The 42nd Parallel (19 page)

“So do I . . .” said Alec. “Dod gast it, I wisht we had a watermelon.”

“Maybe we’ll see some along the riverbank somewhere goin’ home.”

“Jiminy crickets, what I couldn’t do to a watermelon, Joe.” “Mommer had a watermelon on ice,” said Janey; “maybe there’ll be some yet when we get home.”

“I don’t never want to go home,” said Joe, suddenly bitter serious. “Joe, you oughtn’t to talk like that.” She felt girlish and frightened. “I’ll talk how I goddam please . . . Kerist, I hate the scrimpy dump.” “Joe, you oughtn’t to talk like that.” Janey felt she was going to cry. “Dod gast it,” said Alec. “It’s time we shoved . . . What you say, bo . . . ? We’ll take one more dip and then make tracks for home.” When the boys were through swimming they all went up to look at the Falls and then they started off. They went along fast in the swift stream under the steep treehung bank. The afternoon was very sultry, they went through layers of hot steamy air. Big cloudheads were piling up in the north. It wasn’t fun any more for Janey. She was afraid it was going to rain. Inside she felt sick and drained out. She was afraid her period was coming on. She’d only had the curse a few times yet and the thought of it scared her and took all the strength out of her, made her want to crawl away out of sight like an old sick mangy cat. She didn’t want Joe and Alec to notice how she felt. She thought how would it be if she turned the canoe over. The boys could swim ashore all right, and she’d drown and they’d drag the river for her body and everybody’d cry and feel so sorry about it.

Purplegray murk rose steadily and drowned the white summits of the cloudheads. Everything got to be livid white and purple. The boys paddled as hard as they could. They could hear the advancing rumble of thunder. The bridge was well in sight when the wind hit them, a hot stormwind full of dust and dead leaves and bits of chaff and straw, churning the riverwater.

They made the shore just in time. “Dod gast it, this is goin’ to be some storm,” said Alec; “Janey, get under the boat.” They turned the canoe over on the pebbly shore in the lee of a big bowlder and huddled up under it. Janey sat in the middle with the waterlilies they had picked that morning all shriveled and clammy from the heat in her hand. The boys lay in their damp bathingsuits on either side of her. Alec’s towsled black hair was against her cheek. The other side of her Joe lay with his head in the end of the canoe and his lean brown feet and legs in their rolledup pants tucked under her dress. The smell of sweat and riverwater and the warm boysmell of Alec’s hair and shoulders made her dizzy. When the rain came drumming on the bottom of the canoe curtaining them in with lashing white spray, she slipped her arm round Alec’s neck and let her hand rest timidly on his bare shoulder. He didn’t move.

The rain passed after a while. “Gee, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” said Alec. They were pretty wet and chilly but they felt good in the fresh rainwashed air. They put the canoe back in the water and went on down as far as the bridge. Then they carried it back to the house they’d gotten it from, and went to the little shelter to wait for the electric car. They were tired and sunburned and sticky. The car was packed with a damp Sunday afternoon crowd, picnickers caught by the shower at Great Falls and Glen Echo. Janey thought she’d never stand it till she got home. Her belly was all knotted up with a cramp. When they got to Georgetown the boys still had fifty cents between them and wanted to go to a movie, but Janey ran off and left them. Her only thought was to get to bed so that she could put her face into the pillow and cry.

After that Janey never cried much; things upset her but she got a cold hard feeling all over instead. Highschool went by fast, with hot thunderstormy Washington summers in between terms, punctuated by an occasional picnic at Marshall Hall or a party at some house in the neighborhood. Joe got a job at the Adams Express. She didn’t see him much as he didn’t eat home any more. Alec had bought a motorcycle and although he was still in highschool Janey heard little about him. Sometimes she sat up to get a word with Joe when he came home at night. He smelt of tobacco and liquor though he never seemed to be drunk. He went to his job at seven and when he got out in the evenings he went out with the bunch hanging round poolrooms on 4½ Street or playing craps or bowling. Sundays he played baseball in Maryland. Janey would sit up for him, but when he came she’d ask him how things were going where he worked and he’d say “Fine” and he’d ask her how things were going at school and she’d say “Fine” and then they’d both go off to bed. Once in a while she’d ask if he’d seen Alec and he’d say “Yes” with a scrap of a smile and she’d ask how Alec was and he’d say “Fine.”

She had one friend, Alice Dick, a dark stubby girl with glasses who took all the same classes with her at highschool. Saturday afternoons they’d dress up in their best and go window-shopping down F Street way. They’d buy a few little things, stop in for a soda and come home on the streetcar feeling they’d had a busy afternoon. Once in a very long while they went to a matinee at Poli’s and Janey would take Alice Dick home to supper. Alice Dick liked the Williamses and they liked her. She said it made her feel freer to spend a few hours with broadminded people. Her own folks were Southern Methodists and very narrow. Her father was a clerk in the Government Printing Office and was in daily dread that his job would come under the civil service regulations. He was a stout shortwinded man, fond of playing practical jokes on his wife and daughter, and suffered from chronic dyspepsia.

Alice Dick and Janey planned that as soon as they got through highschool they’d get jobs and leave home. They even picked out the house where they’d board, a greenstone house near Thomas Circle, run by a Mrs. Jenks, widow of a naval officer, who was very refined and had southern cooking and charged moderately for tableboard.

One Sunday night during the spring of her last term in highschool Janey was in her room getting undressed. Francie and Ellen were still playing in the backyard. Their voices came in through the open window with a spicy waft of lilacs from the lilacbushes in the next yard. She had just let down her hair and was looking in the mirror imagining how she’d look if she was a peach and had auburn hair, when there was a knock at the door and Joe’s voice outside. There was something funny about his voice.

“Come in,” she called. “I’m just fixin’ my hair.”

She first saw his face in the mirror. It was very white and the skin was drawn back tight over the cheekbones and round the mouth.

“Why, what’s the matter, Joe?” She jumped up and faced him.

“It’s like this, Janey,” said Joe, drawling his words out painfully. “Alec was killed. He smashed up on his motorbike. I just come from the hospital. He’s dead, all right.”

Janey seemed to be writing the words on a white pad in her mind. She couldn’t say anything.

“He smashed up comin’ home from Chevy Chase . . . He’d gone out to the ballgame to see me pitch. You oughter seen him all smashed to hell.”

Janey kept trying to say something.

“He was your best . . .”

“He was the best guy I’ll ever know,” Joe went on gently. “Well, that’s that, Janey . . . But I wanted to tell you I don’t want to hang round this lousy dump now that Alec’s gone. I’m goin’ to enlist in the navy. You tell the folks, see . . . I don’t wanna talk to ’em. That’s it; I’ll join the navy and see the world.”

“But, Joe . . .”

“I’ll write you, Janey; honest, I will . . . I’ll write you a hell of a lot. You an’ me . . . Well, goodby, Janey.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her awkwardly on the nose and cheek. All she could do was whisper. “Do be careful, Joe,” and stand there in front of the bureau in the gust of lilacs and the yelling of the kids that came through the open window. She heard Joe’s steps light quick down the stairs and heard the frontdoor shut.

She turned out the light, took off her clothes in the dark, and got into bed. She lay there without crying.

Graduation came and commencement and she and Alice went out to parties and even once with a big crowd on one of the moonlight trips down the river to Indian Head on the steamboat
Charles McAlister.
The crowd was rougher than Janey and Alice liked. Some of the boys were drinking a good deal and there were couples kissing and hugging in every shadow; still the moonlight was beautiful rippling on the river and she and Janey put two chairs together and talked. There was a band and dancing, but they didn’t dance on account of the rough men who stood round the dancefloor making remarks. They talked and on the way home up the river, Janey, talking very low and standing by the rail very close to Alice, told her about Alec. Alice had read about it in the paper but hadn’t dreamed that Janey had known him so well or felt that way about him. She began to cry and Janey felt very strong comforting her and they felt that they’d be very close friends after that. Janey whispered that she’d never be able to love anybody else and Alice said she didn’t think she could ever love a man anyway, they all drank and smoked and talked dirty among themselves and had only one idea.

In July Alice and Janey got jobs in the office of Mrs. Robinson, public stenographer in the Riggs Building, to replace girls away on their vacations. Mrs. Robinson was a small grayhaired pigeonbreasted woman with a Kentucky shriek in her voice, that made Janey think of a parrot’s. She was very precise and all the proprieties were observed in her office. “Miss Williams,” she would chirp, leaning back from her desk, “that em ess of Judge Roberts’s has absolutely got to be finished today . . . My dear, we’ve given our word and we’ll deliver if we have to stay till midnight. Noblesse oblige, my dear,” and the typewriters would trill and jingle and all the girls’ fingers would go like mad typing briefs, manuscripts of undelivered speeches by lobbyists, occasional overflow from a newspaperman or a scientist, or prospectuses from realestate offices or patent promoters, dunning letters for dentists and doctors.

Sunday nights when we had fishballs and baked beans and Mr. Garfield read to us in a very beautiful reading voice and everybody was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop because he was reading
The Man Without a Country
and it was a very terrible story and Aaron Burr had been a very dangerous man and this poor young man had said “Damn the United States; I never hope to hear her name again” and it was a very terrible thing to say and the grayhaired judge was so kind and good

and the judge sentenced me and they took me far away to foreign lands on a frigate and the officers were kind and good and spoke in kind grave very sorry reading voices like Mr. Garfield and everything was very kind and grave and very sorry and frigates and the blue Mediterranean and islands and when I was dead I began to cry and I was afraid the other boys would see I had tears in my eyes

American shouldn’t cry he should look kind and grave and very sorry when they wrapped me in the stars and stripes and brought me home on a frigate to be buried I was so sorry I never remembered whether they brought me home or buried me at sea but anyway I was wrapped in Old Glory

the government of the United States must insist and demand that American citizens who may be taken prisoner whether by one party or the other as participants in the present insurrectionary disturbances shall be dealt with in accordance with the broad principles of international law

SOLDIERS GUARD CONVENTION

the
Titanic
left Southampton on April 10th on its maiden operation is to be performed against the wishes of the New York Life according to “Kimmel” Why they know I’m Kimmel in Niles I’m George to everyone even mother and sister when we meet on the streets

I’m going to Maxim’s

Where fun and frolic beams

With all the girls I’ll chatter

I’ll laugh and kiss and flatter

Lolo, Dodo, Joujou.

Cloclo, Margot, Froufrou

TITANIC
LARGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD SINKING

personally I am not sure that the twelvehour day is bad for employees especially when they insist on working that long in order to make more money

Still all my song shall be

Nearer My God to thee

Nearer to thee

it was now about one
AM
, a beautiful starlight night with no moon. The sea was as calm as a pond, just a gentle heave as the boat dipped up and down in the swell, an ideal night except for the bitter cold. In the distance the
Titanic
looked an enormous length, its great hulk outlined in black against the starry sky, every porthole and saloon blazing with light

ASK METHODISM TO OUST TRINITY

the bride’s gown is of charmeuse satin with a chiffon veiled lace waist. The veil is of crepe lisse edged with point de venise a departure from the conventional bridal veil and the bouquet is to be lilies of the valley and gardenias

Lolo, Dodo, Joujou
,

Cloclo, Margot, Froufrou

I’m going to Maxim’s

And you can goto . . .

the
Titanic
slowly tilted straight on end with the stern vertically upward and as it did so the lights in the cabins and saloons which had not flickered for a moment since we left, died out, came on again for a single flash and finally went out altogether. Meanwhile the machinery rattled through the vessel with a rattle and a groaning that could be heard for miles. Then with a quiet slanting dive

“But it’s so interesting, mommer,” Janey would say when her mother bewailed the fact that she had to work. “In my day it wasn’t considered ladylike, it was thought to be demeaning.” “But it isn’t now,” Janey would say getting into a temper. Then it would be a great relief to get out of the stuffy house and the stuffy treeshaded streets of Georgetown and to stop by for Alice Dick and go down town to the moving pictures and to see the pictures of foreign countries, and the crowds on F Street and to stop in at a drugstore for a soda afterwards, before getting on the Georgetown car, and to sit up at the fountain talking about the picture they’d seen and Olive Thomas and Charley Chaplin and John Bunny. She began to read the paper every day and to take an interest in politics. She began to feel that there was a great throbbing arclighted world somewhere outside and that only living in Georgetown where everything was so poky and oldfashioned, and Mommer and Popper were so poky and oldfashioned, kept her from breaking into it.