U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [396]
"How about givin' me a break? Haven't been in the house five hours and there you go pickin' on me just like when I was workin' back here. . . ."
Jim was losing control of himself, he was starting to shake. "Wel , you know what you can do about that," he said, cutting his words off sharp. Charley felt like smash-ing him one in his damn narrow jaw. "If it wasn't for Ma, you wouldn't need to worry about that," he said quietly. Jim didn't answer for a minute. The wrinkles came out of his forehead. He shook his head and looked grave.
"You're right, Charley, you better stick around. If it gives her any pleasure . . ." Charley threw his cigar halfsmoked into the brass spit-toon and walked out the door before Jim could stop him. He went to the house and got his hat and coat and went for a long walk through the soggy snow of the grey after-noon. They were just finishing at the suppertable when Char-ley got back. His supper had been set out on a plate for him at his place. Nobody spoke but old man Vogel. "Ve been tinking, dese airmen maybe dey live on air too," he said and laughed wheezily. Nobody else laughed. Jim got up and went out of the room. As soon as Charley had swal-lowed his supper he said he was sleepy and went up to bed. Charley stayed on while November dragged on towards Thanksgiving and Christmas. His mother never seemed to be any better. Every afternoon he went over to see her for five or ten minutes. She was always cheerful. It made him
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snow, the watertanks, the little stations, the grainelevators, the redfaced trainmen with their earflaps and gauntlets. Early in the morning going through the industrial district before Chicago she looked out at the men, young men old men with tin dinnerpails, faces ruddy and screwed up with the early cold, crowding the platforms waiting to go to work. She looked in their faces careful y, studying their faces; they were people she expected to get to know, be-cause she was going to stay in Chicago instead of going back to col ege.
THE CAMERA EYE (45)
the narrow yel ow room teems with talk under the
low ceiling and crinkling tendrils of cigarettesmoke twine blue and fade round noses behind ears under the rims of women's hats in arch looks changing arrangements of lips the toss of a bang the wise I-know-it wrinkles round the eyes al scrubbed stroked clipped scraped with the help of lipstick rouge shavingcream razorblades into a certain pat-tern that implies this warmvoiced woman who moves back and forth
with a throaty laugh head tossed a little back distributing with teasing looks the parts in the fiveoclock drama every man his pigeonhole
the personality must be kept careful y adjusted over the face
to facilitate recognition she pins on each of us a badge
-125-today entails tomorrow
Thank you but why me? Inhibited? Indeed
goodby
the old brown hat flopped faithful on the chair beside the door successful y snatched outside the clinking cocktail voices fade
even in this elderly brick dwel inghouse made over
with green paint orange candles a little tinted calcimine into Greenwich Vil age the stairs go up and down
lead through a hal way ranked with bel s names evok-ing lives tangles unclassified into the rainy twoway street where cabs slither slush-ing footsteps plunk slant lights shimmer on the curve of a wet cheek a pair of freshcolored lips a weatherlined neck a gnarled grimed hand an old man's bloodshot eye
street twoway to the corner of the roaring avenue
where in the lilt of the rain and the din the four directions (the salty in al of us ocean the protoplasm throbbing through cel s growing dividing sprouting into the bil ion diverse not yet labeled not yet named
always they slip through the fingers
the changeable the multitudinous