John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

“Sure, peaches and cream, we’ll pay like millionaires,” said Ike.

They filled up on coffee and hominy and ham and eggs and big heavy white bakingpowder biscuits, and by the end of breakfast they had gotten to laughing so hard over Fainy’s stories of Doc Bingham’s life and loves that the waitress asked them if they’d been drinking. Ike kidded her into bringing them each another cup of coffee without extra charge. Then he fished up two mashed cigarettes from the pocket of his overalls. “Have a coffin nail, Mac?”

“You can’t smoke here,” said the waitress. “The missus won’t stand for smokin’.”

“All right, bright eyes, we’ll skidoo.”

“How far are you goin’?”

“Well, I’m headed for Duluth myself. That’s where my folks are…” “So you’re from Duluth, are you?” “Well, what’s the big joke about Duluth?” “It’s no joke, it’s a misfortune.”

“You don’t think you can kid me, do you?” “’Tain’t worth my while, sweetheart.” The waitress tittered as she cleared off the table. She had big red hands and thick nails white from kitchenwork.

“Hey, got any noospapers? I want somethin’ to read waitin’ for the train.” “I’ll get you some. The missus takes the American from Chicago.” “Gee, I ain’t seen a paper in three weeks.” “I like to read the paper, too,” said Mac. “I like to know what’s goin’ on in the world.”

“A lot of lies most of it… all owned by the interests.”

“Hearst’s on the side of the people.”

“I don’t trust him any more’n the rest of ’em.”

“Ever read The Appeal to Reason?”

“Say, are you a Socialist?”

“Sure; I had a job in my uncle’s printin’ shop till the big interests put him outa business because he took the side of the strikers.”

“Gee, that’s swell… put it there… me, too…. Say, Mac, this is a big day for me… I don’t often meet a guy thinks like I do.”

They went out with a roll of newspapers and sat under a big pine a little way out of town. The sun had come out warm; big white marble clouds sailed through the sky. They lay on their backs with their heads on a piece of pinkish root with bark like an alligator. In spite of last night’s rain the pine needles were warm and dry under them. In front of them stretched the singletrack line through thickets and clearings of wrecked woodland where fireweed was beginning to thrust up here and there a palegreen spike of leaves. They read sheets of the weekold paper turn and turn about and talked.

“Maybe in Russia it’ll start; that’s the most backward country where the people are oppressed worst… There was a Russian feller workin’ down to the sawmill, an educated feller who’s fled from Siberia… I used to talk to him a lot… That’s what he thought. He said the social revolution would start in Russia an’ spread all over the world. He was a swell guy. I bet he was somebody.”

“Uncle Tim thought it would start in Germany.”

“Oughter start right here in America… We got free institutions here already… All we have to do is get out from under the interests.” “Uncle Tim says we’re too well off in America… we don’t know what oppression or poverty is. Him an’ my other uncles was Fenians back in Ireland before they came to this country. That’s what they named me Fenian… Pop didn’t like it, I guess… he didn’t have much spunk, I guess.”

“Ever read Marx?”

“No… golly, I’d like to though.” “Me neither, I read Bellamy’s Looking Backward , though; that’s what made me a Socialist.” “Tell me about it; I’d just started readin’ it when I left home.” “It’s about a galoot that goes to sleep an’ wakes up in the year two thousand and the social revolution’s all happened and everything’s socialistic an’ there’s no jails or poverty and nobody works for themselves an’ there’s no way anybody can get to be a rich bondholder or capitalist and life’s pretty slick for the working class.” “That’s what I always thought… It’s the workers who create wealth and they ought to have it instead of a lot of drones.” “If you could do away with the capitalist system and the big trusts and Wall Street things ’ud be like that.”

“Gee.”

“All you’d need would be a general strike and have the workers refuse to work for a boss any longer… God damn it, if people only realized how friggin’ easy it would be. The interests own all the press and keep knowledge and education from the workin’men.”

“I know printin’, pretty good, an’ linotypin’… Golly, maybe some day I could do somethin’.”

Mac got to his feet. He was tingling all over. A cloud had covered the sun, but down the railroad track the scrawny woods were full of the goldgreen blare of young birch leaves in the sun. His blood was like fire. He stood with his feet apart looking down the railroad track. Round the bend in the far distance a handcar appeared with a section gang on it, a tiny cluster of brown and dark blue. He watched it come nearer. A speck of red flag fluttered in the front of the handcar; it grew bigger, ducking into patches of shadow, larger and more distinct each time it came out into a patch of sun.

“Say, Mac, we better keep out of sight if we want to hop that freight. There’s some friggin’ mean yard detectives on this road.” “All right.” They walked off a hundred yards into the young growth of scrub pine and birch. Beside a big green-lichened stump Mac stopped to make water. His urine flowed bright yellow in the sun, disappearing at once into the porous loam of rotten leaves and wood. He was very happy. He gave the stump a kick. It was rotten. His foot went through it and a little powder like smoke went up from it as it crashed over into the alderbushes behind.

Ike had sat down on a log and was picking his teeth with a little birchtwig.

“Say, ever been to the coast, Mac?”

“No.”

“Like to?”

“Sure.”

“Well, let’s you an’ me beat our way out to Duluth… I want to stop by and say hello to the old woman, see. Haven’t seen her in three months. Then we’ll take in the wheat harvest and make Frisco or Seattle by fall. Tell me they have good free night-schools in Seattle. I want to do some studyin’, see? I dunno a friggin’ thing yet.”

“That’s slick.”

“Ever hopped a freight or ridden blind baggage, Mac?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“You just follow me and do what I do. You’ll be all right.”

Down the track they heard the hoot of a locomotive whistle.

“There is number three comin’ round the bend now… We’ll hop her right after she starts outa the station. She’ll take us into Mackinaw City this afternoon.”

Late that afternoon, stiff and cold, they went into a little shed on the steamboat wharf at Mackinaw City to get shelter. Everything was hidden in a driving rainstreaked mist off the lake. They had bought a ten-cent package of Sweet Caps, so that they only had ninety cents left between them. They were arguing about how much they ought to spend for supper when the steamboat agent, a thin man wearing a green eyeshade and a slicker, came out of his office. “You boys lookin’ for a job?” he asked. “Cause there’s a guy here from the Lakeview House lookin’ for a coupla pearldivers. Agency didn’t send ’em enough help I guess. They’re openin’ up tomorrer.” “How much do they pay ye?” asked Ike. “I don’t reckon it’s much, but the grub’s pretty good.” “How about it, Mac? We’ll save up our fare an’ then we’ll go to Duluth like a coupla dudes on the boat.”

So they went over that night on the steamboat to Mackinac Island. It was pretty dull on Mackinac Island. There was a lot of small scenery with signs on it reading “Devil’s Cauldron,” “Sugar Loaf,” “Lover’s Leap,” and wives and children of mediumpriced business men from Detroit, Saginaw and Chicago. The grayfaced woman who ran the hotel, known as The Management, kept them working from six in the morning till way after sundown. It wasn’t only dishwashing, it was sawing wood, running errands, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, smashing baggage and a lot of odd chores. The waitresses were all old maids or else brokendown farmers’ wives whose husbands drank. The only other male in the place was the cook, a hypochondriac French Canadian halfbreed who insisted on being called Mr. Chef. Evenings he sat in his little log shack back of the hotel drinking paregoric and mumbling about God.