“Gee.”
“All you’d need would be a general strike and have the workers refuse to work for a boss any longer… God damn it, if people only realized how friggin’ easy it would be. The interests own all the press and keep knowledge and education from the workin’men.”
“I know printin’, pretty good, an’ linotypin’… Golly, maybe some day I could do somethin’.”
Mac got to his feet. He was tingling all over. A cloud had covered the sun, but down the railroad track the scrawny woods were full of the goldgreen blare of young birch leaves in the sun. His blood was like fire. He stood with his feet apart looking down the railroad track. Round the bend in the far distance a handcar appeared with a section gang on it, a tiny cluster of brown and dark blue. He watched it come nearer. A speck of red flag fluttered in the front of the handcar; it grew bigger, ducking into patches of shadow, larger and more distinct each time it came out into a patch of sun.
“Say, Mac, we better keep out of sight if we want to hop that freight. There’s some friggin’ mean yard detectives on this road.” “All right.” They walked off a hundred yards into the young growth of scrub pine and birch. Beside a big green-lichened stump Mac stopped to make water. His urine flowed bright yellow in the sun, disappearing at once into the porous loam of rotten leaves and wood. He was very happy. He gave the stump a kick. It was rotten. His foot went through it and a little powder like smoke went up from it as it crashed over into the alderbushes behind.
Ike had sat down on a log and was picking his teeth with a little birchtwig.
“Say, ever been to the coast, Mac?”
“No.”
“Like to?”
“Sure.”
“Well, let’s you an’ me beat our way out to Duluth… I want to stop by and say hello to the old woman, see. Haven’t seen her in three months. Then we’ll take in the wheat harvest and make Frisco or Seattle by fall. Tell me they have good free night-schools in Seattle. I want to do some studyin’, see? I dunno a friggin’ thing yet.”
“That’s slick.”
“Ever hopped a freight or ridden blind baggage, Mac?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“You just follow me and do what I do. You’ll be all right.”
Down the track they heard the hoot of a locomotive whistle.
“There is number three comin’ round the bend now… We’ll hop her right after she starts outa the station. She’ll take us into Mackinaw City this afternoon.”
Late that afternoon, stiff and cold, they went into a little shed on the steamboat wharf at Mackinaw City to get shelter. Everything was hidden in a driving rainstreaked mist off the lake. They had bought a ten-cent package of Sweet Caps, so that they only had ninety cents left between them. They were arguing about how much they ought to spend for supper when the steamboat agent, a thin man wearing a green eyeshade and a slicker, came out of his office. “You boys lookin’ for a job?” he asked. “Cause there’s a guy here from the Lakeview House lookin’ for a coupla pearldivers. Agency didn’t send ’em enough help I guess. They’re openin’ up tomorrer.” “How much do they pay ye?” asked Ike. “I don’t reckon it’s much, but the grub’s pretty good.” “How about it, Mac? We’ll save up our fare an’ then we’ll go to Duluth like a coupla dudes on the boat.”
So they went over that night on the steamboat to Mackinac Island. It was pretty dull on Mackinac Island. There was a lot of small scenery with signs on it reading “Devil’s Cauldron,” “Sugar Loaf,” “Lover’s Leap,” and wives and children of mediumpriced business men from Detroit, Saginaw and Chicago. The grayfaced woman who ran the hotel, known as The Management, kept them working from six in the morning till way after sundown. It wasn’t only dishwashing, it was sawing wood, running errands, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, smashing baggage and a lot of odd chores. The waitresses were all old maids or else brokendown farmers’ wives whose husbands drank. The only other male in the place was the cook, a hypochondriac French Canadian halfbreed who insisted on being called Mr. Chef. Evenings he sat in his little log shack back of the hotel drinking paregoric and mumbling about God.
When they got their first month’s pay they packed up their few belongings in a newspaper and sneaked on board the Juniata for Duluth. The fare took all their capital, but they were happy as they stood in the stern watching the spruce and balsamcovered hill of Mackinac disappear into the lake.
Duluth; girderwork along the waterfront, and the shack-covered hills and the tall thin chimneys and the huddle of hunch-shouldered grain elevators under the smoke from the mills scrolled out dark against a huge salmon-colored sunset. Ike hated to leave the boat on account of a pretty dark-haired girl he’d meant all the time to speak to. “Hell, she wouldn’t pay attention to you, Ike, she’s too swank for you,” Mac kept saying. “The old woman’ll be glad to see us anyway,” said Ike as they hurried off the gangplank. “I half expected to see her at the dock, though I didn’t write we was coming. Boy, I bet she’ll give us a swell feed.”
“Where does she live?”
“Not far. I’ll show you. Say, don’t ask anythin’ about my old man, will ye; he don’t amount to much. He’s in jail, I guess. Ole woman’s had pretty tough sleddin’ bringin’ up us kids… I got two brothers in Buffalo… I don’t get along with ’em. She does fancy needlework and preservin’ an’ bakes cakes an’ stuff like that. She used to work in a bakery but she’s got the lumbago too bad now. She’d ’a’ been a real bright woman if we hadn’t always been so friggin’ poor.”
They turned up a muddy street on a hill. At the top of the hill was a little prim house like a schoolhouse.
“That’s where we live… Gee, I wonder why there’s no light.”
They went in by a gate in the picket fence. There was sweetwilliam in bloom in the flowerbed in front of the house. They could smell it though they could hardly see, it was so dark. Ike knocked.
“Damn it, I wonder what’s the matter.” He knocked again. Then he struck a match. On the door was nailed a card “FOR SALE” and the name of a realestate agent. “Jesus Christ, that’s funny, she musta moved. Now I think of it, I haven’t had a letter in a couple of months. I hope she ain’t sick… I’ll ask at Bud Walker’s next door.”
Mac sat down on the wooden step and waited. Overhead in a gash in the clouds that still had the faintest stain of red from the afterglow his eye dropped into empty black full of stars. The smell of the sweetwilliams tickled his nose. He felt hungry.
A low whistle from Ike roused him. “Come along,” he said gruffly and started walking fast down the hill with his head sunk between his shoulders.
“Hey, what’s the matter?”
“Nothin’. The old woman’s gone to Buffalo to live with my brothers. The lousy bums got her to sell out so’s they could spend the dough, I reckon.”
“Jesus, that’s hell, Ike.”
Ike didn’t answer. They walked till they came to the corner of a street with lighted stores and trolleycars. A tune from a mechanical piano was tumbling out from a saloon. Ike turned and slapped Mac on the back. “Let’s go have a drink, kid… What the hell.”
There was only one other man at the long bar. He was a very drunken tall elderly man in lumbermen’s boots with a sou’wester on his head who kept yelling in an inaudible voice, ‘Whoop her up, boys,’ and making a pass at the air with a long grimy hand. Mac and Ike drank down two whiskies each, so strong and raw that it pretty near knocked the wind out of them. Ike put the change from a dollar in his pocket and said: