U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [573]
"That was his last nickel."
-534-Goldfarb came back saying that the col ection hadn't been so good. Sixtynine dol ars and some pledges. "Christ-mas time coming on. . . you know. Everybody's always broke at Christmas." "Henderson made a lousy speech," grumbled Don. "He's more of a socialfascist every day." Mary sat there feeling the tiredness in every bone of her body waiting until Don got ready to go home. She was too sleepy to fol ow what they were talking about but every now and then the words centralcommittee, expulsions, oppositionists, splitters rasped in her ears. Then Don was tapping her on the shoulder and she was waking up and walking beside him through the dark streets.
"It's funny, Don," she was saying, "I always go to sleep when you talk about party discipline. I guess it's because I don't want to hear about it.""No use being sentimental about it," said Don savagely. "But is it sentimental to be more interested in saving the miners' unions?" she said, suddenly feeling wide awake again. "Of course that's what we al believe but we have to fol ow the party line. A lot of those boys. . . Goldfarb's one of them. . . Ben
Compton's another. . . think this is a debatingsociety. If they're not very careful indeed they'l find themselves out on their ear. . . . You just watch." Once they'd staggered up the five flights to their dingy little apartment where Mary had always planned to put up curtains but had never had time, Don suddenly caved in with fatigue and threw himself on the couch and fel asleep without taking off his clothes. Mary tried to rouse him but gave it up. She unlaced his shoes for him and threw a blanket over him and got into bed herself and tried to sleep.
She was staring wide awake, she was counting old pairs of trousers, torn suits of wool y underwear, old armyshirts with the sleeves cut off, socks with holes in them that didn't match. She was seeing the rickety children with puffy bel ies showing through their rags, the scrawny
-535-women with uncombed hair and hands distorted with work, the boys with their heads battered and bleeding from the clubs of the Coal and Iron Police, the photograph of a miner's body shot through with machinegun bul ets. She got up and took two or three swigs from a bottle of gin she kept in the medicinecloset in the bathroom. The gin burned her throat. Coughing she went back to bed and went off into a hot dreamless sleep. Towards morning Don woke her getting into the bed.
He kissed her. "Darling, I've set the alarm for seven.
. . . Be sure to get me up. I've got a very important com-mitteemeeting. . . . Be sure and do it." He went off to sleep again right away like a child. She lay beside his big-boned lanky body, listening to his regular breathing, feel-ing happy and safe there in the bed with him. Eddy Spel man got through with his truck again and
distributed his stuff to several striking locals U.M.W. in the Pittsburgh district, although he had a narrow squeak when the deputies tried to ambush him near Greensburg. They'd have nabbed him if a guy he knew who was a
bootlegger hadn't tipped him off. The same bootlegger helped him out when he skidded into a snowdrift on the hil going down into Johnstown on the way back. He was laughing about it as he helped Mary pack up the new ship-ment. "He wanted to give me some liquor. . . . He's a good fel er, do you know it, Miss Mary?. . . Tough kinder. . . that racket hardens a fel er up. . . but a prince when you know him. . . .'Hel , no, Ed,' his
name's Eddy too, I says to him when he tries to slip me a pint, 'I ain't goin' to take a drink until after the revolu-tion and then I'l be ridin' so high I won't need to.'" Mary laughed. "I guess we al ought to do that, Eddy.
. . . But I feel so tired and discouraged at night some-times." "Sure," said Eddy, turning serious. "It gits you down thinkin' how they got al the guns an' al the money an' we ain't got nothin'."
-536-"One thing you're going to have, Comrade Spel man, is a pair of warm gloves and a good overcoat before