1919 (36 page)

He went to the sink and began dabbling his face with water. Daughter hurried into her skirt and shoes and stockings and went over to the sink where he was washing his face, “That was mean of me, Webb, I'm terribly sorry. There's something always makes me be mean to people I like.” Webb wouldn't say anything for a long time. His nose was still bleeding.

“Go along home,” he said, “I'm going to stay here. . . . It's all right . . . my mistake.”

She put on her dripping raincoat and went out into the shiny evening streets. All the way home on the express in the subway she was feeling warm and tender towards Webb, like towards Dad or the boys.

She didn't see him for several days, then one evening he called and asked her if she wanted to go out on the picket line next morning. It was still dark when she met him at the ferry station. They were both cold and sleepy and didn't say much going out on the train. From the train they had to run through the slippery streets to get to the mills in time to join the picket line. Faces looked cold and pinched in the blue early light. Women had shawls over their heads, few of the men or boys had overcoats. The young girls were all shivering in their cheap fancy topcoats that had no warmth to them. The cops had already begun to break up the head of the line. Some of the strikers were singing
Solidarity Forever
, others were yelling Scabs, Scabs and making funny long jeering hoots. Daughter was confused and excited.

Suddenly everybody around her broke and ran and left her in a stretch of empty street in front of the wire fencing of the mills. Ten feet in front of her a young woman slipped and fell. Daughter caught the scared look in her eyes that were round and black. Daughter stepped forward to help her up but two policemen were ahead of her swinging their nightsticks. Daughter thought they were going to help the girl up. She stood still for a second, frozen in her tracks when she saw one of the policemen's feet shoot out. He'd kicked the girl full in the face. Daughter never remembered what happened except that she was wanting a gun and punching into the policeman's big red face and against the buttons and the thick heavy cloth of his overcoat. Something crashed down on her head from behind; dizzy and sick she was being pushed into the policewagon. In front of her was the girl's face all caved in and bleeding. In the darkness inside were other men and women cursing and laughing. But Daughter and the woman opposite looked at each other dazedly and said nothing. Then the door closed behind them and they were in the dark.

When they were committed she was charged with rioting, felonious assault, obstructing an officer and inciting to sedition. It wasn't so bad in the county jail. The women's section was crowded with strikers, all the cells were full of girls laughing and talking, singing songs and telling each other how they'd been arrested, how long they'd been in, how they were going to win the strike. In Daughter's cell the girls all clustered around her and wanted to know how she'd gotten there. She began to feel she was quite a hero. Towards evening her name was called and she found Webb and Ada and a lawyer clustered around the policesergeant's desk. Ada was mad, “Read that, young woman, and see how that'll sound back home,” she said, poking an afternoon paper under her nose.

T
EXAS
B
ELLE
A
SSAULTS
C
OP
said one headline. Then followed an account of her knocking down a policeman with a left on the jaw. She was released on a thousand dollars bail; outside the jail, Ben Compton broke away from the group of reporters around him and rushed up to her. “Congratulations, Miss Trent,” he said, “that was a darn nervy thing to do . . . made a very good impression in the press.” Sylvia Dalhart was with him. She threw her arms around her and kissed her: “That was a mighty spunky thing to do. Say, we're sending a delegation to Washington to see President Wilson and present a petition and we want you on it. The President will refuse to see the delegation and you'll have a chance to picket the White House and get arrested again.”

“Well, I declare,” said Ada when they were safely on the train for New York. “I think you've lost your mind.” “You'd have done the same thing, Ada darlin', if you'd seen what I saw . . . when I tell Dad and the boys about it they'll see red. It's the most outrageous thing I ever heard of.” Then she burst out crying.

When they got back to Ada's apartment they found a telegram from Dad saying
Coming at once. Make no statement until I arrive.
Late that night another telegram came; it read:
Dad seriously ill come on home at once have Ada retain best lawyer obtainable.
In the morning Daughter scared and trembling was on the first train south. At St. Louis she got a telegram saying
Don't worry condition fair double pneumonia.
Upset as she was it certainly did her good to see the wide Texas country, the spring crops beginning, a few bluebonnets in bloom. Buster was there to meet her at the depot, “Well, Daughter,” he said after he had taken her bag, “you've almost killed Dad.”

Buster was sixteen and captain of the highschool ball team. Driving her up to the house in the new Stutz he told her how things were. Bud had been tearing things up at the University and was on the edge of getting fired and had gotten balled up with a girl in Galveston who was trying to blackmail him. Dad had been very much worried because he'd gotten in too deep in the oil game and seeing Daughter spread all over the front page for knocking down a cop had about finished him; old Emma was getting too old to run the house for them anymore and it was up to Daughter to give up her crazy ideas and stay home and keep house for them. “See this car? A dandy ain't it. . . . I bought it myself. . . . Did a little tradin' in options up near Amarillo on my own, jus' for the hell of it, and I made five thousand bucks.” “Why, you smart kid. I tell you, Bud, it's good to be home. But about the policeman you'd have done the same yourself or you're not my brother. I'll tell you all about it sometime. Believe me it does me good to see Texas faces after those mean weaselfaced Easterners.” Dr. Winslow was in the hall when they came in. He shook hands warmly and told her how well she was looking and not to worry because he'd pull her Dad through if it was the last thing he did on earth. The sickroom and Dad's restless flushed face made her feel awful, and she didn't like finding a trained nurse running the house.

After Dad began to get around a little they both went down to Port Arthur for a couple of weeks for a change to stay with an old friend of Dad's. Dad said he'd give her a car if she'd stay on, and that he'd get her out of this silly mess she'd gotten into up north.

She began to play a lot of tennis and golf again and to go out a good deal socially. Joe Washburn had married and was living in Oklahoma getting rich on oil. She felt easier in Dallas when he wasn't there; seeing him upset her so. The next fall Daughter went down to Austin to finish her journalism course, mostly because she thought her being there would keep Bud in the straight and narrow. Friday afternoons they drove back home together in her Buick sedan for the weekend. Dad had bought a new Tudor style house way out and all her spare time was taken up picking out furniture and hanging curtains and arranging the rooms. She had a great many beaux always coming around to take her out and had to start keeping an engagement book. Especially after the declaration of war social life became very hectic. She was going every minute and never got any sleep. Everybody was getting commissions or leaving for officers training camps. Daughter went in for Red Cross work and organized a canteen, but that wasn't enough and she kept applying to be sent abroad. Bud went down to San Antonio to learn to fly and Buster, who'd been in the militia, lied about his age and joined up as a private and was sent to Jefferson Barracks. At the canteen she lived in a whirl and had one or two proposals of marriage a week, but she always told them that she hadn't any intention of being a war bride.

Then one morning a War Department telegram came. Dad was in Austin on business so she opened it. Bud had crashed, killed. First thing Daughter thought was how hard it would hit Dad. The phone rang; it was a long distance call from San Antonio, sounded like Joe Washburn's voice. “Is that you, Joe?” she said weakly. “Daughter, I want to speak to your father,” came his grave drawl. “I know . . . O Joe.”

“It was his first solo flight. He was a great boy. Nobody seems to know how it happened. Must have been defect in structure. I'll call Austin. I know where to get hold of him. . . . I've got the number . . . see you soon, Daughter.” Joe rang off. Daughter went into her room and burrowed face down into the bed that hadn't been made up. For a minute she tried to imagine that she hadn't gotten up yet, that she dreamed the phone ringing and Joe's voice. Then she thought of Bud so sharply it was as if he'd come into the room, the way he laughed, the hard pressure of his long thin hand over her hands when he'd suddenly grabbed the wheel when they'd skidded going around a corner into San Antonio the last time she'd driven him down after a leave, the clean anxious lean look of his face above the tight khaki collar of the uniform. Then she heard Joe's voice again: Must have been some defect in structure.

She went down and jumped into her car. At the fillingstation where she filled up with gas and oil the garageman asked her how the boys liked it in the army. She couldn't stop to tell him about it now. “Bully, they like it fine,” she said, with a grin that hurt her like a slap in the face. She wired Dad at his lawpartner's office that she was coming and pulled out of town for Austin. The roads were in bad shape, it made her feel better to feel the car plough through the muddy ruts and the water spraying out in a wave on either side when she went through a puddle at fifty.

She averaged fortyfive all the way and got to Austin before dark. Dad had already gone down to San Antonio on the train. Dead tired, she started off. She had a blowout and it took her a long time to get it fixed; it was midnight before she drew up at the Menger. Automatically she looked at herself in the little mirror before going in. There were streaks of mud on her face and her eyes were red.

In the lobby she found Dad and Joe Washburn sitting side by side with burntout cigars in their mouths. Their faces looked a little alike. Must have been the grey drawn look that made them look alike. She kissed them both. “Dad, you ought to go to bed,” she said briskly. “You look all in.” “I suppose I might as well . . . There's nothing left to do,” he said.

“Wait for me, Joe, until I get Dad fixed up,” she said in a low voice as she passed him. She went up to the room with Dad, got herself a room adjoining, ruffled his hair and kissed him very gently and left him to go to bed.

When she got back down to the lobby Joe was sitting in the same place with the same expression on his face. It made her mad to see him like that.

Her sharp brisk voice surprised her. “Come outside a minute, Joe, I want to walk around a little.” The rain had cleared the air. It was a transparent early summer night. “Look here, Joe, who's responsible for the condition of the planes? I've got to know.” “Daughter, how funny you talk . . . what you ought to do is get some sleep, you're all overwrought.” “Joe, you answer my question.” “But Daughter, don't you see nobody's responsible. The army's a big institution. Mistakes are inevitable. There's a lot of money being made by contractors of one kind or another. Whatever you say aviation is in its infancy . . . we all knew the risks before we joined up.”

“If Bud had been killed in France I wouldn't have felt like this .. but here . . . Joe, somebody's directly responsible for my brother's death. I want to go and talk to him, that's all. I won't do anything silly. You all think I'm a lunatic I know, but I'm thinking of all the other girls who have brothers training to be aviators. The man who inspected those planes is a traitor to his country and ought to be shot down like a dog.” “Look here, Daughter,” Joe said as he brought her back to the hotel, “we're fightin' a war now. Individual lives don't matter, this isn't the time for lettin' your personal feelin's get away with you or embarrassin' the authorities with criticism. When we've licked the huns'll be plenty of time for gettin' the incompetents and the crooks . . . that's how I feel about it.”

“Well, good night, Joe . . . you be mighty careful yourself. When do you expect to get your wings?” “Oh, in a couple of weeks.” “How's Gladys and Bunny?” “Oh, they're all right,” said Joe; a funny constraint came into his voice and he blushed. “They're in Tulsa with Mrs. Higgins.”

She went to bed and lay there without moving, feeling desperately quiet and cool; she was too tired to sleep. When morning came she went around to the garage to get her car. She felt in the pocket on the door to see if her handbag was there that always had her little pearlhandled revolver in it, and drove out to the aviation camp. At the gate the sentry wouldn't let her by, so she sent a note to Colonel Morrissey who was a friend of Dad's, saying that she must see him at once. The corporal was very nice and got her a chair in the little office at the gate and a few minutes later said he had Colonel Morrissey on the wire. She started to talk to him but she couldn't think what to say. The desk and the office and the corporal began swaying giddily and she fainted.

She came to in a staffcar with Joe Washburn who was taking her back to the hotel. He was patting her hand saying, “That's all right, Daughter.” She was clinging to him and crying like a little tiny girl. They put her to bed at the hotel and gave her bromides and the doctor wouldn't let her get up until after the funeral was over.

She got a reputation for being a little crazy after that. She stayed on in San Antonio. Everything was very gay and tense. All day she worked in a canteen and evenings she went out, supper and dancing, every night with a different aviation officer. Everybody had taken to drinking a great deal. It was like when she used to go to highschool dances, she felt herself moving in a brilliantly lighted daze of suppers and lights and dancing and champagne and different colored faces and stiff identical bodies of men dancing with her, only now she had a kidding line and let them hug her and kiss her in taxicabs, in phonebooths, in people's backyards.