U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [288]
-256-had cars and Daughter and the boys kept after Dad to buy a car, a real car instead of that miserable old flivver he drove around the ranch.
When Dad bought a Pierce Arrow touring car the spring Daughter graduated from highschool, she was the happiest girl in the world. Sitting at the wheel in a fluffy white dress the morning of Commencement outside the house waiting for Dad, who had just come out from the office and was changing his clothes, she had thought how much she'd like to be able to see herself sitting there in the not too hot June morning in the lustrous black shiny car among the shiny brass and nickel fixtures under the shiny paleblue big Texas sky in the middle of the big flat rich Texas country that ran for two hundred miles in every direction. She could see half her face in the little oval mirror on the mud-guard. It looked red and sunburned under her sandybrown hair. If she only had red hair and a skin white like butter-milk like Susan Gil espie had, she was wishing when she saw Joe Washburn coming along the street dark and seri-ouslooking under his panama hat. She fixed her face in a shy kind of smile just in time to have him say, "How lovely you look, Daughter, you must excuse ma sayin' so."
"I'm just waiting for Dad and the boys to go to the exer-cises. O Joe, we're late and I'm so excited. . . . I feel like a sight."
"Wel , have a good time." He walked on unhurriedly putting his hat back on his head as he went. Something hotter than the June sunshine had come out of Joe's very dark eyes and run in a blush over her face and down the back of her neck under her thin dress and down the middle of her bosom, where the little breasts that she tried never to think of were just beginning to be noticeable. At last Dad and the boys came out al looking blonde and dressed up and sunburned. Dad made her sit in the back seat with Bud who sat up stiff as a poker.
The big wind that had come up drove grit in their faces.
-257-After she caught sight of the brick buildings of the high-school and the crowd and the light dresses and the stands and the big flag with the stripes al wiggling against the sky she got so excited she never remembered anything that happened.
That night, wearing her first evening dress at the dance she came to in the feeling of tul e and powder and crowds, boys al stiff and scared in their dark coats, girls pack-ing into the dressing room to look at each other's dresses. She never said a word while she was dancing, just smiled and held her head a little to one side and hoped some-body would cut in. Half the time she didn't know who she was dancing with, just moved smiling in a cloud of pink tul e and colored lights; boys' faces bobbed in front of her, tried to say smarty ladykil erish things or else were shy and tonguetied, different colored faces on top of the same stiff bodies. Honestly she was surprised when Susan Gil espie came up to her when they were getting their wraps to go home and giggled, "My dear, you were the bel e of the bal ." When Bud and Buster said so next morning and old black Emma who'd'brought them al up after mother died came in from the kitchen and said,
"Lawsy, Miss Annie, folks is talkin' al over town about how you was the bel e of the bal last night," she felt her-self blushing happily al over. Emma said she'd heard-it from, that noaccount yal er man on the milk route whose aunt worked at Mrs. Washburn's, then she set down the popovers and went out with a grin as wide as a piano.
"Wel , Daughter," said Dad in his deep quiet voice, tap-ping the top of her hand, "I thought so myself but I thought maybe I was prejudiced."
During the summer Joe Washburn, who'd just gradu-ated from law school at Austin and who was going into Dad's office in the fal , came and spent two weeks with them on the ranch. Daughter was just horrid to him, made old Hildreth give him a mean little old oneeyed pony to
-258-ride, put homed toads in his cot, would hand him hot chile sauce instead of catsup at table or try to get him to put