I'm Dying Laughing Read Free Page B

always had an abject, cringing admiration for the Wobblies. They admitted life was really tough: you can’t flatter it.’
    ‘Faugh!’
    ‘Faugh yourself. Grandma loved a Wob, that kept her straight, though I guess she was straight. I saw him at last; “my dear Tom”, she called him, “my dear young man.” He was a tall, straight man, seventy, no stoop, long head, bushy black hair, footballer’s neck and shoulders, with big slow feet, just like Lincoln, glasses on his small blue eyes, big shapely hands, and a wonderful laugh, like all the glasses in a glass-blower’s ringing downscale. He was masculine, ugly, you might say; yet I somehow thought he must look like his mother. He said he looked like his father. “I’m the only one of the boys that does,” he said: “my mother had a faithful weekend visitor.” That floored me for a while. Grandma loved him all her life. Ah, me. Living Man, she called him: or Deep River. I don’t know why.’
    ‘Deep River is the Ohio. It’s a freedom song for the Negroes.’
    Emily said, ‘I bet secretly I’m looking for one like him. Girlish first impressions.’
    The man looked restless, surly. She said, ‘What’s your name? I’ve forgotten.’
    It was Jean-Marie McRoy, a mixture, French-Canadian, Scots, and yes, part Russian.
    ‘You look Russian. When I saw you lolling on that box, I said to myself, “He’s resting from running up the Potemkin Staircase.” Or was it down?’
    He liked that. He said his rich father-in-law, a lumber man, didn’t think much of him.
    ‘He says I have no imagination, no personality. That means I don’t make money and don’t want to. Sue thinks so too, my wife. She’s stuck by me so far. She likes me, but she wants me to shine on campus, the big popular man: heads turn when I come in, sush-sush murmur, bald heads and spectacles shine with approval, they clap—the bear with the heart of a mouse. To hell with it. I tried it. I try anything. I got drunk and ducked—’
    He had published an essay on population, well received except by one professor in England—the name? Growl, growl. The first thing he was going to do was to go to Cambridge to seek out this professor. He had already sent him a four-page letter requesting him to issue a recantation of his review of the book, already printed in a learned journal.
    ‘I don’t know what you think? Was it the right thing to do? Or should I just take it?’
    ‘Go and punch his nose,’ she said.
    ‘No, I’ll go and show him his ignorance and question his scholarship. He’s well-known as a Marxist. I’m going there first thing, won’t even get a room in London first. Talk to Mann first.’
    ‘Man?’
    ‘Aloysius Mann!’ he called out, staring at her for her ignorance. ‘Population theory!’
    ‘What are you going to do for your Ph.D?’
    After a pause, he grinned,
    ‘The two departments.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Marxian economics. Producer goods and consumer goods.’
    ‘Well, that’s Greek to me. I’ve been to an American high school and college; ergo, I know nothing. My dad was a business crank; made ovens, patented the Wilkes Oven and believed in self-government in industry, that meant free enterprise by company rules; government run by business advisers; no government interference. The Utopia of businessmen—and he thought the USA could be. My uncle worked for the Eastern Railroad and Lumber Company. He was a self-respecting worker, that means no fighter; and basically he agreed with Dad. Sure, to hell with the boss; but the unions interfered with a man’s freedom; so good nigger just the same. He was a veteran from 1919 and they were a bit leery of the men who came back from Europe in 1918. They thought they might have caught a light case of ideas; and ideas are anarchistic. That’s why they formed the Elmers. Uncle was one. Then he got caught in the crossfire of a street-battle in Centralia, Armistice Day, 1919, marching with the veterans. My grandma always said we would pay