The next day he had a hammering headache and his stomach was upset. He figured up he’d spent fifteen dollars that he couldn’t afford to waste. Maisie wouldn’t speak to him. He stayed on in bed, rolling round, feeling miserable, wishing he could go to sleep and stay asleep forever. That Sunday evening Maisie’s brother Bill came to supper. As soon as he got into the house Maisie started talking to Mac as if nothing had happened. It made him sore to feel that this was just in order to keep Bill from knowing they had quarrelled.
Bill was a powerfullybuilt towhaired man with a red neck, just beginning to go to fat. He sat at the table, eating the potroast and cornbread Maisie had made, talking big about the real estate boom up in Los Angeles. He’d been a locomotive engineer and had been hurt in a wreck and had had the lucky breaks with a couple of options on lots he’d bought with his compensation money. He tried to argue Mac into giving up his job in San Diego and coming in with him. “I’ll get you in on the ground floor, just for Maisie’s sake,” he said over and over again. “And in ten years you’ll be a rich man, like I’m goin’ to be in less time than that… Now’s the time, Maisie, for you folks to make a break, while you’re young, or it’ll be too late and Mac’ll just be a workingman all his life.”
Maisie’s eyes shone. She brought out a chocolate layer cake and a bottle of sweet wine. Her cheeks flushed and she kept laughing showing all her little pearly teeth. She hadn’t looked so pretty since she’d had her first baby. Bill’s talk about money made her drunk.
“Suppose a feller didn’t want to get rich… you know what Gene Debs said, ‘I want to rise with the ranks, not from the ranks,’” said Mac.
Maisie and Bill laughed. “When a guy talks like that he’s ripe for the nuthouse, take it from me,” said Bill. Mac flushed and said nothing.
Bill pushed back his chair and cleared his throat in a serious tone: “Look here, Mac… I’m goin’ to be around this town for a few days lookin’ over the situation, but looks to me like things was pretty dead. Now what I propose is this… You know what I think of Maisie… I think she’s about the sweetest little girl in the world. I wish my wife had half what Maisie’s got… Well, anyway, here’s my proposition: Out on Ocean View Avenue I’ve got several magnificent mission-style bungalows I haven’t disposed of yet, twentyfivefoot frontage on a refined residential street by a hundredfoot depth. Why, I’ve gotten as high as five grand in cold cash for ’em. In a year or two none of us fellers’ll be able to stick our noses in there. It’ll be millionaires’ row… Now if you’re willing to have the house in Maisie’s name I’ll tell you what I’ll do… I’ll swop properties with you, paying all the expenses of searching title and transfer and balance up the mortgages, that I’ll hold so’s to keep ’em in the family, so that you won’t have to make substantially bigger payments than you do here, and will be launched on the road to success.”
“Oh, Bill, you darling!” cried Maisie. She ran over and kissed him on the top of the head and sat swinging her legs on the arm of his chair. “Gee, I’ll have to sleep on that,” said Mac; “it’s mighty white of you to make the offer.” “Fainie, I’d think you’d be more grateful to Bill,” snapped Maisie. “Of course we’ll do it.”
“No, you’re quite right,” said Bill. “A man’s got to think a proposition like that over. But don’t forget the advantages offered, better schools for the kids, more refined surroundings, an upandcoming boom town instead of a dead one, chance to get ahead in the world instead of being a goddam wageslave.”
So a month later the McCrearys moved up to Los Angeles. The expenses of moving and getting the furniture installed put Mac five hundred dollars in debt. On top of that little Rose caught the measles and the doctor’s bill started mounting. Mac couldn’t get a job on any of the papers. Up at the union local that he transferred to they had ten men out of work as it was.
He spent a lot of time walking about town worrying. He didn’t like to be at home any more. He and Maisie never got on now. Maisie was always thinking about what went on at brother Bill’s house, what kind of clothes Mary Virginia, his wife, wore, how they brought up their children, the fine new victrola they’d bought. Mac sat on benches in parks round town, reading The Appeal to Reason and The Industrial Worker and the local papers.
One day he noticed The Industrial Worker sticking out of the pocket of the man beside him. They had both sat on the bench a long time when something made him turn to look at the man. “Say, aren’t you Ben Evans?” “Well, Mac, I’ll be goddamned… What’s the matter, boy, you’re lookin’ thin?” “Aw, nothin’, I’m lookin’ for a master, that’s all.”
They talked for a long time. Then they went to have a cup of coffee in a Mexican restaurant where some of the boys hung out. A young blonde fellow with blue eyes joined them there who talked English with an accent. Mac was surprised to find out that he was a Mexican. Everybody talked Mexico. Madero had started his revolution. The fall of Diaz was expected any day. All over the peons were taking to the hills, driving the rich cientificos off their ranches. Anarchist propaganda was spreading among the town workers. The restaurant had a warm smell of chiles and overroasted coffee. On each table there were niggerpink and vermilion paper flowers, an occasional flash of white teeth in bronze and brown faces talking low. Some of the Mexicans there belonged to the I.W.W., but most of them were anarchists. The talk of revolution and foreign places made him feel happy and adventurous again, as if he had a purpose in life, like when he’d been on the bum with Ike Hall.
“Say, Mac, let’s go to Mexico and see if there’s anything in this revoloossione talk,” Ben kept saying.
“If it wasn’t for the kids… Hell, Fred Hoff was right when he bawled me out and said a revolutionist oughtn’t to marry.”
Eventually Mac got a job as linotype operator on The Times, and things at the house were a little better, but he never had any spare money, as everything had to go into paying debts and interest on mortgages. It was night work again, and he hardly ever saw Maisie and the kids any more. Sundays Maisie would take little Ed to brother Bill’s and he and Rose would go for walks or take trolleytrips. That was the best part of the week. Saturday nights he’d sometimes get to a lecture or go down to chat with the boys at the I.W.W. local, but he was scared to be seen round in radical company too much for fear of losing his job. The boys thought he was pretty yellow but put up with him because they thought of him as an old timer.
He got occasional letters from Milly telling him about Uncle Tim’s health. She had married a man named Cohen who was a registered accountant and worked in one of the offices at the stockyards. Uncle Tim lived with them. Mac would have liked to bring him down to live with him in Los Angeles, but he knew that it would only mean squabbling with Maisie. Milly’s letters were pretty depressing. She felt funny, she said, to be married to a Jew. Uncle Tim was always poorly. The doctor said it was the drink, but whenever they gave him any money he drank it right up. She wished she could have children. Fainie was lucky, she thought, to have such nice children. She was afraid that poor Uncle Tim wasn’t long for this world.
The same day that the papers carried the murder of Madero in Mexico City, Mac got a wire from Milly that Uncle Tim was dead and please to wire money for the funeral. Mac went to the savingsbank and drew out $53.75 he had in an account for the children’s schooling and took it down to the Western Union and wired fifty to her. Maisie didn’t find out until the baby’s birthday came round, when she went down to deposit five dollars birthday money from brother Bill.