U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [37]
freighter. He was sick of the bum grub and hard life on the sea. He stil had his pay in his pocket and he was bound he wouldn't blow it in on a bust. He'd heard that there was a miners' strike in Goldfield and he thought he'd go up there and see what he could do. He made Mac feel that he was leading a pretty stodgy life helping print lies against the working class. "Godalmighty, man, you're just the kind o' stuff we need out there. We're goin' to publish a paper in Goldfield, Nevada."
That night Mac went round to the local and fil ed out a card, and went home to his boarding house with his head swimming. I was just on the point of sel ing out to the sons of bitches, he said to himself.
The next Sunday he and Maisie had been planning to
go up the Scenic Railway to the top of Mount Tamalpais. Mac was terribly sleepy when his alarmclock got him out of bed. They had to start early because he had to be on the job again that night. As he walked to the ferrystation where he was going to meet her at nine the clank of the presses was stil in his head, and the sour smel of ink and paper bruised under the presses, and on top of that the smel of the hal of the house he'd been in with a couple of the fel ows, the smel of moldy rooms and sloppails and the smal of armpits and the dressingtable of the frizzyhaired girl he'd had on the clammy bed and the taste of the stale beer they'd drunk and the cooing me-chanical voice, "Goodnight, dearie, come round soon."
"God, I'm a swine," he said to himself.
-89-For once it was a clear morning, al the colors in the street shone like bits of glass. God, he was sick of whor-ing round. If Maisie would only be a sport, if Maisie was only a rebel you could talk to like you could to a friend. And how the hel was he going to tel her he was throw-ing up his job?
She was waiting for him at the ferry looking like a Gibson girl with her neat sal orblue dress and picture hat. They didn't have time to say anything as they had to run for the ferry. Once on the ferryboat she lifted up her face to be kissed. Her lips were cool and her gloved hand rested so lightly on his. At Sausalito they took the trol ey-car and changed and she kept smiling at him when they ran to get good places in the scenic car and they felt so alone in the roaring immensity of tawny mountain and blue sky and sea. They'd never been so happy together. She ran ahead of him al the way to the top. At the ob-servatory they were both breathless. They stood against a wal out of sight of the other people and she let him kiss her al over her face, al over her face and neck. Scraps of mist flew past cutting patches out of their view of the bay and the val eys and the shadowed moun-tains. When they went round to the seaward side an icy wind was shril ing through everything. A churning mass of fog was wel ing up from the sea like a tidal wave. She gripped his arm. "Oh, this scares me, Fainy!" Then sud-denly he told her that he'd given up his job. She looked up at him frightened and shivering in the cold wind and little and helpless; tears began to run down either side of her nose. "But I thought you loved me, Fenian . . . Do you think it's been easy for me waitin' for you al this time, wantin' you and lovin' you? Oh, I thought you loved me!"
He put his arm round her. He couldn't say anything. They started walking towards the gravity car.
-90-"I don't want al those people to see I've been crying. We were so happy before. Let's walk down to Muir
Woods.""It's pretty far, Maisie.""I don't care; I want to.""Gee, you're a good sport, Maisie." They started down the footpath and the mist blotted out everything. After a couple of hours they stopped to rest. They left the path and found a patch of grass in the middle of a big thicket of cistus. The mist was al around but it was bright overhead and they could feel the warmth of the sun
through it. "Ouch, I've got blisters," she said and made a funny face that made him laugh.
"It can't be so awful far now," he said; "honest, Maisie." He wanted to explain