U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [36]
streets until he was deadtired; he walked fast not looking to the right or left, brushing past painted girls at street-corners, touts that tried to put addresscards into his hand, drunks that tried to pick fights with him, panhandlers whining for a handout. Then, bitter and cold and tired, he went back to his room and fel into bed.
Next day he went out and got a job in a smal print-shop run and owned by a baldheaded Italian with big whiskers and a flowing black tie, named Bonel o. Bonel o told him he had been a redshirt with Garibaldi and was now an anarchist. Ferrer was his great hero; he hired Mac because he thought he might make a convert out of him. Al that winter Mac worked at Bonel o's, ate
spaghetti and drank red wine and talked revolution with him and his friends in the evening, went to Socialist pic-nics or libertarian meetings on Sundays. Saturday nights he went round to whorehouses with a fel ow named
Mil er whom he'd met at the Y. Mil er was studying to be a dentist. He got to be friends with a girl named Maisie Spencer who worked in the mil inery department at the Emporium. Sundays she used to try to get him to go to church. She was a quiet girl with big blue eyes that she turned up to him with an unbelieving smile when he talked revolution to her. She had tiny regular pearly teeth and dressed prettily. After a while she got so that she did not bother him so much about church. She liked to have him take her to hear the band play at the Presidio or to look at the statuary in Sutro Park. The morning of the earthquake Mac's first thought,
when he got over his own terrible scare, was for Maisie. The house where her folks lived on Mariposa Street was
-87-stil standing when he got there, but everyone had cleared out. It was not til the third day, three days of smoke and crashing timbers and dynamiting he spent working in a firefighting squad, that he found her in a provision line at the entrance to Golden Gate Park. The Spencers were living in a tent near the shattered greenhouses. She didn't recognise him because his hair and eye-brows were singed and his clothes were in tatters and he was soot from head to foot. He'd never kissed her be-fore, but he took her in his arms before everybody and kissed her. When he let her go her face was al sooty from his. Some of the people in the line laughed and clapped, but the old woman right behind, who had her hair done in a pompadour askew so that the rat showed through and who wore two padded pink silk dressing
gowns one above the other said spiteful y, "Now you'l have to go and wash your face." After that they considered themselves engaged, but
they couldn't get married, because Bonel o's printshop had been gutted with the rest of the block it stood in, and Mac was out of a job. Maisie used to let him kiss her and hug her in dark doorways when he took her home at
night, but further than that he gave up trying to go. In the fal he got a job on the Bulletin. That was night work and he hardly ever saw Maisie except Sundays, but they began to talk about getting married after Christmas. When he was away from her he felt somehow sore at
Maisie most of the time, but when he was with her he melted absolutely. He tried to get her to read pamphlets on socialism, but she laughed and looked up at him with her big intimate blue eyes and said it was too deep for her. She liked to go to the theater and eat in restaurants where the linen was starched and there were waiters in dress suits. About that time he went one night to hear Upton Sin-clair speak about the Chicago stockyards. Next to him was
-88-a young man in dungarees. He had a nose like a hawk and gray eyes and deep creases under his cheekbones and talked in a slow drawl. His name was Fred Hoff. After the lecture they went and had a beer together and talked. Fred Hoff belonged to the new revolutionary organiza-tion cal ed The Industrial Workers of the World. He read Mac the preamble over a second glass of beer.