John Passos - 1919

When Joe left the house to look around and find a flop, he was walking on air. He hadn’t planned to get married that soon but what the hell, a man had to have a girl of his own. He began doping out what he’d write Janey about it, but he decided she wouldn’t like it and that he’d better not write. He wished Janey wasn’t getting so kind of uppish, but after all she was making a big success of business. When he was skipper of his own ship she’d think it was all great.

Joe was two months ashore that time. He went to shore school every day, lived at the Y.M.C.A. and didn’t take a drink or shoot pool or anything. The pay he had saved up from the two trips on the North Star was just about enough to swing it. Every week or so he went over to Newport News to talk it over with old Cap’n Perry who told him what kind of questions the examining board would ask him and what kind of papers he’d need. Joe was pretty worried about his original A.B. certificate, but he had another now and recommendations from captains of ships he’d been on. What the hell, he’d been at sea four years, it was about time he knew a little about running a ship. He almost worried himself sick over the examination, but when he was actually there standing before the old birds on the board it wasn’t as bad as he thought it ud be. When he actually got the third mate’s license and showed it to Del, they were both of them pretty tickled.

Joe bought his uniform when he got an advance of pay. From then on he was busy all day doing odd jobs round the drydock for old Cap’n Perry who hadn’t gotten a crew together yet. Then in the evenings he worked painting up the little bedroom, kitchenette and bath he’d rented for him and Del to live in when he was ashore. Del’s folks insisted on having a church wedding and Will Stirp, who was making fifteen dollars a day in a shipyard in Baltimore, came down to be best man.

Joe felt awful silly at the wedding and Will Stirp had gotten hold of some whiskey and had a breath like a distillery wagon and a couple of the other boys were drunk and that made Del and her folks awful sore and Del looked like she wanted to crown him all through the service. When it was over Joe found he’d wilted his collar and Del’s old man began pulling a lot of jokes and her sisters giggled so much in their white organdy dresses, he could have choked ’em. They went back to the Matthews’ house and everybody was awful stiff except Will Stirp and his friends who brought in a bottle of whiskey and got old man Matthews cockeyed. Mrs. Matthews ran ’em all out of the house and all the old cats from the Ladies Aid rolled their eyes up and said, “Could you imagine it?” And Joe and Del left in a taxicab a feller he knew drove and everybody threw rice at them and Joe found he had a sign reading Newlywed pinned on the tail of his coat and Del cried and cried and when they got to their apartment Del locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t answer when he called and he was afraid she’d fainted.

Joe took off his new blue serge coat and his collar and necktie and walked up and down not knowing what to do. It was six o’clock in the evening. He had to be aboard ship at midnight because they were sailing for France as soon as it was day. He didn’t know what to do. He thought maybe she’d want something to eat so he cooked up some bacon and eggs on the stove. By the time everything was cold and Joe was walking up and down cussing under his breath, Del came out of the bathroom looking all fresh and pink like nothing had happened. She said she couldn’t eat anything but let’s go to a movie…“But, honeybug,” said Joe, “I’ve got to pull out at twelve.” She began to cry again and he flushed and felt awful fussed. She snuggled up to him and said, “We won’t stay for the feature. We’ll come back in time.” He grabbed her and started hugging her but she held him off firmly and said, “Later.”

Joe couldn’t look at the picture. When they got back to the apartment it was ten o’clock. She let him pull off her clothes but she jumped into bed and wrapped the bedclothes around her and whimpered that she was afraid of having a baby, that he must wait till she found out what to do to keep from having a baby. All she let him do was rub up against her through the bedclothes and then suddenly it was ten of twelve and he had to jump into his clothes and run down to the wharf. An old colored man rowed him out to where his ship lay at anchor. It was a sweetsmelling spring night without any moon. He heard honking overhead and tried to squint up his eyes to see the birds passing against the pale stars. “Them’s geese, boss,” said the old colored man in a soft voice. When he climbed onboard everybody started kidding him and declared he looked all wore out. Joe didn’t know what to say so he talked big and kidded back and lied like a fish.

Goodby Broadway

Hello France

We’re ten million strong

8 YEAR OLD BOY SHOT BY LAD WITH RIFLE

the police have already notified us that any entertainment in Paris must be brief and quietly conducted and not in public view and that we have already had more dances than we ought

capitalization grown 104 % while business expands 520%

HAWAIIAN SUGAR CONTROL LOST BY GERMANS

efforts of the Bolshevik Government to discuss the withdrawal of the U.S. and allied forces from Russia through negotiation for an armistice are attracting no serious attention

BRISTISH AIRMAN FIGHTS SIXTY FOES

SERBIANS ADVANCE 10 MILES; TAKE 10 TOWNS;

MENACE PRILEP

Good morning

Mr. Zip Zip Zip

You’re surely looking fine

Good morning

Mr. Zip Zip Zip

With your hair cut just as short as

With your hair cut just as short as

With your hair cut just as short as mine

LENINE REPORTED ALIVE

AUDIENCE AT HIPPODROME TESTIMONIALS MOVED TO

CHEERS AND TEARS

several different stories have come to me well authenticated concerning the depth of Hindenburg’s brutality; the details are too horrible for print. They relate to outraged womanhood and girlhood, suicide and blood of the innocent that wet the feet of Hindenburg

WAR DECREASES MARRIAGES AND BIRTHS

Oh ashes to ashes

And dust to dust

If the shrapnel dont get you

Then the eightyeights must

the raindrops fall one by one out of the horsechestnut tree over the arbor onto the table in the abandoned beergarden and the puddly gravel and my clipped skull where my fingers move gently forward and back over the fuzzy knobs and hollows

spring and we’ve just been swimming in the Marne way off somewhere beyond the fat clouds on the horizon they are hammering on a tin roof in the rain in the spring after a swim in the Marne with that hammering to the north pounding the thought of death into our ears

the winey thought of death stings in the spring blood that throbs in the sunburned neck up and down the belly under the tight belt hurries like cognac into the tips of my toes and the lobes of my ears and my fingers stroking the fuzzy closecropped skull

shyly tingling fingers feel out the limits of the hard immortal skull under the flesh a deathshead and skeleton sits wearing glasses in the arbor under the lucid occasional raindrops inside the new khaki uniform inside my twentyoneyearold body that’s been swimming in the Marne in red and whitestriped trunks in Chalons in the spring

The years Dick was little he never heard anything about his Dad, but when he was doing his homework evenings up in his little room in the attic he’d start thinking about him sometimes; he’d throw himself on the bed and lie on his back trying to remember what he had been like and Oak Park and everything before Mother had been so unhappy and they had had to come east to live with Aunt Beatrice. There was the smell of bay rum and cigarsmoke and he was sitting on the back of an upholstered sofa beside a big man in a panama hat who shook the sofa when he laughed; he held on to Dad’s back and punched his arm and the muscle was hard like a chair or a table and when Dad laughed he could feel it rumble in his back, “Dicky, keep your dirty feet off my palm beach suit,” and he was on his hands and knees in the sunlight that poured through the lace curtains of the window trying to pick the big purple roses off the carpet; they were all standing in front of a red automobile and Dad’s face was red and he smelt of armpits and white steam was coming out around, and people were saying Safetyvalve. Downstairs Dad and Mummy were at dinner and there was company and wine and a new butler and it must be awful funny because they laughed so much and the knives and forks went click click all the time; Dad found him in his nightgown peeking through the portières and came out awful funny and excited smelling like wine and whaled him and mother came out and said, “Henry, don’t strike the child,” and they stood hissing at one another in low voices behind the portières on account of company and Mummy had picked Dick up and carried him upstairs crying in her evening dress all lacy and frizzly and with big puffy silk sleeves; touching silk put his teeth on edge, made him shudder all down his spine. He and Henry had had tan overcoats with pockets in them like grownup overcoats and tan caps and he’d lost the button off the top of his. Way back there it was sunny and windy; Dick got tired and sickyfeeling when he tried to remember back like that and it got him so he couldn’t keep his mind on tomorrow’s lessons and would pull out “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” that he had under the mattress because Mother took books away when they weren’t just about the lessons and would read just a little and then he’d forget everything reading and wouldn’t know his lessons the next day.