U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [147]
"Looks to me like it might be a tornado," and when he got on the train he half leaned out of the open window watching purple thunderheads building up in the northwest beyond the brightgreen wheat that
stretched clear to the clouds. He kinda hoped it would be a tornado because he'd never seen one, but when the lightning began cracking like a whip out of the clouds he felt a little scared, though being on the train with the conductor and the other passengers made it seem safer. It wasn't a tornado but it was a heavy thundershower and the wheatfields turned to zinc as great trampling hissing sheets of rain advanced slowly across them. Afterwards the sun came out and Charley opened the window and
everything smelt like spring and there were birds singing in al the birchwoods and in the dark firs round al the little shining lakes.
Jim was there to meet him at the Union Depot in a
Ford truck. They stopped at the freight station and Charley had to help load a lot of heavy packages of spare parts shipped from Detroit and marked "Vogel's Garage." Charley tried to look as if he'd lived in a big city al his life, but the clanging trol eycars and the roughshod hoofs of truckhorses striking sparks out of the cobbles and the goodlooking blond girls and the stores and the big Ger-man beersaloons and the hum that came from mil s and machineshops went to his head. Jim looked tal and thin in his overal s and had a new curt way of talking. "Kid,
-372-you see you mind yourself a little up to the house; the old man's an old German, Hedwig's old man, an' a little pernickety, like al old Germans are," said Jim when they'd fil ed the truck and were moving slowly through the heavy traffic. "Sure, Jim," said Charley and he began to feel a little uneasy about what it 'ud be like living in Minneapolis. He wished Jim 'ud smile a little more. Old man Vogel was a stocky redfaced man with untidy gray hair and a potbel y, fond of dumpling and stews with plenty of rich sauce on them and beer, and Jim's wife Hedwig was his only daughter. His wife was dead but he had a middleaged German woman everybody ad-dressed as Aunt Hartmann to keep house for him. She fol owed the men around al the time with a mop and between her and Hedwig, whose blue eyes had a peevish look because she was going to have a baby in the fal , the house was so spotless that you could have eaten a fried egg off the linoleum anywhere. They never let the win-dows be opened for fear of the dust coming in. The house was right on the street and the livery stable was in the yard behind, entered through an al ey beyond which was the old saddler's shop that had just been done over as a garage. When Jim and Charley drove up the signpainters were on a stepladder out front putting up the new shiny red and white sign that read " VOGEL'S GARAGE.""The old bastard," muttered Jim. "He said held cal it Vogel and Anderson's, but what the hel !" Everything smelt of stables and a colored man was leading a skinny horse around with a blanket over him.
Al that summer Charley washed cars and drained
transmissions and relined brakes. He was always dirty and greasy in greasy overal s, in the garage by seven every morning and not through til late in the evening when he was too tired to do anything but drop into the cot that had been fixed for him in the attic over the garage. Jim gave him a dol ar a week for pocket money and ex.
-373-plained that he was mighty generous to do it as it was to Charley's advantage to learn the business. Saturday nights he was the last one to get a bath and there usual y wasn't anything but lukewarm water left so that he'd have a hard time getting cleaned up. Old man Vogel was a
socialist and no churchgoer and spent al day Sunday drink-ing beer with his cronies. At Sunday dinner everybody talked German, and Jim and Charley sat at the table glumly without saying anything, but old Vogel plied them with beer and made jokes at which Hedwig and Aunt
Hartmann always laughed uproariously, and after dinner Charley's head would be swimming from the beer that tasted awful bitter to him, but he felt he had to drink it, and old man Vogel would tease him to smoke a cigar and then tel him to go out and see the town. He'd walk out feeling overfed and a little dizzy and take the streetcar to St. Paul to see the new state capitol or to Lake Har-riet or go out to Big Island Park and ride on the rol er-coaster or walk around the Parkway until his feet felt like they'd drop off. He didn't know any kids his own age at first, so he took to reading for company. He'd buy every number of Popular Mechanics and The Scientific Ameri- can and Adventure and The Wide World Magazine. He had it al planned to start building a yawlboat from the plans in The Scientific American and to take a trip down to the Mississippi River to the Gulf. He'd live by shooting ducks and fishing for catfish. He started sav-ing up his dol ars to buy himself a shotgun. He liked it al right at old man Vogel's, though, on account of not having to read the Bible or go to church, and he liked tinkering with motors and learned to drive the Ford truck. After a while he got to know Buck and Slim Jones, two brothers about his age who lived down the block. He was a pretty big guy to them on account of working in a garage. Buck sold newspapers and had a system of getting into movingpicture shows by the exit