U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [46]
" Maisie's a fine girl, too, and I like her better al the time," said Mac, feeling a warm tearing wave of affection go over him, like sometimes a Saturday evening when he'd helped her bathe the kids and put them to bed and the room was stil steamy from their baths and his eyes
-116-suddenly met Maisie's eyes and there was nowhere they had to go and they were just both of them there together. The man from up San Jacinto way began to sing: O my wife has gone to the country,
Hooray, hooray.
I love my wife, but oh you kid,
My wife's gone away.
"But God damn it to hel ," said Mac, "a man's got to work for more than himself and his kids to feel right."
"I agree with you absholootely, pard; every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.""Oh, hel ," said Mac, "I wish I was on the bum again or up at Gold-field with the bunch." They drank and drank and ate free lunch and drank
some more, al the time rye with beer chasers, and the man from up San Jacinto way had a telephone number
and cal ed up some girls and they bought a bottle of whisky and went out to their apartment, and the rancher from up San Jacinto way sat with a girl on each knee sing-ing My wife has gone to the country. Mac just sat belch-ing in a corner with his head dangling over his chest; then suddenly he felt bitterly angry and got to his feet upset-ting a table with a glass vase on it.
" McCreary," he said, "this is no place for a class-conscious rebel . . . I'm a wobbly, damn you . . . I'm goin' out and get in this free-speech fight."
The other McCreary went on singing and paid no atten-tion. Mac went out and slammed the door. One of the girls fol owed him out jabbering about the broken vase, but he pushed her in the face and went out into the quiet street. It was moonlight. He'd lost the last steamcar and would have to walk home.
When he got to the house he found Maisie sitting on the porch in her kimono. She was crying. "And I had such a nice supper for you," she kept saying, and her eyes
-117-looked into him cold and bitter the way they'd been when he'd gotten back from Goldfield before they were mar-ried. The next day he had a hammering headache and his
stomach was upset. He figured up he'd spent fifteen dol-lars that he couldn't afford to waste. Maisie wouldn't speak to him. He stayed on in bed, rol ing round, feeling miserable, wishing he could go to sleep and stay asleep forever. That Sunday evening Maisie's brother Bil came to supper. As soon as he got into the house Maisie started talking to Mac as if nothing had happened. It made him sore to feel that this was just in order to keep Bil from knowing they had quarrel ed.
Bil was a powerful ybuilt towhaired man with a red neck, just beginning to go to fat. He sat at the table, eat-ing the potroast and cornbread Maisie had made, talking big about the real estate boom up in Los Angeles. He'd been a locomotive engineer and had been hurt in a wreck and had had the lucky breaks with a couple of options on lots he'd bought with his compensation money. He tried to argue Mac into giving up his job in San Diego and coming in with him. "I'l get you in on the ground floor, just for Maisie's sake," he said over and over again. "And in ten years you'l be a rich man, like I'm goin' to be in less time than that . . . Now's the time, Maisie, for you folks to make a break, while you're young, or it'l be too late and Mac'l just be a workingman al his life." Maisie's eyes shone. She brought out a chocolate layer cake and a bottle of sweet wine. Her cheeks flushed and she kept laughing showing al her little pearly teeth. She hadn't looked so pretty since she'd had her first baby. Bil 's talk about money made her drunk.
"Suppose a fel er didn't want to get rich . . . you know what Gene Debs said, 'I want to rise with the
ranks, not from the ranks,' " said Mac.
Maisie and Bil laughed. "When a guy talks like that
-118-he's ripe for the nuthouse, take it from me," said Bil . Mac flushed and said nothing. Bil pushed back his chair and cleared his throat in a serious tone: "Look here, Mac . . . I'm goin' to be around this town for a few days lookin' over the situa-tion, but looks to me like things was pretty dead. Now what I propose is this . . . You know what I think of Maisie . . . I think she's about the sweetest little girl in the world. I wish my wife had half what Maisie's got . . . Wel , anyway, here's my proposition: Out on Ocean View Avenue I've got several magnificent missionstyle bunga-lows I haven't disposed of yet, twentyfivefoot frontage on a refined residential street by a hundredfoot depth. Why, I've gotten as high as five grand in cold cash for 'em. In a year of two none of us fel ers'l be able to stick our noses in there. It'l be mil ionaires' row . . . Now if you're wil ing to have the house in Maisie's name I'l tel you what I'l do . . . I'l swop properties with you, pay-ing al the expenses of searching title and transfer and balance up the mortgages, that I'l hold so's to keep 'em in the family, so that you won't have to make substantial y bigger payments than you do here, and wil be launched on the road to success."