U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [57]
worked, angry and out of sorts, and the girls would be scared of him and go about the house quiet as mice; but Joe seemed to like to provoke him, he'd run whistling through the back hal or clatter up and down stairs making a tremendous racket with his stubtoed ironplated shoes. Then Popper would start scolding him and Joe would
stand in front of him without saying a word glaring at the floor with bitter blue eyes. Janey's insides knotted up and froze when Popper would start up the stairs to the bathroom pushing Joe in front of him. She knew what would happen. He'd take down the razorstrop from be-hind the door and put the boy's head and shoulders under his arm and beat him. Joe would clench his teeth and flush and not say a word and when Popper was tired of beating him they'd look at each other and Joe would be sent up to his room and Popper would come down stairs trembling al over and pretend nothing had happened, and Janey would slip out into the yard with her fists clenched whis-pering to herself, "I hate him . . . I hate him . . . I hate him."
Once a drizzly Saturday night she stood against the fence in the dark looking up at the lighted window. She could hear Popper's voice and Joe's in an argument. She
-137-thought maybe she'd fal down dead at the first thwack of the razorstrop. She couldn't hear what they were say-ing. Then suddenly it came, the leather sound of blows and Joe stifling a gasp. She was eleven years old. Some-thing broke loose. She rushed into the kitchen with her hair al wet from the rain, " Mommer, he's kil ing Joe. Stop it." Her mother turned up a withered helpless drooping face from a pan she was scouring. "Oh, you can't do anything." Janey ran upstairs and started beating on the bathroom door.
"Stop it, stop it," her voice kept yel -ing. She was scared but something stronger than she was had hold of her. The door opened; there was Joe looking sheepish and Popper with his face al flushed and the razorstrop in his hand.
"Beat me . . . it's me that's bad . . . I won't have you beating Joe like that." She was scared. She didn't know what to do, tears stung in her eyes.
Popper's voice was unexpectedly kind:
"You go straight up to bed without any supper and remember that you have enough to do to fight your own battles, Janey." She ran up to her room and lay on the bed shaking. When she'd gone to sleep Joe's voice woke her up with a start.
He was standing in his nightgown in the door. "Say, Janey," he whispered. "Don't you do that again, see. I can take care of myself, see. A girl can't butt in between men like that. When I get a job and make enough dough I'l get me a gun and if Popper tries to beat me up I'l shoot him dead." Janey began to sniffle. "What you wanna cry for; this ain't no Johnstown flood." She could hear him tiptoe down the stairs again in his bare feet. At highschool she took the commercial course and
learned stenography and typewriting. She was a plain thinfaced sandyhaired girl, quiet and popular with the teachers. Her fingers were quick and she picked up typing
-138-and shorthand easily. She liked to read and used to get books like The Inside of the Cup, The Battle of the Strong, The Winning of Barbara Worth out of the li-brary. Her mother kept tel ing her that she'd spoil her eyes if she read so much. When she read she used to imagine she was the heroine, that the weak brother who went to the bad but was a gentleman at core and capable of every sacrifice, like Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities was Joe and that the hero was Alec.
She thought Alec was the bestlooking boy in George-town and the strongest. He had black closecropped hair and a very white skin with a few freckles and a strong squareshouldered way of walking. After him Joe was the bestlooking and strongest and the best basebal player anyway. Everybody said he ought to go on through high-school on account of being such a good basebal player, but at the end of his first year Popper said he had three girls to support and that Joe would have to get to work; so he got a job as a Western Union messenger.