U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [27]
-63-want to do some studyin', see? I dunno a friggin' thing yet."
"That's slick."
"Ever hopped a freight or ridden blind baggage, Mac?"
"Wel , not exactly."
"You just fol ow me and do what I do. You'l be al right." Down the track they heard the hoot of a locomotive
whistle.
"There is number three comin' round the bend now
. . . We'l hop her right after she starts outa the station. She'l take us into Mackinaw City this afternoon." Late that afternoon, stiff and cold, they went into a little shed on the steamboat wharf at Mackinaw City to get shelter. Everything was hidden in a driving rainstreaked mist off the lake. They had bought a ten-cent package of Sweet Caps, so that they only had ninety cents left between them. They were arguing about how much they ought to spend for supper when the steamboat agent, a thin man wearing a green eyeshade and a slicker came out of his office. "You boys lookin' for a job?" he asked.
"Cause there's a guy here from the Lakeview House lookin' for a coupla pearldivers. Agency didn't send 'em enough help I guess. They're openin' up tomorrer."
"How much do they pay ye?" asked Ike. "I don't reckon it's much, but the grub's pretty good.""How about it, Mac? We'l save up our fare an' then we'l go to Duluth like a coupla dudes on the boat."
So they went over that night on the steamboat to
Mackinac Island. It was pretty dul on Mackinac Island. There was a lot of smal scenery with signs on it reading
"Devil's Cauldron,""Sugar Loaf,""Lover's Leap," and wives and children of mediumpriced business men from Detroit, Saginaw and Chicago. The grayfaced woman who ran the hotel, known as The Management, kept them
working from six in the morning til way after sundown.
-64-It wasn't only dishwashing, it was sawing wood, running errands, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, smashing bag-gage and a lot of odd chores. The waitresses were al old maids or else brokendown farmers' wives whose husbands drank. The only other male in the place was the cook, a hypochondriac French Canadian halfbreed who insisted on being cal ed Mr. Chef. Evenings he sat in his little log shack back of the hotel drinking paregoric and mum-bling about God. When they got their first month's pay they packed up their few belongings in a newspaper and sneaked on board the Juniata for Duluth. The fare took al their capital, but they were happy as they stood in the stern watching the spruce and balsamcovered hil of Mackinac disappear into the lake. Duluth; girderwork along the waterfront, and the
shack-covered hil s and the tal thin chimneys and the huddle of hunch-shouldered grain elevators under the smoke from the mil s scrol ed out dark against a huge salmoncolored sunset. Ike hated to leave the boat on account of a pretty dark-haired girl he'd meant al the time to speak to. "Hel , she wouldn't pay attention to you, Ike, she's too swank for you," Mac kept saying. "The old woman'l be glad to see us anyway," said Ike as they hurried off the gangplank. "I half expected to see her at the dock, though I didn't write we was coming. Boy, I bet she'l give us a swel feed."
"Where does she live?"
"Not far. I'l show you. Say, don't ask anythin' about my ole man, wil ye; he don't amount to much. He's in jail, I guess. Ole woman's had pretty tough sleddin'
bringin' up us kids . . . I got two brothers in Buffalo
. . . I don't get along with 'em. She does fancy needle-work and preservin' an' bakes cakes an' stuff like that. She used to work in a bakery but she's got the lumbago
-65-too bad now. She'd 'a' been a real bright woman if we hadn't always been so friggin'
poor."
They turned up a muddy street on a hil . At the top of the hil was a little prim house like a schoolhouse.
"That's where we live . . . Gee, I wonder why there's no light." They went in by a gate in the picket fence. There was sweetwil iam in bloom in the flowerbed in front of the house. They could smel it though they could hardly see, it was so dark. Ike knocked.
"Damn it, I wonder what's the