John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

After that Janey never cried much; things upset her but she got a cold hard feeling all over instead. Highschool went by fast, with hot thunderstormy Washington summers in between terms, punctuated by an occasional picnic at Marshall Hall or a party at some house in the neighborhood. Joe got a job at the Adams Express. She didn’t see him much as he didn’t eat home any more. Alec had bought a motorcycle and although he was still in highschool Janey heard little about him. Sometimes she sat up to get a word with Joe when he came home at night. He smelt of tobacco and liquor though he never seemed to be drunk. He went to his job at seven and when he got out in the evenings he went out with the bunch hanging round poolrooms on 4½ Street or playing craps or bowling. Sundays he played baseball in Maryland. Janey would sit up for him, but when he came she’d ask him how things were going where he worked and he’d say “Fine” and he’d ask her how things were going at school and she’d say “Fine” and then they’d both go off to bed. Once in a while she’d ask if he’d seen Alec and he’d say “Yes” with a scrap of a smile and she’d ask how Alec was and he’d say “Fine.”

She had one friend, Alice Dick, a dark stubby girl with glasses who took all the same classes with her at highschool. Saturday afternoons they’d dress up in their best and go window-shopping down F Street way. They’d buy a few little things, stop in for a soda and come home on the streetcar feeling they’d had a busy afternoon. Once in a very long while they went to a matinee at Poli’s and Janey would take Alice Dick home to supper. Alice Dick liked the Williamses and they liked her. She said it made her feel freer to spend a few hours with broadminded people. Her own folks were Southern Methodists and very narrow. Her father was a clerk in the Government Printing Office and was in daily dread that his job would come under the civil service regulations. He was a stout shortwinded man, fond of playing practical jokes on his wife and daughter, and suffered from chronic dyspepsia.

Alice Dick and Janey planned that as soon as they got through highschool they’d get jobs and leave home. They even picked out the house where they’d board, a greenstone house near Thomas Circle, run by a Mrs. Jenks, widow of a naval officer, who was very refined and had southern cooking and charged moderately for tableboard.

One Sunday night during the spring of her last term in highschool Janey was in her room getting undressed. Francie and Ellen were still playing in the backyard. Their voices came in through the open window with a spicy waft of lilacs from the lilacbushes in the next yard. She had just let down her hair and was looking in the mirror imagining how she’d look if she was a peach and had auburn hair, when there was a knock at the door and Joe’s voice outside. There was something funny about his voice.

“Come in,” she called. “I’m just fixin’ my hair.”

She first saw his face in the mirror. It was very white and the skin was drawn back tight over the cheekbones and round the mouth.

“Why, what’s the matter, Joe?” She jumped up and faced him.

“It’s like this, Janey,” said Joe, drawling his words out painfully. “Alec was killed. He smashed up on his motorbike. I just come from the hospital. He’s dead, all right.”

Janey seemed to be writing the words on a white pad in her mind. She couldn’t say anything.

“He smashed up comin’ home from Chevy Chase… He’d gone out to the ballgame to see me pitch. You oughter seen him all smashed to hell.”

Janey kept trying to say something.

“He was your best…”

“He was the best guy I’ll ever know,” Joe went on gently. “Well, that’s that, Janey… But I wanted to tell you I don’t want to hang round this lousy dump now that Alec’s gone. I’m goin’ to enlist in the navy. You tell the folks, see… I don’t wanna talk to ’em. That’s it; I’ll join the navy and see the world.”

“But, Joe…”

“I’ll write you, Janey; honest, I will… I’ll write you a hell of a lot. You an’ me… Well, goodby, Janey.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her awkwardly on the nose and cheek. All she could do was whisper. “Do be careful, Joe,” and stand there in front of the bureau in the gust of lilacs and the yelling of the kids that came through the open window. She heard Joe’s steps light quick down the stairs and heard the frontdoor shut.

She turned out the light, took off her clothes in the dark, and got into bed. She lay there without crying.

Graduation came and commencement and she and Alice went out to parties and even once with a big crowd on one of the moonlight trips down the river to Indian Head on the steamboat Charles McAlister. The crowd was rougher than Janey and Alice liked. Some of the boys were drinking a good deal and there were couples kissing and hugging in every shadow; still the moonlight was beautiful rippling on the river and she and Janey put two chairs together and talked. There was a band and dancing, but they didn’t dance on account of the rough men who stood round the dancefloor making remarks. They talked and on the way home up the river, Janey, talking very low and standing by the rail very close to Alice, told her about Alec. Alice had read about it in the paper but hadn’t dreamed that Janey had known him so well or felt that way about him. She began to cry and Janey felt very strong comforting her and they felt that they’d be very close friends after that. Janey whispered that she’d never be able to love anybody else and Alice said she didn’t think she could ever love a man anyway, they all drank and smoked and talked dirty among themselves and had only one idea.

In July Alice and Janey got jobs in the office of Mrs. Robinson, public stenographer in the Riggs Building, to replace girls away on their vacations. Mrs. Robinson was a small grayhaired pigeonbreasted woman with a Kentucky shriek in her voice, that made Janey think of a parrot’s. She was very precise and all the proprieties were observed in her office. “Miss Williams,” she would chirp, leaning back from her desk, “that em ess of Judge Roberts’s has absolutely got to be finished today… My dear, we’ve given our word and we’ll deliver if we have to stay till midnight. Noblesse oblige, my dear,” and the typewriters would trill and jingle and all the girls’ fingers would go like mad typing briefs, manuscripts of undelivered speeches by lobbyists, occasional overflow from a newspaperman or a scientist, or prospectuses from realestate offices or patent promoters, dunning letters for dentists and doctors.

Sunday nights when we had fishballs and baked beans and Mr. Garfield read to us in a very beautiful reading voice and everybody was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop because he was reading The Man Without a Country and it was a very terrible story and Aaron Burr had been a very dangerous man and this poor young man had said “Damn the United States; I never hope to hear her name again” and it was a very terrible thing to say and the grayhaired judge was so kind and good

and the judge sentenced me and they took me far away to foreign lands on a frigate and the officers were kind and good and spoke in kind grave very sorry reading voices like Mr. Garfield and everything was very kind and grave and very sorry and frigates and the blue Mediterranean and islands and when I was dead I began to cry and I was afraid the other boys would see I had tears in my eyes

American shouldn’t cry he should look kind and grave and very sorry when they wrapped me in the stars and stripes and brought me home on a frigate to be buried I was so sorry I never remembered whether they brought me home or buried me at sea but anyway I was wrapped in Old Glory