U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [173]
"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 al right." The Florida guy pul ed out a big wad of bil s. "Brother, do you know what you're going to do? You're going to sel 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. "Al right, Ben,"
-403-said Doc. "It's al 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 swal owed 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 pul ed 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 pil ow he glanced down into the berth below. There lay Doc, fast asleep, al 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 swel 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. "Wel , I'l 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' al that, but I'l 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 stil 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
-404-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 bel yup; stil 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 al 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 dol ars 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