U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [65]
-155-sliding by and said, "But, Alice, he's smart as a whip. . . . Gosh, I like brainy people, don't you?" Alice looked at her and shook her head sadly and said nothing. That same afternoon they went to the Georgetown
hospital to see Popper. It was pretty horrible. Mommer and Janey and the doctor and the wardnurse knew that he had cancer of the bladder and couldn't live very long but they didn't admit it even to themselves. They had just moved him into a private room where he would be more comfortable. It was costing lots of money and they'd had to put a second mortgage on the house. They'd al-ready spent al Janey's savings that she had in a bankaccount of her own against a rainy day. That afternoon they had to wait quite a while. When the nurse came out with a glass urinal under a towel Janey went in alone.
"Hel o, Popper," she said with a forced smile. The smel of disinfectant in the room sickened her. Through the open window came warm air of sunwilted trees, drowsy Sundayafternoon noises, the caw of a crow, a distant sound of traffic. Popper's face was drawn in and twisted to one side. His big moustaches looked pathetical y silky and white. Janey knew that she loved him better than any-body else in the world . . . His voice was feeble but fairly firm. " Janey, I'm in drydock, girl, and I guess I'l never . . . you know better'n I do, the sonsobitches won't tel me . . . Say, tel me about Joe. You hear from him, don't you? I wish he hadn't joined the navy; no future for a boy there without pul higher up; but I'm. glad he went to sea, takes after me . . . I'd been three times round the Horn in the old days before I was twenty. That was before I settled down in the towboat business, you understand . . . But I been thinkin' here lyin' in bed that Joe done just what I'd 'a' done, a chip of the old block, and I'm glad of it. I don't worry about him, but I wish you girls was married an' off my hands. I'd feel easier. I don't trust girls nowadays with these here
-156-monopoly. You boys are working for a bunch of thieves, but I know it ain't your fault. Here's lookin' at you." Before they knew it Larry and Joe were singing. The old man was talking about cotton spinning machinery and canecrushers and pouring out drinks from a rumbottle. They were pretty goddam drunk. They didn't know how they got aboard. Joe remembered the dark focastle and the sound of snoring from the bunks spinning around, then sleep hitting him like a sandbag and the sweet, sicky taste of rum in his mouth. A couple of days later Joe came down with a fever
and horrible pains in his joints. He was out of his head when they put him ashore at St. Thomas's. It was dengue and he was sick for two months before he had the strength even to write Del to tel her where he was. The hos-pital orderly told him he'd been out of his head five days and they'd given him up for a goner. The doctors had been sore as hel about it because this was post hospital; after al he was a white man and unconscious and they couldn't very wel feed him to the sharks.
It was July before Joe was wel enough to walk around the steep little coraldust streets of the town. He had to leave the hospital and would have been in a bad way if one of the cooks at the marine barracks hadn't looked out for him and found him a flop in an unused section of the building. It was hot and there was never a cloud in the sky and he got pretty sick of looking at the niggers and the bare hil s and