He’d gotten back to trying to remember his highschool games, inning by inning, when the key was put into the lock. The corporal who’d searched him opened the door and handed him his shirt and pants. “You can wash up if you want to,” he said. “Better clean up smart. Orders is to take you to Captain Cooper-Trahsk.” “Gosh, can’t you get me somethin’ to eat or some water. I’m about starved. . . . Say, how long have I been in here, anyway?” Joe was blinking in the bright white light that came in from the other room. He pulled on his shirt and pants.
“Come along,” said the corporal. “Can’t ahnswer no question till you’ve seen Captain Cooper-Trahsk.” “But what about my slippers?” “You keep a civil tongue in your mouth and ahnswer all questions you’re harsked and it’ll be all the better for you. . . . Come along.”
When he followed the corporal down the same corridor he’d come in by all the English tommies stared at his bare feet. In the lavatory there was a shiny brass tap of cold water and a hunk of soap. First Joe took a long drink. He felt giddy and his knees were shaking. The cold water and washing his hands and face and feet made him feel better. The only thing he had to dry himself on was a roller towel already grimy. “Say, I need a shave,” he said. “You’ll ’ave to come along now,” said the corporal sternly. “But I got a Gillette somewheres. . . .”
The corporal gave him an angry stare. They were going in the door of a nicely furnished office with a thick red and brown carpet on the floor. At a mahogany desk sat an elderly man with white hair and a round roastbeef face and lots of insignia on his uniform. “Is that. . . ?” Joe began, but he saw that the corporal after clicking his heels and saluting had frozen into attention.
The elderly man raised his head and looked at them with a fatherly blue eye, “Ah . . . quite so . . .” he said. “Bring him up closer, corporal, and let’s have a look at him. . . . Isn’t he in rather a mess, corporal? You’d better give the poor beggar some shoes and stockings. . . .” “Very good, sir,” said the corporal in a spiteful tone, stiffening to attention again. “At ease, corporal, at ease,” said the elderly man, putting on a pair of eyeglasses and looking at some papers on his desk. “This is . . . er . . . Zentner . . . claim American citizenship, eh?” “The name is Williams, sir.” “Ah, quite so . . . Joe Williams, seaman. . . .” He fixed his blue eyes confidentially on Joe. “Is that your name, me boy?”
“Yessir.”
“Well, how do you come to be trying to get into England in wartime without passport or other identifying document?”
Joe told about how he had an American A.B. certificate and had been on the beach at B.A. . . . Buenos Aires. “And why were you . . . er . . . in this condition in the Argentine?” “Well, sir, I’d been on the Mallory Line and my ship sailed without me and I’d been painting the town red a little, sir, and the skipper pulled out ahead of schedule so that left me on the beach.”
“Ah . . . a hot time in the old town tonight . . . that sort of thing, eh?” The elderly man laughed; then suddenly he puckered up his brows. “Let me see . . . er . . . what steamer of the Mallory Line were you travelling on?” “The Patagonia, sir, and I wasn’t travellin’ on her, I was a seaman on board of her.”
The elderly man wrote a long while on a sheet of paper, then he lifted Joe’s cigarbox out of the desk drawer and began looking through the clippings and photographs. He brought out a photograph and turned it out so that Joe could see it. “Quite a pretty girl . . . is that your best beloved, Williams?” Joe blushed scarlet. “That’s my sister.” “I say she looks like a ripping girl . . . don’t you think so, corporal?” “Quite so, sir,” said the corporal distantly. “Now, me boy, if you know anything about the activities of German agents in South America . . . many of them are Americans or impostors masquerading as Americans . . . it’ll be much better for you to make a clean breast of it.”
“Honestly, sir,” said Joe, “I don’t know a thing about it. I was only in B.A. for a few days.” “Have you any parents living?” “My father’s a pretty sick man. . . . But I have my mother and sisters in Georgetown.” “Georgetown . . . Georgetown . . . let me see . . . isn’t that in British Guiana?” “It’s part of Washington, D.C.” “Of course . . . ah, I see you were in the navy. . . .” The elderly man held off the picture of Joe and the two other gobs. Joe’s knees felt so weak he thought he was going to fall down. “No, sir, that was in the naval reserve.”
The elderly man put everything back in the cigarbox. “You can have these now, my boy. . . . You’d better give him a bit of breakfast and let him have an airing in the yard. He looks a bit weak on his pins, corporal.”
“Very good, sir.” The corporal saluted, and they marched out.
The breakfast was watery oatmeal, stale tea and two slices of bread with margarine on it. After it Joe felt hungrier than before. Still it was good to get out in the air, even if it was drizzling and the flagstones of the small courtyard where they put him were like ice to his bare feet under the thin slime of black mud that was over them.
There was another prisoner in the courtyard, a little fatfaced man in a derby hat and a brown overcoat, who came up to Joe immediately. “Say, are you an American?”
“Sure,” said Joe.
“My name’s Zentner . . . buyer in restaurant furnishings . . . from Chicago. . . . This is the tamnest outrage. Here I come to this tamned country to buy their tamned goods, to spend good American dollars. . . . Three days ago yet I placed a ten tousand dollar order in Sheffield. And they arrest me for a spy and I been here all night yet and only this morning vill they let me telephone the consulate. It is outrageous and I hafe a passport and visa all they vant. I can sue for this outrage. I shall take it to Vashington. I shall sue the British government for a hundred tousand dollars for defamation of character. Forty years an American citizen and my fader he came not from Chermany but from Poland. . . . And you, poor boy, I see that you haf no shoes. And they talk about the atrocious Chermans and if this ain’t an atrocity, vat is it?”
Joe was shivering and running round the court at a jogtrot to try to keep warm. Mr. Zentner took off his brown coat and handed it to him.
“Here, kid, you put that coat on.” “But, jeez, it’s too good; that’s damn nice of you.” “In adversity ve must help von anoder.”
“Dod gast it, if this is their spring, I hate to think what their winter’s like. . . . I’ll give the coat back to you when I go in. Jeez, my feet are cold. . . . Say, did they search you?” Mr. Zentner rolled up his eyes. “Outrageous,” he spluttered . . .“Vat indignities to a buyer from a neutral and friendly country. Vait till I tell the ambassador. I shall sue. I shall demand damages.” “Same here,” said Joe, laughing.
The corporal appeared in the door and shouted, “Williams.” Joe gave back the coat and shook Mr. Zentner’s fat hand. “Say, for Gawd’s sake, don’t forget to tell the consul there’s another American here. They’re talkin’ about sendin’ me to a concentration camp for duration.” “Sure, don’t vorry, boy. I’ll get you out,” said Mr. Zentner, puffing out his chest.
This time Joe was taken to a regular cell that had a little light and room to walk around. The corporal gave him a pair of shoes and some wool socks full of holes. He couldn’t get the shoes on but the socks warmed his feet up a little. At noon they handed him a kind of stew that was mostly potatoes with eyes in them and some more bread and margarine.
The third day when the turnkey brought the noonday slum, he brought a brownpaper package that had been opened. In it was a suit of clothes, shirt, flannel underwear, socks and even a necktie.
“There was a chit with it, but it’s against the regulaytions,” said the turnkey. “That outfit’ll make a bloomin’ toff out of you.”
Late that afternoon the turnkey told Joe to come along and he put on the clean collar that was too tight for his neck and the necktie and hitched up the pants that were much too big for him around the waist and followed along corridors and across a court full of tommies into a little office wit
h a sentry at the door and a sergeant at a desk. Sitting on a chair was a busylooking young man with a straw hat on his knees. “’Ere’s your man, sir,” said the sergeant without looking at Joe. “I’ll let you question him.”
The busylooking young man got to his feet and went up to Joe. “Well, you’ve certainly been making me a lot of trouble, but I’ve been over the records in your case and it looks to me as if you were what you represented yourself to be. . . . What’s your father’s name?”
“Same as mine, Joseph P. Williams. . . . Say, are you the American consul?”
“I’m from the consulate. . . . Say, what the hell do you want to come ashore without a passport for? Don’t you think we have anything better to do than to take care of a lot of damn fools that don’t know enough to come in when it rains? Damn it, I was goin’ to play golf this afternoon and here I’ve been here two hours waiting to get you out of the cooler.”
“Jeez, I didn’t come ashore. They come on and got me.”
“That’ll teach you a lesson, I hope. . . . Next time you have your papers in order.”
“Yessirree . . . I shu will.”
A half an hour later Joe was out on the street, the cigarbox and his old clothes rolled up in a ball under his arm. It was a sunny afternoon; the redfaced people in dark clothes, longfaced women in crummy hats, the streets full of big buses and the tall trolleycars; everything looked awful funny, until he suddenly remembered it was England and he’d never been there before.
He had to wait a long time in an empty office at the consulate while the busylooking young man made up a lot of papers. He was hungry and kept thinking of beefsteak and frenchfried. At last he was called to the desk and given a paper and told that there was a berth all ready for him on the American steamer Tampa, out of Pensacola, and he’d better go right down to the agents and make sure about it and go on board and if they caught him around Liverpool again it would be the worse for him.
“Say, is there any way I can get anything to eat around here, Mr. Consul?” “What do you think this is, a restaurant? . . . No, we have no appropriations for any handouts. You ought to be grateful for what we’ve done already.” “They never paid me off on the Argyle and I’m about starved in that jail, that’s all.” “Well, here’s a shilling but that’s absolutely all I can do.” Joe looked at the coin, “Who’s ’at—King George? Well, thank you, Mr. Consul.”
He was walking along the street with the agent’s address in one hand and the shilling in the other. He felt sore and faint and sick in his stomach. He saw Mr. Zentner the other side of the street. He ran across through the jammed up traffic and went up to him with his hand held out.
“I got the clothes, Mr. Zentner, it was damn nice of you to send them.” Mr. Zentner was walking along with a small man in an officer’s uniform. He waved a pudgy hand and said, “Glad to be of service to a fellow citizen,” and walked on.
Joe went into a fried fish shop and spent sixpence on fried fish and spent the other sixpence on a big mug of beer in a saloon where he’d hoped to find free lunch to fill up on but there wasn’t any free lunch. By the time he’d found his way to the agent’s office it was closed and there he was roaming round the streets in the white misty evening without any place to go. He asked several guys around the wharves if they knew where the Tampa was docked, but nobody did and they talked so funny he could hardly understand what they said anyway.
Then just when the streetlights were going on, and Joe was feeling pretty discouraged, he found himself walking down a side street behind three Americans. He caught up to them and asked them if they knew where the Tampa was. Why the hell shouldn’t they know, weren’t they off’n her and out to see the goddam town and he’d better come along. And if he wasn’t tickled to meet some guys from home after those two months on the limejuicer and being in jail and everything. They went into a bar and drank some whiskey and he told all about the jail and how the damn bobbies had taken him off the Argyle and he’d never gotten his pay nor nutten and they set him up to drinks and one of the guys who was from Norfolk, Virginia, named Will Stirp pulled out a five dollar bill and said to take that and pay him back when he could.
It was like coming home to God’s country running into guys like that and they all had a drink all around; they were four of ’em Americans in this lousy limejuicer town and they each set up a round because they were four of ’em Americans ready to fight the world. Olaf was a Swede but he had his first papers so he counted too and the other feller’s name was Maloney. The hatchetfaced barmaid held back on the change but they got it out of her; she’d only given ’em fifteen shillings instead of twenty for a pound, but they made her give the five shillings back. They went to another fried fish shop; couldn’t seem to get a damn thing to eat in this country except fried fish and then they all had some more drinks and were the four of them Americans feeling pretty good in this lousy limejuicer town. A runner got hold of them because it was closing time on account of the war and there wasn’t a damn thing open and very few streetlights and funny little hats on the streetlights on account of the zeppelins. The runner was a pale ratfaced punk and said he knowed a house where they could ’ave a bit of beer and nice girls and a quiet social time. There was a big lamp with red roses painted on it in the parlor of the house and the girls were skinny and had horseteeth and there were some bloody limejuicers there who were pretty well under way and they were the four of them Americans. The limeys began to pick on Olaf for bein’ a bloody ’un. Olaf said he was a Swede but that he’d sooner be a bloody ’un than a limejuicer at that. Somebody poked somebody else and the first thing Joe knew he was fighting a guy bigger ’n he was and police whistles blew and there was a whole crowd of them piled up in the Black Maria.
Will Stirp kept saying they was the four of them Americans just havin’ a pleasant social time and there was no call for the bobbies to interfere. But they were all dragged up to a desk and committed and all four of ’em Americans locked up in the same cell and the limeys in another cell. The police station was full of drunks yelling and singing. Maloney had a bloody nose. Olaf went to sleep. Joe couldn’t sleep; he kept saying to Will Stirp he was scared they sure would send him to a concentration camp for the duration of the war this time and each time Will Stirp said they were the four of them Americans and wasn’t he a Freeborn American Citizen and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do to ’em. Freedom of the seas, God damn it.
Next morning they were in court and it was funny as hell except that Joe was scared; it was solemn as Quakermeetin’ and the magistrate wore a little wig and they were everyone of ’em fined three and six and costs. It came to about a dollar a head. Darned lucky they still had some jack on them.
And the magistrate in the little wig gave ’em a hell of a talking to about how this was wartime and they had no right being drunk and disorderly on British soil but had ought to be fighting shoulder to shoulder with their brothers, Englishmen of their own blood and to whom the Americans owed everything, even their existence as a great nation, to defend civilization and free institutions and plucky little Belgium against the invading huns who were raping women and sinking peaceful merchantmen.
When the magistrate had finished, the court attendants said, “Hear, hear,” under their breath and they all looked very savage and solemn and turned the American boys loose after they’d paid their fines and the police sergeant had looked at their papers. They held Joe after the others on account of his paper being from the consulate and not having the stamp of the proper police station on it but after a while they let him go with a warning not to come ashore again and that if he did it would be worse for him.
Joe felt relieved when he’d seen the skipper and had been taken on and had rigged up his bunk and gone ashore and gotten his bundle that he’d left with the nice flaxenhaired barmaid at the first pub he’d gone to the night before. At last he was on an American ship. She had an American flag painted on either side of the hull and her name Tampa, Pensacola, Florida, in white lett
ers. There was a colored boy cooking and first thing they had cornmeal mush and karo syrup, and coffee instead of that lousy tea and the food tasted awful good. Joe felt better than any time since he’d left home. The bunks were clean and a fine feeling it was when the Tampa left the dock with her whistle blowing and started easing down the slatecolored stream of the Mersey towards the sea.
Fifteen days to Hampton Roads, with sunny weather and a sea like glass every day up to the last two days and then a stiff northwesterly wind that kicked up considerable chop off the Capes. They landed the few bundles of cotton print goods that made up the cargo at the Union Terminal in Norfolk. It was a big day for Joe when he went ashore with his pay in his pocket to take a look around the town with Will Stirp, who belonged there.
They went to see Will Stirp’s folks and took in a ball game and after that hopped the trolley down to Virginia Beach with some girls Will Stirp knew. One of the girls’ names was Della; and she was very dark and Joe fell for her, kind of. When they were putting on their bathing suits in the bathhouse he asked Will would she. . . ? And Will got sore and said, “Ain’t you got the sense to tell a good girl from a hooker?” And Joe said well, you never could tell nowadays.
They went in swimming and fooled around the beach in their bathing suits and built a fire and toasted marshmallows and then they took the girls home. Della let Joe kiss her when they said good night and he began kinder planning that she’d be his steady girl.