U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [584]
"Say, Rudy, if Ada Cohn cal s up again tel her I'm out of the office. . . . I have too much to do to spend my time taking care of hysterical women a day like this." She put on her hat, col ected her papers, and hurried over to the meeting of the committee.
-558-VAG
The young man waits at the edge of the concrete,
with one hand he grips a rubbed suitcase of phony
leather, the other hand almost making a fist, thumb up that moves in ever so slight an arc when a car
slithers past, a truck roars clatters; the wind of cars passing ruffles his hair, slaps grit in his face.
Head swims, hunger has twisted the bel y tight,
he has skinned a heel through the torn sock, feet
ache in the broken shoes, under the threadbare suit care-ful y brushed off with the hand, the torn drawers have a crummy feel, the feel of having slept in your clothes; in the nostrils lingers the staleness of discouraged car-casses crowded into a transient camp, the carbolic stench of the jail, on the taut cheeks the shamed flush from the boring eyes of cops and deputies, railroadbul s (they eat three squares a day, they are buttoned into wel made clothes, they have wives to sleep with, kids to play with after supper, they work for the big men who buy their way, they stick their chests out with the sureness of power behind their backs). Git the hel out, scram. Know what's good for you, you'l make yourself scarce. Gittin' tough, eh? Think you kin take it, eh?
The punch in the jaw, the slam on the head with
the nightstick, the wrist grabbed and twisted behind the back, the big knee brought up sharp into the crotch, the walk out of town with sore feet to stand and wait at the edge of the hissing speeding string of cars where the reek of ether and lead and gas melts into the silent grassy smel of the earth.
Eyes black with want seek out the eyes of the
drivers, a hitch, a hundred miles down the road.
Overhead in the blue a plane drones. Eyes fol ow
-559-the silver Douglas that flashes once in the sun and bores its smooth way out of sight into the blue.
(The transcontinental passengers sit pretty, big
highlypaid jobs, who are saluted
men with bankaccounts, highlypaid jobs, who are saluted by doormen; telephonegirls say goodmorning to them. Last night after a fine dinner, drinks with friends, they left Newark. Roar of climbing motors slanting up into the inky haze. Lights drop away. An hour staring along a silvery wing at a big lonesome moon hurrying west through curdling scum. Beacons flash in a line across Ohio.
At Cleveland the plane drops banking in a smooth
spiral, the string of lights along the lake swings in a circle. Climbing roar of the motors again; slumped in the soft seat drowsing through the flat moonlight night. Chi. A glimpse of the dipper. Another spiral
swoop from cool into hot air thick with dust and the reek of burnt prairies. Beyond the Mississippi dawn creeps up behind
through the murk over the great plains. Puddles of
mist go white in the Iowa hil s, farms, fences, silos, steel glint from a river. The blinking eyes of the bea-cons reddening into day. Watercourses vein the eroded hil s. Omaha. Great cumulus clouds, from coppery
churning to creamy to silvery white, trail brown skirts of rain over the hot plains. Red and yel ow badlands,
tiny horned shapes of cattle.
Cheyenne. The cool high air smel s of sweetgrass.
The tightbaled clouds to westward burst and scat-ter in tatters over the strawcolored hil s. Indigo moun-tains jut rimrock. The plane breasts a huge crumbling cloudbank and toboggans over bumpy air across green and crimson slopes into the sunny dazzle of Salt Lake. The transcontinental passenger thinks contracts,
profits, vacationtrips, mighty continent between Atlantic
-560-and Pacific, power, wires humming dol ars, cities jammed, hil s empty, the indiantrail leading into the wagonroad, the macadamed pike, the concrete skyway; trains, planes: history the bil iondol ar speedup,