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

reading the book. His tongue got dry and he felt sticky all over.
    “Nobody said anything to you, eh?” Doc Bingham’s booming voice broke in on his reading. Before he could answer the voice of the man at the other desk snarled out: “Look here, Mannie, you’ve got to clear out of here . . . I’ve rented the desk.”
    “Shake not thy gory locks at me, Samuel Epstein. My young friend and I are just preparing an expedition among the aborigines of darkest Michigan. We are leaving for Saginaw tonight. Within sixty days I’ll come back and take the office off your hands. This young man is coming with me to learn the business.”
    “Business, hell,” growled the other man, and shoved his face back down among his papers again.
    “Procrastination, Fenian, is the thief of time,” said Doc Bingham, putting one fat hand Napoleonfashion into his doublebreasted vest. “There is a tide in the affairs of men that taken at its full . . .” And for two hours Fainy sweated under his direction, packing booklets into brown paper packages, tying them and addressing them to Truthseeker Inc., Saginaw, Mich.
    He begged off for an hour to go home to see his folks. Milly kissed him on the forehead with thin tight lips. Then she burst out crying. “You’re lucky; oh, I wish I was a boy,” she spluttered and ran upstairs. Mrs. O’Hara said to be a good boy and always live at the Y.M.C.A.—that kept a boy out of temptation, and to let his Uncle Tim be a lesson to him, with his boozin’ ways.
    His throat was pretty tight when he went to look for his Uncle Tim. He found him in the back room at O’Grady’s. His eyes were a flat bright blue and his lower lip trembled when he spoke, “Have one drink with me, son, you’re on your own now.” Fainy drank down a beer without tasting it.
    “Fainy, you’re a bright boy . . . I wish I could have helped you more; you’re an O’Hara every inch of you. You read Marx . . . study all you can, remember that you’re a rebel by birth and blood . . . Don’t blame people for things . . . Look at that terrible forktongued virago I’m married to; do I blame her? No, I blame the system. And don’t ever sell out to the sons of bitches, son; it’s women’ll make you sell out every time. You know what I mean. All right, go on . . . better cut along or you’ll miss your train.” “I’ll write you from Saginaw, Uncle Tim, honest I will.”
    Uncle Tim’s lanky red face in the empty cigarsmoky room, the bar and its glint of brass and the pinkarmed barkeep leaning across it, the bottles and the mirrors and the portrait of Lincoln gave a misty half turn in his head and he was out in the shiny rainy street under the shiny clouds, hurrying for the Elevated station with his suitcase in his hand.
    At the Illinois Central station he found Doc Bingham waiting for him, in the middle of a ring of brown paper parcels. Fen felt a little funny inside when he saw him, the greasy sallow jowls, the doublebreasted vest, the baggy black ministerial coat, the dusty black felt hat that made the hair stick out in a sudden fuzzycurl over the beefy ears. Anyway, it was a job.
    “It must be admitted, Fenian,” began Doc Bingham as soon as Fainy had come up to him, “that confident as I am of my knowledge of human nature I was a little afraid you wouldn’t turn up. Where is it that the poet says that difficult is the first fluttering course of the fledgeling from the nest. Put these packages on the train while I go purchase tickets, and be sure it’s a smoker.”
    After the train had started and the conductor had punched the tickets Doc Bingham leaned over and tapped Fainy on the knee with a chubby forefinger. “I’m glad you’re a neat dresser, my boy; you must never forget the importance of putting up a fine front to the world. Though the heart be as dust and ashes, yet must the outer man be sprightly and of good cheer. We will go sit for a while in the pullman smoker up ahead to get away from the