Lee glanced down the page. "Thou wilt die soon and thou are not yet simple nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly."
Lee looked up from the page, and he answered the book as he would answer one of his ancient relatives. "That is true," he said. "It's very hard. I'm sorry. But don't forget that you also say, 'Always run the short way and the short way is the natural'--don't forget that." He let the pages slip past his fingers to the fly leaf where was written with a broad carpenter's pencil, "Sam'l Hamilton."
Suddenly Lee felt good. He wondered whether Sam'l Hamilton had ever missed his book or known who stole it. It had seemed to Lee the only clean pure way was to steal it. And he still felt good about it. His fingers caressed the smooth leather of the binding as he took it back and slipped it under the breadbox. He said to himself, "But of course he knew who took it. Who else would have stolen Marcus Aurelius?"He went into the sitting room and pulled a chair near to the sleeping Adam.
2
In his room Cal sat at his desk, elbows down, palms holding his aching head together, hands pushing against the sides of his head. His stomach churned and the sour-sweet smell of whisky was on him and in him, living in his pores, in his clothing, beating sluggishly in his head.
Cal had never drunk before, had never needed to. But going to Kate's had been no relief from pain and his revenge had been no triumph. His memory was all swirling clouds and broken pieces of sound and sight and feeling. What now was true and what was imagined he could not separate. Coming out of Kate's he had touched his sobbing brother and Aron had cut him down with a fist like a whip. Aron had stood over him in the dark and then suddenly turned and ran, screaming like a brokenhearted child. Cal could still hear the hoarse cries over running footsteps. Cal had lain still where he had fallen under the tall privet in Kate's front yard. He heard the engines puffing and snorting by the roundhouse and the crash of freight cars being assembled. Then he had closed his eyes and, hearing light steps and feeling a presence, he looked up. Someone was bending over him and he thought it was Kate. The figure moved quietly away.
After a while Cal had stood up and brushed himself and walked toward Main Street. He was surprised at how casual his feeling was. He sang softly under his breath, "There's a rose that grows in no man's land and 'tis wonderful to see--"
On Friday Cal brooded the whole day long. And in the evening Joe Laguna bought the quart of whisky for him. Cal was too young to purchase. Joe wanted to accompany Cal, but Joe was satisfied with the dollar Cal gave him and went back for a pint of grappa.
Cal went to the alley behind the Abbot House and found the shadow behind a post where he had sat the night he first saw his mother. He sat cross-legged on the ground, and then, in spite of revulsion and nausea, he forced the whisky into himself. Twice he vomited and then went on drinking until the earth tipped and swayed and the streetlight spun majestically in a circle.
The bottle slipped from his hand finally and Cal passed out, but even unconscious he still vomited weakly. A serious, short-haired dog-about-town with a curling tail sauntered into the alley, making his stations, but he smelled Cal and took a wide circle around him. Joe Laguna found him and smelled him too. Joe shook the bottle leaning against Cal's leg and Joe held it up to the streetlight and saw that it was one-third full. He looked for the cork and couldn't find it. He walked away, his thumb over the neck to keep the whisky from sloshing out.
When in the cold dawn a frost awakened Cal to a sick world he struggled home like a broken bug. He hadn't far to go, just to the alley mouth and then across the street.
Lee heard him at the door and smelled his nastiness as he bumped along the hall to his room and fell over on his bed. Cal's head shattered with pain and he was wide awake. He had no resistance against sorrow and no device to protect himself against shame. After a while he did the best he could. He bathed in icy water and scrubbed and scratched his body with a block of pumice stone, and the pain of his scraping seemed good to him.
He knew that he had to tell his guilt to his father and beg his forgiveness. And he had to humble himself to Aron, not only now but always. He could not live without that. And yet, when he was called out and stood in the room with Sheriff Quinn and his father, he was as raw and angry as a surly dog and his hatred of himself turned outward toward everyone--a vicious cur he was, unloved, unloving.
Then he was back in his room and his guilt assaulted him and he had no weapon to fight it off.
A panic for Aron arose in him. He might be injured, might be in trouble. It was Aron who couldn't take care of himself. Cal knew he had to bring Aron back, had to find him and build him back the way he had been. And this had to be done even though Cal sacrificed himself. And then the idea of sacrifice took hold of him the way it does with all guilty-feeling men. A sacrifice might reach Aron and bring him back.
Cal went to his bureau and got the flat package from under his handkerchiefs in his drawer. He looked around the room and brought a porcelain pin tray to his desk. He breathed deeply and found the cool air good tasting. He lifted one of the crisp bills, creased it in the middle so' that it made an angle, and then he scratched a match under his desk and lighted the bill. The heavy paper curled and blackened, the flame ran upward, and only when the fire was about his fingertips did Cal drop the charred chip in the pin tray. He stripped off another bill and lighted it.
When six were burned Lee came in without knocking. "I smelled smoke," and then he saw what Cal was doing. "Oh!" he said.
Cal braced himself for intervention but none came. Lee folded his hands across his middle and stood silently--waiting. Cal doggedly lighted bill after bill until all were burned, and then he crushed the black chips down to powder and waited for Lee to comment, but Lee did not speak or move.
At last Cal said, "Go ahead--you want to talk to me. Go ahead!"
"No," said Lee, "I don't. And if you have no need to talk to me--I'll stay a while and then I'll go away. I'll sit down here." He squatted in a chair, folded his hands, and waited. He smiled to himself, the expression that is called inscrutable.
Cal turned from him. "I can outsit you," he said.
"In a contest maybe," said Lee. "But in day to day, year to year--who knows?--century to century sitting--no, Cal. You'd lose."
After a few moments Cal said peevishly, "I wish you'd get on with your lecture."
"I don't have a lecture."
"What the hell are you doing here then? You know what I did, and I got drunk last night."
"I suspect the first and I can smell the second."
"Smell?"
"You still smell," said Lee.
"First time," said Cal. "I don't like it."
"I don't either," said Lee. "I've got a bad stomach for liquor. Besides it makes me playful, intellectual but playful."
"How do you mean, Lee?"
"I can only give you an example. In my younger days I played tennis. I liked it, and it was also a good thing for a servant to do. He could pick up his master's flubs at doubles and get no thanks but a few dollars for it. Once, I think it was sherry that time, I developed the theory that the fastest and most elusive animals in the world are bats. I was apprehended in the middle of the night in the bell tower of the Methodist Church in San Leandro. I had a racquet, and I seem to have explained to the arresting officer that I was improving my backhand on bats."
Cal laughed with such amusement that Lee almost wished he had done it.
Cal said, "I just sat behind a post and drank like a pig."
"Always animals--"
"I was afraid if I didn't get drunk I'd shoot myself, Cal interrupted.
"You'd never do that. You're too mean," said Lee. "By the way, where is Aron?"
"He ran away. I don't know where he went. "He's not too mean," said Lee nervously. "I know it. That's what I thought about. You don't think he would, do you, Lee?"
Lee said tes
tily, "Goddam it, whenever a person wants reassurance he tells a friend to think what he wants to be true. It's like asking a waiter what's good tonight. How the hell do I know?"
Cal cried, "Why did I do it--why did I do it?"
"Don't make it complicated," Lee said. You know why you did it. You were mad at him, and you were mad at him because your father hurt your feelings. That's not difficult. You were just mean."
"I guess that's what I wonder--why I'm mean. Lee, I don't want to be mean. Help me, Lee!"
"Just a second," Lee said. "I thought I heard your father." He darted out the door.
Cal heard voices for a moment and then Lee came back to the room. "He's going to the post office. We never get any mail in midafternoon. Nobody does. But every man in Salinas goes to the post office in the afternoon."
"Some get a drink on the way, said Cal. "I guess it is a kind of a habit and a kind of a rest. They see their friends." And Lee said, "Cal--I don't like your father's looks. He's got a dazed look. Oh, I forgot. You don't know. Your mother committed suicide last night."
Cal said, "Did she?" and then he snarled, I hope it hurt. No, I don't want to say that. I don't want to think that. There it is again. There it is! I don't--want it--Lee scratched a spot on his head, and that started his whole head to itching, and he scratched it all over, taking his time. It gave him the appearance of deep thought. He said, "Did burning the money give you much pleasure?"
"I--I guess so."
"And are you taking pleasure from this whipping you're giving yourself? Are you enjoying your despair?"
"Lee!"
"You're pretty full of yourself. You're marveling at the tragic spectacle of Caleb Trask--Caleb the magnificent, the unique. Caleb whose suffering should have its Homer. Did you ever think of yourself as a snot-nose kid--mean sometimes, incredibly generous sometimes? Dirty in your habits, and curiously pure in your mind. Maybe you have a little more energy than most, just energy, but outside of that you're very like all the other snot-nose kids. Are you trying to attract dignity and tragedy to yourself because your mother was a whore? And if anything should have happened to your brother, will you be able to sneak for yourself the eminence of being a murderer, snot-nose?"
Cal turned slowly back to his desk. Lee watched him, holding his breath the way a doctor watches for the reaction to a hypodermic. Lee could see the reactions flaring through Cal--the rage at insult, the belligerence, and the hurt feelings following behind and out of that--just the beginning of relief.
Lee sighed. He had worked so hard, so tenderly, and his work seemed to have succeeded. He said softly, "We're a violent people, Cal. Does it seem strange to you that I include myself? Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil."
Cal turned his head toward Lee, and his face had lost its tightness. He smiled, and Lee knew he had not fooled the boy entirely. Cal knew now it was a job--a well-done job--and he was grateful.
Lee went on, "That's why I include myself. We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed--selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful--we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic--and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal--all of us. You aren't very different."
"Talk away," said Cal, and he smiled and repeated, "Talk away."
"I don't need to any more," said Lee. "I'm finished now. I wish your father would come back. He worries me." And Lee went nervously out.
In the hall just inside the front door he found Adam leaning against the wall, his hat low over his eyes and his shoulders slumped.
"Adam, what's the matter with you?"
"I don't know. Seem tired. Seem tired."
Lee took him by the arm, and it seemed that he had to guide him toward the living room. Adam fell heavily into his chair, and Lee took the hat from his head. Adam rubbed the back of his left hand with his right. His eyes were strange, very clear but unmoving. And his lips were dry and thickened and his speech had the sound of a dream talker, slow and coming from a distance. He rubbed his hand harshly. "Strange thing," he said, "I must have fainted--in the post office. I never faint. Mr. Pioda helped me up. Just for a second it was, I guess. I never faint."
Lee asked, "Was there any mail?"
"Yes--yes--I think there was mail." He put his left hand in his pocket and in a moment took it out. "My hand is kind of numb," he said apologetically and reached across with his right hand and brought out a yellow government postcard.
"Thought I read it," he said. "I must have read it." He held it up before his eyes and then dropped the card in his lap. "Lee, I guess I've got to get glasses. Never needed them in my life. Can't read it. Letters jump around."
"Shall I read it?"
"Funny--well, I'll go first thing for glasses. Yes, what does it say?"
And Lee read," 'Dear Father, I'm in the army. I told them I was eighteen. I'll be all right. Don't worry about me. Aron.' "
"Funny," said Adam. "Seems like I read it. But I guess I didn't." He rubbed his hand.
Chapter 52
1
That winter of 1917-1918 was a dark and frightened time. The Germans smashed everything in front of them. In three months the British suffered three hundred thousand casualties. Many units of the French army were mutinous. Russia was out of the war. The German east divisions, rested and re-equipped, were thrown at the western front. The war seemed hopeless.
It was May before we had as many as twelve divisions in the field, and summer had come before our troops began to move across the sea in numbers. The Allied generals were fighting each other. Submarines slaughtered the crossing ships.
We learned then that war was not a quick heroic charge but a slow, incredibly complicated matter. Our spirits sank in those winter months. We lost the flare of excitement and we had not yet put on the doggedness of a long war.
Ludendorff was unconquerable. Nothing stopped him. He mounted attack after attack on the broken armies of France and England. And it occurred to us that we might be too late, that soon we might be standing alone against the invincible Germans.
It was not uncommon for people to turn away from the war, some to fantasy and some to vice and some to crazy gaiety. Fortunetellers were in great demand, and saloons did a roaring business. But people also turned inward to their private joys and tragedies to escape the pervasive fear and despondency. Isn't it strange that today we have forgotten this? We remember World War I as quick victory, with flags and bands, marching and horseplay and returning soldiers, fights in the barrooms with the goddam Limeys who thought they had won the war. How quickly we forgot that in that winter Ludendorff could not be beaten and that many people were preparing in their minds and spirits for a lost war.
2
Adam Trask was more puzzled than sad. He didn't have to resign from the draft board. He was given a leave of absence for ill health. He sat by the hour rubbing the back of his left hand. He brushed it with a harsh brush and soaked it in hot water.
"It's circulation," he said. "As soon as I get the circulation back it'll be all right. It's my eyes that bother me. I never had trouble with my eyes. Guess I'll have to get my eyes tested for glasses. Me with glasses! Be hard to get used to. I'd go today but I feel a little dizzy."
He felt more dizzy than he would admit. He could not move a
bout the house without a hand brace against a wall. Lee often had to give him a hand-up out of his chair or help him out of bed in the morning and tie his shoes because he could not tie knots with his numb left hand.
Almost daily he came back to Aron. "I can understand why a young man might want to enlist," he said. "If Aron had talked to me, I might have tried to persuade him against it, but I wouldn't have forbidden it. You know that, Lee."
"I know it."
"That's what I can't understand. Why did he sneak away? Why doesn't he write? I thought I knew him better than that. Has he written to Abra? He'd be sure to write to her."
"I'll ask her."
"You do that. Do that right away."
"The training is hard. That's what I've heard. Maybe they don't give him time."
"It doesn't take any time to write a card."
"When you went in the army, did you write to your father?"
"Think you've got me there, don't you? No, I didn't, but I had a reason. I didn't want to enlist. My father forced me. I was resentful. You see, I had a good reason. But Aron--he was doing fine in college. Why, they've written, asking about him. You read the letter. He didn't take any clothes. He didn't take the gold watch."
"He wouldn't need any clothes in the army, and they don't want gold watches there either. Everything's brown."
"I guess you're right. But I don't understand it. I've got to do something about my eyes. Can't ask you to read everything to me." His eyes really troubled him. "I can see a letter," he said. "But the words jumble all around." A dozen times a day he seized a paper or a book and stared at it and put it down.
Lee read the papers to him to keep him from getting restless, and often in the middle of the reading Adam went to sleep.
He would awaken and say, "Lee? Is that you, Cal? You know I never had any trouble with my eyes. I'll just go tomorrow and get my eyes tested."
About the middle of February Cal went into the kitchen and said, "Lee, he talks about it all the time. Let's get his eyes tested."
Lee was stewing" apricots. He left the stove and closed the kitchen door and went back to the stove. "I don't want him to go," he said.
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