U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [155]
Charley colored up. "Aw, I resigned.""Wel , come round with me to see the boss, " said the truckdriver. "And if it's al right by him it's al right by me." They left next morning before day. Charley felt bad about sneaking out on his landlady, but he left a note on the table saying he'd send her what he owed her as soon as he got a job. It was fine leaving the city and the mil s and grainelevators behind in the gray chil y early morn-ing light. The road fol owed the river and the bluffs and the truck roared along sloshing through puddles and muddy ruts. It was chil y although the sun was warm when it wasn't behind the clouds. He and Fred had to yel at each other to make their voices heard but they told stories and chewed the fat about one thing and an-other. They spent the night in LaCrosse. They just got into the hash joint in time to order ham-burger steaks before it closed, and Charley felt he was making a hit with the waitress who was from Omaha and whose name was Helen. She was about thirty and had a tired look under the eyes that made him think maybe she was kind of easy. He hung round until she closed up and took her out walking and they walked along the river and the wind was warm and smelt winey of sawmil s and there was a little moon behind fleecy clouds and they sat down in the new grass where it was dark behind stacks of fresh-cut lumber laid out to season. She let her head drop on his shoulder and cal ed him "baby boy." Fred was asleep in the truck rol ed up in a blanket on
-391-top of the sacking when he got back. Charley curled up in his overcoat on the other side of the truck. It was cold and the packingcases were uncomfortable to lie on but he was tired and his face felt windburned, and he soon fel asleep.
They were off before day.
The first thing Fred said was, "Wel , did you make her, kid?" Charley laughed and nodded. He felt good and thought to himself he was damn lucky to get away from the Twin Cities and Emiscah and that sonofabitchin'
foreman. The whole world was laid out in front of him like a map, and the Mack truck roaring down the middle of it and towns were waiting for him everywhere where he could pick up jobs and make good money and find
goodlooking girls waiting to cal him their baby boy. He didn't stay long in Milwaukee. They didn't need
any help in any of the garages so he got a job pearl-diving in a lunchroom. It was a miserable greasy job with long hours. To save money he didn't get a room but flopped in a truck in a garage where a friend of Jim's was working. He was planning to go over on the boat as soon as he got his first week's pay. One of the stiffs working in the lunchroom was a wobbly named Monte Davis. He
got everybody to walk out on account of a freespeech fight the wobblies were running in town, so Charley worked a whole week and had not a cent to show for it and hadn't eaten for a day and a half when Fred came back with another load on his Mack truck and set him up to a feed. They drank some beer afterwards and had a big argu-ment about strikes. Fred said al this wobbly agitation was damn foolishness and he thought the cops would be doing right if they jailed every last one of them. Charley said that working stiffs ought to stick together for decent liv-ing conditions and the time was coming when there'd be a big revolution like the American revolution only bigger and after that there wouldn't be any bosses and the work--392-ers would run industry. Fred said he talked like a damn foreigner and ought to be ashamed of himself and that a white man ought to believe in individual liberty and if he got a raw deal on one job he was goddam wel able to find another. They parted sore, but Fred was a good-hearted guy and lent Charley five bucks to go over to Chi with.
Next day he went over on the boat. There were stil some yel owish floes of rotting ice on the lake that was a very pale cold blue with a few whitecaps on it. Charley had never been out on a big body of water before and felt a little sick, but it was fine to see the chimneys and great blocks of buildings, pearly where the sun hit them, growing up out of the blur of factory smoke, and the breakwaters and the big oreboats plowing through the blue seas, and to walk down the wharf with everything new to him and to plunge into the crowd and the stream of automobiles and green and yel ow buses blocked up by the drawbridge on Michigan Avenue, and to walk along in the driving wind looking at the shiny storewindows and goodlooking girls and windblown dresses.