U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [5]
"If those damn lousy furreners hadn't a walked out," somebody would answer soothingly. The strike was not popular on Orchard Street. It meant that Mom had to work harder and harder, doing bigger and bigger boilersful of wash, and that Fainy and his older sister Mil y had to help when they came home
from school. And then one day Mom got sick and had to
-9-go back to bed instead of starting in on the ironing, and lay with her round white creased face whiter than the pil-low and her watercreased hands in a knot under her chin. The doctor came and the district nurse, and al three rooms of the flat smelt of doctors and nurses and drugs, and the only place Fainy and Mil y could find to sit was on the stairs. There they sat and cried quietly together. Then Mom's face on the pil ow shrank into a little creased white thing like a rumpled up handkerchief and they said that she was dead and took her away.
The funeral was from the undertaking parlors on River-side Avenue on the next block. Fainy felt very proud and important because everybody kissed him and patted his head and said he was behaving like a little man. He had a new black suit on, too, like a grownup suit with pockets and everything, except that it had short pants. There were al sorts of people at the undertaking parlors he had never been close to before, Mr. Russel , the butcher and Father O'Donnel and Uncle Tim O'Hara who'd come on from Chicago, and it smelt of whisky and beer like at Finley's. Uncle Tim was a skinny man with a knobbed red face and blurry blue eyes. He wore a loose black silk tie that wor-ried Fainy, and kept leaning down suddenly, bending from the waist as if he was going to close up like a jack-knife, and whispering in a thick voice in Fainy's ear.
"Don't you mind 'em, old sport, they're a bunch o'
bums and hypocrytes, stewed to the ears most of 'em already. Look at Father O'Donnel the fat swine already figurin' up the burial fees. But don't you mind 'em, re-member you're an O'Hara on your mother's side. I don't mind em, old sport, and she was my own sister by birth and blood."
When they got home he was terribly sleepy and his feet were cold and wet. Nobody paid any attention to him. He sat whimpering on the edge of the bed in the dark. In the front room there were voices and a sound of knives
-10-and forks, but he didn't dare go in there. He curled up against the wal and went to sleep. Light in his eyes woke him up. Uncle Tim and Pop were standing over him talk-ing loud. They looked funny and didn't seem to be stand-ing very steady. Uncle Tim held the lamp. Wel , Fainy, old sport, said Uncle Tim giving the
lamp a perilous wave over Fainy's head. Fenian O'Hara McCreary, sit up and take notice and tel us what you think of our proposed removal to the great and growing city of Chicago. Middletown's a terrible bitch of a dump if you ask me . . . Meanin' no offense, John . . . But Chicago . . . Jesus God, man, when you get there you'l think you've been dead and nailed up in a coffin al these years."
Fainy was scared. He drew his knees up to his chin and looked tremblingly at the two big swaying figures of men lit by the swaying lamp. He tried to speak but the words dried up on his lips.
The kid's asleep, Tim, for al your speechifyin' . . . Take your clothes off, Fainy, and get into bed and get a good night's sleep. We're leavin' in the mornin'." And late on a rainy morning, without any breakfast, with a big old swel top trunk tied up with rope joggling perilously on the roof of the cab that Fainy had been sent to order from Hodgeson's Livery Stable, they set out. Mil y was crying. Pop didn't say a word but sucked on an unlit pipe. Uncle Tim handled everything, making little jokes al the time that nobody laughed at, pul ing a rol of bil s out of his pocket at every juncture, or taking great gurgling sips out of the flask he had in his pocket. Mil y cried and cried. Fainy looked out with big dry eyes at the familiar streets, al suddenly odd and lopsided, that rol ed past the cab; the red bridge, the scabshingled