U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [30]
-70-that looked as if it would give them a flop for thirtyfive cents, so they walked and walked, and anyway the sky was beginning to pale into a slow northern summer dawn. When it was ful y day they went back to the Chink's and spent the thirtyfive cents on oatmeal and coffee. Then they went to the Canadian Pacific employment office and signed up for work in a construction camp at Banff. The hours they had to wait til traintime they spent in the public library. Mac read part of Bel amy Looking Backward and Ike, not being able to find a volume of Karl Marx, read an instalment of "When the Sleeper Wakes" in the Strand Magazine. So when they got on the train they were ful of the coming Socialist revolution and started talking it up to two lanky redfaced lumberjacks who sat opposite them. One of them chewed tobacco silently al the while, but the other spat his quid out of the window and said, "You blokes 'l keep quiet with that kinder talk if you knows what's 'ealthy for ye.""Hel , this is a free country, ain't it? A guy's free to talk, ain't he?" said Ike.
"A bloke kin talk so long as his betters don't tel him to keep his mouth shut.""Hel , I'm not tryin' to pick a fight," said Ike. "Better not," said the other man, and didn't speak again. They worked for the C. P. R. al summer and by the
first of October they were in Vancouver. They had new suitcases and new suits. Ike had forty-nine dol ars and fifty cents and Mac had eighty-three fifteen in a brand new pigskin wal et. Mac had more because he didn't play poker. They took a dol ar and a half room between them and lay in bed like princes their first free morning. They were tanned and toughened and their hands were horny. After the smel of rank pipes and unwashed feet and the bedbugs in the railroad bunkhouses the smal cleanboarded hotel room with its clean beds seemed like a palace. When he was ful y awake Mac sat up and reached for his Ingersol . Eleven o'clock. The sunlight on the win--71-dowledge was ruddy from the smoke of forestfires up the coast. He got up and washed in cold water at the wash-basin. He walked up and down the room wiping his face and arms in the towel. It made him feel good to fol ow the contours of his neck and the hol ow between his shoulderblades and the muscles of his arms as he dried himself with the fresh coarse towel.
"Say, Ike, what do you think we oughta do? I think we oughta go down on the boat to Seattle, Wash., like a coupla dude passengers. I wanta settle down an' get a printin' job; there's good money in that. I'm goin' to study to beat hel this winter. What do you think, Ike?
I want to get out of this limejuicy hole an' get back to God's country. What do you think, Ike?"
Ike groaned and rol ed over in bed.
"Say, wake up, Ike, for crissake. We want to take a look at this burg an' then twentythree."
Ike sat up in bed. "God damn it, I need a woman."
"I've heard tel there's swel broads in Seattle, honest, Ike." Ike jumped out of bed and began splattering himself from head to foot with cold water. Then he dashed into his clothes and stood looking out the window combing the water out of his hair.
"When does the friggin' boat go? Jez, I had two wet dreams last night, did you?" Mac blushed. He nodded his head.
"Jez, we got to get us women. Wet dreams weakens a guy."
"I wouldn't want to get sick."
"Aw, hel , a man's not a man until he's had his three doses."
"Aw, come ahead, let's go see the town."
"Wel , ain't I been waitin' for ye this halfhour?" They ran down the stairs and out into the street. They walked round Vancouver, sniffing the winey smel of
-72-lumbermil s along the waterfront, loafing under the big trees in the park. Then they got their tickets at the steam-boat office and went to a haberdashery store and bought themselves striped neckties, colored socks and four-dol ar silk shirts. They felt like mil ionaires when