The 42nd Parallel
She nodded and then hid her face and started to cry again.
“The lousy little bastard,” Charley kept saying. She crumpled up on the sofa with her face in her hands.
“He’s gone to Chicago . . . He’s a bad egg allright,” said Charley.
He felt he had to get out in the air. He picked up his coat and hat and started to put them on. Then she got to her feet and threw herself against him. She held him close and her arms were tight round his neck. “Honestly, Charley, I loved you all the time . . . I pretended to myself it was you.” She kissed him on the mouth. He pushed her away, but he felt weak and tired and thought of the icy streets walking home and his cold hallbedroom and thought, what the hell did it matter anyway? and took off his hat and coat again. She kissed him and loved him up and locked the parlor door and they loved each other up on the sofa and she let him do everything he wanted. Then after a while she turned on the light and straightened her clothes and went over to the mirror to fix her hair and he tied his necktie again and she smoothed down his hair as best she could with her fingers and they unlocked the parlor door very carefully and she went out in the hall to call dad. Her face was flushed and she looked very pretty again. Mr. Svenson and Anna and all the girls were out in the kitchen and Emiscah said, “Dad, Charley and I are going to get married next month,” and everybody said, “Congratulations,” and all the girls kissed Charley and Mr. Svenson broke out a bottle of whisky and they had a drink all round and Charley went home feeling like a whipped dog.
There was a fellow named Hendriks at the shop seemed a pretty wise guy; Charley asked him next noon whether he didn’t know of anything a girl could take and he said he had a prescription for some pills and next day he brought it and told Charley not to tell the druggist what he wanted them for. It was payday and Hendriks came round to Charley’s room after he’d gotten cleaned up that night and asked him if he’d gotten the pills allright. Charley had the package right in his pocket and was going to cut nightschool that night and take it to Emiscah. First he and Hendriks went to have a drink at the corner. He didn’t like whisky straight and Hendriks said to take it with ginger ale. It tasted great and Charley felt sore and miserable inside and didn’t want to see Emiscah anyway. They had some more drinks and then went and bowled for a while. Charley beat him four out of five and Hendriks said the party was on him from now on.
Hendriks was a squareshouldered redheaded guy with a freckled face and a twisted nose and he began telling stories about funny things that had happened with the ribs and how that was his long suit anyway. He’d been all over and had had high yallers and sealskin browns down New Orleans and Chink girls in Seattle, Wash., and a fullblooded Indian squaw in Butte, Montana, and French girls and German Jewish girls in Colon and a Caribee woman more than ninety years old in Port of Spain. He said that the Twin Cities was the bunk and what a guy ought to do was to go down an’ get a job in the oilfields at Tampico or in Oklahoma where you could make decent money and live like a white man. Charley said he’d pull out of St. Paul in a minute if it wasn’t that he wanted to finish his course in nightschool and Hendriks told him he was a damn fool, that book learnin’ never got nobody nowhere and what he wanted was to have a good time when he had his strength and after that to hell wid ’em. Charley said he felt like saying to hell wid ’em anyway.
They went to several bars, and Charley who wasn’t used to drinking anything much except beer began to reel a little, but it was swell barging round with Hendriks from bar to bar. Hendriks sang My Mother Was a Lady in one place and The Bastard King of England in another where an old redfaced guy with a cigar set them up to some drinks. Then they tried to get into a dancehall but the guy at the door said they were too drunk and threw them out on their ear and that seemed funny as hell and they went to a back room of a place Hendriks knew and there were two girls there Hendriks knew and Hendriks fixed it up for ten dollars each for all night, then they had one more drink before going to the girls’ place and Hendriks sang:
Two drummers sat at dinner in a grand hotel one day
While dining they were chatting in a jolly sort of way
And when a pretty waitress brought them a tray of food
They spoke to her familiarly in a manner rather rude
“He’s a hot sketch,” said one of the girls to the other. But the other was a little soused and began to get a crying jag when Hendriks and Charley put their heads together and sang:
My mother was a lady like yours you will allow
And you may have a sister who needs protection now
I’ve come to this great city to find a brother dear
And you wouldn’t dare insult me, sir, if Jack were only here.
They cried and the other one kept shoving her and saying, “Dry your eyes, deary, you’re maudlin,” and it was funny as hell.
The next few weeks Charley was uneasy and miserable. The pills made Emiscah feel awful sick but they finally brought her around. Charley didn’t go there much, though they still talked about “When we’re married,” and the Svensons treated Charley as a soninlaw. Emiscah nagged a little about Charley’s drinking and running round with this fellow Hendriks. Charley had dropped out of nightschool and was looking for a chance to get a job that would take him away somewhere, he didn’t much care where. Then one day he busted a lathe and the foreman fired him. When he told Emiscah about it she got sore and said she thought it was about time he gave up boozing and running round and he paid little attention to her and he said it was about time for him to butt out, and picked up his hat and coat and left. Afterwards when he was walking down the street he wished he’d remembered to ask her to give him back his seal ring, but he didn’t go back to ask for it.
That Sunday he went to eat at old man Vogel’s, but he didn’t tell them he’d lost his job. It was a sudden hot spring day. He’d been walking round all morning, with a headache from getting tanked up with Hendriks the night before, looking at the crocuses and hyacinths in the parks and the swelling buds in the dooryards. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He was a week overdue on his rent and he wasn’t getting any schooling and he hadn’t any girl and he felt like saying to hell with everything and joining up in the militia to go down to the Mexican border. His head ached and he was tired of dragging his feet over the pavements in the early heat. Welldressed men and women went by in limousines and sedans. A boy flashed by on a red motorbike. He wished he had the jack to buy a motorbike himself and go on a trip somewhere. Last night he’d tried to argue Hendriks into going South with him, but Hendriks said he’d picked up with a skirt that was a warm baby and he was getting his nookie every night and going to stay right with it. To hell with all that, thought Charley; I want to see some country.
He looked so down in the mouth that Jim said, “What’s the trouble, Charley?” when he walked into the garage. “Aw, nothing,” said Charley, and started to help clean the parts of the carburetor of a Mack truck Jim was tinkering with. The truckdriver was a young feller with closecropped black hair and a tanned face. Charley liked his looks. He said he was going to take a load of storefittings down to Milwaukee next day and was looking for a guy to go with him. “Would you take me?” said Charley. The truckdriver looked puzzled. “He’s my kid brother, Fred; he’ll be allright . . . But what about your job?”
Charley colored up. “Aw, I resigned.” “Well, come round with me to see the boss,” said the truckdriver. “And if it’s allright by him it’s allright by me.”
They left next morning before day. Charley felt bad about sneaking out on his landlady, but he left a note on the table saying he’d send her what he owed her as soon as he got a job. It was fine leaving the city and the mills and grainelevators behind in the gray chilly early morning light. The road followed the river and the bluffs and the truck roared along sloshing through puddles and muddy ruts. It was chilly although the sun was warm when it wasn’t behind the clouds. He and Fred had to yell at each other to make their voices heard but they told stories a
nd chewed the fat about one thing and another. They spent the night in LaCrosse.
They just got into the hashjoint in time to order hamburger steaks before it closed, and Charley felt he was making a hit with the waitress who was from Omaha and whose name was Helen. She was about thirty and had a tired look under the eyes that made him think maybe she was kind of easy. He hung round until she closed up and took her out walking and they walked along the river and the wind was warm and smelt winey of sawmills and there was a little moon behind fleecy clouds and they sat down in the new grass where it was dark behind stacks of freshcut lumber laid out to season. She let her head drop on his shoulder and called him “baby boy.”
Fred was asleep in the truck rolled up in a blanket on top of the sacking when he got back. Charley curled up in his overcoat on the other side of the truck. It was cold and the packingcases were uncomfortable to lie on but he was tired and his face felt windburned, and he soon fell asleep.
They were off before day.
The first thing Fred said was, “Well, did you make her, kid?” Charley laughed and nodded. He felt good and thought to himself he was damn lucky to get away from the Twin Cities and Emiscah and that sonofabitchin’ foreman. The whole world was laid out in front of him like a map, and the Mack truck roaring down the middle of it and towns were waiting for him everywhere where he could pick up jobs and make good money and find goodlooking girls waiting to call him their baby boy.
He didn’t stay long in Milwaukee. They didn’t need any help in any of the garages so he got a job pearldiving in a lunchroom. It was a miserable greasy job with long hours. To save money he didn’t get a room but flopped in a truck in a garage where a friend of Jim’s was working. He was planning to go over on the boat as soon as he got his first week’s pay. One of the stiffs working in the lunchroom was a wobbly named Monte Davis. He got everybody to walk out on account of a freespeech fight the wobblies were running in town, so Charley worked a whole week and had not a cent to show for it and hadn’t eaten for a day and a half when Fred came back with another load on his Mack truck and set him up to a feed. They drank some beer afterwards and had a big argument about strikes. Fred said all this wobbly agitation was damn foolishness and he thought the cops would be doing right if they jailed every last one of them. Charley said that working stiffs ought to stick together for decent living conditions and the time was coming when there’d be a big revolution like the American revolution only bigger and after that there wouldn’t be any bosses and the workers would run industry. Fred said he talked like a damn foreigner and ought to be ashamed of himself and that a white man ought to believe in individual liberty and if he got a raw deal on one job he was goddam well able to find another. They parted sore, but Fred was a goodhearted guy and lent Charley five bucks to go over to Chi with.
Next day he went over on the boat. There were still some yellowish floes of rotting ice on the lake that was a very pale cold blue with a few whitecaps on it. Charley had never been out on a big body of water before and felt a little sick, but it was fine to see the chimneys and great blocks of buildings, pearly where the sun hit them, growing up out of the blur of factory smoke, and the breakwaters and the big oreboats plowing through the blue seas, and to walk down the wharf with everything new to him and to plunge into the crowd and the stream of automobiles and green and yellow buses blocked up by the drawbridge on Michigan Avenue, and to walk along in the driving wind looking at the shiny storewindows and goodlooking girls and windblown dresses.
Jim had told him to go to see a friend of his who worked in a Ford servicestation on Blue Island Avenue but it was so far that by the time he got there the guy had gone. The boss was there though and he told Charley that if he came round next morning he’d have a job for him. As he didn’t have anywhere to go and didn’t like to tell the boss he was flat he left his suitcase in the garage and walked around all night. Occasionally he got a few winks of sleep on a park bench, but he’d wake up stiff and chilled to the bone and would have to run around to warm up. The night seemed never to end and he didn’t have a red to get a cup of coffee with in the morning, and he was there walking up and down outside an hour before anybody came to open up the servicestation in the morning.
He worked at the Ford servicestation several weeks until one Sunday he met Monte Davis on North Clark Street and went to a wobbly meeting with him in front of the Newberry Library. The cops broke up the meeting and Charley didn’t walk away fast enough and before he knew what had happened to him he’d been halfstunned by a riotstick and shoved into the policewagon. He spent the night in a cell with two bearded men who were blind drunk and didn’t seem to be able to talk English anyway. Next day he was questioned by a police magistrate and when he said he was a garage mechanic a dick called up the servicestation to check up on him; the magistrate discharged him, but when he got to the garage the boss said he’d have no goddam I Won’t Works in this outfit and paid him his wages and discharged him too.
He hocked his suitcase and his good suit and made a little bundle of some socks and a couple of shirts and went round to see Monte Davis to tell him he was going to hitchhike to St. Louis. Monte said there was a freespeech fight in Evansville and he guessed he’d come along to see what was doing. They went out on the train to Joliet. When they walked past the prison Monte said the sight of a prison always made him feel sick and gave him a kind of a foreboding. He got pretty blue and said he guessed the bosses’d get him soon, but that there’d be others. Monte Davis was a sallow thinfaced youth from Muscatine, Iowa. He had a long crooked nose and stuttered and didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t sold papers or worked in a buttonfactory. He thought of nothing but the I.W.W. and the revolution. He bawled Charley out for a scissorbill because he laughed about how fast the wobblies ran when the cops broke up the meeting, and told him he ought to be classconscious and take things serious.
At the citylimits of Joliet they hopped a truck that carried them to Peoria, where they separated because Charley found a truckdriver he’d known in Chicago who offered him a lift all the way to St. Louis. In St. Louis things didn’t seem to be so good, and he got into a row with a hooker he picked up on Market Street who tried to roll him, so as a guy told him there were plenty jobs to be had in Louisville he began to beat his way East. By the time he got to New Albany it was hot as the hinges of hell; he’d had poor luck on hitches and his feet were swollen and blistered. He stood a long time on the bridge looking down into the swift brown current of the Ohio, too tired to go any further. He hated the idea of tramping round looking for a job. The river was the color of gingerbread; he started to think about the smell of gingercookies Lizzie Green used to make in his mother’s kitchen and he thought he was a damn fool to be bumming round like this. He’d go home and plant himself among the weeds, that’s what he’d do.
Just then a brokendown Ford truck came by running on a flat tire. “Hey, you’ve got a flat,” yelled Charley. The driver put on the brakes with a bang. He was a big bulletheaded man in a red sweater. “What the hell is it to you?” “Jez, I just thought you might not a noticed.” “Ah notice everythin’, boy . . . ain’t had nutten but trouble all day. Wanta lift?” “Sure,” said Charley. “Now, Ah can’t park on de bridge nohow . . . Been same goddam thing all day. Here Ah gits up early in de mornin’ b’fo’ day and goes out to haul foa hawgsheads a tobacca an de goddam nigger done lost de warehouse key. Ah swear if Ah’d had a gun Ah’d shot de son of a bitch dead.” At the end of the bridge he stopped and Charley helped him change the tire. “Where you from, boy?” he said as he straightened up and brushed the dust off his pants. “I’m from up in the Northwest,” said Charley. “Ah reckon you’re a Swede, ain’t yez?” Charley laughed. “No; I’m a garage mechanic and lookin’ for a job.” “Pahl in, boy; we’ll go an’ see ole man Wiggins—he’s ma boss—an’ see what we can do.”
Charley stayed all summer in Louisville working at the Wiggins Repair Shops. He roomed with an Italian named Grassi who’d come over to esc
ape military service. Grassi read the papers every day and was very much afraid the U.S. would go into the war. Then he said he’d have to hop across the border to Mexico. He was an anarchist and a quiet sort of guy who spent the evenings singing low to himself and playing the accordion on the lodginghouse steps. He told Charley about the big Fiat factories at Torino where he’d worked, and taught him to eat spaghetti and drink red wine and to play Funiculi funicula on the accordion. His big ambition was to be an airplane pilot. Charley picked up with a Jewish girl who worked as sorter in a tobacco warehouse. Her name was Sarah Cohen but she made him call her Belle. He liked her well enough but he was careful to make her understand that he wasn’t the marrying kind. She said she was a radical and believed in free love, but that didn’t suit him much either. He took her to shows and took her out walking in Cherokee Park and bought her an amethyst brooch when she said amethyst was her birthstone.
When he thought about himself he felt pretty worried. Here he was doing the same work day after day, with no chance of making better money or getting any schooling or seeing the country. When winter came on he got restless. He’d rescued an old Ford roadster that they were going to tow out to the junkheap and had patched it up with discarded spare parts.
He talked Grassi into going down to New Orleans with him. They had a little money saved up and they’d run down there and get a job and be there for the Mardi Gras. The first day that he’d felt very good since he left St. Paul was the sleety January day they pulled out of Louisville with the engine hitting on all four cylinders and a pile of thirdhand spare tires in the back, headed south.
They got down through Nashville and Birmingham and Mobile, but the roads were terrible and they had to remake the car as they went along and they almost froze to death in a blizzard near Guntersville and had to lay over for a couple of days, so that by the time they’d gotten down to Bay St. Louis and were bowling along the shore road under a blue sky and feeling the warm sun and seeing palms and bananatrees and Grassi was telling about Vesuvio and Bella Napoli and his girl in Torino that he’d never see again on account of the bastardly capitalista war, their money had run out. They got into New Orleans with a dollar five between them and not more than a teacupful of gasoline in the tank, but by a lucky break Charley managed to sell the car as it stood for twentyfive dollars to a colored undertaker.