U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [113]
-267-Christian, aren't you? You're entirely wrong . . . a Chris-tian, aren't you? Have you ever thought that Christ would have been just like them if he hadn't been lucky enough to have been born of decent people . . . a Christian, aren't you. . . ." Ada, standing over her in a nightgown, woke her up,
"What can be the matter, child?" "I was having a night-mare . . . isn't that sil y?" said Daughter and sat bolt-upright in bed. "Did I yel bloody murder?" "I bet you children were out eating Welsh Rabbit, that's why you were so late," said Ada, and went back to her room laughing.
That spring Daughter coached a girls' basketbal team at a Y.W.C.A. in the Bronx, and got engaged to Edwin Vinal. She told him she didn't want to marry anybody for a couple of years yet, and he said he didn't care about car-nal marriage but that the important thing was for them to plan a life of service together. Sunday evenings, when the weather got good, they would go and cook a steak together in Palisades Park and sit there looking through the trees at the lights coming on in the great toothed rockrim of the city and talk about what was good and evil and what real love was. Coming back they'd stand hand in hand in the bow of the ferry boat among the crowd of boyscouts and hikers and picnickers and look at the great sweep of lighted buildings fading away into the ruddy haze down the North River and talk about al the terrible conditions in the city. Edwin would kiss her on the forehead when he said Goodnight and she'd go up in the elevator feeling that the kiss was a dedication.
At the end of June she went home to spend three months on the ranch, but she was very unhappy there that summer. Somehow she couldn't get around to tel ing Dad about her engagement. When Joe Washburn came out to spend a
week the boys made her furious teasing her about him and tel ing her that he was engaged to a girl in Oklahoma City,
-268-and she got so mad she wouldn't speak to them and was barely civil to Joe. She insisted on riding a mean little pinto that bucked and threw her once or twice. She drove the car right through a gate one night and busted both lamps to smithereens. When Dad scolded her about her recklessness she'd tel him he oughtn't to care because she was going back east to earn her own living and he'd be rid of her. Joe Washburn treated her with the same grave kindness as always, and sometimes when she was acting crazy she'd catch a funny understanding kidding gleam in his keen eyes that would make her feel suddenly al weak and sil y inside. The night before he left the boys cornered a rattler on the rockpile behind the corral and Daughter dared Joe to pick it up and snap its head off. Joe ran for a forked stick and caught the snake with a jab behind the head and threw it with al his might against the wal of the little smokehouse. As it lay wriggling on the grass with a broken back Bud took its head off with a hoe. It had six rattles and a button.
"Daughter," Joe drawled, looking her in the face with his steady smiling stare,
"sometimes you talk like you didn't have good sense."
"You're yal er, that's what's the matter with you," she said.
"Daughter, you're crazy . . . you apologize to Joe," yel ed Bud, running up red in the face with the dead snake in his hand. She turned and went into the ranchhouse and threw herself on her bed. She didn't come out of her room. til after Joe had left in the morning. he