1919 (37 page)

One night she met Joe Washburn at a party Ida Olsen was giving for some boys who were leaving for overseas. It was the first time she'd ever seen Joe drink. He wasn't drunk but she could see that he'd been drinking a great deal. They went and sat side by side on the back steps of the kitchen in the dark. It was a clear hot night full of dryflies with a hard hot wind rustling the dry twigs of all the trees. Suddenly she took Joe's hand: “Oh, Joe, this is awful.”

Joe began to talk about how unhappy he was with his wife, how he was making big money through his oil leases and didn't give a damn about it, how sick he was of the army. They'd made him an instructor and wouldn't let him go overseas and he was almost crazy out there in camp. “Oh, Joe, I want to go overseas too. I'm leading such a silly life here.” “You have been actin' kinder wild, Daughter, since Bud died,” came Joe's soft deep drawling voice. “Oh, Joe, I wisht I was dead,” she said and put her head on his knee and began to cry. “Don't cry, Daughter, don't cry,” he began to say, then suddenly he was kissing her. His kisses were hard and crazy and made her go all limp against him.

“I don't love anybody but you, Joe,” she suddenly said quietly. But he already had control of himself; “Daughter, forgive me,” he said in a quiet lawyer's voice, “I don't know what I was thinking of, I must be crazy . . . this war is making us all crazy . . . Good night . . . Say . . . er . . . erase this all from the record, will you?”

That night she couldn't sleep a wink. At six in the morning she got into her car, filled up with gas and oil and started for Dallas. It was a bright fall morning with blue mist in the hollows. Dry cornstalks rustled on the long hills red and yellow with fall. It was late when she got home. Dad was sitting up reading the war news in pyjamas and bathrobe. “Well, it won't be long now, Daughter,” he said. “The Hindenburg line is crumpling up. I knew our boys could do it once they got started.” Dad's face was more lined with his hair whiter than she'd remembered it. She heated up a can of Campbell's soup as she hadn't taken any time to eat. They had a cosy little supper together and read a funny letter of Buster's from Camp Merritt where his outfit was waiting to go overseas. When she went to bed in her own room it was like being a little girl again, she'd always loved times when she got a chance to have a cosy chat with Dad all alone; she went to sleep the minute her head hit the pillow.

She stayed on in Dallas taking care of Dad; it was only sometimes when she thought of Joe Washburn that she felt she couldn't stand it another minute. The fake armistice came and then the real armistice, everybody was crazy for a week like a New Orleans mardigras. Daughter decided that she was going to be an old maid and keep house for Dad. Buster came home looking very tanned and full of army slang. She started attending lectures at Southern Methodist, doing church work, getting books out of the circulating library, baking angelcake; when young girlfriends of Buster's came to the house she acted as a chaperon.

Thanksgiving Joe Washburn and his wife came to dinner with them. Old Emma was sick so Daughter cooked the turkey herself. It was only when they'd all sat down to table, with the yellow candles lighted in the silver candlesticks and the salted nuts set out in the little silver trays and the decoration of pink and purple mapleleaves, that she remembered Bud. She suddenly began to feel faint and ran into her room. She lay face down on the bed listening to their grave voices. Joe came to the door to see what was the matter. She jumped up laughing, and almost scared Joe to death by kissing him square on the mouth. “I'm all right Joe,” she said. “How's yourself?”

Then she ran to the table and started cheering everybody up, so that they all enjoyed their dinner. When they were drinking their coffee in the other room she told them that she'd signed up to go overseas for six months with the Near East Relief, that had been recruiting at Southern Methodist. Dad was furious and Buster said she ought to stay home now the war was over, but Daughter said, others had given their lives to save the world from the Germans and that she certainly could give up six months to relief work. When she said that they all thought of Bud and were quiet.

It wasn't actually true that she'd signed up, but she did the next morning and got around Miss Frazier, a returned missionary from China who was arranging it, so that they sent her up to New York that week, with orders to sail immediately with the office in Rome as her first destination. She was so widely excited all the time she was getting her passport and having her uniform fitted, she hardly noticed how glum Dad and Buster looked. She only had a day in New York. When the boat backed out of the dock with its siren screaming and started steaming down the North River, she stood on the front deck with her hair blowing in the wind, sniffing the funny steamboard harbor overseas smell and feeling like a twoyearold.

GOLDEN VOICE OF CARUSO SWELLS IN
VICTORY SONG TO CROWDS ON STREETS

 

Oh Oh Oh, it's a lovely war

Oo wouldn't be a sodger, ay

 

from Pic Umbral to the north of the Stelvio it will follow the crest of the Rhetian alps up to the sources of the Adige and the Eisah passing thence by mounts Reschen and Brenner and the heights of Oetz and Boaller; thence south crossing Mount Toblach

 

As soon as reveille has gone

We feel just as 'eavy as lead

But we never git up till the sergeant

Brings us a cup of tea in bed

 

HYPNOTIZED BY COMMON LAW WIFE

 

army casualties soar to 64,305 with 318 today; 11,760 have paid the supreme sacrifice in action and 6,193 are severely wounded

 

Oh Oh Oh, it's a lovely war

Oo wouldn't be a sodger ay

Oh, it's a shayme to tayke the pay

 

in the villages in peasant houses the Americans are treated as guests living in the best rooms and courteously offered the best shining samovars or teaurns by the housewives

 

Le chef de gare il est cocu

 

in the largely populated districts a spectacular touch was given the festivities by groups of aliens appearing in costume and a carnival spirit prevailed

 

BRITISH SUPPRESS SOVIETS

 

Le chef de gare il est cocu

Qui est cocu? Le chef de gare

Sa femme elle l'a voulut

 

there can be no reason to believe these officers of an established news organization serving newspapers all over the country failed to realize their responsibilities at a moment of supreme significance to the people of this country. Even to anticipate the event in a matter of such moment would be a grave imposition for which those responsible must be called to account

 

Any complaynts this morning?

Do we complayn? Not we

Wats the matter with lumps of onion

Floatin' around in the tea?

 

PEACE DOVE IN JEWELS GIVEN
MRS. WILSON

 

and the watershed of the Cols di Polberdo, Podlaniscam and Idria. From this point the line turns southeast towards the Schneeberg, excludes the whole basin of the Saave and its tributaries. From Schneeberg it goes down to the coast in such a way as to include Castna, Mattuglia and Volusca

sealed signed and delivered      all over Tours you can smell lindens in bloom      it's hot my uniform sticks      the OD chafes me under the chin

only four days ago AWOL crawling under the freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps      waiting in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from the door so's I could slink out with a cigarette (and my heart) in my mouth      then in a tiny box of a hotel room changing the date on that old movement order

but today

my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle

I walk past the headquarters of the SOS      Hay sojer your tunic's unbuttoned (f—k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it      the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub      through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling      towel's dry and warm smells of steam      in the suitcase I've got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know      the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam's Medical Corps (serial number . . . never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and

having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels

I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds      and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair

an anonymous civilian

CAN'T RECALL KILLING SISTER; CLAIMS

 

I've got the blues

  
I've got the blues

    
I've got the alcohoholic blues

 

SOAP CRISIS THREATENED

 

with the gay sunlight and the resumption of racing Paris has resumed its normal life. The thousands and thousands of flags of all nations hang on dozens of lines stretching from mast to mast making a fairylike effect that is positively astonishing

 

THREAT LETTERS REVEALED

 

I love my country indeed I do

But this war is making me blue

I like fightin fightin's my name

But fightin is the least about this fightin game

 

the police found an anteroom full of mysteriouslooking packages which when opened were found full of pamphlets in Yiddish Russian and English and of membership cards for the Industrial Workers of the World

 

HIGH WIND INCREASES DANGER OF MEN

 

WHILE PEACE IS TALKED OF WORLDWIDE WAR RAGES

 

the agents said the arrests were ordered from the State Department. The detention was so sudden neither of the men had time to obtain his baggage from the vessel. Then came a plaintive message from two business men at Lure; the consignment had arrived, the sacks had been opened and their contents was ordinary building plaster. The huge car remained suspended in some trees upside down while the passengers were thrown into the torrent twenty feet below

 

Lordy, lordy, war is hell

    
Since he amputated my booze

 

OUTRAGE PERPETRATED IN SEOUL

 

I've got the alcohohoholic blues

 

The Department of Justice Has the Goods on the Packers According to Attorney General Palmer

L'Ecole du Malheur Nous Rend Optimistes

Unity of Free Peoples Will Prevent any Inequitable Outcome of Peace of Paris

it is only too clear that the league of nations lies in pieces on the floor of the Hotel Crillon and the modest alliance that might with advantage occupy its place is but a vague sketch

 

HOW TO DEAL WITH BOLSHEVISTS?

SHOOT THEM! POLES' WAY!

 

Hamburg Crowds Flock to See Ford

 

HINTS AT BIG POOL TO DEVELOP ASIA

 

When Mr. Hoover said to cut our eatin down

I did it and I didn't ever raise a frown

Then when he said to cut out coal
,

But now he's cut right into my soul

 

Allons-nous Assister à la Panique des Sots?

stones were clattering on the roof and crashing through the windows and wild men were shrieking through the keyhole while enormous issues depended on them that required calm and deliberation at any rate the President did not speak to the leaders of the democratic movements

 

LIEBKNECHT KILLED ON WAY TO PRISON

Eveline had moved to a little place on the rue de Bussy where there was a street market every day. Eleanor to show that there was no hard feeling had given her a couple of her Italian painted panels to decorate the dark parlor with. In early November rumors of an armistice began to fly around and then suddenly one afternoon Major Wood ran into the office that Eleanor and Eveline shared and dragged them both away from their desks and kissed them both and shouted, “At last it's come.” Before she knew it Eveline found herself kissing Major Moorehouse right on the mouth. The Red Cross office turned into a college dormitory the night of a football victory: it was the Armistice.

Everybody seemed suddenly to have bottles of cognac and to be singing,
There's a long long trail awinding
or
La Madellon pour nous n'est pas sévère.

She and Eleanor and J.W. and Major Wood were in a taxicab going to the Café de la Paix.