U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [48]
"So's my name McCreary, too," said Mac.
They shook hands heartily.
"By the living jumbo, that's a coincidence . . . We must be kin or pretty near it . . . Where you from, pard?"
you from, pard?"
"I'm from Chicago, but my folks was Irish."
"Mine was from the East, Delaware . . . but it's the good old Scotch-Irish stock." They had more drinks on that. Then they went to
another saloon where they sat in a corner at a table and talked. The big man talked about his ranch and his apricot crop and how his wife was bedridden since his last child had come. "I'm awful fond of the old gal, but what can a fel er do? Can't get gelded just to be true to your wife.""I like my wife swel ," said Mac, "and I've got swel kids. Rose is four and she's beginning to read already and Ed's about learnin' to walk. . . . But hel , before I was married I used to think I might amount to somethin'
in the world . . . I don't mean I thought I was anythin'
in particular . . . You know how it is.""Sure, pard, I used to feel that way when I was a young fel er."
" Maisie's a fine girl, too, and I like her better al the time," said Mac, feeling a warm tearing wave of affection go over him, like sometimes a Saturday evening when he'd helped her bathe the kids and put them to bed and the room was stil steamy from their baths and his eyes
-116-suddenly met Maisie's eyes and there was nowhere they had to go and they were just both of them there together. The man from up San Jacinto way began to sing: O my wife has gone to the country,
Hooray, hooray.
I love my wife, but oh you kid,
My wife's gone away.
"But God damn it to hel ," said Mac, "a man's got to work for more than himself and his kids to feel right."
"I agree with you absholootely, pard; every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.""Oh, hel ," said Mac, "I wish I was on the bum again or up at Gold-field with the bunch." They drank and drank and ate free lunch and drank
some more, al the time rye with beer chasers, and the man from up San Jacinto way had a telephone number
and cal ed up some girls and they bought a bottle of whisky and went out to their apartment, and the rancher from up San Jacinto way sat with a girl on each knee sing-ing My wife has gone to the country. Mac just sat belch-ing in a corner with his head dangling over his chest; then suddenly he felt bitterly angry and got to his feet upset-ting a table with a glass vase on it.
" McCreary," he said, "this is no place for a class-conscious rebel . . . I'm a wobbly, damn you . . . I'm goin' out and get in this free-speech fight."
The other McCreary went on singing and paid no atten-tion. Mac went out and slammed the door. One of the girls fol owed him out jabbering about the broken vase, but he pushed her in the face and went out into the quiet street. It was moonlight. He'd lost the last steamcar and would have to walk home.
When he got to the house he found Maisie sitting on the porch in her kimono. She was crying. "And I had such a nice supper for you," she kept saying, and her eyes
-117-looked into him cold and bitter the way they'd been when he'd gotten back from Goldfield before they were mar-ried. The next day he had a hammering headache and his
stomach was upset. He figured up he'd spent fifteen dol-lars that he couldn't afford to waste. Maisie wouldn't speak to him. He stayed on in bed, rol ing round, feeling miserable, wishing he could go to sleep and stay asleep forever. That Sunday evening Maisie's brother Bil came to supper. As soon as he got into the house Maisie started talking to Mac as if nothing had happened. It made him sore to feel that this was just in order to keep Bil from knowing they had quarrel ed.
Bil was a powerful ybuilt towhaired man with a red neck, just beginning to go to fat. He sat at the table, eat-ing the potroast and cornbread Maisie had made, talking big about the real estate boom up in Los Angeles. He'd been a locomotive engineer and had been hurt in a wreck and had had the lucky breaks with a couple of options on lots he'd bought with his compensation