U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [401]
While they were washing their hands in the lavatory Merritt asked Charley what he was taking along for
clothes. Charley laughed and said he probably had a clean shirt and a toothbrush somewhere. Merritt turned a square serious face to him: "But we might have to go out. . .
. I've engaged a smal suite for us at the Waldman Park. You know in Washington those things count a great deal."
"Wel , if the worst comes to the worst I can rent me a soup an' fish." As the porter was putting Merritt's big pigskin suitcase and his hatbox into the rumbleseat of the car, Merritt asked with a worried frown if Charley thought it would be too much weight. "Hel , no, we could carry a dozen like that," said Charley, putting his foot on the starter. They drove fast through the empty streets and out across the bridge and along the wide avenues bordered by low gimcrack houses out towards Jamaica. Bil Cermak had the ship out of the hangar and al tuned up.
Charley put his hand on the back of Bil 's greasy leather jerkin. "Always on the dot, Bil ," he said. "Meet Mr. Merritt. . . . Say, Andy . . . Bil 's comin' with us, if you don't mind . . . he can rebuild this motor out of old hairpins and chewin'gum if anythin' goes wrong." Bil was already hoisting Merritt's suitcase into the tail. Merritt was putting on a big leather coat and goggles like Charley had seen in the windows of Abercrombie and
Fitch. "Do you think it wil be bumpy?" Merritt was ask-ing again. Charley gave him a boost. "May be a little bumpy over Pennsylvania . . . but we ought to be there in time for a good lunch. . . . Wel , gents, this is the first
-210-time I've ever been in the Nation's Capital." "Me neither,'
said Bil . "Bil ain't never been outside of Brooklyn," said Charley, laughing. He felt good as he climbed up to the controls. He put on his goggles and yel ed back at Merritt, "You're in the observer's seat, Andy."
The Askew-Merritt starter worked like a dream. The
motor sounded smooth and quiet as a sewingmachine.
"What do you think of that, Bil ?" Charley kept yel ing at the mechanic behind him. She taxied smoothly across the soft field in the early spring sunshine, bounced a couple of times, took the air and banked as he turned out across the slatecolored squares of Brooklyn. The light northwest wind made a mil ion furrows on the opaque green bay. Then they were crossing the gutted factory districts of Bayonne and Elizabeth. Beyond the russet saltmeadows, Jersey stretched in great flat squares, some yel ow, some red, some of them misted with the green of new crops. There were ranks of big white cumulus clouds catching the sunlight beyond the Delaware. It got to be a little bumpy and Charley rose to seven thousand feet where it was cold and clear with a fiftymile wind blowing from the northwest. When he came down again it was noon and the Susquehanna shone bright blue in a rift in the clouds. Even at two thousand feet he could feel the warm steam of spring from the plowed land. Flying low over the farms he could see the white fluff of orchards in bloom. He got too far south, avoiding a heavy squal over the head of the Chesapeake, and had to fol ow the Potomac north up to-wards the glinting white dome of the Capitol and the shin-ing sliver of the Washington Monument. There was no smoke over Washington. He circled around for a half an hour before he found the flyingfield. There was so much green it al looked like flyingfield.
"Wel , Andy," said Charley when they were stretching
-211-their legs on the turf, "when those experts see that starter their eyes'l pop out of their heads."
Merritt's face looked pale and he tottered a little as he walked. "Can't hear," he shouted.
"I got to take a leak." Charley fol owed him to the hangar, leaving Bil to go over the motor. Merritt was phoning for a taxi. "Christ amighty, am I hungry?" roared Charley. Merritt winced.
"I got to get a drink to settle my stomach first." When they got into the taxi with their feet on Mer-ritt's enormous pigskin suitcase, "I'l tel you one thing, Charley," Merritt said,
"we've got to have a separate cor-poration for that starter . . . might need a separate productionplant and everything. Standard Airparts would list wel ." They had two rooms and a large parlor with pink easy-chairs in it at the huge new hotel. From the windows you could look down into the fresh green of Rock Creek Park. Merritt looked around with considerable satisfaction. "I like to get into a place on Sunday," he said. "It gives you a chance to get settled before beginning work." He added that he didn't think there'd be anybody in the diningroom he knew, not on a Sunday, but as it turned out it took them quite a while to get to their table. Charley was introduced on the way to a senator, a corporation lawyer, the youngest member of the House of Representatives and a nephew of the Secretary of the Navy. "You see," explained Merritt,