U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [36]
He put his arm round her. He couldn't say anything. They started walking towards the gravity car.
-90-"I don't want al those people to see I've been crying. We were so happy before. Let's walk down to Muir
Woods.""It's pretty far, Maisie.""I don't care; I want to.""Gee, you're a good sport, Maisie." They started down the footpath and the mist blotted out everything. After a couple of hours they stopped to rest. They left the path and found a patch of grass in the middle of a big thicket of cistus. The mist was al around but it was bright overhead and they could feel the warmth of the sun
through it. "Ouch, I've got blisters," she said and made a funny face that made him laugh.
"It can't be so awful far now," he said; "honest, Maisie." He wanted to explain to her about the strike and the wobblies and why he was going to Goldfield, but he couldn't. Al he could do was kiss her. Her mouth clung to his lips and her arms were tight round his neck.
"Honest, it won't make any difference about our gettin'
married; honest, it won't . . . Maisie, I'm crazy about you . . . Maisie, do let me You must let me . . .
Honest, you don't know how terrible it is for me, lovin'
you like this and you never lettin' me."
He got up and smoothed down her dress. She lay there with her eyes closed and her face white; he was afraid she had fainted. He kneeled down and kissed her gently on the cheek. She smiled ever so little and pul ed his head down and ruffled his hair. "Little husband," she said. After a while they got to their feet and walked through the redwood grove, without seeing it, to the trol eystation. Going home on the ferry they decided they'd get married inside of the week. Mac promised not to go to Nevada. Next morning he got up feeling depressed. He was
sel ing out. When he was shaving in the bathroom he looked at himself in the mirror and said, half aloud: "You bastard, you're sel ing out to the sons of bitches." He went back to his room and wrote Maisie a letter.
-91-DEAR MAISIE:
Honestly you mustn't think for one minute I don't
love you ever so much, but I promised to go to Goldfield to help the gang run that paper and I've got to do it. I'l send you my address as soon as I get there and if you real y need me on account of anything, I'l come right back, honestly I wil .
A whole lot of kisses and love
FAINY
He went down to the Bulletin office and drew his pay, packed his bag and went down to the station to see when he could get a train for Goldfield, Nevada.
THE CAMERA EYE (9)
al day the fertilizerfactories smelt something awful and at night the cabin was ful of mosquitoes fit to carry you away but it was Crisfield on the Eastern Shore and if we had a gasoline boat to carry them across the bay here we could ship our tomatoes and corn and early peaches ship
'em clear to New York instead of being jipped by the commissionmerchants in Baltimore we'd run a truck farm ship early vegetables irrigate fertilize enrich the tobacco exhausted land of the Northern Neck if we had a gasoline boat we'd run oysters in her in winter raise terrapin for the market
but up on the freight siding I got talking to a young guy couldn't have been much older 'n me was asleep in
-92-one of the boxcars asleep right there in the sun and the smel of cornstalks and the reek of rotting menhaden from the fertilizer factories he had curly hair and wisps of hay in it and through his open shirt you could see his body was burned brown to the waist I guess he wasn't much account but he'd bummed al way from Minnesota he was going south and when I told him about Chesa-peake Bay he wasn't surprised but said I guess it's too fur to swim it I'l git a job in a menhaden boat
BIG BILL
Big Bil Haywood was born in sixty nine in a
boardinghouse in Salt Lake City.
He was raised in Utah, got his schooling in Ophir
a mining camp with shooting scrapes, faro Saturday
nights, whisky spil ed on pokertables piled with new silver dol ars.
When he was eleven his mother bound him out
to a farmer, he ran away because the farmer lashed
him with a whip. That was his first strike.