A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht
page 73 of 301 (24%)
page 73 of 301 (24%)
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language she tries to remember from reading the funeral accounts of rich
and powerful people." Clara, her hat awry, her doltish body sagging in the rain--shuffled down the dirt road once more. Her outing is over. Cinderella returns to the ashes of life. THE WAY HOME He shuffles around in front of the Clinton Street employment agency. The signs say: "Pick men wanted, section hands wanted, farm laborers wanted." A Mexican stands woodenly against the window front. His eyes are open but asleep. He has the air of one come from a far country who lives upon memories. There are others--roughly dressed exiles. Their eyes occasionally study the signs, deciphering with difficulty the crudely chalked words on the bulletin boards. Slav, Swede, Pole, Italian, Greek--they read in a language foreign to them that men are wanted on the farms in the Dakotas, in the lumber camps, on the roadbeds in Montana. Hard-handed men with dull, seamed faces and glittering eyes--the spike-haired proletaire from a dozen lands looking for jobs. But this one who shuffles about in a tattered mackinaw, huge baggy trousers frayed at the feet, this one whose giant's body swings loosely back and forth under the signs, is a more curious exile. His Mexican |
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