Amerikan Eagle

From the cardboard boxes, military gear smelling of mildew was hauled out: old-style round metal helmets from the last war (Like one Dad probably wore, Sam thought), canvas web belting, wooden truncheons, and green cloth armbands that said GUARD in white block letters. He put his gear on, feeling as if he were dressing up for Halloween, and joined four other cops—Pinette, Lubrano, Smith, and Reardon—in an old Ford cruiser that took three tries to start up. He sat in the rear, silent, with the helmet in his lap. There was joking and laughing from the others about being in the Kingfish’s army, but he didn’t join them.

Lubrano said to Reardon, “You know, I’ve always wondered how we got so many Jews and refugees in town. Bet you they paid off Long and his buds to look the other way when they got smuggled in.”

Reardon laughed. “Too bad they can’t get their money back after tonight.”

They pulled up at Foss Avenue, a narrow street about a block away from the harbor, with sagging buildings of brick and wood, dirty trash bins on the crooked sidewalks. Sam knew the street well: taverns, flophouses, and boardinghouses. A place for people struggling to make a go of it. The luckier ones moved on to better neighborhoods. The others never left except in ambulances or funeral home wagons.

There was another reason for remembering this place, for something Sam had done on Thurber Street, two blocks over, just before he and his very pregnant Sarah had bought their house. Thurber Street. Even being this close to the street made him uncomfortable. He turned away. There was a wooden and barbed-wire barrier overseen by two regular National Guard troops in uniform, gear spotless, boots shiny, Springfield rifles hanging from their shoulders. Sam noted their grins as he and the others got out of the cruiser with their surplus gear. The real National Guard and the play National Guard.

Sam hung back as other cops dressed in helmets and gear approached. From the gloom came a man in a dark blue suit, Confederate-flag pin on his lapel, carrying a small flashlight and a clipboard stuffed with papers. “Eddie Mitchell, Department of Interior,” the man said. “Listen up, okay?”

Sam and the others gathered in a semicircle around Mitchell, a tall man with glasses who spoke with a soft Tennessee accent. “The other end of this street is sealed off, and we’ve got the alleyways covered as well. Y’all gonna be used as chutes. There’s a place down there, the Harbor Point Hotel. In about”—he put the flashlight beam to his watch—“ten minutes, we’re gonna have that place raided and trucks backed up to take the undesirables away. Y’all just gonna be flanking the front entrance. Just make sure nobody gets away. Got it?”

A murmur of voices, but Sam kept quiet. He wished he was in his empty home, taking a bath and having a beer. Any place else than here.

A rumble of approaching truck engines, and Mitchell waved a hand. The regular National Guardsmen pulled the barrier aside. Two army deuce-and-a-half trucks growled by, canvas sides flapping, diesel fumes belching. Mitchell yelled, “Let’s go, boys. Follow ’em!”

The more eager of the bunch followed the truck at a half-trot. Sam pulled up the rear, walking at a brisk pace, truncheon in hand, helmet hard and uncomfortable on his head. Ahead, voices were yelling, and there was a throng of people in front of the hotel, some wearing uniforms, others not. Flashlights were being waved around, and there were other guys in suits directing the flow of people, blowing whistles. The place was three-story, wooden, with a rotting porch out front, a blue-and-white wooden sign announcing HARBOR POINT. One of the trucks backed in, the tailgate rattling open. Sam took a position by the porch as lights blazed, as the other officers in helmets and webbed gear made up two lines leading to the truck.

Amazing, too, was what followed. Wooden tables were unfolded, chairs lined up. It was strange, like seeing a voting booth set up in the heart of a riot. Then people started filing out of the grandly named hotel. They were old and young, the men clean-shaven or bearded, some women wearing colorful kerchiefs on their hair, some holding children by the hand. Most carried small suitcases, as though they had always expected this night to come.

He heard a jumble of voices—French, Polish, Dutch, British—but the faces all looked the same. Pale, shocked, wide-eyed, as if they could not believe this was happening to them in this supposed land of liberty. All had the look of having been put through this before, but with soldiers in gray uniforms and coal-scuttle helmets, soldiers with crooked cross symbols on their vehicles, not white stars.

A woman in a thin black cotton dress stared at him as she went by. She called out in a thick accent, “Why are you doing this? Why?”

He looked away. He had no answer.