U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [9]
The next morning early Fainy was sweeping out the
office, when a man with a face like a raw steak walked up the steps; he was smoking a thin black stogy of a sort Fainy had never seen before. He knocked on the ground glass door.
I want to speak to Mr. O'Hara, Timothy O'Hara.
He's not here yet, be here any minute now, sir. Wil you wait?
You bet I'l wait. The man sat on the edge of a
You bet I'l wait. The man sat on the edge of a
chair and spat, first taking the chewed end of the stogy out of his mouth and looking at it meditatively for a long time. When Tim O'Hara came the office door closed with a bang. Fainy hovered nervously around, a little bit afraid the man might be a detective fol owing up the affair of the handbil s. Voices rose and fel , the stranger's voice in short rattling tirades, O'Hara's voice in long expostulating
-20-clauses, now and then Fainy caught the word foreclose, until suddenly the door flew open and the stranger shot out, his face purpler than ever. On the iron stoop he turned and pul ing a new stogy from his pocket, lit it from the old onei growling the words through the stogy and the blue puff of smoke, he said, Mr. O'Hara, you have twenty-four hours to think it over . . . A word from you and proceedings stop immediately." Then he went off down the street leaving behind him a long trail of rancid smoke.
A minute later, Uncle Tim came out of the office, his face white as paper. Fenian, old sport, he said, you go get yourself a job. I'm going out of business . . . Keep a weather eye open. I'm going to have a drink. And he was drunk for six days. By the end of that time a number of meeklooking men appeared with summonses, and Uncle Tim had to sober up enough to go down to the court and put in a plea of bankruptcy. Mrs. O'Hara scolded and stormed, Didn't I tel you, Tim O'Hara, no good'l ever come with your fiddlin'
round with these godless labor unions and social-democrats and knights of labor, al of
'em drunk and loafin' bums like yourself, Tim O'Hara. Of course the master printers ud have to get together and buy up your outstandin'
paper and squash you, and serve you right too, Tim
O'Hara, you and your godless socialistic boosin' ways only they might have thought of your poor wife and her help-less wee babes, and now we'l starve al of us together, us and the dependents and hangers on you've brought into the house.
Wel , I declare, cried Fainy's sister Mil y. If I
haven't slaved and worked my fingers to the bone for every piece of bread I've eaten in this house, and she got up from the breakfast table and flounced out of the room. Fainy sat there while the storm raged above his head; then he got up, slipping a corn muffin into his
-21-pocket as he went. In the hal he found the "help wanted" section of the Chicago Tribune, took his cap and went out into a raw Sunday morning ful of churchbel s jangling in his ears. He boarded a streetcar and went out to Lin-coln Park. There he sat on a bench for a long time munch-ing the muffin and looking down the columns of advertisements: Boy Wanted. But they none of them looked very inviting. One thing he was bound, he wouldn't get another job in a printing shop until the strike was over. Then his eye struck
Bright boy wanted with amb. and lit. taste, knowledge of print. and pub. business. Conf. sales and distrib. propo-sition $15 a week apply by letter P.O. Box 1256b Fainy's head suddenly got very light. Bright boy, that's me, ambition and literary taste . . . Gee, I must finish Looking Backward . . . and jez, I like reading fine, an' I could run a linotype or set up print if anybody'd let me. Fifteen bucks a week . . . pretty soft, ten dol ars'
raise. And he began to write a letter in his head, apply-ing for the job. DEAR SIR (MY
DEAR SIR)
or maybe GENTLEMEN,
In applying for the position you offer in today's
Sunday Tribune I want to apply, (al ow me to state) that I'm seventeen years old, no, nineteen, with several years'
experience in the printing and publishing trades, ambitious and with excel ent knowledge and taste in the printing and publishing trades,