‘You a wobbly?'

‘You a wobbly?’
‘Sure I am, you dirty yellow…,’he began.
The sheriff came up and hauled off to hit him. ‘Look out, he’s got glasses on.’ A big hand pulled his glasses off. ‘We’ll fix that. ‘Then the sheriff punched him in the nose with his fist. ‘Say you ain’t.?
Ben’s mouth was full of blood . He set his jaw. ?He’s a kike, hit him a again for me.’
‘Say you ain’t a wobbly.? Somebody whacked a rifle barrel against his shins and fell forward. ‘Run for it,’ they were yelling. Blows with clubs and rifle buts were splitting his ears.
He tried to walk forward without running. He tripped on a rail and fell, cutting his arm on something sharp. There was so much blood in his eyes he couldn’t see. A heavy boot was kicking him again and again on the side. He was passing out. Somehow he staggered forward. Somebody was holding him up under the arms and was dragging him free of the cattle guard on the track. Another fellow began to wipe his face off with a handkerchief . He heard Bram’s voice way off somewhere, ‘We’re over the county line, boys.’ What with losing his glasses and the rain and the night and the shooting pain all up and his back Ben couldn’t see anything. He heard shots behind them and yells from where other guys were running the gantlet. He was the center of a little straggling group of wobblies making their way down the railroad track. ?Fellow workers.’ Bram was saying in his deep quiet voice, ‘we must never forget this night.’
At he interurban trolley station they took up a collection among the ragged and bloody group to buy tickets to Seattle for the guys most hurt. Ben was so dazed and sick he could hardly hold the ticket when somebody pushed it into his hand. Bram and the rest of them set off to walk the thirty miles back to Seattle.
Ben was in hospital three weeks. The kicks in the back had affected his kidneys and he was in frightful pain most of the time. The morphine they gave him made him so dopey he barely knew what was happening when they brought in the boys wounded in the shooting on the Evertett dock on November 5th. When he was discharged he could just walk. Everybody he knew was in jail. At General Delivery he found a letter from Gladys, enclosing fifty dollars and saying his father wanted him to come home.
From the book ‘U.S.A.’ by John Dos Passos

They went down on the boat to Seattle

They went down on the boat to Seattle, I.W.W. headquarters there was like a picnic ground, crowed with young men coming in from every part of the U.S. and Canada. One day a big bunch went down to Everett on the boat to try to hold a meeting at the corner of Wetmore and Hewitt Avenues. The dock was full of deputies with rifles, and revolvers. ‘The Commercial Club boys are waiting for us,? Some guy’s voice tittered nervously. The deputies had white handkerchiefs around their necks. There’s Sheriff McRae’ said somebody. Bram edged up to Ben ‘We better stick together…Looks to me like we was going to get tamped up some.’ The wobblies were arrested as fact as they stepped off the boat and herded down to the end of the dock. The deputies were drunk, most of them . Ben could smell the whiskey on the breath of the red-faced guy who grabbed him by the arm. ‘Get a move on there, you son of bitch…’ He got a blow from a riffle butt in the small of his back. He could hear the crack of saps on men’s skulls. Anybody who resisted had his face beaten to a jelly with a club. The wobblies were made to climb up into a truck. With the dusk a cold drizzle had come on. ‘Boys we got to show them we got guts’ a red haired boy said. A deputy who was holding on to the back of the track aimed a blow at him with his sap, but lost his balance and fell off. The wobblies laughed. The deputy climbed on again, purple in the face. ?You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your dirty mugs when we get through with you.’ He yelled.
Out in the woods where the country road crossed the railroad track they were made to get out of the tracks. The deputies stood around them with their guns levelled while the sheriff who was reeling drunk, and two well-dressed middle aged men talked over what they’ do. Ben heard the world gantlet.
‘Look here, sheriff,’ somebody said. ‘we’re not here to make any kind of disturbance. All we want is our constitutional rights of free speech.’
The sheriff turned towards them waving the butt of his revolver. ‘Oh, you do, you do. Well this is Snohomish County and you ain’t going to forget it… if you come here again some of your fellers is going to die, that’s all there is about it… All right, boys, let’s go.’
The deputies made two lines down towards the railroad track. They grabbed the wobblies one by one and beat them up.
From the book ‘U.S.A.’ by John Dos Passos

He fumbled with the engine

He fumbled with the engine awhile and she could hear him swearing in French. Then he went into the hangar to wake up a mechanic. Daughter stood there shivering in the growing silvery light.: She wouldn’t think of anything. She wanted to go up in a plane. Her head ached,, but she didn’t feel nauseated. When the mechanic came back with Pierre, she could make out that she was arguing with him trying to make him give up the flight. She got very sore: Pierre, you’ve got to take me up,’ she yelled at the two men sleepily arguing in French. ?All right , miss Sistair’. They wrapped a heavy army coat around her and strapped her very carefully in the observer’s seat. Pierre climbed into the pilot seat. It was a Blèriot monoplane, he said. The mechanic spun the propeller. Te engine started. Everything was full of the roar of the engine. Suddenly she was scared and sober, thought about home and the boat she was going to take tomorrow. It seemed an endless time with the engine roaring. The light was brighter . She started to fumble with the straps to unstrap them. It was crazy going up like this. She had to catch the boat. The plane had started. It was bouncing over the field, bouncing along the ground. They were still on the ground rumbling bouncing along. Maybe it wouldn’t go up. She hoped it wouldn’t go up. A row of poplars swept past below them. The motor was a settles roar now, they were climbing. It was daylight: a cold silver sun shone in her face. Underneath them was a floor of thick white clouds like a beach.
From the book ‘U.S.A.’ by John Dos Passos