JURORS AT GATES OF BEEF BARONS 3 страница

Mrs. Olsen came over all in a flurry with Joe's papers
and Joe hustled over to the office in East New York and
they took him on as bosun. The skipper was Ben Tarbell
who'd been first mate on the Higginbotham. Joe wanted
to go down to Norfolk to see Del, but hell this was no
time to stay ashore. What he did was to send her fifty
bucks he borrowed from Glen. He didn't have time to
worry about it anyway because they sailed the next day
with sealed orders as to where to meet the convoy.

It wasn't so bad steaming in convoy. The navy officers
on the destroyers and the Salem that was in command
gave the orders, but the merchant captains kidded back
and forth with wigwag signals. It was some sight to see
the Atlantic Ocean full of long strings of freighters all
blotched up with gray and white watermarkings like bar-
berpoles by the camouflage artists. There were old tubs
in that convoy that a man wouldn't have trusted himself

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in to cross to Staten Island in peacetime and one of the
new wooden Shipping Board boats leaked so bad, jerry-
built out of new wood -- somebody musta been making
money -- that she had to be abandoned and scuttled half
way across.

Joe and Glen smoked their pipes together in Glen's
cabin and chewed the fat a good deal. They decided that
everything ashore was the bunk and the only place for
them was blue water. Joe got damn fed up with bawling
out the bunch of scum he had for a crew. Once they got
in the zone, all the ships started steering a zigzag course
and everybody began to get white around the gills. Joe
never cussed so much in his life. There was a false alarm
of submarines every few hours and seaplanes dropping
depth bombs and excited gun crews firing at old barrels,
bunches of seaweed, dazzle in the water. Steaming into
the Gironde at night with the searchlights crisscrossing
and the blinker signals and the patrolboats scooting.
around, they sure felt good.

It was a relief to get the dirty trampling mules off the
ship and their stench out of everything, and to get rid of
the yelling and cussing of the hostlers. Glen and Joe only
got ashore for a few hours and couldn't find Marceline
and Loulou. The Garonne was beginning to look like the
Delaware with all the new Americanbuilt steel and con-
crete piers. Going out they had to anchor several hours to
repair a leaky steampipe and saw a patrol boat go by tow-
ing five ships' boats crowded to the gunnels, so they
guessed the fritzes must be pretty busy outside.

No convoy this time. They slipped out in the middle of
a foggy night. When one of the deckhands came up out
of the focastle with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth,
the mate knocked him flat and said he'd have him arrested
when he got back home for a damn German spy. They
coasted Spain as far as Finisterre. The skipper had just
changed the course to southerly when they saw a sure

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enough periscope astern. The skipper grabbed the wheel
himself and yelled down the tube to the engine room to
give him everything they'd got, that wasn't much to be
sure, and the gun crew started blazing away.

The periscope disappeared but a couple of hours later
they overhauled a tubby kind of ketch, must be a Spanish
fishingboat, that was heading for the shore, for Vigo prob-
ably, scudding along wing and wing in the half a gale
that was blowing up west northwest. They'd no sooner
crossed the wake of the ketch than there was a thud that
shook the ship and a column of water shot up that
drenched them all on the bridge. Everything worked like
clockwork. No. I was the only compartment flooded. As
luck would have it, the crew was all out of the focastle
standing on deck amidships in their life preservers. The
Chemang settled a little by the bow, that was all. The
gunners were certain it was a mine dropped by the old
black ketch that had crossed their bow and let them have
a couple of shots, but the ship was rolling so in the heavy
sea that the shots went wild. Anyway, the ketch went out
of sight behind the island that blocks the mouth of the
roadstead of Vigo. The Chemang crawled on in under one
bell.

By the time they got into the channel opposite the
town of Vigo, the water was gaining on the pumps in No.
2, and there was four feet of water in the engineroom.
They had to beach her on the banks of hard sand to the
right of the town.

So they were ashore again with their bundles standing
around outside the consul's office, waiting for him to find
them somewhere to flop. The consul was a Spaniard and
didn't speak as much English as he might have but he
treated them fine. The Liberal Party of Vigo invited offi-
cers and crew to go to a bullfight there was going to be
that afternoon. More monkeydoodle business, the skipper
got a cable to turn the ship over to the agents of Gomez

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and Ca. of Bilboa who had bought her as she stood and
were changing her registry.

When they got to the bullring half the crowd cheered
them and yelled, "Viva los Aliados," and the rest hissed
and shouted, "Viva Maura." They thought there was
going to be a fight right there but the bull came out and
everybody quieted down. The bullfight was darn bloody,
but the boys with the spangles were some steppers and
the people sitting around made them drink wine all the
time out of little black skins and passed around bottles of
cognac so that the crew got pretty cockeyed and Joe spent
most of his time keeping the boys in order. Then the
officers were tendered a banquet by the local pro-allied
society and a lot of bozos with mustachlos made fiery
speeches that nobody could understand and the Ameri-
cans cheered and sang, The Yanks are Coming and Keep
the Home Fires Burning and We're Bound for the Ham-
burg Show. The chief, an old fellow named McGillicudy,
did some card tricks, and the evening was a big success.
Joe and Glen bunked together at the hotel. The maid
there was awful pretty but wouldn't let 'em get away with
any foolishness. "Well, Joe," said Glen, before they went
to sleep, "it's a great war." "Well, I guess that's strike
three," said Joe. "That was no strike, that was a ball,"
said Glen.

They waited two weeks in Vigo while the officials quar-
reled about their status and they got pretty fed up with
it. Then they were all loaded on a train to take them to
Gibraltar where they were to be taken on board a Ship-
ping Board boat. They were three days on the train with
nothing to sleep on but hard benches. Spain was just one
set of great dusty mountains after another. They changed
cars in Madrid and in Seville and a guy turned up each
time from the consulate to take care of them. When they
got to Seville they found it was Algeciras they were going
to instead of Gib.

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When they got to Algeciras they found that nobody
had ever heard of them. They camped out in the con-
sulate while the consul telegraphed all over the place and
finally chartered two trucks and sent them over to Cadiz.
Spain was some country, all rocks and wine and busty
black eyed women and olive trees. When they got to
Cadiz the consular agent was there to meet them with a.
telegram in his hand. The tanker Gold Shell was waiting
in Algeciras to take them on board there, so it was back
again cooped up on the trucks, bouncing on the hard
benches with their faces powdered with dust and their
mouths full of it and not a cent in anybody's jeans left
to buy a drink with. When they got on board the Gold
Shell around three in the morning a bright moonlight
night some of the boys were so tired they fell down and
went to sleep right on the deck with their heads on their
seabags.

The Gold Shell landed 'em in Perth Amboy in late
October. Joe drew his back pay and took the first train
connections he could get for Norfolk. He was fed up
with bawling out that bunch of pimps in the focastle.
Damn it, he was through with the sea; he was going to
settle down and have a little married life.

He felt swell coming over on the ferry from Cape
Charles, passing the Ripraps, out of the bay full of white-
caps into the smooth brown water of Hampton Roads
crowded with shipping; four great battlewaggons at an-
chor, subchasers speeding in and out and a white revenue
cutter, camouflaged freighters and colliers, a bunch of red
munitions barges anchored off by themselves. It was a
sparkling fall day. He felt good; he had three hundred
and fifty dollars in his pocket. He had a good suit on and
he felt sunburned and he'd just had a good meal. God

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damn it, he wanted a little love now. Maybe they'd have
a kid.

Things sure were different in Norfolk. Everybody in
new uniforms, twominute speakers at the corner of Main
and Granby, liberty loan posters, bands playing. He
hardly knew the town walking up from the ferry. He'd
written Del that he was coming but he was worried about
seeing her, hadn't had any letters lately. He still had a
latch key to the apartment but he knocked before open-
ing the door. There was nobody there.

He'd always pictured her running to the door to meet
him. Still it was only four o'clock, she must be at her
work. Must have another girl with her, don't keep the
house so tidy. . . . Underwear hung to dry on a line, bits
of clothing on all the chairs, a box of candy with half-
eaten pieces in it on the table. . . . Jez, they must have
had a party last night. There was a half a cake, glasses
that had had liquor in them, a plate full of cigarette butts
and even a cigar butt. Oh, well, she'd probably had some
friends in. He went to the bathroom and shaved and
cleaned up a little. Sure Del was always popular, she
probably had a lot of friends in all the time, playing
cards and that. In the bathroom there was a pot of rouge
and lipsticks, and facepowder spilt over the faucets. It
made Joe feel funny shaving among all these women's
things.

He heard her voice laughing on the stairs and a man's
voice; the key clicked in the lock. Joe closed his suitcase
and stood up. Del had bobbed her hair. She flew up to
him and threw her arms around his neck. "Why, I declare
it's my hubby." Joe could taste rouge on her lips. "My,
you look thin, Joe. Poor Boy, you musta been awful
sick. . . . If I'd had any money at all I'd have jumped
on a boat and come on down. . . . This is Wilmer Tay-
loe . . . I mean Lieutenant Tayloe, he just got his com-
mission yesterday."

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Joe hesitated a moment and then held out his hand.
The other fellow had red hair clipped close and a freckled
face. He was all dressed up in a whipcord uniform, shiny
Sam Browne belt and puttees. He had a silver bar on each
shoulder and spurs on his feet.

"He's just going overseas tomorrow. He was coming
by to take me out to dinner. Oh, Joe, I've got so much to
tell you, honey."

Joe and Lieutenant Tayloe stood around eyeing each
other uncomfortably while Del bustled around tidying
the place up, talking to Joe all the time. "It's terrible I
never get any chance to do anything and neither does
Hilda . . . You remember Hilda Thompson, Joe? Well,
she's been livin' with me to help make up the rent but
we're both of us doin' war work down at the Red Cross
canteen every evening and then I sell Liberty bonds. . . .
Don't you hate the huns, Joe. Oh, I just hate them, and
so does Hilda. . . . She's thinking of changing her name
on account of its being German. I promised to call her
Gloria but I always forget. . . . You know, Wilmer, Joe's
been torpedoed twice."

"Well, I suppose the first six times is the hardest,"
stammered Lieutenant Tayloe. Joe grunted.

Del disappeared into the bathroom and closed the
door. "You boys make yourselves comfortable. I'll be
dressed in a minute."

Neither of them said anything. Lieutenant Tayloe's
shoes creaked as he shifted his weight from one foot to
the other. At last he pulled a flask out of his hip pocket.
"Have a drink," he said. "Ma outfit's goin' overseas any
time after midnight.""I guess I'd better," said Joe,
without smiling. When Della came out of the bathroom
all dressed up she certainly looked snappy. She was much
prettier than last time Joe had seen her. He was all the
time wondering if he ought to go up and hit that damn

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shavetail until at last he left, Del telling him to come by
and get her at the Red Cross canteen.

When he'd left she came and sat on Joe's knee and
asked him about everything and whether he'd got his sec-
ond mate's ticket yet and whether he'd missed her and
how she wished he could make a little more money be-
cause she hated to have another girl in with her this
way but it was the only way she could pay the rent. She
drank a little of the whiskey that the lieutenant had for-
gotten on the table and ruffled his hair and loved him up.
Joe asked her if Hilda was coming in soon and she said
no she had a date and she was going to meet her at the
canteen. But Joe went and bolted the door anyway and
for the first time they were really happy hugged in each
other's arms on the bed.

Joe didn't know what to do with himself around Nor-
folk. Del was at the office all day and at the Red Cross
canteen all the evening. He'd usually be in bed when she
came home. Usually there'd be some damn army officer
or other bringing her home, and he'd hear them talking
and kidding outside the door and lie there in bed imag-
ining that the guy was kissing her or loving her up. He'd
be about ready to hit her when she'd come in and bawl
her out and they'd quarrel and yell at each other and
she'd always end by saying that he didn't understand
her and she thought he was unpatriotic to be interfering
with her war work and sometimes they'd make up and
he'd feel crazy in love with her and she'd make herself
little and cute in his arms and give him little tiny kisses
that made him almost cry they made him feel so happy.
She was getting better looking every day and she sure
was a snappy dresser.

Sunday mornings she'd be too tired to get up and he'd
cook breakfast for her and they'd sit up in bed together
and eat breakfast like he had with Marceline that time in
Bordeaux. Then she'd tell him she was crazy about him

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and what a smart guy he was and how she wanted him
to get a good shore job and make a lot of money so that
she wouldn't have to work any more and how Captain
Barnes whose folks were worth a million had wanted her
to get a divorce from Joe and marry him and Mr. Can-
field in the Dupont office who made a cool 50,000 a year
had wanted to give her a pearl necklace but she hadn't
taken it because she didn't think it was right. Talk like
that made Joe feel pretty rotten. Sometimes he'd start to
talk about what they'd do if they had some kids, but Del
ud always make a funny face and tell him not to talk like
that.

Joe went around looking for work and almost landed
the job of foreman in one of the repairshops over at the
shipyard in Newport News, but at the last minute another
berry horned in ahead of him and got it. A couple of
times he went out on parties with Del and Hilda Thomp-
son, and some army officers and a midshipman off a de-
stroyer, but they all high-hatted him and Del let any
boy who wanted to kiss her and would disappear into a
phone booth with anything she could pick up so long as
it had a uniform on and he had a hell of a time. He found
a poolroom where some boys he knew hung out and
where he could get corn liquor and started tanking up a
good deal. It made Del awful sore to come home and
find him drunk but he didn't care any more.

Then one night when Joe had been to a fight with some
guys and had gotten an edge on afterward, he met Del and
another damn shavetail walking on the street. It was
pretty dark and there weren't many people around and
they stopped in every dark doorway and the shavetail was
kissing and hugging her. When he got them under a street
light so's he made sure it was Del he went up to them
and asked them what the hell they meant. Del must have
had some drinks because she started tittering in a shrill
little voice that drove him crazy and he hauled off and let

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the shavetail have a perfect left right on the button. The
spurs tinkled and the shavetail went to sleep right flat on
the little grass patch under the streetlight. It began to hit
Joe kinder funny but Del was sore as the devil and said
she'd have him arrested for insult to the uniform and
assault and battery and that he was nothing but a yellow
snivelling slacker and what was he doing hanging around
home when all the boys were at the front fighting the
huns. Joe sobered up and pulled the guy up to his feet
and told them both they could go straight to hell. He
walked off before the shavetail, who musta been pretty
tight, had time to do anything but splutter, and went
straight home and packed his suitcase and pulled out.

Will Stirp was in town so Joe went over to his house
and got him up out of bed and said he'd busted up house-
keeping and would Will lend him twentyfive bucks to
go up to New York with. Will said it was a damn good
thing and that love 'em and leave 'em was the only
thing for guys like them. They talked till about day about
one thing and another. Then Joe went to sleep and slept
till late afternoon. He got up in time to catch the Wash-
ington boat. He didn't take a room but roamed around
on deck all night. He got to cracking with one of the offi-
cers and went and sat in the pilot house that smelt com-
fortably of old last year's pipes. Listening to the sludge
of water from the bow and watching the wabbly white
finger of the searchlight pick up buoys and lighthouses he
began to pull himself together. He said he was going up
to New York to see his sister and try for a second mate's
ticket with the Shipping Board. His stories about being
torpedoed went big because none of them on the Dominion
City had even been across the pond.

It felt like old times standing in the bow in the sharp
November morning, sniffing the old brackish smell of the
Potomac water, passing redbrick Alexandria and Anacostia
and the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, seeing the MonuU00AD

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ment stick up pink through the mist in the early light.
The wharves looked about the same, the yachts and power
boats anchored opposite, the Baltimore boat just coming
in, the ramshackle excursion steamers, the oystershells
underfoot on the wharf, the nigger roustabouts standing
around. Then he was hopping the Georgetown car and
too soon he was walking up the redbrick street. While he
rang the bell he was wondering why he'd come home.

Mommer looked older but she was in pretty good
shape and all taken up with her boarders and how the
girls were both engaged. They said that Janey was doing
so well in her work, but that living in New York had
changed her. Joe said he was going down to New York
to try to get his second mate's ticket and that he sure
would look her up. When they asked him about the war
and the submarines and all that he didn't know what to
tell 'em so he kinder kidded them along. He was glad
when it was time to go over to Washington to get his
train, though they were darn nice to him and seemed to
think that he was making a big success getting to be a
second mate so young. He didn't tell 'em about being
married.

Going down on the train to New York Joe sat in the
smoker looking out of the window at farms and stations
and billboards and the grimy streets of factory towns
through Jersey under a driving rain and everything he
saw seemed to remind him of Del and places outside of
Norfolk and good times he'd had when he was a kid.
When he got to the Penn Station in New York first thing
he did was check his bag, then he walked down Eighth
Avenue all shiny with rain to the corner of the street
where Janey lived. He guessed he'd better phone her
first and called from a cigarstore. Her voice sounded

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kinder stiff; she said she was busy and couldn't see him
till tomorrow. He came out of the phonebooth and
walked down the street not knowing where to go. He had
a package under his arm with a couple of Spanish shawls
he'd bought for her and Del on the last trip. He felt so
blue he wanted to drop the shawls and everything down
a drain, but he thought better of it and went back to the
checkroom at the station and left them in his suitcase.
Then he went and smoked a pipe for a while in the wait-
ingroom.

God damn it to hell he needed a drink. He went over
to Broadway and walked down to Union Square, stopping
in every place he could find that looked like a saloon but
they wouldn't serve him anywhere. Union Square was
all lit up and full of navy recruiting posters. A big wooden
model of a battleship filled up one side of it. There was
a crowd standing around and a young girl dressed like a
sailor was making a speech about patriotism. The cold rain
came on again and the crowd scattered. Joe went down a
street and into a ginmill called The Old Farm. He must
have looked like somebody the barkeep knew because he
said hello and poured him out a shot of rye.

Joe got to talking with two guys from Chicago who
were drinking whiskey with beer chasers. They said this
wartalk was a lot of bushwa propaganda and that if work-
ing stiffs stopped working in munition factories making
shells to knock other working stiffs' blocks off with, there
wouldn't be no goddam war. Joe said they were goddam
right but look at the big money you made. The guys from
Chicago said they'd been working in a munitions factory
themselves but they were through, goddam it, and that if
the working stiffs made a few easy dollars it meant that
the war profiteers were making easy millions. They said
the Russians had the right idea, make a revolution and
shoot the goddam profiteers and that ud happen in this

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country if they didn't watch out and a damn good thing
too. The barkeep leaned across the bar and said they'd
oughtn't to talk thataway, folks ud take 'em for German
spies.

"Why, you're a German yourself, George," said one
of the guys.

The barkeep flushed and said, "Names don't mean
nothin' . . . I'm a patriotic American. I vas talking yust
for your good. If you vant to land in de hoosgow it's not
my funeral." But he set them up to drinks on the house
and it seemed to Joe that he agreed with 'em.

They drank another round and Joe said it was all true
but what the hell could you do about it? The guys said
what you could do about it was join the I.W.W. and
carry a red card and be a classconscious worker. Joe said
that stuff was only for foreigners, but if somebody started
a white man's party to fight the profiteers and the goddam
bankers he'd be with 'em. The guys from Chicago began
to get sore and said the wobblies were just as much white
men as he was and that political parties were the bunk
and that all southerners were scabs. Joe backed off and
was looking at the guys to see which one of 'em he'd hit
first when the barkeep stepped around from the end of
the bar and came between them. He was fat but he had
shoulders and a meanlooking pair of blue eyes.

"Look here, you bums," he said, "you listen to me,
sure I'm a Cherman but am I for de Kaiser? No, he's a
schweinhunt, I am sokialist unt I live toity years in Union
City unt own my home unt pay taxes unt I'm a good
American, but dot don't mean dot I vill foight for
Banker Morgan, not vonce. I know American vorkman
in de sokialist party toity years unt all dey do is foight
among each oder. Every sonofabitch denk him better den
de next sonofabitch. You loafers geroutahere . . . closin'
time . . . I'm goin' to close up an' go home."

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One of the guys from Chicagothe
lee of the recruiting tent. Joe felt lousy. He went down
into the subway and waited for the Brooklyn train.

At Mrs. Olsen's everything was dark. Joe rang and in
a little while she came down in a padded pink dressing
gown and opened the door. She was sore at being waked
up and bawled him out for drinking, but she gave him a
flop and next morning lent him fifteen bucks to tide him
over till he got work on a Shipping Board boat. Mrs.
Olsen looked tired and a lot older, she said she had pains
in her back and couldn't get through her work any more.

Next morning Joe put up some shelves in the pantry
for her and carried out a lot of litter before he went over
to the Shipping Board recruiting office to put his name
down for the officer's school. The little kike behind the
desk had never been to sea and asked him a lot of dam-
fool questions and told him to come around next week
to find out what action would be taken on his application.
Joe got sore and told him to f -- k himself and walked out.

He took Janey out to supper and to a show, but she
talked just like everybody else did and bawled him out
for cussing and he didn't have a very good time. She liked
the shawls though and he was glad she was making out

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so well in New York. He never did get around to talking
to her about Della.

After taking her home he didn't know what the hell
to do with himself. He wanted a drink, but taking Janey
out and everything had cleaned up the fifteen bucks he'd
borrowed from Mrs. Olsen. He walked west to a saloon
he knew on Tenth Avenue, but the place was closed:
wartime prohibition. Then he walked back towards Union
Square, maybe that feller Tex he'd seen when he was
walking across the square with Janey would still be sit-
ting there and he could chew the rag a while with him.
He sat down on a bench opposite the cardboard battle-
ship and began sizing it up: not such a bad job. Hell, I
wisht I'd never seen the inside of a real battleship, he was
thinking, when Tex slipped into the seat beside him and
put his hand on his knee. The minute he touched him Joe
knew he'd never liked the guy, eyes too close together:
"What you lookin' so blue about, Joe? Tell me you're
gettin' your ticket."

Joe nodded and leaned over and spat carefully between
his feet.

"What do you think of that for a model battleship,
pretty nifty, ain't it? Jez, us guys is lucky not to be over-
seas.fightin' the fritzes in the trenches."

"Oh, I'd just as soon," growled Joe. "I wouldn't give
a damn."