Read In Dubious Battle for Free Online Page B

“I’d like that. The bunks in jail weren’t any softer than your floor.”
    “Well, have you had any dinner?”
    “No. I forgot it.”
    Nilson spoke irritably. “If you think I’m chiseling, go ahead,” he said. “I haven’t any money. You have three dollars.”
    Jim laughed. “Come on, we’ll get dried herrings and cheese and bread. And we’ll get stuff for a stew tomorrow. I can make a pretty good stew.”
    Harry Nilson poured the last of the coffee into the mugs. “You’re waking up, Jim. You’re looking better. But you don’t know what you’re getting into. I can tell youabout it, but it won’t mean anything until you go through it.”
    Jim looked evenly at him. “Did you ever work at a job where, when you got enough skill to get a raise in pay, you were fired and a new man put in? Did you ever work in a place where they talked about loyalty to the firm, and loyalty meant spying on the people around you? Hell, I’ve got nothing to lose.”
    “Nothing except hatred,” Harry said quietly. “You’re going to be surprised when you see that you stop hating people. I don’t know why it is, but that’s what usually happens.”

2
    ALL during the day Jim had been restive. Harry Nilson, working on a long report, had turned on him several times in exasperation. “Look,” he said finally, “you can go down to the spot alone if you want. There’s no reason why you can’t. But in an hour I’ll go down with you. I’ve got to finish this thing.”
    “I wonder if I ought to change my name,” said Jim. “I wonder if changing your name would have any effect on you.”
    Nilson turned back to his report. “You get some tough assignments and go to jail enough and change your name a few times, and a name won’t mean any more to you than a number.”
    Jim stood by the window and looked out. A brick wall was opposite, bounding the other side of a narrow vacant lot between two buildings. A crowd of boys played handball against the building. Their yells came faintly through the closed window.
    “I used to play in lots when I was a kid,” Jim said. “Seems to me we fought most of the time. I wonder if the kids fight as much as they used to.”
    Harry did not pause in his writing. “Sure they do,” he said. “I look out and see ’em down there. Sure they fight.”
    “I used to have a sister,” Jim went on. “She could lick nearly everybody in the lot. She was the best marble shotI ever saw. Honest, Harry, I’ve seen her split an agate at ten feet, with her knuckles down, too.”
    Harry looked up. “I didn’t know you had a sister. What happened to her?”
    “I don’t know,” said Jim.
    “You don’t know?”
    “No. It was funny—I don’t mean funny. It was one of those things that happen.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t know what happened to her?” Harry laid his pencil down.
    “Well, I can tell you about it,” said Jim. “Her name was May. She was a year older than I was. We always slept in the kitchen. Each had a cot. When May was about fourteen and I was thirteen, she hung a sheet across the corner to make a kind of a little closet to dress and undress behind. She got giggly, too. Used to sit on the steps downstairs with a lot of other girls, and giggle when boys went by. She had yellow hair. She was kind of pretty, I guess. Well, one evening I came home from playing ball over on Twenty-third and Fulton—used to be a vacant lot, there’s a bank there now. I climbed up to our flat. My mother said, ’Did you see May down on the steps?’ I said I hadn’t. Pretty soon my old man came home from work. He said, ‘Where’s May?’ My mother said, ‘She hasn’t come in yet.’
    “It’s funny how this whole thing stands out, Harry. I remember every bit of it, what everybody said, and how everybody looked.
    “We waited dinner a while, but pretty soon my old man stuck out his chin and got mad. ‘Put on the food,’ he said. ‘May’s getting too smart. She thinks she’s too