Partisan
Review
~ Anvil
FEBRUARY
1936
Grade Crossing
JOHN DOS PASSOS
"COME ON GIRLY we're goin' for a ride, get some air."
Before she could protest he'd dragged her out to the parking
lot. "Oh, but I don't think we ought to leave the others,"
she kept saying. "They're too goddam drunk to know. I'll
bring you back in five minutes. A little air does a little girl
good especially a pretty little girl like you."
The gears shrieked because he didn't have the clutch
shoved in. The car stalled; he started the motor again and
immediately went into high. The motor knocked for a
minute but began to gather speed. "S-ee," he said, "not a bad
little bus." As he drove he talked out of the corner of his
mouth to Eileen. "That's the last time I go into that dump.
...
Those little cracker politicians fresh out of the tur-
pentine camps can't get fresh with me. I can buy and sell
'em too easy, like buyin'
a bag of peanuts. That bastard I'll
buy and sell him yet. You don't know who he is but all you
need to know is he's a crook, one of the biggest crooks in
the country, an'
he thought,
the whole damn lot of 'ern
thought they'd put me out on my ass. I can outsmart 'ern
at their own game, see. Administration'll
give me a big job
any day. They told me as much in Washington.
Can get a
job anywhere. I don't mean a job ...
jobs are things of the
past. I mean an appointment.
My name would be an asset
to any Administration."
"Oh it's cold," moaned Eileen. "Let's go back. I'm shiver-
ing." Charley leaned over and put his arm round her should-
ers. As he turned the car gave a great swerve. He wrenched
it back onto the concrete road again. "Oh please do be care-
ful Mr. Anderson ...
you're doing eighty-five now ....
Oh don't scare me please."
Charley laughed. "My what a sweet little girl, look we're
down to forty, just bowlin'
pleasantly along at forty. Now
we'll turn and go back . . . time little chickens were in
bed. Never be scared in a car when I'm driving. If there's
one thing I can do it's drive a car. But I don't like to drive
a car. Now if I had my own ship here. It's a bran'
new
Boeing ...
a real yacht ....
How would you like to take
a nice spin in a plane? N othin'
in drivin'
a car."
When they turned to run back towards Miami they saw
the long streak of the dawn behind the broad barrens dotted
with dead pines and halfbuilt
stucco houses and closed
servicestations and dogstands.
"Now the wind's behind us. We'll have you back to a
threepoint landin'
before you can say Jack Robinson." They
were running along beside a railroad track. They were
catching up on two red lights. "I wonder if that's the New
York train." They were catching up on it, past the lighted
observation car, past the sleepers with no light except
through the groun'dglass windows of the dressingrooms at the
ends of the cars. They were creeping up on the baggage car
and mailcars and on the engine, very huge and tall and black,
flicked with a little curling shine from Charley's headlights
in the dark. The train had cut off the red streak of the dawn.
"Hell they don't make any speed." As they passed the cab
the whistle blew. "Hell I can beat him to the crossin'." The
lights of the crossing were ahead of them and the long beam
of the engine's headlights,
that made the red and yellow
streak of the dawn edging the clouds very pale and far away.
The bar was down at the crossing. Charley stepped on the
gas. They crashed through the bar, shattering their head-
lights; The car swerved around sideways. Their eyes were
full of the glare of the locomotive headlight.
"We're
through," Charley yelled at the girl. "I can ....
" The car
swerved around on the tracks and stalled. He was jabbing
at the starter with his foot. The crash wasn't anything.
When he came to he knew right away he was in a hospital.
First thing he began wondering if he was going to have a
hangover. He couldn't move. Everything was dark. From
way down in a pit he could see the ceiling. Then he
could
see the peak of a nurse's cap and a nurse leaning over him.
All the time he was talking. He couldn't stop talking.
"Well I thought we were done for. Say nurse where did
we crack up? W ~ it at the airport? I'd feel better if I
could remember what happened. It was this way nurse. I'd
taken that little girl up to let her get the feel of that Boeing
ship. I was sore
as
hell at somebody, must have been my
wife, poor old Doris, did' she give me a dirty deal? They
are all alike those rich bitches. But now after this airport
deal I'll be buyin' and sellin' the whole bunch of them. Say
nurse what happened ? Was it at the airport?"
The nurse's face and her hair were yellow under the
white cap. She had a thin lipless face and thin hands that
went past his eyes to smooth the cover under his chin.
"You must try and rest," she said. "Or else I'll have to
give you another hypodermic."
"Say nurse are you a Canadian? I b~l :'<Jll're a Canadian."
"No I'm from Tennessee ....
-\Vhy r"
"My mistake. You see always when I've been in a hos-
pital the nurses have been Canadians.
Isn't it kinder dark
in here? I wish I could tell you how it happened.
"I'm the night nurse. It isn't day
yet.
You try and get
some sleep."
"I guess they've called up the office. I'd like Staunch to
take a look at the ship before anything's touched. Funny,
nurse, I don't feel much pain, but I feel so terrible."
"That's just the hypodermics," said the nurse's brisk low
voice. "Now you rest quietlyi and in the morning you'll
wake up feeling a whole lot better."
"Check."
He couldn't stop talking: "You see it was this way. I had
some sort of a wrangle with a guy. Are you listen in' nurse?
I guess I've got kind of a chip on my shoulder since they
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