U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [110]
. . . Did a little tradin' in options up near Amaril o on my own, jus' for the hel of it, and I made five thousand bucks." "Why, you smart kid. I tel you, Bud, it's good to be home. But about that policeman you'd have done the same yourself or you're not my brother. I'l tel you al about it sometime. Believe me it does me good to see Texas faces after those mean weasel-faced Easterners." Dr. Winslow was in the hal when they came in. He shook hands warmly and told her how wel she was looking and not to worry because he'd pul her Dad through if it was the last thing he did on earth. The sickroom and Dad's restless flushed face made her feel awful, and she didn't like finding a trained nurse running the house.
After Dad began to get around a little they both went down to Port Arthur for a couple of weeks for a change to stay with an old friend of Dad's. Dad said he'd give her a car if she'd stay on, and that he'd get her out of this sil y mess she'd gotten into up north. She began to play a lot of tennis and golf again and to go out a good deal social y. Joe Washburn had married and was living in Oklahoma getting rich on oil. She felt easier in Dal as when he wasn't there; seeing him upset her so. The next fal Daughter went down to Austin to
-279-finish her journalism course, mostly because she thought her being there would keep Bud in the straight and nar-row. Friday afternoons they drove back home together in her Buick sedan for the weekend. Dad had bought a new Tudor style house way out and al her spare time was taken up picking out furniture and hanging curtains and arranging the rooms. She had a great many beaux always coming around to take her out and had to start keeping an engagement book. Especial y after the declaration of war social life became very hectic. She was going every minute and never got any sleep. Everybody was getting commis-sions or leaving for officers training camps. Daughter went in for Red Cross work and organized a canteen, but that wasn't enough and she kept applying to be sent abroad. Bud went down to San Antonio to learn to fly and Buster, who'd been in the militia, lied about his age and joined up as a private and was sent to Jefferson Barracks. At the can-teen she lived in a whirl and had one or two proposals of marriage a week, but she always told them that she hadn't any intention of being a war bride.
Then one morning a War Department telegram came.
Dad was in Austin on business so she opened it. Bud had crashed, kil ed. First thing Daughter thought was how hard it would hit Dad. The phone rang; it was a long distance cal from San Antonio, sounded like Joe Wash-burn's voice. "Is that you, Joe?" she said weakly. "Daugh-ter, I want to speak to your father," came his grave drawl.
"I know . . . O Joe."
"It was his first solo flight. He was a great boy. Nobody seems to know how it happened. Must have been defect in structure. I'l cal Austin. I know where to get hold of him.
. . . I've got the number . . . see you soon, Daughter." Joe rang off. Daughter went into her room and burrowed face down into the bed that hadn't been made up. For a minute she tried to imagine that she hadn't gotten up yet, that she dreamed the phone ringing and Joe's voice. Then
-280-she thought of Bud so sharply it was as if he'd come into the room, the way he laughed, the hard pressure of his long thin hand over her hands when he'd suddenly grabbed the wheel when they'd skidded going around a corner into San Antonio the last time she'd driven him down after a leave, the clean anxious lean look of his face above the tight khaki col ar of the uniform. Then she heard Joe's voice again: Must have been some defect in structure.
She went down and jumped into her car. At the fil ing-station where she fil ed up with gas and oil the garageman asked her how the boys liked it in the army. She couldn't stop to tel him about it now. "Bul y, they like it fine," she said, with a grin that hurt her like a slap in the face. She wired Dad at his lawpartner's office that she was com-ing and pul ed out of town for Austin. The roads were in bad shape, it made her feel better to feel the car plough through the muddy ruts and the water spraying out in a wave on either side when she went through a puddle at fifty.