
An hour before dawn the east-bound Limited stopped briefly at Cherokee Junction, left two passengers, then wound on snake-like into the night.
Joseph Dillon guided emotional wife across a snow-covered platform, mumbling vile oaths of dissatisfaction against the snow, the cold, and everything in general.
“Oh, please don’t, Joe!” his wife moaned through chattering teeth. She placed a handkerchief over her mouth and talked through it. “You only make me feel worse when you rant on at every little thing.”
“Rant? God, why shouldn’t I? What is there left to live for? You tell me. Everything is black. It’s the end.”
Irritably he swung his wife toward a dismal-looking sign which, with yellow winks, proclaimed sardonically: Quick Lunch.
“Get a load of that greasy beanery!” Joe derided.
Failure in Hollywood was horrible enough, but the loss visited upon him the day before cankered his soul. Now the slip-slide progress across the icy bricks only goaded him on to further blasphemy.
“Joe, were both our trunks put off that baggage car?”
“Say, have you gone nutty? You stood right there with me, watchin’. What in hell are you askin’ such a question for?”
“Don’t know. Wanted something to say, I guess. Every now and then my thoughts get beyond my control, and I just have to talk.”
She stood shivering while he held the lunch-room door open against a north wind which challenged all his strength.
The warm air of the small room quickly changed the chemistry of Joe Dillon’s body, but not his distorted mind. Banging heavily upon the counter, he threw a hateful flock of words toward the kitchen, demanding service.
“Joe, don’t act that way. We’ve got to go on living just the same. I guess we do,” she corrected with mystery in her tone. Then her eyes went instantly moist.
“Aw, nuts!” Joe scoffed, then bellowed, “Coffee!” like a sideshow barker.
“Stop it, Joe! I’m trying to take the blow bravely. He was my baby as well as yours!”
“Sorry I can’t take it so well!” Joe barked back, hissing distaste through set molars. “What a God-forsaken world this is! No money to give it a decent burial. How do you suppose I feel, havin’ a kid o’ mine buried out here in the wilds? And what a life for us to live! Us who should be somethin’, bobbin’ about the country, playin’ dinky vaudeville dates to numbskulls who don’t know a swell act when they see one. What a life! God, what a life! What a—“
“Now listen, Joe., I can’t stand any temper today! I just can’t!”