The 42nd Parallel

Mac

Mac had hardly gotten off the train at Goldfield when a lanky man in khaki shirt and breeches, wearing canvas army leggins, went up to him. “If you don’t mind, what’s your business in this town, brother?” “I’m travelin’ in books.” “What kinda books?” “Schoolbooks and the like, for Truthseeker, Inc. of Chicago.” Mac rattled it off very fast, and the man seemed impressed. “I guess you’re all right,” he said. “Going up to the Eagle?” Mac nodded. “Plug’ll take ye up, the feller with the team… You see we’re looking out for these goddam agitators, the I Won’t Work outfit.”

Outside the Golden Eagle Hotel there were two soldiers on guard, toughlooking sawedoff men with their hats over their eyes. When Mac went in everybody at the bar turned and looked at him. He said “Good evening, gents,” as snappily as possible and went up to the proprietor to ask for a room. All the while he was wondering who the hell he dared ask where the office of the Nevada Workman was. “I guess I can fix you up with a bed. Travelin’ man?” “Yes,” said Mac. “In books.” Down at the end a big man with walrus whiskers was standing at the bar talking fast in a drunken whining voice, “If they’d only give me my head I’d run the bastards outa town soon enough. Too goddam many lawyers mixed up in this. Run the sonsobitches out. If they resists shoot ’em, that’s what I says to the Governor, but they’re all these sonsobitches a lawyers fussin’ everythin’ up all the time with warrants and habeas corpus and longwinded rigmarole. My ass to habeas corpus.” “All right, Joe, you tell ’em,” said the proprietor soothingly. Mac bought a cigar and sauntered out. As the door closed behind him the big man was yelling out again, “I said, My ass to habeas corpus.”

It was nearly dark. An icy wind blew through the ramshackle clapboard streets. His feet stumbling in the mud of the deep ruts, Mac walked round several blocks looking up at dark windows. He walked all over the town but no sign of a newspaper office. When he found himself passing the same Chink hashjoint for the third time, he slackened his steps and stood irresolutely on the curb. At the end of the street the great jagged shank of a hill hung over the town. Across the street a young man, his head and ears huddled into the collar of a mackinaw, was loafing against the dark window of a hardware store. Mac decided he was a squarelooking stiff and went over to speak to him.

“Say, bo, where’s the office of the Nevada Workman?” “What the hell d’you wanter know for?” Mac and the other man looked at each other. “I want to see Fred Hoff… I came on from San Fran to help in the printin’.” “Got a red card?” Mac pulled out his I.W.W. membership card. “I’ve got my union card, too, if you want to see that.”

“Hell, no… I guess you’re all right, but, as the feller said, suppose I’d been a dick, you’d be in the bullpen now, bo.”

“I told ’em I was a friggin’ bookagent to get into the damn town. Spent my last quarter on a cigar to keep up the burjwa look.”

The other man laughed. “All right, fellowworker. I’ll take you round.”

“What they got here, martial law?” asked Mac as he followed the man down an alley between two overgrown shanties.

“Every sonofabitchin’ yellerleg in the State of Nevada right here in town… Lucky if you don’t get run outa town with a bayonet in yer crotch, as the feller said.”

At the end of the alley was a small house like a shoebox with brightly lit windows. Young fellows in miners’ clothes or overalls filled up the end of the alley and sat three deep on the rickety steps. “What’s this, a poolroom?” asked Mac. “This is the Nevada Workman… Say, my name’s Ben Evans; I’ll introjuce you to the gang… Say, yous guys, this is fellowworker McCreary… he’s come on from Frisco to set up type.” “Put it there, Mac,” said a sixfooter who looked like a Swede lumberman, and gave Mac’s hand a wrench that made the bones crack.

Fred Hoff had on a green eyeshade and sat behind a desk piled with galleys. He got up and shook hands. “Oh, boy, you’re just in time. There’s hell to pay. They got the printer in the bullpen and we’ve got to get this sheet out.” Mac took off his coat and went back to look over the press. He was leaning over the typesetter’s “stone” when Fred Hoff came back and beckoned him into a corner.

“Say, Mac, I want to explain the layout here… It’s kind of a funny situation… The W.F.M.’s goin’ yellow on us… It’s a hell of a scrap. The Saint was here the other day and that bastard Mullany shot him through both arms and he’s in hospital now… They’re sore as a boil because we’re instillin’ ideas of revolutionary solidarity, see? We got the restaurant workers out and we got some of the minin’ stiffs. Now the A.F. of L.’s gettin’ wise and they’ve got a bonehead scab organizer in hobnobbin’ with the mineowners at the Montezuma Club.”

“Hey, Fred, let me take this on gradually,” said Mac.

“Then there was a little shootin’ the other day out in front of a restaurant down the line an’ the stiff that owned the joint got plugged an’ now they’ve got a couple of the boys in jail for that.” “The hell you say.” “And Big Bill Haywood’s comin’ to speak next week… That’s about the way the situation is, Mac. I’ve got to tear off an article… You’re boss printer an’ we’ll pay you seventeen fifty like we all get. Ever written any?”

“No.”

“It’s a time like this a feller regrets he didn’t work harder in school. Gosh, I wish I could write decent.”

“I’ll take a swing at an article if I get a chance.”

“Big Bill’ll write us some stuff. He writes swell.”

They set up a cot for Mac back of the press. It was a week before he could get time to go round to the Eagle to get his suitcase. Over the office and the presses was a long attic, with a stove in it, where most of the boys slept. Those that had blankets rolled up in their blankets, those that hadn’t put their jackets over their heads, those that didn’t have jackets slept as best they could. At the end of the room was a long sheet of paper where someone had printed out the Preamble in shaded block letters. On the plaster wall of the office someone had drawn a cartoon of a workingstiff labelled “I.W.W.” giving a fat man in a stovepipe hat labelled “mineowner” a kick in the seat of the pants. Above it they had started to letter “solidarity” but had only gotten as far as “S O L I D A.”

One November night Big Bill Haywood spoke at the miners’ union. Mac and Fred Hoff went to report the speech for the paper. The town looked lonely as an old trashdump in the huge valley full of shrill wind and driving snow. The hall was hot and steamy with the steam of big bodies and plug tobacco and thick mountaineer clothes that gave off the shanty smell of oil lamps and charred firewood and greasy fryingpans and raw whisky. At the beginning of the meeting men moved round uneasily, shuffling their feet and clearing the phlegm out of their throats. Mac was uncomfortable himself. In his pocket was a letter from Maisie. He knew it by heart:

DEAREST FAINY:

Everything has happened just as I was afraid of. You know what I mean, dearest little husband. It’s two months already and I’m so frightened and there’s nobody I can tell. Darling, you must come right back. I’ll die if you don’t. Honestly I’ll die and I’m so lonely for you anyways and so afraid somebody’ll notice. As it is we’ll have to go away somewheres when we’re married and not come back until plenty of time has elapsed. If I thought I could get work there I’d come to you to Goldfield. I think it would be nice if we went to San Diego. I have friends there and they say it’s lovely and there we could tell people we’d been married a long time. Please come sweetest little husband. I’m so lonely for you and it’s so terrible to stand this all alone. The crosses are kisses. Your loving wife,

MAISIE

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Big Bill talked about solidarity and sticking together in the face of the masterclass and Mac kept wondering what Big Bill would do if he’d got a girl in trouble like that. Big Bill was saying the day had come to start building a new society in the shell of the old and for the workers to get ready to assume control of the industries they’d created out of their sweat and blood. When he said, “We stand for the one big union,” there was a burst of cheering and clapping from all the wobblies in the hall. Fred Hoff nudged Mac as he clapped. “Let’s raise the roof, Mac.” The exploiting classes would be helpless against the solidarity of the whole working class. The militia and the yellowlegs were workingstiffs too. Once they realized the historic mission of solidarity the masterclass couldn’t use them to shoot down their brothers anymore. The workers must realize that every small fight, for higher wages, for free-speech, for decent living conditions, was only significant as part of the big fight for the revolution and the coöperative commonwealth. Mac forgot about Maisie. By the time Big Bill had finished speaking his mind had run ahead of the speech so that he’d forgotten just what he said, but Mac was in a glow all over and was cheering to beat hell. He and Fred Hoff were cheering and the stocky Bohemian miner that smelt so bad next them was clapping and the oneeyed Pole on the other side was clapping and the bunch of Wops were clapping and the little Jap who was waiter at the Montezuma Club was clapping and the sixfoot ranchman who’d come in in hopes of seeing a fight was clapping. “Ain’t the sonofabitch some orator,” he was saying again and again. “I tellyer, Utah’s the state for mansized men. I’m from Ogden myself.”

After the meeting Big Bill was round at the office and he joked everybody and sat down and wrote an article right there for the paper. He pulled out a flask and everybody had a drink, except Fred Hoff who didn’t like Big Bill’s drinking, or any drinking, and they all went to bed with the next issue on the press, feeling tired and flushed and fine.

Next morning when Mac woke up he suddenly thought of Maisie and reread her letter, and tears came to his eyes sitting on the edge of the cot before anybody was up yet. He stuck his head in a pail of icy water from the pump, that was frozen so hard he had to pour a kettleful of hot water off the stove into it to thaw it, but he couldn’t get the worried stiff feeling out of his forehead. When he went over with Fred Hoff to the Chink joint for breakfast he tried to tell him he was going back to San Francisco to get married.

“Mac, you can’t do it; we need you here.” “But I’ll come back, honest I will, Fred.” “A man’s first duty’s to the workin’ class,” said Fred Hoff.

“As soon as the kid’s born an’ she can go back to work I’ll come back. But you know how it is, Fred. I can’t pay the hospital expenses on seventeenfifty a week.”

“You oughta been more careful.”

“But hell, Fred, I’m made of flesh and blood like everybody else. For crissake, what do you want us to be, tin saints?”

“A wobbly oughtn’t to have any wife or children, not till after the revolution.”

“I’m not giving up the fight, Fred… I’m not sellin’ out; I swear to God I’m not.”

Fred Hoff had gotten very pale. Sucking his lips in between his teeth he got up from the table and left the restaurant. Mac sat there a long time feeling gloomy as hell. Then he went back to the office of the Workman. Fred Hoff was at the desk writing hard. “Say, Fred,” said Mac, “I’ll stay another month. I’ll write Maisie right now.” “I knew you’d stay, Mac; you’re no quitter.” “But Jesus God, man, you expect too much of a feller.” “Too much is too damn little,” said Fred Hoff. Mac started running the paper through the press.

For the next few weeks, when Maisie’s letters came he put them in his pocket without reading them. He wrote her as reassuringly as he could, that he’d come as soon as the boys could get someone to take his place.

Then Christmas night he read all Maisie’s letters. They were all the same; they made him cry. He didn’t want to get married, but it was hell living up here in Nevada all winter without a girl, and he was sick of whoring around. He didn’t want the boys to see him looking so glum, so he went down to have a drink at the saloon the restaurant workers went to. A great roaring steam of drunken singing came out of the saloon. Going in the door he met Ben Evans. “Hello, Ben, where are you goin’?” “I’m goin’ to have a drink as the feller said.” “Well, so am I.” “What’s the matter?” “I’m blue as hell.” Ben Evans laughed. “Jesus, so am I… and it’s Christmas, ain’t it?”

They had three drinks each but the bar was crowded and they didn’t feel like celebrating; so they took a pint flask, which was all they could afford, up to Ben Evans’ room. Ben Evans was a dark thickset young man with very black eyes and hair. He hailed from Louisville, Kentucky. He’d had considerable schooling and was an automobile mechanic. The room was icy cold. They sat on the bed, each of them wrapped in one of his blankets.

“Well, ain’t this a way to spend Christmas?” said Mac. “Holy Jesus, it’s a good thing Fred Hoff didn’t ketch us,” Mac snickered. “Fred’s a hell of a good guy, honest as the day an’ all that, but he won’t let a feller live.” “I guess if the rest of us were more like Fred we’d get somewheres sooner.” “We would at that… Say, Mac, I’m blue as hell about all this business, this shootin’ an’ these fellers from the W.F.M. goin’ up to the Montezuma Club and playin’ round with that damn scab delegate from Washington.” “Well, none of the wobbly crowd’s done anything like that.” “No, but there’s not enough of us…” “What you need’s a drink, Ben.” “It’s just like this goddam pint, as the feller said, if we had enough of ’em we’d get fried, but we haven’t. If we had enough boys like Fred Hoff we’d have a revolution, but we haven’t.” They each had a drink from the pint and then Mac said: “Say, Ben, did you ever get a girl in trouble, a girl you liked a hellova lot?”

“Sure, hundreds of’em.”

“Didn’t it worry you?”

“For crissake, Mac, if a girl wasn’t a goddam whore she wouldn’t let you, would she?”

“Jeez, I don’t see it like that, Ben… But hell, I don’t know what to do about it… She’s a good kid, anyways, gee…”

“I don’t trust none of ’em… I know a guy onct married a girl like that, carried on and bawled an’ made out he’d knocked her up. He married her all right an’ she turned out to be a goddam whore and he got the siph off’n her… You take it from me, boy…. Love ’em and leave ’em, that’s the only way for stiffs like us.”

They finished up the pint. Mac went back to the Workman office and went to sleep with the whisky burning in his stomach. He dreamed he was walking across a field with a girl on a warm day. The whisky was hotsweet in his mouth, buzzed like bees in his ears. He wasn’t sure if the girl was Maisie or just a goddam whore, but he felt very warm and tender, and she was saying in a little hotsweet voice, “Love me up, kid,” and he could see her body through her thingauze dress as he leaned over her and she kept crooning, “Love me up, kid,” in a hotsweet buzzing.

“Hey, Mac, ain’t you ever goin’ to get waked up?” Fred Hoff, scrubbing his face and neck with a towel, was standing over him. “I want to get this place cleaned up before the gang gets here.” Mac sat up on the cot. “Yare, what’s the matter?” He didn’t have a hangover but he felt depressed, he could tell that at once.

“Say, you certainly were stinkin’ last night.”

“The hell I was, Fred… I had a coupla drinks but, Jesus…”

“I heard you staggerin’ round here goin’ to bed like any goddam scissorbill.”

“Look here, Fred, you’re not anybody’s nursemaid. I can take care of myself.”

“You guys need nursemaids… You can’t even wait till we won the strike before you start your boozin’ and whorin’ around.” Mac was sitting on the edge of the bed lacing his boots. “What in God’s name do you think we’re all hangin’ round here for… our health?” “I don’t know what the hell most of you are hangin’ round for,” said Fred Hoff and went out slamming the door.

A couple of days later it turned out that there was another fellow around who could run a linotype and Mac left town. He sold his suitcase and his good clothes for five dollars and hopped a train of flatcars loaded with ore that took him down to Ludlow. In Ludlow he washed the alkali dust out of his mouth, got a meal and got cleaned up a little. He was in a terrible hurry to get to Frisco, all the time he kept thinking that Maisie might kill herself. He was crazy to see her, to sit beside her, to have her pat his hand gently while they were sitting side by side talking the way she used to do. After those bleak dusty months up in Goldfield he needed a woman. The fare to Frisco was $11.15 and he only had four dollars and some pennies left. He tried risking a dollar in a crapgame in the back of a saloon, but he lost it right away and got cold feet and left.