Chapter 44


1
It was only after Aron went away to college that Abra really got to know his family. Aron and Abra had fenced themselves in with themselves. With Aron gone, she attached herself to the other Trasks. She found that she trusted Adam more, and loved Lee more, than her own father.
About Cal she couldn’t decide. He disturbed her sometimes with anger, sometimes with pain, and sometimes with curiosity. He seemed to be in a perpetual contest with her. She didn’t know whether he liked her or not, and so she didn’t like him. She was relieved when, calling at the Trask house, Cal was not there, to look secretly at her, judge, appraise, consider, and look away when she caught him at it.
Abra was a straight, strong, fine-breasted woman, developed and ready and waiting to take her sacrament--but waiting. She took to going to the Trask house after school, sitting with Lee, reading him parts of Aron’s daily letter.
Aron was lonely at Stanford. His letters were drenched with lonesome longing for his girl. Together they were matter of fact, but from the university, ninety miles away, he made passionate love to her, shut himself off from the life around him. He studied, ate, slept, and wrote to Abra, and this was his whole life.
In the afternoons she sat in the kitchen with Lee and helped him to string beans or slip peas from their pods. Sometimes she made fudge and very often she stayed to dinner rather than go home to her parents. There was no subject she could not discuss with Lee. And the few things she could talk about to her father and mother were thin and pale and tired and mostly not even true. There Lee was different also. Abra wanted to tell Lee only true things even when she wasn’t quite sure what was true.
Lee would sit smiling a little, and his quick fragile hands flew about their work as though they had independent lives. Abra wasn’t aware that she spoke exclusively of herself. And sometimes while she talked Lee’s mind wandered out and came back and went out again like a ranging dog, and Lee would nod at intervals and make a quiet humming sound.
He liked Abra and he felt strength and goodness in her, and warmth too. Her features had the bold muscular strength which could result finally either in ugliness or in great beauty. Lee, musing through her talk, thought of the round smooth faces of the Cantonese, his own breed. Even thin they were moon-faced. Lee should have liked that kind best since beauty must be somewhat like ourselves, but he didn’t. When he thought of Chinese beauty the iron predatory faces of the Manchus came to his mind, arrogant and unyielding faces of a people who had authority by unquestioned inheritance.
She said, “Maybe it was there all along. I don’t know. He never talked much about his father. It was after Mr. Trask had the--you know--the lettuce. Aron was angry then.”
“Why?” Lee asked.
“People were laughing at him.”
Lee’s whole mind popped back. “Laughing at Aron? Why at him? He didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Well, that’s the way he felt. Do you want to know what I think?”
“Of course,” said Lee.
“I figured this out and I’m not quite finished figuring. I thought he always felt--well, kind of crippled--maybe unfinished, because he didn’t have a mother.”
Lee’s eyes opened wide and then drooped again. He nodded. “I see. Do you figure Cal is that way too?”
“No.”
“Then why Aron?”
“Well, I haven’t got that yet. Maybe some people need things more than others, or hate things more. My father hates turnips. He always did. Never came from anything. Turnips make him mad, real mad. Well, one time my mother was--well, huffy, and she made a casserole of mashed turnips with lots of pepper and cheese on top and got it all brown on top. My father ate half a dish of it before he asked what it was. My mother said turnips, and he threw the dish on the floor and got up and went out. I don’t think he ever forgave her.”
Lee chuckled. “He can forgive her because she said turnips. But, Abra, suppose he’d asked and she had said something else and he liked it and had another dish. And then afterward he found out. Why, he might have murdered her.”
“I guess so. Well, anyway, I figure Aron needed a mother more than Cal did. And I think he always blamed his father.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I think.”
“You do get around, don’t you?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“Of course you should.”
“Shall I make some fudge?”
“Not today. We still have some.”
“What can I do?”
“You can pound flour into the top round. Will you eat with us?”
“No. I’m going to a birthday party, thank you. Do you think he’ll be a minister?”
“How do I know?” said Lee. “Maybe it’s just an idea.”
“I hope he doesn’t,” said Abra, and she clapped her mouth shut in astonishment at having said it.
Lee got up and pulled out the pastry board and laid out the red meat and a flour sifter beside it. “Use the back side of the knife,” he said.
“I know.” She hoped he hadn’t heard her.
But Lee asked, “Why don’t you want him to be a minister?”
“I shouldn’t say it.”
“You should say anything you want to. You don’t have to explain.” He went back to his chair, and Abra sifted flour over the steak and pounded the meat with a big knife. Tap-tap--”I shouldn’t talk like this”--tap-tap.
Lee turned his head away to let her take her own pace.
“He goes all one way,” she said over the pounding. “If it’s church it’s got to be high church. He was talking about how priests shouldn’t be married.”
“That’s not the way his last letter sounded,” Lee observed.
“I know. That was before.” Her knife stopped its pounding. Her face was young perplexed pain. “Lee, I’m not good enough for him.”
“Now, what do you mean by that?”
“I’m not being funny. He doesn’t think about me. He’s made someone up, and it’s like he put my skin on her. I’m not like that--not like the made-up one.”
“What’s she like?”
“Pure!” said Abra. “Just absolutely pure. Nothing but pure--never a bad thing. I’m not like that.”
“Nobody is,” said Lee.
“He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t even want to know me. He wants that--white--ghost.”
Lee rubbed a piece of cracker. “Don’t you like him? You’re pretty young, but I don’t think that makes any difference.”
“ ’Course I like him. I’m going to be his wife. But I want him to like me too. And how can he, if he doesn’t know anything about me? I used to think he knew me. Now I’m not sure he ever did.”
“Maybe he’s going through a hard time that isn’t permanent. You’re a smart girl--very smart. Is it pretty hard trying to live up to the one--in your skin?”
“I’m always afraid he’ll see something in me that isn’t in the one he made up. I’ll get mad or I’ll smell bad--or something else. He’ll find out.”
“Maybe not,” said Lee. “But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes.”
She moved toward the table. “Lee, I wish--”
“Don’t spill flour on my floor,” he said. “What do you wish?”
“It’s from my figuring out. I think Aron, when he didn’t have a mother--why, he made her everything good he could think of.”
“That might be. And then you think he dumped it all on you.” She stared at him and her fingers wandered delicately up and down the blade of the knife. “And you wish you could find some way to dump it all back.”
“Yes.”
“Suppose he wouldn’t like you then?”
“I’d rather take a chance on that,” she said. “I’d rather be myself.”
Lee said, “I never saw anybody get mixed up in other people’s business the way I do. And I’m a man who doesn’t have a final answer about anything. Are you going to pound that meat or shall I do it?”
She went back to work. “Do you think it’s funny to be so serious when I’m not even out of high school?” she asked.
“I don’t see how it could be any other way,” said Lee. “Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.”
Her tapping speeded up and its beat became erratic and nervous. Lee moved five dried lima beans in patterns on the table--a line, an angle, a circle.
The beating stopped. “Is Mrs. Trask alive?”
Lee’s forefinger hung over a bean for a moment and then slowly fell and pushed it to make the O into a Q. He knew she was looking at him. He could even see in his mind how her expression would be one of panic at her question. His thought raced like a rat new caught in a wire trap. He sighed and gave it up. He turned slowly and looked at her, and his picture had been accurate.
Lee said tonelessly, “We’ve talked a lot and I don’t remember that we have ever discussed me--ever.” He smiled shyly. “Abra, let me tell you about myself. I’m a servant. I’m old. I’m Chinese. These three you know. I’m tired and I’m cowardly.”
“You’re not--” she began.
“Be silent,” he said. “I am so cowardly. I will not put my finger in any human pie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Abra, is your father mad at anything except turnips?”
Her face went stubborn. “I asked you a question.”
“I did not hear a question,” he said softly and his voice became confident. “You did not ask a question, Abra.”
“I guess you think I’m too young--” Abra began.
Lee broke in, “Once I worked for a woman of thirty-five who had successfully resisted experience, learning, and beauty. If she had been six she would have been the despair of her parents. And at thirty-five she was permitted to control money and the lives of people around her. No, Abra, age has nothing to do with it. If I had anything at all to say--I would say it to you.”
The girl smiled at him. “I’m clever,” she said. “Shall I be clever?”
“God help me--no,” Lee protested.
“Then you don’t want me to try to figure it out?”
“I don’t care what you do as long as I don’t have anything to do with it. I guess no matter how weak and negative a good man is, he has as many sins on him as he can bear. I have enough sins to trouble me. Maybe they aren’t very fine sins compared to some, but, the way I feel, they’re all I can take care of. Please forgive me.”
Abra reached across the table and touched the back of his hand with floury fingers. The yellow skin on his hand was tight and glazed. He looked down at the white powdery smudges her fingers left.
Abra said, “My father wanted a boy. I guess he hates turnips and girls. He tells everyone how he gave me my crazy name. ‘And though I called another, Abra came.’ ”
Lee smiled at her. “You’re such a nice girl,” he said. “I’ll buy some turnips tomorrow if you’ll come to dinner.”
Abra asked softly, “Is she alive?”
“Yes,” said Lee.
The front door slammed, and Cal came into the kitchen. “Hello, Abra. Lee, is father home?”
“No, not yet. What are you grinning all over for?”
Cal handed him a check. “There. That’s for you.”
Lee looked at it. “I didn’t want interest,” he said.
“It’s better. I might want to borrow it back.”
“You won’t tell me where you got it?”
“No. Not yet. I’ve got a good idea--” His eyes flicked to Abra.
“I have to go home now,” she said.
Cal said, “She might as well be in on it. I decided to do it Thanksgiving, and Abra’ll probably be around and Aron will be home.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“I’ve got a present for my father.”
“What is it?” Abra asked.
“I won’t tell. You’ll find out then.”
“Does Lee know?”
“Yes, but he won’t tell.”
“I don’t think I ever saw you so--gay,” Abra said. “I don’t think I ever saw you gay at all.” She discovered in herself a warmth for him.
After Abra had gone Cal sat down. “I don’t know whether to give it to him before Thanksgiving dinner or after,” he said.
“After,” said Lee. “Have you really got the money?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Honestly?”
“You mean, did I steal it?”
“Yes.”
“Honestly,” said Cal. “Remember how we had champagne for Aron? We’ll get champagne. And--well, we’ll maybe decorate the dining room. Maybe Abra’ll help.”
“Do you really think your father wants money?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“I hope you’re right,” said Lee. “How have you been doing in school?”
“Not very well. I’ll pick up after Thanksgiving,” said Cal.

2
After school the next day Abra hurried and caught up with Cal.
“Hello, Abra,” he said. “You make good fudge.”
“That last was dry. It should be creamy.”
“Lee is just crazy about you. What have you done to him?”
“I like Lee,” she said and then, “I want to ask you something, Cal.”
“Yes?”
“What’s the matter with Aron?”
“What do you mean?”
“He just seems to think only about himself.”
“I don’t think that’s very new. Have you had a fight with him?”
“No. When he had all that about going into the church and not getting married, I tried to fight with him, but he wouldn’t.”
“Not get married to you? I can’t imagine that.”
“Cal, he writes me love letters now--only they aren’t to me.”
“Then who are they to?”
“It’s like they were to--himself.”
Cal said, “I know about the willow tree.”
She didn’t seem surprised. “Do you?” she asked.
“Are you mad at Aron?”
“No, not mad. I just can’t find him. I don’t know him.”
“Wait around,” said Cal. “Maybe he’s going through something.”
“I wonder if I’ll be all right. Do you think I could have been wrong all the time?”
“How do I know?”
“Cal,” she said, “is it true that you go out late at night and even go--to--bad houses?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s true. Did Aron tell you?”
“No, not Aron. Well, why do you go there?”
He walked beside her and did not answer.
“Tell me,” she said.
“What’s it to you?”
“Is it because you’re bad?”
“What’s it sound like to you?”
“I’m not good either,” she said.
“You’re crazy,” said Cal. “Aron will knock that out of you.”
“Do you think he will?”
“Why, sure,” said Cal. “He’s got to.”

Chapter 45


1
Joe Valery  got along by watching and listening and, as he said himself, not sticking his neck out. He had built his hatreds little by little--beginning with a mother who neglected him, a father who alternately whipped and slobbered over him. It had been easy to transfer his developing hatred to the teacher who disciplined him and the policeman who chased him and the priest who lectured him. Even before the first magistrate looked down on him, Joe had developed a fine stable of hates toward the whole world he knew.
Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant. Joe early developed a gentle protective love for Joe. He comforted and flattered and cherished Joe. He set up walls to save Joe from a hostile world. And gradually Joe became proof against wrong. If Joe got into trouble, it was because the world was in angry conspiracy against him. And if Joe attacked the world, it was revenge and they damn well deserved it--the sons of bitches. Joe lavished every care on his love, and he perfected a lonely set of rules which might have gone like this:
1. Don’t believe nobody. The bastards are after you.
2. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t stick your neck out.
3. Keep your ears open. When they make a slip, grab on to it and wait.
4. Everybody’s a son of a bitch and whatever you do they got it coming.
5. Go at everything roundabout.
6. Don’t never trust no dame about nothing.
7. Put your faith in dough. Everybody wants it. Everybody will sell out for it.
There were other rules, but they were refinements. His system worked, and since he knew no other, Joe had no basis of comparison with other systems. He knew it was necessary to be smart and he considered himself smart. If he pulled something off, that was smart; if he failed, that was bad luck. Joe was not very successful but he got by and with a minimum of effort. Kate kept him because she knew he would do anything in the world if he were paid to do it or was afraid not to do it. She had no illusions about him. In her business Joes were necessary.
When he first got the job with Kate, Joe looked for the weaknesses on which he lived--vanity, voluptuousness, anxiety or conscience, greed, hysteria. He knew they were there because she was a woman. It was a matter of considerable shock to him to learn that, if they were there, he couldn’t find them. This dame thought and acted like a man--only tougher, quicker, and more clever. Joe made a few mistakes and Kate rubbed his nose in them. He developed an admiration for her based on fear.
When he found that he couldn’t get away with some things, he began to believe he couldn’t get away with anything. Kate made a slave of him just as he had always made slaves of women. She fed him, clothed him, gave him orders, punished him.
Once Joe recognized her as more clever than himself, it was a short step to the belief that she was more clever than anybody. He thought that she possessed the two great gifts: she was smart and she got the breaks--and you couldn’t want no better than that. He was glad to do her hatchet work--and afraid not to. Kate don’t make no mistakes, Joe said. And if you played along with her, Kate took care of you. This went beyond thought and became a habit pattern. When he got Ethel floated over the county line, it was all in the day’s work. It was Kate’s business and she was smart.

2

Kate did not sleep well when the arthritic pains were bad. She could almost feel her joints thicken and knot. Sometimes she tried to think of other things, even unpleasant ones, to drive the pain and the distorted fingers from her mind. Sometimes she tried to remember every detail in a room she had not seen for a long time. Sometimes she looked at the ceiling and projected columns of figures and added them. Sometimes she used memories. She built Mr. Edwards’ face and his clothes and the word that was stamped on the metal clasp of his suspenders. She had never noticed it, but she knew the word was “Excelsior.”
Often in the night she thought of Faye, remembered her eyes and hair and the tone of her voice and how her hands fluttered and the little lump of flesh beside her left thumbnail, a scar from an ancient cut. Kate went into her feeling about Faye. Did she hate or love her? Did she pity her? Was she sorry she had killed her? Kate inched over her own thoughts like a measuring worm. She found she had no feeling about Faye. She neither liked nor disliked her or her memory. There had been a time during her dying when the noise and the smell of her had made anger rise in Kate so that she considered killing her quickly to get it over.
Kate remembered how Faye had looked the last time she saw her, lying in her purple casket, dressed in white, with the undertaker’s smile on her lips and enough powder and rouge to cover her sallow skin.
A voice behind Kate had said, “She looks better than she has in years.” And another voice had answered, “Maybe the same thing would do me some good,” and there was a double snicker. The first voice would be Ethel, and the second Trixie. Kate remembered her own half-humorous reaction. Why, she had thought, a dead whore looks like anybody else.
Yes, the first voice must have been Ethel. Ethel always got into the night thinking, and Ethel always brought a shrinking fear with her, the stupid, clumsy, nosy bitch--the lousy old bag. And it happened very often that Kate’s mind would tell her, “Now wait a moment. Why is she a lousy old bag? Isn’t it because you made a mistake? Why did you float her? If you’d used your head and kept her here--”
Kate wondered where Ethel was. How about one of those agencies to find Ethel--at least to find where she went? Yes, and then Ethel would tell about that night and show the glass. Then there’d be two noses sniffing instead of one. Yes, but what difference would that make? Every time Ethel got a beer in her she would be telling somebody. Oh, sure, but they would think she was just a buzzed old hustler. Now an agency man--no--no agencies.
Kate spent many hours with Ethel. Did the judge have any idea it was a frame--too simple? It shouldn’t have been an even hundred dollars. That was obvious. And how about the sheriff? Joe said they dropped her over the line into Santa Cruz County. What did Ethel tell the deputy who drove her out? Ethel was a lazy old bat. Maybe she had stayed in Watsonville. There was Pajaro, and that was a railroad section, and then the Pajaro River and the bridge into Watsonville. Lots of section hands went back and forth, Mexicans, some Hindus. That puddlehead Ethel might have thought she could turn enough tricks with the track workers. Wouldn’t it be funny if she had never left Watsonville, thirty miles away? She could even slip in over the line and see her friends if she wanted to. Maybe she came to Salinas sometimes. She might be in Salinas right now. The cops weren’t likely to keep too much on the look for her. Maybe it would be a good idea to send Joe over to Watsonville to see if Ethel was there. She might have gone on to Santa Cruz. Joe could look there too. It wouldn’t take him long. Joe could find any hooker in any town in a few hours. If he found her they could get her back somehow. Ethel was a fool. But maybe when he found her it would be better if Kate went to her. Lock the door. Leave a “Do not disturb” sign. She could get to Watsonville, do her business, and get back. No taxis. Take a bus. Nobody saw anybody on the night buses. People sleeping with their shoes off and coats rolled up behind their heads. Suddenly she knew she would be afraid to go to Watsonville. Well, she could make herself go. It would stop all this wondering. Strange she hadn’t thought of sending Joe before. That was perfect. Joe was good at some things, and the dumb bastard thought he was clever. That was the kind easiest to handle. Ethel was stupid. That made her hard to handle.
As her hands and her mind grew more crooked, Kate began to rely more and more on Joe Valery  as her assistant in chief, as her go-between, and as her executioner. She had a basic fear of the girls in the house--not that they were more untrustworthy than Joe but that the hysteria which lay very close to the surface might at any time crack through their caution and shatter their sense of self-preservation and tear down not only themselves but their surroundings. Kate had always been able to handle this ever-present danger, but now the slow-depositing calcium and the slow growth of apprehension caused her to need help and to look for it from Joe. Men, she knew, had a little stronger wall against self-destruction than the kind of women she knew.
She felt that she could trust Joe, because she had in her files a notation relating to one Joseph Venuta who had walked away from a San Quentin road gang in the fourth year of a five-year sentence for robbery. Kate had never mentioned this to Joe Valery , but she thought it might have a soothing influence on him if he got out of hand.
Joe brought the breakfast tray every morning--green China tea and cream and toast. When he had set it on her bedside table he made his report and got his orders for the day. He knew that she was depending on him more and more. And Joe was very slowly and quietly exploring the possibility of taking over entirely. If she got sick enough there might be a chance. But very profoundly Joe was afraid of her.
“Morning,” he said.
“I’m not going to sit up for it, Joe. Just give me the tea. You’ll have to hold it.”
“Hands bad?”
“Yes. They get better after a flare up.”
“Looks like you had a bad night.”
“No,” said Kate. “I had a good night. I’ve got some new medicine.”
Joe held the cup to her lips, and she drank the tea in little sips, breathing in over it to cool it. “That’s enough,” she said when the cup was only half empty. “How was the night?”
“I almost came to tell you last night,” said Joe. “Hick came in from King City. Just sold his crop. Bought out the house. Dropped seven hundred not counting what he give the girls.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. But I hope he comes in again.”
“You should get the name, Joe. I’ve told you that.”
“He was cagey.”
“All the more reason to get his name. Didn’t any of the girls frisk him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out.”
Joe sensed a mild geniality in her and it made him feel good. “I’ll find out,” he assured her. “I got enough to go on.”
Her eyes went over him, testing and searching, and he knew something was coming. “You like it here?” she asked softly.
“Sure. I got it good here.”
“You could have it better--or worse,” she said.
“I like it good here,’’ he said uneasily, and his mind cast about for a fault in himself. “I got it real nice here.”
She moistened her lips with her arrow-shaped tongue. “You and I can work together,” she said.
“Any way you want it,” he said ingratiatingly, and a surge of pleasant expectation grew in him. He waited patiently. She took a good long time to begin.
At last she said, “Joe, I don’t like to have anything stolen.”
“I didn’t take nothing.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Who?”
“I’ll get to it, Joe. Do you remember that old buzzard we had to move?”
“You mean Ethel what’s-her-name?”
“Yes. That’s the one. She got away with something. I didn’t know it then.”
“What?”
A coldness crept into her voice. “Not your business, Joe. Listen to me! You’re a smart fellow. Where would you go to look for her?”
Joe’s mind worked quickly, not with reason but with experience and instinct. “She was pretty beat up. She wouldn’t go far. An old hustler don’t go far.”
“You’re smart. You think she might be in Watsonville?”
“There or maybe Santa Cruz. Anyways, I’ll give odds she ain’t farther away than San Jose.”
She caressed her fingers tenderly. “Would you like to make five hundred, Joe?”
“You want I should find her?”
“Yes. Just find her. When you do, don’t let her know. Just bring me the address. Got that? Just tell me where she is.”
“Okay,” said Joe. “She must of rolled you good.”
“That’s not your business, Joe.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You want I should start right off?”
“Yes. Make it quick, Joe.”
“Might be a little tough,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”
“That’s up to you.”
“I’ll go to Watsonville this afternoon.”
“That’s good, Joe.”
She was thoughtful. He knew she was not finished and that she was wondering whether she should go on. She decided.
“Joe, did--did she do anything--well, peculiar--that day in court?”
“Hell, no. Said she was framed like they always do.”
And then something came back to him that he hadn’t noticed at the time. Out of his memory Ethel’s voice came, saying, “Judge, I got to see you alone. I got to tell you something.” He tried to bury his memory deep so that his face would not speak.
Kate said, “Well, what was it?”
He had been too late. His mind leaped for safety. “There’s something,” he said to gain time. “I’m trying to think.”
“Well, think!” Her voice was edged and anxious.
“Well--” He had it. “Well, I heard her tell the cops--let’s see--she said why couldn’t they let her go south. She said she had relatives in San Luis Obispo.”
Kate leaned quickly toward him. “Yes?”
“And the cops said it was too damn far.”
“You’re smart, Joe. Where will you go first?”
“Watsonville,” he said. “I got a friend in San Luis. He’ll look around for me. I’ll give him a ring.”
“Joe,” she said sharply. “I want this quiet.”
“For five hundred you’ll get it quiet and quick,” said Joe. He felt fine even though her eyes were suited and inspective again. Her next words jarred his stomach loose from his backbone.
“Joe, not to change the subject--does the name Venuta mean anything to you?”
He tried to answer before his throat tightened. “Not a thing,” he said.
“Come back as soon as you can,” Kate said. “Tell Helen to come in. She’ll take over for you.”

3

Joe packed his suitcase, went to the depot, and bought a ticket for Watsonville. At Castroville, the first station north, he got off and waited four hours for the Del Monte express from San Francisco to Monterey, which is at the end of a spur line. In Monterey he climbed the stairs of the Central Hotel, registered as John Vicker. He went downstairs and ate a steak at Pop Ernst’s, bought a bottle of whisky, and retired to his room.
He took off his shoes and his coat and vest, removed his collar and tie, and lay down on the bed. The whisky and a glass were on the table beside the brass bed. The overhead light shining in his face didn’t bother him. He didn’t notice it. Methodically he primed his brain with half a tumbler of whisky and then he crossed his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles and he brought out thoughts and impressions and perceptions and instincts and began matching them.
It had been a good job and he had thought he had her fooled. Well, he’d underrated her. But how in hell had she got onto it he was wanted? He thought he might go to Reno or maybe to Seattle. Seaport towns--always good. And then--now wait a minute. Think about it.
Ethel didn’t steal nothing. She had something. Kate was scared of Ethel. Five hundred was a lot of dough to dig out a beat-up whore. What Ethel wanted to tell the judge was, number one, true; and, number two, Kate was scared of it. Might be able to use that. Hell!--not with her holding that jailbreak over him. Joe wasn’t going to serve out the limit with penalties.
But no harm in thinking about it. Suppose he was to gamble four years against--well, let’s say ten grand. Was that a bad bet? No need to decide. She knew it before and didn’t turn him in. Suppose she thought he was a good dog.
Maybe Ethel might be a hole-card.
Now--wait--just think about it. Maybe it was the breaks. Maybe he ought to draw his hand and see. But she was so goddam smart. Joe wondered if he could play against her. But how, if he just played along?
Joe sat up and filled his glass full. He turned off his light and raised his shade. And as he drank his whisky he watched a skinny little woman in a bathrobe washing her stockings in a basin in a room on the other side of the air shaft. And the whisky muttered in his ears.
It might be the breaks. God knows, Joe had waited long enough. God knows, he hated the bitch with her sharp little teeth. No need to decide right now.
He raised his window quietly and threw the writing pen from the table against the window across the air shaft. He enjoyed the scene of fear and apprehension before the skinny dame yanked her shade down.
With the third glass of whisky the pint was empty. Joe felt a wish to go out in the street and look the town over. But then his discipline took over. He had made a rule, and kept to it, never to leave his room when he was drinking. That way a man never got in trouble. Trouble meant cops, and cops meant a check-up, and that would surely mean a trip across the bay to San Quentin and no road gang for good behavior this time. He put the street out of his mind.
Joe had another pleasure he saved for times when he was alone, and he was not aware it was a pleasure. He indulged it now. He lay on the brass bed and went back in time over his sullen and miserable childhood and his fretful and vicious growing up. No luck--he never got the breaks. The big shots got the breaks. A few snatch jobs he got away with, but the tray of pocketknives? Cops came right in his house and got him. Then he was on the books and they never let him alone. Guy in Daly City couldn’t shag a crate of strawberries off a truck without they’d pick up Joe. In school he didn’t have no luck neither. Teachers against him, principal against him. Guy couldn’t take that crap. Had to get out.
Out of his memory of bad luck a warm sadness grew, and he pushed it with more memories until the tears came to his eyes and his lips quivered with pity for the lonely lost boy he had been. And here he was now--look at him--a rap against him, working in a whorehouse when other men had homes and cars. They were safe and happy and at night their blinds were pulled down against Joe. He wept quietly until he fell asleep.
Joe got up at ten in the morning and ate a monster breakfast at Pop Ernst’s. In the early afternoon he took a bus to Watsonville and played three games of snooker with a friend who came to meet him in answer to a phone call. Joe won the last game and racked his cue. He handed his friend two ten-dollar bills.
“Hell,” said his friend, “I don’t want your money.”
“Take it,” said Joe.
“It ain’t like I give you anything.”
“You give me plenty. You say she ain’t here and you’re the baby that would know.”
“Can’t tell me what you want her for?”
“Wilson, I tol’ you right first an’ I tell you now, I don’t know. I’m jus’ doing a job of work.”
“Well, that’s all I can do. Seems like there was this convention--what was it?--dentists, or maybe Owls. I don’t know whether she said she was going or I just figured it myself. I got it stuck in my mind. Give Santa Cruz a whirl. Know anybody?”
“I got a few acquaintances,” said Joe.
“Look up H. V. Mahler, Hal Mahler. He runs Hal’s poolroom. Got a game in back.”
“Thanks,” said Joe.
“No--look, Joe. I don’t want your money.”
“It ain’t my money--buy a cigar,” said Joe.
The bus dropped him two doors from Hal’s place. It was suppertime but the stud game was still going. It was an hour before Hal got up to go to the can and Joe could follow and make a connection. Hal peered at Joe with large pale eyes made huge by thick glasses. He buttoned his fly slowly and adjusted his black alpaca sleeve guards and squared his green eyeshade. “Stick around till the game breaks,” he said. “Care to sit in?”
“How many playing for you, Hal?”
“Only one.”
“I’ll play for you.”
“Five bucks an hour,” said Hal.
“An’ ten per cent if I win?”
“Well, okay. Sandy-haired fella Williams is the house.”
At one o’clock in the morning Hal and Joe went to Barlow’s Grill. “Two rib steaks and french fries. You want soup?” Hal asked Joe.
“No. And no french fries. They bind me up.”
“Me too,” said Hal. “But I eat them just the same. I don’t get enough exercise.”
Hal was a silent man until he was eating. He rarely spoke unless his mouth was full. “What’s your pitch?” he asked around steak.
“Just a job. I make a hundred bucks and you get twenty-five--okay?”
“Got to have like proof--like papers?”
“No. Be good but I’ll get by without them.”
“Well, she come in and wants me to steer for her. She wasn’t no good. I didn’t take twenty a week off her. I probably wouldn’t of knew what become of her only Bill Primus seen her in my place and when they found her he come in an’ ast me about her. Nice fella, Bill. We got a nice force here.”
Ethel was not a bad woman--lazy, sloppy, but good-hearted. She wanted dignity and importance. She was just not very bright and not very pretty and, because of these two lacks, not very lucky. It would have bothered Ethel if she had known that when they pulled her out of the sand where waves had left her half buried, her skirts were pulled around her ass. She would have liked more dignity.
Hal said, “We got some crazy bohunk bastards in the sardine fleet. Get loaded with ink an’ they go nuts. Way I figure, one of them sardine crews took her out an’ then jus’ pushed her overboard. I don’t see how else she’d get in the water.”
“Maybe she jumped off the pier?”
“Her?” said Hal through potatoes. “Hell, no! She was too blamed lazy to kill herself. You want to check?”
“If you say it’s her, it’s her,” said Joe, and he pushed a twenty and a five across the table.
Hal rolled the bills like a cigarette and put them in his vest pocket. He cut out the triangle of meat from the rib steak and put it in his mouth. “It was her,” he said. “Want a piece of pie?”
Joe meant to sleep until noon but he awakened at seven and lay in bed for quite a long time. He planned not to get back to Salinas until after midnight. He needed more time to think.
When he got up he looked in the mirror and inspected the expression he planned to wear. He wanted to look disappointed but not too disappointed. Kate was so goddam clever. Let her lead. Just follow suit. She was about as wide open as a fist. Joe had to admit that he was scared to death of her.
His caution said to him, “Just go in and tell her and get your five hundred.”
And he answered his caution savagely, “Breaks. How many breaks did I ever get? Part of the breaks is knowing a break when you get it. Do I want to be a lousy pimp all my life? Just play it close. Let her do the talking. No harm in that. I can always tell her later like I just found out if it don’t go good.”
“She could have you in a cell block in six hours flat.”
“Not if I play ’em close. What I got to lose? What breaks did I ever get?”

4

Kate was feeling better. The new medicine seemed to be doing her some good. The pain in her hands was abated, and it seemed to her that her fingers were straighter, the knuckles not so swollen. She had had a good night’s sleep, the first in a long time, and she felt good, even a little excited. She planned to have a boiled egg for breakfast. She got up and put on a dressing gown and brought a hand mirror back to the bed. Lying high against the pillows, she studied her face.
The rest had done wonders. Pain makes you set your jaw, and your eyes grow falsely bright with anxiety, and the muscles over the temples and along the cheeks, even the weak muscles near to the nose, stand out a little, and that is the look of sickness and of resistance to suffering.
The difference in her rested face was amazing. She looked ten years younger. She opened her lips and looked at her teeth. Time to go for a cleaning. She took care of her teeth. The gold bridge where the molars were gone was the only repair in her mouth. It was remarkable how young she looked, Kate thought. Just one night’s sleep and she snapped back. That was another thing that fooled them. They thought she would be weak and delicate. She smiled to herself--delicate like a steel trap. But then she always took care of herself--no liquor, no drugs, and recently she had stopped drinking coffee. And it paid off. She had an angelic face. She put the mirror a little higher so that the crepe at her throat did not reflect.
Her thought jumped to that other angelic face so like hers--what was his name?--what the hell was his name--Alec? She could see him, moving slowly past, his white surplice edged with lace, his sweet chin down and his hair glowing under the candlelight. He held the oaken staff and its brass cross angled ahead of him. There was something frigidly beautiful about him, something untouched and untouchable. Well, had anything or anybody ever really touched Kate--really got through and soiled her? Certainly not. Only the hard outside had been brushed by contacts. Inside she was intact--as clean and bright as this boy Alec--was that his name?
She chuckled--mother of two sons--and she looked like a child. And if anyone had seen her with the blond one--could they have any doubt? She thought how it would be to stand beside him in a crowd and let people find out for themselves. What would--Aron, that was the name--what would he do if he knew? His brother knew. That smart little son of a bitch--wrong word--must not call him that. Might be too true. Some people believed it. And not smart bastard either--born in holy wedlock. Kate laughed aloud. She felt good. She was having a good time.
The smart one--the dark one--bothered her. He was like Charles. She had respected Charles--and Charles would probably have killed her if he could.
Wonderful medicine--it not only stopped the arthritic pain, it gave her back her courage. Pretty soon she could sell out and go to New York as she had always planned. Kate thought of her fear of Ethel. How sick she must- have been--the poor dumb old bag! How would it be to murder her with kindness? When Joe found her, how about--well, how about taking her on to New York? Keep her close.
A funny notion came to Kate. That would be a comical murder, and a murder no one under any circumstances could solve or even suspect. Chocolates--boxes of chocolates, bowls of fondant, bacon, crisp bacon--fat, port wine, and then butter, everything soaked in butter and whipped cream; no vegetables, no fruit--and no amusement either. Stay in the house, dear. I trust you. Look after things. You’re tired. Go to bed. Let me fill your glass. I got these new sweets for you. Would you like to take the box to bed? Well, if you don’t feel good why don’t you take a physic? These cashews are nice, don’t you think? The old bitch would blow up and burst in six months. Or how about a tapeworm? Did anyone ever use tapeworms? Who was the man who couldn’t get water to his mouth in a sieve--Tantalus?
Kate’s lips were smiling sweetly and a gaiety was coming over her. Before she went it might be good to give a party for her sons. Just a simple little party with a circus afterward for her darlings--her jewels. And then she thought of Aron’s beautiful face so like her own and a strange pain--a little collapsing pain--arose in her chest. He wasn’t smart. He couldn’t protect himself. The dark brother might be dangerous. She had felt his quality. Cal had beaten her. Before she went away she would teach him a lesson. Maybe--why, sure--maybe a dose of the clap might set that young man back on his heels.
Suddenly she knew that she did not want Aron to know about her. Maybe he could come to her in New York. He would think she had always lived in an elegant little house on the East Side. She would take him to the theater, to the opera, and people would see them together and wonder at their loveliness, and recognize that they were either brother and sister or mother and son. No one could fail to know. They could go together to Ethel’s funeral. She would need an oversized coffin and six wrestlers to carry it. Kate was so filled with amusement at her thoughts that she did not hear Joe’s knocking on the door. He opened it a crack and looked in and saw her gay and smiling face.
“Breakfast,” he said and nudged the door open with the edge of the linen-covered tray. He pushed the door closed with his knee. “Want it there?” he asked and gestured toward the gray room with his chin.
“No. I’ll have it right here. And I want a boiled egg and a piece of cinnamon toast. Four and a half minutes on the egg. Make sure. I don’t want it gooey.”
“You must feel better, ma’am.”
“I do,” she said. “That new medicine is wonderful. You look dragged by dogs, Joe. Don’t you feel well?”
“I’m all right,” he said and set the tray on the table in front of the big deep chair. “Four and a half minutes?”
“That’s right. And if there’s a good apple--a crisp apple--bring that too.”
“You ain’t et like this since I knew you,” he said.
In the kitchen, waiting for the cook to boil the egg, he was apprehensive. Maybe she knew. He’d have to be careful. But hell! she couldn’t hate him for something he didn’t know. No crime in that.
Back in her room he said, “Didn’t have no apples. He said this was a good pear.”
“I’d like that even better,” said Kate.
He watched her chip off the egg and dip a spoon into the shell. “How is it?”
“Perfect!” said Kate. “Just perfect.”
“You look good,” he said.
“I feel good. You look like hell. What’s the matter?”
Joe went into it warily. “Ma’am, there ain’t nobody needs five hundred like I do.”
She said playfully, “There isn’t anyone who needs--”
“What?”
“Forget it. What are you trying to say? You couldn’t find her--is that it? Well, if you did a good job looking, you’ll get your five hundred. Tell me about it.” She picked up the salt shaker and scattered a few grains into the open eggshell.
Joe put an artificial joy on his face. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m in a spot. I need it. Well, I looked in Pajaro and Watsonville. Got a line on her in Watsonville but she’d went to Santa” Cruz. Got a smell of her there but she was gone.”
Kate tasted the egg and added more salt. “That all?”
“No,” said Joe. “I went it blind there. Dropped down to San Luis an’ she had been there too but gone.”
“No trace? No idea where she went?”
Joe fiddled with his fingers. His whole pitch, maybe his whole life, depended on his next words, and he was reluctant to say them.
“Come on,” she said at last. “You got something--what is it?”
“Well, it ain’t much. I don’t know what to think of it.”
“Don’t think. Just tell. I’ll think,” she said sharply.
“Might not even be true.”
“For Christ’s sake!” she said angrily.
“Well, I talked to the last guy that seen her. Guy named Joe, like me--”
“Did you get his grandmother’s name?” she asked sarcastically.
“This guy Joe says she loaded up on beer one night an’ she said how she’s going to come back to Salinas an’ lay low. Then she dropped out of sight. This guy Joe didn’t know nothing more.”
Kate was startled out of control. Joe read her quick start, the apprehension, and then the almost hopeless fear and weariness. Whatever it was, Joe had something. He had got the breaks at last.
She looked up from her lap and her twisted fingers. “We’ll forget the old fart,” she said. “You’ll get your five hundred, Joe.”
Joe breathed shallowly, afraid that any sound might drag her out of her self-absorption. She had believed him. More than that, she was believing things he had not told her. He wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible. He said, “Thank you, ma’am,” but very softly, and he moved silently toward the door.
His hand was on the knob when she spoke with elaborate casualness. “Joe, by the way--”
“Ma’am?”
“If you should hear anything about--her, let me know, will you?”
“I sure will. Want me to dig into it?”
“No. Don’t bother. It isn’t that important.”
In his room, with the door latched, Joe sat down and folded his arms. He smiled to himself. And instantly he began to work out the future course. He decided to let her brood on it till, say, next week. Let her relax, and then bring up Ethel again. He did not know what his weapon was or how he was going to use it. But he did know that it was very sharp and he itched to use it. He would have laughed out loud if he had known that Kate had gone to the gray room and locked its door, and that she sat still in the big chair and her eyes were closed.

Part Five


Chapter 46


Sometimes, but not often, a rain comes to the Salinas Valley in November. It is so rare that the Journal or the Index or both carry editorials about it. The hills turn to a soft green overnight and the air smells good. Rain at this time is not particularly good in an agricultural sense unless it is going to continue, and this is extremely unusual. More commonly, the dryness comes back and the fuzz of grass withers or a little frost curls it and there’s that amount of seed wasted.
The war years were wet years, and there were many people who blamed the strange intransigent weather on the firing of the great guns in France. This was seriously considered in articles and in arguments.
We didn’t have many troops in France that first winter, but we had millions in training, getting ready to go--painful as the war was, it was exciting too. The Germans were not stopped. In fact, they had taken the initiative again, driving methodically toward Paris, and God knew when they could be stopped--if they could be stopped at all. General Pershing would save us if we could be saved. His trim, beautifully uniformed soldierly figure made its appearance in every paper every day. His chin was granite and there was no wrinkle on his tunic. He was the epitome of a perfect soldier. No one knew what he really thought.
We knew we couldn’t lose and yet we seemed to be going about losing. You couldn’t buy flour, white flour, any more without taking four times the quantity of brown flour. Those who could afford it ate bread and biscuits made with white flour and made mash for the chickens with the brown.
In the old Troop C armory the Home Guard drilled, men over fifty and not the best soldier material, but they took setting-up exercises twice a week, wore Home Guard buttons and overseas caps, snapped orders at one another, and wrangled eternally about who should be officers. William C. Burt died right on the armory floor in the middle of a push-up. His heart couldn’t take it.
There were Minute Men too, so called because they made one-minute speeches in favor of America in moving-picture theaters and in churches. They had buttons too.
The women rolled bandages and wore Red Cross uniforms and thought of themselves as Angels of Mercy. And everybody knitted something for someone. There were wristlets, short tubes of wool to keep the wind from whistling up soldiers’ sleeves, and there were knitted helmets with only a hole in front to look out of. These were designed to keep the new tin helmets from freezing to the head.
Every bit of really first-grade leather was taken for officers’ boots and for Sam Browne belts. These belts were handsome and only officers could wear them. They consisted of a wide belt and a strip that crossed the chest and passed under the left epaulet. We copied them from the British, and even the British had forgotten their original purpose, which was possibly to support a heavy sword. Swords were not carried except on parade, but an officer would not be caught dead without a Sam Browne belt. A good one cost as much as twenty-five dollars.
We learned a lot from the British--and if they had not been good fighting men we wouldn’t have taken it. Men began to wear their handkerchiefs in their sleeves and some foppish lieutenants carried swagger sticks. One thing we resisted for a long time, though. Wrist-watches were just too silly. It didn’t seem likely that we would ever copy the Limeys in that.
We had our internal enemies too, and we exercised vigilance. San Jose had a spy scare, and Salinas was not likely to be left behind--not the way Salinas was growing.
For about twenty years Mr. Fenchel had done hand tailoring in Salinas. He was short and round and he had an accent that made you laugh. All day he sat cross-legged on his table in the little shop on Alisal Street, and in the evening he walked home to his small white house far out on Central Avenue. He was forever painting his house and the white picket fence in front of it. Nobody had given his accent a thought until the war came along, but suddenly we knew. It was German. We had our own personal German. It didn’t do him any good to bankrupt himself buying war bonds. That was too easy a way to cover up.
The Home Guard wouldn’t take him in. They didn’t want a spy knowing their secret plans for defending Salinas. And who wanted to wear a suit made by an enemy? Mr. Fenchel sat all day on his table and he didn’t have anything to do, so he basted and ripped and sewed and ripped on the same piece of cloth over and over.
We used every cruelty we could think of on Mr. Fenchel. He was our German. He passed our house every day, and there had been a time when he spoke to every man and woman and child and dog, and everyone had answered. Now no one spoke to him, and I can see now in my mind his tubby loneliness and his face full of hurt pride.
My little sister and I did our part with Mr. Fenchel, and it is one of those memories of shame that still makes me break into a sweat and tighten up around the throat. We were standing in our front yard on the lawn one evening and we saw him coming with little fat steps. His black homburg was brushed and squarely set on his head. I don’t remember that we discussed our plan but we must have, to have carried it out so well.
As he came near, my sister and I moved slowly across the street side by side. Mr. Fenchel looked up and saw us moving toward him. We stopped in the gutter as he came by.
He broke into a smile and said, “Gut efning, Chon. Gut efning, Mary.”
We stood stiffly side by side and we said in unison, “Hoch der Kaiser!”
I can see his face now, his startled innocent blue eyes. He tried to say something and then he began to cry. Didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t. He just stood there sobbing. And do you know?--Mary and I turned around and walked stiffly across the street and into our front yard. We felt horrible. I still do when I think of it.
We were too young to do a good job on Mr. Fenchel. That took strong men--about thirty of them. One Saturday night they collected in a bar and marched in a column of fours out Central Avenue, saying, “Hup! Hup!” in unison. They tore down Mr. Fenchel’s white picket fence and burned the front out of his house. No Kaiser-loving son of a bitch was going to get away with it with us. And then Salinas could hold up its head with San Jose.
Of course that made Watsonville get busy. They tarred and feathered a Pole they thought was a German. He had an accent.
We of Salinas did all of the things that are inevitably done in a war, and we thought the inevitable thoughts. We screamed over good rumors and died of panic at bad news. Everybody had a secret that he had to spread obliquely to keep its identity as a secret. Our pattern of life changed in the usual manner. Wages and prices went up. A whisper of shortage caused us to buy and store food. Nice quiet ladies clawed one another over a can of tomatoes.
It wasn’t all bad or cheap or hysterical. There was heroism too. Some men who could have avoided the army enlisted, and others objected to the war on moral or religious grounds and took the walk up Golgotha which normally comes with that. There were people who gave everything they had to the war because it was the last war and by winning it we would remove war like a thorn from the flesh of the world and there wouldn’t be any more such horrible nonsense.
There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope--I hope he didn’t suffer--and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is. And it is true that there were some people who, when their sorrow was beginning to lose its savor, gently edged it toward pride and felt increasingly important because of their loss. Some of these even made a good thing of it after the war was over. That is only natural, just as it is natural for a man whose life function is the making of money to make money out of a war. No one blamed a man for that, but it was expected that he should invest a part of his loot in war bonds. We thought we invented all of it in Salinas, even the sorrow.

Chapter 47


1
In the Trask house next to Reynaud’s Bakery, Lee and Adam put up a map of the western front with lines of colored pins snaking down, and this gave them a feeling of participation. Then Mr. Kelly died and Adam Trask was appointed to take his place on the draft board. He was the logical man for the job. The ice plant did not take up much of his time, and he had a clear service record and an honorable discharge himself.
Adam Trask had seen a war--a little war of maneuver and butchery, but at least he had experienced the reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can. Adam didn’t remember his war very well. Certain sharp pictures stood out in his memory, a man’s face, the piled and burning bodies, the clang of saber scabbards at fast trot, the uneven, tearing sound of firing carbines, the thin cold voice of a bugle in the night. But Adam’s pictures were frozen. There was no motion or emotion in them--illustrations in the pages of a book, and not very well drawn.
Adam worked hard and honestly and sadly. He could not get over the feeling that the young men he passed to the army were under sentence of death. And because he knew he was weak, he grew more and more stern and painstaking and much less likely to accept an excuse or a borderline disability. He took the lists home with him, called on parents, in fact, did much more work than was expected of him. He felt like a hanging judge who hates the gallows.
Henry Stanton watched Adam grow more gaunt and more silent, and Henry was a man who liked fun--needed it. A sour-pussed associate could make him sick.
“Relax,” he told Adam. “You’re trying to carry the weight of the war. Now, look--it’s not your responsibility. You got put in here with a set of rules. Just follow the rules and relax. You aren’t running the war.”
Adam moved the slats of the blind so that the late afternoon sun would not shine in his eyes, and he gazed down at the harsh parallel lines the sun threw on his desk. “I know,” he said wearily. “Oh, I know that! But, Henry, it’s when there’s a choice, and it’s my own judgment of the merits, that’s when it gets me. I passed Judge Kendal’s boy and he was killed in training.”
“It’s not your business, Adam. Why don’t you take a few drinks at night? Go to a movie--sleep on it.” Henry put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest and leaned back in his chair. “While we’re talking about it, Adam, it seems to me it don’t do a candidate a damn bit of good for you to worry. You pass boys I could be talked into letting off.”
“I know,” said Adam. “I wonder how long it will last?”
Henry inspected him shrewdly and took a pencil from his stuffed vest pocket and rubbed the eraser against his big white front teeth. “I see what you mean,” he said softly.
Adam looked at him, startled. “What do I mean?” he demanded.
“Now don’t get huffy. I never thought I was lucky before, just having girls.”
Adam traced one of the slat shadows on his desk with his forefinger. “Yes,” he said in a voice as soft as a sigh.
“It’s a long time before your boys will be called up.”
“Yes.” Adam’s finger entered a line of light and slid slowly back.
Henry said, “I’d hate to--”
“Hate to what?”
“I was just wondering how I’d feel if I had to pass on my own sons.”
“I’d resign,” said Adam.
“Yes. I can see that. A man would be tempted to reject them--I mean, his own.”
“No,” said Adam. “I’d resign because I couldn’t reject them. A man couldn’t let his own go free.”
Henry laced his fingers and made one big fist of his two hands and laid the fist on the desk in front of him. His face was querulous. “No,” he said, “you’re right. A man couldn’t.” Henry liked fun and avoided when he could any solemn or serious matter, for he confused these with sorrow. “How’s Aron doing at Stanford?”
“Fine. He writes that it’s hard but he thinks he’ll make out all right. He’ll be home for Thanksgiving.”
“I’d like to see him. I saw Cal on the street last night. There’s a smart boy.”
“Cal didn’t take college tests a year ahead,” said Adam.
“Well, maybe that’s not what he’s cut out for. I didn’t go to college. Did you?”
“No,” said Adam. “I went into the army.”
“Well, it’s a good experience. I’ll bet you wouldn’t take a good bit for the experience.”
Adam stood up slowly and picked his hat from the deer horns on the wall. “Good night, Henry,” he said.

2
Walking home, Adam pondered his responsibility. As he passed Reynaud’s Bakery Lee came out, carrying a golden loaf of French bread.
“I have a hunger for some garlic bread,” Lee said.
“I like it with steak,” said Adam.
“We’re having steak. Was there any mail?”
“I forgot to look in the box.”
They entered the house and Lee went to the kitchen. In a moment Adam followed him and sat at the kitchen table. “Lee,” he said, “suppose we send a boy to the army and he is killed, are we responsible?”
“Go on,” said Lee. “I would rather have the whole thing at once.”
“Well, suppose there’s a slight doubt that the boy should be in the army and we send him and he gets killed.”
“I see. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?”
“I don’t want blame.”
“Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn’t carry any pleasant egotism.”
“I was thinking about that time when Sam Hamilton and you and I had a long discussion about a word,” said Adam. “What was that word?”
“Now I see. The word was timshel.”
“Timshel--and you said--”
“I said that word carried a man’s greatness if he wanted to take advantage of it.”
“I remember Sam Hamilton felt good about it.”
“It set him free,” said Lee. “It gave him the right to be a man, separate from every other man.”
“That’s lonely.”
“All great and precious things are lonely.”
“What is the word again?”
“Timshel--thou mayest.”

3
Adam looked forward to Thanksgiving when Aron would come home from college. Even though Aron had been away such a short time Adam had forgotten him and changed him the way any man changes someone he loves. With Aron gone, the silences were the result of his going, and every little painful event was somehow tied to his absence. Adam found himself talking and boasting about his son, telling people who weren’t very interested how smart Aron was and how he had jumped a year in school. He thought it would be a good thing to have a real celebration at Thanksgiving to let the boy know his effort was appreciated.
Aron lived in a furnished room in Palo Alto, and he walked the mile to and from the campus every day. He was miserable. What he had expected to find at the university had been vague and beautiful. His picture--never really inspected--had been of clean-eyed young men and immaculate girls, all in academic robes and converging on a white temple on the crown of a wooded hill in the evening. Their faces were shining and dedicated and their voices rose in chorus and it was never any time but evening. He had no idea where he had got his picture of academic life--perhaps from the Doré illustrations of Dante’s Inferno with its massed and radiant angels. Leland Stanford University was not like that. A formal square of brown sandstone blocks set down in a hayfield; a church with an Italian mosaic front; classrooms of varnished pine; and the great world of struggle and anger re-enacted in the rise and fall of fraternities. And those bright angels were youths in dirty corduroy trousers, some study-raddled and some learning the small vices of their fathers.
Aron, who had not known he had a home, was nauseatingly homesick. He did not try to learn the life around him or to enter it. He found the natural noise and fuss and horseplay of undergraduates horrifying, after his dream. He left the college dormitory for a dreary furnished room where he could decorate another dream which had only now come into being. In the new and neutral hiding place he cut the university out, went to his classes and left as soon as he could, to live in his new-found memories. The house next to Reynaud’s Bakery became warm and dear, Lee the epitome of friend and counselor, his father the cool, dependable figure of godhead, his brother clever and delightful, and Abra--well, of Abra he made his immaculate dream and, having created her, fell in love with her. At night when his studying was over he went to his nightly letter to her as one goes to a scented bath. And as Abra became more radiant, more pure and beautiful, Aron took an increasing joy in a concept of his own wickedness. In a frenzy he poured joyous abjectness on paper to send to her, and he went to bed purified, as a man is after sexual love. He set down every evil thought he had and renounced it. The results were love letters that dripped with longing and by their high tone made Abra very uneasy. She could not know that Aron’s sexuality had taken a not unusual channel.
He had made a mistake. He could admit the mistake but as yet he could not reverse himself. He made a compact with himself. At Thanksgiving he would go home, and then he would be sure. He might never come back. He remembered that Abra had once suggested that they go to live on the ranch, and that became his dream. He remembered the great oaks and the clear living air, the clean sage-laced wind from the hills and the brown oak leaves scudding. He could see Abra there, standing under a tree, waiting for him to come in from his work. And it was evening. There, after work of course, he could live in purity and peace with the world, cut off by the little draw. He could hide from ugliness--in the evening.

Chapter 48


1
Late in November the Nigger died and was buried in black austerity, as her will demanded. She lay for a day in Muller’s Funeral Chapel in an ebony and silver casket, her lean and severe profile made even more ascetic by the four large candles set at the four corners of the casket.
Her little black husband crouched like a cat by her right shoulder, and for many hours he seemed as still as she. There were no flowers, as ordered, no ceremony, no sermon, and no grief. But a strange and catholic selection of citizens tiptoed to the chapel door and peered in and went away--lawyers and laborers and clerks and bank tellers, most of them past middle age. Her girls came in one at a time and looked at her for decency and for luck and went away.
An institution was gone from Salinas, dark and fatal sex, as hopeless and deeply hurtful as human sacrifice. Jenny’s place would still jangle with honky-tonk and rock with belching laughter. Kate’s would rip the nerves to a sinful ecstasy and leave a man shaken and weak and frightened at himself. But the somber mystery of connection that was like a voodoo offering was gone forever.
The funeral was also by order of the will, the hearse and one automobile with the small black man crouched back in a corner. It was a gray day, and when Muller’s service had lowered the casket with oiled and silent winches the hearse drove away and the husband filled the grave himself with a new shovel. The caretaker, cutting dry weeds a hundred yards away, heard a whining carried on the wind.
Joe Valery had been drinking a beer with Butch Beavers at the Owl, and he went with Butch to have a look at the Nigger. Butch was in a hurry because he had to go out to Natividad to auction a small herd of white-face Herefords for the Tavernettis.
Coming out of the mortuary, Joe found himself in step with Alf Nichelson--crazy Alf Nichelson, who was a survival from an era that was past. Alf was a jack-of-all-trades, carpenter, tinsmith, blacksmith, electrician, plasterer, scissors grinder, and cobbler. Alf could do anything, and as a result he was a financial failure although he worked all the time. He knew everything about everybody back to the beginning of time.
In the past, in the period of his success, two kinds of people had access to all homes and all gossip--the seamstress and the handy man. Alf could tell you about everybody on both sides of Main Street. He was a vicious male gossip, insatiably curious and vindictive without malice.
He looked at Joe and tried to place him. “I know you,” he said. “Don’t tell me.”
Joe edged away. He was wary of people who knew him.
“Wait a minute. I got it. Kate’s. You work at Kate’s.”
Joe sighed with relief. He had thought Alf might have known him earlier. “That’s right,” he said shortly.
“Never forget a face,” said Alf. “Seen you when I built that crazy lean-to for Kate. Now why in hell did she want that for? No window.”
“Wanted it dark,” said Joe, “Eyes bother her.”
Alf sniffed. He hardly ever believed anything simple or good about anybody. You could say good morning to Alf and he’d work it around to a password. He was convinced that everyone lived secretly and that only he could see through them.
He jerked his head back at Muller’s. “Well, it’s a milestone,” he said. “Nearly all the old-timers gone. When Fartin’ Jenny goes that’ll be the end. And Jenny’s getting along.”
Joe was restless. He wanted to get away--and Alf knew he did. Alf was an expert in people who wanted to get away from him. Come to think of it, maybe that is why he carried his bag of stories. No one really went away when he could hear some juicy stuff about someone. Everybody is a gossip at heart. Alf was not liked for his gift but he was listened to. And he knew that Joe was on the point of making an excuse and getting out. It occurred to. him that he didn’t know much about Kate’s place lately. Joe might trade him some new stuff for some old stuff. “The old days was pretty good,” he said. “ ’Course you’re just a kid.”
“I got to meet a fella,” said Joe.
Alf pretended not to hear him. “You take Faye,” he said. “She was a case,” and, parenthetically, “You know Faye run Kate’s place. Nobody really knows how Kate come to own it. It was pretty mysterious, and there was some that had their suspicions.” He saw with satisfaction that the fella Joe was going to meet would wait a long time.
“What was they suspicious about?” Joe asked.
“Hell, you know how people talk. Probably nothing in it. But I got to admit it looked kind of funny.”
“Like to have a beer?” Joe asked.
“Now you got something there,” said Alf. “They say a fella jumps from a funeral to the bedroom. I ain’t as young as I was. Funeral makes me thirsty. The Nigger was quite a citizen. I could tell you stuff about her. I’ve knew her for thirty-five--no, thirty-seven years.”
“Who was Faye?” Joe asked.
They went into Mr. Griffin’s saloon. Mr. Griffin didn’t like anything about liquor, and he hated drunks with a deadly scorn. He owned and operated Griffin’s Saloon on Main Street, and on a Saturday night he might refuse to serve twenty men he thought had had enough. The result was that he got the best trade in his cool, orderly, quiet place. It was a saloon in which to make deals and to talk quietly without interruption.
Joe and Alf sat at the round table at the back and had three beers apiece. Joe learned everything true and untrue, founded and unfounded, every ugly conjecture. Out of it he got complete confusion but a few ideas. Something might have been not exactly on the level about the death of Faye. Kate might be the wife of Adam Trask. He hid that quickly--Trask might want to pay off. The Faye thing might be too hot to touch. Joe had to think about that--alone.
At the end of a couple of hours Alf was restive. Joe had not played ball. He had traded nothing, not one single piece of information or guess. Alf found himself thinking, Fella that close-mouthed must have something to hide. Wonder who would have a line on him?
Alf said finally, “Understand, I like Kate. She gives me a job now and then and she’s generous and quick to pay. Probably nothing to all the palaver about her. Still, when you think of it, she’s a pretty cold piece of woman. She’s got a real bad eye. You think?”
“I get along fine,” said Joe.
Alf was angry at Joe’s perfidy, so he put in a needle. “I had a funny idea,” he said. “It was when I built that lean-to without no window. She laid that cold eye on me one day and the idea come to me. If she knew all the things I heard, and she was to offer me a drink or even a cupcake--why, I’d say, ‘No thank you, ma’am,’ ”
“Me and her get along just fine,” said Joe. “I got to meet a guy.”
Joe went to his room to think. He was uneasy. He jumped up and looked in his suitcase and opened all the bureau drawers. He thought somebody had been going through his things. Just came to him. There was nothing to find. It made him nervous. He tried to arrange the things he had heard.
There was a tap on the door and Thelma came in, her eyes swollen and her nose red. “What’s got into Kate?”
“She’s been sick.”
“I don’t mean that. I was in the kitchen shaking up a milkshake in a fruit jar and she came in and worked me over.”
“Was you maybe shaking up a little bourbon in it?”
“Hell, no. Just vanilla extract. She can’t talk like that to me.”
“She did, didn’t she?”
“Well, I won’t take it.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” said Joe. “Get out, Thelma!”
Thelma looked at him out of her dark, handsome, brooding eyes, and she regained the island of safety a woman depends on. “Joe,” she asked, “are you really just pure son of a bitch or do you just pretend to be?”
“What do you care?” Joe asked.
“I don’t,” said Thelma. “You son of a bitch.”

2
Joe planned to move slowly, cautiously, and only after long consideration. “I got the breaks, I got to use ’em right,” he told himself.
He went in to get his evening orders and took them from the back of Kate’s head. She was at her desk, green eyeshade low, and she did not look around at him. She finished her terse orders and then went on, “Joe, I wonder if you’ve been attending to business. I’ve been sick. But I’m well again or very nearly well.”
“Something wrong?”
“Just a symptom. I’d rather Thelma drank whisky than vanilla extract, and I don’t want her to drink whisky. I think you’ve been slipping.”
His mind scurried for a hiding place. “Well, I been busy,” he said.
“Busy?”
“Sure. Doing that stuff for you.”
“What stuff?”
“You know--about Ethel.”
“Forget Ethel!”
“Okay,” said Joe. And then it came without his expecting it. “I met a fella yesterday said he seen her.”
If Joe had not known her he would not have given the little pause, the rigid ten seconds of silence, its due.
At the end of it Kate asked softly, “Where?”
“Here.”
She turned her swivel chair slowly around to face him. “I shouldn’t have let you work in the dark, Joe. It’s hard to confess a fault but I owe it to you. I don’t have to remind you I got Ethel floated out of the county. I thought she’d done something to me.” A melancholy came into her voice. “I was wrong. I found out later. It’s been working on me ever since. She didn’t do anything to me. I want to find her and make it up to her. I guess you think it’s strange for me to feel that way.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Find her for me, Joe. I’ll feel better when I’ve made it up to her--the poor old girl.”
“I’ll try, ma’am.”
“And, Joe--if you need any money, let me know. And if you find her, just tell her what I said. If she doesn’t want to come here, find out where I can telephone her. Need any money?”
“Not right now, ma’am. But I’ll have to go out of the house more than I ought.”
“You go ahead. That’s all, Joe.”
He wanted to hug himself. In the hall he gripped his elbows and let his joy run through him. And he began to believe he had planned the whole thing. He went through the darkened parlor with its low early evening spatter of conversation. He stepped outside and looked up at the stars swimming in schools through the wind-driven clouds.
Joe thought of his bumbling father--because he remembered something the old man had told him. “Look out for a soup carrier,” Joe’s father had said. “Take one of them dames that’s always carrying soup to somebody--she wants something, and don’t you forget it.”
Joe said under his breath, “A soup carrier. I thought she was smarter than that.” He went over her tone and words to make sure he hadn’t missed something. No--a soup carrier. And he thought of Alf saying, “If she was to offer a drink or even a cupcake--”

3
Kate sat at her desk. She could hear the wind in the tall privet in the yard, and the wind and the darkness were full of Ethel--fat, sloppy Ethel oozing near like a jellyfish. A dull weariness came over her.
She went into the lean-to, the gray room, and closed the door and sat in the darkness, listening to the pain creep back into her fingers. Her temples beat with pounding blood. She felt for the capsule hanging in its tube on the chain around her neck, she rubbed the metal tube, warm from her breast, against her cheek, and her courage came back. She washed her face and put on make-up, combed and puffed her hair in a loose pompadour. She moved into the hall and at the door of the parlor she paused, as always, listening.
To the right of the door two girls and a man were talking. As soon as Kate stepped inside the talk stopped instantly. Kate said, “Helen, I want to see you if you aren’t busy right now.”
The girl followed her down the hall and into her room. She was a pale blond with a skin like clean and polished bone. “Is something the matter, Miss Kate?” she asked fearfully.
“Sit down. No. Nothing’s the matter. You went to the Nigger’s funeral.”
“Didn’t you want me to?”
“I don’t care about that. You went.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What about it?”
“Tell me what you remember--how it was.”
Helen said nervously, “Well, it was kind of awful and--kind of beautiful.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. No flowers, no nothing, but there was--there was a--well, a kind of--dignity. The Nigger was just laying there in a black wood coffin with the biggest goddam silver handles. Made you feel--I can’t say it. I don’t know how to say it.”
“Maybe you said it. What did she wear?”
“Wear, ma’am?”
“Yes--wear. They didn’t bury her naked, did they?”
A struggle of effort crossed Helen’s face. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t remember.”
“Did you go to the cemetery?”
“No, ma’am. Nobody did--except him.”
“Who?”
“Her man.”
Kate said quickly--almost too quickly, “Have you got any regulars tonight?”
“No, ma’am. Day before Thanksgiving. Bound to be slow.”
“I’d forgotten,” said Kate. “Get back out.” She watched the girl out of the room and moved restlessly back to her desk. And as she looked at an itemized bill for plumbing her left hand strayed to her neck and touched the chain. It was comfort and reassurance.

Chapter 49


1
Both Lee and Cal tried to argue Adam out of going to meet the train, the Lark night train from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Cal said, “Why don’t we let Abra go alone? He’ll want to see her first.”
“I think he won’t know anybody else is there,” said Lee. “So it doesn’t matter whether we go or not.”
“I want to see him get off the train,” said Adam. “He’ll be changed. I want to see what change there is.”
Lee said, “He’s only been gone a couple of months. He can’t be very changed, nor much older.”
“He’ll be changed. Experience will do that.”
“If you go we’ll all have to go,” said Cal.
“Don’t you want to see your brother?” Adam asked sternly.
“Sure, but he won’t want to see me--not right at first.”
“He will too,” said Adam. “Don’t you underrate Aron.”
Lee threw up his hands. “I guess we all go,” he said.
“Can you imagine?” said Adam. “He’ll know so many new things. I wonder if he’ll talk different. You know, Lee, in the East a boy takes on the speech of his school. You can tell a Harvard man from a Princeton man. At least that’s what they say.”
“I’ll listen,” said Lee. “I wonder what dialect they speak at Stanford. “ He smiled at Cal.
Adam didn’t think it was funny. “Did you put some fruit in his room?” he asked. “He loves fruit.”
“Pears and apples and muscat grapes,” said Lee.
“Yes, he loves muscats. I remember he loves muscats.”
Under Adam’s urging they got to the Southern Pacific Depot half an hour before the train was due. Abra was already there.
“I can’t come to dinner tomorrow, Lee,” she said. “My father wants me home. I’ll come as soon after as I can.”
“You’re a little breathless,” said Lee.
“Aren’t you?”
“I guess I am,” said Lee. “Look up the track and see if the block’s turned green.”
Train schedules are a matter of pride and of apprehension to nearly everyone. When, far up the track, the block signal snapped from red to green and the long, stabbing probe of the headlight sheered the bend and blared on the station, men looked at their watches and said, “On time.”
There was pride in it, and relief too. The split second has been growing more and more important to us. And as human activities become more and more intermeshed and integrated, the split tenth of a second will emerge, and then a new name must be made for the split hundredth, until one day, although I don’t believe it, we’ll say, “Oh, the hell with it. What’s wrong with an hour?” But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.
The Lark came rushing in as though it had no intention of stopping. And only when the engine and baggage cars were well past did the air brakes give their screaming hiss and the straining iron protest to a halt.
The train delivered quite a crowd for Salinas, returning relatives home for Thanksgiving, their hands entangled in cartons and gift-wrapped paper boxes. It was a moment or two before his family could locate Aron. And then they saw him, and he seemed bigger than he had been.
He was wearing a flat-topped, narrow-brimmed hat, very stylish, and when he saw them he broke into a run and yanked off his hat, and they could see that his bright hair was clipped to a short brush of a pompadour that stood straight up. And his eyes shone so that they laughed with pleasure to see him.
Aron dropped his suitcase and lifted Abra from the ground in a great hug. He set her down and gave Adam and Cal his two hands. He put his arms around Lee’s shoulders and nearly crushed him.
On the way home they all talked at once. “Well, how are you?”
“You look fine.”
“Abra, you’re so pretty.”
“I am not. Why did you cut your hair?”
“Oh, everybody wears it that way,”
“But you have such nice hair.”
They hurried up to Main Street and one short block and around the corner on Central past Reynaud’s with stacked French bread in the window and black-haired Mrs. Reynaud waved her flour-pale hand at them and they were home.
Adam said, “Coffee, Lee?”
“I made it before we left. It’s on the simmer.” He had the cups laid out too. Suddenly they were together--Aron and Abra on the couch, Adam in his chair under the light, Lee passing coffee, and Cal braced in the doorway to the hall. And they were silent, for it was too late to say hello and too early to begin other things.
Adam did say, “I’ll want to hear all about it. Will you get good marks?”
“Finals aren’t until next month, Father.”
“Oh, I see. Well, you’ll get good marks, all right. I’m sure you will.”
In spite of himself a grimace of impatience crossed Aron’s face.
“I’ll bet you’re tired,” said Adam. “Well, we can talk tomorrow.”
Lee said, “I’ll bet he’s not. I’ll bet he’d like to be alone.”
Adam looked at Lee and said, “Why, of course--of course. Do you think we should all go to bed?”
Abra solved it for them. “I can’t stay out long,” she said. “Aron, why don’t you walk me home? We’ll be together tomorrow.”
On the way Aron clung to her arm. He shivered. “There’s going to a frost,” he said.
“You’re glad to be back.”
“Yes, I am. I have a lot to talk about.”
“Good things?”
“Maybe. I hope you think so.”
“You sound serious.”
“It is serious.”
“When do you have to go back?”
“Not until Sunday night.”
“We’ll have lots of time. I want to tell you some things too. We have tomorrow and Friday and Saturday and all day Sunday. Would you mind not coming in tonight?”
“Why not?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“I want to know now.”
“Well, my father’s got one of his streaks.”
“Against me?”
“Yes. I can’t go to dinner with you tomorrow, but I won’t eat much at home, so you can tell Lee to save a plate for me.”
He was turning shy. She could feel it in the relaxing grip on her arm and in his silence, and she could see it in his raised face. “I shouldn’t have told you that tonight.”
“Yes, you should,” he said slowly. “Tell me the truth. Do you still--want to be with me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then all right. I’ll go away now. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
He left her on her porch with the feeling of a light-brushed kiss on her lips. She felt hurt that he had agreed so easily, and she laughed sourly at herself that she could ask a thing and be hurt when she got it. She watched his tall quick step through the radiance of the corner streetlight. She thought, I must be crazy. I’ve been imagining things.

2

In his bedroom after he had said his good night, Aron sat on the edge of his bed and peered down at his hands cupped between his knees. He felt let down and helpless, packed like a bird’s egg in the cotton of his father’s ambition for him. He had not known its strength until tonight, and he wondered whether he would have the strength to break free of its soft, persistent force. His thoughts would not coagulate. The house seemed cold with a dampness that made him shiver. He got up and softly opened his door. There was a light under Cal’s door. He tapped and went in without waiting for a reply.
Cal sat at a new desk. He was working with tissue paper and a bolt of red ribbon, and as Aron came in he hastily covered something on his desk with a large blotter.
Aron smiled. “Presents?”
“Yes,” said Cal and left it at that.
“Can I talk to you?”
“Sure! Come on in. Talk low or Father will come in. He hates to miss a moment.”
Aron sat down on the bed. He was silent so long that Cal asked, “What’s the matter--you got trouble?”
“No, not trouble. I just wanted to talk to you. Cal, I don’t want to go on at college.”
Cal’s head jerked around. “You don’t? Why not?”
“I just don’t like it.”
“You haven’t told Father, have you? He’ll be disappointed. It’s bad enough that I don’t want to go. What do you want to do?”
“I thought I’d like to take over the ranch.”
“How about Abra?”
“She told me a long time ago that’s what she’d like.”
Cal studied him. “The ranch has got a lease to run.”
“Well, I was just thinking about it.”
Cal said, “There’s no money in farming.”
“I don’t want much money. Just to get along.”
“That’s not good enough for me,” said Cal. “I want a lot of money and I’m going to get it too.”
“How?”
Cal felt older and surer than his brother. He felt protective toward him. “If you’ll go on at college, why, I’ll get started and lay in a foundation. Then when you finish we can be partners. I’ll have one kind of thing and you’ll have another. That might be pretty good.”
“I don’t want to go back. Why do I have to go back?”
“Because Father wants you to.”
“That won’t make me go.”
Cal stared fiercely at his brother, at the pale hair and the wide-set eyes, and suddenly he knew why his father loved Aron, knew it beyond doubt. “Sleep on it,” he said quickly. “It would be better if you finish out the term at least. Don’t do anything now.”
Aron got up and moved toward the door. “Who’s the present for?” he asked.
“It’s for Father. You’ll see it tomorrow--after dinner.”
“It’s not Christmas.”
“No,” said Cal, “it’s better than Christmas.”
When Aron had gone back to his room Cal uncovered his present. He counted the fifteen new bills once more, and they were so crisp they made a sharp, cracking sound. The Monterey County Bank had to send to San Francisco to get them, and only did so when the reason for them was told. It was a matter of shock and disbelief to the bank that a seventeen-year-old boy should, first, own them, and, second, carry them about. Bankers do not like money to be lightly handled even if the handling is sentimental. It had taken Will Hamilton’s word to make the bank believe that the money belonged to Cal, that it was honestly come by, and that he could do what he wanted to with it.
Cal wrapped the bills in tissue and tied it with red ribbon finished in a blob that was faintly recognizable as a bow. The package might have been a handkerchief. He concealed it under the shirts in his bureau and went to bed. But he could not sleep. He was excited and at the same time shy. He wished the day was over and the gift given. He went over what he planned to say.
“This is for you.”
“What is it?”
“A present.”
From then on he didn’t know what would happen. He tossed and rolled in bed, and at dawn he got up and dressed and crept out of the house.
On Main Street he saw Old Martin sweeping the street with a stable broom. The city council was discussing the purchase of a mechanical sweeper. Old Martin hoped he would get to drive it, but he was cynical about it. Young men got the cream of everything. Bacigalupi’s garbage wagon went by, and Martin looked after it spitefully. There was a good business. Those wops were getting rich.
Main Street was empty except for a few dogs sniffing at closed entrances and the sleepy activity around the San Francisco Chop House. Pet Bulene’s new taxi was parked in front, for Pet had been alerted the night before to take the Williams girls to the morning train for San Francisco.
Old Martin called to Cal, “Got a cigarette, young fella?”
Cal stopped and took out his cardboard box of Murads.
“Oh, fancy ones!” Martin said. “I ain’t got a match either.”
Cal lighted the cigarette for him, careful not to set fire to the grizzle around Martin’s mouth.
Martin leaned on the handle of his brush and puffed disconsolately. “Young fellas gets the cream,” he said. “They won’t let me drive it.”
“What?” Cal asked.
“Why, the new sweeper. Ain’t you heard? Where you been, boy?” It was incredible to him that any reasonably informed human did not know about the sweeper. He forgot Cal. Maybe the Bacigalupis would give him a job. They were coining money. Three wagons and a new truck.
Cal turned down Alisal Street, went into the post office, and looked in the glass window of box 632. It was empty. He wandered back home and found Lee up and stuffing a very large turkey.
“Up all night?” Lee asked.
“No. I just went for a walk.”
“Nervous?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t blame you. I would be too. It’s hard to give people things--I guess it’s harder to be given things, though. Seems silly, doesn’t it? Want some coffee?”
“I don’t mind.”
Lee wiped his hands and poured coffee for himself and for Cal. “How do you think Aron looks?”
“All right, I guess.”
“Did you get to talk to him?”
“No,” said Cal. It was easier that way. Lee would want to know what he said. It wasn’t Aron’s day. It was Cal’s day. He had carved this day out for himself and he wanted it. He meant to have it.
Aron came in, his eyes still misty with sleep. “What time do you plan to have dinner, Lee?”
“Oh, I don’t know--three-thirty or four.”
“Could you make it about five?”
“I guess so, if Adam says it’s all right. Why?”
“Well, Abra can’t get here before then. I’ve got a plan I want to put to my father and I want her to be here.”
“I guess that will be all right,” said Lee.
Cal got up quickly and went to his room. He sat at his desk with the student light turned on and he churned with uneasiness and resentment. Without effort, Aron was taking his day away from him. It would turn out to be Aron’s day. Then, suddenly, he was bitterly ashamed. He covered his eyes with his hands and he said, “It’s just jealousy. I’m jealous. That’s what I am. I’m jealous. I don’t want to be jealous.” And he repeated over and over, “Jealous--jealous--jealous,” as though bringing it into the open might destroy it. And having gone this far, he proceeded with his self-punishment. “Why am I giving the money to my father? Is it for his good? No. It’s for my good. Will Hamilton said it--I’m trying to buy him. There’s not one decent thing about it. There’s not one decent thing about me. I sit here wallowing in jealousy of my brother. Why not call things by their names?”
He whispered hoarsely to himself. “Why not be honest? I know why my father loves Aron. It’s because he looks like her. My father never got over her. He may not know it, but it’s true. I wonder if he does know it. That makes me jealous of her too. Why don’t I take my money and go away? They wouldn’t miss me. In a little while they’d forget I ever existed--all except Lee. And I wonder whether Lee likes me. Maybe not.” He doubled his fists against his forehead. “Does Aron have to fight himself like this? I don’t think so, but how do I know? I could ask him. He wouldn’t say.”
Cal’s mind careened in anger at himself and in pity for himself. And then a new voice came into it, saying coolly and with contempt, “If you’re being honest--why not say you are enjoying this beating you’re giving yourself? That would be the truth. Why not be just what you are and do just what you do?” Cal sat in shock from this thought. Enjoying?--of course. By whipping himself he protected himself against whipping by someone else. His mind tightened up. Give the money, but give it lightly. Don’t depend on anything. Don’t foresee anything. Just give it and forget it. And forget it now. Give--give. Give the day to Aron. Why not? He jumped up and hurried out to the kitchen.
Aron was holding open the skin of the turkey while Lee forced stuffing into the cavity. The oven cricked and snapped with growing heat.
Lee said, “Let’s see, eighteen pounds, twenty minutes to the pound--that’s eighteen times twenty--that’s three hundred and sixty minutes, six hours even--eleven to twelve, twelve to one--” He counted on his fingers.
Cal said, “When you get through, Aron, let’s take a walk.”
“Where to?” Aron asked.
“Just around town. I want to ask you something.”
Cal led his brother across the street to Berges and Garrisiere, who imported fine wines and liquors. Cal said, “I’ve got a little money, Aron. I thought you might like to buy some wine for dinner. I’ll give you the money.”
“What kind of wine?”
“Let’s make a real celebration. Let’s get champagne--it can be your present.”
Joe Garrisiere said, “You boys aren’t old enough.”
“For dinner? Sure we are.”
“Can’t sell it to you. I’m sorry.”
Cal said, “I know what you can do. We can pay for it and you can send it to our father.”
“That I can do,” Joe Garrisiere said. “We’ve got some Oeil de Perdrix--” His lips pursed as though he were tasting it.
“What’s that?” Cal asked.
“Champagne--but very pretty, same color as a partridge eye--pink but a little darker than pink, and dry too. Four-fifty a bottle.”
“Isn’t that high?” Aron asked.
“Sure it’s high!” Cal laughed. “Send three bottles over, Joe.” To Aron he said, “It’s your present.