Read Online The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos - Free Book Online Page A

there’s matches there’s danger of fire,” he said. Doc Bingham’s face was black as thunder as he wrapped himself in a horseblanket, muttering about “indignity to a wearer of the cloth.” Fainy was excited and happy. He lay on his back listening to the beat of the rain on the roof and its gurgle in the gutters, and the muffled stirring and chomping of the cattle and horse, under them; his nose was full of the smell of the hay and the warm meadowsweetness of the cows. He wasn’t sleepy. He wished he had someone his own age to talk to. Anyway, it was a job and he was on the road.
    He had barely got to sleep when a light woke him. The boy he’d seen in the kitchen was standing over him with a lantern. His shadow hovered over them enormous against the rafters.
    “Say, I wanner buy a book.”
    “What kind of a book?” Fainy yawned and sat up.
    “You know . . . one o’ them books about chorus girls an’ white slaves an’ stuff like that.”
    “How much do you want to pay, son?” came Doc Bingham’s voice from under the horseblanket. “We have a number of very interesting books stating the facts of life frankly and freely, describing the deplorable licentiousness of life in the big cities, ranging from a dollar to five dollars.
The Complete Sexology of Dr. Burnside
, is six fifty.”
    “I couldn’t go higher’n a dollar . . . Say, you won’t tell the ole man on me?” the young man said, turning from one to another. “Seth Hardwick, he lives down the road, he went into Saginaw onct an’ got a book from a man at the hotel. Gosh, it was a pippin.” He tittered uneasily.
    “Fenian, go down and get him
The Queen of the White Slaves
for a dollar,” said Doc Bingham, and settled back to sleep.
    Fainy and the farmer’s boy went down the rickety ladder.
    “Say, is she pretty spicy? . . . Gosh, if pop finds it he’ll give me a whalin’. . . Gosh, I bet you’ve read all them books.”
    “Me?” said Fainy haughtily. “I don’t need to read books. I kin see life if I wanter. Here it is . . . it’s about fallen women.”
    “Ain’t that pretty short for a dollar? I thought you could get a big book for a dollar.”
    “This one’s pretty spicy.”
    “Well, I guess I’ll take it before dad ketches me snoopin’ around . . . Goodnight.” Fainy went back to his bed in the hay and fell fast asleep. He was dreaming that he was going up a rickety stair in a barn with his sister Milly who kept getting all the time bigger and whiter and fatter, and had on a big hat with ostrich plumes all round it and her dress began to split from the neck and lower and lower and Doc Bingham’s voice was saying, She’s Maria Monk, the queen of the white slaves, and just as he was going to grab her, sunlight opened his eyes. Doc Bingham stood in front of him, his feet wide apart, combing his hair with a pocketcomb and reciting:
     
“Let us depart, the universal sun
Confines not to one land his blessed beams
Nor is man rooted like a tree . . .
     
    “Come, Fenian,” he boomed, when he saw that Fainy was awake, “let us shake the dust of this inhospitable farm, latcheting our shoes with a curse like philosophers of old . . . Hitch up the horse; we’ll get breakfast down the road.”
    This went on for several weeks, until one evening they found themselves driving up to a neat yellow house in a grove of feathery dark tamaracks. Fainy waited in the wagon while Doc Bingham interviewed the people in the house. After a while Doc Bingham appeared in the door, a broad smile creasing his cheeks. “We’re going to be very handsomely treated, Fenian, as befits a wearer of the cloth and all that . . . You be careful how you talk, will you? Take the horse to the barn and unhitch.”
    “Say, Mr. Bingham, how about my money? It’s three weeks now.” Fainy jumped down and went to the horse’s head.
    An expression of gloom passed over Doc Bingham’s face. “Oh, lucre, lucre . . .
     
“Examine well
His