John Passos - 1919

They had to troop half across town through streets black dark for fear of airraids and slimy with rain, to a long tarpaper shack inside a barbedwire enclosure. Ben Tarbell told the boys he was sorry but they’d have to stay there for the present, and that he was trying to get the consul to do something about it and the old man had cabled the owners to try to get ’em some pay. Some girls from the Red Cross brought them grub, mostly bread and marmalade and meatpaste, nothing you could really sink your teeth into, and some thin blankets. They stayed in that damn place for twelve days, playing poker and yarning and reading old newspapers. Evenings sometimes a frousy halfdrunk woman would get past the old guard and peek in the door of the shack and beckon one of the men out into the foggy darkness behind the latrines somewhere. Some of the guys were disgusted and wouldn’t go.

They’d been shut up in there so long that when the mate finally came around and told ’em they were going home they didn’t have enough spunk left in ’em to yell. They went across the town packed with traffic and gasflare in the fog again and on board a new 6000 ton freighter, the Vicksburg , that had just unloaded a cargo of cotton. It felt funny being a passenger and being able to lay around all day on the trip home.

Joe was lying out on the hatchcover the first sunny day they’d had when old Cap’n Perry came up to him. Joe got to his feet. Cap’n Perry said he hadn’t had a chance to tell him what he thought of him for having the presence of mind to cut the lashings on those rafts and that half the men on the boat owed their lives to him. He said Joe was a bright boy and ought to start studying how to get out of the focastle and that the American merchant marine was growing every day on account of the war and young fellers like him were just what they needed for officers. “You remind me, boy,” he said, “when we get to Hampton Roads and I’ll see what I can do on the next ship I get. You could get your third mate’s ticket right now with a little time in shore school.” Joe grinned and said he sure would like to. It made him feel good the whole trip. He couldn’t wait to go and see Del and tell her he wasn’t in the focastle any more. Dod gast it, he was tired of being treated like a jailbird all his life.

The Vicksburg docked at Newport News. Hampton Roads was fuller of shipping than Joe had ever seen it. Along the wharves everybody was talking about the Deutschland that had just unloaded a cargo of dyes in Baltimore. When Joe got paid off he wouldn’t even take a drink with his shipmates but hustled down to the ferry station to get the ferry for Norfolk. Jez, the old ferry seemed slow. It was about five o’clock a Saturday afternoon when he got into Norfolk. Walking down the street he was scared she wouldn’t be home yet.

Del was home and seemed glad to see him. She said she had a date that night but he teased her into breaking it off. After all, weren’t they engaged to be married? They went out and had a sundae at an icecream parlor and she told him all about her new job with the Duponts and how she was getting ten more a week and how all the boys she knew and several girls were working in the munition factories and how some of ’em were making fifteen dollars a day and they were buying cars and the boy she’d had a date with that night had a Packard. It took a long time for Joe to get around to tell her about what old Cap’n Perry had said and she was all excited about his having been torpedoed and said why didn’t he go and get a job over at Newport News in the shipyard and make real money, she didn’t like the idea of his being torpedoed every minute, but Joe said he hated to leave the sea now that there was a chance of getting ahead. She asked him how much he’d make as third mate on a freighter and he said a hundred and twentyfive a month but there’d always be bonuses for the zone and there were a lot of new ships being built and he thought the prospects pretty good all around.

Del screwed her face up in a funny way and said she didn’t know how she’d like having a husband who was away from home all the time, but she went into a phone booth and called the other boy up and broke off the date she had with him. They went back to Del’s house and she cooked up a bite of supper. Her folks had gone over to Fortress Monroe to eat with an aunt of hers. It made Joe feel good to see her with an apron on bustling around the kitchen. She let him kiss her a couple of times but when he went up behind her and hugged her and pulled her face back and kissed her, she said not to do that, it made her feel all out of breath. The dark smell of her hair and the feel of her skin that was white like milk against his lips made him feel giddy. It was a relief when they went out on the street in the keen northwest wind again. He bought her a box of Saturday night candies at a drugstore. They went to see a bill of vaudeville and movies at the Colonial. The Belgian war pictures were awful exciting and Del said wasn’t it terrible and Joe started to tell her about what a guy he knew had told him about being in an air raid in London but she didn’t listen.

When he kissed her goodnight in the hall, Joe felt awful hot and pressed her up in the corner by the hatrack and tried to get his hand under her skirt but she said not till they were married and he said with his mouth against hers, when would they get married and she said they’d get married as soon as he got his new job.

Just then they heard the key in the latch just beside them and she pulled him into the parlor and whispered not to say anything about their being engaged just yet. It was Del’s old man and her mother and her two kid sisters and the old man gave Joe a mean look and the kid sisters giggled and Joe went away feeling fussed. It was early yet but Joe felt too het up to sleep so he walked around a little and then went by the Stirps’ house to see if Will was in town. Will was in Baltimore looking for a job, but old Mrs. Stirp said if he didn’t have nowhere to go and wanted to sleep in Will’s bed he was welcome, but he couldn’t sleep for thinking of Del and how smart she was and how she felt in his arms and how the smell of her hair made him feel crazy and how much he wanted her.

First thing he did Monday morning was to go over to Newport News and see Cap’n Perry. The old man was darn nice to him, asked him about his schooling and his folks. When Joe said he was old Cap’n Joe Williams’ son, Cap’n Perry couldn’t do enough for him. Him and Joe’s old man had been on the Albert and Mary Smith together in the old clipper ship days. He said he’d have a berth for Joe as junior officer on the Henry B. Higginbotham as soon as she’d finished repairs and he must go to work at shore school over in Norfolk and get ready to go before the licensing board and get his ticket. He’d coach him up on the fine points himself. When he left the old man said, “Ma boy, if you work like you oughter, bein’ your Dad’s son, an’ this war keeps up, you’ll be master of your own vessel in five years, I’ll guarantee it.”

Joe couldn’t wait to get hold of Del and tell her about it. That night he took her to the movies to see the Four Horsemen. It was darned exciting, they held hands all through and he kept his leg pressed against her plump little leg. Seeing it with her and the war and everything flickering on the screen and the music like in church and her hair against his cheek and being pressed close to her a little sweaty in the warm dark like to went to his head. When the picture was over he felt he’d go crazy if he couldn’t have her right away. She was kinder kidding him along and he got sore and said God damn it, they’d have to get married right away or else he was through. She’d held out on him just about long enough. She began to cry and turned her face up to him all wet with tears and said if he really loved her he wouldn’t talk like that and that that was no way to talk to a lady and he felt awful bad about it. When they got back to her folks’ house, everybody had gone to bed and they went out in the pantry back of the kitchen without turning the light on and she let him love her up. She said honestly she loved him so much she’d let him do anything he wanted only she knew he wouldn’t respect her if she did. She said she was sick of living at home and having her mother keep tabs on her all the time, and she’d tell her folks in the morning about how he’d got a job as a ship’s officer and they had to get married before he left and that he must get him his uniform right away.