U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [185]
Up in Rockport they unloaded their coal and anchored out in the harbor waiting to be towed to another wharf to load granite blocks for the trip back. One night when Gaskin and his boy had gone ashore and Joe was on watch the second engineer of the tug, a thinfaced guy named Hart came under the stern in a skiff and whispered to Joe did he want some c --t. Joe was stretched out on the house smoking a pipe and thinking about Del a. The hil s and the harbor and the rocky shore were fading into a warm pink twilight. Hart had a nervous stuttering man-ner. Joe held off at first but after a while he said,
"Bring
'em along.""Got any cards?" said Hart. "Yare I got a pack." Joe went below to clean up the cabin. He'd just kid 'em along, he was thinking. He'd oughtn't to have a rough time with girls and al that now that he was going to marry Del a. He heard the sound of the oars and went out on deck. A fogbank was coming in from the sea. There was Hart and his two girls under the stern. They tripped and giggled and fel hard against him when he helped 'em over the side. They'd brought some liquor and a couple of
-50-pounds of hamburger and some crackers. They weren't much for looks but they were pretty good sorts with big firm arms and shoulders and they sure could drink liquor. Joe'd never seen girls like that before. They were sports al right. They had four quarts of liquor between 'em and drank it in tumblers.
The other two barges were sounding their claxons every two minutes, but Joe forgot al about his. The fog was white like canvas nailed across the cabin ports. They played strip poker but they didn't get very far with it. Him and Hart changed girls three times that night. The girls were cookoo, they never seemed to have enough, but round twelve the girls were darned decent, they cooked up the hamburger and served up a lunch and ate al old man Gaskin's bread and butter.
Then Hart passed out and the girls began to get worried about getting home on account of the fog and everything. Al of 'em laughing like loons they hauled Hart up on deck and poured a bucket of water on him. That Maine water was so cold that he came to like sixty sore as a pup and wanting to fight Joe. The girls quieted him down and got him into the boat and they went off into the fog singing Tipperary.
Joe was reeling himself. He stuck his head in a bucket of water and cleaned up the cabin and threw the bottles overboard and started working on the claxon regularly. To hel with
'em, he kept saying to himself, he wouldn't be a plaster saint for anybody. He was feeling fine, he wished he had something more to do than spin that damn claxon. Old man Gaskin came on board about day. Joe could see he'd gotten wind of something because after that he never would speak to him except to give orders and wouldn't let his boy speak to him; so that when they'd unloaded the granite blocks in East New York, Joe asked for his pay and said he was through. Old man Gaskin growled out it
-51-was a good riddance and that he wouldn't have no boozin'
and whorin' on his barge. So there was Joe with fortyfive dol ars in his pocket walking through Red Hook looking for a boarding house.
After he'd been a couple of days reading want ads and going around Brooklyn looking for a job he got sick. He went to a sawbones an oldtimer at the boarding house told him about. The doe who was a little kike with a goatee told him it was the gonawria and he'd have to come every afternoon for treatment. He said he'd guarantee to cure him up for fifty dol ars, half payable in advance, and that he'd advise him to have a bloodtest taken to see if he had syphilis too and that would cost him fifteen dol ars. Joe paid down the twentyfive but said he'd think about the test. He had a treatment and went out onto the street. The doc had told him to be sure to walk as little as possible, but he couldn't seem to go home to the stinking boardinghouse and wandered aimlessly round the clattering Brooklyn streets. It was a hot afternoon. The sweat was pouring off him as he walked. If you catch it right the first day or two it ain't so bad, he kept saying to himself. He came out on a bridge under the elevated; must be Brooklyn Bridge. It was cooler walking across the bridge. Through the spiderwebbing of cables, the shipping and the pack of tal buildings were black against the sparkle of the harbor. Joe sat down on a bench at the first pier and stretched his legs out in front of him. Here he'd gone to work and caught a dose. He felt terrible and how was he going to write Del now; and his board to pay, and a job to get and these damn treatments to take. Jesus, he felt lousy. A kid came by with an evening paper. He bought a