'
* * * * *
"I asked him," said the newspaper man, "if he liked the plays he'd seen.
Bill grinned at that.
"'It ain't that,' said Bill. 'No, it ain't that. It's only seeing them.
You know, there's nothing like these kind of things anywhere else in the
world.'
"And then the theater got dark and we said good-bye casually and went to
our different seats. I didn't see Haywood again. About a week or so later
I read the headline that he had fled the country. Nobody knew where he
was, but people suspected. And then two weeks after that there was the
story that he had reached Russia and was in Moscow.
"Well, when I read that," said the newspaper man, "I remembered all of a
sudden how he had stood leaning against the railing at the Columbia
theater saying good-bye to something. Making the rounds for a month saying
good-bye in his own way to all the places he would never see again. Kind
of odd, I thought, for Bill Haywood to do that. That isn't the way
Nietzsche would have written a radical. But Dickens might have written it
that way, like Bill.
"That's why whenever I see his name in print now," pursued the newspaper
man, "I always think of the burlesque chorus on the stage kicking their
legs and yodeling jazzily and Big Bill Haywood staring with his one eye,
saying good-bye with his one eye.
Pages:
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274