NEWSREEL XXX 10 страница

In the next camp Svenson lived with his six daughters.
His wife was dead. Anna the eldest was about thirty and
was cashier at the amusement park, two of them were
waitresses at the Tonka Bay Hotel and the others were
in highschool and didn't work. They were all tall and
blond and had nice complexions. Charley fell for the
youngest, Emiscah, who was just about his age. They had

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a float and a springboard and they all went in swimming
together. Charley wore a bathingsuit upper and a pair of
khaki pants all summer and got very sunburned. Ed's
girl was Zona and all four of them used to go out canoe-
ing after the amusement park closed, particularly warm
nights when there was a moon. They didn't drink but
they smoked cigarettes and played the phonograph and
kissed and cuddled up together in the bottom of the canoe.
When they'd got back to the boys' camp, Spagnolo would
be in bed and they'd haze him a little and put junebugs
under his blankets and he'd curse and swear and toss
around. Emiscah was a great hand for making fudge, and
Charley was crazy about her and she seemed to like him.
She taught him how to frenchkiss and would stroke his
hair and rub herself up against him like a cat but she
never let him go too far and he wouldn't have thought it
was right anyway. One night all four of them went out
and built a fire under a pine in a patch of big woods up the
hill back of the camps. They toasted marshmallows and
sat round the fire telling ghoststories. They had blankets
and Ed knew how to make a bed with hemlock twigs
stuck in the ground and they all four of them slept in the
same blankets and tickled each other and roughhoused
around and it took them a long time to get to sleep. Part
of the time Charley lay between the two girls and they
cuddled up close to him, but he got a hard on and couldn't
sleep and was worried for fear the girls would notice.

He learned to dance and to play poker and when labor-
day came he hadn't saved any money but he felt he'd
had a wonderful summer.

He and Ed got a room together in St. Paul. He got
a job as machinist's assistant in the Northern Pacific shops
and made fair money. He learned to run an electric lathe
and started a course in nightschool to prepare for civil
engineering at the Mechanical Arts High. Ed didn't seem
to have much luck about jobs, all he seemed to be able

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to do was pick up a few dollars now and then as attendant
at a bowling alley. Sundays they often ate dinner with the
Svensons. Mr. Svenson was running a small movie house
called the Leif Ericsson on Fourth Street but things
weren't going so well. He took it for granted that the
boys were engaged to two of his daughters and was only
too glad to see them come around. Charley took Emiscah
out every Saturday night and spent a lot on candy and
taking her to vaudeville shows and to a Chink restaurant
where you could dance afterwards. At Christmas he gave
her his seal ring and after that she admitted that she was
engaged to him. They'd go back to the Svensons' and sit
on the sofa in the parlor hugging and kissing.

She seemed to enjoy getting him all wrought up, then
she'd run off and go and fix her hair or put some rouge
on her face and be gone a long time and he'd hear her
upstairs giggling with her sisters. He'd walk up and down
in the parlor, where there was only one light in a flowered
shade, feeling nervous and jumpy. He didn't know what
to do. He didn't want to get married because that 'ud
keep him from traveling round the country and getting
ahead in studying engineering. The other guys at the shop
who weren't married went down the line or picked up
streetwalkers, but Charley was afraid of getting a disease
and he never seemed to have any time what with night-
school and all, and besides it was Emiscah he wanted.

After he'd given her a last rough kiss, feeling her
tongue in his mouth and his nostrils full of her hair and
the taste of her mouth in his mouth he'd walk home with
his ears ringing, feeling sick and weak; when he got to
bed he couldn't sleep but would toss around all night
thinking he was going mad and Ed'd grunt at him from
the other side of the bed for crissake to keep still.

In February Charley got a bad sore throat and the
doctor he went to said it was diphtheria and sent him to
the hospital. He was terribly sick for several days after

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they gave him the antitoxin. When he was getting better
Ed and Emiscah came to see him and sat on the edge of
his bed and made him feel good. Ed was all dressed up
and said he had a new job and was making big money but
he wouldn't tell what it was. Charley got the idea that
Ed and Emiscah were going round together a little since
he'd been sick but he didn't think anything of it.

The man in the next cot, who was also recovering from
diphtheria, was a lean grayhaired man named Michaelson.
He'd been working in a hardware store that winter and
was having a hard time. Up to a couple of years before
held had a farm in Iowa in the cornbelt, but a series of
bad crops had ruined him, the bank had foreclosed and
taken the farm and offered to let him work it as a tenant
but he'd said he'd be damned if he'd work as a tenant
for any man and had pulled up his stakes and come to
the city, and here he was fifty years old with a wife and
three small children to support trying to start from the
ground up again. He was a great admirer of Bob La
Follette and had a theory that the Wall Street bankers
were conspiring to seize the government and run the
country by pauperizing the farmer. He talked all day in
a thin wheezy voice until the nurse made him shut up,
about the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor
party and the destiny of the great northwest and the
need for workingmen and farmers to stick together to
elect honest men like Bob La Follette. Charley had joined
a local of an A. F. of L. union that fall and Michaelson's
talk, broken by spells of wheezing and coughing, made
him feel excited and curious about politics. He decided
he'd read the papers more and keep up with what was
going on in the world. What with this war and every-
thing you couldn't tell what might happen.

When Michaelson's wife and children came to see him
he introduced them to Charley and said that being laid up
next to a bright young fellow like that made being sick

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a pleasure. It made Charley feel bad to see how miserably
pale and illfed they looked and what poor clothes they had
on in this zero weather. He left the hospital before
Michaelson did and the last thing Michaelson said when
Charley leaned over him to shake his dry bony hand was
"Boy, you read Henry George, do you hear . . . ? He
knows what's the trouble with this country; damme if
he don't."

Charley was so, glad to be walking on his pins down the
snowy street in the dryicecold wind and to get the smell
of iodoform and sick people out of his head that he forgot
all about it.

First thing he did was to go to Svenson's. Emiscah
asked him where Ed Walters was. He said he hadn't been
home and didn't know. She looked worried when he said
that and he wondered about it. "Don't Zona know?" asked
Charley. "No, Zona's got a new felleri that's all she thinks
about." Then she smiled and patted his hand and babied
him a little bit and they sat on the sofa and she brought
out some fudge she'd made and they held hands and
gave each other sticky kisses and Charley felt happy.
When Anna came in she said how thin he looked and
that they'd have to feed him up, and he stayed to supper.
Mr. Svenson said to come and eat supper with them every
night for a while until he was on his feet again. After
supper they all played hearts in the front parlor and had
a fine time.

When Charley got back to his lodging house he met
the landlady in the hall. She said his friend had left with-
out paying the rent and that he'd pay up right here and
now or else she wouldn't let him go up to his room. He
argued with her and said he'd just come out of the hos-
pital and she finally said she'd let him stay another week.
She was a big softlooking woman with puckered cheeks
and a yellow chintz apron full of little pockets. When
Charley got up to the hall bedroom where he'd slept all

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winter with Ed, it was miserably cold and lonely. He
got into the bed between the icy sheets and lay shivering,
feeling weak and kiddish and almost ready to cry, won-
dering why the hell Ed had gone off without leaving him
word and why Emiscah had looked so funny when he
said he didn't know where Ed was.

Next day he went to the shop and got his old job back,
though he was so weak he wasn't much good. The fore-
man was pretty decent about it and told him to go easy
for a few days, but he wouldn't pay him for the time he
was sick because he wasn't an old employee and hadn't
gotten a certificate from the company doctor. That eve-
ning he went to the bowlingalley where Ed used to work.
The barkeep upstairs said Ed had beaten it to Chi on
account of some flimflam about raffling off a watch. "Good
riddance, if you ask me," he said. "That bozo has all the
makin's of a bad egg.

He had a letter from Jim saying that ma had written
from Fargo that she was worried about him and that
Charley had better let Jim take a look at him so he went
over to the Vogels' next Sunday. First thing he did when
he saw Jim was to say that busting up the Ford had been
a damn fool kid's trick and they shook hands on it and
Jim said nobody would say anything about it and that
he'd better stay and eat with them. The meal was fine
and the beer was fine. Jim's kid was darn cute; it was
funny to think that he was an uncle. Even Hedwig didn't
seem so peevish as before. The garage was making good
money and old man Vogel was going to give up the livery-
stable and retire. When Charley said he was studying at
nightschool old Vogel began to pay more attention to
him. Somebody said something about La. Follette and
Charley said he was a big man.

"Vat is the use being a big man if you are wrong?" said
old Vogel with beersuds in his mustache. He took an-
other draft out of his stein and looked at Charley with

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sparkling blue eyes. "But dot's only a beginning . . . ve
vill make a sozialist out of you yet." Charley blushed and
said, "Well, I don't know about that," and Aunt Hart-
mann piled another helping of hasenpfeffer and noodles
and mashed potatoes on his plate.

One raw March evening he took Emiscah to see "The
Birth of a Nation." The battles and the music and the
bugles made them all jelly inside. They both had tears in
their eyes when the two boys met on the battlefield and
died in each other's arms on the battlefield. When the
Ku Klux Klan charged across the screen Charley had his
leg against Emiscah's leg and she dug her fingers into
his knee so hard it hurt. When they came out Charley
said by heck he thought he wanted to go up to Canada
and enlist and go over and see the Great War. Emiscah
said not to be silly and then looked at him kinda funny
and asked him if he was pro-British. He said he didn't
care and that the only fellows that would gain would be
the bankers, whoever won. She said, "Isn't it terrible?
Let's not talk about it any more."

When they got back to the Svensons', Mr. Svenson
was sitting in the parlor in his shirtsleeves reading the
paper. He got up and went to meet Charley with a wor-
ried frown on his face and was just about to say some-
thing when Emiscah shook her head. He shrugged his
shoulders and went out. Charley asked Emiscah what
was eating the old man. She grabbed hold of him and put
her head on his shoulder and burst out crying. "What's
the matter, kittens what's the matter, kitten?" he kept
asking. She just cried and cried until he could feel her
tears on his cheek and neck and said, "For crissake, snap
out of it, kitten; you're wilting my collar."

She let herself drop on the sofa and he could see that
she was working hard to pull herself together. He sat
down beside her and kept patting her hand. Suddenly she
got up and stood in the middle of the floor. He tried to

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put his arms around her to pet her but she pushed him
off. "Charley," she said in a hard strained voice, "lemme
tellye somethin' . . . I think I'm goin' to have a baby."

"But you're crazy. We haven't ever . . ."

"Maybe it's somebody else . . . Oh, God, I'm going
to kill myself."

Charley took her by the arms and made her sit down
on the sofa. "Now pull yourself together, and tell me
what the trouble is."

"I wish you'd beat me up," Emiscah said, laughing
crazily. "Go ahead; hit me with your fist."

Charley went weak all over.

"Tell me what the trouble is," he said. "By Jez, it
couldn't be Ed."

She looked up at him with scared eyes, her face drawn
like an old woman's. "No, no . . . Here's how it is. I'm
a month past my time, see, and I don't know enough about
things like that, so I asks Anna about it and she says I'm
goin' to have a baby sure and that we've got to get married
right away and she told dad, the dirty little sneak, and I
couldn't tell 'em it wasn't you . . . They think it's you,
see, and dad says it's all right, young folks bein' like that
nowadays an' everythin' an' says we'll have to get married
and I thought I wouldn't let on an' you'd never know,
but, kid, I had to tell you."

"Oh, Jez," said Charley. He looked at the flowered
pink shade with a fringe over the lamp on the table be-
side him and the tablecover with a fringe and at his shoes
and the roses on the carpet. "Who was it?"

"It was when you were in the hospital, Charley. We
had a lot of beer to drink an' he took me to a hotel. I
guess I'm just bad, that's all. He was throwin' money
around an' we went in a taxicab and I guess I was crazy.
No, I'm a bad woman through and through, Charley. I
went out with him every night when you were in the
hospital."

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"By God, it was Ed."

She nodded and then hid her face and started to cry
again.

"The lousy little bastard," Charley kept saying. She
crumpled up on the sofa with her face in her hands.

"He's gone to Chicago . . . He's a bad egg allright,"
said Charley.

He felt he had to get out in the air. He picked up his
coat and hat and started to put them on. Then she got to
her feet and threw herself against him. She held him
close and her arms were tight round his neck. "Honestly,
Charley, I loved you all the time . . . I pretended to
myself it was you." She kissed him on the mouth. He
pushed her away, but he felt weak and tired and thought
of the icy streets walking home and his cold hallbedroom
and thought, what the hell did it matter anyway? and
took off his hat and coat again. She kissed him and loved
him up and locked the parlor door and they loved each
other up on the sofa and she let him do everything he
wanted. Then after a while she turned on the light and
straightened her clothes and went over to the mirror to
fix her hair and he tied his necktie again and she smoothed
down his hair as best she could with her fingers and they
unlocked the parlor door very carefully and she went out
in the hall to call dad. Her face was flushed and she
looked very pretty again. Mr. Svenson and Anna and all
the girls were out in the kitchen and Emiscah said, "Dad,
Charley and I are going to get married next month," and
everybody said, "Congratulations," and all the girls kissed
Charley and Mr. Svenson broke out a bottle of whisky
and they had a drink all round and Charley went home
feeling like a whipped dog.

There was a fellow named Hendriks at the shop seemed
a pretty wise guy; Charley asked him next noon whether
he didn't know of anything a girl could take and he said
he had a perscription for some pills and next day he

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brought it and told Charley not to tell the druggist what
he wanted them for. It was payday and Hendriks came
round to Charley's room after he'd gotten cleaned up that
night and asked him if he'd gotten the pills allright.
Charley had the package right in his pocket and was going
to cut nightschool that night and take it to Emiscah. First
he and Hendriks went to have a drink at the corner.
He didn't like whisky straight and Hendriks said to take
it with ginger ale. It tasted great and Charley felt sore
and miserable inside and didn't want to see Emiscah any-
way. They had some more drinks and then went and
bowled for a while. Charley beat him four out of five and
Hendriks said the party was on him from now on.

Hendriks was a squareshouldered redheaded guy with
a freckled face and a twisted nose and he began telling
stories about funny things that had happened with the
ribs and how that was his long suit anyway. He'd been
all over and had had high yallers and sealskin browns
down New Orleans and Chink girls in Seattle, Wash.,
and a fullblooded Indian squaw in Butte, Montana, and
French girls and German Jewish girls in Colon and a
Caribee woman more than ninety years old in Port of
Spain. He said that the Twin Cities was the bunk and
what a guy ought to do was to go down an' get a job in
the oilfields at Tampico or in Oklahoma where you could
make decent money and live like a white man. Charley
said he'd pull out of St. Paul in a minute if it wasn't that
he wanted to finish his course in nightschool and Hendriks
told him he was a damn fool, that book learnin' never
got nobody nowhere and what he wanted was to have a
good time when he had his strength and after that to hell
wid 'em. Charley said he felt like saying to hell wid 'em
anyway.

They went to several bars, and Charley who wasn't used
to drinking anything much except beer began to reel
a little, but it was swell barging round with Hendriks

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from bar to bar. Hendriks sang My Mother Was a Lady
in one place and The Bastard King of England in another
where an old redfaced guy with a cigar set them up to
some drinks. Then they tried to get into a dancehall but
the guy at the door said they were too drunk and threw
them out on their ear and that seemed funny as hell and
they went to a back room of a place Hendriks knew and
there were two girls there Hendriks knew and Hendriks
fixed it up for ten dollars each for all night, then they
had one more drink before going to the girls' place and
Hendriks sang:

Two drummers sat at dinner in a grand hotel one day
While dining they were chatting in a jolly sort of way
And when a pretty waitress brought them a tray of food
They spoke to her familiarly in a manner rather rude

"He's a hot sketch," said one of the girls to the other.
But the other was a little soused and began to get a cry-
ing jag when Hendriks and Charley put their heads to-
gether and sang:

My mother was a lady like yours you will allow
And you may have a sister who needs protection now
I've come to this great city to find a brother dear
And you wouldn't dare insult me, sir, if Jack were only
here.

They cried and the other one kept shoving her and
saying, "Dry your eyes, deary, you're maudlin," and it
was funny as hell.

The next few weeks Charley was uneasy and miserable.
The pills made Emiscah feel awful sick but they finally
brought her around. Charley didn't go there much,
though they still talked about "When we're married," and
the Svensons treated Charley as a soninlaw. Emiscah
nagged a little about Charley's drinking and running
round with this fellow Hendriks. Charley had dropped

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out of nightschool and was looking for a chance to get
a job that would take him away somewhere, he didn't
much care where. Then one day he busted a lathe and the
foreman fired him. When he told Emiscah about it she
got sore and said she thought it was about time he gave
up boozing and running round and he paid little atten-
tion to her and he said it was about time for him to butt
out, and picked up his hat and coat and left. Afterwards
when he was walking down the street he wished he'd
remembered to ask her to give him back his seal ring,
but he didn't go back to ask for it.

That Sunday he went to eat at old man Vogel's, but he
didn't tell them he'd lost his job. It was a sudden hot
spring day. He'd been walking round all morning, with
a headache from getting tanked up with Hendriks the
night before, looking at the crocuses and hyacinths in the
parks and the swelling buds in the dooryards. He didn't
know what to do with himself. He was a week overdue
on his rent and he wasn't getting any schooling and he
hadn't any girl and he felt like saying to hell with every-
thing and joining up in the militia to go down to the
Mexican border. His head ached and he was tired of
dragging his feet over the pavements in the early heat.
Welldressed men and women went by in limousines and
sedans. A boy flashed by on a red motorbike. He wished
he had the jack to buy a motorbike himself and go on a
trip somewhere. Last night he'd tried to argue Hendriks
into going South with him, but Hendriks said he'd picked
up with a skirt that was a warm baby and he was getting
his nookie every night and going to stay right with it.
To hell with all that, thought Charley; I want to see
some country.

He looked so down in the mouth that Jim said, "What's
the trouble, Charley?" when he walked into the garage.
"Aw, nothing," said Charley, and started to help clean
the parts of the carburetor of a Mack truck Jim was

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tinkering with. The truckdriver was a young feller with
closecropped black hair and a tanned face. Charley liked
his looks. He said he was going to take a load of store-
fittings down to Milwaukee next day and was looking for
a guy to go with him. "Would you take me?" said
Charley. The truckdriver looked puzzled. "He's my kid
brother, Fred; he'll be allright . . . But what about your
job?"

Charley colored up. "Aw, I resigned.""Well, come
round with me to see the boss, " said the truckdriver. "And
if it's allright by him it's allright by me."

They left next morning before day. Charley felt bad
about sneaking out on his landlady, but he left a note on
the table saying he'd send her what he owed her as soon
as he got a job. It was fine leaving the city and the mills
and grainelevators behind in the gray chilly early morn-
ing light. The road followed the river and the bluffs and
the truck roared along sloshing through puddles and
muddy ruts. It was chilly although the sun was warm
when it wasn't behind the clouds. He and Fred had to
yell at each other to make their voices heard but they
told stories and chewed the fat about one thing and an-
other. They spent the night in LaCrosse.

They just got into the hash joint in time to order ham-
burger steaks before it closed, and Charley felt he was
making a hit with the waitress who was from Omaha and
whose name was Helen. She was about thirty and had a
tired look under the eyes that made him think maybe she
was kind of easy. He hung round until she closed up and
took her out walking and they walked along the river and
the wind was warm and smelt winey of sawmills and there
was a little moon behind fleecy clouds and they sat down
in the new grass where it was dark behind stacks of fresh-
cut lumber laid out to season. She let her head drop on his
shoulder and called him "baby boy."

Fred was asleep in the truck rolled up in a blanket on

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top of the sacking when he got back. Charley curled up
in his overcoat on the other side of the truck. It was cold
and the packingcases were uncomfortable to lie on but he
was tired and his face felt windburned, and he soon fell
asleep.

They were off before day.

The first thing Fred said was, "Well, did you make
her, kid?" Charley laughed and nodded. He felt good
and thought to himself he was damn lucky to get away
from the Twin Cities and Emiscah and that sonofabitchin'
foreman. The whole world was laid out in front of him
like a map, and the Mack truck roaring down the middle
of it and towns were waiting for him everywhere where
he could pick up jobs and make good money and find
goodlooking girls waiting to call him their baby boy.

He didn't stay long in Milwaukee. They didn't need
any help in any of the garages so he got a job pearl-
diving in a lunchroom. It was a miserable greasy job with
long hours. To save money he didn't get a room but
flopped in a truck in a garage where a friend of Jim's was
working. He was planning to go over on the boat as soon
as he got his first week's pay. One of the stiffs working in
the lunchroom was a wobbly named Monte Davis. He
got everybody to walk out on account of a freespeech fight
the wobblies were running in town, so Charley worked
a whole week and had not a cent to show for it and hadn't
eaten for a day and a half when Fred came back with
another load on his Mack truck and set him up to a feed.
They drank some beer afterwards and had a big argu-
ment about strikes. Fred said all this wobbly agitation was
damn foolishness and he thought the cops would be doing
right if they jailed every last one of them. Charley said
that working stiffs ought to stick together for decent liv-
ing conditions and the time was coming when there'd be a
big revolution like the American revolution only bigger
and after that there wouldn't be any bosses and the work-

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ers would run industry. Fred said he talked like a damn
foreigner and ought to be ashamed of himself and that a
white man ought to believe in individual liberty and if he
got a raw deal on one job he was goddam well able to
find another. They parted sore, but Fred was a good-
hearted guy and lent Charley five bucks to go over to
Chi with.

Next day he went over on the boat. There were still
some yellowish floes of rotting ice on the lake that was a
very pale cold blue with a few whitecaps on it. Charley
had never been out on a big body of water before and
felt a little sick, but it was fine to see the chimneys and
great blocks of buildings, pearly where the sun hit them,
growing up out of the blur of factory smoke, and the
breakwaters and the big oreboats plowing through the
blue seas, and to walk down the wharf with everything
new to him and to plunge into the crowd and the stream
of automobiles and green and yellow buses blocked up by
the drawbridge on Michigan Avenue, and to walk along
in the driving wind looking at the shiny storewindows and
goodlooking girls and windblown dresses.