U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [231]
-166-and what a smart guy he was and how she wanted him to get a good shore job and make a lot of money so that she wouldn't have to work any more and how Captain Barnes whose folks were worth a mil ion had wanted her to get a divorce from Joe and marry him and Mr. Can-field in the Dupont office who made a cool 50,000 a year had wanted to give her a pearl necklace but she hadn't taken it because she didn't think it was right. Talk like that made Joe feel pretty rotten. Sometimes he'd start to talk about what they'd do if they had some kids, but Del ud always make a funny face and tel him not to talk like that.
Joe went around looking for work and almost landed
the job of foreman in one of the repairshops over at the shipyard in Newport News, but at the last minute another berry horned in ahead of him and got it. A couple of times he went out on parties with Del and Hilda Thomp-son, and some army officers and a midshipman off a de-stroyer, but they al high-hatted him and Del let any boy who wanted to kiss her and would disappear into a phone booth with anything she could pick up so long as it had a uniform on and he had a hel of a time. He found a poolroom where some boys he knew hung out and
where he could get corn liquor and started tanking up a good deal. It made Del awful sore to come home and
find him drunk but he didn't care any more.
Then one night when Joe had been to a fight with some guys and had gotten an edge on afterward, he met Del and another damn shavetail walking on the street. It was pretty dark and there weren't many people around and they stopped in every dark doorway and the shavetail was kissing and hugging her. When he got them under a street light so's he made sure it was Del he went up to them and asked them what the hel they meant. Del must have had some drinks because she started tittering in a shril little voice that drove him crazy and he hauled off and let
-167-the shavetail have a perfect left right on the button. The spurs tinkled and the shavetail went to sleep right flat on the little grass patch under the streetlight. It began to hit Joe kinder funny but Del was sore as the devil and said she'd have him arrested for insult to the uniform and assault and battery and that he was nothing but a yel ow snivel ing slacker and what was he doing hanging around home when al the boys were at the front fighting the huns. Joe sobered up and pul ed the guy up to his feet and told them both they could go straight to hel . He walked off before the shavetail, who musta been pretty tight, had time to do anything but splutter, and went straight home and packed his suitcase and pul ed out. Wil Stirp was in town so Joe went over to his house and got him up out of bed and said he'd busted up house-keeping and would Wil lend him twentyfive bucks to go up to New York with. Wil said it was a damn good thing and that love 'em and leave 'em was the only
thing for guys like them. They talked til about day about one thing and another. Then Joe went to sleep and slept til late afternoon. He got up in time to catch the Wash-ington boat. He didn't take a room but roamed around on deck al night. He got to cracking with one of the offi-cers and went and sat in the pilot house that smelt com-fortably of old last year's pipes. Listening to the sludge of water from the bow and watching the wabbly white finger of the searchlight pick up buoys and lighthouses he began to pul himself together. He said he was going up to New York to see his sister and try for a second mate's ticket with the Shipping Board. His stories about being torpedoed went big because none of them on the Dominion City had even been across the pond. It felt like old times standing in the bow in the sharp November morning, sniffing the old brackish smel of the Potomac water, passing redbrick Alexandria and Anacostia and the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, seeing the MonuU00AD
-168-ment stick up pink through the mist in the early light. The wharves looked about the same, the yachts and power boats anchored opposite, the Baltimore boat just coming in, the ramshackle excursion steamers, the oystershel s underfoot on the wharf, the nigger roustabouts standing around. Then he was hopping the Georgetown car and too soon he was walking up the redbrick street. While he rang the bel he was wondering why he'd come home.