U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [414]
In summer they would sometimes have had fun if it
hadn't been for always dreading that Fred would take a bit too much. Fred would get the rowboats out of the boat-house the first sunny day of spring and work like a demon calking and painting them a fresh green and whistle as he worked, or he would be up before day digging clams or catching shiners for bait with a castingnet, and there was money around and big pans of chowder Long Island style and New England style simmering on the back of the
stove, and Agnes was happy and singing and always in a bustle fixing shoredinners and sandwiches for fishermen, and Margie would go out sometimes with fishingparties, and Fred taught her to swim in the clear channel up under the railroad bridge and took her with him barefoot over the muddy flats clamming and after softshel crabs, and sportsmen with fancy vests who came down to rent a boat would often give her a quarter. When Fred was in a sober
-167-spel it was lovely in summer, the warm smel of the marshgrass, the freshness of the tide coming in through the inlet, the itch of saltwater and sunburn, but then as soon as he'd gotten a little money together Fred would get to drinking and Agnes's eyes would be red al the time and the business would go to pot. Margie hated the way Agnes's face got ugly and red when she cried, she'd tel herself that she'd never cry no matter what happened when she grew up.
Once in a while during the good times Fred would say he was going to give the family a treat and they'd get al dressed up and leave the place with old man Hines, Joe Hines's father, who had a wooden leg and big bushy white whiskers, and go over on the train to the beach and walk along the boardwalk to the amusementpark at Hol and's. It was too crowded and Margie would be scared of get-ting something on her pretty dress and there was such a glare and men and women with sunburned arms and legs and untidy hair lying out in the staring sun with sand over them, and Fred and Agnes would romp around in their bathingsuits like the others. Margie was scared of the big spuming surf crashing over her head, even when Fred held her in his arms she was scared and then it was terrible he'd swim so far out.
Afterwards they'd get back itchy into their clothes and walk along the boardwalk shril ing with peanutwagons and reeking with the smel of popcorn and saltwater taffy and hotdogs and mustard and beer al mixed up with the surf and the clanking roar of the rol ercoaster and the steamcal iope from the merrygoround and so many horrid people pushing and shoving, stepping on your toes. She was too little to see over them. It was better when Fred hoisted her on his shoulder though she was too old to ride on her father's shoulder in spite of being so smal for her age and kept pul ing at her prettv paleblue frock to keep it from getting above her knees.
-168-What she liked at the beach was playing the game where you rol ed a little bal over the clean narrow varnished boards into holes with numbers and there was a Jap there in a clean starched white coat and shelves and shelves of the cutest little things for prizes: teapots, little china men that nodded their heads, vases for flowers, rows and rows of the prettiest Japanese dol s with real eyelashes some of them, and jars and jugs and pitchers. One time Margie won a little teapot shaped like an elephant that she kept for years. Fred and Agnes didn't seem to think much of the little Jap who gave the prizes but Margie thought he was lovely, his face was so smooth and he had such a funny little voice and his lips and eyelids were so clearly marked just like the dol s' and he had long black eyelashes too. Margie used to think she'd like to have him to take to bed with her like a dol . She said that and Agnes and Fred laughed and laughed at her so that she felt awful ashamed. But what she liked best at Hol and's Beach was the
vaudevil e theater. They'd go in there and the crowds and laughs and racket would die away as the big padded doors closed behind them. There'd be a movingpicture going