The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos Read Free Book Online Page A

want you to do now is to lend me two of your big cartons, those cardboard boxes you send suits home in.” “What you wan’ to do?”
    “My young friend and I have a little project.”
    “Don’t you do nothin’ crooked with them cartons; my name’s on them.”
    Doc Bingham laughed heartily as they walked out the door, carrying under each arm one of the big flat cartons that had
Levy and Goldstein, Reliable Tailoring
, written on them in florid lettering.
    “He’s a great joker, Fenian,” he said. “But let that man’s lamentable condition be a lesson to you . . . The poor unfortunate is suffering from the consequences of a horrible social disease, contracted through some youthful folly.”
    They were passing the taxidermist’s store again. There were the wildcats and the golden pheasant and the big sawfish . . .
Frequents shallow bays and inlets.
Fainy had a temptation to drop the tailor’s cartons and run for it. But anyhow, it was a job.
    “Fenian,” said Doc Bingham, confidentially, “do you know the Mohawk House?”
    “Yessir, we used to do their printing for them.”
    “They don’t know you there, do they?”
    “Naw, they wouldn’t know me from Adam . . . I just delivered some writin’ paper there once.”
    “That’s superb . . . Now get this right; my room is 303. You wait and come in about five minutes. You’re the boy from the tailor’s, see, getting some suits to be cleaned. Then you come up to my room and get the suits and take ’em round to my office. If anybody asks you where you’re going with ’em, you’re goin’ to Levy and Goldstein, see?”
    Fainy drew a deep breath.
    “Sure, I get you.”
    When he reached the small room in the top of the Mohawk House, Doc Bingham was pacing the floor.
    “Levy and Goldstein, sir,” said Fainy, keeping his face straight.
    “My boy,” said Doc Bingham, “you’ll be an able assistant; I’m glad I picked you out. I’ll give you a dollar in advance on your wages.” While he talked he was taking clothes, papers, old books, out of a big trunk that stood in the middle of the floor. He packed them carefully in one of the cartons. In the other he put a furlined overcoat. “That coat cost two hundred dollars, Fenian, a remnant of former splendors . . . Ah, the autumn leaves at Vallombrosa . . . Et tu in Arcadia vixisti . . . That’s Latin, a language of scholars.”
    “My Uncle Tim who ran the printing shop where I worked knew Latin fine.”
    “Do you think you can carry these, Fenian . . . they’re not too heavy?”
    “Sure I can carry ’em.” Fainy wanted to ask about the dollar.
    “All right, you’d better run along . . . Wait for me at the office.”
    In the office Fainy found a man sitting at the second rolltop desk. “Well, what’s your business?” he yelled out in a rasping voice. He was a sharpnosed waxyskinned young man with straight black hair standing straight up. Fainy was winded from running up the stairs. His arms were stiff from carrying the heavy cartons. “I suppose this is some more of Mannie’s tomfoolishness. Tell him he’s got to clear out of here; I’ve rented the other desk.”
    “But Dr. Bingham has just hired me to work for the Truthseeker Literary Distributing Company.”
    “The hell he has.”
    “He’ll be here in a minute.”
    “Well, sit down and shut up; can’t you see I’m busy?”
    Fainy sat down glumly in the swivelchair by the window, the only chair in the office not piled high with small paper-covered books. Outside the window he could see a few dusty roofs and fire escapes. Through grimy windows he could see other offices, other rolltop desks. On the desk in front of him were paperwrapped packages of books. Between them were masses of loose booklets. His eye caught a title:
     
    THE QUEEN OF THE WHITE SLAVES
Scandalous revelations of Milly Meecham stolen from her parents at the age of sixteen, tricked by her vile seducer into a life of infamy and shame.
     
    He started