The Pastures of Heaven

by Steinbeck, John

  “I always give a reason for everything,” she told her friends.

  In the evening, after the dishes were washed, Molly sat on her bed and studied, and when the light was off, she lay on her bed and thought of her father. It was ridicu­lous to do it, she knew. It was a waste of time. Her father came up to the door, wearing a cutaway coat, and striped trousers and a top hat. He carried a huge bouquet of red roses in his hand. “I couldn’t come before, Molly. Get on your coat quickly. First we’re going down to get that eve­ning dress in the window of Prussia’s, but we’ll have to hurry. I have tickets for the train to New York tonight. Hurry up, Molly! Don’t stand there gawping.” it was silly. Her father was dead. No, she didn’t really believe he was dead. Somewhere in the world he lived beauti­fully, and sometime he would come back.

  Molly told one of her friends at school, “I don’t really believe it, you see, but 1 don’t disbelieve it. If 1 ever knew he was dead, why it would be awful. I don’t know what I’d do then. I don’t want to think about knowing he’s dead.”

  When her mother died, she felt little besides shame. Her mother had wanted so much to be loved, and she hadn’t known how to draw love. Her importunities had bothered the children and driven them away.

  “Well, that’s about all,” Molly finished. “I got my di­ploma, and then I was sent down here.”

  “It was about the easiest interview I ever had,” John Whiteside said.

  “Do you think I’ll get the position, then?”

  The old man gave a quick, twinkly glance at the big meerschaum hanging over the mantel.

  “That’s his friend,” Molly thought. “He has secrets with that pipe.”

  “Yes, I think you’ll get the job. I think you have it already. Now, Miss Morgan, where are you going to live? You must find board and room some place.”

  Before she knew she was going to say it, she had blurted, “I want to live here.”

  John Whiteside opened his eyes in astonishment. “But we never take boarders, Miss Morgan.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry I said that. I just liked it so much here, you see.”

  He called, “Willa,” and when his wife stood in the half-open door. “This young lady wants to board with us. She’s the new teacher.”

  Mrs. Whiteside frowned. “Couldn’t think of it. We never take boarders. She’s too pretty to be around that fool of a Bill. What would happen to those cows of his? It’d be a lot of trouble. You can sleep in the third bed­room upstairs,” she said to Molly. “It doesn’t catch much sun anyway.”

  Life changed its face. All of a sudden Molly found she was a queen. From the first day the children of the school adored her, for she understood them, and what was more, she let them understand her. It took her some time to realize that she had become an important person. If two men got to arguing at the store about a point of history or literature or mathematics, and the argument dead­locked, it ended up, “Take it to the teacher! If she doesn’t know, she’ll find it.” Molly was very proud to be able to decide such questions. At parties she had to help with the decorations and to plan refreshments.

  “I think we’ll put pine boughs around everywhere. They’re pretty, and they smell so good. They smell like a party.” She was supposed to know everything and to help with everything, and she loved it.

  At the Whiteside home she slaved in the kitchen under the mutterings of Willa. At the end of six months, Mrs. Whiteside grumbled to her husband, “Now if Bill only had any sense. But then,” she continued, “if she has any sense—” and there she left it.

  At night Molly wrote letters to the few friends she had made in Teachers’ College, letters full of little stories about her neighbors, and full of joy. She must attend every party because of the social prestige of her position. On Saturdays she ran about the hills and brought back ferns and wild flowers to plant about the house.

  Bill Whiteside took one look at Molly and scuttled back to his cows. It was a long time before he found the cour­age to talk to her very much. He was a big, simple young man who had neither his father’s balance nor his mother’s humor. Eventually, however, he trailed after Molly and looked after her from distances.

  One evening, with a kind of feeling of thanksgiving for her happiness, Molly told Bill about her father. They were sitting in canvas chairs on the wide veranda, waiting for the moon. She told him about the visits, and then about the disappearance. “Do you see what I have, Bill?” she cried. “My lovely father is some place. He’s mine. You think he’s living, don’t you, Bill?”

  “Might be,” said Bill. “From what you say, he was a kind of an irresponsible cuss, though. Excuse me, Molly. Still, if he’s alive, it’s funny he never wrote.”

  Molly felt cold. It was just the kind of reasoning she had successfully avoided for so long. “Of course,” she said stiffly, “I know that. I have to do some work now, Bill.”

  High up on a hill that edged the valley of the Pastures of Heaven, there was an old cabin which commanded a view of the whole country and of all the roads in the vicinity. It was said that the bandit Vasquez had built the cabin and lived in it for a year while the posses went crashing through the country looking for him. It was a landmark. All of the people of the valley had been to see it at one time or another. Nearly everyone asked Molly whether she had been there yet. “No,” she said, “but I will go up some day. I’ll go some Saturday. I know where the trail to it is.” One morning she dressed in her new hiking boots and corduroy skirt. Bill sidled up and offered to accompany her. “No,” she said. “You have work to do. I can’t take you away from it.”

  “Work be hanged!” said Bill.

  “Well, I’d rather go alone. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I just want to go alone, Bill.” She was sorry not to let him accompany her, but his remark about her father had frightened her. “I want to have an adventure,” she said to herself. “If Bill comes along, it won’t be an adventure at all. It’ll just be a trip.” It took her an hour and a half to climb up the steep trail under the oaks. The leaves on the ground were as slippery as glass, and the sun was hot. The good smell of ferns and dank moss and yerba buena filled the air. When Molly came at last to the ridge crest, she was damp and winded. The cabin stood in a small clearing in the brush, a little square wood­en room with no windows. Its doorless entrance as a black shadow. The place was quiet, the kind of humming quiet that flies and bees and crickets make. The whole hillside sang softly in the sun. Molly approached on tiptoe. Her heart was beating violently.

  “Now I’m having an adventure,” she whispered. “Now I’m right in the middle of an adventure at Vasquez’ cabin.” She peered in at the doorway and saw a lizard scuttle out of sight. A cobweb fell across her forehead and seemed to try to restrain her. There was nothing at all in the cabin, nothing but the dirt floor and the rotting wooden walls, and the dry, deserted smell of the earth that has long been covered from the sun. Molly was filled with ex­citement. “At night he sat in there. Sometimes when he heard noises like men creeping up on him, he went out of the door like the ghost of a shadow, and just melted into the darkness.” She looked down on the valley of the Pastures of Heaven. The orchards lay in dark green squares; the grain was yellow, and the hills behind, a light brown washed with lavender. Among the farms the roads twisted and curled, avoiding a field, looping around a huge tree, half circling a hill flank. Over the whole valley was stretched a veil of heat shimmer. “Unreal,” Molly whispered, “fantastic. It’s a story, a real story, and I’m having an adventure.” A breeze rose out of the valley like the sigh of a sleeper, and then subsided.

  “In the daytime that young Vasquez looked down on the valley just as I’m looking. He stood right here, and looked at the roads down there. He wore a purple vest braided with gold, and the trousers on his slim legs widened at the bottom like the mouths of trumpets. His spur rowels were wrapped with silk ribbons to keep them from clinking. Sometimes he saw the posses riding by on the road below. Lucky for him the men bent over their hors
es’ necks, and didn’t look up at the hilltops. Vasquez laughed, but he was afraid, too. Sometimes he sang. His songs were soft and sad because he knew he couldn’t live very long.”

  Molly sat down on the slope and rested her chin in her cupped hands. Young Vasquez was standing beside her, and Vasquez had her father’s gay face, his shining eyes as he came on the porch shouting, “Hi, kids!” This was the kind of adventure her father had. Molly shook her­self and stood up. “Now I want to go back to the first time and think it all over again.”

  In the late afternoon Mrs. Whiteside sent Bill out to look for Molly. “She might have turned an ankle, you know.” But Molly emerged from the trail just as Bill ap­proached it from the road.

  “We were beginning to wonder if you’d got lost,” he said. “Did you go up to the cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Funny old box, isn’t it? Just an old woodshed. There are a dozen just like it down here. You’d be surprised, though, how many people go up there to look at it. The funny part is, nobody’s sure Vasquez was ever there.”

  “Oh, I think he must have been there.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bill became serious. “Everybody thinks Vasquez was a kind of a hero, when really he was just a thief. He started in stealing sheep and horses and ended up robbing stages. He had to kill a few people to do it. It seems to me, Molly, we ought to teach people to hate robbers, not worship them.”

  “Of course, Bill,” she said wearily. “You’re perfectly right. Would you mind not talking for a little while, Bill? I guess I’m a little tired, and nervous, too.”

  The year wheeled around. Pussywillows had their kit­tens, and wild flowers covered the hills. Molly found her­self wanted and needed in the valley. She even attended school board meetings. There had been a time when those secret and august conferences were held behind closed doors, a mystery and a terror to everyone. Now that Molly was asked to step into John Whiteside’s sitting room, she found that the board discussed crops, told stories, and cir­culated mild gossip.

  Bert Munroe had been elected early in the fall, and by the springtime he was the most energetic member. He it was who planned dances at the schoolhouse, who insisted upon having plays and picnics. He even offered prizes for the best report cards in the school. The board was coming to rely pretty much on Bert Munroe.

  One evening Molly came down late from her room. As

  always, when the board was meeting, Mrs. Whiteside sat in the dining room. “I don’t think I’ll go into the meeting,” Molly said. “Let them have one time to them­selves. Sometimes I feel that they would tell other kinds of stories if I weren’t there.”

  “You go on in, Molly! They can’t hold a board meeting without you. They’re so used to you, they’d be lost. Be­sides, I’m not at all sure I want them to tell those other stories.”

  Obediently Molly knocked on the door and went into the sitting room. Bert Munroe paused politely in the story he was narrating. “I was just telling about my new farm hand, Miss Morgan. I’ll start over again, ‘cause it’s kind of funny. You see, I needed a hay hand, and I picked this fellow up under the Salinas River bridge. He was pretty drunk, but he wanted a job. Now I’ve got him, I find he isn’t worth a cent as a hand, but I can’t get rid of him. That son of a gun has been every place. You ought to hear him tell about the places he’s been. My kids wouldn’t let me get rid of him if I wanted to. Why, he can take the littlest thing he’s seen and make a fine story out of it. My kids just sit around with their ears spread, listening to him. Well, about twice a month he walks into Salinas and goes on a bust. He’s one of those dirty, periodic drunks. The Salinas cops always call me up when they find him in a gutter, and I have to drive in to get him. And you know, when he comes out of it, he’s always got some kind of present in his pocket for my kid Manny. There’s nothing you can do with a man like that. He disarms you. I don’t get a dollar’s worth of work a month out of him.”

  Molly felt a sick dread rising in her. The men were laughing at the story. “You’re too soft, Bert. You can’t afford to keep an entertainer on the place. I’d sure get rid of him quick.”

  Molly stood up. She was dreadfully afraid someone would ask the man’s name. “I’m not feeling very well to­night,” she said. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed.” The men stood up while she left the room. In her bed she buried her head in the pillow. “It’s crazy,” she said to herself. “There isn’t a chance in the world. I’m forgetting all about it right now.” But she found to her dismay that she was crying.

  The next few weeks were agonizing to Molly. She was reluctant to leave the house. Walking to and from school she watched the road ahead of her. “If I see any kind of a stranger I’ll run away. But that’s foolish. I’m being a fool.” Only in her own room did she feel safe. Her terror was making her lose color, was taking the glint out of her eyes.

  “Molly, you ought to go to bed,” Mrs. Whiteside in­sisted. “Don’t be a little idiot. Do I have to smack you the way I do Bill to make you go to bed?” but Molly would not go to bed. She thought too many things when she was in bed.

  The next time the board met, Bert Munroe did not appear. Molly felt reassured and almost happy at his ab­sence.

  “You’re feeling better, aren’t you, Miss Morgan?”

  “Oh, yes. It was only a little thing, a kind of a cold. If I’d gone to bed I might have been really sick.”

  The meeting was an hour gone before Bert Munroe came in. “Sorry to be late,” he apologized. “The same old thing happened. My so-called hay hand was asleep in the street in Salinas. What a mess! He’s out in the car sleeping it off now. I’ll have to hose the car out tomorrow.”

  Molly’s throat closed with terror. For a second she thought she was going to faint. “Excuse me, I must go,” she cried, and ran out of the room. She walked into the dark hallway and steadied herself against the wall. Then slowly and automatically she marched out of the front door and down the steps. The night was filled with whispers. Out in the road she could see the black mass that was Bert Munroe’s car. She was surprised at the way her footsteps plodded down the path of their own voli­tion. “Now I’m killing myself,” she said. “Now I’m throw­ing everything away. I wonder why.” The gate was under her hand, and her hand flexed to open it. Then a tiny breeze sprang up and brought to her nose the sharp foulness of vomit. She heard a blubbering, drunken snore. In­stantly something whirled in her head. Molly spun around and ran frantically back to the house. In her room she locked the door and sat stiffly down, panting with the effort of her run. It seemed hours before she heard the men go out of the house, calling their good nights. Then Bert’s motor started, and the sound of it died away down the road. Now that she was ready to go she felt paralyzed. John Whiteside was writing at his desk when Molly entered the sitting room. He looked up questioningly at her. “You aren’t well, Miss Morgan. You need a doctor.” She planted herself woodenly beside the desk. “Could you get a substitute teacher for me?” she asked.

  “Of course I could. You pile right into bed and I’ll call a doctor.”

  “It isn’t that, Mr. Whiteside. I want to go away to­night.”

  “What are you talking about? You aren’t well.”

  “I told you my father was dead. I don’t know whether he’s dead or not. I’m afraid—I want to go away tonight.”

  He stared intently at her. “Tell me what you mean,” he said softly.

  “If I should see that drunken man of Mr. Munroe’s—” she paused, suddenly terrified at what she was about to say.

  John Whiteside nodded very slowly.

  “No,” she cried. “I don’t think that. I’m sure I don’t.”

  “I’d like to do something, Molly.”

  “I don’t want to go, I love it here—But I’m afraid. It’s so important to me.”

  John Whiteside stood up and came close to her and put his arm about her shoulders. “I
don’t think I under­stand, quite,” he said. “I don’t think I want to under­stand. That isn’t necessary.” He seemed to be talking to himself. “It wouldn’t be quite courteous to understand.”

  “Once I’m away I’ll be able not to believe it,” Molly whimpered.

  He gave her shoulders one quick squeeze with his en­circling arm. “You run upstairs and pack your things, Molly,” he said. “I’ll get out the car and drive you right in to Salinas now.”

  Nine

  OF ALL THE FARMS in the Pastures of Heaven the one most admired was that of Raymond Banks. Raymond kept five thousand white chickens and one thousand white ducks. The farm lay on the northern flat, the prettiest place in the whole country. Raymond had laid out his land in squares of alfalfa and of kale. His long, low chicken houses were whitewashed so often that they looked always immaculate and new. There was never any of the filth so often associated with poultry farms, about Raymond’s place.

  For the ducks there was a large round pond into which fresh water constantly flowed from a two-inch pipe. The overflow from the pond ran down rows of thick sturdy kale or spread itself out in the alfalfa patches. It was a line thing on a sunny morning to see the great flock of clean, white chickens eating and scratching in the dark green alfalfa, and it was even finer to see the thousand white ducks sailing magnificently about on the pond. Ducks swim ponderously, as though they were as huge as the Leviathan. The ranch sang all day with the busy noise of chickens.

  From the top of a nearby hill you could look down on the squares of alfalfa on which the thousands of moving white specks eddied and twisted like bits of dust on a green pool. Then perhaps a red-tail hawk would soar over, carefully watching Raymond’s house. The white specks instantly stopped their meaningless movements and scuttled to the protecting roosters, and up from the fields came the despairing shrieks of thousands of hawk-fright­ened chickens. The back door of the farmhouse slammed, and Raymond sauntered out carrying a shot gun. The hawk swung up a hundred feet in the air and soared away. The little white bunches spread out again and the eddying continued.