“Oh Joe Joe I don’t want you to go.”
“You think I want to go?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Oh no.”
“Little mick.”
“It’s nice like this isn’t it?”
“Ummm.”
“Were you ever like this with anyone before?”
“Not with anyone I loved.”
“I’m glad.”
“It’s the truth. You?”
“You shouldn’t ask that.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a lady.”
“You’re a little mick.”
“I never was.”
“I know.”
“But you couldn’t’ve known really oh Joe I wish you’d run away and not go.”
“There. My left arm under you. Like a cushion.”
“Kiss me.”
“Sweet little mick.”
“Darling. Oh darling. Oh. Oh my dear my dear my dear my”
They didn’t sleep very much. Sometimes they dozed off and awakened and found that they were apart and came back to each other and held one another tight very tight as if they had been lost forever and had just found each other all over again. And all night long Mike was stirring through the house and coughing and mumbling.
When morning came he stood over their bed holding a breadboard which had two breakfasts on it.
“Here you kids eat.”
Tough old Mike standing there gentle and grizzled and fierce with bloodshot painful eyes. Mike had been in jail too many times not to be good. Old Mike who hated everybody. He hated Wilson and he hated Hughes and he hated Roosevelt and he hated the socialists because they had only big talk and milk in their veins for blood. He even hated Debs a little although not much. Twenty-eight years in the coal mine had fixed him up for a fine hater. “And now I’m a railroad bull goddam me a railroad bull how’s that for a filthy way to make a living?” Mike with his crooked back from the mines standing there with their breakfasts.
“Here you kids. Hurry up and eat. You ain’t got much time.”
They ate. Mike went grumbling off and didn’t come into the room again. When they had eaten they lay for a little while looking up at the ceiling and digesting their food.
“You rumbled.”
“I did not. Besides it isn’t nice for you to mention it. It was you anyhow.”
“It was a cute little rumble. I liked it.”
“You’re terrible. You get up first.”
“No you get up first.”
“Oh Joe kiss me don’t go.”
“Hurry up you damned kids.”
“You get up.”
“You.”
“I’ll count—one two three.”
They jumped out of bed. It was chilly. They shivered and laughed at each other and almost never got dressed for wanting to stop and kiss.
“Hurry up you damned kids. You’ll miss the train and then Joe will be shot by Americans instead of Germans. That would be a goddam shame.”
There were four train loads of them leaving that morning and there was a terrible crowd at the station. The whole place the station and the cars and even the locomotives were draped with bunting and the children and women mostly carried flags little flags that they waved vaguely vacantly. There were three bands all seeming to play at once and lots of officers herding people around and songs and the mayor giving an address and people crying and losing each other and laughing and drunk.
His mother and his sisters were there and Kareen was there and Mike was there muttering goddam fools and glaring at everybody and watching Kareen sharply.
“And their lives if necessary that democracy may not perish from the face of the earth ”
It’s a long way to Tiperrary it’s a long way to go
“Don’t get scared Kareen. It’s all right.”
“As that great patriot Patrick Henry said ”
Johnny get your gun get your gun get your gun
“As that great patriot George Washington said ”
“Goodbye mother goodbye Catherine goodbye Elizabeth. I’ll send back half my pay and dad’s insurance will hold out till I get back.”
And we won’t be back till it’s over over there
“Step lively boy you’re in the army now.”
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile smile smile
“As that great patriot Abraham Lincoln said ”
“Where’s my boy where’s my boy? He’s under age can’t you see? He just came up from Tucson bout a week ago. They had him in jail for a tramp and I came all the way here to get him back. They let him out of jail if he’d join the army. He’s only sixteen except he’s big and strong for his age he always was. He’s too young I tell you he’s just a baby. Where is he my little boy?”
Goodbye maw goodbye paw goodbye mule with your old hee-haw
“As that great patriot Theodore Roosevelt has said ”
America I love you you’re like a sweetheart to me
“Don’t go Joe run away they’ll kill you I know it I’ll never see you again.”
Oh Kareen why do they have a war right now just when we find each other? Kareen we’ve got more important things than war. Us Kareen you and me in a house. I’ll come home at night to you in my house your house our house. We’ll have fat happy kids smart kids too. That’s more important than a war. Oh Kareen Kareen I look at you and you’re only nineteen and you’re old like an old woman. Kareen I look at you and I cry inside and I bleed.
Just a baby’s prayer at twilight when lights are low
“As that great patriot Woodrow Wilson has said ”
There’s a silver lining through the dark cloud shining
“All aboard. All aboard.”
Over there over there over there over there over there
“Goodbye son. Write us. We’ll make out.”
“Goodbye mother goodbye Catherine goodbye Elizabeth don’t cry.”
“For you are Los Angeles’ own. May God bless you. May God give us victory.”
“All aboard. All aboard.”
The yanks are coming the yanks are coming
“Let us pray. Our Father which art in Heaven”
I can’t pray. Kareen can’t pray. Kareen Kareen this is no time to pray.
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”
Kareen Kareen I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and be with you and work and make money and have kids and love you. But I’ve got to go.
“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever Amen.”
“Goodbye Mike goodbye Kareen I love you Kareen.”
Oh say can you see
“Goodbye mother goodbye Catherine goodbye Elizabeth.”
What so proudly we hailed
“You in my arms Kareen forever.”
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Goodbye everybody goodbye. Goodbye my son father brother lover husband goodbye. Goodbye goodbye my mother father brother sister sweetheart wife goodbye and goodbye.
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
“Goodbye Joe.”
“Goodbye Kareen.”
“Joe dear darling Joe hold me closer. Drop your bag and put both of your arms around me and hold me tightly. Put both of your arms around me. Both of them.”
You in both of my arms Kareen goodbye. Both of my arms. Kareen in my arms. Both of them. Arms arms arms arms. I’m fainting in and out all the time Kareen and I’m not catching on quick. You are in my arms Kareen. You in both of my arms. Both of my arms. Both of them. Both
I haven’t got any arms Kareen.
My arms are gone.
Both of my arms are gone Kareen both of them.
They’re gone.
Kareen Kareen Kareen.
They’ve cut my arms off both of my arms.
Oh Jesus mother god Kareen they’ve cut off both of them.
Oh Jesus mothe
r god Kareen Kareen Kareen my arms.
iv
It was hot. So hot that he seemed to be burning up inside and out. It was so hot he couldn’t breathe. He could only gasp. Far off against the sky there was a foggy line of mountains and moving straight across the desert was the railroad track dancing and leaping in the heat. It seemed that he and Howie were working on the railroad. That was funny. Oh hell things were getting mixed up again. He’d seen all this before. It was like going into a new drug store for the first time and sitting down and suddenly feeling that you’ve been there many times before and that you’ve already heard what the clerk is going to say as soon as he comes up to serve you. He and Howie working on the railroad in the heat? Sure. Sure. It was all right. Things were under control.
He and Howie were working there in the hot sun laying that railroad straight through the Uintah desert. And he was so hot he felt he was going to die. He felt that if he could only stop for a little rest he would cool off. But that was the awful thing about a section gang job. You couldn’t ever stop. The fellows didn’t laugh and kid as you’d think guys would either. They didn’t say a word. They just worked.
Looking at a section gang it always seems as if they are working slow. But you have to work slow because you never stop and you have just so much strength. You don’t stop because you’re afraid. It isn’t that you’re afraid of the foreman because the foreman never bothers anybody. It’s just that you’re afraid for the job and of how much the other guy will do. So he and Howie worked slow and steady trying to keep up with the Mexicans.
His head throbbed and he could hear his heart pounding against his ribs and even down in the calves of his legs he could feel the strong pulse beat and yet he couldn’t stop work even for a minute. His breath came shorter and shorter and it seemed that his lungs were too small to hold the air he had to get into them if he was going to keep alive. It was a hundred and twenty-five in the shade and there wasn’t any shade and he felt like he was smothering under a white hot blanket and all he could think was I’ve got to stop I’ve got to stop I’ve got to stop.
They stopped for lunch.
It was their first day on the gang and he and Howie naturally thought they would be supplied with lunch from the hand car. But they weren’t. When the foreman saw they had nothing to eat he said something to a couple of the Mexicans. The Mexicans came over and offered them something out of their lunch pails. The Mexicans were eating fried egg sandwiches all crusted over with red pepper. He and Howie just grunted no thanks and flopped on their backs. Then they turned over on their stomachs because the sun was so hot it would have burned out their eye balls even with the lids closed. The Mexicans just sat and chewed on their fried egg sandwiches and stared at them.
All of a sudden there was the noise of the Mexicans getting up so he and Howie rolled over to see what was happening. The whole gang was starting down the tracks on a slow gallop. The foreman just sat and watched the gang. They asked the foreman what the idea was and the foreman said the boys were going to take a swim.
The idea of a swim was too much. He and Howie jumped up and ran along after them. The way the foreman spoke they thought they were going just a little piece down the track. But it turned out they ran two miles before they came to a canal maybe ten feet wide and mud-colored and beached on both sides with a solid mass of tumbleweeds. The Mexicans started pulling their clothes off. He and Howie wondered how they figured to make it into the water without getting full of thistles. They decided there must be some path through the weeds or the Mexicans wouldn’t have tackled the swim in the first place. By the time they were undressed the Mexicans were splashing around in the ditch and laughing and yelling.
It turned out there wasn’t any path through the tumble-weeds after all. They were ashamed to stand there so naked and white compared to the rest and do nothing about it. So they began jumping through the tumbleweeds until they were in the water. The water was hot and it smelled of alkali but that didn’t make any difference. It was like an April shower. He thought about the Y.M.C.A. swimming pool in Shale City. He thought my gosh these guys act as if this was the greatest swimming hole in the world. He thought I’ll bet they were never in a swimming pool in their lives. He was standing there with the mud of the ditch bottom up above his ankles when the Mexicans began climbing out and putting their clothes on again. The swim was over.
By the time he and Howie got back to their clothes they were whiskered with thistles to the hips. They noticed that the Mexicans didn’t even bother to pick the thistles out. Some of the Mexicans were already starting on the trip back to the hand car so they sort of brushed the thistles off their legs and leaped into their clothes. Then they ran the two miles back and lunch was over and it was time to go to work again.
As the afternoon wore on he and Howie began to stumble at their work and finally to fall. The foreman didn’t say anything when they fell down and neither did the Mexicans. The Mexicans just stopped and waited for them to get up staring like babies all the while. When they stumbled back to their feet they began tugging at the rails again. Every muscle in their bodies ached and still they had to keep on working. Most of the skin had worn off their hands. Every time they grabbed the hot rail-tongs and lifted they could taste the pain of raw hands clear into their mouths. The thistles in their feet and legs seemed to go deeper and deeper with every step they took and they festered and there was no time to stop and pick them out.
But the aches and bruises and the awful weariness weren’t the worst things. His body could keep up somehow but it was the things inside of him that began to strain and roar. His lungs got so dry that they squeaked with each breath. His heart swelled from pumping so hard. He got a little panic-stricken because he knew he couldn’t keep it up and he knew he had to. He wanted to die if that would get him out of work. The ground began to rise and fall beneath him and things took on a strange color and the man standing right beside him seemed miles off floating in a fog. There was nothing real but pain.
The whole afternoon was a mixture of stumbling on his knees in the dust and fighting for breath and feeling his stomach inside him swell and jerk and draw up hard. He tried to think of Diane. He tried to think of what she looked like. He tried to find her there in the desert so he would have something to tie to. But he couldn’t bring her face before his eyes. He couldn’t even imagine her.
Suddenly he thought oh Diane you’re not worth it. You can’t be worth it. No one on earth except maybe a guy’s mother could be worth so much pain. Yet working there in the midst of pain he tried to figure out excuses for Diane. Maybe she really hadn’t meant to cheat on him. Maybe she had dated Glen Hogan because she couldn’t find any other way out. If that was true and he hoped it was true then it was awfully silly for him to be away out here in the desert forgetting it all with a bunch of Mexicans when he might just as well be back in the cool shade of Shale City enjoying summer vacation and thinking maybe I’ll have a date with Diane tonight.
He thought girls are a terrible thing all right. Girls are probably all untrue and faithless and they try to smash a guy but you’ve just got to expect it from them. You’ve had to expect it from them and learn to forgive them because it stood to reason that if you rushed away like he and Howie had and went into the middle of a desert and decided you would bury yourselves there for the whole three months’ summer vacation why nobody suffered but you. And that left the girl back there in Shale City to go out with Glen Hogan as much as she wanted to. Tugging and stumbling and trying to breathe he suddenly had an awful feeling come over him. He was asking himself a question. He was saying to himself Joe Bonham have you been a fool?
Somebody hollered out that it was quitting time and things began to dissolve slowly in front of his eyes. When he got them back into focus he was lying on his stomach with his head hanging over the side of the hand car and Howie lying beside him. He remembered looking down at the ground as it ran like water in front of his eyes and hearing those Mexicans singing. They were taki
ng turns pumping away on that hand car to get them back to the bunkhouse. He just lay there gagging a little and listening to them sing.
The bunkhouse had a dirt floor. It was a sort of shed with a tin roof. It was so hot inside that he wanted to reach out with his hands for air to stuff into his lungs. The bunks were wood one on top of the other. He and Howie staggered to a pair of bunks that were together. They didn’t even bother to unroll their bedding. They just flopped on the bunks and lay there quiet and still. The foreman came up and asked if they wanted him to show them where they could get dinner. But they didn’t pay any attention to him. They just lay back and closed their eyes.
He had reached a funny state. It was the first time in his life he had ever felt that way. No one part of his body hurt more than any other part so the pain everywhere stopped and he was only numb and sleepy. He thought about Diane again. Not for very long but she was the last thought in his mind before the darkness. He thought about Diane tiny and cute and scared the first time he kissed her. Oh Diane he thought how could you have done such a thing? How could you have done it? And then somebody was shaking him.
They might have been shaking him for hours for all he knew. He opened his eyes. He was still in the bunkhouse. It was dark and the air was filled with sighs. There was a smell of smoke in the place. The Mexicans had cooked their supper over a fire in the middle of the floor. There was a hole in the tin roof for the smoke to escape through. He could see the stars through it flickering like something in a fever dream. He gagged. The smell of food and smoke in the air. Wasn’t it just like a Mexican to want something piping hot for supper after spending a whole day in the bottom of hell?
It was Howie shaking him.
“Wake up. It’s ten o’clock.”
He didn’t know whether it was night or whether his eye sockets had just burned out and he couldn’t tell sunlight from dark.
“Morning or night?”
“Night.”
“Tonight or last night?”