U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [156]
Jim had told him to go to see a friend of his who
worked in a Ford servicestation on Blue Island Avenue but is was so far that by the time he got there the guy had gone. The boss was there though and he told Charley that if he came round next morning he'd have a job for him. As he didn't have anywhere to go and didn't like to tel the boss he was flat he left his suitcase in the garage and walked around al night. Occasional y he got a few winks of sleep on a park bench, bat he'd wake up stiff and chil ed to the bone and would have to run around to warm up. The night seemed never to end and he didn't have a red to get a cup of coffee with in the morning, and he was there walking up and down outside an hour be-fore anybody came to open up the servicestation in the morning.
-393-He worked at the Ford servicestation several weeks until one Sunday he met Monte Davis on North Clark
Street and went to a wobbly meeting with him in front of the Newberry Library. The cops broke up the meeting and Charley didn't walk away fast enough and before he knew what had happened to him he'd been halfstunned by a riotstick and shoved into the policewagon. He spent the night in a cel with two bearded men who were blind drunk and didn't seem to be able to talk English any-way. Next day he was questioned by a police magistrate and when he said he was a garage mechanic a dick cal ed up the servicestation to check up on him; the magistrate discharged him, but when he got to the garage the boss said he'd have no goddam I Won't Works in this outfit and paid him his wages and discharged him too.
He hocked his suitcase and his good suit and made a little bundle of some socks and a couple of shirts and went round to see Monte Davis to tel him he was going to hitchhike to St. Louis. Monte said there was a free-speech fight in Evansvil e and he guessed he'd come along to see what was doing. They went out on the train to Joliet. When they walked past the prison Monte said the sight of a prison always made him feel sick and gave him a kind of a foreboding. He got pretty blue and said he guessed the bosses'd get him soon, but that there'd be others. Monte Davis was a sal ow thinfaced youth from Muscatine, Iowa. He had a long crooked nose and stut-tered and didn't remember a time when he hadn't sold papers or worked in a buttonfactory. He thought of noth-ing but the I.W.W. and the revolution. He bawled Charley out for a scissorbil because he laughed about how fast the wobblies ran when the cops broke up the meeting, and told him he ought to be classconscious and take things serious.
At the citylimits of Joliet they hopped a truck that carried them to Peoria, where they separated because
-394-Charley found a truckdriver he'd known in Chicago who offered him a lift al the way to St. Louis. In St. Louis things didn't seem to be so good, and he got into a row with a hooker he picked up on Market Street who tried to rol him, so as a guy told him there were plenty jobs to be had in Louisvil e he began to beat his way East. By the time he got to New Albany it was hot as the hinges of hel ; he'd had poor luck on hitches and his feet were swol en and blistered. He stood a long time on the bridge looking down into the swift brown current of the Ohio, too tired to go any further. He hated the idea of tramp-ing round looking for a job. The river was the color of gingerbread; he started to think about the smel of ginger-cookies Lizzie Green used to make in his mother's kitchen and he thought he was a damn fool to be bumming round like this. He'd go home and plant himself among the weeds, that's what he'd do.
Just then a brokendown Ford truck came by running
on a flat tire. "Hey, you've got a flat," yel ed Charley. The driver put on the brakes with a bang. He was a big bul etheaded man in a red sweater. "What the hel is it to you?""Jez, I just thought you might not a noticed."
"Ah notice everythin', boy . . . ain't had nutten but trouble al day. Wanta lift?""Sure," said Charley. "Now, Ah can't park on de bridge nohow . . . Been same god-dam thing al day. Here Ah gits up early in de mornin'