John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

Mac beat his way to San Francisco.

Maisie was cold and bitter at first, but after they’d talked a little while she said he looked thin and ragged as a bum and burst into tears and kissed him. They went to get her savings out of the bank and bought Mac a suit and went down to City Hall and got married without saying anything to her folks. They were both very happy going down on the train to San Diego, and they got a furnished room there with kitchen privileges and told the landlady they’d been married a year. They wired Maisie’s folks that they were down there on their honeymoon and would be back soon.

Mac got work there at a job printer’s and they started payments on a bungalow at Pacific Beach. The work wasn’t bad and he was pretty happy in his quiet life with Maisie. After all, he’d had enough bumming for a while. When Maisie went to the hospital to have the baby, Mac had to beg a two months’ advance of pay from Ed Balderston, his boss. Even at that they had to take out a second mortgage on the bungalow to pay the doctor’s bill. The baby was a girl and had blue eyes and they named her Rose.

Life in San Diego was sunny and quiet. Mac went to work mornings on the steamcar and came back evenings on the steamcar and Sundays he puttered round the house or sometimes sat on one of the beaches with Maisie and the kid. It was understood between them now that he had to do everything that Maisie wanted because he’d given her such a tough time before they were married. The next year they had another kid and Maisie was sick and in hospital a long time after, so that now all that he could do with his pay each week was cover the interest on his debts, and he was always having to kid the grocerystore along and the milkman and the bakery to keep their chargeaccounts going from week to week. Maisie read a lot of magazines and always wanted new things for the house, a pianola, or a new icebox, or a fireless cooker. Her brothers were making good money in the real estate business in Los Angeles and her folks were coming up in the world. Whenever she got a letter from them she’d worry Mac about striking his boss for more pay or moving to a better job.

When there was anybody of the wobbly crowd in town down on his uppers or when they were raising money for strike funds or anything like that he’d help them out with a couple of dollars, but he never could do much for fear Maisie would find out about it. Whenever she found The Appeal to Reason or any other radical paper round the house she’d burn it up, and then they’d quarrel and be sulky and make each other’s lives miserable for a few days, until Mac decided what was the use, and never spoke to her about it. But it kept them apart almost as if she thought he was going out with some other woman.

One Saturday afternoon Mac and Maisie had managed to get a neighbor to take care of the kids and were going into a vaudeville theater when they noticed a crowd at the corner in front of Marshall’s drugstore. Mac elbowed his way through. A thin young man in blue denim was standing close to the corner lamppost where the firealarm was, reading the Declaration of Independence: When in the course of human events … A cop came up and told him to move on… inalienable right … life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Now there were two cops. One of them had the young man by the shoulders and was trying to pull him loose from the lamppost.

“Come on, Fainy, we’ll be late for the show,” Maisie kept saying.

“Hey, get a file; the bastard’s locked himself to the post,” he heard one cop say to the other. By that time Maisie had managed to hustle him to the theater boxoffice. After all, he’d promised to take her to the show and she hadn’t been out all winter. The last thing he saw the cop had hauled off and hit the young guy in the corner of the jaw.

Mac sat there in the dark stuffy theater all afternoon. He didn’t see the acts or the pictures between the acts. He didn’t speak to Maisie. He sat there feeling sick in the pit of his stomach. The boys must be staging a free-speech fight right here in town. Now and then he glanced at Maisie’s face in the dim glow from the stage. It had puffed out a little in wellsatisfied curves like a cat sitting by a warm stove, but she was still a good looker. She’d already forgotten everything and was completely happy looking at the show, her lips parted, her eyes bright, like a little girl at a party. “I guess I’ve sold out to the sonsobitches allright, allright,” he kept saying to himself.

The last number on the programme was Eva Tanguay. The nasal voice singing I’m Eva Tanguay, I don’t care brought Mac out of his sullen trance. Everything suddenly looked bright and clear to him, the proscenium with its heavy gold fluting, the people’s faces in the boxes, the heads in front of him, the tawdry powdery mingling of amber and blue lights on the stage, the scrawny woman flinging herself around inside the rainbow hoop of the spotlight.

The papers say that I’m insane

But… I… don’t… care.

Mac got up. “Maisie, I’ll meet you at the house. You see the rest of the show. I feel kind of bum.” Before she could answer, he’d slipped out past the other people in the row, down the aisle and out. On the street there was nothing but the ordinary Saturday afternoon crowd. Mac walked round and round the downtown district. He didn’t even know where I.W.W. headquarters was. He had to talk to somebody. As he passed the Hotel Brewster he caught a whiff of beer. What he needed was a drink. This way he was going nuts.

At the next corner he went into a saloon and drank four rye whiskies straight. The bar was lined with men drinking, treating each other, talking loud about baseball, prizefights, Eva Tanguay and her Salome dance.

Beside Mac was a big redfaced man with a widebrimmed felt hat on the back of his head. When Mac reached for his fifth drink this man put his hand on his arm and said, “Pard, have that on me if you don’t mind… I’m celebratin’ today.” “Thanks; here’s lookin’ at you,” said Mac. “Pard, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, you’re drinkin’ like you wanted to drink the whole barrel up at once and not leave any for the rest of us… Have a chaser.” “All right, bo,” said Mac. “Make it a beer chaser.”

“My name’s McCreary,” said the big man. “I just sold my fruit crop. I’m from up San Jacinto way.”

“So’s my name McCreary, too,” said Mac.

They shook hands heartily.

“By the living jumbo, that’s a coincidence… We must be kin or pretty near it… Where you from, pard?”

“I’m from Chicago, but my folks was Irish.”

“Mine was from the East, Delaware… but it’s the good old Scotch-Irish stock.”

They had more drinks on that. Then they went to another saloon where they sat in a corner at a table and talked. The big man talked about his ranch and his apricot crop and how his wife was bedridden since his last child had come. “I’m awful fond of the old gal, but what can a feller do? Can’t get gelded just to be true to your wife.” “I like my wife swell,” said Mac, “and I’ve got swell kids. Rose is four and she’s beginning to read already and Ed’s about learnin’ to walk…. But hell, before I was married I used to think I might amount to somethin’ in the world… I don’t mean I thought I was anythin’ in particular… You know how it is.” “Sure, pard, I used to feel that way when I was a young feller.” “Maisie’s a fine girl, too, and I like her better all the time,” said Mac, feeling a warm tearing wave of affection go over him, like sometimes a Saturday evening when he’d helped her bathe the kids and put them to bed and the room was still steamy from their baths and his eyes suddenly met Maisie’s eyes and there was nowhere they had to go and they were just both of them there together.