U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [18]
"Hot stuff," said the little man, "but two dol ars is too much." Fainy found himself stuttering: "They're nnnot mmmine, sir; I don't know . . ."
"Oh, wel , what the hel . . ." The little man dropped two dol ar bil s in Fainy's hand and went back to his read-ing. Fainy had six dol ars in his pocket and two books left when he started back to the daycoach. Half way down the car he met the conductor. His heart almost stopped beat-ing. The conductor looked at him sharply but said noth-ing. Doc Bingham was sitting in his seat with his head in his hand and his eyes closed as if he were dozing. Fainy slipped into the seat beside him.
"How many did they take?" asked Doc Bingham talk--41-ing out of the corner of his mouth without opening his eyes.
"I got six bucks . . . Gol y, the conductor scared me, the way he looked at me."
"You leave the conductor to me, and remember that it's never a crime in the face of humanity and enlightenment to distribute the works of the great humanists among the merchants and moneychangers of this godforsaken coun-try . . . You better slip me the dough." Fainy wanted to ask about the dol ar he'd been prom-ised, but Doc Bingham was off on Othel o again: If after every tempest there come such calms as this Then may the laboring bark climb hills of seas
Olympus high.
They slept late at the Commercial House in Saginaw, and ate a large breakfast, during which Doc Bingham discoursed on the theory and practice of book salesman-ship. "I am very much afraid that through the hinterland to which we are about to penetrate," he said as he cut up three fried eggs and stuffed his mouth with bakingpowder biscuit, "that we wil find the yokels stil hankering after Maria Monk."
Fainy didn't know who Maria Monk was, but he didn't like to ask. He went with Doc Bingham round to Hum-mer's livery stable to hire a horse and wagon. There fol-lowed a long wrangle between the firm of Truthseeker Inc., and the management of Hummer's Livery Stable
as to the rent of a springwagon and an elderly piebald horse with cruppers you could hang a hat on, so that it was late afternoon before they drove out of Saginaw with their packages of books piled behind them, bound for the road.
It was a chil y spring day. Sagging clouds moved in a gray blur over a bluish silvery sky. The piebald kept slackening to a walk; Fainy clacked the reins continual y
-42-on his caving rump and clucked with his tongue until his mouth was dry. At the first whack the piebald would go into a lope that would immediately degenerate into an irregular jogtrot and then into a walk. Fainy cursed and clucked, but he couldn't get the horse to stay in the lope or the jogtrot. Meanwhile Doc Bingham sat beside him with his broad hat on the back of his head, smoking a cigar and discoursing: "Let me say right now, Fenian, that the attitude of a man of enlightened ideas, is, A plague on both your houses. . . I myself am a pantheist . . . but even a pantheist . . . must eat, hence Maria Monk." A few drops of rain, icy and stinging as hail, had begun to drive in their faces. "I'l get pneumonia at this rate, and it'l be your fault, too; I thought you said you could drive a horse . . . Here, drive into that farmhouse on the left. Maybe they'l let us put the horse and wagon in their barn."
As they drove up the lane towards the gray house and the big gray barn that stood under a clump of pines a little off from the road, the piebald slowed to a walk and began reaching for the bright green clumps of grass at the edge of the ditch. Fainy beat at him with the ends of the reins, and even stuck his foot over the dashboard and kicked him, but he wouldn't budge.
"Goddam it, give me the reins."
Doc Bingham gave the horse's head a terrible yank, but