U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [151]
The man in the next cot, who was also recovering from diphtheria, was a lean grayhaired man named Michaelson. He'd been working in a hardware store that winter and was having a hard time. Up to a couple of years before held had a farm in Iowa in the cornbelt, but a series of bad crops had ruined him, the bank had foreclosed and taken the farm and offered to let him work it as a tenant but he'd said he'd be damned if he'd work as a tenant for any man and had pul ed up his stakes and come to the city, and here he was fifty years old with a wife and three smal children to support trying to start from the ground up again. He was a great admirer of Bob La
Fol ette and had a theory that the Wal Street bankers were conspiring to seize the government and run the country by pauperizing the farmer. He talked al day in a thin wheezy voice until the nurse made him shut up, about the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor
party and the destiny of the great northwest and the need for workingmen and farmers to stick together to elect honest men like Bob La Fol ette. Charley had joined a local of an A. F. of L. union that fal and Michaelson's talk, broken by spel s of wheezing and coughing, made him feel excited and curious about politics. He decided he'd read the papers more and keep up with what was going on in the world. What with this war and every-thing you couldn't tel what might happen. When Michaelson's wife and children came to see him he introduced them to Charley and said that being laid up next to a bright young fel ow like that made being sick
-382-a pleasure. It made Charley feel bad to see how miserably pale and il fed they looked and what poor clothes they had on in this zero weather. He left the hospital before Michaelson did and the last thing Michaelson said when Charley leaned over him to shake his dry bony hand was
"Boy, you read Henry George, do you hear . . . ? He knows what's the trouble with this country; damme if he don't."
Charley was so, glad to be walking on his pins down the snowy street in the dryicecold wind and to get the smel of iodoform and sick people out of his head that he forgot al about it.
First thing he did was to go to Svenson's. Emiscah
asked him where Ed Walters was. He said he hadn't been home and didn't know. She looked worried when he said that and he wondered about it. "Don't Zona know?" asked Charley. "No, Zona's got a new fel eri that's al she thinks about." Then she smiled and patted his hand and babied him a little bit and they sat on the sofa and she brought out some fudge she'd made and they held hands and
gave each other sticky kisses and Charley felt happy. When Anna came in she said how thin he looked and
that they'd have to feed him up, and he stayed to supper. Mr. Svenson said to come and eat supper with them every night for a while until he was on his feet again. After supper they al played hearts in the front parlor and had a fine time.
When Charley got back to his lodging house he met
the landlady in the hal . She said his friend had left with-out paying the rent and that he'd pay up right here and now or else she wouldn't let him go up to his room. He argued with her and said he'd just come out of the hos-pital and she final y said she'd let him stay another week. She was a big softlooking woman with puckered cheeks and a yel ow chintz apron ful of little pockets. When Charley got up to the hal bedroom where he'd slept al
-383-winter with Ed, it was miserably cold and lonely. He got into the bed between the icy sheets and lay shivering, feeling weak and kiddish and almost ready to cry, won-dering why the hel Ed had gone off without leaving him word and why Emiscah had looked so funny when he
said he didn't know where Ed was.
Next day he went to the shop and got his old job back, though he was so weak he wasn't much good. The fore-man was pretty decent about it and told him to go easy for a few days, but he wouldn't pay him for the time he was sick because he wasn't an old employee and hadn't gotten a certificate from the company doctor. That eve-ning he went to the bowlingal ey where Ed used to work. The barkeep upstairs said Ed had beaten it to Chi on account of some flimflam about raffling off a watch. "Good riddance, if you ask me," he said. "That bozo has al the makin's of a bad egg.