U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [412]
Blackbird bye bye
SKYSCRAPERS BLINK ON EMPTY
STREETS
it was a very languid, a very pink and white Peggy Joyce in a very pink and white boudoir who held out a smal white hand
MARGO DOWLING
When Margie got big enough she used to go across to the station to meet Fred with a lantern dark winter nights when he was expected to be getting home from the city on the nine fourteen. Margie was very little for her age, Agnes used to say, but her red broadcloth coat with the fleece col ar tickly round her ears was too smal for her al the same, and left her chapped wrists out nights when the sleety wind whipped round the corner of the station and the wire handle of the heavy lantern cut cold into her hand. Always she went with a chil creeping down her spine and in her hands and feet for fear Fred wouldn't be himself and would lurch and stumble the way he some-times did and be so red in the face and talk so awful. Mr. Bemis the stoopshouldered station agent used to kid about it with big Joe Hines the sectionhand who was often put--163-tering around in the station at traintime, and Margie would stand outside in order not to listen to them saying,
"Wel , here's bettin' Fred Dowlin' comes in stinkin' again tonight." It was when he was that way that he needed Margie and the lantern on account of the plankwalk over to the house being so narrow and slippery. When she was a very little girl she used to think that it was because he was so tired from the terrible hard work in the city that he walked so funny when he got off the train but by the time she was eight or nine Agnes had told her al about how getting drunk was something men did and that they hadn't ought to. So every night she felt the same awful feeling when she saw the lights of the train coming towards her across the long trestle from Ozone Park.
Sometimes he didn't come at al and she'd go back home crying; but the good times he would jump springily off the train, square in his big overcoat that smelt of pipes, and swoop down on her and pick her up lantern and al :
"How's Daddy's good little girl?" He would kiss her and she would feel so proudhappy riding along there and looking at mean old Mr. Bemis from up there, and Fred's voice deep in his big chest would go rumbling through his muffler, "Goodnight, chief," and the yel owlighted win-dows of the train would be moving and the red caterpil-lar's eyes in its tail would get little and draw together as the train went out of sight across the trestle towards Ham-mels. She would bounce up and down on his shoulder and feel the muscles of his arm hard like oars tighten against her when he'd run with her down the plankwalk shouting to Agnes, "Any supper left, girlie?" and Agnes would come to the door grinning and wiping her hands on her apron and the big pan of hot soup would be steaming on the stove, and it would be so cozywarm and neat in the kitchen, and they'd let Margie sit up til she was nodding and her eyes were sandy and there was the sandman com-ing in the door, listening to Fred tel about pocket bil iards
-164-and sweepstakes and racehorses and terrible fights in the city. Then Agnes would carry her into bed in the cold room and Fred would stand over her smoking his pipe and tel her about shipwrecks at Fire Island when he was in the Coast Guard, til the chinks of light coming in through the door from the kitchen got more and more blurred, and in spite of Margie's trying al the time to keep awake because she was so happy listening to Fred's burring voice, the sandman she'd tried to pretend had lost the train would come in behind Fred, and she'd drop off. As she got older and along in gradeschool at Rockaway Park it got to be less often like that. More and more Fred was drunk when he got off the train or else he didn't come at al . Then it was Agnes who would tel her stories about the old days and what fun it had been, and