soil still clumped to the burlap, crates of turnips, bread, freshly laid eggs and pats of butter.

Madeleine was especially moved by the individual stories that increasingly peppered the newspapers. She took to reading out to Jim the accounts of hardship and years of desperate poverty, the tales of newfound optimism, as veterans talked equally of their struggles, and the windfall the Bonus Bill would bring once it came to pass. Jim never said anything in response, she noticed, but neither did he stop her, listening without comment as she read aloud to him.

It was the middle of May when the Lindbergh child was finally found, or what was left of him. The boy had been killed, his tiny body abandoned in the woods.

‘I’m sorry, Madeleine,’ the Major said gruffly when she visited the morning after the discovery. ‘The Lindberghs – their poor son. Nobody deserves what happened to them.’

‘I know,’ she said simply. She hesitated. ‘I’ve been thinking about your editorial,’ she said, the words tumbling out in a rush. ‘If the newspapers won’t publish it, why don’t you simply write to Washington? President Hoover, the Senate, send it to them all.’

The Major frowned.

‘She knows someone there,’ Jim stepped in to elaborate. ‘Madeleine has a friend from university who works in Capitol Hill. He might be able to get it to a couple of congressmen.’