U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [499]
broke and blue and purple in the trough. They fol owed the long streaks of mustardcolored weed but they didn't see any sailfish. Cassidy caught a dolphin and Charley lost one. The boat pitched so that Charley had to keep working on the juleps to keep his stomach straight.
Most of the morning they cruised back and forth in
front of the mouth of the Miami River. Beyond the steep dark waves they could see the stil sunny brown water of the bay and against the horizon the new buildings spar-kling white among a red web of girder construction.
"Buildin', that's what I like to see," said Homer Cassidy, waving a veined hand that had a big old gold sealring on it towards the city. "And it's just beginnin'. . . . Why, boy, I kin remember when Miamah was the jumpin' off place, a little col ection of brokendown shacks between the railroad and the river, and I tel you the mosquitoes were fierce. There were a few crackers down here growin' early
-363-tomatoes and layin' abed half the time with chil s and fever . . . and now look at it . . . an' up in New York they try to tel you the boom ain't sound." Charley nodded without speaking. He was having a tussle with a fish on his line. His face was getting red and his hand was cramped from reeling. "Nothin' but a smal bonito," said Cassidy. ". . . The way they try to tel you the fishin'
ain't any good . . . that's al propaganda for the West Coast. . . . Boy, I must admit that I saw it comin' years ago when I was workin' with old Flagler. There was a man with vision.
. . . I went down with him on the first train that went over the overseas extension into Key West I was one of the attorneys for the road at the time. Schoolchildren threw roses under his feet al the way from his private car to the carriage. . . . We had nearly a thousand men carried away in hurricanes before the line was completed . . . and now the new Miamah . . . an'
Miamah Beach, what do you think of Miamah Beach?
It's Flagler's dream come true."
"Wel , what I'd like to do," Charley began and stopped to take a big swig of the new julep the colored boy had just handed him. He was beginning to feel wonderful now that the little touch of seasickness had gone. Cassidy's fish-ing guide had taken Charley's rod up forward to put a new hook on it, so Charley was sitting there in the stern of the motorboat feeling the sun eat into his back and little flecks of salt spray drying on his face with nothing to do but sip the julep, with nothing to worry about. " Cassidy, this sure is the life .
. . why can't a guy do what he wants to with his life? I was just goin' to say what I want to do is get out of this whole racket . . . investments, al that crap.
. . . I'd like to get out with a smal pile and get a house and settle down to monkeyin'
around with motors and de-signin' planes and stuff like that. . . . I always thought if I could pul out with enough jack I'd like to build me a windtunnel al my own . . . you know that's what they
-364-test out model planes in.""Of course," said Cassidy, "it's aviation that's goin' to make Miami. . . . Think of it, eighteen, fourteen, ten hours from New York. . . . I don't need to tel you. . . . and you and me and the Senator . . . we're right in among the foundin'
fathers with that airport. . . . Wel , boy, I've waited al ma life to make a real kil in'. Al ma life I been servin' others
. . . on the bench, railroad lawyer, al that sort of thing.
. . . Seems to me about time to make a pile of ma own."
"Suppose they pick some other place, then we'l be holdin' the bag. After al it's happened before," said Charley.
"Boy, they can't do it. You know yourself that that's the ideal location and then . . . I oughtn't to be tel in'
you this but you'l find it out soon anyway . . . wel , you know our Washington friend, wel , he's one of the for-wardestlooking men in this country. . . . That money I put up don't come out of Homer Cassidy's account