"The poor bastard," Horace said. "The poor bastard is in love with her. No, by God, somebody else has got to tell him. I won't."
The sheriff stood up. "Let's go down to the Chop House and get a cup of coffee."
They walked along the street in silence for a while. "Horace," the sheriff said, "if I told some of the things I know, this whole goddam county would go up in smoke."
"I guess that's right."
"You said she had twins?"
"Yeah, twin boys."
"You listen to me, Horace. There's only three people in the world that knows--her and you and me. I'm going to warn her that if she ever tells I'll brush her ass out of this county so fast it'll burn. And, Horace--if you should ever get an itchy tongue, before you tell anybody, even your wife, why, you think about those little boys finding out their mother is a whore."
3
Adam sat in his chair under the big oak tree. His left arm was expertly bandaged against his side so that he could not move his shoulder. Lee came out carrying the laundry basket. He set it on the ground beside Adam and went back inside.
The twins were awake, and they both looked blindly and earnestly up at the wind-moved leaves of the oak tree. A dry oak leaf came whirling down and landed in the basket. Adam leaned over and picked it out.
He didn't hear Samuel's horse until it was almost upon him, but Lee had seen him coming. He brought a chair out and led Doxology away toward the shed.
Samuel sat down quietly, and he didn't trouble Adam by looking at him too much, and he didn't trouble him by not looking at him. The wind freshened in the treetops and a fringe of it ruffled Samuel's hair. "I thought I'd better get back to the wells," Samuel said softly.
Adam's voice had gone rusty from lack of use. "No," he said, "I don't want any wells. I'll pay for the work you did."
Samuel leaned over the basket and put his finger against the small palm of one of the twins and the fingers closed and held on. "I guess the last bad habit a man will give up is advising."
"I don't want advice."
"Nobody does. It's a giver's present. Go through the motions, Adam."
"What motions?"
"Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true."
"Why should I?" Adam asked.
Samuel was looking at the twins. "You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow."
Adam did not answer, and Samuel stood up. "I'll be back," he said. "I'll be back again and again. Go through the motions, Adam."
In the back of the shed Lee held Doxology while Sam mounted. "There goes your bookstore, Lee," he said.
"Oh, well," said the Chinese, "maybe I didn't want it much anyway."
Chapter 19
1
A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development--to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.
The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels. The sectarian churches came in swinging, cocky and loud and confident. Ignoring the laws of debt and repayment, they built churches which couldn't be paid for in a hundred years. The sects fought evil, true enough, but they also fought each other with a fine lustiness. They fought at the turn of a doctrine. Each happily believed all the others were bound for hell in a basket. And each for all its bumptiousness brought with it the same thing: the Scripture on which our ethics, our art and poetry, and our relationships are built. It took a smart man to know where the difference lay between the sects, but anyone could see what they had in common. And they brought music--maybe not the best, but the form and sense of it. And they brought conscience, or, rather, nudged the dozing conscience. They were not pure, but they had a potential of purity, like a soiled white shirt. And any man could make something pretty fine of it within himself. True enough, the Reverend Billing, when they caught up with him, turned out to be a thief, an adulterer, a libertine, and a zoophilist, but that didn't change the fact that he had communicated some good things to a great number of receptive people. Billing went to jail, but no one ever arrested the good things he had released. And it doesn't matter much that his motive was impure. He used good material and some of it stuck. I use Billing only as an outrageous example. The honest preachers had energy and go. They fought the devil, no holds barred, boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns. But some of the truth and beauty remained, and the anthem was recognizable. The sects did more than this, though. They built the structure of social life in the Salinas Valley. The church supper is the grandfather of the country club, just as the Thursday poetry reading in the basement under the vestry sired the little theater.
While the churches, bringing the sweet smell of piety for the soul, came in prancing and farting like brewery horses in bock-beer time, the sister evangelism, with release and joy for the body, crept in silently and gravely, with its head bowed and its face covered.
You may have seen the spangled palaces of sin and fancy dancing in the false West of the movies, and maybe some of them existed--but not in the Salinas Valley. The brothels were quiet, orderly, and circumspect. Indeed, if after hearing the ecstatic shrieks of climactic conversion against the thumping beat of the melodeon you had stood under the window of a whorehouse and listened to the low decorous voices, you would have been likely to confuse the identities of the two ministries. The brothel was accepted while it was not admitted.
I will tell you about the solemn courts of love in Salinas. They were about the same in other towns, but the Salinas Row has a pertinence to this telling.
You walked west on Main Street until it bent. That's where Castroville Street crossed Main. Castroville Street is now called Market Street, God knows why. Streets used to be named for the place they aimed at. Thus Castroville Street, if you followed it nine miles, brought you to Castroville, Alisal Street to Alisal, and so forth.
Anyway, when you came to Castroville Street you turned right. Two blocks down, the Southern Pacific tracks cut diagonally across the street on their way south, and a street crossed Castroville Street from east to west. And for the life of me I cannot remember the name of that street. If you turned left on that street and crossed the tracks you were in Chinatown. If you turned right you were on the Row.
It was a black 'dobe street, deep shining mud in winter and hard as rutted iron in summer. In the spring the tall grass grew along its sides--wild oats and mallow weeds and yellow mustard mixed in. In the early morning the sparrows shrieked over the horse manure in the street.
Do you remember hearing that, old men? And do you remember how an easterly breeze brought odors in from Chinatown, roasting pork and punk and black tobacco and yen shi? And do you remember the deep Waiting stroke of the great gong in the Joss House, and how its tone hung in the air so long?
Remember, too, the little houses, unpainted, unrepaired? They seemed very small, and they tried to efface themselves in outside neglect, and the wild overgrown front yards tried to hide them from the street. Remember how the shades were always drawn with little lines of yellow light around their edges? You could hear only a murmur from within. Then the front door would open to admit a country b
oy, and you'd hear laughter and perhaps the soft sentimental tone of an open-face piano with a piece of toilet chain across the strings, and then the door would close it off again.
Then you might hear horses' hoofs on the dirt street, and Pet Bulene would drive his hack up in front, and maybe four or five portly men would get out--great men, rich or official, bankers maybe, or the courthouse gang. And Pet would drive around the corner and settle down in his hack to wait for them. Big cats would ripple across the street to disappear in the tall grass.
And then--remember?--the train whistle and the boring light and a freight from King City would go stomping across Castroville Street and into Salinas and you could hear it sighing at the station. Remember?
Every town has its celebrated madams, eternal women to be sentimentalized down the years. There is something very attractive to men about a madam. She combines the brains of a businessman, the toughness of a prize fighter, the warmth of a companion, the humor of a tragedian. Myths collect around her, and, oddly enough, not voluptuous myths. The stories remembered and repeated about a madam cover every field but the bedroom. Remembering, her old customers picture her as a philanthropist, medical authority, bouncer, and poetess of the bodily emotions without being involved with them.
For a number of years Salinas had sheltered two of these treasures: Jenny, sometimes called Fartin' Jenny, and the Nigger, who owned and operated the Long Green. Jenny was a good companion, a keeper of secrets, a giver of secret loans. There is a whole literature of stories about Jenny in Salinas.
The Nigger was a handsome, austere woman with snow-white hair and a dark and awful dignity. Her brown eyes, brooding deep in her skull, looked out on an ugly world with philosophic sorrow. She conducted her house like a cathedral dedicated to a sad but erect Priapus. If you wanted a good laugh and a poke in the ribs, you went to Jenny's and got your money's worth; but if the sweet world-sadness close to tears crept out of your immutable loneliness, the Long Green was your place. When you came out of there you felt that something pretty stern and important had happened. It was no jump in the hay. The dark beautiful eyes of the Nigger stayed with you for days.
When Faye came down from Sacramento and opened her house there was a flurry of animosity from the two incumbents. They got together to drive Faye out, but they discovered she was not in competition.
Faye was the motherly type, big-breasted, big-hipped, and warm. She was a bosom to cry on, a soother and a stroker. The iron sex of the Nigger and the tavern bacchanalianism of Jenny had their devotees, and they were not lost to Faye. Her house became the refuge of young men puling in puberty, mourning over lost virtue, and aching to lose some more. Faye was the reassurer of misbegotten husbands. Her house took up the slack for frigid wives. It was the cinnamon-scented kitchen of one's grandmother. If any sexual thing happened to you at Faye's you felt it was an accident but forgivable. Her house led the youths of Salinas into the thorny path of sex in the pinkest, smoothest way. Faye was a nice woman, not very bright, highly moral, and easily shocked. People trusted her and she trusted everyone. No one could want to hurt Faye once he knew her. She was no competition to the others. She was a third phase.
Just as in a store or on a ranch the employees are images of the boss, so in a whorehouse the girls are very like the madam, partly because she hires that kind and partly because a good madam imprints her personality on the business. You could stay a very long time at Faye's before you would hear an ugly or suggestive word spoken. The wanderings to the bedrooms, the payments, were so soft and casual they seemed incidental. All in all, she ran a hell of a fine house, as the constable and the sheriff knew. Faye contributed heavily to every charity. Having a revulsion against disease, she paid for regular inspection of her girls. You had less chance of contracting a difficulty at Faye's than with your Sunday School teacher. Faye soon became a solid and desirable citizen of the growing town of Salinas.
2
The girl Kate puzzled Faye--she was so young and pretty, so lady-like, so well educated. Faye took her into her own inviolate bedroom and questioned her far more than she would if Kate had been another kind of girl. There were always women knocking on the door of a whorehouse, and Faye recognized most of them instantly. She could tick them off--lazy, vengeful, lustful, unsatisfied, greedy, ambitious. Kate didn't fall into any of these classes.
"I hope you don't mind my asking you all these questions," she said. "It just seems so strange that you should come here. Why, you could get a husband and a surrey and a corner house in town with no trouble at all, no trouble at all." And Faye rolled her wedding band around and around on her fat little finger.
Kate smiled shyly. "It's so hard to explain. I hope you won't insist on knowing. The happiness of someone very near and dear to me is involved. Please don't ask me."
Faye nodded solemnly. "I've known things like that. I had one girl who was supporting her baby, and no one knew for a long, long time. That girl has a fine house and a husband in--there, I nearly told you where. I'd cut out my tongue before I'd tell. Do you have a baby, dear?"
Kate looked down to try to conceal the shine of tears in her eyes. When she could control her throat she whispered, "I'm sorry, I can't talk about it."
"That's all right. That's all right. You just take your time."
Faye was not bright, but she was far from stupid. She went to the sheriff and got herself cleared. There was no sense in taking chances. She knew something was wrong about Kate, but if it didn't harm the house it really wasn't Faye's business.
Kate might have been a chiseler, but she wasn't. She went to work right away. And when customers come back again and again and ask for a girl by name, you know you've got something. A pretty face won't do that. It was quite apparent to Faye that Kate was not learning a new trade.
There are two things it is good to know about a new girl: first, will she work? and second, will she get along with the other girls? There's nothing will upset a house like an ill-tempered girl.
Faye didn't have long to wonder about the second question. Kate put herself out to be pleasant. She helped the other girls keep their rooms clean. She served them when they were sick, listened to their troubles, answered them in matters of love, and as soon as she had some, loaned them money. You couldn't want a better girl. She became best friend to everyone in the house.
There was no trouble Kate would not take, no drudgery she was afraid of, and, in addition, she brought business. She soon had her own group of regular customers. Kate was thoughtful too. She remembered birthdays and always had a present and a cake with candles. Faye realized she had a treasure.
People who don't know think it is easy to be a madam--just sit in a big chair and drink beer and take half the money the girls make, they think. But it's not like that at all. You have to feed the girls--that's groceries and a cook. Your laundry problem is quite a bit more complicated than that of a hotel. You have to keep the girls well and as happy as possible, and some of them can get pretty ornery. You have to keep suicide at an absolute minimum, and whores, particularly the ones getting along in years, are flighty with a razor; and that gets your house a bad name.
It isn't so easy, and if you have waste too you can lose money. When Kate offered to help with the marketing and planning of meals Faye was pleased, although she didn't know when the girl found time. Well, not only did the food improve, but the grocery bills came down one-third the first month Kate took over. And the laundry--Faye didn't know what Kate said to the man but that bill suddenly dropped twenty-five per cent. Faye didn't see how she ever got along without Kate.
In the late afternoon before business they sat together in Faye's room and drank tea. It was much nicer since Kate had painted the woodwork and put up lace curtains. The girls began to realize that there were two bosses, not one, and they were glad because Kate was very easy to get along with. She made them turn more tricks but she wasn't mean about it. They'd as likely as not have a big laugh over it.
By the time a year had pass
ed Faye and Kate were like mother and daughter. And the girls said, "You watch--she'll own this house some day."
Kate's hands were always busy, mostly at drawn worn on the sheerest of lawn handkerchiefs. She could make beautiful initials. Nearly all the girls carried and treasured her handkerchiefs.
Gradually a perfectly natural thing happened. Faye, the essence of motherness, began to think of Kate as her daughter. She felt this in her breast and in her emotions, and her natural morality took hold. She did not want her daughter to be a whore. It was a perfectly reasonable sequence.
Faye thought hard how she was going to bring up the subject. It was a problem. It was Faye's nature to approach any subject sideways. She could not say, "I want you to give up whoring."
She said, "If it is a secret, don't answer, but I've always meant to ask you. What did the sheriff say to you--good Lord, is it a year ago? How the time goes! Quicker as you get older, I think. He was nearly an hour with you. He didn't--but of course not. He's a family man. He goes to Jenny's. But I don't want to pry into your affairs."
"There's no secret at all about that," said Kate. "I would have told you. He told me I should go home. He was very nice about it. When I explained that I couldn't, he was very nice and understanding."
"Did you tell him why?" Faye asked jealously.
"Of course not. Do you think I would tell him when I won't tell you? Don't be silly, darling. You're such a funny little girl."
Faye smiled and snuggled contentedly down in her chair.
Kate's face was in repose, but she was remembering every word of that interview. As a matter of fact, she rather liked the sheriff. He was direct.
3
He had closed the door of her room, glanced around with the quick recording eye of a good policeman--no photographs, none of the personal articles which identify, nothing but clothes and shoes.
He sat down on her little cane rocking chair and his buttocks hung over on each side. His fingers got together in conference, talking to one another like ants. He spoke in an unemotional tone, almost as though he weren't much interested in what he was saying. Maybe that was what impressed her.
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