When there was anybody of the wobbly crowd in town down on his uppers or when they were raising money for strike funds or anything like that he’d help them out with a couple of dollars, but he never could do much for fear Maisie would find out about it. Whenever she found The Appeal to Reason or any other radical paper round the house she’d burn it up, and then they’d quarrel and be sulky and make each other’s lives miserable for a few days, until Mac decided what was the use, and never spoke to her about it. But it kept them apart almost as if she thought he was going out with some other woman.
One Saturday afternoon Mac and Maisie had managed to get a neighbor to take care of the kids and were going into a vaudeville theater when they noticed a crowd at the corner in front of Marshall’s drugstore. Mac elbowed his way through. A thin young man in blue denim was standing close to the corner lamppost where the firealarm was, reading the Declaration of Independence: When in the course of human events… A cop came up and told him to move on… inalienable right… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Now there were two cops. One of them had the young man by the shoulders and was trying to pull him loose from the lamppost.
“Come on, Fainy, we’ll be late for the show,” Maisie kept saying.
“Hey, get a file; the bastard’s locked himself to the post,” he heard one cop say to the other. By that time Maisie had managed to hustle him to the theater boxoffice. After all, he’d promised to take her to the show and she hadn’t been out all winter. The last thing he saw the cop had hauled off and hit the young guy in the corner of the jaw.
Mac sat there in the dark stuffy theater all afternoon. He didn’t see the acts or the pictures between the acts. He didn’t speak to Maisie. He sat there feeling sick in the pit of his stomach. The boys must be staging a free-speech fight right here in town. Now and then he glanced at Maisie’s face in the dim glow from the stage. It had puffed out a little in wellsatisfied curves like a cat sitting by a warm stove, but she was still a good looker. She’d already forgotten everything and was completely happy looking at the show, her lips parted, her eyes bright, like a little girl at a party. “I guess I’ve sold out to the sonsobitches allright, allright,” he kept saying to himself.
The last number on the programme was Eva Tanguay. The nasal voice singing I’m Eva Tanguay, I don’t care brought Mac out of his sullen trance. Everything suddenly looked bright and clear to him, the proscenium with its heavy gold fluting, the people’s faces in the boxes, the heads in front of him, the tawdry powdery mingling of amber and blue lights on the stage, the scrawny woman flinging herself around inside the rainbow hoop of the spotlight.
The papers say that I’m insane
But… I… don’t… care.
Mac got up. “Maisie, I’ll meet you at the house. You see the rest of the show. I feel kind of bum.” Before she could answer, he’d slipped out past the other people in the row, down the aisle and out. On the street there was nothing but the ordinary Saturday afternoon crowd. Mac walked round and round the downtown district. He didn’t even know where I.W.W. headquarters was. He had to talk to somebody. As he passed the Hotel Brewster he caught a whiff of beer. What he needed was a drink. This way he was going nuts.
At the next corner he went into a saloon and drank four rye whiskies straight. The bar was lined with men drinking, treating each other, talking loud about baseball, prizefights, Eva Tanguay and her Salome dance.
Beside Mac was a big redfaced man with a widebrimmed felt hat on the back of his head. When Mac reached for his fifth drink this man put his hand on his arm and said, “Pard, have that on me if you don’t mind… I’m celebratin’ today.” “Thanks; here’s lookin’ at you,” said Mac. “Pard, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, you’re drinkin’ like you wanted to drink the whole barrel up at once and not leave any for the rest of us… Have a chaser.” “All right, bo,” said Mac. “Make it a beer chaser.”
“My name’s McCreary,” said the big man. “I just sold my fruit crop. I’m from up San Jacinto way.”
“So’s my name McCreary, too,” said Mac.
They shook hands heartily.
“By the living jumbo, that’s a coincidence… We must be kin or pretty near it… Where you from, pard?”
“I’m from Chicago, but my folks was Irish.”
“Mine was from the East, Delaware… but it’s the good old Scotch-Irish stock.”
They had more drinks on that. Then they went to another saloon where they sat in a corner at a table and talked. The big man talked about his ranch and his apricot crop and how his wife was bedridden since his last child had come. “I’m awful fond of the old gal, but what can a feller do? Can’t get gelded just to be true to your wife.” “I like my wife swell,” said Mac, “and I’ve got swell kids. Rose is four and she’s beginning to read already and Ed’s about learnin’ to walk…. But hell, before I was married I used to think I might amount to somethin’ in the world… I don’t mean I thought I was anythin’ in particular… You know how it is.” “Sure, pard, I used to feel that way when I was a young feller.” “Maisie’s a fine girl, too, and I like her better all the time,” said Mac, feeling a warm tearing wave of affection go over him, like sometimes a Saturday evening when he’d helped her bathe the kids and put them to bed and the room was still steamy from their baths and his eyes suddenly met Maisie’s eyes and there was nowhere they had to go and they were just both of them there together.
The man from up San Jacinto way began to sing:
O my wife has gone to the country,
Hooray, hooray.
I love my wife, but oh you kid,
My wife’s gone away.
“But God damn it to hell,” said Mac, “a man’s got to work for more than himself and his kids to feel right.”
“I agree with you absholootely, pard; every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.” “Oh, hell,” said Mac, “I wish I was on the bum again or up at Goldfield with the bunch.”
They drank and drank and ate free lunch and drank some more, all the time rye with beer chasers, and the man from up San Jacinto way had a telephone number and called up some girls and they bought a bottle of whisky and went out to their apartment, and the rancher from up San Jacinto way sat with a girl on each knee singing My wife has gone to the country. Mac just sat belching in a corner with his head dangling over his chest; then suddenly he felt bitterly angry and got to his feet upsetting a table with a glass vase on it.
“McCreary,” he said, “this is no place for a classconscious rebel… I’m a wobbly, damn you… I’m goin’ out and get in this free-speech fight.”
The other McCreary went on singing and paid no attention. Mac went out and slammed the door. One of the girls followed him out jabbering about the broken vase, but he pushed her in the face and went out into the quiet street. It was moonlight. He’d lost the last steamcar and would have to walk home.
When he got to the house he found Maisie sitting on the porch in her kimono. She was crying. “And I had such a nice supper for you,” she kept saying, and her eyes looked into him cold and bitter the way they’d been when he’d gotten back from Goldfield before they were married.