U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [195]
"I bet you don't remember when we lived in Oak
-75-Park, Dick. . . . Now Chicago's a fine town." "Sure I do . . . and you an' me going to kindergarden and Dad being there and everything."
"Hel 's bel s, I wanta smoke."
"Mother'l smel it on you."
"Don't give a damn if she does."
When they got home Aunt Beatrice met them at the
front door looking sore as a crab and told them to go down to the basement. Mother wanted to see them. The back stairs smelt of Sunday dinner and sage chickenstuffing. They hobbled down as slowly as possible, it must be about Henry's smoking. She was in the dark basement hal . By the light of the gasjet against the wal Dick couldn't make out who the man was. Mother came up to them and they could see that her eyes were red.
"Boys, it's your father," she said in a weak voice. The tears began running down her face. The man had a grey shapeless head and his hair was
cut very short, the lids of his eyes were red and lashless and his eyes were the same color as his face. Dick was scared. It was somebody he'd known when he was little; it couldn't be Dad.
"For God's sake, no more waterworks, Leona," the man said in a whining voice. As he stood staring into the boys'
faces his body wabbled a little as if he was weak in the knees. "They're good lookers both of them, Leona . . . I guess they don't think much of their poor old Dad." They al stood there without saying anything in the dark basement hal in the rich close smel of Sunday dinner from the kitchen. Dick felt he ought to talk but something had stuck in his throat. He found he was stuttering, "Ha-ha-hav-have you been sick?" The man turned to Mother. "You'd better tel them al about it when I'm gone . . . don't spare me . . . no-body's ever spared me. . . . Don't look at me as if I was a ghost, boys, I won't hurt you." A nervous tremor shook
-76-the lower part of his face. "Al my life I've always been the one has gotten hurt. . . . Wel , this is a long way from Oak Park . . . I just wanted to take a look at you, good-by. . . . I guess the likes of me had better go out the basement door . . . I'l meet: you at the bank at eleven sharp, Leona, and that'l be the last thing you'l ever have to do for me." The gasjet went red when the door opened and flooded the hal with reflected sunlight. Dick was shaking for fear the man was going to kiss him, but al he did was give them each a little trembly pat on the shoulder. His suit hung loose on him and he seemed to have trouble lifting his feet in their soft baggy shoes up the five stone steps to the street. Mother closed the door sharply.
"He's going to Cuba," she said. "That's the last time we'l see him. I hope God can forgive him for al this, your poor mother never can . . . at least he's out of that horrible place." "Where was he, Mom?" asked Henry in a business like voice. "Atlanta." Dick ran away and up to the top floor and into his own room in the attic and threw himself on the bed sobbing. They none of them went down to dinner although they were hungry and the stairs were rich with the smel of roast chicken. When Pearl was washing up Dick tiptoed into the kitchen and coaxed a big heaping plate of chicken and stuffing and sweetpotatoes out of her; she said to run along and eat it in the back yard because it was her day out and she had the dishes to do. He sat on a dusty step-ladder in the laundry eating. He could hardly get the chicken down on account of the funny stiffness in his throat. When he'd finished, Pearl made him help her wipe.
-77-That summer they got him a job as bel boy in a smal hotel at Bay Head that was run by a lady who was a
parishioner of Dr. Atwood's. Before he left Major and Mrs. Glen, who were Aunt Beatrice's star boarders, gave him a fivedol ar bil for pocket money and a copy of the
"Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" to read on the train. Dr. Atwood asked him to stay after the bibleclass his last Sunday and told him the parable of the talent, that Dick knew very wel already because Dr. Atwood preached on it as a text four times every year, and showed him a letter from the headmaster of Kent accepting him for the next year as a scholarship pupil and told him that he must work hard because God expected from each of us accord-ing to our abilities. Then he told him a few things a grow-ing boy ought to know and said he must avoid temptations and always serve God with a clean body and a clean mind, and keep himself pure for the lovely sweet girl he would some day marry, and that anything else led only to mad-ness and disease. Dick went away with his cheeks burning. It wasn't so bad at the Bayview, but the guests and help were al old people; about his own age there was only Skinny Murray the other bel hop, a tal sandyhaired boy who never had anything to say. He was a couple of years older than Dick. They slept on two cots in a smal airless room right up under the roof that would stil be so hot from the sun by bedtime they could hardly touch it. Through the thin partition they could hear the waitresses in the next room rustling about and giggling as they went to bed. Dick hated that sound and the smel of girls and cheap facepowder that drifted in through the cracks in the wal . The hottest nights he and Skinny would take the screen out of the window and crawl out along the gutter to a piece of flat roof there was over one of the upper porches. There the mosquitoes would torment them, but it was better than trying to sleep on their cots. Once the girls were looking out of the window and saw them