U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [331]
"Why the hel did you let me go with that girl, Dick?
I feel like a louse . . . Oh Christ . . . mind if I have half this bed, Dick? I'l get me a room in the morning." Dick found him a pair of pyjamas and made himself smal on his side of the bed. "The trouble with you, Henry," he said, yawning, "is that you're just an old Puritan
. . . you ought to be more continental."
"I notice you didn't go with any of those bitches your-self."
"I haven't got any morals but I'm finnicky, my dear, Epicurus' owne sonne," Dick drawled sleepily.
"S --t I feel like a dirty dishrag," whispered Henry. Dick closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Early in October Dick was sent to Brest with a despatch case that the Colonel said was too important to entrust to an enlisted man. At Rennes he had to wait two hours for the train, and was sitting eating in the restaurant when a doughboy with his arm in a sling came up to him saying,
"Hel o, Dick, for crying out loud." It was Skinny Murray.
"By gosh, Skinny, I'm glad to see you . . . it must be five or six years . . . Gee, we're getting old. Look, sit down . . . no, I can't do that."
"I suppose I ought to have saluted, sir," said Skinny stiffly.
"Can that, Skinny . . . but we've got to find a place to
-354-talk . . . got any time before your train? You see it's me the M.P.'s would arrest if they saw me eating and drink-ing with an enlisted man. . . . Wait around til I've fin-ished my lunch and we'l find a ginmil across from the station. I'l risk it.""I've got an hour I'm going to the Grenoble leave area."
"Lucky bastard . . . were you badly wounded, Skin-ny?""Piece of shrapnel in the wing, captain," said Skinny, coming to attention as a sergeant of M.P.'s stalked stiffly through the station restaurant. "Those birds gimme the wil ies."
Dick hurried through his lunch, paid, and walked
across the square outside the station. One of the cafés had a back room that looked dark and quiet. They were just settling down to chat over two beers when Dick remembered the despatch case. He'd left it at the table. Whisper-ing breathlessly that he'd be back he ran across the square and into the station restaurant. Three French officers were at the table. "Pardon, messieurs." It was stil where he'd left it under the table. "If I'd lost that I'd have had to shoot myself," he told Skinny. They chatted about Tren-ton and Philadelphia and Bay Head and Dr. Atwood. Skinny was married and had a good job in a Philadelphia bank. He had volunteered for the tanks and was winged by a bit of shrapnel before the attack started, damn lucky for him, because his gang had been wiped out by a black maria. He was just out of hospital today and felt pretty weak on his pins. Dick took down his service data and said held get him transferred to Tours; just the kind of fel ow they needed for a courier. Then Skinny had to run for his train, and Dick, with the despatch case tightly wedged under his arm, went out to strol around the town daintily colored and faintly gay under the autumn drizzle.
The rumor of the fake armistice set Tours humming
like a swarm of bees; there was a lot of drinking and back-slapping and officers and enlisted men danced snakedances
-355-in and out of the officebuildings. When it turned out to be a false alarm Dick felt almost relieved. The days that fol-lowed everybody round the headquarters of the Despatch Service wore a mysterious expression of knowing more than they were wil ing to tel . The night of the real armistice Dick ate supper a little deliriously with Colonel Edge-combe and some other officers. After dinner Dick happened to meet the colonel in the courtyard out back. The colonel's face was red and his moustache bristled. "Wel , Savage, it's a great day for the race," he said, and laughed a great deal. "What race?" said Dick shyly. "The human race," roared the colonel.
Then he drew Dick aside: "How would you like to go to Paris, my boy? It seems that there's to be a peace con-ference in Paris and that President Wilson is going