U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [57]
"Come in," she cal ed. "I'm just fixin' my hair." She first saw his face in the mirror. It was very white and the skin was drawn back tight over the cheekbones and round the mouth.
"Why, what's the matter, Joe?" She jumped up and faced him.
"It's like this, Janey," said Joe, drawling his words out painful y. "Alec was kil ed. He smashed up on his motor-bike. I just come from the hospital. He's dead, al right." Janey seemed to be writing the words on a white pad in her mind. She couldn't say anything.
"He smashed up comin' home from Chevy Chase . . . He'd gone out to the bal game to see me pitch. You
oughter seen him al smashed to hel ."
-145-Janey kept trying to say something.
"He was your best . . ."
"He was the best guy I'l ever know," Joe went on gently. "Wel , that's that, Janey . . . But I wanted to tel you I don't want to hang round this lousy dump now that Alec's gone. I'm goin' to enlist in the navy. You tel the folks, see . . . I don't wanna talk to 'em. That's it; I'l join the navy and see the world."
"But, Joe . . ."
"I'l write you, Janey; honest, I wil . . . I'l write you a hel of a lot. You an' me . . . Wel , goodby, Janey." He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her awkwardly on the nose and cheek. Al she could do was whisper. "Do be careful, Joe," and stand there in front of the bureau in the gust of lilacs and the yel ing of the kids that came through the open window. She heard Joe's steps light quick down the stairs and heard the frontdoor shut. She turned out the light, took off her clothes in the dark, and got into bed. She lay there without crying. Graduation came and commencement and she and Alice
went out to parties and even once with a big crowd on one of the moonlight trips down the river to Indian Head on the steamboat Charles McAlister. The crowd was rougher than Janey and Alice liked. Some of the boys were drink-ing a good deal and there were couples kissing and hug-ging in every shadow; stil the moonlight was beautiful rippling on the river and she and Janey put two chairs together and talked. There was a band and dancing, but they didn't dance on account of the rough men who stood round the dancefloor making remarks. They talked and on the way home up the river, Janey, talking very low and standing by the rail very close to Alice, told her about Alec. Alice had read about it in the paper but hadn't dreamed that Janey had known him so wel or felt that way about him. She began to cry and Janey felt very
-146-strong comforting her and they felt that they'd be very close friends after that. Janey whispered that she'd never be able to love anybody else and Alice said she didn't think she could ever love a man anyway, they al drank and smoked and talked dirty among themselves and had only one idea.
In July Alice and Janey got jobs in the office of Mrs. Robinson, public stenographer in the Riggs Building, to replace girls away on their vacations. Mrs. Robinson was a smal grayhaired pigeonbreasted woman with a Ken-tucky shriek in her voice, that made Janey think of a parrot's. She was very precise and al the proprieties were observed in her office. "Miss Wil iams," she would chirp, leaning back from her desk, "that em ess of Judge Rob-erts's has absolutely got to be finished today . . . My dear, we've given our word and we'l deliver if we have to stay til midnight. Noblesse oblige, my dear," and the typewriters would tril and jingle and al the girls' fingers would go like mad typing briefs, manuscripts of unde-livered speeches by lobbyists, occasional overflow from a newspaperman or a scientist, or prospectuses from real-estate offices or patent promoters, dunning letters for dentists and doctors.
THE CAMERA EYE (14)
Sunday nights when we had fishbal s and baked beans and Mr. Garfield read to us in a very beautiful reading voice and everybody was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop because he was reading The Man Without a Country and it was a very terrible story and Aaron Burr
-147-had been a very dangerous man and this poor young man had said "Damn the United States; I never hope to hear her name again" and it was a very terrible thing to say and the grayhaired judge was so kind and good