The Big Town | Page 6

be overseas from any
of the places you've mentioned. What I'm looking for is a home with a
couple of beds and a cook-stove in the kitchen, and maybe a bath."
"But we want to see New York first," said Katie, "and we can do that
better without no household cares."

"That's the idear!" says Griffin. "Eat, drink and be merry; to-morrow
we may die."
"I guess we won't drink ourselves to death," I said, "not if the Big
Town's like where we been living."
"Oh, say!" says our new friend. "Do you think little old New York is
going to stand for prohibition? Why, listen! I can take you to thirty
places to-morrow night where you can get all you want in any one of
them."
"Let's pass up the other twenty-nine," I says.
"But that isn't the idear," he said. "What makes we New Yorkers sore is
to think they should try and wish a law like that on Us. Isn't this
supposed to be a government of the people, for the people and by the
people?"
"People!" I said. "Who and the hell voted for prohibition if it wasn't the
people?"
"The people of where?" he says. "A lot of small-time hicks that couldn't
buy a drink if they wanted it."
"Including the hicks," I says, "that's in the New York State legislature."
"But not the people of New York City," he said. "And you can't tell me
it's fair to spring a thing like this without warning on men that's got
their fortunes tied up in liquor that they can't never get rid of now, only
at a sacrifice."
"You're right," I said. "They ought to give them some warning. Instead
of that they was never even a hint of what was coming off till Maine
went dry seventy years ago."
"Maine?" he said. "What the hell is Maine?"
"I don't know," I said. "Only they was a ship or a boat or something
named after it once, and the Spaniards sunk it and we sued them for

libel or something."
"You're a smart Aleck," he said. "But speaking about war, where was
you?"
"In the shipyards at South Bend painting a duck boat," I says. "And
where was you?"
"I'd of been in there in a few more weeks," he says. "They wasn't no
slackers in the Big Town."
"No," said I, "and America will never forget New York for coming in
on our side."
By this time the gals was both giving me dirty looks, and we'd eat all
we could get, so we paid our checks and went back in our car and I felt
kind of apologetic, so I dug down in the old grip and got out a bottle of
bourbon that a South Bend pal of mine, George Hull, had give me the
day before; and Griffin and I went in the washroom with it and
before the evening was over we was pretty near ready to forget national
boundaries and kiss.
The old bourb' helped me save money the next morning, as I didn't care
for no breakfast. Ella and Kate went in with Griffin and you could of
knocked me over with a coupling pin when the Mrs. come back and
reported that he'd insisted on paying the check. "He told us all about
himself," she said. "His name is Francis Griffin and he's in Wall Street.
Last year he cleared twenty thousand dollars in commissions and
everything."
"He's a piker," I says. "Most of them never even think under six
figures."
"There you go!" said the Mrs. "You never believe nothing. Why
shouldn't he be telling the truth? Didn't he buy our breakfast?"
"I been buying your breakfast for five years," I said, "but that don't
prove that I'm knocking out twenty thousand per annum in Wall

Street."
Francis and Katie was setting together four or five seats ahead of us.
"You ought to of seen the way he looked at her in the diner," said the
Mrs. "He looked like he wanted to eat her up."
"Everybody gets desperate in a diner these days," I said. "Did you and
Kate go fifty-fifty with him? Did you tell him how much money we
got?"
"I should say not!" says Ella. "But I guess we did say that you wasn't
doing nothing just now and that we was going to New York to see Life,
after being cooped up in a small town all these years. And Sis told him
you'd made us put pretty near everything in bonds, so all we can spend
is eight thousand a year. He said that wouldn't go very far in the Big
Town."
"I doubt if it ever gets as far as the Big Town," I said. "It won't if he
makes up his