The 42nd Parallel

  It was three in the afternoon. They went into a little Chinese restaurant on the waterfront and drank coffee. They had two dollars they got from hocking their suitcases. The pawnbroker wouldn’t take the silk shirts because they were dirty. Outside it was raining pitchforks.

  “Jesus, why the hell didn’t we have the sense to keep sober? God, we’re a coupla big stiffs, Ike.”

  “We had a good party . . . Jez, you looked funny with that liprouge all over your face.”

  “I feel like hell . . . I wanta study an’ work for things; you know what I mean, not to get to be a goddam slavedriver but for socialism and the revolution an’ like that, not work an’ go on a bat an’ work an’ go on a bat like those damn yaps on the railroad.”

  “Hell, another time we’ll have more sense an’ leave our wads somewhere safe . . . Gee, I’m beginning to sink by the bows myself.”

  “If the damn house caught fire I wouldn’t have the strength to walk out.”

  They sat in the Chink place as long as they could and then they went out in the rain to find a thirtycent flophouse where they spent the night, and the bedbugs ate them up. In the morning they went round looking for jobs, Mac in the printing trades and Ike at the shipping agencies. They met in the evening without having had any luck and slept in the park as it was a fine night. Eventually they both signed up to go to a lumbercamp up the Snake River. They were sent up by the agency on a car full of Swedes and Finns. Mac and Ike were the only ones who spoke English. When they got there they found the foreman so hardboiled and the grub so rotten and the bunkhouse so filthy that they lit out at the end of a couple of days, on the bum again. It was already cold in the Blue Mountains and they would have starved to death if they hadn’t been able to beg food in the cookhouses of lumbercamps along the way. They hit the railroad at Baker City, managed to beat their way back to Portland on freights. In Portland they couldn’t find jobs because their clothes were so dirty, so they hiked southward along a big endless Oregon valley full of fruit-ranches, sleeping in barns and getting an occasional meal by cutting wood or doing chores around a ranch house.

  In Salem, Ike found that he had a dose and Mac couldn’t sleep nights worrying for fear he might have it too. They tried to go to a doctor in Salem. He was a big roundfaced man with a hearty laugh. When they said they didn’t have any money he guessed it was all right and that they could do some chores to pay for the consultation, but when he heard it was a venereal disease he threw them out with a hot lecture on the wages of sin.

  They trudged along the road, hungry and footsore; Ike had fever and it hurt him to walk. Neither of them said anything. Finally they got to a small fruitshipping station where there were watertanks, on the main line of the Southern Pacific. There Ike said he couldn’t walk any further, that they’d have to wait for a freight. “Jesus Christ, jail ’ud be better than this.”

  “When you’re outa luck in this man’s country, you certainly are outa luck,” said Mac and for some reason they both laughed.

  Among the bushes back of the station they found an old tramp boiling coffee in a tin can. He gave them some coffee and bread and baconrind and they told him their troubles. He said he was headed south for the winter and that the thing to cure it up was tea made out of cherry pits and stems. “But where the hell am I going to get cherry pits and stems?” Anyway he said not to worry, it was no worse than a bad cold. He was a cheerful old man with a face so grimed with dirt it looked like a brown leather mask. He was going to take a chance on a freight that stopped there to water a little after sundown. Mac dozed off to sleep while Ike and the old man talked. When he woke up Ike was yelling at him and they were all running for the freight that had already started. In the dark Mac missed his footing and fell flat on the ties. He wrenched his knee and ground cinders into his nose and by the time he had got to his feet all he could see were the two lights on the end of the train fading into the November haze.

  That was the last he saw of Ike Hall.

  He got himself back on the road and limped along until he came to a ranch house. A dog barked at him and worried his ankles but he was too down and out to care. Finally a stout woman came to the door and gave him some cold biscuits and applesauce and told him he could sleep in the barn if he gave her all his matches. He limped to the barn and snuggled into a pile of dry sweetgrass and went to sleep.

  In the morning the rancher, a tall ruddy man named Thomas, with a resonant voice, went over to the barn and offered him work for a few days at the price of his board and lodging. They were kind to him, and had a pretty daughter named Mona that he kinder fell in love with. She was a plump rosy-cheeked girl, strong as a boy and afraid of nothing. She punched him and wrestled with him; and, particularly after he’d gotten fattened up a little and rested, he could hardly sleep nights for thinking of her. He lay in his bed of sweetgrass telling over the touch of her bare arm that rubbed along his when she handed him back the nozzle of the sprayer for the fruittrees, or was helping him pile up the pruned twigs to burn, and the roundness of her breasts and her breath sweet as a cow’s on his neck when they romped and played tricks on each other evenings after supper. But the Thomases had other ideas for their daughter and told Mac that they didn’t need him any more. They sent him off kindly with a lot of good advice, some old clothes and a cold lunch done up in a newspaper, but no money. Mona ran after him as he walked off down the dustyrutted wagonroad and kissed him right in front of her parents. “I’m stuck on you,” she said. “You make a lot of money and come back and marry me.” “By gum, I’ll do that,” said Mac, and he walked off with tears in his eyes and feeling very good. He was particularly glad he hadn’t got the clap off that girl in Seattle.

  Newsreel VI

  Paris Shocked At Last

  HARRIMAN SHOWN AS RAIL COLOSSUS

  noted swindler run to earth

  TEDDY WIELDS BIG STICK

  straphangers demand relief.

  We were sailing along

  On moonlight bay

  You can hear the voices ringing

  They seem to say

  You have stolen my heart, now don’t go away

  Just as we sang

  love’s

  old

  sweet

  songs

  On moonlight bay

  MOB LYNCHES AFTER PRAYER

  when the metal poured out of the furnace I saw the men running to a place of safety. To the right of the furnace I saw a party of ten men all of them running wildly and their clothes a mass of flames. Apparently some of them had been injured when the explosion occurred and several of them tripped and fell. The hot metal ran over the poor men in a moment.

  PRAISE MONOPOLY AS BOON TO ALL

  industrial foes work for peace at Mrs. Potter Palmer’s

  love’s

  old

  sweet

  song

  We were sailing along

  on moonlight bay

  The Camera Eye (7)

  skating on the pond next the silver company’s mills where there was a funny fuzzy smell from the dump whale-oil soap somebody said it was that they used in cleaning the silver knives and spoons and forks putting shine on them for sale there was shine on the ice early black ice that rang like a sawblade just scratched white by the first skaters I couldn’t learn to skate and kept falling down look out for the muckers everybody said bohunk and polak kids put stones in their snowballs write dirty words up on walls do dirty things up alleys their folks work in the mills

  we clean young American Rover Boys handy with tools Deerslayers played hockey Boy Scouts and cut figure eights on the ice Achilles Ajax Agamemnon I couldn’t learn to skate and kept falling down

  The Plant Wizard

  Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,

  he walked round the woods one winter

  crunching through the shinycrusted snow

  stumbled into a little dell where a warm spring was

  and found the grass green and weeds spro
uting

  and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,

  He went home and sat by the stove and read Darwin

  Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural

  Selection that wasn’t what they taught in church,

  so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,

  found a seedball in a potato plant

  sowed the seed and cashed in on Mr. Darwin’s Natural Selection

  on Spencer and Huxley

  with the Burbank Potato.

  Young man go west;

  Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa

  full of his dream of green grass in winter ever

  blooming flowers ever

  bearing berries; Luther Burbank

  could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbank

  carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter

  and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus—

  winters were bleak in that bleak

  brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts—

  out to sunny Santa Rosa;

  and he was a sunny old man

  where roses bloomed all year

  everblooming everbearing

  hybrids.

  America was hybrid

  America should cash in on Natural Selection.

  He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and Natural

  Selection and the influence of the mighty dead

  and a good firm shipper’s fruit

  suitable for canning.

  He was one of the grand old men until the churches

  and the congregations

  got wind that he was an infidel and believed

  in Darwin.

  Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,

  selecting improved hybrids for America

  those sunny years in Santa Rosa.

  But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time;

  he wouldn’t give up Darwin and Natural Selection

  and they stung him and he died

  puzzled.

  They buried him under a cedartree.

  His favorite photograph

  was of a little tot

  standing beside a bed of hybrid

  everblooming double Shasta daisies

  with never a thought of evil

  And Mount Shasta

  in the background, used to be a volcano

  but they don’t have volcanos

  any more.

  Newsreel VII

  SAYS THIS IS CENTURY WHERE BILLIONS

  AND BRAINS ARE TO RULE

  infant born in Minneapolis comes here in incubator

  Cheyenne Cheyenne

  Hop on my pony

  says Jim Hill hits oil trust on 939 counts

  BIG FOUR TRAIN BLOWN TO PIECES

  woman and children blotted out admits he saw floggings and even mutilations but no frightful outrages

  TRUTH ABOUT THE CONGO FREE STATE

  Find Bad Fault In Dreadnaught Santos Dumont tells of rival of bird of prey wives prime aim of Congo natives extraordinary letter ordering away U.S. marines

  WHITES IN CONGO LOSE MORAL SENSE

  WOMAN HELD A CAPTIVE BY AMBULANCE CHASERS

  Thaw Faces Judge in Fateful Fight

  LABOR MENACE IN POLITICS

  last of Salome seen in New York heroism of mother unavailing

  There’s room here for two, dear,

  But after the ceremony

  Two, dear, as one, dear, will ride back on my pony

  From old Cheyenne

  The Camera Eye (8)

  you sat on the bed unlacing your shoes Hey Frenchie yelled Tylor in the door you’ve got to fight the Kid doan wanna fight him gotto fight him hasn’t he got to fight him fellers? Freddie pushed his face through the crack in the door and made a long nose Gotta fight him umpyaya and all the fellows on the top floor were there if not you’re a girlboy and I had on my pyjamas and they pushed in the Kid and the Kid hit Frenchie and Frenchie hit the Kid and your mouth tasted bloody and everybody yelled Go it Kid except Gummer and he yelled Bust his jaw Jack and Frenchie had the Kid down on the bed and everybody pulled him off and they all had Frenchie against the door and he was slamming right an’ left and he couldn’t see who was hitting him and everybody started to yell the Kid licked him and Tylor and Freddy held his arms and told the Kid to come and hit him but the Kid wouldn’t and the Kid was crying

  the bloody sweet puky taste and then the bell rang for lights and everybody ran to their rooms and you got into bed with your head throbbing and you were crying when Gummer tiptoed in an’ said you had him licked Jack it was a fucking shame it was Freddy hit you that time, but Hoppy was tiptoeing round the hall and caught Gummer trying to get back to his room and he got his

  Mac

  By Thanksgiving Mac had beaten his way to Sacramento, where he got a job smashing crates in a dried fruit warehouse. By the first of the year he’d saved up enough to buy a suit of dark clothes and take the steamboat down the river to San Francisco.

  It was around eight in the evening when he got in. With his suitcase in his hand, he walked up Market Street from the dock. The streets were full of lights. Young men and pretty girls in brightcolored dresses were walking fast through a big yanking wind that fluttered dresses and scarfs, slapped color into cheeks, blew grit and papers into the air. There were Chinamen, Wops, Portuguese, Japs in the streets. People were hustling to shows and restaurants. Music came out of the doors of bars, frying, buttery foodsmells from restaurants, smells of winecasks and beer. Mac wanted to go on a party but he only had four dollars so he went and got a room at the Y and ate some soggy pie and coffee in the deserted cafeteria downstairs.

  When he got up in the bare bedroom like something in a hospital he opened the window, but it only gave on an airshaft. The room smelt of some sort of cleaning fluid and when he lay down on the bed the blanket smelt of formaldehyde. He felt too well. He could feel the prancing blood steam all through him. He wanted to talk to somebody, to go to a dance or have a drink with a fellow he knew or kid a girl somewhere. The smell of rouge and musky facepowder in the room of those girls in Seattle came back to him. He got up and sat on the edge of the bed swinging his legs. Then he decided to go out, but before he went he put his money in his suitcase and locked it up. Lonely as a ghost he walked up and down the streets until he was deadtired; he walked fast not looking to the right or left, brushing past painted girls at streetcorners, touts that tried to put addresscards into his hand, drunks that tried to pick fights with him, panhandlers whining for a handout. Then, bitter and cold and tired, he went back to his room and fell into bed.

  Next day he went out and got a job in a small printshop run and owned by a baldheaded Italian with big whiskers and a flowing black tie, named Bonello. Bonello told him he had been a redshirt with Garibaldi and was now an anarchist. Ferrer was his great hero; he hired Mac because he thought he might make a convert out of him. All that winter Mac worked at Bonello’s, ate spaghetti and drank red wine and talked revolution with him and his friends in the evening, went to Socialist picnics or libertarian meetings on Sundays. Saturday nights he went round to whorehouses with a fellow named Miller whom he’d met at the Y. Miller was studying to be a dentist. He got to be friends with a girl named Maisie Spencer who worked in the millinery department at the Emporium. Sundays she used to try to get him to go to church. She was a quiet girl with big blue eyes that she turned up to him with an unbelieving smile when he talked revolution to her. She had tiny regular pearly teeth and dressed prettily. After a while she got so that she did not bother him so much about church. She liked to have him take her to hear the band play at the Presidio or to look at the statuary in Sutro Park.

  The morning of the earthquake Mac’s first thought, when he got over his own terrible scare, was for Maisie. The house where her folks lived on Mariposa Street was still standing when he got there, but everyone had cleared out. It was not till the third day, three days of smok
e and crashing timbers and dynamiting he spent working in a firefighting squad, that he found her in a provision line at the entrance to Golden Gate Park. The Spencers were living in a tent near the shattered greenhouses.

  She didn’t recognise him because his hair and eyebrows were singed and his clothes were in tatters and he was soot from head to foot. He’d never kissed her before, but he took her in his arms before everybody and kissed her. When he let her go her face was all sooty from his. Some of the people in the line laughed and clapped, but the old woman right behind, who had her hair done in a pompadour askew so that the rat showed through and who wore two padded pink silk dressing gowns one above the other, said spitefully, “Now you’ll have to go and wash your face.”