U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [495]
-354-They came out of the tunnel into a rainygrey morning and the roar and slambanging of trucks through Jersey City. Then the traffic gradual y thinned and they were going across the flat farmlands of New Jersey strawcolored and ruddy with winter. At Philadelphia Charley made Parker drive him to Broad Street. "I haven't got the pa-tience to drive, I'l take the afternoon train. Come to the Waldman Park when you get in." He hired a drawingroom in the parlorcar and went and lay down to try to sleep. The train clattered and roared so and the grey sky and the lavender fields and yel ow pas-tures and the twigs of the trees beginning to glow red and green and paleyel ow with a foretaste of spring made him feel so blue, so like howling like a dog, that he got fed up with being shut up in the damn drawingroom and went back to the clubcar to smoke a cigar.
He was slumped in the leather chair fumbling for the cigarclipper in his vest pocket when the portly man in the next chair looked up from a bluecovered sheaf of law-papers he was poring over. Charley looked into the black eyes and the smooth bluejowled face and at the bald head stil neatly plastered with a patch of black hair shaped like a bird's wing, without immediately recognizing it.
"Why, Charley ma boy, I reckon you must be in love." Charley straightened up and put out his hand. "Hel o, senator," he said, stammering a little like he used to in the old days.
"Goin' to the nation's capital?""Such is my unfortunate fate." Senator Planet's eyes went searching al over him. " Charley, I hear you had an accident."
"I've had a series of them," said Charley, turning red. Senator Planst nodded his head understandingly and made a clucking noise with his tongue. "Too bad . . . too bad.
. . . Wel , sir, a good deal of water has run under the bridge since you and young Merritt had dinner with me that night in Washington. . . . Wel , we're none of us gettin' any younger." Charley got the feeling that the
-355-senator's black eyes got considerable pleasure from ex-ploring the flabby lines where his neck met his col ar and the bulge of his bel y against his vest. "Wel , we're none of us getting any younger," the senator repeated. "You are, senator. I swear you look younger than you did the last time I saw you."
The senator smiled. "Wel , I hope you'l forgive me for makin' the remark . . . but it's been one of the most sen-sational careers I have had the luck to witness in many years of public life."
"Wel , it's a new industry. Things happen fast."
"Unparal eled," said the senator. "We live in an age of unparal eled progress . . . everywhere except in Washington. . . . You should come down to our quiet little vil age more often. . . . You have many friends there. I see by the papers, as Mr. Dooley used to say, that there's been considerable reorganization out with you folks in Detroit. Need a broader capital base, I suppose."
"A good many have been thrown out on their broad capital bases," said Charley. He thought the senator would never quit laughing. The senator pul ed out a large ini-tialed silk handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes and brought his smal pudgy hand down on Charley's knee.
"God almighty, we ought to have a drink on that." The senator ordered whiterock from the porter and mys-teriously wafted a couple of slugs of good rye whiskey into it from a bottle he had in his Gladstone bag. Charley began to feel better. The senator was saying that some very interesting developments were to be expected from the development of airroutes. The need for subsidies was pretty general y admitted if this great nation was to catch up on its lag in air transportation. The question would be of course which of a number of competing concerns en-joyed the confidence of the Administration. There was more in this airroute business than there ever had been in supplying ships and equipment. "A question of the con--356-fidence of