"Andy Duncan - Fortitude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Andy)

faster than I had expected. The German resistance just seemed to melt
away, they said. Good thing, too: My wound turned out to be even more
serious than before; I wouldn't have lasted another half hour. My father
would write to tell me that very day he had been curiously restless, kept
pacing his study, knew something was terribly wrong. But all I knew as I
lost consciousness was Private Angelo's tearful, grimy face. The details
of my deliverance came to me later; their implications, later still.

Chaos, as before. Bugles. Police whistles. A haze of gas. A rain of
garbage from office windows. Rearing horses. Hundreds of people in the
middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, slowing our advance -- running across our
path, or clutching at our reins and stirrups, or just standing there
dazed. Some were Bonus, I was sure, but which? Screams and curses. A lunch
pail bounced off the pavement once, twice, and tumbled away, spraying
scraps. Up ahead, through the cherry trees, I could see the Capitol
getting blessedly nearer. One of the trees swayed and fell, and a tank
trundled into view, lurching upward as it rolled over something.
I long had dreaded my return to July 28, 1932. But now that it was here I
was going to do just what I did before, by God: my duty. And, later,
something more.
Ahead was a streetwide melee, as the infantry steadily pushed the front
line of Bonus marchers back toward the Anacostia Bridge. It was no rout,
though. These were American vets, all right; they scratched and struggled
and threw punches and wrestled the whole way down Pennsylvania. I heard no
shots except the thumps of the gas canisters, but I saw plenty of
doughboys using the butts of their rifles. No bayonets in use, not that I
could see, not yet.
A pack of a dozen Bonus boys, all in uniform, ran toward me. Somehow they
had made it past the infantry. Some had bloody faces. Two were waving
shovels, and one a crooked umbrella. They looked wild-eyed, crazy. I
whistled to the riders on my left and right and we charged. The veterans
wheeled so fast they skidded, stumbled, then ran back the way they had
come, cursing us the whole way. We swept them along with the flats of our
sabers. I gave one straggler a good smack in the pants, and he yelled,
"I'm going, General! I'm going! Don't hit me!"
General. Promoted by a goddamned Bonus marcher. I slowed to a trot and
stared down the crowd lining the sidewalk. What shocked, snarling, hateful
looks, what howls and oaths -- as if I were the Lindbergh kidnapper, or
Scarface Al. And from Americans! Watching American troops do their duty,
sweeping an organized Bolshevik occupation force out of Washington! I was
glad to wield the broom -- as glad the second time as the first.
A rock, I suppose, struck my helmet, knocked it sideways; I righted it
immediately, and kneed my horse forward. Ahead, a stray cloud of gas made
a hotel awning bulge upward. From beneath it a man in uniform stumbled
into the street, holding his throat: a goddamn doorman. A horse reared;
its rider yelled: "Out of the way, sir! Out of the way, please!" The
doorman staggered to the sidewalk, clawing at his epaulets. Two fat men in
business suits grabbed him, hauled him through a revolving door, glared
back at me.
The gas was dissipating quickly in this windy canyon, yet my eyes were