Part Four


Chapter 34


A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught--in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too--in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill?
Herodotus, in the Persian War, tells a story of how Croesus, the richest and most-favored king of his time, asked Solon the Athenian a leading question. He would not have asked it if he had not been worried about the answer. “Who,” he asked, “is the luckiest person in the world?” He must have been eaten with doubt and hungry for reassurance. Solon told him of three lucky people in old times. And Croesus more than likely did not listen, so anxious was he about himself. And when Solon did not mention him, Croesus was forced to say, “Do you not consider me lucky?”
Solon did not hesitate in his answer. “How can I tell?” he said. “You aren’t dead yet.”
And this answer must have haunted Croesus dismally as his luck disappeared, and his wealth and his kingdom. And as he was being burned on a tall fire, he may have thought of it and perhaps wished he had not asked or not been answered.
And in our time, when a man dies--if he has had wealth and influence and power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments--the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil?--which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come of it?”
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, “Thank God that son of a bitch is dead.”
Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.
There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do now? How can we go on without him?”
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

Chapter 35


1
Lee helped Adam and the two boys move to Salinas, which is to say he did it all, packed the things to be taken, saw them on the train, loaded the back seat of the Ford, and, arriving in Salinas, unpacked and saw the family settled in Dessie’s little house. When he had done everything he could think of to make them comfortable, and a number of things unnecessary, and more things for the sake of delay, he waited on Adam formally one evening after the twins had gone to bed. Perhaps Adam caught his intention from Lee’s coldness and formality.
Adam said, “All right. I’ve been expecting it. Tell me.”
That broke up Lee’s memorized speech, which he had intended to begin, “For a number of years I have served you to the best of my ability and now I feel--”
“I’ve put it off as long as I could,” said Lee. “I have a speech all ready. Do you want to hear it?”
“Do you want to say it?”
“No,” said Lee. “I don’t. And it’s a pretty good speech too.”
“When do you want to go?” Adam asked.
“As soon as possible. I’m afraid I might lose my intention if I don’t go soon. Do you want me to wait until you get someone else?”
“Better not,” said Adam. “You know how slow I am. It might be some time. I might never get around to it.”
“I’ll go tomorrow then.”
“It will tear the boys to pieces,” Adam said. “I don’t know what they’ll do. Maybe you’d better sneak off and let me tell them afterward.”
“It’s my observation that children always surprise us,” said Lee.
And so it was. At breakfast the next morning Adam said, “Boys, Lee is going away.”
“Is he?” said Cal. “There’s a basketball game tonight, costs ten cents. Can we go?”
“Yes. But did you hear what I said?”
“Sure,” Aron said. “You said Lee’s going away.”
“But he’s not coming back.”
Cal asked, “Where’s he going?”
“To San Francisco to live.”
“Oh!” said Aron. “There’s a man on Main Street, right on the street, and he’s got a little stove and he cooks sausages and puts them in buns. They cost a nickel. And you can take all the mustard you want.”
Lee stood in the kitchen door, smiling at Adam.
When the twins got their books together Lee said, “Good-by, boys.”
They shouted, “Good-by!” and tumbled out of the house.
Adam stared into his coffee cup and said in apology, “What little brutes! I guess that’s your reward for over ten years of service.”
“I like it better that way,” Lee said. “If they pretended sorrow they’d be liars. It doesn’t mean anything to them. Maybe they’ll think of me sometimes--privately. I don’t want them to be sad. I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.” He laid fifty cents on the table in front of Adam. “When they start for the basketball game tonight, give them this from me and tell them to buy the sausage buns. My farewell gift may be ptomaine, for all I know.”
Adam looked at the telescope basket Lee brought into the dining room. “Is that all your stuff, Lee?”
“Everything but my books. They’re in boxes in the cellar. If you don’t mind I’ll send for them or come for them after I get settled.”
“Why, sure. I’m going to miss you, Lee, whether you want me to or not. Are you really going to get your bookstore?”
“That is my intention.”
“You’ll let us hear from you?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. They say a clean cut heals soonest. There’s nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can’t see or hear or touch a man, it’s best to let him go.”
Adam stood up from the table. “I’ll walk to the depot with you.”
“No!” Lee said sharply. “No. I don’t want that. Good-by, Mr. Trask. Good-by, Adam.” He went out of the house so fast that Adam’s “Good-by” reached him at the bottom of the front steps and Adam’s “Don’t forget to write” sounded over the click of the front gate.

2
That night after the basketball game Cal and Aron each had five sausages on buns, and it was just as well, for Adam had forgotten to provide any supper. Walking home, the twins discussed Lee for the first time.
“I wonder why he went away?” Cal asked.
“He’s talked about going before.”
“What do you suppose he’ll do without us?”
“I don’t know. I bet he comes back,” Aron said.
“How do you mean? Father said he was going to start a bookstore. That’s funny. A Chinese bookstore.”
“He’ll come back,” said Aron. “He’ll get lonesome for us. You’ll see.”
“Bet you ten cents he don’t.”
“Before when?”
“Before forever.”
“That’s a bet,” said Aron.
Aron was not able to collect his winnings for nearly a month, but he won six days later.
Lee came in on the ten-forty and let himself in with his own key. There was a light in the dining room but Lee found Adam in the kitchen, scraping at a thick black crust in the frying pan with the point of a can opener.
Lee put down his basket. “If you soak it overnight it will come right out.”
“Will it? I’ve burned everything I’ve cooked. There’s a saucepan of beets out in the yard. Smelled so bad I couldn’t have them in the house. Burned beets are awful--“Lee!” he cried, and then. “Is anything the matter?”
Lee took the black iron pan from him and put it in the sink and ran water in it. “If we had a new gas stove we could make a cup of coffee in a few minutes,” he said. “I might as well build up the fire.”
“Stove won’t burn,” said Adam.
Lee lifted a lid. “Have you ever taken the ashes out?”
“Ashes?”
“Oh, go in the other room,” said Lee. “I’ll make some coffee.”
Adam waited impatiently in the dining room but he obeyed his orders. At last Lee brought in two cups of coffee and set them on the table. “Made it in a skillet,” he said. “Much faster.” He leaned over his telescope basket and untied the rope that held it shut. He brought out the stone bottle. “Chinese absinthe,” he said. “Ng-ka-py maybe last ten more years. I forgot to ask whether you had replaced me.”
“You’re beating around the bush,” said Adam.
“I know it. And I also know the best way would be just to tell it and get it over with.”
“You lost your money in a fan-tan game.”
“No. I wish that was it. No, I have my money. This damn cork’s broken--I’ll have to shove it in the bottle.” He poured the black liquor into his coffee. “I never drank it this way,” he said. “Say, it’s good.”
“Tastes like rotten apples,” said Adam.
“Yes, but remember Sam Hamilton said like good rotten apples.”
Adam said, “When do you think you’ll get around to telling me what happened to you?”
“Nothing happened to me,” said Lee. “I got lonesome. That’s all. Isn’t that enough?”
“How about your bookstore?”
“I don’t want a bookstore. I think I knew it before I got on the train, but I took all this time to make sure.”
“Then there’s your last dream gone.”
“Good riddance.” Lee seemed on the verge of hysteria. “Missy Tlask, Chinee boy sink gung get dlunk.”
Adam was alarmed. “What’s the matter with you anyway?”
Lee lifted the bottle to his lips and took a deep hot drink and panted the fumes out of his burning throat. “Adam,” he said, “I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I’ve never been so goddam lonesome in my life.”

Chapter 36


1
Salinas had two grammar schools, big yellow structures with tall windows, and the windows were baleful and the doors did not smile. These schools were called the East End and the West End. Since the East End School was way to hell and gone across town and the children who lived east of Main Street attended there, I will not bother with it.
The West End, a huge building of two stories, fronted with gnarled poplars, divided the play yards called girlside and boyside. Behind the school a high board fence separated girlside from boyside, and the back of the play yard was bounded by a slough of standing water in which tall tules and even cattails grew. The West End had grades from third to eighth. The first- and second-graders went to Baby School some distance away.
In the West End there was a room for each grade--third, four, and fifth on the ground floor, six, seventh, and eighth on the second floor. Each room had the usual desks of battered oak, a platform and square teacher’s desk, one Seth Thomas clock and one picture. The pictures identified the rooms, and the pre-Raphaelite influence was overwhelming. Galahad standing in full armor pointed the way for third-graders; Atalanta’s race urged on the fourth, the Pot of Basil confused the fifth grade, and so on until the denunciation of Cataline sent the eighth-graders on to high school with a sense of high civic virtue.
Cal and Aron were assigned to the seventh grade because of their age, and they learned every shadow of its picture--Laocoön completely wrapped in snakes.
The boys were stunned by the size and grandeur of the West End after their background in a one-room country school. The opulence of having a teacher for each grade made a deep impression on them. It seemed wasteful. But as is true of all humans, they were stunned for one day, admiring on the second, and on the third day could not remember very clearly ever having gone to any other school.
The teacher was dark and pretty, and by a judicious raising or withholding of hands the twins had no worries. Cal worked it out quickly and explained it to Aron. “You take most kids,” he said, “if they know the answer, why, they hold up their hands, and if they don’t know they just crawl under the desk. Know what we’re going to do?”
“No. What?”
“Well, you notice the teacher don’t always call on somebody with his hand up. She lets drive at the others and, sure enough, they don’t know.”
“That’s right,” said Aron.
“Now, first week we’re going to work like bedamned but we won’t stick up our hands. So she’ll call on us and we’ll know. That’ll throw her. So the second week we won’t work and we’ll stick up our hands and she won’t call on us. Third week we’ll just sit quiet, and she won’t ever know whether we got the answer or not. Pretty soon she’ll let us alone. She isn’t going to waste her time calling on somebody that knows.”
Cal’s method worked. In a short time the twins were not only let alone but got themselves a certain reputation for smartness. As a matter of fact, Cal’s method was a waste of time. Both boys learned easily enough.
Cal was able to develop his marble game and set about gathering in all the chalkies and immies, glassies and agates, in the schoolyard. He traded them for tops just as marble season ended. At one time he had and used as legal tender at least forty-five tops of various sizes and colors, from the thick clumsy baby tops to the lean and dangerous splitters with their needle points.
Everyone who saw the twins remarked on their difference one from the other and seemed puzzled that this should be so. Cal was growing up dark-skinned, dark-haired. He was quick and sure and secret. Even though he may have tried, he could not conceal his cleverness. Adults were impressed with what seemed to them a precocious maturity, and they were a little frightened at it too. No one liked Cal very much and yet everyone was touched with fear of him and through fear with respect. Although he had no friends he was welcomed by his obsequious classmates and took up a natural and cold position of leadership in the schoolyard.
If he concealed his ingenuity, he concealed his hurts too. He was regarded as thick-skinned and insensitive--even cruel.
Aron drew love from every side. He seemed shy and delicate. His pink-and-white skin, golden hair, and wide-set blue eyes caught attention. In the schoolyard his very prettiness caused some difficulty until it was discovered by his testers that Aron was a dogged, steady, and completely fearless fighter, particularly when he was crying. Word got around, and the natural punishers of new boys learned to let him alone. Aron did not attempt to hide his disposition. It was concealed by being the opposite of his appearance. He was unchanging once a course was set. He had few facets and very little versatility. His body was as insensitive to pain as was his mind to subtleties.
Cal knew his brother and could handle him by keeping him off balance, but this only worked up to a certain point. Cal had learned when to sidestep, when to run away. Change of direction confused Aron, but that was the only thing that confused him. He set his path and followed it and he did not see nor was he interested in anything beside his path. His emotions were few and heavy. All of him was hidden by his angelic face, and for this he had no more concern or responsibility than has a fawn for the dappling spots on its young hide.

2

On Aron’s first day in school he waited eagerly for the recess. He went over to the girlside to talk to Abra. A mob of squealing girls could not drive him out. It took a full-grown teacher to force him back to the boyside.
At noon he missed her, for her father came by in his high-wheeled buggy and drove her home for her lunch. He waited outside the schoolyard gate for her after school.
She came out surrounded by girls. Her face was composed and gave no sign that she expected him. She was far the prettiest girl in the school, but it is doubtful whether Aron had noticed that.
The cloud of girls hung on and hung on. Aron marched along three paces behind them, patient and unembarrassed even when the girls tossed their squealing barbs of insult over their shoulders at him. Gradually some drifted away to their own homes, and only three girls were with Abra when she came to the white gate of her yard and turned in. Her friends stared at him a moment, giggled, and went on their way.
Aron sat down on the edge of the sidewalk. After a moment the latch lifted, the white gate opened, and Abra emerged. She walked across the walk and stood over him. “What do you want?”
Aron’s wide eyes looked up at her. “You aren’t engaged to anybody?”
“Silly,” she said.
He struggled up to his feet. “I guess it will be a long time before we can get married,” he said.
“Who wants to get married?”
Aron didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t hear. He walked along beside her.
Abra moved with firm and deliberate steps and she faced straight ahead. There was wisdom and sweetness in her expression. She seemed deep in thought. And Aron, walking beside her, never took his eyes from her face. His attention seemed tied to her face by a taut string.
They walked silently past the Baby School, and there the pavement ended. Abra turned right and led the way through the stubble of the summer’s hayfield. The black ’dobe clods crushed under their feet.
On the edge of the field stood a little pump house, and a willow tree flourished beside it, fed by the overspill of water. The long skirts of the willow hung down nearly to the ground.
Abra parted the switches like a curtain and went into the house of leaves made against the willow trunk by the sweeping branches. You could see out through the leaves, but inside it was sweetly protected and warm and safe. The afternoon sunlight came yellow through the aging leaves.
Abra sat down on the ground, or rather she seemed to drift down, and her full skirts settled in a billow around her. She folded her hands in her lap almost as though she were praying.
Aron sat down beside her. “I guess it will be a long time before we can get married,” he said again. “Not so long,” Abra said. “I wish it was now.”
“It won’t be so long,” said Abra. Aron asked, “Do you think your father will let you?”
It was a new thought to her, and she turned and looked at him. “Maybe I won’t ask him.”
“But your mother?”
“Let’s not disturb them,” she said. “They’d think it was funny or bad. Can’t you keep a secret?”
“Oh, yes. I can keep secrets better than anybody. And I’ve got some too.”
Abra said, “Well, you just put this one with the others.”
Aron picked up a twig and drew a line on the dark earth. “Abra, do you know how you get babies?”
“Yes,” she said. “Who told you?”
“Lee told me. He explained the whole thing. I guess we can’t have any babies for a long time.”
Abra’s mouth turned up at the corners with a condescending wisdom. “Not so long,” she said.
“We’ll have a house together some time,” Aron said, bemused. “We’ll go in and close the door and it will be nice. But that will be a long time.”
Abra put out her hand and touched him on the arm. “Don’t you worry about long times,” she said. “This is a kind of a house. We can play like we live here while we’re waiting. And you will be my husband and you can call me wife.”
He tried it over under his breath and then aloud. “Wife,” he said. “It’ll be like practicing,” said Abra.
Aron’s arm shook under her hand, and she put it, palm up, in her lap.
Aron said suddenly, “While we’re practicing, maybe we could do something else.”
“What?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t like it.”
“What is it?”
“Maybe we could pretend like you’re my mother.”
“That’s easy,” she said.
“Would you mind?”
“No, I’d like it. Do you want to start now?”
“Sure,” Aron said. “How do you want to go about it?”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” said Abra. She put a cooing tone in her voice and said, “Come, my baby, put your head in Mother’s lap. Come, my little son. Mother will hold you.” She drew his head down, and without warning Aron began to cry and could not stop. He wept quietly, and Abra stroked his cheek and wiped the flowing tears away with the edge of her skirt.
The sun crept down toward its setting place behind the Salinas River, and a bird began to sing wonderfully from the golden stubble of the field. It was as beautiful under the branches of the willow tree as anything in the world can be.
Very slowly Aron’s weeping stopped, and he felt good and he felt warm.
“My good little baby,” Abra said. “Here, let Mother brush your hair back.”
Aron sat up and said almost angrily, “I don’t hardly ever cry unless I’m mad. I don’t know why I cried.”
Abra asked, “Do you remember your mother?”
“No. She died when I was a little bit of a baby.”
“Don’t you know what she looked like?”
“No.”
“Maybe you saw a picture.”
“No, I tell you. We don’t have any pictures. I asked Lee and he said no pictures--no, I guess it was Cal asked Lee.”
“When did she die?”
“Right after Cal and I were born.”
“What was her name?”
“Lee says it was Cathy. Say, what you asking so much for?”
Abra went on calmly, “How was she complected?”
“What?”
“Light or dark hair?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t your father tell you?”
“We never asked him.”
Abra was silent, and after a while Aron asked, “What’s the matter--cat got your tongue?”
Abra inspected the setting sun.
Aron asked uneasily, “You mad with me”--and he added tentatively--“wife?”
“No, I’m not mad. I’m just wondering.”
“What about?”
“About something.” Abra’s firm face was tight against a seething inner argument. She asked, “What’s it like not to have any mother?”
“I don’t know. It’s like anything else.”
“I guess you wouldn’t even know the difference.”
“I would too. I wish you would talk out. You’re like riddles in the Bulletin.”
Abra continued in her concentrated imperturbability, “Do you want to have a mother?”
“That’s crazy,” said Aron. “ ’Course I do. Everybody does. You aren’t trying to hurt my feelings, are you? Cal tries that sometimes and then he laughs.”
Abra looked away from the setting sun. She had difficulty seeing past the purple spots the light had left on her eyes. “You said a little while ago you could keep secrets.”
“I can.”
“Well, do you have a double-poison-and-cut-my-throat secret?”
“Sure I have.”
Abra said softly, “Tell me what it is, Aron.” She put a caress in his name.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me the deepest down hell-and-goddam secret you know.”
Aron reared back from her in alarm. “Why, I will not,” he said. “What right you got to ask me? I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
“Come on, my baby--tell Mother,” she crooned.
There were tears crowding up in his eyes again, but this time they were tears of anger. “I don’t know as I want to marry you,” he said. “I think I’m going home now.”
Abra put her hand on his wrist and hung on. Her voice lost its coquetry. “I wanted to see. I guess you can keep secrets all right.”
“Why did you go for to do it? I’m mad now. I feel sick.”
“I think I’m going to tell you a secret,” she said.
“Ho!” he jeered at her. “Who can’t keep a secret now?”
“I was trying to decide,” she said. “I think I’m going to tell you this secret because it might be good for you. It might make you glad.”
“Who told you not to tell?”
“Nobody,” she said. “I only told myself.”
“Well, I guess that’s a little different. What’s your old secret?”
The red sun leaned its rim on the rooftree of Tollot’s house on the Blanco Road, and Tollot’s chimney stuck up like a black thumb against it.
Abra said softly, “Listen, you remember when we came to your place that time?”
“Sure!”
“Well, in the buggy I went to sleep, and when I woke up my father and mother didn’t know I was awake. They said your mother wasn’t dead. They said she went away. They said something bad must have happened to her, and she went away.”
Aron said hoarsely, “She’s dead.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if she wasn’t?”
“My father says she’s dead. He’s not a liar.”
“Maybe he thinks she’s dead.
He said, “I think he’d know.” But there was uncertainty in his tone.
Abra said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find her? ’Spose she lost her memory or something. I’ve read about that. And we could find her and that would make her remember.” The glory of the romance caught her like a rip tide and carried her away.
Aron said, “I’ll ask my father.”
“Aron,” she said sternly, “what I told you is a secret.”
“Who says?”
“I say. Now you just say after me--‘I’ll take double poison and cut my throat if I tell.’ ”
For a moment he hesitated and then he repeated, “I’ll take double poison and cut my throat if I tell.”
She said, “Now spit in your palm--like this--that’s right. Now you give me your hand--see?--squidge the spit all together. Now rub it dry on your hair.” The two followed the formula, and then Abra said solemnly, “Now, I’d just like to see you tell that one. I knew one girl that told a secret after that oath and she burned up in a barn fire.”
The sun was gone behind Toiler’s house and the gold light with it. The evening star shimmered over Mount Toro.
Abra said, “They’ll skin me alive. Come on. Hurry! I bet my father’s got the dog whistle out for me. I’ll get whipped.”
Aron looked at her in disbelief. “Whipped! They don’t whip you?”
“That’s what you think!”
Aron said passionately, “You just let them try. If they go for to whip you, you tell them I’ll kill them.” His wide-set blue eyes were slitted and glinting. “Nobody’s going to whip my wife,” he said.
Abra put her arms around his neck in the dusk under the willow tree. She kissed him on his open mouth. “I love you, husband,” she said, and then she turned and bolted, holding up her skirts above her knees, her lace-edged white drawers flashing as she ran toward home.

3

Aron went back to the trunk of the willow tree and sat on the ground and leaned back against the bark. His mind was a grayness and there were churnings of pain in his stomach. He tried to sort out the feeling into thoughts and pictures so the pain would go away. It was hard. His slow deliberate mind could not accept so many thoughts and emotions at once. The door was shut against everything except physical pain. After a while the door opened a little and let in one thing to be scrutinized and then another and another, until all had been absorbed, one at a time. Outside his closed mind a huge thing was clamoring to get in. Aron held it back until last.
First he let Abra in and went over her dress, her face, the feel of her hand on his cheek, the odor that came from her, like milk a little and like cut grass a little. He saw and felt and heard and smelled her all over again. He thought how clean she was, her hands and fingernails, and how straightforward and unlike the gigglers in the schoolyard.
Then, in order, he thought of her holding his head and his baby crying, crying with longing, wanting something and in a way feeling that he was getting it. Perhaps the getting it was what had made him cry.
Next he thought of her trick--her testing of him. He wondered what she would have done if he had told her a secret. What secret could he have told her if he had wished? Right now- he didn’t recall any secret except the one that was beating on the door to get into his mind.
The sharpest question she had asked, “How does it feel not to have a mother?” slipped into his mind. And how did it feel? It didn’t feel like anything. Ah, but in the schoolroom, at Christmas and graduation, when the mothers of other children came to the parties--then was the silent cry and the wordless longing. That’s what it was like.
Salinas was surrounded and penetrated with swamps, with tule-filled ponds, and every pond spawned thousands of frogs. With the evening the air was so full of their song that it was a kind of roaring silence. It was a veil, a background, and its sudden disappearance, as after a clap of thunder, was a shocking thing. It is possible that if in the night the frog sound should have stopped, everyone in Salinas would have awakened, feeling that there was a great noise. In their millions the frog songs seemed to have a beat and a cadence, and perhaps it is the ears’ function to do this just as it is the eyes’ business to make stars twinkle.
It was quite dark under the willow tree now. Aron wondered whether he was ready for the big thing, and while he wondered it slipped through and was in.
His mother was alive. Often he had pictured her lying underground, still and cool and unrotted. But this was not so. Somewhere she moved about and spoke, and her hands moved and her eyes were open. And in the midst of his flood of pleasure a sorrow came down on him and a sense of loss, of dreadful loss. Aron was puzzled. He inspected the cloud of sadness. If his mother was alive, his father was a liar. If one was alive, the other was dead. Aron said aloud under the tree, “My mother is dead. She’s buried some place in the East.”
In the darkness he saw Lee’s face and heard Lee’s soft speech. Lee had built very well. Having a respect that amounted to reverence for the truth, he had also its natural opposite, a loathing of a lie. He had made it very clear to the boys exactly what he meant. If something was untrue and you didn’t know it, that was error. But if you knew a true thing and changed it to a false thing, both you and it were loathsome.
Lee’s voice said, “I know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don’t believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That’s a running sore.” And Lee had worked patiently and slowly and he had succeeded in building Adam as the center, the foundation, the essence of truth.
Aron shook his head in the dark, shook it hard in disbelief. “If my father is a liar, Lee is a liar too.” He was lost. He had no one to ask. Cal was a liar, but Lee’s conviction had made Cal a clever liar. Aron felt that something had to die--his mother or his world.
His solution lay suddenly before him. Abra had not lied. She had told him only what she had heard, and her parents had only heard it too. He got to his feet and pushed his mother back into death and closed his mind against her.
He was late for supper. “I was with Abra,” he explained. After supper, when Adam sat in his new comfortable chair, reading the Salinas Index, he felt a stroking touch on his shoulder and looked up. “What is it, Aron?” he asked.
“Good night, Father,” Aron said.

Chapter 37


1
February in Salinas is likely to be damp and cold and full of miseries. The heaviest rains fall then, and if the river is going to rise, it rises then. February of 1915 was a year heavy with water.
The Trasks were well established in Salinas. Lee, once he had given up his brackish bookish dream, made a new kind of place for himself in the house beside Reynaud’s Bakery. On the ranch his possessions had never really been unpacked, for Lee had lived poised to go someplace else. Here, for the first time in his life, he built a home for himself, feathered with comfort and permanence.
The large bedroom nearest the street door fell to him. Lee dipped into his savings. He had never before spent a needless penny, since all money had been earmarked for his bookstore. But now he bought a little hard bed and a desk. He built bookshelves and unpacked his books, invested in a soft rug and tacked prints on the walls. He placed a deep and comfortable “Morris chair under the best reading lamp he could find. And last he bought a typewriter and set about learning to use it.
Having broken out of his own Spartanism, he remade the Trask household, and Adam gave him no opposition. A gas stove came into the house and electric wires and a telephone. He spent Adam’s money remorselessly--new furniture, new carpets, a gas water-heater, and a large icebox. In a short time there was hardly a house in Salinas so well equipped. Lee defended himself to Adam, saying, “You have plenty of money. It would be a shame not to enjoy it.”
“I’m not complaining,” Adam protested. “Only I’d like to buy something too. What shall I buy?”
“Why don’t you go to Logan’s music store and listen to one of the new phonographs?”
“I think I’ll do that,” said Adam. And he bought a Victor victrola, a tall Gothic instrument, and he went regularly to see what new records had come in.
The growing century was shucking Adam out of his shell. He subscribed to the Atlantic Monthly and the National Geographic. He joined the Masons and seriously considered the Elks. The new icebox fascinated him. He bought a textbook on refrigeration and began to study it.
The truth was that Adam needed work. He came out of his long sleep needing to do something.
“I think I’ll go into business,” he said to Lee.
“You don’t need to. You have enough to live on.”
“But I’d like to be doing something.”
“That’s different,” said Lee. “Know what you want to do? I don’t think you’d be very good at business.”
“Why not?”
“Just a thought,” said Lee.
“Say, Lee, I want you to read an article. It says they’ve dug up a mastodon in Siberia. Been in the ice thousands of years. And the meat’s still good.”
Lee smiled at him. “You’ve got a bug in your bonnet somewhere,” he said. “What have you got in all of those little cups in the icebox?”
“Different things.”
“Is that the business? Some of the cups smell bad.”
“It’s an idea,” Adam said. “I can’t seem to stay away from it. I just can’t seem to get over the idea that you can keep things if you get them cold enough.”
“Let’s not have any mastodon meat in our icebox,” said Lee.
If Adam had conceived thousands of ideas, the way Sam Hamilton had, they might all have drifted away, but he had only the one. The frozen mastodon stayed in his mind. His little cups of fruit, of pudding, of bits of meat, both cooked and raw, continued in the icebox. He bought every available book on bacteria and began sending for magazines that printed articles of a mildly scientific nature. And as is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed.
Salinas had a small ice company, not large but enough to supply the few houses with iceboxes and to service the ice-cream parlors. The horse-drawn ice wagon went its route every day.
Adam began to visit the ice plant, and pretty soon he was taking his little cups to the freezing chambers. He wished with all his heart that Sam Hamilton were alive to discuss cold with him. Sam would have covered the field very quickly, he thought.
Adam was walking back from the ice plant one rainy afternoon, thinking about Sam Hamilton, when he saw Will Hamilton go into the Abbot House Bar. He followed him and leaned against the bar beside him. “Why don’t you come up and have some supper with us?”
“I’d like to,” Will said. “I’ll tell you what--I’ve got a deal I’m trying to put through. If I get finished in time I’ll walk by. Is there something important?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve been doing some thinking and I’d like to ask your advice.”
Nearly every business proposition in the county came sooner or later to Will Hamilton’s attention. He might have excused himself if he had not remembered that Adam was a rich man. An idea was one thing, but backed up with cash it was quite another. “You wouldn’t entertain a reasonable offer for your ranch, would you?” he asked.
“Well, the boys, particularly Cal, they like the place. I think I’ll hang on to it.”
“I think I can turn it over for you.”
“No, it’s rented, paying its own taxes. I’ll hold on to it.”
“If I can’t get in for supper I might be able to come in afterward,” said Will.
Will Hamilton was a very substantial businessman. No one knew exactly how many pies his thumb had explored, but it was known that he was a clever and comparatively rich man. His business deal had been non-existent. It was a part of his policy always to be busy and occupied.
He had supper alone in the Abbot House. After a considered time he walked around the corner on Central Avenue and rang the bell of Adam Trask’s house.
The boys had gone to bed. Lee sat with a darning basket, mending the long black stockings the twins wore to school. Adam had been reading the Scientific American. He let Will in and placed a chair for him. Lee brought a pot of coffee and went back to his mending.
Will settled himself into a chair, took out a fat black cigar, and lighted up. He waited for Adam to open the game.
“Nice weather for a change. And how’s your mother?” Adam said.
“Just fine. Seems younger every day. The boys must be growing up.”
“Oh, they are. Cal’s going to be in his school play. He’s quite an actor. Aron’s a real good student. Cal wants to go to farming.”
“Nothing wrong with that if you go about it right. Country could use some forward-looking farmers.” Will waited uneasily. He wondered if it could be that Adam’s money was exaggerated. Could Adam be getting ready to borrow money? Will quickly worked out how much he would lend on the Trask ranch and how much he could borrow on it. The figures were not the same, nor was the interest rate. And still Adam did not come up with his proposition. Will grew restless. “I can’t stay very long,” he said. “Told a fellow I’d meet him later tonight.”
“Have another cup of coffee,” Adam suggested.
“No, thanks. Keeps me awake. Did you have something you wanted to see me about?”
Adam said, “I was thinking about your father and I thought I’d like to talk to a Hamilton.”
Will relaxed a little in his chair. “He was a great old talker.”
“Somehow he made a man better than he was,” said Adam.
Lee looked up from his darning egg. “Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.”
Will said, “You know, it sounds funny to hear you use all those two-bit words. I’d swear to God you used to talk pidgin.”
“I used to,” said Lee. “It was vanity, I guess.” He smiled at Adam and said to Will, “Did you hear that somewhere up in Siberia they dug a mastodon out of the ice? It had been there a hundred thousand years and the meat was still fresh.”
“Mastodon?”
“Yes, a kind of elephant that hasn’t lived on the earth for a long time.”
“Meat was still fresh?”
“Sweet as a pork chop,” said Lee. He shoved the wooden egg into the shattered-knee of a black stocking.
“That’s very interesting,” said Will.
Adam laughed. “Lee hasn’t wiped my nose yet, but that will come,” he said. “I guess I’m pretty roundabout. The whole thing comes up because I’m tired of just sitting around. I want to get something to take up my time.”
“Why don’t you farm your place?”
“No. That doesn’t interest me. You see, Will, I’m not like a man looking for a job. I’m looking for work. I don’t need a job.”
Will came out of his cautiousness. “Well, what can I do for you?”
“I thought I’d tell you an idea I had, and you might give me an opinion. You’re a businessman.”
“Of course,” said Will. “Anything I can do.”
“I’ve been looking into refrigeration,” said Adam. “I got an idea and I can’t get rid of it. I go to sleep and it comes right back at me. Never had anything give me so much trouble. It’s a kind of a big idea. Maybe it’s full of holes.”
Will uncrossed his legs and pulled at his pants where they were binding him. “Go ahead--shoot,” he said. “Like a cigar?”
Adam didn’t hear the offer, nor did he know the implication. “The whole country’s changing,” Adam said. “People aren’t going to live the way they used to. Do you know where the biggest market for oranges in the winter is?”
“No. Where?”
“New York City. I read that. Now in the cold parts of the country, don’t you think people get to wanting perishable things in the winter--like peas and lettuce and cauliflower? In a big part of the country they don’t have those things for months and months. And right here in the Salinas Valley we can raise them all the year around.”
“Right here isn’t right there,” said Will. “What’s your idea?”
“Well, Lee made me get a big icebox, and I got kind of interested. I put different kinds of vegetables in there. And I got to arranging them different ways. You know, Will, if you chop ice fine and lay a head of lettuce in it and wrap it in waxed paper, it will keep three weeks and come out fresh and good.”
“Go on,” said Will cautiously.
“Well, you know the railroads built those fruit cars. I went down and had a look at them. They’re pretty good. Do you know we could ship lettuce right to the east coast in the middle of winter?”
Will asked, “Where do you come in?”
“I was thinking of buying the ice plant here in Salinas and trying to ship some things.”
“That would cost a lot of money.”
“I have quite a lot of money,” said Adam.
Will Hamilton putted his lip angrily. “I don’t know why I got into this,” he said. “I know better.”
“How do you mean?”
“Look here,” said Will. “When a man comes to me for advice about an idea, I know he doesn’t want advice. He wants me to agree with him. And if I want to keep his friendship I tell him his idea is fine and go ahead. But I like you and you’re a friend of my family, so I’m going to stick my neck out.”
Lee put down his darning, moved his sewing basket to the floor, and changed his glasses.
Adam remonstrated, “What are you getting upset about?”
“I come from a whole goddam family of inventors,” said Will. “We had ideas for breakfast. We had ideas instead of breakfast. We had so many ideas we forgot to make the money for groceries. When we got a little ahead my father, or Tom, patented something. I’m the only one in the family, except my mother, who didn’t have ideas, and I’m the only one who ever made a dime. Tom had ideas about helping people, and some of it was pretty darn near socialism. And if you tell me you don’t care about making a profit, I’m going to throw that coffee pot right at your head.”
“Well, I don’t care much.”
“You stop right there, Adam. I’ve got my neck out. If you want to drop forty or fifty thousand dollars quick, you just go on with your idea. But I’m telling you--let your damned idea die. Kick dust over it.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Everything’s wrong with it. People in the East aren’t used to vegetables in the winter. They wouldn’t buy them. You get your cars stuck on a siding and you’ll lose the shipment. The market is controlled. Oh, Jesus Christ! It makes me mad when babies try to ride into business on an idea.”
Adam sighed. “You make Sam Hamilton sound like a criminal,” he said.
“Well, he was my father and I loved him, but I wish to God he had let ideas alone.” Will looked at Adam and saw amazement in his eyes, and suddenly Will was ashamed. He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I didn’t mean to run down my people,” he said. “I think they were good people. But my advice to you stands. Let refrigeration alone.”
Adam turned slowly to Lee. “Have we got any more of that lemon pie we had for supper?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Lee. “I thought I heard mice in the kitchen. I’m afraid there will be white of egg on the boys’ pillows. You’ve got half a quart of whisky.”
“Have I? Why don’t we have that?”
“I got excited,” said Will, and he tried to laugh at himself. “A drink would do me good.” His face was fiery red and his voice was strained in his throat. “I’m getting too fat,” he said.
But he had two drinks and relaxed. Sitting comfortably, he instructed Adam. “Some things don’t ever change their value,” he said. “If you want to put money into something, you look around at the world. This war in Europe is going to go on a long time. And when there’s war there’s going to be hungry people. I won’t say it is so, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we got into it. I don’t trust this Wilson--he’s all theory and big words. And if we do get into it, there’s going to be fortunes made in imperishable foods. You take rice and corn and wheat and beans, they don’t need ice. They keep, and people can stay alive on them. I’d say if you were to plant your whole damned bottom land to beans and just put them away, why, your boys wouldn’t have to worry about the future. Beans are up to three cents now. If we get into the war I wouldn’t be surprised if they went to ten cents. And you keep beans dry and they’ll be right there, waiting for a market. If you want to turn a profit, you plant beans.”
He went away feeling good. The shame that had come over him was gone and he knew he had given sound advice.
After Will had gone Lee brought out one-third of a lemon pie and cut it in two. ‘“He’s getting too fat,” Lee said.
Adam was thinking. “I only said I wanted something to do,” he observed.
“How about the ice-plant?”
“I think I’ll buy it.”
“You might plant some beans too,” said Lee.

2

Late in the year Adam made his great try, and it was a sensation in a year of sensations, both local and international. As he got ready, businessmen spoke of him as farseeing, forward-looking, progress-minded. The departure of six carloads of lettuce packed in ice was given a civic overtone. The Chamber of Commerce attended the departure. The cars were decorated with big posters which said, “Salinas Valley Lettuce.” But no one wanted to invest in the project.
Adam untapped energy he did not suspect he had. It was a big job to gather, trim, box, ice, and load the lettuce. There was no equipment for such work. Everything had to be improvised, a great many hands hired and taught to do the work. Everyone gave advice but no one helped. It was estimated that Adam had spent a fortune on his idea, but how big a fortune no one knew. Adam did not know. Only Lee knew.
The idea looked good. The lettuce was consigned to commission merchants in New York at a fine price. Then the train was gone and everyone went home to wait. If it was a success any number of men were willing to dig down to put money in. Even Will Hamilton wondered whether he had not been wrong with his advice.
If the series of events had been planned by an omnipotent and unforgiving enemy it could not have been more effective. As the train came to Sacramento a snow slide closed the Sierras for two days and the six cars stood on a siding, dripping their ice away. On the third day the freight crossed the mountains, and that was the time for unseasonable warm weather throughout the Middle West. In Chicago there developed a confusion of orders--no one’s fault--just one of those things that happen, and Adam’s six cars of lettuce stood in the yard for five more days. That was enough, and there is no reason to go into it in detail. What arrived in New York was six carloads of horrible slop with a sizable charge just to get rid of it.
Adam read the telegram from the commission house and he settled back in his chair and a strange enduring smile came on his face and did not go away.
Lee kept away from him to let him get a grip on himself. The boys heard the reaction in Salinas. Adam was a fool. These know-it-all dreamers always got into trouble. Businessmen congratulated themselves on their foresight in keeping out of it. It took experience to be a businessman. People who inherited their money always got into trouble. And if you wanted any proof--just look at how Adam had run his ranch. A fool and his money were soon parted. Maybe that would teach him a lesson. And he had doubled the output of the ice company.
Will Hamilton recalled that he had not only argued against it but had foretold in detail what would happen. He did not feel pleasure, but what could you do when a man wouldn’t take advice from a sound businessman? And, God knows, Will had plenty of experience with fly-by-night ideas. In a roundabout way it was recalled that Sam Hamilton had been a fool too. And as for Tom Hamilton--he had been just crazy.
When Lee felt that enough time had passed he did not beat around the bush. He sat directly in front of Adam to get and to keep his attention.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“All right.”
“You aren’t going to crawl back in your hole, are you?”
“What makes you think that?” Adam asked.
“Well, you have the look on your face you used to wear. And you’ve got that sleepwalker light in your eyes. Does this hurt your feelings?”
“No,” said Adam. “The only thing I was wondering about was whether I’m wiped out.”
“Not quite,” said Lee. “You have about nine thousand dollars left and the ranch.”
“There’s a two-thousand-dollar bill for garbage disposal,” said Adam.
“That’s before the nine thousand.”
“I owe quite a bit for the new ice machinery.”
“That’s paid.”
“I have nine thousand?”
“And the ranch,” said Lee. “Maybe you can sell the ice plant.”
Adam’s face tightened up and lost the dazed smile. “I still believe it will work,” he said. “It was a whole lot of accidents. I’m going to keep the ice plant. Cold does preserve things. Besides, the plant makes some money. Maybe I can figure something out.”
“Try not to figure something that costs money,” said Lee. “I would hate to leave my gas stove.”

3

The twins felt Adam’s failure very deeply. They were fifteen years old and they had known so long that they were sons of a wealthy man that the feeling was hard to lose. If only the affair had not been a kind of carnival it would not have been so bad. They remembered the big placards on the freight cars with horror. If the businessmen made fun of Adam, the high-school group was much more cruel. Overnight it became the thing to refer to the boys as “Aron and Cal Lettuce,” or simply as “Lettuce-head.”
Aron discussed his problem with Abra. “It’s going to make a big difference,” he told her.
Abra had grown to be a beautiful girl. Her breasts were rising with the leaven of her years, and her face had the calm and warmth of beauty. She had gone beyond prettiness. She was strong and sure and feminine.
She looked at his worried face and asked, “Why is it going to make a difference?”
“Well, one thing, I think we’re poor.”
“You would have worked anyway.”
“You know I want to go to college.”
“You still can. I’ll help you. Did your father lose all his money?”
“I don’t know. That’s what they say.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Abra asked.
“Why, everybody. And maybe your father and mother won’t want you to marry me.”
“Then I won’t tell them about it,” said Abra,
“You’re pretty sure of yourself.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m pretty sure of myself. Will you kiss me?”
“Right here? Right in the street?”
“Why not?”
“Everybody’d see.”
“I want them to,” said Abra.
Aron said, “No. I don’t like to make things public like that.”
She stepped around in front of him and stopped him. “You look here, mister. You kiss me now.”
“Why?”
She said slowly, “So everybody will know that I’m Mrs. Lettuce-head.”
He gave her a quick embarrassed peck and then forced her beside him again. “Maybe I ought to call it off myself,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m not good enough for you now. I’m just another poor kid. You think I haven’t seen the difference in your father?”
“You’re just crazy,” Abra said. And she frowned a little because she had seen the difference in her father too.
They went into Bell’s candy store and sat at a table. The rage was celery tonic that year. The year before it had been root-beer ice-cream sodas.
Abra stirred bubbles delicately with her straw and thought how her father had changed since the lettuce failure. He had said to her, “Don’t you think it would be wise to see someone else for a change?”
“But I’m engaged to Aron.”
“Engaged!” he snorted at her. “Since when do children get engaged? You’d better look around a little. There are other fish in the sea.”
And she remembered that recently there had been references to suitability of families and once a hint that some people couldn’t keep a scandal hidden forever. This had happened only when Adam was reputed to have lost all of his money.”
She leaned across the table. “You know what we could really do is so simple it will make you laugh.”
“What?”
“We could run your father’s ranch. My father says it’s beautiful land.”
“No,” Aron said quickly.
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to be a farmer and you’re not going to b? a farmer’s wife.”
“I’m going to be Aron’s wife, no matter what he is.”
“I’m not going to give up college,” he said.
“I’ll help you,” Abra said again.
“Where would you get the money?”
“Steal it,” she said.
“I want to get out of this town,” he said. “Everybody’s sneering at me. I can’t stand it here.”
“They’ll forget it pretty soon.”
“No, they won’t either. I don’t want to stay two years more to finish high school.”
“Do you want to go away from me, Aron?”
“No. Oh, damn it, why did he have to mess with things he doesn’t know about?”
Abra reproved him. “Don’t you blame your father. If it had worked everybody’d been bowing to him.”
“Well, it didn’t work. He sure fixed me. I can’t hold up my head. By God! I hate him.”
Abra said sternly, “Aron! You stop talking like that!”
“How do I know he didn’t lie about my mother?”
Abra’s face reddened with anger. “You ought to be spanked,” she said. “If it wasn’t in front of everybody I’d spank you myself.” She looked at his beautiful face, twisted now with rage and frustration, and suddenly she changed her tactics. “Why don’t you ask about your mother? Just come right out and ask him.”
“I can’t, I promised you.”
“You only promised not to say what I told you.”
“Well, if I asked him he’d want to know where I heard.”
“All right,” she cried, “you’re a spoiled baby! I let you out of your promise. Go ahead and ask him.”
“I don’t know if I will or not.”
“Sometimes I want to kill you,” she said. “But Aron--I do love you so. I do love you so.” There was giggling from the stools in front of the soda fountain. Their voices had risen and they were overheard by their peers. Aron blushed and tears of anger started in his eyes. He ran out of the store and plunged away up the street.
Abra calmly picked up her purse and straightened her skirt and brushed it with her hand. She walked calmly over to Mr. Bell and paid for the celery tonics. On her way to the door she stopped by the giggling group. “You let him alone,” she said coldly. She walked on, and a falsetto followed her--”Oh, Aron, I do love you so.”
In the street she broke into a run to try to catch up with Aron, but she couldn’t find him. She called on the telephone. Lee said that Aron had not come home. But Aron was in his bedroom, lapped in resentments--Lee had seen him creep in and close his door behind him.
Abra walked up and down the streets of Salinas, hoping to catch sight of him. She was angry at him, but she was also bewilderingly lonely, Aron hadn’t ever run away from her before. Abra had lost her gift for being alone.
Cal had to learn loneliness. For a very short time he tried to join Abra and Aron, but they didn’t want him. He was jealous and tried to attract the girl to himself and failed.
His studies he found easy and not greatly interesting. Aron had to work harder to learn, wherefore Aron had a greater sense of accomplishment when he did learn, and he developed a respect for learning out of all proportion to the quality of the learning. Cal drifted through. He didn’t care much for the sports at school or for the activities. His growing restlessness drove him out at night. He grew tall and rangy, and always there was the darkness about him.

Chapter 38


1
From his first memory Cal had craved warmth and affection, just as everyone does. If he had been an only child or if Aron had been a different kind of boy, Cal might have achieved his relationship normally and easily. But from the very first people were won instantly to Aron by his beauty and his simplicity. Cal very naturally competed for attention and affection in the only way he knew--by trying to imitate Aron. And what was charming in the blond ingenuousness of Aron became suspicious and unpleasant in the dark-faced, slit-eyed Cal. And since he was pretending, his performance was not convincing. Where Aron was received, Cal was rebuffed for doing or saying exactly the same thing.
And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist--or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.
In Cal the process had been so long and so slow that he felt no strangeness. He had built a wall of self-sufficiency around himself, strong enough to defend him against the world. If his wall had any weak places they may have been on the sides nearest Aron and Lee, and particularly nearest Adam. Perhaps in his father’s very unawareness Cal had felt safety. Not being noticed at all was better than being noticed adversely.
When he was quite small Cal had discovered a secret. If he moved very quietly to where his father was sitting and if he leaned very lightly against his father’s knee, Adam’s hand would rise automatically and his fingers would caress Cal’s shoulder. It is probable that Adam did not even know he did it, but the caress brought such a raging flood of emotion to the boy that he saved this special joy and used it only when he needed it. It was a magic to be depended upon. It was the ceremonial symbol of a dogged adoration.
Things do not change with a change of scene. In Salinas, Cal had no more friends than he had had in King City. Associates he had, and authority and some admiration, but friends he did not have. He lived alone and walked alone.

2

If Lee knew that Cal left the house at night and returned very late, he gave no sign, since he couldn’t do anything about it. The night constables sometimes saw him walking alone. Chief Heiserman made it a point to speak to the truant officer, who assured him that Cal not only had no record for playing hooky but actually was a very good student. The chief knew Adam of course, and since Cal broke no windows and caused no disturbance he told the constables to keep their eyes open but to let the boy alone unless he got into trouble.
Old Tom Watson caught up with Cal one night and asked, “Why do you walk around so much at night?”
“I’m not bothering anybody,” said Cal defensively.
“I know you’re not. But you ought to be home in bed.”
“I’m not sleepy,” said Cal, and this didn’t make any sense at all to Old Tom, who couldn’t remember any time in his whole life when he wasn’t sleepy. The boy looked in on the fan-tan games in Chinatown, but he didn’t play. It was a mystery, but then fairly simple things were mysteries to Tom Watson and he preferred to leave them that way.
On his walks Cal often recalled the conversation between Lee and Adam he had heard on the ranch. He wanted to dig out the truth. And his knowledge accumulated slowly, a reference heard in the street, the gibing talk in the pool hall. If Aron had heard the fragments he would not have noticed, but Cal collected them. He knew that his mother was not dead. He knew also, both from the first conversation and from the talk he heard, that Aron was not likely to be pleased at discovering her.
One night Cal ran into Rabbit Holman, who was up from San Ardo on his semi-annual drunk. Rabbit greeted Cal effusively, as a country man always greets an acquaintance in a strange place. Rabbit, drinking from a pint flask in the alley behind the Abbot House, told Cal all the news he could think of. He had sold a piece of his land at a fine price and he was in Salinas to celebrate, and celebration meant the whole shebang. He was going down the Line and show the whores what a real man could do.
Cal sat quietly beside him, listening. When the whisky got low in Rabbit’s pint Cal slipped away and got Louis Schneider to buy him another one. And Rabbit put down his empty pint and reached for it again and came up with a full pint.
“Funny,” he said, “thought I only had one. Well, it’s a good mistake.”
Halfway down the second pint Rabbit had not only forgotten who Cal was but how old he was. He remembered, however, that his companion was his very dear old friend.
“Tell you what, George,” he said. “You let me get a little more of this here lead in my pencil and you and me will go down the Line. Now don’t say you can’t afford it. The whole shebang’s on me. Did I tell you I sold forty acres? Wasn’t no good neither.”
And he said, “Harry, tell you what let’s do. Let’s keep away from them two-bit whores. We’ll go to Kate’s place. Costs high, ten bucks, but what the hell! They got a circus down there. Ever seen a circus, Harry? Well, it’s a lulu. Kate sure knows her stuff. You remember who Kate is, don’t you, George? She’s Adam Trask’s wife, mother of them damn twins. Jesus! I never forget the time she shot him and ran away. Plugged him in the shoulder and just runoff. Well, she wasn’t no good as a wife but she’s sure as hell a good whore. Funny too--you know how they say a whore makes a good wife? Ain’t nothing new for them to experiment with. Help me up a little, will you, Harry? What was I saying?”
“Circus,” said Cal softly.
“Oh, yeah. Well, this circus of Kate’s will pop your eyes out. Know what they do?”
Cal walked a little behind so that Rabbit would not notice him. Rabbit told what they did. And what they did wasn’t what made Cal sick. That just seemed to him silly. It was the men who watched. Seeing Rabbit’s face under the streetlights, Cal knew what the watchers at the circus would be like.
They went through the overgrown yard and up on the unpainted porch. Although Cal was tall for his age he walked high on his toes. The guardian of the door didn’t look at him very closely. The dim room with its low secret lamps and the nervous waiting men concealed his presence.