1919

Joe Williams

It was a lousy trip. Joe was worried all the time about Del and about not making good and the deckcrew was a bunch of soreheads. The engines kept breaking down. The Higginbotham was built like a cheesebox and so slow there were days when they didn’t make more’n thirty or forty miles against moderate head winds. The only good times he had was taking boxing lessons from the second engineer, a fellow named Glen Hardwick. He was a little wiry guy, who was a pretty good amateur boxer, though he must have been forty years old. By the time they got to Bordeaux Joe was able to give him a good workout. He was heavier and had a better reach and Glen said he’d a straight natural right that would take him far as a lightweight.

In Bordeaux the first port official that came on board tried to kiss Cap’n Perry on both cheeks. President Wilson had just declared war on Germany. All over the town nothing was too good for Les Americains. Evenings when they were off Joe and Glen Hardwick cruised around together. The Bordeaux girls were damn pretty. They met up with a couple one afternoon in the public garden that weren’t hookers at all. They were nicely dressed and looked like they came of good families, what the hell it was wartime. At first Joe thought he ought to lay off that stuff now that he was married, but hell, hadn’t Del held out on him. What did she think he was, a plaster saint? They ended by going to a little hotel the girls knew and eating supper and drinking a beaucoup wine and champagne and having a big party. Joe had never had such a good time with a girl in his life. His girl’s name was Marceline and when they woke up in the morning the help at the hotel brought them in coffee and rolls and they ate breakfast, both of ’em sitting up in bed and Joe’s French began to pick up and he learned how to say C’est la guerre and On les aura and Je m’en fiche and Marceline said she’d always be his sweetie when he was in Bordeaux and called him petit lapin.

They only stayed in Bordeaux the four days it took ’em to wait their turn to go up to the dock and unload, but they drank wine and cognac all the time and the food was swell and nobody could do enough for them on account of America having come into the war and it was a great old four days.

On the trip home the Higginbotham sprung leaks so bad the old man stopped worrying about submarines altogether. It was nip and tuck if they’d make Halifax. The ship was light and rolled like a log so that even with fiddles on they couldn’t keep dishes on the messtable. One dirty night of driving fog somewhere south of Cape Race, Joe with his chin in his peajacket was taking a turn on the deck amidship when he was suddenly thrown flat. They never knew what hit ’em, a mine or a torpedo. It was only that the boats were in darn good order and the sea was smooth that they got off at all. As it was the four boats got separated. The Higginbotham faded into the fog and they never saw her sink, though the last they could make out her maindeck was awash.

They were cold and wet. In Joe’s boat nobody said much. The men at the oars had to work hard to keep her bow into the little chop that came up. Each sea a little bigger than the others drenched them with spray. They had on wool sweaters and lifepreservers but the cold seeped through. At last the fog greyed a little and it was day. Joe’s boat and the captain’s boat managed to keep together until late that afternoon they were picked up by a big fishing schooner, a banker bound for Boston.

When they were picked up old Cap’n Perry was in a bad way. The master of the fishing schooner did everything he could for him, but he was unconscious when they reached Boston four days later and died on the way to the hospital. The doctors said it was pneumonia.

Next morning Joe and the mate went to the office of the agent of Perkins and Ellerman, the owners, to see about getting themselves and the crew paid off. There was some kind of damn monkeydoodle business about the vessel’s having changed owners in midAtlantic, a man named Rosenberg had bought her on a speculation and now he couldn’t be found and the Chase National Bank was claiming ownership and the underwriters were raising cain. The agent said he was sure they’d be paid all right, because Rosenberg had posted bond, but it would be some time. “And what the hell do they expect us to do all that time, eat grass?” The clerk said he was sorry but they’d have to take it up direct with Mr. Rosenberg.

Joe and the first mate stood side by side on the curb outside the office and cursed for a while, then the mate went over to South Boston to break the news to the chief who lived there.

It was a warm June afternoon. Joe started to go around the shipping offices to see what he could do in the way of a berth. He got tired of that and went and sat on a bench on the Common, staring at the sparrows and the gobs loafing around and the shop girls coming home from work, their little heels clattering on the asphalt paths.

Joe hung around Boston broke for a couple of weeks. The Salvation Army took care of the survivors, serving ’em beans and watery soup and a lot of hymns off key that didn’t appeal to Joe the way he felt just then. He was crazy to get enough jack to go to Norfolk and see Del. He wrote her every day but the letters he got back to General Delivery seemed kinder cool. She was worried about the rent and wanted some spring clothes and was afraid they wouldn’t like it at the office if they found out about her being married.

Joe sat on the benches on the Common and roamed around among the flowerbeds in the Public Garden, and called regularly at the agent’s office to ask about a berth, but finally he got sick of hanging around and went down and signed on as quartermaster, on a United Fruit boat, the Callao. He thought it ud be a short run and by the time he got back in a couple of weeks he’d be able to get his money.

On the home trip they had to wait several days anchored outside in the roads at Roseau in Dominica, for the limes they were going to load to be crated. Everybody was sore at the port authorities, a lot of damn British niggers, on account of the quarantine and the limes not being ready and how slow the lighters were coming off from the shore. The last night in port Joe and Larry, one of the other quartermasters, got kidding some young coons in a bumboat that had been selling fruit and liquor to the crew under the stern; first thing they knew they’d offered ’em a dollar each to take ’em ashore and land ’em down the beach so’s the officers wouldn’t see them. The town smelt of niggers. There were no lights in the streets. A little coalblack youngster ran up and asked did they want some mountain chicken. “I guess that means wild women, sure,” said Joe. “All bets are off tonight.” The little dinge took ’em into a bar kept by a stout mulatto woman and said something to her in the island lingo they couldn’t understand, and she said they’d have to wait a few minutes and they sat down and had a couple of drinks of corn and oil. “I guess she must be the madam,” said Larry. “If they ain’t pretty good lookers they can go to hell for all I care. I’m not much on the dark meat.” From out back came a sound of sizzling and a smell of something frying. “Dod gast it, I could eat something,” said Joe. “Say, boy, tell her we want something to eat.” “By and by you eat mountain chicken.” “What the hell?” They finished their drinks just as the woman came back with a big platter of something fried up. “What’s that?” asked Joe. “That’s mountain chicken, mister; that’s how we call froglegs down here but they ain’t like the frogs you all has in the states. I been in the states and I know. We wouldn’t eat them here. These here is clean frogs just like chicken. You’ll find it real good if you eat it.” They roared. “Jesus, the drinks are on us,” said Larry, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

Then they thought they’d go pick up some girls. They saw a couple leaving the house where the music was and followed ’em down the dark street. They started to talk to ’em and the girls showed their teeth and wriggled in their clothes and giggled. But three or four nigger men came up sore as hell and began talking in the local lingo. “Jez, Larry, we’d better watch our step,” said Joe through his teeth. “These bozos got razors.” They were in the middle of a yelling bunch of big black men when they heard an American voice behind them, “Don’t say another word, boys, I’ll handle this.” A small man in khaki riding breeches and a panama hat was pushing his way through the crowd talking in the island lingo all the time. He was a little man with a gray triangular face tufted with a goatee. “My name’s Henderson, DeBuque Henderson of Bridgeport, Connecticut.” He shook hands with both of them.

“Well, what’s the trouble, boys? It’s all right now, everybody knows me here. You have to be careful on this island, boys, they’re touchy, these people, very touchy…. You boys better come along with me and have a drink….” He took them each by the arm and walked them hurriedly up the street. “Well, I was young once… I’m still young… sure, had to see the island… damn right too, the most interesting island in the whole Caribbean only lonely… never see a white face.”

When they got to his house he walked them through a big whitewashed room onto a terrace that smelt of vanilla flowers. They could see the town underneath with its few lights, the dark hills, the white hull of the Callao with the lighters around her lit up by the working lights. At intervals the rattle of winches came up to them and a crazy jigtune from somewhere.

The old feller poured them each a glass of rum; then another. He had a parrot on a perch that kept screeching. The landbreeze had come up full of heavy flowersmells off the mountains and blew the old feller’s stringy white hair in his eyes. He pointed at the Callao all lit up with its ring of lighters. “United Fruit… United Thieves Company… it’s a monopoly… if you won’t take their prices they let your limes rot on the wharf; it’s a monopoly. You boys are working for a bunch of thieves, but I know it ain’t your fault. Here’s lookin’ at you.”

Before they knew it Larry and Joe were singing. The old man was talking about cotton spinning machinery and canecrushers and pouring out drinks from a rumbottle. They were pretty goddam drunk. They didn’t know how they got aboard. Joe remembered the dark focastle and the sound of snoring from the bunks spinning around, then sleep hitting him like a sandbag and the sweet, sicky taste of rum in his mouth.

A couple of days later Joe came down with a fever and horrible pains in his joints. He was out of his head when they put him ashore at St. Thomas’s. It was dengue and he was sick for two months before he had the strength even to write Del to tell her where he was. The hospital orderly told him he’d been out of his head five days and they’d given him up for a goner. The doctors had been sore as hell about it because this was post hospital; after all he was a white man and unconscious and they couldn’t very well feed him to the sharks.

It was July before Joe was well enough to walk around the steep little coraldust streets of the town. He had to leave the hospital and would have been in a bad way if one of the cooks at the marina barracks hadn’t looked out for him and found him a flop in an unused section of the building. It was hot and there was never a cloud in the sky and he got pretty sick of looking at the niggers and the bare hills and the blue shutin harbor. He spent a lot of time sitting out on the old coalwharf in the shade of a piece of corrugated iron roof looking through the planking at the clear deep bluegreen water, watching shoals of snappers feeding around the piles. He got to thinking about Del and that French girl in Bordeaux and the war and how the United Fruit was a bunch of thieves and then the thoughts would go round and round in his head like the little silver and blue and yellow fish round the swaying weeds on the piles and he’d find he’d dropped off to sleep.

When a northbound fruitsteamer came into the harbor he got hold of one of the officers on the wharf and told him his sad story. They gave him passage up to New York. First thing he did was try to get hold of Janey; maybe if she thought he ought to, he’d give up this dog’s life and take a steady job ashore. He called up the J. Ward Moorehouse advertising office where she worked but the girl at the other end of the line told him she was the boss’s secretary and was out west on business.

He went over and got a flop at Mrs. Olsen’s in Redhook. Everybody over there was talking about the draft and how they rounded you up for a slacker if they picked you up on the street without a registration card. And sure enough, just as Joe was stepping out of the subway at Wall Street one morning a cop came up to him and asked him for his card. Joe said he was a merchant seaman and had just got back from a trip and hadn’t had time to register yet and that he was exempt, but the cop said he’d have to tell that to the judge. They were quite a bunch being marched down Broadway; smart guys in the crowd of clerks and counterjumpers along the sidewalks yelled “Slackers” at them and the girls hissed and booed.

In the Custom House they were herded into some of the basement rooms. It was a hot August day. Joe elbowed his way through the sweating, grumbling crowd towards the window. Most of them were foreigners, there were longshoremen and waterfront loafers; a lot of the group were talking big but Joe remembered the navy and kept his mouth shut and listened. He was in there all day. The cops wouldn’t let anybody telephone and there was only one toilet and they had to go to that under guard. Joe felt pretty weak on his pins, he hadn’t gotten over the effect of that dengue yet. He was about ready to pass out when he saw a face he knew. Damned if it wasn’t Glen Hardwick.

Glen had been picked up by a Britisher and taken into Halifax. He’d signed as second on the Chemang, taking out mules to Bordeaux and a general cargo to Genoa, going to be armed with a threeinch gun and navy gunners, Joe ought to come along. “Jesus, do you think I could get aboard her?” Joe asked. “Sure, they’re crazy for navigation officers; they’d take you on even without a ticket.” Bordeaux sounded pretty good, remember the girlfriends there? They doped out that when Glen got out he’d phone Mrs. Olsen to bring over Joe’s license that was in a cigarbox at the head of his bed. When they finally were taken up to the desk to be questioned the guy let Glen go right away and said Joe could go as soon as they got his license over but that they must register at once even if they were exempt from the draft. “After all, you boys ought to remember that there’s a war on,” said the inspector at the desk. “Well, we sure ought to know,” said Joe.

Mrs. Olsen came over all in a flurry with Joe’s papers and Joe hustled over to the office in East New York and they took him on as bosun. The skipper was Ben Tarbell who’d been first mate on the Higginbotham. Joe wanted to go down to Norfolk to see Del, but hell this was no time to stay ashore. What he did was to send her fifty bucks he borrowed from Glen. He didn’t have time to worry about it anyway because they sailed the next day with sealed orders as to where to meet the convoy.

It wasn’t so bad steaming in convoy. The navy officers on the destroyers and the Salem that was in command gave the orders, but the merchant captains kidded back and forth with wigwag signals. It was some sight to see the Atlantic Ocean full of long strings of freighters all blotched up with gray and white watermarkings like barberpoles by the camouflage artists. There were old tubs in that convoy that a man wouldn’t have trusted himself in to cross to Staten Island in peacetime and one of the new wooden Shipping Board boats leaked so bad, jerrybuilt out of new wood — somebody musta been making money — that she had to be abandoned and scuttled half way across.

Joe and Glen smoked their pipes together in Glen’s cabin and chewed the fat a good deal. They decided that everything ashore was the bunk and the only place for them was blue water. Joe got damn fed up with bawling out the bunch of scum he had for a crew. Once they got in the zone, all the ships started steering a zigzag course and everybody began to get white around the gills. Joe never cussed so much in his life. There was a false alarm of submarines every few hours and seaplanes dropping depth bombs and excited gun crews firing at old barrels, bunches of seaweed, dazzle in the water. Steaming into the Gironde at night with the searchlights crisscrossing and the blinker signals and the patrolboats scooting around, they sure felt good.

It was a relief to get the dirty trampling mules off the ship and their stench out of everything, and to get rid of the yelling and cussing of the hostlers. Glen and Joe only got ashore for a few hours and couldn’t find Marceline and Loulou. The Garonne was beginning to look like the Delaware with all the new Americanbuilt steel and concrete piers. Going out they had to anchor several hours to repair a leaky steampipe and saw a patrol boat go by towing five ships’ boats crowded to the gunnels, so they guessed the fritzes must be pretty busy outside.

No convoy this time. They slipped out in the middle of a foggy night. When one of the deckhands came up out of the focastle with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the mate knocked him flat and said he’d have him arrested when he got back home for a damn German spy. They coasted Spain as far as Finisterre. The skipper had just changed the course to southerly when they saw a sure enough periscope astern. The skipper grabbed the wheel himself and yelled down the tube to the engine room to give him everything they’d got, that wasn’t much to be sure, and the gun crew started blazing away.

The periscope disappeared but a couple of hours later they overhauled a tubby kind of ketch, must be a Spanish fishingboat, that was heading for the shore, for Vigo probably, scudding along wing and wing in the half a gale that was blowing up west northwest. They’d no sooner crossed the wake of the ketch than there was a thud that shook the ship and a column of water shot up that drenched them all on the bridge. Everything worked like clockwork. No. 1 was the only compartment flooded. As luck would have it, the crew was all out of the focastle standing on deck amidships in their life preservers. The Chemang settled a little by the bow, that was all. The gunners were certain it was a mine dropped by the old black ketch that had crossed their bow and let them have a couple of shots, but the ship was rolling so in the heavy sea that the shots went wild. Anyway, the ketch went out of sight behind the island that blocks the mouth of the roadstead of Vigo. The Chemang crawled on in under one bell.

By the time they got into the channel opposite the town of Vigo, the water was gaining on the pumps in No. 2, and there was four feet of water in the engineroom. They had to beach her on the banks of hard sand to the right of the town.

So they were ashore again with their bundles standing around outside the consul’s office, waiting for him to find them somewhere to flop. The consul was a Spaniard and didn’t speak as much English as he might have but he treated them fine. The Liberal Party of Vigo invited officers and crew to go to a bullfight there was going to be that afternoon. More monkeydoodle business, the skipper got a cable to turn the ship over to the agents of Gomez and Ca. of Bilboa who had bought her as she stood and were changing her registry.

When they got to the bullring half the crowd cheered them and yelled, “Viva los Aliados,” and the rest hissed and shouted, “Viva Maura.” They thought there was going to be a fight right there but the bull came out and everybody quieted down. The bullfight was darn bloody, but the boys with the spangles were some steppers and the people sitting around made them drink wine all the time out of little black skins and passed around bottles of cognac so that the crew got pretty cockeyed and Joe spent most of his time keeping the boys in order. Then the officers were tendered a banquet by the local pro-allied society and a lot of bozos with mustachios made fiery speeches that nobody could understand and the Americans cheered and sang, The Yanks are Coming and Keep the Home Fires Burning and We’re Bound for the Hamburg Show. The chief, an old fellow named McGillicudy, did some card tricks, and the evening was a big success. Joe and Glen bunked together at the hotel. The maid there was awful pretty but wouldn’t let ’em get away with any foolishness. “Well, Joe,” said Glen, before they went to sleep, “it’s a great war.” “Well, I guess that’s strike three,” said Joe. “That was no strike, that was a ball,” said Glen.

They waited two weeks in Vigo while the officials quarreled about their status and they got pretty fed up with it. Then they were all loaded on a train to take them to Gibraltar where they were to be taken on board a Shipping Board boat. They were three days on the train with nothing to sleep on but hard benches. Spain was just one set of great dusty mountains after another. They changed cars in Madrid and in Seville and a guy turned up each time from the consulate to take care of them. When they got to Seville they found it was Algeciras they were going to instead of Gib.

When they got to Algeciras they found that nobody had ever heard of them. They camped out in the consulate while the consul telegraphed all over the place and finally chartered two trucks and sent them over to Cadiz. Spain was some country, all rocks and wine and busty black eyed women and olive trees. When they got to Cadiz the consular agent was there to meet them with a telegram in his hand. The tanker Gold Shell was waiting in Algeciras to take them on board there, so it was back again cooped up on the trucks, bouncing on the hard benches with their faces powdered with dust and their mouths full of it and not a cent in anybody’s jeans left to buy a drink with. When they got on board the Gold Shell around three in the morning a bright moonlight night some of the boys were so tired they fell down and went to sleep right on the deck with their heads on their seabags.

The Gold Shell landed ’em in Perth Amboy in late October. Joe drew his back pay and took the first train connections he could get for Norfolk. He was fed up with bawling out that bunch of pimps in the focastle. Damn it, he was through with the sea; he was going to settle down and have a little married life.

He felt swell coming over on the ferry from Cape Charles, passing the Ripraps, out of the bay full of whitecaps into the smooth brown water of Hampton Roads crowded with shipping; four great battlewaggons at anchor, subchasers speeding in and out and a white revenue cutter, camouflaged freighters and colliers, a bunch of red munitions barges anchored off by themselves. It was a sparkling fall day. He felt good; he had three hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket. He had a good suit on and he felt sunburned and he’d just had a good meal. God damn it, he wanted a little love now. Maybe they’d have a kid.

Things sure were different in Norfolk. Everybody in new uniforms, twominute speakers at the corner of Main and Granby, liberty loan posters, bands playing. He hardly knew the town walking up from the ferry. He’d written Del that he was coming but he was worried about seeing her, hadn’t had any letters lately. He still had a latch key to the apartment but he knocked before opening the door. There was nobody there.

He’d always pictured her running to the door to meet him. Still it was only four o’clock, she must be at her work. Must have another girl with her, don’t keep the house so tidy…. Underwear hung to dry on a line, bits of clothing on all the chairs, a box of candy with halfeaten pieces in it on the table…. Jez, they must have had a party last night. There was a half a cake, glasses that had had liquor in them, a plate full of cigarette butts and even a cigar butt. Oh, well, she’d probably had some friends in. He went to the bathroom and shaved and cleaned up a little. Sure Del was always popular, she probably had a lot of friends in all the time, playing cards and that. In the bathroom there was a pot of rouge and lipsticks, and facepowder spilt over the faucets. It made Joe feel funny shaving among all these women’s things.

He heard her voice laughing on the stairs and a man’s voice; the key clicked in the lock. Joe closed his suitcase and stood up. Del had bobbed her hair. She flew up to him and threw her arms around his neck. “Why, I declare it’s my hubby.” Joe could taste rouge on her lips. “My, you look thin, Joe. Poor Boy, you musta been awful sick…. If I’d had any money at all I’d have jumped on a boat and come on down…. This is Wilmer Tayloe… I mean Lieutenant Tayloe, he just got his commission yesterday.”

Joe hesitated a moment and then held out his hand. The other fellow had red hair clipped close and a freckled face. He was all dressed up in a whipcord uniform, shiny Sam Browne belt and puttees. He had a silver bar on each shoulder and spurs on his feet.

“He’s just going overseas tomorrow. He was coming by to take me out to dinner. Oh, Joe, I’ve got so much to tell you, honey.”

Joe and Lieutenant Tayloe stood around eyeing each other uncomfortably while Del bustled around tidying the place up, talking to Joe all the time. “It’s terrible I never get any chance to do anything and neither does Hilda… You remember Hilda Thompson, Joe? Well, she’s been livin’ with me to help make up the rent but we’re both of us doin’ war work down at the Red Cross canteen every evening and then I sell Liberty bonds…. Don’t you hate the huns, Joe. Oh, I just hate them, and so does Hilda…. She’s thinking of changing her name on account of its being German. I promised to call her Gloria but I always forget…. You know, Wilmer, Joe’s been torpedoed twice.”

“Well, I suppose the first six times is the hardest,” stammered Lieutenant Tayloe. Joe grunted.

Del disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door. “You boys make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be dressed in a minute.”

Neither of them said anything. Lieutenant Tayloe’s shoes creaked as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. At last he pulled a flask out of his pocket. “Have a drink,” he said. “Ma outfit’s goin’ overseas any time after midnight.” “I guess I’d better,” said Joe, without smiling. When Della came out of the bathroom all dressed up she certainly looked snappy. She was much prettier than last time Joe had seen her. He was all the time wondering if he ought to go up and hit that damn shavetail until at last he left, Del telling him to come by and get her at the Red Cross canteen.

When he’d left she came and sat on Joe’s knee and asked him about everything and whether he’d got his second mate’s ticket yet and whether he’d missed her and how she wished he could make a little more money because she hated to have another girl in with her this way but it was the only way she could pay the rent. She drank a little of the whiskey that the lieutenant had forgotten on the table and ruffled his hair and loved him up. Joe asked her if Hilda was coming in soon and she said no she had a date and she was going to meet her at the canteen. But Joe went and bolted the door anyway and for the first time they were really happy hugged in each other’s arms on the bed.

Joe didn’t know what to do with himself around Norfolk. Del was at the office all day and at the Red Cross canteen all the evening. He’d usually be in bed when she came home. Usually there’d be some damn army officer or other bringing her home, and he’d hear them talking and kidding outside the door and lie there in bed imagining that the guy was kissing her or loving her up. He’d be about ready to hit her when she’d come in and bawl her out and they’d quarrel and yell at each other and she’d always end by saying that he didn’t understand her and she thought he was unpatriotic to be interfering with her war work and sometimes they’d make up and he’d feel crazy in love with her and she’d make herself little and cute in his arms and give him little tiny kisses that made him almost cry they made him feel so happy. She was getting better looking every day and she sure was a snappy dresser.

Sunday mornings she’d be too tired to get up and he’d cook breakfast for her and they’d sit up in bed together and eat breakfast like he had with Marceline that time in Bordeaux. Then she’d tell him she was crazy about him and what a smart guy he was and how she wanted him to get a good shore job and make a lot of money so that she wouldn’t have to work any more and how Captain Barnes whose folks were worth a million had wanted her to get a divorce from Joe and marry him and Mr. Canfield in the Dupont office who made a cool 50,000 a year had wanted to give her a pearl necklace but she hadn’t taken it because she didn’t think it was right. Talk like that made Joe feel pretty rotten. Sometimes he’d start to talk about what they’d do if they had some kids, but Del ud always make a funny face and tell him not to talk like that.

Joe went around looking for work and almost landed the job of foreman in one of the repair shops over at the shipyard in Newport News, but at the last minute another berry horned in ahead of him and got it. A couple of times he went out on parties with Del and Hilda Thompson, and some army officers and a midshipman off a destroyer, but they all highhatted him and Del let any boy who wanted to kiss her and would disappear into a phone booth with anything she could pick up so long as it had a uniform on and he had a hell of a time. He found a poolroom where some boys he knew hung out and where he could get corn liquor and started tanking up a good deal. It made Del awful sore to come home and find him drunk but he didn’t care any more.

Then one night when Joe had been to a fight with some guys and had gotten an edge on afterward, he met Del and another damn shavetail walking on the street. It was pretty dark and there weren’t many people around and they stopped in every dark doorway and the shavetail was kissing and hugging her. When he got them under a street light so’s he made sure it was Del he went up to them and asked them what the hell they meant. Del must have had some drinks because she started tittering in a shrill little voice that drove him crazy and he hauled off and let the shavetail have a perfect left right on the bottom. The spurs tinkled and the shavetail went to sleep right flat on the little grass patch under the streetlight. It began to hit Joe kinder funny but Del was sore as the devil and said she’d have him arrested for insult to the uniform and assault and battery and that he was nothing but a yellow sniveling slacker and what was he doing hanging around home when all the boys were at the front fighting the huns. Joe sobered up and pulled the guy up to his feet and told them both they could go straight to hell. He walked off before the shavetail, who musta been pretty tight, had time to do anything but splutter, and went straight home and packed his suitcase and pulled out.

Will Stirp was in town so Joe went over to his house and got him up out of bed and said he’d busted up housekeeping and would Will lend him twentyfive bucks to go up to New York with. Will said it was a damn good thing and that love ’em and leave ’em was the only thing for guys like them. They talked till about day about one thing and another. Then Joe went to sleep and slept till late afternoon. He got up in time to catch the Washington boat. He didn’t take a room but roamed around on deck all night. He got to cracking with one of the officers and went and sat in the pilot house that smelt comfortably of old last year’s pipes. Listening to the sludge of water from the bow and watching the wabbly white finger of the searchlight pick up buoys and lighthouses he began to pull himself together. He said he was going up to New York to see his sister and try for a second mate’s ticket with the Shipping Board. His stories about being torpedoed went big because none of them on the Dominion City had even been across the pond.

It felt like old times standing in the bow in the sharp November morning, sniffing the old brackish smell of the Potomac water, passing redbrick Alexandria and Anacostia and the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, seeing the Monument stick up pink through the mist in the early light. The wharves looked about the same, the yachts and power boats anchored opposite, the Baltimore boat just coming in, the ramshackle excursion steamers, the oystershells underfoot on the wharf, the nigger roustabouts standing around. Then he was hopping the Georgetown car and too soon he was walking up the redbrick street. While he rang the bell he was wondering why he’d come home.

Mommer looked older but she was in pretty good shape and all taken up with her boarders and how the girls were both engaged. They said that Janey was doing so well in her work, but that living in New York had changed her. Joe said he was going down to New York to try to get his second mate’s ticket and that he sure would look her up. When they asked him about the war and the submarines and all that he didn’t know what to tell ’em so he kinder kidded them along. He was glad when it was time to go over to Washington to get his train, though they were darn nice to him and seemed to think that he was making a big success getting to be a second mate so young. He didn’t tell ’em about being married.

Going down on the train to New York Joe sat in the smoker looking out of the window at farms and stations and billboards and the grimy streets of factory towns through Jersey under a driving rain and everything he saw seemed to remind him of Del and places outside of Norfolk and good times he’d had when he was a kid. When he got to the Penn Station in New York first thing he did was check his bag, then he walked down Eighth Avenue all shiny with rain to the corner of the street where Janey lived. He guessed he’d better phone her first and called from a cigarstore. Her voice sounded kinder stiff; she said she was busy and couldn’t see him till tomorrow. He came out of the phonebooth and walked down the street not knowing where to go. He had a package under his arm with a couple of Spanish shawls he’d bought for her and Del on the last trip. He felt so blue he wanted to drop the shawls and everything down a drain, but he thought better of it and went back to the checkroom at the station and left them in his suitcase. Then he went and smoked a pipe for a while in the waitingroom.

God damn it to hell he needed a drink. He went over to Broadway and walked down to Union Square, stopping in every place he could find that looked like a saloon but they wouldn’t serve him anywhere. Union Square was all lit up and full of navy recruiting posters. A big wooden model of battleship filled up one side of it. There was a crowd standing around and a young girl dressed like a sailor was making a speech about patriotism. The cold rain came on again and the crowd scattered. Joe went down a street and into a ginmill called The Old Farm. He must have looked like somebody the barkeep knew because he said hello and poured him out a shot of rye.

Joe got to talking with two guys from Chicago who were drinking whiskey and beer chasers. They said this wartalk was a lot of bushwa propaganda and that if working stiffs stopped working in munition factories making shells to knock other working stiffs’ blocks off with, there wouldn’t be no goddam war. Joe said they were goddam right but look at the big money you made. The guys from Chicago said they’d been working in a munitions factory themselves but they were through, goddam it, and that if the working stiffs made a few easy dollars it meant that the war profiteers were making easy millions. They said the Russians had the right idea, make a revolution and shoot the goddam profiteers and that ud happen in this country if they didn’t watch out and a damn good thing too. The barkeep leaned across the bar and said they’d oughtn’t to talk thataway, folks ud take ’em for German spies.

“Why, you’re a German yourself, George,” said one of the guys.

The barkeep flushed and said, “Names don’t mean nothin’… I’m a patriotic American. I vas talking yust for your good. If you vant to land in de hoosgow it’s not my funeral.” But he set them up to drinks on the house and it seemed to Joe that he agreed with ’em.

They drank another round and Joe said it was all true but what the hell could you do about it? The guys said what you could do about it was join the I.W.W. and carry a red card and be a classconscious worker. Joe said that stuff was only for foreigners, but if somebody started a white man’s party to fight the profiteers and the goddam bankers he’d be with ’em. The guys from Chicago began to get sore and said the wobblies were just as much white men as he was and that political parties were the bunk and that all southerners were scabs. Joe backed off and was looking at the guys to see which one of ’em he’d hit first when the barkeep stepped around from the end of the bar and came between them. He was fat but he had shoulders and a meanlooking pair of blue eyes.

“Look here, you bums,” he said, “you listen to me, sure I’m a Cherman but am I for de Kaiser? No, he’s a schweinhunt, I am sokialist unt I live toity years in Union City unt own my home unt pay taxes unt I’m a good American, but dot don’t mean dot I vill foight for Banker Morgan, not vonce. I know American vorkman in de sokialist party toity years unt all dey do is foight among each oder. Every sonofabitch denk him better den de next sonofabitch. You loafers geroutahere… closin’ time… I’m goin’ to close up an’ go home.”

One of the guys from Chicago started to laugh, “Well, I guess the drinks are on us, Oscar… it’ll be different after the revolution.”

Joe still wanted to fight but he paid for a round with his last greenback and the barkeep who was still red in the face from his speech, lifted a glass of beer to his mouth. He blew the foam off it and said, “If I talk like dot I lose my yob.”

They shook hands all around and Joe went out into the gusty northeast rain. He felt lit but he didn’t feel good. He went up to Union Square again. The recruiting speeches were over. The model battleship was dark. A couple of ragged looking youngsters were huddled in the lee of the recruiting tent. Joe felt lousy. He went down into the subway and waited for the Brooklyn train.

At Mrs. Olsen’s everything was dark. Joe rang and in a little while she came down in a padded pink dressing gown and opened the door. She was sore at being waked up and bawled him out for drinking, but she gave him a flop and next morning lent him fifteen bucks to tide him over till he got work on a Shipping Board boat. Mrs. Olsen looked tired and a lot older, she said she had pains in her back and couldn’t get through her work any more.

Next morning Joe put up some shelves in the pantry for her and carried out a lot of litter before he went over to the Shipping Board recruiting office to put his name down for the officer’s school. The little kike behind the desk had never been to sea and asked him a lot of damnfool questions and told him to come around next week to find out what action would be taken on his application. Joe got sore and told him to f — k himself and walked out.

He took Janey out to supper and to a show, but she talked just like everybody else did and bawled him out for cussing and he didn’t have a very good time. She liked the shawls though and he was glad she was making out so well in New York. He never did get around to talking to her about Della.

After taking her home he didn’t know what the hell to do with himself. He wanted a drink, but taking Janey out and everything had cleaned up the fifteen bucks he’d borrowed from Mrs. Olsen. He walked west to a saloon he knew on Tenth Avenue, but the place was closed: wartime prohibition. Then he walked back towards Union Square, maybe that feller Tex he’d seen when he was walking across the square with Janey would still be sitting there and he could chew the rag a while with him. He sat down on a bench opposite the cardboard battleship and began sizing it up: not such a bad job. Hell, I wisht I’d never seen the inside of a real battleship, he was thinking, when Tex slipped into the seat beside him and put his hand on his knee. The minute he touched him Joe knew he’d never liked the guy, eyes too close together: “What you lookin’ so blue about, Joe? Tell me you’re getting’ your ticket.”

Joe nodded and leaned over and spat carefully between his feet.

“What do you think of that for a model battleship, pretty nifty, ain’t it? Jez, us guys is lucky not to be overseas fightin’ the fritzes in the trenches.”

“Oh, I’d just as soon,” growled Joe. “I wouldn’t give a damn.”

“Say, Joe, I got a job lined up. Guess I oughtn’t to blab around about it, but you’re regular. I know you won’t say nothin’. I been on the bum for two weeks, somethin’ wrong with my stomach. Man, I’m sick, I’m tellin’ you. I can’t do no heavy work no more. A punk I know works in a whitefront been slippin’ me my grub, see. Well, I was sittin’ on a bench right here on the square, a feller kinda well dressed sits down an’ starts to chum up. Looked to me like one of these here sissies lookin’ for rough trade, see, thought I’d roll him for some jack, what the hell, what can you do if you’re sick an’ can’t work?”

Joe sat leaning back with his legs stuck out, his hands in his pockets staring hard at the outline of the battleship against the buildings. Tex was talking fast, poking his face into Joe’s: “Turns out the sonofabitch was a dick. S — t I was scared pissless. A secret service agent. Burns is his big boss… but what he’s lookin’ for’s reds, slackers, German spies, guys that can’t keep their traps shut… an’ he turns around and hands me out a job, twentyfive smackers a week if little Willy makes good. All I got to do’s bum around and listen to guys talk, see? If I hears anything that ain’t 100 per cent I slips the word to the boss and he investigates. Twentyfive a week and servin’ my country besides, and if I gets in any kind of jam, Burns gets me out…. What do you think of that for the gravy, Joe?”

Joe got to his feet. “Guess I’ll go back to Brooklyn.” “Stick around… look here, you’ve always treated me white… you belong, I know that Joe… I’ll put you next to this guy if you want. He’s a good scout, educated feller an’ all that and he knows where you can get plenty liquor an’ women if you want ’em.” “Hell, I’m goin” to sea and get out of all this’s — t,” said Joe, turning his back and walking towards the subway station.