They worked for the C.P.R. all summer and by the first of October they were in Vancouver. They had new suitcases and new suits. Ike had forty-nine dollars and fifty cents and Mac had eighty-three fifteen in a brand new pigskin wallet. Mac had more because he didn’t play poker. They took a dollar and a half room between them and lay in bed like princes their first free morning. They were tanned and toughened and their hands were horny. After the smell of rank pipes and unwashed feet and the bedbugs in the railroad bunkhouses the small cleanboarded hotel room with its clean beds seemed like a palace.
When he was fully awake Mac sat up and reached for his Ingersoll. Eleven o’clock. The sunlight on the windowledge was ruddy from the smoke of forestfires up the coast. He got up and washed in cold water at the washbasin. He walked up and down the room wiping his face and arms in the towel. It made him feel good to follow the contours of his neck and the hollow between his shoulderblades and the muscles of his arms as he dried himself with the fresh coarse towel.
“Say, Ike, what do you think we oughta do? I think we oughta go down on the boat to Seattle, Wash., like a coupla dude passengers. I wanta settle down an’ get a printin’ job; there’s good money in that. I’m goin’ to study to beat hell this winter. What do you think, Ike? I want to get out of this limejuicy hole an’ get back to God’s country. What do you think, Ike?”
Ike groaned and rolled over in bed.
“Say, wake up, Ike, for crissake. We want to take a look at this burg an’ then twentythree.”
Ike sat up in bed. “God damn it, I need a woman.”
“I’ve heard tell there’s swell broads in Seattle, honest, Ike.”
Ike jumped out of bed and began splattering himself from head to foot with cold water. Then he dashed into his clothes and stood looking out the window combing the water out of his hair.
“When does the friggin’ boat go? Jez, I had two wet dreams last night, did you?”
Mac blushed. He nodded his head.
“Jez, we got to get us women. Wet dreams weakens a guy.”
“I wouldn’t want to get sick.”
“Aw, hell, a man’s not a man until he’s had his three doses.”
“Aw, come ahead, let’s go see the town.”
“Well, ain’t I been waitin’ for ye this halfhour?”
They ran down the stairs and out into the street. They walked round Vancouver, sniffing the winey smell of lumbermills along the waterfront, loafing under the big trees in the park. Then they got their tickets at the steamboat office and went to a haberdashery store and bought themselves striped neckties, colored socks and four-dollar silk shirts. They felt like millionaires when they walked up the gangplank of the boat for Victoria and Seattle, with their new suits and their new suitcases and their silk shirts. They strolled round the deck smoking cigarettes and looking at the girls. “Gee, there’s a couple looks kinda easy… I bet they’re hookers at that,” Ike whispered in Mac’s ear and gave him a dig in the ribs with his elbow as they passed two girls in Spring Maid hats who were walking round the deck the other way. “Shit, let’s try to pick ’em up.”
They had a couple of beers at the bar, then they went back on deck. The girls had gone. Mac and Ike walked disconsolately round the deck for a while, then they found the girls leaning over the rail in the stern. It was a cloudy moonlight night. The sea and the dark islands covered with spiring evergreens shone light and dark in a mottling silvery sheen. Both girls had frizzy hair and dark circles under their eyes. Mac thought they looked too old, but as Ike had gone sailing ahead it was too late to say anything. The girl he talked to was named Gladys. He liked the looks of the other one, whose name was Olive, better, but Ike got next to her first. They stayed on deck kidding and giggling until the girls said they were cold, then they went in the saloon and sat on a sofa and Ike went and bought a box of candy.
“We ate onions for dinner today,” said Olive. “Hope you fellers don’t mind. Gladys, I told you we oughtn’t to of eaten them onions, not before comin’ on the boat.”
“Gimme a kiss an’ I’ll tell ye if I mind or not,” said Ike.
“Kiddo, you can’t talk fresh like that to us, not on this boat,” snapped Olive, two mean lines appearing on either side of her mouth.
“We have to be awful careful what we do on the boat,” explained Gladys. “They’re terrible suspicious of two girls travelin’ alone nowadays. Ain’t it a crime?”
“It sure is,” Ike moved up a little closer on the seat.
“Quit that… Make a noise like a hoop an’ roll away. I mean it.” Olive went and sat on the opposite bench. Ike followed her.
“In the old days it was liberty hall on these boats, but not so any more,” Gladys said, talking to Mac in a low intimate voice. “You fellers been workin’ up in the canneries?”
“No, we been workin’ for the C.P.R. all summer.”
“You must have made big money.” As she talked to him, Mac noticed that she kept looking out of the corner of her eye at her friend.
“Yare… not so big… I saved up pretty near a century.”
“An’ now you’re going to Seattle.”
“I want to get a job linotypist.”
“That’s where we live, Seattle. Olive an’ I’ve got an apartment… Let’s go out on deck, it’s too hot in here.”
As they passed Olive and Ike, Gladys leaned over and whispered something in Olive’s ear. Then she turned to Mac with a melting smile. The deck was deserted. She let him put his arm round her waist. His fingers felt the bones of some sort of corset. He squeezed. “Oh, don’t be too rough, kiddo,” she whined in a funny little voice. He laughed. As he took his hand away he felt the contour of her breast. Walking, his leg brushed against her leg. It was the first time he’d been so close to a girl.
After a while she said she had to go to bed. “How about me goin’ down with ye?” She shook her head. “Not on this boat. See you tomorrow; maybe you and your pal ’ll come and see us at our apartment. We’ll show you the town.” “Sure,” said Mac. He walked on round the deck, his heart beating hard. He could feel the pound of the steamboat’s engines and the arrowshaped surge of broken water from the bow and he felt like that. He met Ike.
“My girl said she had to go to bed.” “So did mine.” “Get anywheres, Mac?” “They got an apartment in Seattle.” “I got a kiss off mine. She’s awful hot. Jez, I thought she was going to feel me up.” “We’ll get it tomorrow all right.”
The next day was sunny; the Seattle waterfront was sparkling, smelt of lumberyards, was noisy with rattle of carts and yells of drivers when they got off the boat. They went to the Y.M.C.A. for a room. They were through with being laborers and hobos. They were going to get clean jobs, live decently and go to school nights. They walked round the city all day, and in the evening met Olive and Gladys in front of the totempole on Pioneer Square.
Things happened fast. They went to a restaurant and had wine with a big feed and afterwards they went to a beergarden where there was a band, and drank whiskeysours. When they went to the girls’ apartment they took a quart of whiskey with them and Mac almost dropped it on the steps and the girls said, “For crissake don’t make so much noise or you’ll have the cops on us,” and the apartment smelt of musk and facepowder and there was women’s underwear around on all the chairs and the girls got fifteen bucks out of each of them first thing. Mac was in the bathroom with his girl and she smeared liprouge on his nose and they laughed and laughed until he got rough and she slapped his face. Then they all sat together round the table and drank some more and Ike danced a Solomeydance in his bare feet. Mac laughed, it was so very funny, but he was sitting on the floor and when he tried to get up he fell on his face and all of a sudden he was being sick in the bathtub and Gladys was cursing hell out of him. She got him dressed, only he couldn’t find his necktie, and everybody said he was too drunk and pushed him out and he was walking down the street singing Make a Noise Like a Hoop and Just Roll Away, Roll Away, and he asked a cop where the Y.M.C.A. was and the cop pushed him into a cell at the stationhouse and locked him up.