U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [46]
-111-In the gray of dawn Mac woke up from a doze with his teeth chattering. The train had stopped on a siding. His legs were so numb it was some time before he could stand on them. He went to look at the old man, but he couldn't tel whether he was dead or not. It got a little lighter and the east began to glow like the edge of a piece of iron in a forge. Mac jumped to the ground and walked back along the train to the caboose. The brakeman was drowsing beside his lantern. Mac
told him that an old tramp was dying in one of the flat-cars. The brakeman had a smal flask of whisky in his good coat that hung on a nail in the caboose. They walked together up the track again. When they got to the flatcar it was almost day. The old man had flopped over on his side. His face looked white and grave like the face of a statue of a Civil War general. Mac opened his coat and the filthy torn shirts and underclothes and put his hand on the old man's chest. It was cold and lifeless as a board. When he took his hand away there was sticky blood on it.
"Hemorrhage," said the brakeman, making a perfunc-tory clucking noise in his mouth. The brakeman said they'd have to get the body off the train. They laid him down flat in the ditch beside the bal-last with his hat over his face. Mac asked the brakeman if he had a spade so that they could bury him, so that the buzzards wouldn't get him, but he said no, the gandy-walkers would find him and bury him. He took Mac back to the caboose and gave him a drink and asked him al about how the old man had died.
Mac beat his way to San Francisco.
Maisie was cold and bitter at first, but after they'd talked a little while she said he looked thin and ragged as a bum and burst into tears and kissed him. They went to get her savings out of the bank and bought Mac a suit and went down to City Hal and got married without saying anything to her folks. They were both very happy going
-112-down on the train to San Diego, and they got a furnished room there with kitchen privileges and told the landlady they'd been married a year. They wired Maisie's folks that they were down there on their honeymoon and would be back soon.
Mac got work there at a job printer's and they started payments on a bungalow at Pacific Beach. The work wasn't bad and he was pretty happy in his quiet life with Maisie. After al , he'd had enough bumming for a while. When Maisie went to the hospital to have the baby, Mac had to beg a two months' advance of pay from Ed Balderston, his boss. Even at that they had to take out a second mort-gage on the bungalow to pay the doctor's bil . The baby was a girl and had blue eyes and they named her Rose. Life in San Diego was sunny and quiet. Mac went to
work mornings on the steamcar and came back evenings on the steamcar and Sundays he puttered round the house or sometimes sat on one of the beaches with Maisie and the kid. It was understood between them now that he had to do everything that Maise wanted because he'd given her such a tough time before they were married. The next year they had another kid and Maisie was sick and in hos-pital a long time after, so that now al that he could do with his pay each week was cover the interest on his debts, and he was always having to kid the grocerystore along and the milkman and the bakery to keep their charge-accounts going from week to week. Maisie read a lot of magazines and always wanted new things for the house, a pianola, or a new icebox, or a fireless cooker. Her brothers were making good money in the real estate business in Los Angeles and her folks were coming up in the world.
Whenever she got a letter from them she'd worry Mac about striking his boss for more pay or moving to a better job.
When there was anybody of the wobbly crowd in town
down on his uppers or when they were raising money