John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

The man from up San Jacinto way began to sing:

O my wife has gone to the country ,

Hooray, hooray.

I love my wife, but oh you kid ,

My wife’s gone away.

“But God damn it to hell,” said Mac, “a man’s got to work for more than himself and his kids to feel right.”

“I agree with you absholootely, pard; every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.” “Oh, hell,” said Mac, “I wish I was on the bum again or up at Goldfield with the bunch.”

They drank and drank and ate free lunch and drank some more, all the time rye with beer chasers, and the man from up San Jacinto way had a telephone number and called up some girls and they bought a bottle of whisky and went out to their apartment, and the rancher from up San Jacinto way sat with a girl on each knee singing My wife has gone to the country. Mac just sat belching in a corner with his head dangling over his chest; then suddenly he felt bitterly angry and got to his feet upsetting a table with a glass vase on it.

“McCreary,” he said, “this is no place for a classconscious rebel… I’m a wobbly, damn you… I’m goin’ out and get in this free-speech fight.”

The other McCreary went on singing and paid no attention. Mac went out and slammed the door. One of the girls followed him out jabbering about the broken vase, but he pushed her in the face and went out into the quiet street. It was moonlight. He’d lost the last steamcar and would have to walk home.

When he got to the house he found Maisie sitting on the porch in her kimono. She was crying. “And I had such a nice supper for you,” she kept saying, and her eyes looked into him cold and bitter the way they’d been when he’d gotten back from Goldfield before they were married.

The next day he had a hammering headache and his stomach was upset. He figured up he’d spent fifteen dollars that he couldn’t afford to waste. Maisie wouldn’t speak to him. He stayed on in bed, rolling round, feeling miserable, wishing he could go to sleep and stay asleep forever. That Sunday evening Maisie’s brother Bill came to supper. As soon as he got into the house Maisie started talking to Mac as if nothing had happened. It made him sore to feel that this was just in order to keep Bill from knowing they had quarrelled.

Bill was a powerfullybuilt towhaired man with a red neck, just beginning to go to fat. He sat at the table, eating the potroast and cornbread Maisie had made, talking big about the real estate boom up in Los Angeles. He’d been a locomotive engineer and had been hurt in a wreck and had had the lucky breaks with a couple of options on lots he’d bought with his compensation money. He tried to argue Mac into giving up his job in San Diego and coming in with him. “I’ll get you in on the ground floor, just for Maisie’s sake,” he said over and over again. “And in ten years you’ll be a rich man, like I’m goin’ to be in less time than that… Now’s the time, Maisie, for you folks to make a break, while you’re young, or it’ll be too late and Mac’ll just be a workingman all his life.”

Maisie’s eyes shone. She brought out a chocolate layer cake and a bottle of sweet wine. Her cheeks flushed and she kept laughing showing all her little pearly teeth. She hadn’t looked so pretty since she’d had her first baby. Bill’s talk about money made her drunk.

“Suppose a feller didn’t want to get rich… you know what Gene Debs said, ‘I want to rise with the ranks, not from the ranks,’” said Mac.

Maisie and Bill laughed. “When a guy talks like that he’s ripe for the nuthouse, take it from me,” said Bill. Mac flushed and said nothing.

Bill pushed back his chair and cleared his throat in a serious tone: “Look here, Mac… I’m goin’ to be around this town for a few days lookin’ over the situation, but looks to me like things was pretty dead. Now what I propose is this… You know what I think of Maisie… I think she’s about the sweetest little girl in the world. I wish my wife had half what Maisie’s got… Well, anyway, here’s my proposition: Out on Ocean View Avenue I’ve got several magnificent mission-style bungalows I haven’t disposed of yet, twentyfivefoot frontage on a refined residential street by a hundredfoot depth. Why, I’ve gotten as high as five grand in cold cash for ’em. In a year or two none of us fellers’ll be able to stick our noses in there. It’ll be millionaires’ row… Now if you’re willing to have the house in Maisie’s name I’ll tell you what I’ll do… I’ll swop properties with you, paying all the expenses of searching title and transfer and balance up the mortgages, that I’ll hold so’s to keep ’em in the family, so that you won’t have to make substantially bigger payments than you do here, and will be launched on the road to success.”

“Oh, Bill, you darling!” cried Maisie. She ran over and kissed him on the top of the head and sat swinging her legs on the arm of his chair. “Gee, I’ll have to sleep on that,” said Mac; “it’s mighty white of you to make the offer.” “Fainie, I’d think you’d be more grateful to Bill,” snapped Maisie. “Of course we’ll do it.”

“No, you’re quite right,” said Bill. “A man’s got to think a proposition like that over. But don’t forget the advantages offered, better schools for the kids, more refined surroundings, an upandcoming boom town instead of a dead one, chance to get ahead in the world instead of being a goddam wageslave.”

So a month later the McCrearys moved up to Los Angeles. The expenses of moving and getting the furniture installed put Mac five hundred dollars in debt. On top of that little Rose caught the measles and the doctor’s bill started mounting. Mac couldn’t get a job on any of the papers. Up at the union local that he transferred to they had ten men out of work as it was.

He spent a lot of time walking about town worrying. He didn’t like to be at home any more. He and Maisie never got on now. Maisie was always thinking about what went on at brother Bill’s house, what kind of clothes Mary Virginia, his wife, wore, how they brought up their children, the fine new victrola they’d bought. Mac sat on benches in parks round town, reading The Appeal to Reason and The Industrial Worker and the local papers.

One day he noticed The Industrial Worker sticking out of the pocket of the man beside him. They had both sat on the bench a long time when something made him turn to look at the man. “Say, aren’t you Ben Evans?” “Well, Mac, I’ll be goddamned… What’s the matter, boy, you’re lookin’ thin?” “Aw, nothin’, I’m lookin’ for a master, that’s all.”

They talked for a long time. Then they went to have a cup of coffee in a Mexican restaurant where some of the boys hung out. A young blonde fellow with blue eyes joined them there who talked English with an accent. Mac was surprised to find out that he was a Mexican. Everybody talked Mexico. Madero had started his revolution. The fall of Diaz was expected any day. All over the peons were taking to the hills, driving the rich cientificos off their ranches. Anarchist propaganda was spreading among the town workers. The restaurant had a warm smell of chiles and overroasted coffee. On each table there were niggerpink and vermilion paper flowers, an occasional flash of white teeth in bronze and brown faces talking low. Some of the Mexicans there belonged to the I.W.W., but most of them were anarchists. The talk of revolution and foreign places made him feel happy and adventurous again, as if he had a purpose in life, like when he’d been on the bum with Ike Hall.

“Say, Mac, let’s go to Mexico and see if there’s anything in this revoloossione talk,” Ben kept saying.