John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

“Business, hell,” growled the other man, and shoved his face back down among his papers again.

“Procrastination, Fenian, is the thief of time,” said Doc Bingham, putting one fat hand Napoleonfashion into his doublebreasted vest. “There is a tide in the affairs of men that taken at its full…” And for two hours Fainy sweated under his direction, packing booklets into brown paper packages, tying them and addressing them to Truthseeker Inc., Saginaw, Mich.

He begged off for an hour to go home to see his folks. Milly kissed him on the forehead with thin tight lips. Then she burst out crying. “You’re lucky; oh, I wish I was a boy,” she spluttered and ran upstairs. Mrs. O’Hara said to be a good boy and always live at the Y.M.C.A. — that kept a boy out of temptation, and to let his Uncle Tim be a lesson to him, with his boozin’ ways.

His throat was pretty tight when he went to look for his Uncle Tim. He found him in the back room at O’Grady’s. His eyes were a flat bright blue and his lower lip trembled when he spoke, “Have one drink with me, son, you’re on your own now.” Fainy drank down a beer without tasting it.

“Fainy, you’re a bright boy… I wish I could have helped you more; you’re an O’Hara every inch of you. You read Marx… study all you can, remember that you’re a rebel by birth and blood… Don’t blame people for things… Look at that terrible forktongued virago I’m married to; do I blame her? No, I blame the system. And don’t ever sell out to the sons of bitches, son; it’s women’ll make you sell out every time. You know what I mean. All right, go on… better cut along or you’ll miss your train.” “I’ll write you from Saginaw, Uncle Tim, honest I will.”

Uncle Tim’s lanky red face in the empty cigarsmoky room, the bar and its glint of brass and the pinkarmed barkeep leaning across it, the bottles and the mirrors and the portrait of Lincoln gave a misty half turn in his head and he was out in the shiny rainy street under the shiny clouds, hurrying for the Elevated station with his suitcase in his hand.

At the Illinois Central station he found Doc Bingham waiting for him, in the middle of a ring of brown paper parcels. Fen felt a little funny inside when he saw him, the greasy sallow jowls, the doublebreasted vest, the baggy black ministerial coat, the dusty black felt hat that made the hair stick out in a sudden fuzzycurl over the beefy ears. Anyway, it was a job.

“It must be admitted, Fenian,” began Doc Bingham as soon as Fainy had come up to him, “that confident as I am of my knowledge of human nature I was a little afraid you wouldn’t turn up. Where is it that the poet says that difficult is the first fluttering course of the fledgeling from the nest. Put these packages on the train while I go purchase tickets, and be sure it’s a smoker.”

After the train had started and the conductor had punched the tickets Doc Bingham leaned over and tapped Fainy on the knee with a chubby forefinger. “I’m glad you’re a neat dresser, my boy; you must never forget the importance of putting up a fine front to the world. Though the heart be as dust and ashes, yet must the outer man be sprightly and of good cheer. We will go sit for a while in the pullman smoker up ahead to get away from the yokels.”

It was raining hard and the windows of the train were striped with transverse beaded streaks against the darkness. Fainy felt uneasy as he followed Doc Bingham lurching through the greenplush parlor car to the small leather upholstered smokingcompartment at the end. There Doc Bingham drew a large cigar from his pocket and began blowing a magnificent series of smoke rings. Fainy sat beside him with his feet under the seat trying to take up as little room as possible.

Gradually the compartment filled up with silent men and crinkly spiralling cigarsmoke. Outside the rain beat against the windows with a gravelly sound. For a long time nobody said anything. Occasionally a man cleared his throat and let fly towards the cuspidor with a big gob of phlegm or a jet of tobacco juice.

“Well, sir,” a voice began, coming from nowhere in particular, addressed to nowhere in particular, “it was a great old inauguration even if we did freeze to death.”

“Were you in Washington?”

“Yessir, I was in Washington.”

“Most of the trains didn’t get in till the next day.”

“I know it; I was lucky, there was some of them snowed up for forty-eight hours.”

“Some blizzard all right.”

All day the gusty northwind bore

The lessening drift its breath before

Low circling through its southern zone

The sun through dazzling snowmist shone ,

recited Doc Bingham coyly, with downcast eyes.

“You must have a good memory to be able to recite verses right off the reel like that.”

“Yessir, I have a memory that may I think, without undue violation of modesty, be called compendious. Were it a natural gift I should be forced to blush and remain silent, but since it is the result of forty years of study of what is best in the world’s epic lyric and dramatic literatures, I feel that to call attention to it may sometimes encourage some other whose feet are also bound on the paths of enlightenment and selfeducation.” He turned suddenly to Fainy. “Young man, would you like to hear Othello’s address to the Venetian senate?”

“Sure I would,” said Fainy, blushing.

“Well, at last Teddy has a chance to carry out his word about fighting the trusts.” “I’m telling you the insurgent farmer vote of the great Northwest…” “Terrible thing the wreck of those inauguration specials.”

But Doc Bingham was off:

Most potent grave and reverend signiors ,

My very noble and approved good masters ,

That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter

It is most true; true, I have married her…

“They won’t get away with those antitrust laws, believe me they won’t. You can’t curtail the liberty of the individual liberty in that way.” “It’s the liberty of the individual business man that the progressive wing of the Republican party is trying to protect.”

But Doc Bingham was on his feet, one hand was tucked into his doublebreasted vest, with the other he was making broad circular gestures:

Rude am I in speech

And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace ,

For since these arms of mine had seven years pith

Till now some nine moons wasted they have used

Their dearest action in the tented field.

“The farmer vote,” the other man began shrilly, but nobody was listening. Doc Bingham had the floor.

And little of the great world can I speak

More than pertains to broils and battle

And therefore little shall I grace my cause

In speaking for myself.

The train began to slacken speed. Doc Bingham’s voice sounded oddly loud in the lessened noise. Fainy felt his back pushing into the back of the seat and then suddenly there was stillness and the sound of an engine bell in the distance and Doc Bingham’s voice in a queasy whisper:

“Gentlemen, I have here in pamphlet form a complete and unexpurgated edition of one of the world’s classics, the famous Decameron of Boccaccio, that for four centuries has been a byword for spicy wit and ribald humor…” He took a bundle of little books out of one of his sagging pockets and began dandling them in his hand. “Just as an act of friendship I would be willing to part with some if any of you gentlemen care for them… Here, Fenian, take these and see if anybody wants one; they’re two dollars apiece. My young friend here will attend to distribution… Goodnight, gentlemen.” And he went off and the train had started again and Fainy found himself standing with the little books in his hand in the middle of the lurching car with the suspicious eyes of all the smokers boring into him like so many gimlets.