U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [251]
thing for guys like them. They talked til about day about one thing and another. Then Joe went to sleep and slept til late afternoon. He got up in time to catch the Wash-ington boat. He didn't take a room but roamed around on deck al night. He got to cracking with one of the offi-cers and went and sat in the pilot house that smelt com-fortably of old last year's pipes. Listening to the sludge of water from the bow and watching the wabbly white finger of the searchlight pick up buoys and lighthouses he began to pul himself together. He said he was going up to New York to see his sister and try for a second mate's ticket with the Shipping Board. His stories about being torpedoed went big because none of them on the Dominion City had even been across the pond. It felt like old times standing in the bow in the sharp November morning, sniffing the old brackish smel of the Potomac water, passing redbrick Alexandria and Anacostia and the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, seeing the MonuU00AD
-168-ment stick up pink through the mist in the early light. The wharves looked about the same, the yachts and power boats anchored opposite, the Baltimore boat just coming in, the ramshackle excursion steamers, the oystershel s underfoot on the wharf, the nigger roustabouts standing around. Then he was hopping the Georgetown car and too soon he was walking up the redbrick street. While he rang the bel he was wondering why he'd come home.
Mommer looked older but she was in pretty good
shape and al taken up with her boarders and how the girls were both engaged. They said that Janey was doing so wel in her work, but that living in New York had changed her. Joe said he was going down to New York to try to get his second mate's ticket and that he sure would look her up. When they asked him about the war and the submarines and al that he didn't know what to tel 'em so he kinder kidded them along. He was glad when it was time to go over to Washington to get his train, though they were darn nice to him and seemed to think that he was making a big success getting to be a second mate so young. He didn't tel 'em about being married.
Going down on the train to New York Joe sat in the
smoker looking out of the window at farms and stations and bil boards and the grimy streets of factory towns through Jersey under a driving rain and everything he saw seemed to remind him of Del and places outside of Norfolk and good times he'd had when he was a kid.
When he got to the Penn Station in New York first thing he did was check his bag, then he walked down Eighth Avenue al shiny with rain to the corner of the street where Janey lived. He guessed he'd better phone her first and cal ed from a cigarstore. Her voice sounded
-169-kinder stiff; she said she was busy and couldn't see him til tomorrow. He came out of the phonebooth and
walked down the street not knowing where to go. He had a package under his arm with a couple of Spanish shawls he'd bought for her and Del on the last trip. He felt so blue he wanted to drop the shawls and everything down a drain, but he thought better of it and went back to the checkroom at the station and left them in his suitcase. Then he went and smoked a pipe for a while in the wait-ingroom. God damn it to hel he needed a drink. He went over to Broadway and walked down to Union Square, stopping in every place he could find that looked like