JURORS AT GATES OF BEEF BARONS 1 страница

compare love with Vesuvius emblazoned streets await
tramp of paladins

Honey ain't I glad I found you
Oh you beautiful doll
You great big beautiful doll

TRADES WHITE HORSE FOR RED

Madero's troops defeat rebels in Battle at Parral Roose-
velt carries Illinois oratory closes eyelids Chicago pleads for
more water

CONFESSED ANARCHISTS ON BENDED KNEES KISS U. S. FLAG

The Sunbeam Movement is Spreading

BOMB NO. 4 IN LEVEE WAR SPLINTERS
WEST SIDE SALOON

a report printed Wednesday that a patient in a private
pavilion in St. Luke's Hospital undergoing an operation for
the extirpation of a cancerous growth at the base of the tongue
was General Grant was denied by both the hospital authorities
and Lieut. Howze who characterized the story as a deliberate
fabrication

THE CAMERA EYE (13)

he was a towboat captain and he knew the river
blindfold from Indian Head to the Virginia Capes and
the bay and the Eastan Shoa up to Baltima' for that
matter and he lived in a redbrick house in Alexandria
the pilothouse smelt of a hundred burntout pipes
that's the Mayflower the president's yacht and that
there's the Dolphin and that's the ole monitor Tippe-

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canoe and that there's the revenoo cutter and we're just
passin' the po-lice boat

when Cap'n Keen reaches up to pull the whistle on
the ceiling of the pilothouse you can see the red and
green bracelet tattooed under the black hairs on his wrist

Ma soul an' body ole Cap'n Gifford used ter be a
frien' o' mahne many's the time we been oysterin' together
on the Eastan Shoa an' oysterpirates used to shanghai
young fellers in those days an' make 'em work all winter
you couldn' git away less you swam ashoa and the water
was too damnation cole an' the ole man used to take the
fellers' clothes away so's they couldn't git ashoa when
they was anchored up in a crik or near a house or some-
thin' boy they was mean customers the oysterpirates ma
soul and body onct there was a young feller they worked
till he dropped and then they'd just sling him overboard
tongin' for oysters or dredgin' like them oysterpirates
did's the meanest kinda work in winter with the spray
freezin' on the lines an' cuttin' your hands to shreds an'
the dredge foulin' every minute an' us havin' to haul it
up an' fix it with our hands in the icy water hauled up a
stiff onct What's a stiff? Ma soul an' body a stiff's a
dead man ma boy a young feller it was too without a stitch
on him an' the body looked like it had been beat with a
belayin' pin somethin' terrible or an' oar mebbe reckon he
wouldn't work or was sick or somethin' an' the ole man

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jus' beat him till he died sure couldn't a been nothin' but
an oysterpirate

JANEY

When Janey was little she lived in an old flatface brick
house a couple of doors up the hill from M Street in
Georgetown. The front part of the house was always
dark because Mommer kept the heavy lace curtains drawn
to and the yellow linen shades with lace inset bands down.
Sunday afternoons Janey and Joe and Ellen and Francie
had to sit in the front room and look at pictures or read
books. Janey and Joe read the funnypaper together be-
cause they were the oldest and the other two were just
babies and not old enough to know what was funny any-
way. They couldn't laugh outloud because Popper sat
with the rest of The Sunday Star on his lap and usually
went to sleep after dinner with the editorial section crum-
pled in one big blueveined hand. Tiny curds of sunlight
flickering through the lace insets in the window shade
would lie on his bald head and on one big red flange of
his nose and on the droop of one mustache and on his
speckled sundayvest and on the white starched shirt-
sleeves with shiny cuffs, held up above the elbow by a
rubber band. Janey and Joe'would sit on the same chair
feeling each other's ribs jiggle when they laughed about
the Katzenjammer kids setting off a cannoncracker under
the captain's stool. The little ones would see them laugh-
ing and start laughing too, "Shut up, can't you," Joe
would hiss at them out of the corner of his mouth. "You
don't know what we're laughing at." Once in a while,
if there was no sound from Mommer who was taking her
Sunday afternoon nap upstairs stretched out in the back

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bedroom in a faded lilac sack with frills on it, after they'd
listened for a long time to the drawnout snort that ended
in a little hiss of Popper's snores, Joe would slip off his
chair and Janey would follow him without breathing into
the front hall and out the front door. Once they'd closed
it very carefully so that the knocker wouldn't bang, Joe
would give her a slap, yell "You're it" and run off down
the hill towards M Street, and she'd have to run after
him, her heart pounding, her hands cold for fear he'd
run away and leave her.

Winters the brick sidewalks were icy and there were
colored women out spreading cinders outside their doors
when the children went to school mornings. Joe never
would walk with the rest of them because they were girls,
he lagged behind or ran ahead. Janey wished she could
walk with him but she couldn't leave her little sisters
who held tight onto her hands. One winter they got in
the habit of walking up the hill with a little yaller girl
who lived directly across the street and whose name was
Pearl. Afternoons Janey and Pearl walked home together.
Pearl usually had a couple of pennies to buy bullseyes
or candy bananas with at a little store on Wisconsin
Avenue, and she always gave Janey half so Janey was
very fond of her. One afternoon she asked Pearl to come
in and they played dolls together under the big rose of
sharon bush in the back yard. When Pearl had gone
Mommer's voice called from the kitchen. Mommer had
her sleeves rolled up on her faded pale arms and a checked
apron on and was rolling piecrust for supper so that her
hands were covered with flour.

" Janey, come here," she said. Janey knew from the
cold quaver in her voice that something was wrong.

"Yes, Mommer." Janey stood in front of her mother
shaking her head about so that the two stiff sandy pig-
tails lashed from side to side. "Stand still, child, for
gracious sake . . . Jane, I want to talk to you about some-

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thing. That little colored girl you brought in this after-
noon . . ." Janey's heart was dropping. She had a sick
feeling and felt herself blushing, she hardly knew why.

"Now, don't misunderstand me; I like and respect the
colored people; some of them are fine selfrespecting peo-
ple in their place . . . But you mustn't bring that little
colored girl in the house again. Treating colored people
kindly and with respect is one of the signs of good breed-
ing . . . You mustn't forget that your mother's people
were wellborn every inch of them . . . Georgetown was
very different in those days. We lived in a big house with
most lovely lawns . . . but you must never associate with
colored people on an equal basis. Living in this neighbor-
hood it's all the more important to be careful about those
things . . . Neither the whites nor the blacks respect
those who do . . . That's all, Janey, you understand;
now run out and play, it'll soon be time for your supper."
Janey tried to speak but she couldn't. She stood stiff in
the middle of the yard on the grating that covered the
drainpipe, staring at the back fence. "Niggerlover," yelled
Joe in her ear. "Niggerlover ump-mya-mya . . . Nig-
gerlover niggerlover ump-mya-mya." Janey began to cry.

Joe was an untalkative sandyhaired boy who could pitch
a mean outcurve when he was still little. He learned to
swim and dive in Rock Creek and used to say he wanted
to be motorman on a streetcar when he grew up. For
several years his best friend was Alec McPherson whose
father was a locomotive engineer on the B. and O. After
that Joe wanted to be a locomotive engineer. Janey used
to tag around after the two boys whenever they'd let her,
to the carbarns at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue where
they made friends with some of the conductors and motor-
men who used to let them ride on the platform a couple
of blocks sometimes if there wasn't any inspector around,
down along the canal or up Rock Creek where they caught

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tadpoles and fell in the water and splashed each other
with mud.

Summer evenings when the twilight was long after
supper they played lions and tigers with other kids from
the neighborhood in the long grass of some empty lots
near Oak Hill Cemetery. There were long periods when
there was measles or scarlet fever around and Mommer
wouldn't let them out. Then Alec would come down and
they'd play three-o-cat in the back yard. Those were the
times Janey liked best. Then the boys treated her as one
of them. Summer dusk would come down on them sultry
and full of lightningbugs. If Popper was feeling in a good
mood he'd send them up the hill to the drugstore on N
Street to buy icecream, there'd be young men in their
shirtsleeves and straw hats strolling with girls who wore
a stick of punk in their hair to keep off the mosquitoes,
a rankness and a smell of cheap perfume from the colored
families crowded on their doorsteps, laughing, talking
softly with an occasional flash of teeth, rolling of a white
eyeball. The dense sweaty night was scary, hummed,
rumbled with distant thunder, with junebugs, with the
clatter of traffic from M Street, the air of the street dense
and breathless under the thick trees; but when she was
with Alec and Joe she wasn't scared, not even of drunks
or big shamblefooted coloredmen. When they got back
Popper would smoke a cigar and they'd sit out in the back
yard and the mosquitoes 'ud eat them up and Mommer
and Aunt Francine and the kids 'ud eat the icecream and
Popper would just smoke a cigar and tell them stories of
when he'd been a towboat captain down on the Chesapeake
in his younger days and he'd saved the barkentine Nancy
Q in distress on the Kettlebottoms in a sou'west gale.
Then it'd get time to go to bed and Alec 'ud be sent home
and Janey'd have to go to bed in the stuffy little back
room on the top floor with her two little sisters in their
cribs against the opposite wall. Maybe a thunderstorm

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would come up and she'd lie awake staring up at the ceil-
ing cold with fright, listening to her little sisters whimper
as they slept until she heard the reassuring sound of
Mommer scurrying about the house closing windows, the
slam of a door, the whine of wind and rattle of rain and
the thunder rolling terribly loud and near overhead like
a thousand beertrucks roaring over the bridge. Times like
that she thought of going down to Joe's room and crawl-
ing into bed with him, but for some reason she was afraid
to, though sometimes she got as far as the landing. He'd
laugh at her and call her a softie.

About once a week Joe would get spanked. Popper
would come home from the Patent Office where he
worked, angry and out of sorts, and the girls would be
scared of him and go about the house quiet as mice; but
Joe seemed to like to provoke him, he'd run whistling
through the back hall or clatter up and down stairs making
a tremendous racket with his stubtoed ironplated shoes.
Then Popper would start scolding him and Joe would
stand in front of him without saying a word glaring at
the floor with bitter blue eyes. Janey's insides knotted up
and froze when Popper would start up the stairs to the
bathroom pushing Joe in front of him. She knew what
would happen. He'd take down the razorstrop from be-
hind the door and put the boy's head and shoulders under
his arm and beat him. Joe would clench his teeth and flush
and not say a word and when Popper was tired of beating
him they'd look at each other and Joe would be sent up
to his room and Popper would come down stairs trembling
all over and pretend nothing had happened, and Janey
would slip out into the yard with her fists clenched whis-
pering to herself, "I hate him . . . I hate him . . . I
hate him."

Once a drizzly Saturday night she stood against the
fence in the dark looking up at the lighted window. She
could hear Popper's voice and Joe's in an argument. She

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thought maybe she'd fall down dead at the first thwack
of the razorstrop. She couldn't hear what they were say-
ing. Then suddenly it came, the leather sound of blows
and Joe stifling a gasp. She was eleven years old. Some-
thing broke loose. She rushed into the kitchen with her
hair all wet from the rain, " Mommer, he's killing Joe.
Stop it." Her mother turned up a withered helpless
drooping face from a pan she was scouring. "Oh, you can't
do anything." Janey ran upstairs and started beating on
the bathroom door. "Stop it, stop it," her voice kept yell-
ing. She was scared but something stronger than she was
had hold of her. The door opened; there was Joe looking
sheepish and Popper with his face all flushed and the
razorstrop in his hand.

"Beat me . . . it's me that's bad . . . I won't have
you beating Joe like that." She was scared. She didn't
know what to do, tears stung in her eyes.

Popper's voice was unexpectedly kind:

"You go straight up to bed without any supper and
remember that you have enough to do to fight your own
battles, Janey." She ran up to her room and lay on the
bed shaking. When she'd gone to sleep Joe's voice woke
her up with a start.

He was standing in his nightgown in the door. "Say,
Janey," he whispered. "Don't you do that again, see. I
can take care of myself, see. A girl can't butt in between
men like that. When I get a job and make enough dough
I'll get me a gun and if Popper tries to beat me up I'll
shoot him dead." Janey began to sniffle. "What you
wanna cry for; this ain't no Johnstown flood."

She could hear him tiptoe down the stairs again in his
bare feet.

At highschool she took the commercial course and
learned stenography and typewriting. She was a plain
thinfaced sandyhaired girl, quiet and popular with the
teachers. Her fingers were quick and she picked up typing

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and shorthand easily. She liked to read and used to get
books like The Inside of the Cup, The Battle of the
Strong, The Winning of Barbara Worth out of the li-
brary. Her mother kept telling her that she'd spoil her
eyes if she read so much. When she read she used to
imagine she was the heroine, that the weak brother who
went to the bad but was a gentleman at core and capable
of every sacrifice, like Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two
Cities was Joe and that the hero was Alec.

She thought Alec was the bestlooking boy in George-
town and the strongest. He had black closecropped hair
and a very white skin with a few freckles and a strong
squareshouldered way of walking. After him Joe was the
bestlooking and strongest and the best baseball player
anyway. Everybody said he ought to go on through high-
school on account of being such a good baseball player,
but at the end of his first year Popper said he had three
girls to support and that Joe would have to get to work;
so he got a job as a Western Union messenger. Janey was
pretty proud of him in his uniform until the girls at high-
school kidded her about it. Alec's folks had promised to
put him through college if he made good in highschool,
so Alec worked hard. He wasn't tough and dirtytalking
like most of the boys Joe knew. He was always nice to
Janey though he never seemed to want to be left alone
with her. She pretty well admitted to herself that she
had a terrible crush on Alec.

The best day of her life was the sweltering summer
Sunday they all went canoeing up to Great Falls. She had
put up the lunch the night before. In the morning she
added a steak she found in the icebox. There was blue
haze at the end of every street of brick houses and dark
summergreen trees when before anybody else was awake
she and Joe crept out of the house round seven that morn-
ing.

They met Alec at the corner in front of the depot. He

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stood waiting for them with his feet wide apart and a
skillet in his hand.

They all ran and caught the car that was just leaving
for Cabin John's Bridge. They had the car all to them-
selves like it was a private car. The car hummed over the
rails past whitewashed shanties and nigger cabins along
the canal, skirting hillsides where the sixfoot tall waving
corn marched in ranks like soldiers. The sunlight glanced
in bluewhite glare on the wavingdrooping leaves of the
tassling corn; glare, and a whirring and tinkling of grass-
hoppers and dryflies rose in hot smoke into the pale sky
round the clattering shaking electric car. They ate sweet
summerapples Joe had bought off a colored woman in
the station and chased each other round the car and flopped
down on top of each other in the cornerseats; and they
laughed and giggled till they were weak. Then the car
was running through woods; they could see the trestle-
work of the rollercoasters of Glen Echo through the trees
and they piled off the car at Cabin John's having more
fun than a barrel of monkeys.

They ran down to the bridge to look up and down the
river brown and dark in the white glary morning between
foliagesodden banks; then they found the canoe that be-
longed to a friend of Alec's in a house by the canal, bought
some cream soda and rootbeer and some packages of
neccos and started out. Alec and Joe paddled and Janey
sat in the bottom with her sweater rolled round a thwart
for a pillow. Alec was paddling in the bow. It was swelter-
ing hot. The sweat made the shirt cling to the hollow of
his chunky back that curved with every stroke of the
paddle. After a while the boys stripped to their bathing-
suits that they wore under their clothes. It made Janey's
throat tremble to watch Alec's back and the bulging
muscles of his arm as he paddled, made her feel happy
and scared. She sat there in her white dimity dress, trail-
ing her hand in the weedy browngreen water. They

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stopped to pick waterlilies and the white flowers of arrow-
head that glistened like ice and everything smelt wet rank
of the muddy roots of waterlilies. The cream soda got
warm and they drank it that way and kidded each other
back and forth and Alec caught a crab and covered Janey's
dress with greenslimy splashes and Janey didn't care a
bit and they called Joe skipper and he loosened up and
said he was going to join the navy and Alec said he'd be a
civil engineer and build a motorboat and take them all
cruising and Janey was happy because they included her
when they talked just like she was a boy too. At a place
below the Falls where there were locks in the canal they
had a long portage down to the river. Janey carried the
grub and the paddles and the frying pan and the boys
sweated and cussed under the canoe. Then they paddled
across to the Virginia side and made a fire in a little hollow
among gray rusty bowlders. Joe cooked the steak and
Janey unpacked the sandwiches and cookies she'd made
and nursed some murphies baking in the ashes. They
roasted ears of corn too that they had swiped out of a
field beside the canal. Everything turned out fine except
that they hadn't brought enough butter. Afterwards they
sat eating cookies and drinking rootbeer quietly talking
round the embers. Alec and Joe brought out pipes and
she felt pretty good sitting there at the Great Falls of the
Potomac with two men smoking pipes.

" Geewhiz, Janey, Joe cooked that steak fine."

"When we was kids we used to ketch frogs and broil
'em up in Rock Creek . . . Remember, Alec?"

"Damned if I don't, and Janey she was along once;
geewhiz, the fuss you kicked up then, Janey."

"I don't like seeing you skin them."

"We thought we was regular wildwest hunters then.
We had packs of fun then."

"I like this better, Alec," said Janey hesitatingly.

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"So do I . . ." said Alec. "Dod gast it, I wisht we
had a watermelon."

"Maybe we'll see some along the riverbank somewhere
goin' home."

" Jiminy crickets, what I couldn't do to a watermelon,
Joe."

" Mommer had a watermelon on ice," said Janey;

"maybe there'll be some yet when we get home."

"I don't never want to go home," said Joe, suddenly
bitter serious.

" Joe, you oughtn't to talk like that." She felt girlish
and frightened.

"I'll talk how I goddam please . . . Kerist, I hate the
scrimpy dump."

" Joe, you oughtn't to talk like that." Janey felt she
was going to cry.

"Dod gast it," said Alec. "It's time we shoved . . .
What you say, ho . . . ? We'll take one more dip and
then make tracks for home."

When the boys were through swimming they all went
up to look at the Falls and then they started off. They
went along fast in the swift stream under the steep tree-
hung bank. The afternoon was very sultry, they went
through layers of hot steamy air. Big cloudheads were
piling up in the north. It wasn't fun any more for Janey.
She was afraid it was going to rain. Inside she felt sick
and drained out. She was afraid her period was coming
on. She'd only had the curse a few times yet and the
thought of it scared her and took all the strength out of
her, made her want to crawl away out of sight like an
old sick mangy cat. She didn't want Joe and Alec to
notice how she felt. She thought how would it be if she
turned the canoe over. The boys could swim ashore all
right, and she'd drown and they'd drag the river for
her body and everybody'd cry and feel so sorry about it.

Purplegray murk rose steadily and drowned the white

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summits of the cloudheads. Everything got to be livid
white and purple. The boys paddled as hard as they
could. They could hear the advancing rumble of thunder.
The bridge was well in sight when the wind hit them, a
hot stormwind full of dust and dead leaves and bits of
chaff and straw, churning the riverwater.

They made the shore just in time. "Dod gast it, this
is goin' to be some storm," said Alec; " Janey, get under
the boat." They turned the canoe over on the pebbly
shore in the lee of a big bowlder and huddled up under
it. Janey sat in the middle with the waterlilies they had
picked that morning all shriveled and clammy from the
heat in her hand. The boys lay in their damp bathing-
suits on either side of her. Alec's towsled black hair was
against her cheek. The other side of her Joe lay with his
head in the end of the canoe and his lean brown feet and
legs in their rolledup pants tucked under her dress. The
smell of sweat and riverwater and the warm boysmell of
Alec's hair and shoulders made her dizzy. When the rain
came drumming on the bottom of the canoe curtaining
them in with lashing white spray, she slipped her arm
round Alec's neck and let her hand rest timidly on his
bare shoulder. He didn't move.

The rain passed after a while. "Gee, that wasn't as bad
as I thought it would be," said Alec. They were pretty
wet and chilly but they felt good in the fresh rainwashed
air. They put the canoe back in the water and went on
down as far as the bridge. Then they carried it back to
the house they'd gotten it from, and went to the little
shelter to wait for the electric car. They were tired and
sunburned and sticky. The car was packed with a damp
Sunday afternoon crowd, picnickers caught by the shower
at Great Falls and Glen Echo. Janey thought she'd never
stand it till she got home. Her belly was all knotted up
with a cramp. When they got to Georgetown the boys still
had fifty cents between them and wanted to go to a movie,

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but Janey ran off and left them. Her only thought was to
get to bed so that she could put her face into the pillow
and cry.

After that Janey never cried much; things upset her
but she got a cold hard feeling all over instead. High-
school went by fast, with hot thunderstormy Washing-
ton summers in between terms, punctuated by an occa-
sional picnic at Marshall Hall or a party at some house in
the neighborhood. Joe got a job at the Adams Express.
She didn't see him much as he didn't eat home any more.
Alec had bought a motorcycle and although he was still
in highschool Janey heard little about him. Sometimes
she sat up to get a word with Joe when he came home at
night. He smelt of tobacco and liquor though he never
seemed to be drunk. He went to his job at seven and
when he got out in the evenings he went out with the
bunch hanging round poolrooms on 4 ½ Street or playing
craps or bowling. Sundays he played baseball in Mary-
land. Janey would sit up for him, but when he came she'd
ask him how things were going where he worked and
he'd say "Fine" and he'd ask her how things were going
at school and she'd say "Fine" and then they'd both go
off to bed. Once in a while she'd ask if he'd seen Alec
and he'd say "Yes" with a scrap of a smile and she'd ask
how Alec was and he'd say "Fine."

She had one friend, Alice Dick, a dark stubby girl with
glasses who took all the same classes with her at high-
school. Saturday afternoons they'd dress up in their best
and go window-shopping down F Street way. They'd buy
a few little things, stop in for a soda and come home on
the streetcar feeling they'd had a busy afternoon. Once
in a very long while they went to a matinee at Poli's and
Janey would take Alice Dick home to supper. Alice Dick
liked the Williamses and they liked her. She said it made
her feel freer to spend a few hours with broadminded
people. Her own folks were Southern Methodists and

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very narrow. Her father was a clerk in the Government
Printing Office and was in daily dread that his job would
come under the civil service regulations. He was a stout
shortwinded man, fond of playing practical jokes on his
wife and daughter, and suffered from chronic dyspepsia.