U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [62]
He went over and got a flop at Mrs. Olsen's in Red-hook. Everybody over there was talking about the draft and how they rounded you up for a slacker if they picked you up on the street without a registration card. And sure enough, just as Joe was stepping out of the subway at Wal Street one morning a cop came up to him and asked him for his card. Joe said he was a merchant seaman and had just got back from a trip and hadn't had time to regis-ter yet and that he was exempt, but the cop said he'd have to tel that to the judge. They were quite a bunch being marched down Broadway; smart guys in the crowd of
clerks and counterjumpers along the sidewalks yel ed
"Slackers" at them and the girls hissed and booed. In the Custom House they were herded into some of
the basement rooms. It was a hot August day. Joe elbowed his way through the sweating, grumbling crowd towards the window. Most of them were foreigners, there were longshoremen and waterfront loafers; a lot of the group were talking big but Joe remembered the navy and kept his mouth shut and listened. He was in there al day. The cops wouldn't let anybody telephone and there was only one toilet and they had to go to that under guard. Joe felt pretty weak on his pins, he hadn't gotten over the effect of that dengue yet. He was about ready to pass out
-158-when he saw a face he knew. Damned if it wasn't Glen Hardwick.
Glen had been picked up by a Britisher' and taken into Halifax. He'd signed as second on the Chemang, taking out mules to Bordeaux and a general cargo to Genoa, going to be armed with a threeinch gun and navy gunners, Joe ought to come along. "Jesus, do you think I could get aboard her?" Joe asked. "Sure, they're crazy for naviga-tion officers; they'd take you on even without a ticket." Bordeaux sounded pretty good, remember the girlfriends there? They doped out that when Glen got out he'd phone Mrs. Olsen to bring over Joe's license that was in a cigar-box at the head of his bed. When they final y were taken up to the desk to be questioned the guy let Glen go right away and said Joe could go as soon as they got his license over but that they must register at once even if they were exempt from the draft. "After al , you boys ought to re-member that there's a war on," said the inspector at the desk. "Wel , we sure ought to know," said Joe. Mrs. Olsen came over al in a flurry with Joe's papers and Joe hustled over to the office in East New York and they took him on as bosun. The skipper was Ben Tarbel who'd been first mate on the Higginbotham. Joe wanted to go down to Norfolk to see Del, but hel this was no time to stay ashore. What he did was to send her fifty bucks he borrowed from Glen. He didn't have time to worry about it anyway because they sailed the next day with sealed orders as to where to meet the convoy.
It wasn't so bad steaming in convoy. The navy officers on the destroyers and the Salem that was in command gave the orders, but the merchant captains kidded back and forth with wigwag signals. It was some sight to see the Atlantic Ocean ful of long strings of freighters al blotched up with gray and white watermarkings like bar-berpoles by the camouflage artists. There were old tubs in that convoy that a man wouldn't have trusted himself
-159-in to cross to Staten Island in peacetime and one of the new wooden Shipping Board boats leaked so bad, jerry-built out of new wood --somebody musta been making money --that she had to be abandoned and scuttled half way across.
Joe and Glen smoked their pipes together in Glen's
cabin and chewed the fat a good deal. They decided that everything ashore was the bunk and the only place for them was blue water. Joe got damn fed up with bawling out the bunch of scum he had for a crew. Once they got in the zone, al the ships started steering a zigzag course and everybody began to get white around the gil s. Joe never cussed so much in his life. There was a false alarm of submarines every few hours and seaplanes dropping depth bombs and excited gun crews firing at old barrels, bunches of seaweed, dazzle in the water. Steaming into the Gironde at night with the searchlights crisscrossing and the blinker signals and the patrolboats scooting. around, they sure felt good.