U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [58]
The best day of her life was the sweltering summer
Sunday they al went canoeing up to Great Fal s. She had put up the lunch the night before. In the morning she added a steak she found in the icebox. There was blue haze at the end of every street of brick houses and dark summergreen trees when before anybody else was awake she and Joe crept out of the house round seven that morn-ing. They met Alec at the corner in front of the depot. He
-139-stood waiting for them with his feet wide apart and a skil et in his hand. They al ran and caught the car that was just leaving for Cabin John's Bridge. They had the car al to them-selves like it was a private car. The car hummed over the rails past whitewashed shanties and nigger cabins along the canal, skirting hil sides where the sixfoot tal waving corn marched in ranks like soldiers. The sunlight glanced in bluewhite glare on the wavingdrooping leaves of the tassling corn; glare, and a whirring and tinkling of grass-hoppers and dryflies rose in hot smoke into the pale sky round the clattering shaking electric car. They ate sweet summerapples Joe had bought off a colored woman in
the station and chased each other round the car and flopped down on top of each other in the cornerseats; and they laughed and giggled til they were weak. Then the car was running through woods; they could see the trestle-work of the rol ercoasters of Glen Echo through the trees and they piled off the car at Cabin John's having more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
They ran down to the bridge to look up and down the river brown and dark in the white glary morning between foliagesodden banks; then they found the canoe that be-longed to a friend of Alec's in a house by the canal, bought some cream soda and rootbeer and some packages of
neccos and started out. Alec and Joe paddled and Janey sat in the bottom with her sweater rol ed round a thwart for a pil ow. Alec was paddling in the bow. It was swelter-ing hot. The sweat made the shirt cling to the hol ow of his chunky back that curved with every stroke of the paddle. After a while the boys stripped to their bathing-suits that they wore under their clothes. It made Janey's throat tremble to watch Alec's back and the bulging muscles of his arm as he paddled, made her feel happy and scared. She sat there in her white dimity dress, trail-ing her hand in the weedy browngreen water. They
-140-stopped to pick waterlilies and the white flowers of arrow-head that glistened like ice and everything smelt wet rank of the muddy roots of waterlilies. The cream soda got warm and they drank it that way and kidded each other back and forth and Alec caught a crab and covered Janey's dress with greenslimy splashes and Janey didn't care a bit and they cal ed Joe skipper and he loosened up and said he was going to join the navy and Alec said he'd be a civil engineer and build a motorboat and take them al cruising and Janey was happy because they included her when they talked just like she was a boy too. At a place below the Fal s where there were locks in the canal they had a long portage down to the river. Janey carried the grub and the paddles and the frying pan and the boys sweated and cussed under the canoe. Then they paddled across to the Virginia side and made a fire in a little hol ow among gray rusty bowlders. Joe cooked the steak and Janey unpacked the sandwiches and cookies she'd made and nursed some murphies baking in the ashes. They
roasted ears of corn too that they had swiped out of a field beside the canal. Everything turned out fine except that they hadn't brought enough butter. Afterwards they sat eating cookies and drinking rootbeer quietly