John Passos - 1919

After Dad began to get around a little they both went down to Port Arthur for a couple of weeks for a change to stay with an old friend of Dad’s. Dad said he’d give her a car if she’d stay on, and that he’d get her out of this silly mess she’d gotten into up north.

She began to play a lot of tennis and golf again and to go out a good deal socially. Joe Washburn had married and was living in Oklahoma getting rich on oil. She felt easier in Dallas when he wasn’t there; seeing him upset her so. The next fall Daughter went down to Austin to finish her journalism course, mostly because she thought her being there would keep Bud in the straight and narrow. Friday afternoons they drove back home together in her Buick sedan for the weekend. Dad had bought a new Tudor style house way out and all her spare time was taken up picking out furniture and hanging curtains and arranging the rooms. She had a great many beaux always coming around to take her out and had to start keeping an engagement book. Especially after the declaration of war social life became very hectic. She was going every minute and never got any sleep. Everybody was getting commissions or leaving for officers training camps. Daughter went in for Red Cross work and organized a canteen, but that wasn’t enough and she kept applying to be sent abroad. Bud went down to San Antonio to learn to fly and Buster, who’d been in the militia, lied about his age and joined up as a private and was sent to Jefferson Barracks. At the canteen she lived in a whirl and had one or two proposals of marriage a week, but she always told them that she hadn’t any intention of being a war bride.

Then one morning a War Department telegram came. Dad was in Austin on business so she opened it. Bud had crashed, killed. First thing Daughter thought was how hard it would hit Dad. The phone rang; it was a long distance call from San Antonio, sounded like Joe Washburn’s voice. “Is that you, Joe?” she said weakly. “Daughter, I want to speak to your father,” came his grave drawl. “I know… O Joe.”

“It was his first solo flight. He was a great boy. Nobody seems to know how it happened. Must have been defect in structure. I’ll call Austin. I know where to get hold of him…. I’ve got the number… see you soon, Daughter.” Joe rang off. Daughter went into her room and burrowed face down into the bed that hadn’t been made up. For a minute she tried to imagine that she hadn’t gotten up yet, that she dreamed the phone ringing and Joe’s voice. Then she thought of Bud so sharply it was as if he’d come into the room, the way he laughed, the hard pressure of his long thin hand over her hands when he’d suddenly grabbed the wheel when they’d skidded going around a corner into San Antonio the last time she’d driven him down after a leave, the clean anxious lean look of his face above the tight khaki collar of the uniform. Then she heard Joe’s voice again: Must have been some defect in structure.

She went down and jumped into her car. At the fillingstation where she filled up with gas and oil the garageman asked her how the boys liked it in the army. She couldn’t stop to tell him about it now. “Bully, they like it fine,” she said, with a grin that hurt her like a slap in the face. She wired Dad at his lawpartner’s office that she was coming and pulled out of town for Austin. The roads were in bad shape, it made her feel better to feel the car plough through the muddy ruts and the water spraying out in a wave on either side when she went through a puddle at fifty.

She averaged fortyfive all the way and got to Austin before dark. Dad had already gone down to San Antonio on the train. Dead tired, she started off. She had a blowout and it took her a long time to get it fixed; it was midnight before she drew up at the Menger. Automatically she looked at herself in the little mirror before going in. There were streaks of mud on her face and her eyes were red.

In the lobby she found Dad and Joe Washburn sitting side by side with burntout cigars in their mouths. Their faces looked a little alike. Must have been the grey drawn look that made them look alike. She kissed them both. “Dad, you ought to go to bed,” she said briskly. “You look all in.” “I suppose I might as well… There’s nothing left to do,” he said.

“Wait for me, Joe, until I get Dad fixed up,” she said in a low voice as she passed him. She went up to the room with Dad, got herself a room adjoining, ruffled his hair and kissed him very gently and left him to go to bed.

When she got back down to the lobby Joe was sitting in the same place with the same expression on his face. It made her mad to see him like that.

Her sharp brisk voice surprised her. “Come outside a minute, Joe, I want to walk around a little.” The rain had cleared the air. It was a transparent early summer night. “Look here, Joe, who’s responsible for the condition of the planes? I’ve got to know.” “Daughter, how funny you talk… what you ought to do is get some sleep, you’re all overwrought.” “Joe, you answer my question.” “But Daughter, don’t you see nobody’s responsible. The army’s a big institution. Mistakes are inevitable. There’s a lot of money being made by contractors of one kind or another. Whatever you say aviation is in its infancy… we all knew the risks before we joined up.”

“If Bud had been killed in France I wouldn’t have felt like this.. but here… Joe, somebody’s directly responsible for my brother’s death. I want to go and talk to him, that’s all. I won’t do anything silly. You all think I’m a lunatic I know, but I’m thinking of all the other girls who have brothers training to be aviators. The man who inspected those planes is a traitor to his country and ought to be shot down like a dog.” “Look here, Daughter,” Joe said as he brought her back to the hotel, “we’re fightin’ a war now. Individual lives don’t matter, this isn’t the time for lettin’ your personal feelin’s get away with you or embarrassin’ the authorities with criticism. When we’ve licked the huns’ll be plenty of time for gettin’ the incompetents and the crooks… that’s how I feel about it.”

“Well, good night, Joe… you be mighty careful yourself. When do you expect to get your wings?” “Oh, in a couple of weeks.” “How’s Gladys and Bunny?” “Oh, they’re all right,” said Joe; a funny constraint came into his voice and he blushed. “They’re in Tulsa with Mrs. Higgins.”

She went to bed and lay there without moving, feeling desperately quiet and cool; she was too tired to sleep. When morning came she went around to the garage to get her car. She felt in the pocket on the door to see if her handbag was there that always had her little pearlhandled revolver in it, and drove out to the aviation camp. At the gate the sentry wouldn’t let her by, so she sent a note to Colonel Morrissey who was a friend of Dad’s, saying that she must see him at once. The corporal was very nice and got her a chair in the little office at the gate and a few minutes later said he had Colonel Morrissey on the wire. She started to talk to him but she couldn’t think what to say. The desk and the office and the corporal began swaying giddily and she fainted.

She came to in a staffcar with Joe Washburn who was taking her back to the hotel. He was patting her hand saying, “That’s all right, Daughter.” She was clinging to him and crying like a little tiny girl. They put her to bed at the hotel and gave her bromides and the doctor wouldn’t let her get up until after the funeral was over.

She got a reputation for being a little crazy after that. She stayed on in San Antonio. Everything was very gay and tense. All day she worked in a canteen and evenings she went out, supper and dancing, every night with a different aviation officer. Everybody had taken to drinking a great deal. It was like when she used to go to highschool dances, she felt herself moving in a brilliantly lighted daze of suppers and lights and dancing and champagne and different colored faces and stiff identical bodies of men dancing with her, only now she had a kidding line and let them hug her and kiss her in taxicabs, in phonebooths, in people’s backyards.