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.
The Camera Eye (34)
his voice was three thousand miles away all the time he kept wanting to get up outa bed his cheeks were bright pink and the choky breathing No kid you better lay there quiet we dont want you catching more cold that’s why they sent me down to stay with you to keep you from getting up outa bed
the barrelvaulted room all smells fever and whitewash carbolic sick wops outside the airraid siren’s got a nightmare
(Mestre’s a railhead and its moonlight over the Brenta and the basehospital and the ammunition dump
carbolic blue moonlight)
all the time he kept trying to get up outa bed Kiddo you better lay there quiet his voice was in Minnesota but dontjaunerstandafellersgottogetup I got a date animportantengagementtoseeabout those lots ought nevertohavestayedinbedsolate I’ll lose my deposit For chrissake dont you think I’m broke enough as it is?
Kiddo you gotto lay there quiet we’re in the hospital in Mestre you got a little fever makes things seem funny
Cant you letafellerbe? You’re in cahoots withem thaswhassematteris I know theyreouttorookme they think Imagoddamsucker tomadethatdeposit I’ll showem Illknockyergoddamblockoff
my shadow on the vault bulkyclumsily staggering and swaying from the one candle spluttering red in the raw winterhospital carbolic night above the shadow on the cot gotto keep his shoulders down to the cot Curley’s husky inspite of
(you can hear their motors now the antiaircraft batteries are letting loose must be great up there in the moonlight out of the smell of carbolic and latrines and sick wops)
sit back and light a macedonia by the candle he seems to be asleep his breathing’s so tough pneumonia breathing can hear myself breathe and the water tick in the faucet doctors and orderlies all down in the bombproof cant even hear a sick wop groan
Jesus is the guy dying?
they’ve cut off their motors the little drums in my ears sure that’s why they call em drums (up there in the blue moonlight the Austrian observer’s reaching for the string that dumps the applecart) the candleflame stands up still
not that time but wham in the side of the head woke Curley and the glass tinkling in the upstairs windows the candle staggered but didnt go out the vault sways with my shadow and Curley’s shadow dammit he’s strong head’s full of the fever reek Kiddo you gotto stay in bed (they dumped the applecart allright) shellfragments hailing around outside Kiddo you gotto get back to bed
But I gotadate oh christohsweetjesus cant you tell me how to get back to the outfit haveaheart dad I didntmeannoharm itsonlyaboutthose lots
the voice dwindles into a whine I’m pulling the covers up to his chin again light the candle again smoke a macedonia again look at my watch again must be near day ten o’clock they dont relieve me till eight
way off a voice goes up and up and swoops like the airraid siren ayayoooTO
Newsreel XXV
General Pershing’s forces today occupied Belle Joyeuse Farm and the southern edges of the Bois des Loges. The Americans encountered but little machinegun opposition. The advance was in the nature of a linestraightening operation. Otherwise the activity along the front today consisted principally of artillery firing and bombing. Patrols are operating around Belluno having preceded the flood of allies pouring through the Quero pass in the Grappa region
REBEL SAILORS DEFY ALLIES
Bonjour ma cherie
Comment allez vous?
Bonjour ma cherie
how do you do?
after a long conference with a secretary of war and the secretary of state President Wilson returned to the White House this afternoon apparently highly pleased that events are steadily pursuing the course which he had felt they would take
Avez vous fiancé? cela ne fait rien
Voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir?
Wee, wee, combien?
HELP THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION BY REPORTING
WAR PROFITEERS
Lord Robert, who is foreign minister Balfour’s right hand man added, “When victory comes the responsibility for America and Great Britain will rest not on statesmen but on the people.” The display of the red flag in our thoroughfares seems to be emblematic of unbridled license and an insignia for lawhating and anarchy, like the black flag it represents everything that is repulsive
LENINE FLEES TO ENGLAND
here I am snug as a bug in a rug on this third day of October. It was Sunday I went over and got hit in the left leg with a machinegun bullet above the knee. I am in a base hospital and very comfortable. I am writing with my left hand as my right one is under my head
STOCK MARKET STRONG BUT NARROW
Some day I’m going to murder the bugler
Some day they’re going to find him dead
I’ll dislocate his reveille
And step upon it heavily
And spend
the rest of my life in bed
A Hoosier Quixote
Hibben, Paxton, journalist, Indianapolis, Ind., Dec. 5, 1880, s. Thomas Entrekin and Jeannie Merrill (Ketcham) H.; A.B. Princeton 1903, A.M. Harvard 1904
Thinking men were worried in the middle west in the years Hibben was growing up there, something was wrong with the American Republic, was it the Gold Standard, Privilege, The Interests, Wall Street?
The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, workingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the rich, the cops were for the rich;
was it for that the pilgrims had bent their heads into the storm, filled the fleeing Indians with slugs out of their blunderbusses
and worked the stony farms of New England;
was it for that the pioneers had crossed the Appalachians,
long squirrelguns slung across lean backs,
a fistful of corn in the pocket of the buckskin vest,
was it for that the Indiana farmboys had turned out to shoot down Johnny Reb and make the black man free?
Paxton Hibben was a small cantankerous boy, son of one of the best families (the Hibbens had a wholesale dry goods business in Indianapolis); in school the rich kids didn’t like him because he went around with the poor kids and the poor kids didn’t like him because his folks were rich,
but he was the star pupil of Short Ridge High
ran the paper,
won all the debates.
At Princeton he was the young collegian, editor of the Tiger, drank a lot, didn’t deny that he ran around after girls, made a brilliant scholastic record and was a thorn in the flesh of the godly. The natural course for a bright young man of his class and position was to study law, but Hibben wanted
travel and romance à la Byron and de Musset, wellgroomed adventures in foreign lands,
so
as his family was one of the best in Indiana and friendly with Senator Beveridge he was gotten a post in the diplomatic service:
3rd sec and 2nd sec American Embassy St. Petersburg and Mexico City 1905–6, sec Legation and Chargé d’affaires, Bogotá, Colombia, 1908-9; The Hague and Luxemburg 1909–12, Santiago de Chile 1912 (retired).
Pushkin for de Musset; St. Petersburg was a young dude’s romance:
goldencrusted spires under a platinum sky,
the icegrey Neva flowing swift and deep under bridges that jingled with sleighbells;
riding home from the Islands with the Grand Duke’s mistress, the more beautiful most amorous singer of Neapolitan streetsongs;
staking a pile of rubles in a tall room glittering with chandeliers, monocles, diamonds dripped on white shoulders;
white snow, white tableclothes, white sheets,
Kakhetian wine, vodka fresh as newmown hay, Astrakhan caviar, sturgeon, Finnish salmon, Lapland ptarmigan, and the most beautiful women in the world;
but it was 1905, Hibben left the embassy one night and saw a flare of red against the trampled snow of the Nevsky
and red flags,
blood frozen in the ruts, blood trickling down the cartracks;
he saw the machineguns on the balconies of the Winter Palace, the cossacks charging the unarmed crowds that wanted peace and food and a little freedom,
heard the throaty roar of the Russian Marseillaise;
some stubborn streak in the old American blood flared in revolt, he walked the streets all night with the revolutionists, got in wrong at the embassy
and was transferred to Mexico City where there was no revolution yet, only peons and priests and the stillness of the great volcanos.
The Cientificos made him a member of the Jockey Club
where in the magnificent building of blue Puebla tile he lost all his money at roulette and helped them drink up the last few cases of champagne left over from the plunder of Cortez.
Chargé d’Affaires in Colombia (he never forgot he owed his career to Beveridge; he believed passionately in Roosevelt, and righteousness and reform, and the antitrust laws, the Big Stick that was going to scare away the grafters and malefactors of great wealth and get the common man his due) he helped wangle the revolution that stole the canal zone from the bishop of Bogotá; later he stuck up for Roosevelt in the Pulitzer libel suit; he was a progressive, believed in the Canal and T.R.
He was shunted to the Hague where he went to sleep during the vague deliberations of the International Tribunal.
In 1912 he resigned from the Diplomatic Service and went home to campaign for Roosevelt.
got to Chicago in time to hear them singing Onward Christian Soldiers at the convention in the Colosseum; in the closepacked voices and the cheers, he heard the trample of the Russian Marseillaise, the sullen silence of Mexican peons, Colombian Indians waiting for a deliverer, in the reverberance of the hymn he heard the measured cadences of the Declaration of Independence.
The talk of social justice petered out; T.R. was a windbag like the rest of ’em, the Bull Moose was stuffed with the same sawdust as the G.O.P.
Paxton Hibben ran for Congress as a progressive in Indiana but the European war had already taken people’s minds off social justice.
Warr Corr Collier’s Weekly 1914–15, staff corr Associated Press in Europe, 1915–17; war corr Leslie’s Weekly in Near East and see Russian commn for Near East Relief, June–Dec, 1921
In those years he forgot all about the diplomat’s mauve silk bathrobe and the ivory toilet sets and the little tête-à-têtes with grandduchesses,
he went to Germany as Beveridge’s secretary, saw the German troops goosestepping through Brussels,
saw Poincaré visiting the long doomed galleries of Verdun between ranks of bitter halfmutinous soldiers in blue,
saw the gangrened wounds, the cholea, the typhus, the little children with their bellies swollen with famine, the maggoty corpses of the Serbian retreat, drunk Allied officers chasing sick naked girls upstairs in the brothels in Saloniki, soldiers looting stores and churches, French and British sailors fighting with beerbottles in the bars;
walked up and down the terrace with King Constantine during the bombardment of Athens, fought a duel with a French commission agent who got up and left when a German sat down to eat in the diningroom at the Grande Bretagne; Hibben thought the duel was a joke until all his friends began putting on silk hats; he stood up and let the Frenchman take two shots at him and then fired into the ground; in Athens as everywhere he was always in hot water, a slightly built truculent man, always standing up for his friends, for people out of luck, for some idea, too reckless ever to lay down the careful steppingstones of a respectable career.
Commd 1st lieut F.A. Nov 27–1917; capt May 31–1919; served at war coll camp Grant; in France with 332nd E.A.; Finance Bureau S.O.S.; at G.H.Q. in office of Insp Gen of A.E.F.; discharged Aug. 21–1919; capt O.R.C. Feb. 7th 1920; recommend Feb 7–1925
The war in Europe was bloody and dirty and dull, but the war in New York revealed such slimy depths of vileness and hypocrisy that no man who saw it can ever feel the same again; in the army training camps it was different, the boys believed in a world safe for Democracy; Hibben believed in the Fourteen Points, he believed in The War To End War.
With mil Mission to Armenia Aug–Dec 1919; staff corr in Europe for the Chicago Tribune; with the Near East Relief 1920–22; sec Russian Red Cross commn in American 1922; v dir for U.S. Nansen Relief Mission 1923; sec AM Commn Relief Russian Children Apr 1922
In the famineyear the cholera year the typhusyear Paxton Hibben went to Moscow with a relief commission.
In Paris they were still haggling over the price of blood, squabbling over toy flags, the riverfrontiers on reliefmaps, the historical destiny of peoples, while behind the scenes the good contractplayers, the Deterdings, the Zahkaroffs, the Stinnesses sat quiet and possessed themselves o
f the raw materials.
In Moscow there was order,
in Moscow there was work,
in Moscow there was hope;
the Marseillaise of 1905, Onward Christian Soldiers of 1912, the sullen passiveness of American Indians, of infantrymen waiting for death at the front was part of the tremendous roar of the Marxian Internationale.
Hibben believed in the new world.
Back in America
somebody got hold of a photograph of Captain Paxton Hibben laying a wreath on Jack Reed’s grave; they tried to throw him out of the O.R.C.;
at Princeton at the twentieth reunion of his college class his classmates started to lynch him; they were drunk and perhaps it was just a collegeboy prank twenty years too late but they had a noose around his neck,
lynch the goddam red,
no more place in America for change, no more place for the old gags: social justice, progressivism, revolt against oppression, democracy; put the reds on the skids,
no money for them,
no jobs for them.
Mem Authors League of America, Soc of Colonial Wars, Vets Foreign Wars, Am Legion, fellow Royal and Am Geog Socs. Decorated chevalier Order of St. Stanislas (Russian), Officer Order of the Redeemer (Greek), Order of the Sacred Treasure (Japan). Clubs Princeton, Newspaper, Civic (New York)
Author: Constantine and the Greek People 1920, The Famine in Russia 1922, Henry Ward Beecher an American Portrait 1927.