U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [6]
-12-THE CAMERA EYE (2)
we hurry wal owing like in a boat in the musty
stablysmel ing herdic cab He kept saying What would you do Lucy if I were to invite one of them to my table?
They're very lovely people Lucy the colored people and He had cloves in a little silver box and a rye whisky smel on his breath hurrying to catch the cars to New York and She was saying Oh dol y I hope we wont be
late and Scott was waiting with the tickets and we had to run up the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and al the little cannons kept fal ing out of the Olympia and everybody stooped to pick them up and the conductor Al aboard lady quick lady they were little brass cannons and were bright in the sun on the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and Scott hoisted us al up and the train was moving and the engine bel was ringing and Scott put in your hand a little handful of brass tiny cannons just big enough to hold the smal est size red firecracker at the battle of Manila Bay and said enough to hold the smal est size red firecracker at the battle of Manila Bay and said Here's the artil ery Jack
and He was holding forth in the parlor car Why
Lucy if it were necessary for the cause of humanity I would walk out and be shot any day you would Jack
wouldn't you? wouldn't you porter? who was bringing appolinaris and He had a flask in the brown grip where
-13-the silk initialed handkerchiefs always smelt of bay rum and when we got to Havre de Grace He said Re-member Lucy we used to have to ferry across the Susque-hanna before the bridge was built and across Gunpowder Creek too
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Russet hil s, patches of woods, farmhouses, cows, a red colt kicking up its heels in a pasture, rail fences, streaks of marsh.
Wel , Tim, I feel like a whipped cur . . . So long as I've lived, Tim, I've tried to do the right thing, Pop kept repeating in a rattling voice. And now what can they be asayin' about me?
"Jesus God, man, there was nothin' else you could do, was there? What the devil can you do if you haven't any money and haven't any job and a lot o' doctors and under-takers and landlords come round with their bil s and you with two children to support?"
"But I've been a quiet and respectable man, steady and misfortunate ever since I married and settled down. And now what'l they be thinkin' of me sneakin' out like a whipped cur?"
" John, take it from me that I'd be the last one to want to bring disrespect on the dead that was my own sister by birth and blood . . . But it ain't your fault and it ain't my fault . . . it's the fault of poverty, and poverty's the fault of the system . . . Fenian, you listen to Tim O'Hara for a minute and Mil y you listen too, cause a girl ought to know these things just as wel as a man and
-14-for once in his life Tim O'Hara's tel in' the truth . . . It's the fault of the system that don't give a man the fruit of his labor . . . The only man that gets anything out of capitalism is a crook, an' he gets to be a mil ionaire in short order . . . But an honest workin' man like John or muself we can work a hundred years and not leave enough to bury us decent with."
Smoke rol ed white in front of the window shaking out of its folds trees and telegraph poles and little square shingleroofed houses and towns and trol eycars, and long rows of buggies with steaming horses standing in line.
"And who gets the fruit of our labor, the goddam busi-ness men, agents, middlemen who never did a productive piece of work in their life."
Fainy's eyes are fol owing the telegraph wires that sag and soar.
Now, Chicago ain't no paradise, I can promise you
that, John, but it's a better market for a workin' man's muscle and brains at present than the East is . . . And why, did you ask me why . . . ? Supply and demand, they need workers in Chicago.
Tim, I tel yer I feel like a whipped cur.
It's the system, John, it's the goddam lousy system. A great bustle in the car woke Fainy up. It was dark. Mil y was crying again. He didn't know where he was. Wel , gentlemen, Uncle Tim was saying, we're
about to arrive in little old New York.
In the station it was light; that surprised Fainy, who thought it was already night. He and Mil y were left a long time sitting on a suitcase in the waitingroom. The waitingroom was huge, ful of unfamiliarlooking people, scary like people in picturebooks. Mil y kept crying. Hey, Mil y, I'l biff you one if you don't stop crying. Why? whined Mil y, crying al the more. Fainy stood as far away from her as possible so that people wouldn't think they were together. When he was