U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [21]
"I couldn't go higher'n a dol ar . . . Say, you won't tel the ole man on me?" the young man said, turning from one to another. "Seth Hardwick, he lives down the road, he went into Saginaw onct an' got a book from a man at the hotel. Gosh, it was a pippin." He tittered un-easily.
" Fenian, go down and get him The Queen of the White Slaves for a dol ar," said Doc Bingham, and settled back to sleep.
Fainy and the farmer's boy went down the rickety
ladder.
"Say, is she pretty spicy? . . . Gosh, if pop finds it he'l give me a whalin' . . . Gosh, I bet you've read al them books."
"Me?" said Fainy haughtily. "I don't need to read books. I kin see life if I wanter. Here it is
. . . it's about fal en women."
"Ain't that pretty short for a dol ar? I thought you could get a big book for a dol ar."
"This one's pretty spicy."
"Wel , I guess I'l take it before dad ketches me snoopin' around . . . Goodnight." Fainy went back to his bed in the hay and fel fast asleep. He was dreaming that he was going up a rickety stair in a barn with his sister Mil y who kept getting al the time bigger and whiter and fatter, and had on a big hat with ostrich plumes al round it and her dress began to split from the
-48-neck and lower and lower and Doc Bingham's voice was saying, She's Maria Monk, the queen of the white slaves, and just as he was going to grab her, sunlight opened his eyes. Doc Bingham stood in front of him, his feet wide apart, combing his hair with a pocketcomb and reciting:
" Let as depart, the universal sun
Confines not to one land his blessed beams
Nor is man rooted like a tree . . .
"Come, Fenian," he boomed, when he saw that Fainy was awake, "let us shake the dust of this inhospitable farm, latcheting our shoes with a curse like philosophers of old
. . . Hitch up the horse; we'l get breakfast down the road."
This went on for several weeks, until one evening they found themselves driving up to a neat yel ow house in a grove of feathery dark tamaracks. Fainy waited in the wagon while Doc Bingham interviewed the people in the house. After a while Doc Bingham appeared in the door, a broad smile creasing his cheeks. "We're going to bev'ery handsomely treated, Fenian, as befits a wearer of the cloth and al that . . . You be careful how you talk, wil you?
Take the horse to the barn and unhitch."
"Say, Mr. Bingham, how about my money? It's three weeks now." Fainy jumped down and went to the horse's head.
An expression of gloom. passed over Doc Bingham's
face. "Oh, lucre, lucre . . .
" Examine well
His milkwhite hand, the palm is hardly clean
But here and there an ugly smutch appears,
Foh, 'twas a bribe that left it. . . .
"I had great plans for a cooperative enterprise that you are spoiling by your youthful haste and greed . . . but if you must I'l hand over to you this very night
-49-everything due you and more. Al right, unhitch the horse and bring me that little package with Maria Monk, and The Popish Plot. " It was a warm day. There were robins singing round
the barn. Everything smelt of sweetgrass and flowers. The barn was red and the yard was ful of white leg-horns. After he had unhitched the spring wagon and put the horse in a stal , Fainy sat on a rail of the fence look-ing out over the silvergreen field of oats out back, and smoked a cigarette. He wished there was a girl there he could put his arm round or a fel ow to talk to.
A hand dropped onto his shoulder. Doc Bingham was
standing beside him.
" Fenian, my young friend, we are in clover," he said.
"She is alone in the house, and her husband has gone to town for two days with the hired man. There'l be nobody there but her two little children, sweet bairns. Perhaps I shal play Romeo. You've never seen me in love. It's my noblest role. Ah, some day I'l tel you about my headstrong youth. Come and meet the sweet charmer." When they went in the kitchen door a dimplefaced
pudgy woman in a lavender housecap