The smoky hall and the platform were filled with swarthy men in blue denim workclothes; in the back were a few peons in white. Many hands shook Mac’s, black eyes looked sharp into his, several men hugged him. He was given a campchair in the front row on the platform. Evidently Ricardo Perez was chairman. Applause followed in every pause in his speech. A feeling of big events hovered in the hall. When Mac got on his feet, somebody yelled “Solidarity forever” in English. Mac stammered a few words about how he wasn’t an official representative of the I.W.W. but that all the same classconscious American workers were watching the Mexican revolution with big hopes, and ended up with the wobbly catchword about building the new society in the shell of the old. The speech went big when Perez translated it and Mac felt pretty good. Then the meeting went on and on, more and more speeches and occasional songs. Mac found himself nodding several times. The sound of the strange language made him sleepy. He barely managed to keep awake until a small band in the open door of the hall broke into a tune and everybody sang and the meeting broke up.
“That’s Cuatro Milpas… that means four cornfields… that’s a song of the peons everybody’s singing now,” said Perez.
“I’m pretty hungry… I’d like to get a little something to eat somewheres,” said Mac. “I haven’t eaten since morning when I had a cup of coffee and a doughnut in El Paso.”
“We will eat at the house of our comrade,” said Perez. “Please… this way.”
They went in off the street, now black and empty, through a tall door hung with a bead curtain, into a whitewashed room brightly lit by an acetylene flare that smelt strong of carbide. They sat down at the end of a long table with a spotted cloth on it. The table gradually filled with people from the meeting, mostly young men in blue workclothes, with thin sharp faces. At the other end sat an old dark man with the big nose and broad flat cheekbones of an Indian. Perez poured Mac out two glasses of a funnytasting white drink that made his head spin. The food was very hot with pepper and chile and he choked on it a little bit. The Mexicans petted Mac like a child at his birthday party. He had to drink many glasses of beer and cognac. Perez went home early and left him in charge of a young fellow named Pablo. Pablo had a Colt automatic on a shoulder strap that he was very proud of. He spoke a little pidginenglish and sat with one hand round Mac’s neck and the other on the buckle of his holster. “Gringo bad… Kill him quick… Fellowworker good… internacional… hurray,” he kept saying. They sang the International several times and then the Marseillaise and the Carmagnole. Mac was carried along in a peppery haze. He sang and drank and ate and everything began to lose outline.
“Fellowworker marry nice girl,” said Pablo. They were standing at a bar somewhere. He made a gesture of sleeping with his two hands against his face. “Come.”
They went to a dancehall. At the entrance everybody had to leave his gun on a table guarded by a soldier in a visored cap. Mac noticed that the men and girls drew away from him a little. Pablo laughed. “They think you gringo… I tell them revolucionario internacional. There she, nice girl… Not goddam whore… not pay, she nice working girl… comrade.”
Mac found himself being introduced to a brown broadfaced girl named Encarnacion. She was neatly dressed and her hair was very shinyblack. She gave him a bright flash of a smile. He patted her on the cheek. They drank some beer at the bar and left. Pablo had a girl with him too. The others stayed on at the dancehall. Pablo and his girl walked round to Encarnacion’s house with them. It was a room in a little courtyard. Beyond it was a great expanse of lightcolored desert land stretching as far as you could see under a waning moon. In the distance were some tiny specks of fires. Pablo pointed at them with his full hand and whispered, “Revolucion.”
Then they said good night at the door of Encarnacion’s little room that had a bed, a picture of the Virgin and a new photograph of Madero stuck up by a pin. Encarnacion closed the door, bolted it and sat down on the bed looking up at Mac with a smile.
The Camera Eye (12)
when everybody went away for a trip Jeanne took us out to play every day in Farragut Square and told you about how in the Jura in winter the wolves come down and howl through the streets of the villages
and sometimes we’d see President Roosevelt ride by all alone on a bay horse and once we were very proud because when we took off our hats we were very proud because he smiled and showed his teeth like in the newspaper and touched his hat and we were very proud and he had an aide de camp
but we had a cloth duck that we used to play with on the steps until it began to get dark and the wolves howled ran with little children’s blood dripping from their snout through the streets of the villages only it was summer and between dog and wolf we’d be put to bed and Jeanne was a young French girl from the Jura where the wolves howled ran through the streets and when everybody had gone to bed she would take you into her bed
and it was a very long scary story and the worst of the wolves howled through the streets gloaming to freeze little children’s blood was the Loup Garou howling in the Jura and we were scared and she had breasts under her nightgown and the Loup Garou was terrible scary and black hair and rub against her and outside the wolves howled in the streets and it was wet there and she said it was nothing she had just washed herself
but the Loup Garou was really a man hold me close cheri a man howled through streets with a bloody snout that tore up the bellies of girls and little children Loup Garou
and afterwards you knew what girls were made like and she was very silly and made you promise not to tell but you wouldn’t have anyway
Newsreel X
MOON’S PATENT IS FIZZLE
insurgents win at Kansas polls Oak Park soulmates part 8000 to take autoride says girl begged for her husband
PIT SENTIMENT FAVORS UPTURN
Oh you be-eautiful doll
You great big beautiful doll
the world cannot understand all that is involved in this, she said. It appears like an ordinary worldly affair with the trappings of what is low and vulgar but there is nothing of the sort. He is honest and sincere. I know him. I have fought side by side with him. My heart is with him now.
Let me throw my arms around you
Honey ain’t I glad I found you
Almost Motionless In Midsummer Languor On Business Seas One Million See Drunkards Bounced
JURORS AT GATES OF BEEF BARONS
compare love with Vesuvius emblazoned streets await tramp of paladins
Honey ain’t I glad I found you
Oh you beautiful doll
You great big beautiful doll
TRADES WHITE HORSE FOR RED
Madero’s troops defeat rebels in Battle at Parral Roosevelt carries Illinois oratory closes eyelids Chicago pleads for more water
CONFESSED ANARCHISTS ON BENDED KNEES
KISS U.S. FLAG
The Sunbeam Movement is Spreading