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 and 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.