Dr. Jonathan Part 8

MINNIE (with heat). Throwing myself away?

GEORGE. Didn't you? Didn't you break loose?--have a good time?

MINNIE. Why wouldn't I have a good time? That's what you were having,--a good time with me,--wasn't it? And say, did you ever stop to think what one day of a working girl's life was like?

GEORGE. One day?

MINNIE. With an alarm clock scaring you out of sweet dreams in the winter, while it's dark, and you get up and dress in the cold and heat a little coffee over a lamp and beat it for the factory,--and stand on your feet all morning, in a noise that would deafen you, feeding a thing you ain't got no interest in? It don't never need no rest! By eleven o'clock you think you're all in, that the morning'll never end, but at noon you get a twenty five cent feed that lasts you until about five in the afternoon,--and then you don't know which way the machine's headed.

I've often thought of one of them cutters at Shale's as a sort of monster, watching you all day, waiting to get you when you're too tired to care. (Dreamily.) When it looks all blurred, and you want to put your hand in it.

GEORGE. Good G.o.d, Minnie!

MINNIE. And when the whistle blows at night all you have is your little hall bedroom in a rooming house that smells of stale smoke and cabbage.

There's no place to go except the streets--but you've just got to go somewhere, to break loose and have a little fun,--even though you're so tired you want to throw yourself on the bed and cry.

(A pause.)

Maybe it's because you're tired. When you're tired that way is when you want a good time most. It's funny, but it's so.

(A pause.)

You ain't got no friends except a few girls with hall bedrooms like yourself, and if a chance comes along for a little excitement, you don't turn it down, I guess.

GEORGE (after a pause). I never knew what your life was like.

MINNIE. Why would you?--with friends, and everything you want, only to buy it? But since the war come on, I tell you, I ain't kicking, I can go to a movie or the theatre once in a while, and buy nice clothes, and I don't get so tired as I used to. I don't want nothing from anybody, I can take care of myself. It's money that makes you free.

GEORGE. Money!

MINNIE. When I looked into this room this morning and saw you standing here in your uniform, I says to myself, "He's changed." Not that you wasn't kind and good natured and generous, George, but you didn't know.

How could you? You'd never had a chance to learn anything!

GEORGE (bitterly, yet smiling in spite of himself). That's so!

MINNIE. I remember that first night I ran into you,--I was coming home from your shops, and you made love to me right off the bat! And after that we used to meet by the watering trough on the Lindon road. We were kids then. And it didn't make no difference how tired I was, I'd get over it as soon as I saw you. You were the live wire!

GEORGE. Minnie, tell me, what made you come back to Foxon Falls today?

(He seizes her hand.)

MINNIE (struggling). Don't, George,--don't go and be foolish again!

(The shop whistle blows. She pulls away from him and backs toward the doorway, upper right.)

There's the noon whistle! Goodbye, I'll be thinking of you, over there.

GEORGE. I'll write to you. Will you write to me, Minnie?

MINNIE (shaking her head). Don't lose any sleep about me. Good luck, George!

(She goes to the doorway, upper right, turns, kisses her hand to GEORGE and disappears. He goes to the doorway and gazes after her; presently he raises his hand and waves in answer to another signal, and smiles. He remains there until MINNIE is out of sight, and then is about to come back into the room when a man appears on the sidewalk, seen through the windows. The man is PRAG. He is a gaunt workman, with high cheek bones and a rather fanatical light in his blue eyes. He stands motionless, gazing at the house.)

GEORGE (calling). Do you want anything, Prag?

PRAG. I joost come to look at your house, where you live. It is no harm, is it?

GEORGE. None at all.

(PRAG continues to stare at the house, and GEORGE obeys a sudden impulse.)

Won't you come in, Prag?

PRAG (looking fixedly at the house). No, I stay here.

GEORGE. Come in a while,--don't be unsociable.

(PRAG crosses the lawn and enters, upper right. He surveys the room curiously, defiantly, and then GEORGE in uniform, as he cones down the stage.)

You're not working today?

PRAG (with bitter gloom). I lose my job, you don't hear? No, it is nothings to you, and you go away to fight for liberty,--ain't it?

GEORGE. How did you lose your job?

PRAG. The foreman come to me last night and says, "Prag I hear you belong to the union. You gets out."

GEORGE (after a moment's hesitation). But--there are plenty of other jobs these days. You can go down to the coast and get more than five dollars a day at a shipyard.

PRAG. It is easy, yes, when you have a little home bought already, and mortgaged, and childrens who go to school here, and a wife a long time sick.

GEORGE. I'm sorry. But weren't you getting along all right here, except your wife's illness? I don't want to be impertinent,--I recognize that it's your affair, but I'd like to know why you joined the union.

PRAG. Why is it you join the army? To fight for somethings you would give your life for--not so? Und you are a soldier,--would you run away from your comrades to live safe and happy? No! That is like me. I lose my job, I go away from my wife and childrens, but it is not for me, it is for all, to get better things for all,--freedoms for all.

GEORGE. Then--you think this isn't a free country.

PRAG. When I sail up the harbour at New York twenty years ago and see that Liberty shining in the sun, I think so, yes. But now I know, for the workmens, she is like the Iron Woman of Nuremberg, with her spikes when she holds you in her arms. You call me a traitor, yes, when I say that.

GEORGE. No--I want to understand.

PRAG. I am born in Bavaria, but I am as good an American as any,--better than you, because I know what I fight for, what I suffer for. I am not afraid of the Junkers here,--I have spirits,--but the Germans at home have no spirits. You think you fight for freedoms, for democracy, but you fight for this! (He waves his hand to indicate the room.) If I had a million dollars, maybe I fight for it, too,--I don't know.

GEORGE. So you think I'm going to fight for this--for money?

PRAG. Are you going to fight for me, for the workmens and their childrens? No, you want to keep your money, to make more of it from your war contracts. It is for the capitalist system you fight.

GEORGE. Come, now, capital has some rights.