John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

This time Fainy was careful to open the package before he brought it in. Doc Bingham took the books out of his hand without looking at him and Fainy went round behind the stovepipe. He stood there in the soggy steam of his clothes listening to Doc Bingham boom. He was hungry, but nobody seemed to think of offering him a piece of pie.

“Ah, my dear friends, how can I tell you with what gratitude to the Great Giver a lonely minister of the gospel of light, wandering among the tares and troubles of this world, finds ready listeners. I’m sure that these little books will be consoling, interesting and inspirational to all that undertake the slight effort of perusal. I feel this so strongly that I always carry a few extra copies with me to dispose of for a moderate sum. It breaks my heart that I can’t yet give them away free gratis.”

“How much are they?” asked the old woman, a sudden sharpness coming over her features. The scrawny woman let her arms drop to her side and shook her head.

“Do you remember, Fenian,” asked Doc Bingham, leaning genially back in his chair, “what the cost price of these little booklets was?” Fainy was sore. He didn’t answer. “Come here, Fenian,” said Doc Bingham in honied tones, “allow me to remind you of the words of the immortal bard:

Lowliness is your ambition’s ladder

Whereto the climber upward turns his face

But when he once attains the topmost round

He then unto the ladder turns his back

“You must be hungry. You can eat my pie.”

“I reckon we can find the boy a piece of pie,” said the old woman.

“Ain’t they ten cents?” said Fainy, coming forward.

“Oh, if they’re only ten cents I think I’d like one,” said the old woman quickly. The scrawny woman started to say something, but it was too late.

The pie had hardly disappeared into Fainy’s gullet and the bright dime out of the old tobaccobox in the cupboard into Doc Bingham’s vest pocket when there was a sound of clinking harness and the glint of a buggylamp through the rainy dark outside the window. The old woman got to her feet and looked nervously at the door, which immediately opened. A heavyset grayhaired man with a small goatee sprouting out of a round red face came in, shaking the rain off the flaps of his coat. After him came a skinny lad about Fainy’s age.

“How do you do, sir; how do you do, son?” boomed Doc Bingham through the last of his pie and coffee.

“They asked if they could put their horse in the barn until it should stop rainin’. It’s all right, ain’t it, James?” asked the old woman nervously. “I reckon so,” said the older man, sitting down heavily in the free chair. The old woman had hidden the pamphlet in the drawer of the kitchen table. “Travelin’ in books, I gather.” He stared hard at the open package of pamphlets. “Well, we don’t need any of that trash here, but you’re welcome to stay the night in the barn. This is no night to throw a human being out inter.”

So they unhitched the horse and made beds for themselves in the hay over the cowstable. Before they left the house the older man made them give up their matches. “Where there’s matches there’s danger of fire,” he said. Doc Bingham’s face was black as thunder as he wrapped himself in a horseblanket, muttering about “indignity to a wearer of the cloth.” Fainy was excited and happy. He lay on his back listening to the beat of the rain on the roof and its gurgle in the gutters, and the muffled stirring and chomping of the cattle and horse, under them; his nose was full of the smell of the hay and the warm meadowsweetness of the cows. He wasn’t sleepy. He wished he had someone his own age to talk to. Anyway, it was a job and he was on the road.

He had barely got to sleep when a light woke him. The boy he’d seen in the kitchen was standing over him with a lantern. His shadow hovered over them enormous against the rafters.

“Say, I wanner buy a book.”

“What kind of a book?” Fainy yawned and sat up.

“You know… one o’ them books about chorus girls an’ white slaves an’ stuff like that.”

“How much do you want to pay, son?” came Doc Bingham’s voice from under the horseblanket. “We have a number of very interesting books stating the facts of life frankly and freely, describing the deplorable licentiousness of life in the big cities, ranging from a dollar to five dollars. The Complete Sexology of Dr. Burnside , is six fifty.”

“I couldn’t go higher’n a dollar… Say, you won’t tell the ole man on me?” the young man said, turning from one to another. “Seth Hardwick, he lives down the road, he went into Saginaw onct an’ got a book from a man at the hotel. Gosh, it was a pippin.” He tittered uneasily.

“Fenian, go down and get him The Queen of the White Slaves for a dollar,” said Doc Bingham, and settled back to sleep.

Fainy and the farmer’s boy went down the rickety ladder.

“Say, is she pretty spicy?… Gosh, if pop finds it he’ll give me a whalin’… Gosh, I bet you’ve read all them books.”

“Me?” said Fainy haughtily. “I don’t need to read books. I kin see life if I wanter. Here it is… it’s about fallen women.”

“Ain’t that pretty short for a dollar? I thought you could get a big book for a dollar.”

“This one’s pretty spicy.”

“Well, I guess I’ll take it before dad ketches me snoopin’ around… Goodnight.” Fainy went back to his bed in the hay and fell fast asleep. He was dreaming that he was going up a rickety stair in a barn with his sister Milly who kept getting all the time bigger and whiter and fatter, and had on a big hat with ostrich plumes all round it and her dress began to split from the neck and lower and lower and Doc Bingham’s voice was saying, She’s Maria Monk, the queen of the white slaves, and just as he was going to grab her, sunlight opened his eyes. Doc Bingham stood in front of him, his feet wide apart, combing his hair with a pocketcomb and reciting:

“Let us depart, the universal sun

Confines not to one land his blessed beams

Nor is man rooted like a tree…

“Come, Fenian,” he boomed, when he saw that Fainy was awake, “let us shake the dust of this inhospitable farm, latcheting our shoes with a curse like philosophers of old… Hitch up the horse; we’ll get breakfast down the road.”

This went on for several weeks, until one evening they found themselves driving up to a neat yellow house in a grove of feathery dark tamaracks. Fainy waited in the wagon while Doc Bingham interviewed the people in the house. After a while Doc Bingham appeared in the door, a broad smile creasing his cheeks. “We’re going to be very handsomely treated, Fenian, as befits a wearer of the cloth and all that… You be careful how you talk, will you? Take the horse to the barn and unhitch.”

“Say, Mr. Bingham, how about my money? It’s three weeks now.” Fainy jumped down and went to the horse’s head.

An expression of gloom passed over Doc Bingham’s face. “Oh, lucre, lucre…

“Examine well

His milkwhite hand, the palm is hardly clean

But here and there an ugly smutch appears ,

Foh, ’twas a bribe that left it….

“I had great plans for a cooperative enterprise that you are spoiling by your youthful haste and greed… but if you must I’ll hand over to you this very night everything due you and more. All right, unhitch the horse and bring me that little package with Maria Monk , and The Popish Plot.”

It was a warm day. There were robins singing round the barn. Everything smelt of sweetgrass and flowers. The barn was red and the yard was full of white leghorns. After he had unhitched the spring wagon and put the horse in a stall, Fainy sat on a rail of the fence looking out over the silvergreen field of oats out back, and smoked a cigarette. He wished there was a girl there he could put his arm round or a fellow to talk to.