U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [53]
Street to buy icecream, there'd be young men in their shirtsleeves and straw hats strol ing with girls who wore a stick of punk in their hair to keep off the mosquitoes, a rankness and a smel of cheap perfume from the colored families crowded on their doorsteps, laughing, talking softly with an occasional flash of teeth, rol ing of a white eyebal . The dense sweaty night was scary, hummed,
rumbled with distant thunder, with junebugs, with the clatter of traffic from M Street, the air of the street dense and breathless under the thick trees; but when she was with Alec and Joe she wasn't scared, not even of drunks or big shamblefooted coloredmen. When they got back Popper would smoke a cigar and they'd sit out in the back yard and the mosquitoes 'ud eat them up and Mommer
and Aunt Francine and the kids 'ud eat the icecream and Popper would just smoke a cigar and tel them stories of when he'd been a towboat captain down on the Chesapeake in his younger days and he'd saved the barkentine Nancy Q in distress on the Kettlebottoms in a sou'west gale. Then it'd get time to go to bed and Alec 'ud be sent home and Janey'd have to go to bed in the stuffy little back room on the top floor with her two little sisters in their cribs against the opposite wal . Maybe a thunderstorm
-136-would come up and she'd lie awake staring up at the ceil-ing cold with fright, listening to her little sisters whimper as they slept until she heard the reassuring sound of Mommer scurrying about the house closing windows, the slam of a door, the whine of wind and rattle of rain and the thunder rol ing terribly loud and near overhead like a thousand beertrucks roaring over the bridge. Times like that she thought of going down to Joe's room and crawl-ing into bed with him, but for some reason she was afraid to, though sometimes she got as far as the landing. He'd laugh at her and cal her a softie. About once a week Joe would get spanked. Popper
would come home from the Patent Office where he
worked, angry and out of sorts, and the girls would be scared of him and go about the house quiet as mice; but Joe seemed to like to provoke him, he'd run whistling through the back hal or clatter up and down stairs making a tremendous racket with his stubtoed ironplated shoes. Then Popper would start scolding him and Joe would
stand in front of him without saying a word glaring at the floor with bitter blue eyes. Janey's insides knotted up and froze when Popper would start up the stairs to the bathroom pushing Joe in front of him. She knew what would happen. He'd take down the razorstrop from be-hind the door and put the boy's head and shoulders under his arm and beat him. Joe would clench his teeth and flush and not say a word and when Popper was tired of beating him they'd look at each other and Joe would be sent up to his room and Popper would come down stairs trembling al over and pretend nothing had happened, and Janey would slip out into the yard with her fists clenched whis-pering to herself, "I hate him . . . I hate him . . . I hate him."
Once a drizzly Saturday night she stood against the fence in the dark looking up at the lighted window. She could hear Popper's voice and Joe's in an argument. She
-137-thought maybe she'd fal down dead at the first thwack of the razorstrop. She couldn't hear what they were say-ing. Then suddenly it came, the leather sound of blows and Joe stifling a gasp. She was eleven years old. Some-thing broke loose. She rushed into the kitchen with her hair al wet from the rain, " Mommer, he's kil ing Joe. Stop it." Her mother turned up a withered helpless drooping face from a pan she was scouring. "Oh, you can't do anything." Janey ran upstairs and started beating on the bathroom door.
"Stop it, stop it," her voice kept yel -ing. She was scared but something stronger than she was had hold of her. The door opened; there was Joe looking sheepish and Popper with his face al flushed and the razorstrop in his hand.
"Beat me . . . it's me that's bad . . . I won't have you beating Joe like that." She was scared. She didn't know what to do, tears stung in her eyes.