John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

but the Loup Garou was really a man hold me close cheri a man howled through streets with a bloody snout that tore up the bellies of girls and little children Loup Garou

and afterwards you knew what girls were made like and she was very silly and made you promise not to tell but you wouldn’t have anyway

MOON’S PATENT IS FIZZLE

insurgents win at Kansas polls Oak Park soulmates part 8000 to take autoride says girl begged for her husband

PIT SENTIMENT FAVORS UPTURN

Oh you be-eautiful doll

You great big beautiful doll

the world cannot understand all that is involved in this, she said. It appears like an ordinary worldly affair with the trappings of what is low and vulgar but there is nothing of the sort. He is honest and sincere. I know him. I have fought side by side with him. My heart is with him now.

Let me throw my arms around you

Honey ain’t I glad I found you

Almost Motionless In Midsummer Languor On Business Seas One Million See Drunkards Bounced

JURORS AT GATES OF BEEF BARONS

compare love with Vesuvius emblazoned streets await tramp of paladins

Honey ain’t I glad I found you

Oh you beautiful doll

You great big beautiful doll

TRADES WHITE HORSE FOR RED

Madero’s troops defeat rebels in Battle at Parral Roosevelt carries Illinois oratory closes eyelids Chicago pleads for more water

CONFESSED ANARCHISTS ON BENDED KNEES

KISS U.S. FLAG

The Sunbeam Movement is Spreading

BOMB NO. 4 IN LEVEE WAR

SPLINTERS WEST SIDE SALOON

a report printed Wednesday that a patient in a private pavilion in St. Luke’s Hospital undergoing an operation for the extirpation of a cancerous growth at the base of the tongue was General Grant was denied by both the hospital authorities and Lieut. Howze who characterized the story as a deliberate fabrication

he was a towboat captain and he knew the river blindfold from Indian Head to the Virginia Capes and the bay and the Eastan Shoa up to Baltima’ for that matter and he lived in a redbrick house in Alexandria the pilothouse smelt of a hundred burntout pipes

that’s the Mayflower the president’s yacht and that there’s the Dolphin and that’s the ole monitor Tippecanoe and that there’s the revenoo cutter and we’re just passin’ the po-lice boat

when Cap’n Keen reaches up to pull the whistle on the ceiling of the pilothouse you can see the red and green bracelet tattooed under the black hairs on his wrist

Ma soul an’ body ole Cap’n Gifford used ter be a frien’ o’ mahne many’s the time we been oysterin’ together on the Eastan Shoa an’ oysterpirates used to shanghai young fellers in those days an’ make ’em work all winter you couldn’ git away less you swam ashoa and the water was too damnation cole an’ the ole man used to take the fellers’ clothes away so’s they couldn’t git ashoa when they was anchored up in a crik or near a house or somethin’ boy they was mean customers the oysterpirates ma soul and body onct there was a young feller they worked till he dropped and then they’d just sling him overboard tongin’ for oysters or dredgin’ like them oysterpirates did’s the meanest kinda work in winter with the spray freezin’ on the lines an’ cuttin’ your hands to shreds an’ the dredge foulin’ every minute an’ us havin’ to haul it up an’ fix it with our hands in the icy water hauled up a stiff onct What’s a stiff? Ma soul an’ body a stiff’s a dead man ma boy a young feller it was too without a stitch on him an’ the body looked like it had been beat with a belayin’ pin somethin’ terrible or an’ oar mebbe reckon he wouldn’t work or was sick or somethin’ an’ the ole man jus’ beat him till he died sure couldn’t a been nothin’ but an oysterpirate

When Janey was little she lived in an old flatface brick house a couple of doors up the hill from M Street in Georgetown. The front part of the house was always dark because Mommer kept the heavy lace curtains drawn to and the yellow linen shades with lace inset bands down. Sunday afternoons Janey and Joe and Ellen and Francie had to sit in the front room and look at pictures or read books. Janey and Joe read the funnypaper together because they were the oldest and the other two were just babies and not old enough to know what was funny anyway. They couldn’t laugh outloud because Popper sat with the rest of The Sunday Star on his lap and usually went to sleep after dinner with the editorial section crumpled in one big blueveined hand. Tiny curds of sunlight flickering through the lace insets in the window shade would lie on his bald head and on one big red flange of his nose and on the droop of one mustache and on his speckled sundayvest and on the white starched shirtsleeves with shiny cuffs, held up above the elbow by a rubber band. Janey and Joe would sit on the same chair feeling each other’s ribs jiggle when they laughed about the Katzenjammer kids setting off a cannon-cracker under the captain’s stool. The little ones would see them laughing and start laughing too, “Shut up, can’t you,” Joe would hiss at them out of the corner of his mouth. “You don’t know what we’re laughing at.” Once in a while, if there was no sound from Mommer who was taking her Sunday afternoon nap upstairs stretched out in the back bedroom in a faded lilac sack with frills on it, after they’d listened for a long time to the drawnout snort that ended in a little hiss of Popper’s snores, Joe would slip off his chair and Janey would follow him without breathing into the front hall and out the front door. Once they’d closed it very carefully so that the knocker wouldn’t bang, Joe would give her a slap, yell “You’re it” and run off down the hill towards M Street, and she’d have to run after him, her heart pounding, her hands cold for fear he’d run away and leave her.

Winters the brick sidewalks were icy and there were colored women out spreading cinders outside their doors when the children went to school mornings. Joe never would walk with the rest of them because they were girls, he lagged behind or ran ahead. Janey wished she could walk with him but she couldn’t leave her little sisters who held tight onto her hands. One winter they got in the habit of walking up the hill with a little yaller girl who lived directly across the street and whose name was Pearl. Afternoons Janey and Pearl walked home together. Pearl usually had a couple of pennies to buy bullseyes or candy bananas with at a little store on Wisconsin Avenue, and she always gave Janey half so Janey was very fond of her. One afternoon she asked Pearl to come in and they played dolls together under the big rose of sharon bush in the back yard. When Pearl had gone Mommer’s voice called from the kitchen. Mommer had her sleeves rolled up on her faded pale arms and a checked apron on and was rolling piecrust for supper so that her hands were covered with flour.

“Janey, come here,” she said. Janey knew from the cold quaver in her voice that something was wrong.

“Yes, Mommer.” Janey stood in front of her mother shaking her head about so that the two stiff sandy pigtails lashed from side to side. “Stand still, child, for gracious sake… Jane, I want to talk to you about something. That little colored girl you brought in this afternoon…” Janey’s heart was dropping. She had a sick feeling and felt herself blushing, she hardly knew why. “Now, don’t misunderstand me; I like and respect the colored people; some of them are fine self-respecting people in their place… But you mustn’t bring that little colored girl in the house again. Treating colored people kindly and with respect is one of the signs of good breeding… You mustn’t forget that your mother’s people were wellborn every inch of them… Georgetown was very different in those days. We lived in a big house with most lovely lawns… but you must never associate with colored people on an equal basis. Living in this neighborhood it’s all the more important to be careful about those things… Neither the whites nor the blacks respect those who do… That’s all, Janey, you understand; now run out and play, it’ll soon be time for your supper.” Janey tried to speak but she couldn’t. She stood stiff in the middle of the yard on the grating that covered the drainpipe, staring at the back fence. “Niggerlover,” yelled Joe in her ear. “Niggerlover ump-mya-mya… Niggerlover niggerlover ump-mya-mya.” Janey began to cry.