U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [479]
What he enjoyed outside of playing with the kids was buying and sel ing stocks and talking to Nat over the long-distance. Nat kept tel ing him he was getting the feel of the market. Nat warned him and Charley knew damn wel that he was slipping at Tern and that if he didn't do some-thing he'd be frozen out, but he felt too rotten to go to directors'
meetings; what he did do was to sel out about half his stocks in smal parcels. Nat kept tel ing him if he'd only get a move on he could get control of the whole busi-ness before Andy Merritt pul ed off his new reorganiza-tion, but he felt too damn nervous and miserable to make the effort. Al he could seem to do was to grumble and cal Julius Stauch and raise hel about details. Stauch had taken over his work on the new monoplane and turned out a little ship that had gone through al tests with flying colors. When he'd put down the receiver, Charley would pour himself a little scotch and settle back on the couch in his window and mutter to himself, "Wel , you're dished this time." One evening Farrel came around and had a long talk and said what Charley needed was a fishing trip, he'd never get wel if he kept on this way. He said he'd been talking to Doc Thompson and that he recommended three
-318-months off and plenty of exercise if he ever expected to throw away his crutches. Gladys couldn't go because old Mrs. Wheatley was sick, so Charley got into the back of his Lincoln towncar alone with the chauffeur to drive him, and a lot of blankets to keep him warm, and a flask of whiskey and a thermosbottle of hot coffee, to go down al alone to Miami.
At Cincinnati he felt so bum he spent a whole day in bed in the hotel there. He got the chauffeur to get him booklets about Florida from a travel agency, and final y sent a wire to Nat Benton asking him to spend a week with him down at the Key Largo fishingcamp. Next morning he started off again early. He'd had a good night's sleep and he felt better and began to enjoy the trip. But he felt a damn fool sitting there being driven like an old woman al bundled up in rugs. He was lonely too because the chauffeur wasn't the kind of bird you could talk to. He was a sourlooking Canuck Gladys had hired because she thought it was classy to give her orders in French through the speakingtube; Charley was sure the bastard gypped him on the price of gas and oil and repairs along the road; that damn Lincoln was turning out a bottomless pit for gas and oil.
In Jacksonvil e the sun was shining. Charley gave him-self the satisfaction of firing the chauffeur as soon as they'd driven up to the door of the hotel. Then he went to bed with a pint of bum corn the bel boy sold him and slept like a log.
In the morning he woke up late feeling thirsty but
cheerful. After breakfast he checked out of the hotel and drove around the town a little. It made him feel good to pack his own bag and get into the front seat and drive his own car.
The town had a cheerful rattletrap look in the sunlight under the big white clouds and the blue sky. At the lunch-room next to the busstation he stopped to have a drink.
-319-He felt so good that he got out of the car without his crutches and hobbled across the warm pavement. The wind was fluttering the leaves of the magazines and the pink and palegreen sheets of the papers outside the lunchroom window. Charley was out of breath from the effort when he slid onto a stool at the counter. "Give me a limeade and no sweetnin' in it, please," he said to the ratfaced boy at the fountain. The sodajerker didn't pay any attention, he was looking down the other way. Charley felt his face get red. His first idea was, I'l get him fired. Then he looked where the