NEWSREEL XXX 11 страница

Jim had told him to go to see a friend of his who
worked in a Ford servicestation on Blue Island Avenue
but is was so far that by the time he got there the guy
had gone. The boss was there though and he told Charley
that if he came round next morning he'd have a job for
him. As he didn't have anywhere to go and didn't like to
tell the boss he was flat he left his suitcase in the garage
and walked around all night. Occasionally he got a few
winks of sleep on a park bench, bat he'd wake up stiff
and chilled to the bone and would have to run around to
warm up. The night seemed never to end and he didn't
have a red to get a cup of coffee with in the morning, and
he was there walking up and down outside an hour be-
fore anybody came to open up the servicestation in the
morning.

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He worked at the Ford servicestation several weeks
until one Sunday he met Monte Davis on North Clark
Street and went to a wobbly meeting with him in front of
the Newberry Library. The cops broke up the meeting
and Charley didn't walk away fast enough and before he
knew what had happened to him he'd been halfstunned
by a riotstick and shoved into the policewagon. He spent
the night in a cell with two bearded men who were blind
drunk and didn't seem to be able to talk English any-
way. Next day he was questioned by a police magistrate
and when he said he was a garage mechanic a dick called
up the servicestation to check up on him; the magistrate
discharged him, but when he got to the garage the boss
said he'd have no goddam I Won't Works in this outfit
and paid him his wages and discharged him too.

He hocked his suitcase and his good suit and made a
little bundle of some socks and a couple of shirts and
went round to see Monte Davis to tell him he was going
to hitchhike to St. Louis. Monte said there was a free-
speech fight in Evansville and he guessed he'd come along
to see what was doing. They went out on the train to
Joliet. When they walked past the prison Monte said the
sight of a prison always made him feel sick and gave him
a kind of a foreboding. He got pretty blue and said he
guessed the bosses'd get him soon, but that there'd be
others. Monte Davis was a sallow thinfaced youth from
Muscatine, Iowa. He had a long crooked nose and stut-
tered and didn't remember a time when he hadn't sold
papers or worked in a buttonfactory. He thought of noth-
ing but the I.W.W. and the revolution. He bawled
Charley out for a scissorbill because he laughed about
how fast the wobblies ran when the cops broke up the
meeting, and told him he ought to be classconscious and
take things serious.

At the citylimits of Joliet they hopped a truck that
carried them to Peoria, where they separated because

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Charley found a truckdriver he'd known in Chicago who
offered him a lift all the way to St. Louis. In St. Louis
things didn't seem to be so good, and he got into a row
with a hooker he picked up on Market Street who tried
to roll him, so as a guy told him there were plenty jobs to
be had in Louisville he began to beat his way East. By
the time he got to New Albany it was hot as the hinges
of hell; he'd had poor luck on hitches and his feet were
swollen and blistered. He stood a long time on the bridge
looking down into the swift brown current of the Ohio,
too tired to go any further. He hated the idea of tramp-
ing round looking for a job. The river was the color of
gingerbread; he started to think about the smell of ginger-
cookies Lizzie Green used to make in his mother's kitchen
and he thought he was a damn fool to be bumming round
like this. He'd go home and plant himself among the
weeds, that's what he'd do.

Just then a brokendown Ford truck came by running
on a flat tire. "Hey, you've got a flat," yelled Charley.
The driver put on the brakes with a bang. He was a big
bulletheaded man in a red sweater. "What the hell is it
to you?""Jez, I just thought you might not a noticed."
"Ah notice everythin', boy . . . ain't had nutten but
trouble all day. Wanta lift?""Sure," said Charley. "Now,
Ah can't park on de bridge nohow . . . Been same god-
dam thing all day. Here Ah gits up early in de mornin'
b'fo' day and goes out to haul foa hawgsheads a tobacca
an de goddam nigger done lost de warehouse key. Ah
swear if Ah'd had a gun Ah'd shot de son of a bitch dead."
At the end of the bridge he stopped and Charley helped
him change the tire. "Where you from, boy?" he said
as he straightened up and brushed the dust off his pants.
"I'm from up in the Northwest,"said Charley. "Ah reckon
you're a Swede, ain't yez?" Charley laughed. "No; I'm
a garage mechanic and lookin' for a job." "Pahl in, boy;

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we'll go an' see ole man Wiggins -- he's ma boss -- an' see
what we can do."

Charley stayed all summer in Louisville working at the
Wiggins Repair Shops. He roomed with an Italian named
Grassi who'd come over to escape military service. Grassi
read the papers every day and was very much afraid the
U. S. would go into the war. Then he said he'd have to
hop across the border to Mexico. He was an anarchist and
a quiet sort of guy who spent the evenings singing low
to himself and playing the accordion on the lodginghouse
steps. He told Charley about the big Fiat factories at
Torino where he'd worked, and taught him to eat
spaghetti and drink red wine and to play Funiculi funicula
on the accordion. His big ambition was to be an airplane
pilot. Charley picked up with a Jewish girl who worked
as sorter in a tobacco warehouse. Her name was Sarah
Cohen but she made him call her Belle. He liked her well
enough but he was careful to make her understand that
he wasn't the marrying kind. She said she was a radical
and believed in free love, but that didn't suit him much
either. He took her to shows and took her out walking
in Cherokee Park and bought her an amethyst brooch
when she said amethyst was her birthstone.

When he thought about himself he felt pretty worried.
Here he was doing the same work day after day, with
no chance of making better money or getting any school-
ing or seeing the country. When winter came on he got
restless. He'd rescued an old Ford roadster that they
were going to tow out to the junkheap and had patched
it up with discarded spare parts.

He talked Grassi into going down to New Orleans
with him. They had a little money saved up and they'd
run down there and get a job and be there for the Mardi
Gras. The first day that he'd felt very good since he left
St. Paul was the sleety January day they pulled out of
Louisville with the engine hitting on all four cylinders

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and a pile of thirdhand spare tires in the back, headed
south.

They got down through Nashville and Birmingham
and Mobile, but the roads were terrible and they had to
remake the car as they went along and they almost froze
to death in a blizzard near Guntersville and had to lay
over for a couple of days, so that by the time they'd
gotten down to Bay St. Louis and were bowling along the
shore road under a blue sky and feeling the warm sun and
seeing palms and bananatrees and Grassi was telling about
Vesuvio and Bella Napoli and his girl in Torino that he'd
never see again on account of the bastardly capitalista
war, their money had run out. They got into New
Orleans with a dollar five between them and not more
than a teacupful of gasoline in the tank, but by a lucky
break Charley managed to sell the car as it stood for
twentyfive dollars to a colored undertaker.

They got a room in a house near the levee for three
dollars a week. The landlady was a yellowfaced woman
from Panama and there was a parrot on the balcony out-
side their room and the sun was warm on their shoulders
walking along the street. Grassi was very happy. "This
is lika the Italia," he kept saying. They walked around
and tried to find out about jobs but they couldn't seem
to find out about anything except that Mardi Gras was
next week. They walked along Canal Street that was
crowded with colored people, Chinamen, pretty girls in
brightcolored dresses, racetrack hangerson, tall elderly
men in palmbeach suits. They stopped to have a beer in
a bar open to the street with tables along the outside
where all kinds of men sat smoking cigars and drinking.
When they came out Grassi bought an afternoon paper.
He turned pale and showed the headline, WAR WITH
GERMANY IMMINENT. "If America go to war with Ger-
many cops will arrest all Italian man to send back to
Italy for fight, see? My friend tell who work in consule'soffice; tell me, see? I will not go fight in capitalista war."

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office; tell me, see? I will not go fight in capitalista war."
Charley tried to kid him along, but a worried set look
came over Grassi's face and as soon as it was dark he left
Charley saying he was going back to the flop and going
to bed.

Charley walked round the streets alone. There was a
warm molasses smell from the sugar refineries, whiffs of
gardens and garlic and pepper and oil cookery. There
seemed to be women everywhere, in bars, standing round
streetcorners, looking out invitingly behind shutters ajar
in all the doors and windows; but he had twenty dollars
on him and was afraid one of them might lift it off him,
so he just walked around until he was tired and then
went back to the room, where he found Grassi already
asleep with the covers over his head.

It was late when he woke up. The parrot was squawking
on the gallery outside the window, hot sunlight filled the
room. Grassi was not there.

Charley had dressed and was combing his hair when
Grassi came in looking very much excited. He had taken a
berth as donkey-engineman on a freighter bound for South
America. "When I get Buenos Aires goodby and no more
war," he said. "If Argentina go to war, goodby again."
He kissed Charley on the mouth, and insisted on giving
him his accordion and there were tears in his eyes when
he went off to join the boat that was leaving at noon.

Charley walked all over town inquiring at garages and
machineshops if there was any chance of a job. The streets
were broad and dusty, bordered by low shuttered frame
houses, and distances were huge. He got tired and dusty
and sweaty. People he talked to were darned agreeable
but nobody seemed to know where he could get a job.
He decided he ought to stay through the Mardi Gras
anyway and then he would go up North again. Men he
talked to told him to go to Florida or Birmingham,
Alabama, or up to Memphis or Little Rock, but every-

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body agreed that unless he wanted to ship as a seaman
there wasn't a job to be had in the city. The days dragged
along warm and slow and sunny and smelling of molasses
from the refineries. He spent a great deal of time reading
in the public library or sprawled on the levee watching
the niggers unload the ships. He had too much time to
think and he worried about what he was going to do with
himself. Nights he couldn't sleep well because he hadn't
done anything all day to tire him.

One night he heard guitarmusic coming out of a joint
called "The Original Tripoli," on Chartres Street. He
went in and sat down at a table and ordered drinks. The
waiter was a Chink. Couples were dancing in a kind of
wrestling hug in the dark end of the room. Charley de-
cided that if he could get a girl for less than five seeds
he'd take one on. Before long he found himself setting
up a girl who said her name was Liz to drinks and a feed.
She said she hadn't had anything to eat all day. He asked
her about Mardi Gras and she said it was a bum time
because the cops closed everything up tight. "They
rounded up all the waterfront hustlers last night, sent
every last one of them up the river.""What they do
with 'em?""Take 'em up to Memphis and turn 'em
loose . . . ain't a jail in the state would hold all the
floosies in this town." They laughed and had another
drink and then they danced. Charley held her tight. She
was a skinny girl with little pointed breasts and big hips.
"Jez, baby, you've got some action," he said after they'd
been dancing a little while. "Ain't it ma business to give
the boys a good time?" He liked the way she looked at
him. "Say, baby, how much do you get?""Five bucks."
"Jez, I ain't no millionaire . . . and didn't I set you up
to some eats?""Awright, sugarpopper; make it three."

They had another drink. Charley noticed that she took
some kind of lemonade each time. "Don't you ever drinkanything, Liz?"

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anything, Liz?" "You can't drink in this game, dearie;
first thing you know I'd be givin' it away."

There was a big drunken guy in a dirty undershirt
looked like a ship's stoker reeling round the room. He
got hold of Liz's hand and made her dance with him.
His big arms tattooed blue and red folded right round
her. Charley could see he was mauling and pulling at her
dress as he danced with her. "Quit that, you son of a
bitch," she was yelling. That made Charley sore and he
went up and pulled the big guy away from her. The big
guy turned and swung on him. Charley ducked and
hopped into the center of the floor with his dukes up.
The big guy was blind drunk, as he let fly another hay-
maker Charley put his foot out and the big guy tripped
and fell on his face upsetting a table and a little dark
man with a black mustache with it. In a second the dark
man was on his feet and had whipped out a machete. The
Chinks ran round mewing like a lot of damn gulls. The
proprietor, a fat Spaniard in an apron, had come out from
behind the bar and was yellin', "Git out, every last one
of you." The man with the machete made a run at
Charley. Liz gave him a yank one side and before Charley
knew what had happened she was pulling him through
the stinking latrines into a passage that led to a back door
out into the street. "Don't you know no better'n to git
in a fight over a goddam whore?" she was saying in his
ear.

Once out in the street Charley wanted to go back to
get his hat and coat. Liz wouldn't let him. "I'll get it
for you in the mornin'," she said. They walked along
the street together. "You're a damn good girl; I like
you," said Charley."Can't you raise ten dollars and make it all night?""Jez, kid, I'm broke.""Well, I'll have to
throw you out and do some more hustlin', I guess . . .
There's only one feller in this world gets it for nothin' and
you ain't him."

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They had a good time together. They sat on the edge
of the bed talking. She looked flushed and pretty in a
fragile sort of way in her pink shimmy shirt. She showed
him a snapshot of her steady who was second engineer on
a tanker. "Ain't he handsome? I don't hustle when he's
in town. He's that strong . . . He can crack a pecan
with his biceps." She showed him the place on his arm
where her steady could crack a pecan.

"Where you from?" asked Charley.

"What's that to you?"

"You're from up North; I can tell by the way you
talk."

"Sure. I'm from Iowa, but I'll never go back there no
more . . . It's a hell of life, bo, and don't you forget
. . . 'Women of pleasure' my foot. I used to think I was
a classy dame up home and then I woke up one morning
and found I was nothing but a goddam whore."

"Ever been to New York?"

She shook her head. "It ain't such a bad life if you keep
away from drink and the pimps," she said thoughtfully.

"I guess I'll shove off for New York right after Mardi
Gras. I can't seem to find me a master in this man's
town."

" Mardi Gras ain't so much if you're broke."

"Well, I came down here to see it and I guess I'd
better see it."

It was dawn when he left her. She came downstairs
with him. He kissed her and told her he'd give her the
ten bucks if she got his hat and coat back for him and
she said to come around to her place that evening about
six, but not to go back to the " Tripoli" because that greaser
was a bad egg and would be laying for him.

The streets of old stucco houses inset with lacy iron
balconies were brimful of blue mist. A few mulatto women
in bandanas were moving around in the courtyards. In
the market old colored men were laying out fruit and

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green vegetables. When he got back to his flop the
Panama woman was out on the gallery outside his room
holding out a banana and calling "Ven, Polly . . . Ven,
Polly," in a little squeaky voice. The parrot sat on the
edge of the tiled roof cocking a glassy eye at her and
chuckling softly. "Me here all night," said the Panama
woman with a tearful smile. "Polly no quiere come."
Charley climbed up by the shutter and tried to grab the
parrot but the parrot hitched away sideways up to the
ridge of the roof and all Charley did was bring a tile
down on his head. "No quiere come," said the Panama
woman sadly. Charley grinned at her and went into his
room, where he dropped on the bed and fell asleep.

During Mardi Gras Charley walked round town till
his feet were sore. There were crowds everywhere and
lights and floats and parades and bands and girls running
round in fancy dress. He picked up plenty of girls but as
soon as they found he was flat they dropped him. He was
spending his money as slowly as he could. When he got
hungry he'd drop into a bar and drink a glass of beer
and eat as much free lunch as he dared.

The day after Mardi Gras the crowds began to thin
out, and Charley didn't have any money for beer. He
walked round feeling hungry and miserable; the smell of
molasses and the absinthe smell from bars in the French
Quarter in the heavy damp air made him feel sick. He
didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't have the
gumption to start off walking or hitchhiking again. He
went to the Western Union and tried to wire Jim collect,
but the guy said they wouldn't take a wire asking for
money collect.

The Panama woman threw him out when he couldn't
pay for another week in advance and there he was walking
down Esplanade Avenue with Grassi's accordion on one
arm and his little newspaper bundle of clothes under the
other. He walked down the levee and sat down in a

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grassy place in the sun and thought for a long time. It
was either throwing himself in the river or enlisting in
the army. Then he suddenly thought of the accordion.
An accordion was worth a lot of money. He left his bundle
of clothes under some planks and walked around to all
the hockshops he could find with the accordion, but they
wouldn't give him more than fifteen bucks for it any-
where. By the time he'd been round to all the hockshops
and musicstores it was dark and everything had closed.
He stumbled along the pavement feeling sick and dopy
from hunger. At the corner of Canal and Rampart he
stopped. Singing was coming out of a saloon. He got the
hunch to go in and play Funiculi funicula on the accordion.
He might get some free lunch and a glass of beer out of it.

He'd hardly started playing and the bouncer had just
vaulted across the bar to give him the bum's rush, when
a tall man sprawled at a table beckoned to him.

"Brother,you come right here an'set down." It was a
big man with a long broken nose and high cheekbones.

"Brother, you set down." The bouncer went back be-
hind the bar. "Brother, you can't play that there accordeen
no mor'n a rabbit. Ah'm nutten but a lowdown cracker
from Okachobee City but if Ah couldn't play no better'n
that . . ." Charley laughed. "I know I can't play it.
That's all right." The Florida guy pulled out a big wad
of bills. "Brother, do you know what you're going to
do? You're going to sell me the goddam thing. . . .
Ah'm nothin' but a lowdown cracker, but, by Jesus
Christ . . ."

"Hey, Doc, be yourself . . . You don't want the damn
thing." His friends tried to make him put his money back.

Doc swept his arm round with a gesture that shot three
glasses onto the floor with a crash. "You turkey-buzzards
talk in your turn . . . Brother, how much do you want
for the accordeen?" The bouncer had come back and was
standing threateningly over the table. "All right, Ben,"

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said Doc. "It's all on your Uncle Henry . . . and let's
have another round a that good rye whisky. Brother, how
much do you want for it?"

"Fifty bucks," said Charley, thinking fast. Doc handed
him out five tens. Charley swallowed a drink, put the
accordion on the table and went off in a hurry. He was
afraid if he hung round the cracker 'ud sober up and try
to get the money back, and besides he wanted to eat.

Next day he got a steerage passage on the steamer
Momus bound for New York. The river was higher than
the city. It was funny standing on the stern of the steam-
boat and looking down on the roofs and streets and trol-
leycars of New Orleans. When the steamer pulled out
from the wharf Charley began to feel good. He found
the colored steward and got him to give him a berth in the
deckhouse. When he put his newspaper package under the
pillow he glanced down into the berth below. There lay
Doc, fast asleep, all dressed up in a light gray suit and a
straw hat with a burntout cigar sticking out of the corner
of his mouth and the accordion beside him.

They were passing between the Eads Jetties and feeling
the seawind in their faces and the first uneasy swell of
the Gulf under their feet when Doc came lurching on
deck. He recognized Charley and went up to him with a
big hand held out. "Well, I'll be a sonofabitch if there
ain't the musicmaker . . . That's a good accordeen, boy.
Ah thought you'd imposed on me bein' only a poa country
lad an' all that, but I'll be a sonofabitch if it ain't worth
the money. Have a snifter on me?"

They went and sat on Doc's bunk and Doc broke out a
bottle of Bacardi and they had some drinks and Charley
told about how he'd been flat broke; if it wasn't for that
fifty bucks he'd still be sitting on the levee and Doc said
that if it wasn't for that fifty bucks he'd be riding first-
class.

Doc said he was going up to New York to sail for

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France in a volunteer ambulance corps; wasn't ever'day
you got a chance to see a big war like that and he wanted
to get in on it before the whole thing went bellyup; still
he didn't like the idea of shooting a lot of whitemen he
didn't have no quarrel with and reckoned this was the
best way; if the Huns was niggers he'd feel different
about it.

Charley said he was going to New York because he
thought there were good chances of schooling in a big
city like that and how he was an automobile mechanic and
wanted to get to be a C.E. or something like that because
there was no future for a working stiff without schooling.

Doc said that was all mahoula and what a boy like him
ought to do was go and sign up as a mechanic in this here
ambulance and they'd pay fifty dollars a month an' maybe
more and that was a lot of seeds on the other side and
he'd ought to see the goddam war before the whole thing
went bellyup.

Doc's name was William H. Rogers and he'd come
from Michigan originally and his old man had been a
grapefruit grower down at Frostproof and Doc had cashed
in on a couple of good crops of vegetables off the Ever-
glades muck and was going over to see the mademosels
before the whole thing went bellyup.

They were pretty drunk by the time night fell and
were sitting in the stern with a seedylooking man in a
derby hat who said he was an Est from the Baltic. The
Est and Doc and Charley got up on the little bridge above
the afterhouse after supper; the wind had gone down and
it was a starlight night with a slight roll and Doc said,
"By God, there's somethin' funny about this here boat
. . . Befoa we went down to supper the Big Dipper was
in the north, and now it's gone right around to the south-
west."

"It is vat you vould expect of a kapitalistichesky so-
ciety," said the Est. When he found that Charley had a

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red card and that Doc didn't believe in shooting anything
but niggers he made a big speech about how revolution
had broken out in Russia and the Czar was being forced
to abdicate and that was the beginning of the regeneration
of mankind from the East. He said the Ests would get
their independence and that soon all Europe would be the
free sozialistitchesky United States of Europe under the
Red flag and Doc said, "What did I tell yez, Charley?
The friggin' business'll go bellyup soon . . . What you
want to do is come with me an' see the war while it lasts."
And Charley said Doc was right and Doc said, "I'll take
you round with me, boy, an' all you need do's show your
driver's license an' tell 'em you're a college student."

The Est got sore at that and said that it was the duty
of every classconscious worker to refuse to fight in this
war and Doc said, "We ain't goin' to fight, Esty, old
man. What we'll do is carry the boys out before they
count out on 'em, see? I'd be a disappointed sonofabitch
if the whole business had gone bellyup befoa we git there,
wouldn't you, Charley?"

Then they argued some more about where the Dipper
was and Doc kept saying it had moved to the south and
when they'd finished the second quart, Doc was saying
he didn't believe in white men shootin' each other up,
only niggers, and started going round the boat lookin' for
that damn shine steward to kill him just to prove it and
the Est was singing The Marseillaise and Charley was
telling everybody that what he wanted to do was to get
in on the big war before it went bellyup. The Est and
Charley had a hard time holding Doc down in his bunk
when they put him to bed. He kept jumping out shout-
ing he wanted to kill a couple of niggers.

They got into New York in a snowstorm. Doc said the
Statue of Liberty looked like she had a white nightgown.
on. The Est looked around and hummed The Marseillaise
and said American cities were not artistical because they

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