The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-06-17
CHAPTER XVI

Terry f1eW there before him.
 "1Il be good" she said in small choked voice, fighting for control. I'll stop. Don't leave me alone the last chance I've got with you"
 He looked at her. His face was grim, and he was suffering. He looked at her, and then he threw down his hat. He did not say any, thing; he just stayed there. She did not say anything; she set about preparing their dinner. She re- gained control, and she ate with him in no appetite but with a quiet, bleakly bland despair.
 Late that night she said beside him, into his ear, Don't be mad at me if say anything. I want to say :. will you take me with you?"
 It was out of the question, he told her. She knew all the req sons.
 Then I won't have you any more?" she said. NO more here close to me? All alone here? Nobody to amuse Terry, tell Terry what to do, make love to Terry"
 He did not speak. She crept on his shoulder and cried. very quiet ly, trying not to arouse him. The sobs died slowly and she was still. Her hands on his shoulders began to clutch him hard; the nails were sharp and cruel. She made sound, a chaotic, primordial sound of passionate despair, and she kissed him. Taut with the pain Of those sharp nails in his flesh he returned the kiss. They were to- gether, in the terrible imminence of parting
 And so Joe Murray took to the road again. Out of one town into another; out of one day into the next. Life had rolled backward, wiping out wife and home, wip- ing out even what he had pos sessed before either: the certainty Of work and the freedom of the nation. When he rode to Port Lansing-riding, by the way, on a diversity of conveyances that chance set along the national highway between he no longer blew, adrift and lightly; he trav- eled on a set, grim pilgrimage. He tore up roots and travelled, carry ing with him the pain of that.
 It was good job, as jobs go. The sllipyard was an immense place. Hundreds worked there, a small regiment: but yet it looked lean and hungry, for not long since they had streamed in of mornings in an army 10000 of them. There was a dry dock, and then a wet dock, and acres of great gaunt shops. The dry dock was working, there were two ships in the wet dock, but the ship ways, 10 of them, loomed empty and silent.
 There was no building, and Joe was lucky and knew it. How long lucky, he couldn't tell. Men of a hundred trades stood about the gates mornings when he came to work, haunting the closed employ ment office. He worked and drew good money and sent large DOT ton of it back to Terry every week. They must save what they could; the future was unknowable.
 Now when you go to a new place, far from home, this is what happens: there is at first lift Of spirits, the glamor of adventure and novelty and the excitement of possibilities whose limits are yet unknown. That lasts while, and that wanes finally, for the possi- bilities are soon limited plainly, and then comes the rather stark realization that this place has no nourishment for you, for your roots are not into it, drawing sus- tenance. There is nothing there for you, and the old places are calling strong, and you are bitter lonesome. Then in time, If you stay, when the lonesomeness is most bitter, there comes change; you do not recognize it when 1t comes. but it arrives. You are drawing nourishment from this place. You are rooted, belonging And if you go away again, you will remember that place always, and it will call to you among the echoes of all the places and things and people forever calling to you out of the past.
 The novelty of Port Lansing was small to Joe, and the possibilities held never any glamor. Women were shut of to him, not only by his simple code but by all his in- clination. And a man needs women, especially a man like Joe, because that is the pattern of life, which has beauty and harmony and sym metry only when there is that bal ance: one and then another one a man and a woman, complement ing and offsetting each other in everything.
 Joe was alone; he lived in a boarding house on mean street, the cheapest could be found where his fellows were a raffish, uncouth lot who would have made him one of them if they could, but they could not, for Joe in his turn could not meet them in their chosen ground, which was drink ing and women and then more drinking, so long as there was money for 1t. He walked, and he went to motion pictures, and he read, and he sat thinking. And he was alone.
 Terry wrote to him often, some times day after day. She had one
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