U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [468]
At noon Farrel came by to take Charley out to lunch.
"Did old Bledsoe give you an earful?" he asked. Charley nodded. "Wel , don't let him get under your skin. His bark is worse than his bite. He wouldn't be in the outfit if he wasn't the best plantmanager in the country." It was at the Country Club dance that Farrel and his wife, who was a thin oldish blonde haggard and peevish under a festoon of diamonds, took him out to, that Char-ley met old Bledsoe's daughter Anne. She was a square-shouldered girl in pink with a large pleasantlysmiling mouth and a firm handshake. Charley cottoned to her first thing. They danced to Just a Girl That Men Forget and she talked about how crazy she was about flying and had five hours toward her pilot's license. Charley said he'd take her up any time if she wasn't too proud to fly a Curtiss-Robin. She said he'd better not make a promise if he didn't intend to keep it because she always did what she said she'd do. Then she talked about golf and he didn't let on that he'd never had a golfclub in his hand in his life. At supper when he came back from getting a couple of plates of chickensalad he found her sitting at a round table under a Japanese lantern with a pale young guy, who turned out to be her brother Harry, and a girl with beau-tiful ashenblond hair and a touch of Alabama' in her talk whose name was Gladys Wheatley. She seemed to be en-gaged or something to Harry Bledsoe who had a silver flask and kept pouring gin into the fruitpunch and held
-294-her hand and cal ed her Glad. They were al younger than Charley, but they made quite a fuss over him and kept saying what a godawful town Detroit was. When Charley got a little gin inside of him he started tel ing war yarns for the first time in his life. He drove Anne home and old Bledsoe came out with
a copy of the Engineering Journal in his hand and said,
"So you've got acquainted, have you?""Oh, yes, we're old friends, Dad," she said.
"Charley's going to teach me to fly.""Humph," said Bledsoe and closed the door in Charley's face with a growling: "You go home and worry about that motor." Al that summer everybody thought that Charley and
Anne were engaged. He'd get away from the plant for an hour or two on quiet afternoons and take a ship up at the flyingfield to give her a chance to pile up flying hours and on Sundays they'd play golf. Charley would get up early Sunday mornings to take a lesson with the golf pro out at the Sunnyside Club where he didn't know anybody. Sat-urday nights they'd often have dinner at the Bledsoes'
house and go out to the Country Club to dance. Gladys Wheatley and Harry were usual y along and they were known as a foursome by al the younger crowd. Old Bled-soe seemed pleased that Charley had taken up with his youngsters and began to treat him as a member of the family. Charley was happy, he enjoyed his work; after the years in New York being in Detroit was like being home. He and Nat made some kil ings in the market. As vicepresident and consulting engineer of the Tern Com-pany he was making
$25,000 a year. Old Bledsoe grumbled that it was too damn much
money for a young engineer, but it pleased him that Charley spent most of it on a smal experimental shop where he and Bil Cermak were building a new motor on their own. Bil Cermak had moved his family out from Long Island and was ful of hunches for mechanical im--295-provements. Charley was so busy he didn't have time to think of women or take anything but an occasional drink in a social way. He thought Anne was a peach and enjoyed her company but he never thought of her as a girl he might someday go to bed with.
Over the Labor Day