John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

“We ate onions for dinner today,” said Olive. “Hope you fellers don’t mind. Gladys, I told you we oughtn’t to of eaten them onions, not before comin’ on the boat.”

“Gimme a kiss an’ I’ll tell ye if I mind or not,” said Ike.

“Kiddo, you can’t talk fresh like that to us, not on this boat,” snapped Olive, two mean lines appearing on either side of her mouth.

“We have to be awful careful what we do on the boat,” explained Gladys. “They’re terrible suspicious of two girls travelin’ alone nowadays. Ain’t it a crime?”

“It sure is,” Ike moved up a little closer on the seat.

“Quit that… Make a noise like a hoop an’ roll away. I mean it.” Olive went and sat on the opposite bench. Ike followed her.

“In the old days it was liberty hall on these boats, but not so any more,” Gladys said, talking to Mac in a low intimate voice. “You fellers been workin’ up in the canneries?”

“No, we been workin’ for the C.P.R. all summer.”

“You must have made big money.” As she talked to him, Mac noticed that she kept looking out of the corner of her eye at her friend.

“Yare… not so big… I saved up pretty near a century.”

“An’ now you’re going to Seattle.”

“I want to get a job linotypist.”

“That’s where we live, Seattle. Olive an’ I’ve got an apartment… Let’s go out on deck, it’s too hot in here.”

As they passed Olive and Ike, Gladys leaned over and whispered something in Olive’s ear. Then she turned to Mac with a melting smile. The deck was deserted. She let him put his arm round her waist. His fingers felt the bones of some sort of corset. He squeezed. “Oh, don’t be too rough, kiddo,” she whined in a funny little voice. He laughed. As he took his hand away he felt the contour of her breast. Walking, his leg brushed against her leg. It was the first time he’d been so close to a girl.

After a while she said she had to go to bed. “How about me goin’ down with ye?” She shook her head. “Not on this boat. See you tomorrow; maybe you and your pal ’ll come and see us at our apartment. We’ll show you the town.” “Sure,” said Mac. He walked on round the deck, his heart beating hard. He could feel the pound of the steamboat’s engines and the arrowshaped surge of broken water from the bow and he felt like that. He met Ike.

“My girl said she had to go to bed.” “So did mine.” “Get anywheres, Mac?” “They got an apartment in Seattle.” “I got a kiss off mine. She’s awful hot. Jez, I thought she was going to feel me up.” “We’ll get it tomorrow all right.”

The next day was sunny; the Seattle waterfront was sparkling, smelt of lumberyards, was noisy with rattle of carts and yells of drivers when they got off the boat. They went to the Y.M.C.A. for a room. They were through with being laborers and hobos. They were going to get clean jobs, live decently and go to school nights. They walked round the city all day, and in the evening met Olive and Gladys in front of the totempole on Pioneer Square.

Things happened fast. They went to a restaurant and had wine with a big feed and afterwards they went to a beergarden where there was a band, and drank whiskeysours. When they went to the girls’ apartment they took a quart of whiskey with them and Mac almost dropped it on the steps and the girls said, “For crissake don’t make so much noise or you’ll have the cops on us,” and the apartment smelt of musk and facepowder and there was women’s underwear around on all the chairs and the girls got fifteen bucks out of each of them first thing. Mac was in the bathroom with his girl and she smeared liprouge on his nose and they laughed and laughed until he got rough and she slapped his face. Then they all sat together round the table and drank some more and Ike danced a Solomeydance in his bare feet. Mac laughed, it was so very funny, but he was sitting on the floor and when he tried to get up he fell on his face and all of a sudden he was being sick in the bathtub and Gladys was cursing hell out of him. She got him dressed, only he couldn’t find his necktie, and everybody said he was too drunk and pushed him out and he was walking down the street singing Make a Noise Like a Hoop and Just Roll Away, Roll Away , and he asked a cop where the Y.M.C.A. was and the cop pushed him into a cell at the stationhouse and locked him up.

He woke up with his head like a big split millstone. There was vomit on his shirt and a rip in his pants. He went over all his pockets and couldn’t find his pocketbook. A cop opened the cell door and told him to make himself scarce and he walked out into the dazzling sun that cut into his eyes like a knife. The man at the desk at the Y looked at him queerly when he went in, but he got up to his room and fell into bed without anybody saying anything to him. Ike wasn’t back yet. He dozed off feeling his headache all through his sleep. When he woke up Ike was sitting on the bed. Ike’s eyes were bright and his cheeks were red. He was still a little drunk. “Say, Mac, did they roll yer? I can’t find my pocketbook an’ I tried to go back but I couldn’t find the apartment. God, I’d have beat up the goddam floosies…Shit, I’m drunk as a pissant still. Say, the galoot at the desk said we’d have to clear out. Can’t have no drunks in the Y.M.C.A.” “But jez, we paid for a week.” “He’ll give us part of it back… Aw, what the hell, Mac… We’re flat, but I feel swell… Say, I had a rough time with your Jane after they’d thrown you out.”

“Hell, I feel sick as a dog.”

“I’m afraid to go to sleep for fear of getting a hangover. Come on out, it’ll do you good.”

It was three in the afternoon. They went into a little Chinese restaurant on the waterfront and drank coffee. They had two dollars they got from hocking their suitcases. The pawnbroker wouldn’t take the silk shirts because they were dirty. Outside it was raining pitchforks.

“Jesus, why the hell didn’t we have the sense to keep sober? God, we’re a coupla big stiffs, Ike.”

“We had a good party… Jez, you looked funny with that liprouge all over your face.”

“I feel like hell… I wanta study an’ work for things; you know what I mean, not to get to be a goddam slavedriver but for socialism and the revolution an’ like that, not work an’ go on a bat an’ work an’ go on a bat like those damn yaps on the railroad.”

“Hell, another time we’ll have more sense an’ leave our wads somewhere safe… Gee, I’m beginning to sink by the bows myself.”

“If the damn house caught fire I wouldn’t have the strength to walk out.”

They sat in the Chink place as long as they could and then they went out in the rain to find a thirtycent flophouse where they spent the night, and the bedbugs ate them up. In the morning they went round looking for jobs, Mac in the printing trades and Ike at the shipping agencies. They met in the evening without having had any luck and slept in the park as it was a fine night. Eventually they both signed up to go to a lumbercamp up the Snake River. They were sent up by the agency on a car full of Swedes and Finns. Mac and Ike were the only ones who spoke English. When they got there they found the foreman so hardboiled and the grub so rotten and the bunkhouse so filthy that they lit out at the end of a couple of days, on the bum again. It was already cold in the Blue Mountains and they would have starved to death if they hadn’t been able to beg food in the cookhouses of lumbercamps along the way. They hit the railroad at Baker City, managed to beat their way back to Portland on freights. In Portland they couldn’t find jobs because their clothes were so dirty, so they hiked southward along a big endless Oregon valley full of fruit-ranches, sleeping in barns and getting an occasional meal by cutting wood or doing chores around a ranch house.