John Passos - 1919

It felt like old times standing in the bow in the sharp November morning, sniffing the old brackish smell of the Potomac water, passing redbrick Alexandria and Anacostia and the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, seeing the Monument stick up pink through the mist in the early light. The wharves looked about the same, the yachts and power boats anchored opposite, the Baltimore boat just coming in, the ramshackle excursion steamers, the oystershells underfoot on the wharf, the nigger roustabouts standing around. Then he was hopping the Georgetown car and too soon he was walking up the redbrick street. While he rang the bell he was wondering why he’d come home.

Mommer looked older but she was in pretty good shape and all taken up with her boarders and how the girls were both engaged. They said that Janey was doing so well in her work, but that living in New York had changed her. Joe said he was going down to New York to try to get his second mate’s ticket and that he sure would look her up. When they asked him about the war and the submarines and all that he didn’t know what to tell ’em so he kinder kidded them along. He was glad when it was time to go over to Washington to get his train, though they were darn nice to him and seemed to think that he was making a big success getting to be a second mate so young. He didn’t tell ’em about being married.

Going down on the train to New York Joe sat in the smoker looking out of the window at farms and stations and billboards and the grimy streets of factory towns through Jersey under a driving rain and everything he saw seemed to remind him of Del and places outside of Norfolk and good times he’d had when he was a kid. When he got to the Penn Station in New York first thing he did was check his bag, then he walked down Eighth Avenue all shiny with rain to the corner of the street where Janey lived. He guessed he’d better phone her first and called from a cigarstore. Her voice sounded kinder stiff; she said she was busy and couldn’t see him till tomorrow. He came out of the phonebooth and walked down the street not knowing where to go. He had a package under his arm with a couple of Spanish shawls he’d bought for her and Del on the last trip. He felt so blue he wanted to drop the shawls and everything down a drain, but he thought better of it and went back to the checkroom at the station and left them in his suitcase. Then he went and smoked a pipe for a while in the waitingroom.

God damn it to hell he needed a drink. He went over to Broadway and walked down to Union Square, stopping in every place he could find that looked like a saloon but they wouldn’t serve him anywhere. Union Square was all lit up and full of navy recruiting posters. A big wooden model of battleship filled up one side of it. There was a crowd standing around and a young girl dressed like a sailor was making a speech about patriotism. The cold rain came on again and the crowd scattered. Joe went down a street and into a ginmill called The Old Farm. He must have looked like somebody the barkeep knew because he said hello and poured him out a shot of rye.

Joe got to talking with two guys from Chicago who were drinking whiskey and beer chasers. They said this wartalk was a lot of bushwa propaganda and that if working stiffs stopped working in munition factories making shells to knock other working stiffs’ blocks off with, there wouldn’t be no goddam war. Joe said they were goddam right but look at the big money you made. The guys from Chicago said they’d been working in a munitions factory themselves but they were through, goddam it, and that if the working stiffs made a few easy dollars it meant that the war profiteers were making easy millions. They said the Russians had the right idea, make a revolution and shoot the goddam profiteers and that ud happen in this country if they didn’t watch out and a damn good thing too. The barkeep leaned across the bar and said they’d oughtn’t to talk thataway, folks ud take ’em for German spies.

“Why, you’re a German yourself, George,” said one of the guys.

The barkeep flushed and said, “Names don’t mean nothin’… I’m a patriotic American. I vas talking yust for your good. If you vant to land in de hoosgow it’s not my funeral.” But he set them up to drinks on the house and it seemed to Joe that he agreed with ’em.

They drank another round and Joe said it was all true but what the hell could you do about it? The guys said what you could do about it was join the I.W.W. and carry a red card and be a classconscious worker. Joe said that stuff was only for foreigners, but if somebody started a white man’s party to fight the profiteers and the goddam bankers he’d be with ’em. The guys from Chicago began to get sore and said the wobblies were just as much white men as he was and that political parties were the bunk and that all southerners were scabs. Joe backed off and was looking at the guys to see which one of ’em he’d hit first when the barkeep stepped around from the end of the bar and came between them. He was fat but he had shoulders and a meanlooking pair of blue eyes.

“Look here, you bums,” he said, “you listen to me, sure I’m a Cherman but am I for de Kaiser? No, he’s a schweinhunt, I am sokialist unt I live toity years in Union City unt own my home unt pay taxes unt I’m a good American, but dot don’t mean dot I vill foight for Banker Morgan, not vonce. I know American vorkman in de sokialist party toity years unt all dey do is foight among each oder. Every sonofabitch denk him better den de next sonofabitch. You loafers geroutahere… closin’ time… I’m goin’ to close up an’ go home.”

One of the guys from Chicago started to laugh, “Well, I guess the drinks are on us, Oscar… it’ll be different after the revolution.”

Joe still wanted to fight but he paid for a round with his last greenback and the barkeep who was still red in the face from his speech, lifted a glass of beer to his mouth. He blew the foam off it and said, “If I talk like dot I lose my yob.”

They shook hands all around and Joe went out into the gusty northeast rain. He felt lit but he didn’t feel good. He went up to Union Square again. The recruiting speeches were over. The model battleship was dark. A couple of ragged looking youngsters were huddled in the lee of the recruiting tent. Joe felt lousy. He went down into the subway and waited for the Brooklyn train.

At Mrs. Olsen’s everything was dark. Joe rang and in a little while she came down in a padded pink dressing gown and opened the door. She was sore at being waked up and bawled him out for drinking, but she gave him a flop and next morning lent him fifteen bucks to tide him over till he got work on a Shipping Board boat. Mrs. Olsen looked tired and a lot older, she said she had pains in her back and couldn’t get through her work any more.

Next morning Joe put up some shelves in the pantry for her and carried out a lot of litter before he went over to the Shipping Board recruiting office to put his name down for the officer’s school. The little kike behind the desk had never been to sea and asked him a lot of damnfool questions and told him to come around next week to find out what action would be taken on his application. Joe got sore and told him to f — k himself and walked out.

He took Janey out to supper and to a show, but she talked just like everybody else did and bawled him out for cussing and he didn’t have a very good time. She liked the shawls though and he was glad she was making out so well in New York. He never did get around to talking to her about Della.

After taking her home he didn’t know what the hell to do with himself. He wanted a drink, but taking Janey out and everything had cleaned up the fifteen bucks he’d borrowed from Mrs. Olsen. He walked west to a saloon he knew on Tenth Avenue, but the place was closed: wartime prohibition. Then he walked back towards Union Square, maybe that feller Tex he’d seen when he was walking across the square with Janey would still be sitting there and he could chew the rag a while with him. He sat down on a bench opposite the cardboard battleship and began sizing it up: not such a bad job. Hell, I wisht I’d never seen the inside of a real battleship, he was thinking, when Tex slipped into the seat beside him and put his hand on his knee. The minute he touched him Joe knew he’d never liked the guy, eyes too close together: “What you lookin’ so blue about, Joe? Tell me you’re getting’ your ticket.”