America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

by John Steinbeck

  Ed had a remarkably fine safe. It was so good that he worried for fear some misguided and romantic burglar might think there was something of value in it and, trying to open it, might abuse and injure its beautiful mechanism. Consequently he not only never locked the safe but contrived a wood block so that it could not be locked. Also, he pasted a note above the combination, assuring all persons that the safe was not locked. Then it developed that there was nothing to put in the safe anyway. Thus the safe became the repository of foods which might attract the flies of Cannery Row, and there were clouds of them drawn to the refuse of the fish canneries but willing to come to other foods. And it must be said that no fly was ever able to negotiate the safe.

  But to get back to the fire. After the ashes had cooled, there was the safe lying on its side in the basement where it had fallen when the floor above gave way. It must have been an excellent safe, for when we opened it we found half a pineapple pie, a quarter of a pound of Gorgonzola cheese, and an open can of sardines—all of them except the sardines in good condition. The sardines were a little dry. Ed admired that safe and used to refer to it with affection. He would say that if there had been valuable things in the safe it would surely have protected them. “Think how delicate Gorgonzola is,” he said. “It couldn’t have been very hot inside that safe. The cheese is still delicious.”

  In spite of a great erudition, or perhaps because of it, Ed had some naive qualities. After the fire there were a number of suits against the electric company, based on the theory, later proved wrong, that if the fires were caused by error or negligence on the part of the company, the company should pay for the damage.

  Pacific Biological Laboratories, Inc., was one of the plaintiffs in this suit. Ed went over to Superior Court in Salinas to testify. He told the truth as clearly and as fully as he could. He loved true things and believed in them. Then he became fascinated by the trial and the jury and he spent much time in court, inspecting the legal system with the same objective care he would have lavished on a new species of marine animal.

  Afterwards he said calmly and with a certain wonder, “You see how easy it is to be completely wrong about a simple matter. It was always my conviction—or better, my impression—that the legal system was designed to arrive at the truth in matters of human and property relationships. You see, I had forgotten or never considered one thing. Each side wants to win, and that factor warps any original intent to the extent that the objective truth of the matter disappears in emphasis. Now you take the case of this fire,” he went on. “Both sides wanted to win, and neither had any interest in, indeed both sides seemed to have a kind of abhorrence for, the truth.” It was an amazing discovery to him and one that required thinking out. Because he loved true things, he thought everyone did. The fact that it was otherwise did not sadden him. It simply interested him. And he set about rebuilding his laboratory and replacing his books with an antlike methodicalness.

  Ed’s use of words was unorthodox and, until you knew him, somewhat startling. Once, in getting a catalogue ready, he wanted to advise the trade that he had plenty of hagfish available. Now the hagfish is a most disgusting animal both in appearance and texture, and some of its habits are nauseating. It is a perfect animal horror. But Ed did not feel this, because the hagfish has certain functions which he found fascinating. In his catalogue he wrote, “Available in some quantities, delightful and beautiful hagfish.”

  He admired worms of all kinds and found them so desirable that, searching around for a pet name for a girl he loved, he called her “Wormy.” She was a little huffy until she realized that he was using not the adjective but a diminutive of the noun. His use of this word meant that he found her pretty, interesting, and desirable. But still it always sounded to the girl like an adjective.

  Ed loved food, and many of the words he used were eating words. I have heard him refer to a girl, a marine animal, and a plain song as “delicious.”

  His mind had no horizons. He was interested in everything. And there were very few things he did not like. Perhaps it would be well to set down the things he did not like. Maybe they would be some kind of key to his personality, although it is my conviction that there is no such key.

  Chief among his hatreds was old age. He hated it in other people and did not even conceive of it in himself. He hated old women and would not stay in a room with them. He said he could smell them. He had a remarkable sense of smell. He could smell a mouse in a room, and I have seen him locate a rattlesnake in the brush by smell.

  He hated women with thin lips. “If the lips are thin—where will there be any fullness?” he would say. His observation was certainly physical and open to verification, and he seemed to believe in its accuracy and so do I, but with less vehemence.

  He loved women too much to take any nonsense from the thin-lipped ones. But if a girl with thin lips painted on fuller ones with lipstick, he was satisfied. “Her intentions are correct,” he said. “There is a psychic fullness, and sometimes that can be very fine.”

  He hated hot soup and would pour cold water into the most beautifully prepared bisque.

  He unequivocally hated to get his head wet. Collecting animals in the tide pools, he would be soaked by the waves to his eyebrows, but his head was invariably covered and safe. In the shower he wore an oilskin sou’wester—a ridiculous sight.

  He hated one professor whom he referred to as “old jingle ballicks.” It never developed why he hated “old jingle ballicks.”

  He hated pain inflicted without good reason. Driving through the streets one night, he saw a man beating a red setter with a rake handle. Ed stopped the car and attacked the man with a monkey wrench and would have killed him if the man had not run away.

  Although slight in build, when he was angry Ed had no fear and could be really dangerous. On an occasion one of our cops was pistol-whipping a drunk in the middle of the night. Ed attacked the cop with his bare hands, and his fury was so great that the cop released the drunk.

  This hatred was only for reasonless cruelty. When the infliction of pain was necessary, he had little feeling about it. Once during the depression we found we could buy a live sheep for three dollars. This may seem incredible now but it was so. It was a great deal of food and even for those days a great bargain. Then we had the sheep and none of us could kill it. But Ed cut its throat with no emotion whatever, and even explained to the rest of us who were upset that bleeding to death is quite painless if there is no fear involved. The pain of opening a vein is slight if the instrument is sharp, and he had opened the jugular with a scalpel and had not frightened the animal, so that our secondary or empathic pain was probably much greater than that of the sheep.

  His feeling for psychic pain in normal people also was philosophic. He would say that nearly everything that can happen to people not only does happen but has happened for a million years. “Therefore,” he would say, “for everything that can happen there is a channel or mechanism in the human to take care of it—a channel worn down in prehistory and transmitted in the genes.”

  He disliked time intensely unless it was part of an observation or an experiment. He was invariably and consciously late for appointments. He said he had once worked for a railroad where his whole life had been regulated by a second hand and that he had then conceived his disgust, a disgust for exactness in time. To my knowledge, that is the only time he ever spoke of the railroad experience. If you asked him to dinner at seven, he might get there at nine. On the other hand, if a good low collecting tide was at 6:53, he would be in the tide pool at 6:52.

  The farther I get into this the more apparent it becomes to me that no rule was final. He himself was not conscious of any rules of behavior in himself, although he observed behavior patterns in other people with delight.

  For many years he wore a beard, not large, and slightly pointed, which accentuated his half-goat, half-Christ appearance. He had started wearing the beard because some girl he wanted thought he had a weak chin. He didn’t have a weak ch
in, but as long as she thought so he cultivated his beard. This was probably during the period of the prognathous Arrow Collar men in the advertising pages. Many girls later he was still wearing the beard because he was used to it. He kept it until the Army made him shave it off in the Second World War. His beard sometimes caused a disturbance. Small boys often followed Ed, baaing like sheep. He developed a perfect defense against this. He would turn and baa back at them, which invariably so embarrassed the boys that they slipped shyly away.

  Ed had a strange and courteous relationship with dogs, although he never owned one or wanted to. Passing a dog on the street, he greeted it with dignity and, when driving, often tipped his hat and smiled and waved at dogs on the sidewalk. And damned if they didn’t smile back at him. Cats, on the other hand, did not arouse any enthusiasm in him. However, he always remembered one cat with admiration. It was in the old days before the fire when Ed’s father was still alive and doing odd jobs about the laboratory. The cat in question took a dislike to Ed’s father and developed a spite tactic which charmed Ed. The cat would climb up on a shelf and pee on Ed’s father when he went by—the cat did it not once but many times.

  Ed regarded his father with affection. “He has one quality of genius,” Ed would say. “He is always wrong. If a man makes a million decisions and judgments at random, it is perhaps mathematically tenable to suppose that he will be right half the time and wrong half the time. But you take my father—he is wrong all of the time about everything. That is a matter not of luck but of selection. That requires genius.”

  Ed’s father was a rather silent, shy, but genial man who took so many aspirins for headaches that he had developed a chronic acetanilide poisoning and the quaint dullness that goes with it. For many years he worked in the basement stockroom, packing specimens to be shipped and even mounting some of the larger and less delicate forms. His chief pride, however, was a human fetus which he had mounted in a museum jar. It was to have been the lone child of a Negress and a Chinese. When the mother succumbed to a lovers’ quarrel and a large dose of arsenic administered by person or persons unknown, the autopsy revealed her secret, and her secret was acquired by Pacific Biological. It was much too far advanced to be of much value for study so Ed’s father inherited it. He crossed its little legs in a Buddha pose, arranged its hands in an attitude of semi-prayer, and fastened it securely upright in the museum jar. It was rather a startling figure, for while it had negroid features, the preservative had turned it to a pale ivory color. It was Dad Ricketts’ great pride. Children and many adults made pilgrimages to the basement to see it. It became famous in Cannery Row.

  One day an Italian woman blundered into the basement. Although she did not speak any English, Dad Ricketts naturally thought she had come to see his prize. He showed it to her; whereupon, to his amazement and embarrassment, she instantly undressed to show him her fine scar from a Caesarian section.

  Cats were a not inconsiderable source of income to Pacific Biological Laboratories, Inc. They were chloroformed, the blood drained, and embalming fluid and color mass injected in the venous and arterial systems. These finished cats were sold to schools for study of anatomy.

  When an order came in for, say, twenty-five cats, there was only one way to get them, since the ASPCA will not allow the raising of cats for laboratory purposes. Ed would circulate the word among the small boys of the neighborhood that twenty-five cents apiece would be paid for cats. It saddened Ed a little to see how venially warped the cat-loving small boys of Monterey were. They sold their own cats, their aunts’ cats, their neighbors’ cats. For a few days there would be scurrying footsteps and soft thumps as cats in gunny sacks were secretly deposited in the basement. Then guileless and innocent-faced little catacides would collect their quarters and rush for Wing Chong’s grocery for pop and cap pistols. No matter what happened, Wing Chong made some small profit.

  Once a lady who liked cats very much, if they were the better sort of cats, remarked to Ed, “Of course I realize that these things are necessary. I am very broad-minded. But, thank heaven, you do not get pedigreed cats.”

  Ed reassured her by saying, “Madam, that’s about the only kind I do get. Alley cats are too quick and intelligent. I get the sluggish stupid cats of the rich and indulgent. You can look through the basement and see whether I have yours—yet.” That friendship based on broad-mindedness did not flourish.

  If there were a complaint and a recognition Ed always gave the cat back. Once two small boys who had obviously read about the oldest cheat in the world worked it twice on Ed before he realized it. One of them sold the cat and collected, the other came in crying and got the cat back. They should have got another cat the third time. If they had been clever and patient they would have made a fortune, but even Ed recognized a bright yellow cat with a broken tail the third time he bought it.

  Life on Cannery Row was curious and dear and outrageous. Across the street from Pacific Biological was Monterey’s largest, most genteel and respected whorehouse. It was owned and operated by a very great woman who was beloved and trusted by all who came in contact with her except those few whose judgment was twisted by a limited virtue. She was a large-hearted woman and a law-abiding citizen in every way except one—she did violate the nebulous laws against prostitution. But since the police didn’t seem to care, she felt all right about it and even made little presents in various directions.

  During the depression Madam paid the grocery bills for most of the destitute families on Cannery Row. When the Chamber of Commerce collected money for any cause and businessmen were assessed at ten dollars, Madam was always nicked for a hundred. The same was true for any mendicant charity. She halfway paid for the widows and orphans of policemen and firemen. She was expected to and did contribute ten times the ordinary amount toward any civic brainstorm of citizens who pretended she did not exist. Also, she was a wise and tolerant pushover for any hard-luck story. Everyone put the bee on her. Even when she knew it was a fake she dug down.

  Ed Ricketts maintained relations of respect and friendliness with Madam. He did not patronize the house. His sex life was far too complicated for that. But Madam brought many of her problems to him, and he gave her the best of his thinking and his knowledge, both scientific and profane.

  There seems to be a tendency toward hysteria among girls in such a house. I do not know whether hysterically inclined types enter the business or whether the business produces hysteria. But often Madam would send a girl over to the laboratory to talk to Ed. He would listen with great care and concern to her troubles, which were rarely complicated, and then he would talk soothingly to her and play some of his favorite music to her on his phonograph. The girl usually went back reinforced with his strength. He never moralized in any way. He would be more likely to examine the problem carefully, with calm and clarity, and to lift the horrors out of it by easy examination. Suddenly the girl would discover that she was not alone, that many other people had the same problems—in a word that her misery was not unique. And then she usually felt better about it.

  There was a tacit but strong affection between Ed and Madam. She did not have a license to sell liquor to be taken out. Quite often Ed would run out of beer so late at night that everything except Madam’s house was closed. There followed a ritual which was thoroughly enjoyed by both parties. Ed would cross the street and ask Madam to sell him some beer. She invariably refused, explaining every time that she did not have a license. Ed would shrug his shoulders, apologize for asking, and go back to the lab. Ten minutes later there would be soft footsteps on the stairs and a little thump in front of the door and then running slippered steps down again. Ed would wait a decent interval and then go to the door. And on his doorstep, in a paper bag, would be six bottles of ice-cold beer. He would never mention it to Madam. That would have been breaking the rules of the game. But he repaid her with hours of his time when she needed his help. And his help was not inconsiderable.

  Sometimes, as happens even in the soundest whor
ehouse, there would be a fight on a Saturday night—one of those things which are likely to occur when love and wine come together. It was only sensible that Madam would not want to bother the police or a doctor with her little problem. Then her good friend Ed would patch up cut faces and torn ears and split mouths. He was a good operator and there were never any complaints. And naturally no one ever mentioned the matter since he was not a doctor of medicine and had no license to practice anything except philanthropy. Madam and Ed had the greatest respect for each other. “She’s one hell of a woman,” he said. “I wish good people could be as good.”

  Just as Madam was the target for every tired heist, so Ed was the fall guy for any illicit scheme that could be concocted by the hustling instincts of some of the inhabitants of Cannery Row. The people of the Row really loved Ed, but this affection did not forbid them from subjecting him to any outrageous scheming that occurred to them. In nearly all cases he knew the game before the play had even started and his hand would be in his pocket before the intricate gambit had come to a request. But he would cautiously wait out the pitch before he brought out the money. “It gives them so much pleasure to earn it,” he would say.

  He never gave much. He never had much. But in spite of his wide experience in chicanery, now and then he would be startled into admiration by some particularly audacious or imaginative approach to the problem of a touch.