U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [363]
-426-most of 'em wops, until he got to be friends with a young fel ow named Nick Gigli who worked with the gang at the gravelpit. Nick used to hang around the canteen before closingtime in the evening; then they'd go out and smoke a cigarette together and talk. Sunday's they'd walk out in the country with the Sunday paper and fool around al afternoon lying in the sun and talking about the articles in the magazine section. Nick was from north Italy and al the men in the gang were Sicilians, so he was lonely. His father and elder brothers were anarchists and he was too; he told Benny about Bakunin and Malatesta and said
Benny ought to be ashamed of himself for wanting to get to be a rich businessman; sure he ought to study and learn, maybe he ought to get to be a lawyer, but he ought to work for the revolution and the working class, to be a business man was to be a shark and a robber like that son of a bitch Vol e. He taught Benny to rol cigarettes and told him about al the girls that were in love with him; that girl in the boxoffice of the movie in Mauch Chunk; he could have her anytime he wanted, but a revolutionist ought to be careful about the girls he went with, women took a classconscious working man's mind off his aims, they were the main seduction of capitalist society. Ben asked him if he thought he ought to throw up his job with Vol e, be-cause Vol e was such a crook, but Nick said any other capi-talist would be the same, al they could do was wait for the Day. Nick was eighteen with bitter brown eyes and a skin almost as dark as a mulatto's. Ben thought he was great on account of al he'd done; he'd shined shoes, been a sailor, a miner, a dishwasher and had worked in textile mil s, shoefactories and a cement factory and had had al kinds of women and been in jail for three weeks in the Paterson strike. Round the camp if any of the wops saw Ben going anywhere alone he'd yel at him, "Hey, kid, where's Nick?"
On Friday evening there was an argument in front of
-427-the window where the construction boss was paying the men off. That night, when Ben was getting into his bunk in the back of the tarpaper shack the canteen was in, Nick came, around and whispered in his ear that the bosses had been gypping the men on time and that they were going on strike tomorrow. Ben said if they went out he'd go out too. Nick cal ed him a brave comrade in Italian and hauled off and kissed him on both cheeks. Next morning only a few of the pick and shovel men turned out when the whistle blew. Ben hung around the door of the colokshack not knowing what to do with himself. Vol e noticed him and told him to hitch up the team to go down to the station after a box of tobacco. Ben looked at his feet and said he couldn't be-cause he was on strike. Vol e burst out laughing and told him to quit his kidding, funniest thing he'd ever heard of a kike walking out with a lot of wops. Ben felt himself go cold and stiff al over: "I'm not a kike any more'n you are.
. . . I'm an American born. . . and I'm goin' to stick with my class, you dirty crook." Vol e turned white and stepped up and shook a big fist under Ben's nose and said he was fired and that if he wasn't a little f --g shrimp of a foureyed kike he'd knock his goddam block off, anyway his brother sure would give him a whaling when he heard about it. Ben went to his bunk and rol ed his things into a bundle and went off to find Nick. Nick was a little down the road where the bunkhouses were, in the center of a bunch of wops al yel ing and waving their arms. The superintend-ent and the gangbosses al turned out with revolvers in black holsters strapped around their waists and one of them made a speech in English and another one Sicilian saying that this was a squareshooting concern that had al-ways treated laborers square and if they didn't like it they could get the hel out. They'd never had a strike and didn't propose to begin now. There was big money involved in this job and the company wasn't going to work and see it
-428-tied up by any goddam