U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [265]
"I am ready," was the simple announcement of the czar, while the czarina, clinging to him, loosed her hold long enough to make the sign of the cross, an example fol owed by the grandducbess Olga and by Dr. Botkin.
The czarevitch, paralyzed with fear, stood in stupefac-tion beside his mother, uttering no sound either in supplication
-255-or protest, while his three sisters and the other grandduchesses sank to the floor trembling.
Yarodsky drew his revolver and fired the first shot. A vol ey fol owed and the prisoners reeled to the ground. Where the bul ets failed to find their mark the bayonet put the finishing touches. The mingled blood of the victims not only cov-ered the floor of the room where the execution took place but ran in streams along the hal way
DAUGHTER
The Trents lived in a house on Pleasant avenue that was the finest street in Dal as that was the biggest and fastest growing town in Texas that was the biggest state in the Union and had the blackest soil and the whitest people and America was the greatest country in the world and Daugh-ter was Dad's onlyest sweetest little girl. Her real name was Anne Elizabeth Trent after poor dear mother who had died when she was a little tiny girl but Dad and the boys cal ed her Daughter. Buddy's real name was Wil iam Delaney Trent like Dad who was a prominent attorney, and Buster's real name was Spencer Anderson Trent.
Winters they went to school and summers they ran wild on the ranch that grandfather had taken up as a pioneer. When they'd been very little there hadn't been any fences yet and stil a few maverick steers out along the creekbot-toms, but by the time Daughter was in highschool every-thing was fenced and they were building a macadam road out from Dal as and Dad went everywhere in the Ford in-stead of on his fine Arab stal ion Mul ah he'd been given by a stockman at the Fat Stock Show in Waco when the stockman had gone broke and hadn't been able to pay his lawyer's fee. Daughter had a creamcolored pony named Coffee who'd nod his head and paw with his hoof when he wanted a lump of sugar, but some of the girls she knew
-256-had cars and Daughter and the boys kept after Dad to buy a car, a real car instead of that miserable old flivver he drove around the ranch.
When Dad bought a Pierce Arrow touring car the spring Daughter graduated from highschool, she was the happiest girl in the world. Sitting at the wheel in a fluffy white dress the morning of Commencement outside the house waiting for Dad, who had just come out from the office and was changing his clothes, she had thought how much she'd like to be able to see herself sitting there in the not too hot June morning in the lustrous black shiny car among the shiny brass and nickel fixtures under the shiny paleblue big Texas sky in the middle of the big flat rich Texas country that ran for two hundred miles in every direction. She could see half her face in the little oval mirror on the mud-guard. It looked red and sunburned under her sandybrown hair. If she only had red hair and a skin white like butter-milk like Susan Gil espie had, she was wishing when she saw Joe Washburn coming along the street dark and seri-ouslooking under his panama hat. She fixed her face in a shy kind of smile just in time to have him say, "How lovely you look, Daughter, you must excuse ma sayin' so."
"I'm just waiting for Dad and the boys to go to the exer-cises. O Joe, we're late and I'm so excited. . . . I feel like a sight."
"Wel , have a good time." He walked on unhurriedly putting his hat back on his head as he went. Something hotter than the June sunshine had come out of Joe's very dark eyes and run in a blush over her face and down the back of her neck under her thin dress and down the middle of her bosom, where the little breasts that she tried never to think of were just beginning to be noticeable. At last Dad and the boys came out al looking blonde and dressed up and sunburned. Dad made her sit in the back seat with Bud who sat up stiff as a poker.
The big wind that had come up drove grit in their faces.
-257-After she caught sight of the brick buildings of the high-school and the crowd and the light dresses and the stands and the big flag with the stripes al wiggling against the sky she got so excited she never remembered anything that happened.