The Short Novels of John Steinbeck

by John Steinbeck

  "They study them," said Doc patiently and he remembered that he had answered this question for Hazel dozens of times before. But Doc had one mental habit he could not get over. When anyone asked a question, Doc thought he wanted to know the answer. That was the way with Doc. He never asked unless he wanted to know and he could not conceive of the brain that would ask without wanting to know. But Hazel, who simply wanted to hear talk, had developed a system of making the answer to one question the basis of another. It kept conversation going.

  "What do they find to study?" Hazel continued. "They're just starfish. There's millions of 'em around. I could get you a million of 'em."

  "They're complicated and interesting animals," Doc said a little defensively. "Besides, these are going to the Middle West to North-western University."

  Hazel used his trick. "They got no starfish there?"

  "They got no ocean there," said Doc.

  "Oh!" said Hazel and he cast frantically about for a peg to hang a new question on. He hated to have a conversation die out like this. He wasn't quick enough. While he was looking for a question Doc asked one. Hazel hated that, it meant casting about in his mind for an answer and casting about in Hazel's mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel's mind was choked with uncatalogued exhibits. He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. Everything was thrown together like fishing tackle in the bottom of a rowboat, hooks and sinkers and line and lures and gaffs all snarled up.

  Doc asked, "How are things going up at the Palace?"

  Hazel ran his fingers through his dark hair and he peered into the clutter of his mind. "Pretty good," he said. "That fellow Gay is moving in with us I guess. His wife hits him pretty bad. He don't mind that when he's awake but she waits 'til he gets to sleep and then hits him. He hates that. He has to wake up and beat her up and then when he goes back to sleep she hits him again. He don't get any rest so he's moving in with us."

  "That's a new one," said Doc. "She used to swear out a warrant and put him in jail."

  "Yeah!" said Hazel. "But that was before they built the new jail in Salinas. Used to be thirty days and Gay was pretty hot to get out, but this new jail--radio in the tank and good bunks and the sheriff's a nice fellow. Gay gets in there and he don't want to come out. He likes it so much his wife won't get him arrested any more. So she figured out this hitting him while he's asleep. It's nerve racking, he says. And you know as good as me--Gay never did take any pleasure beating her up. He only done it to keep his self-respect. But he gets tired of it. I guess he'll be with us now."

  Doc straightened up. The waves were beginning to break over the barrier of the Great Tide Pool. The tide was coming in and little rivers from the sea had begun to flow over the rocks. The wind blew freshly in from the whistling buoy and the barking of sea lions came from around the point. Doc pushed his rain hat on the back of his head. "We've got enough starfish," he said and then went on, "Look, Hazel, I know you've got six or seven undersized abalones in the bottom of your sack. If we get stopped by a game warden, you're going to say they're mine, on my permit--aren't you?"

  "Well--hell," said Hazel.

  "Look," Doc said kindly. "Suppose I get an order for abalones and maybe the game warden thinks I'm using my collecting permit too often. Suppose he thinks I'm eating them."

  "Well--hell," said Hazel.

  "It's like the industrial alcohol board. They've got suspicious minds. They always think I'm drinking the alcohol. They think that about everyone."

  "Well, ain't you?"

  "Not much of it," said Doc. "That stuff they put in it tastes terrible and it's a big job to redistill it."

  "That stuff ain't so bad," said Hazel. "Me and Mack had a snort of it the other day. What is it they put in?"

  Doc was about to answer when he saw it was Hazel's trick again. "Let's get moving," he said. He hoisted his sack of starfish on his shoulder. And he had forgotten the illegal abalones in the bottom of Hazel's sack.

  Hazel followed him up out of the tide pool and up the slippery trail to solid ground. The little crabs scampered and skittered out of their way. Hazel felt that he had better cement the grave over the topic of the abalones.

  "That painter guy came back to the Palace," he offered.

  "Yes?" said Doc.

  "Yeah! You see, he done all our pictures in chicken feathers and now he says he got to do them all over again with nutshells. He says he changed his--his med--medium."

  Doc chuckled. "He still building his boat?"

  "Sure," said Hazel. "He's got it all changed around. New kind of a boat. I guess he'll take it apart and change it. Doc--is he nuts?"

  Doc swung his heavy sack of starfish to the ground and stood panting a little. "Nuts?" he asked. "Oh, yes, I guess so. Nuts about the same amount we are, only in a different way."

  Such a thing had never occurred to Hazel. He looked upon himself as a crystal pool of clarity and on his life as a troubled glass of misunderstood virtue. Doc's last statement had outraged him a little. "But that boat--" he cried. "He's been building that boat for seven years that I know of. The blocks rotted out and he made concrete blocks. Every time he gets it nearly finished he changes it and starts over again. I think he's nuts. Seven years on a boat."

  Doc was sitting on the ground pulling off his rubber boots. "You don't understand," he said gently. "Henri loves boats but he's afraid of the ocean."

  "What's he want a boat for then?" Hazel demanded.

  "He likes boats," said Doc. "But suppose he finishes his boat. Once it's finished people will say, 'Why don't you put it in the water? ' Then if he puts it in the water, he'll have to go out in it, and he hates the water. So you see, he never finishes the boat--so he doesn't ever have to launch it."

  Hazel had followed this reasoning to a certain point but he abandoned it before it was resolved, not only abandoned it but searched for some way to change the subject. "I think he's nuts," he said lamely.

  On the black earth on which the ice plants bloomed, hundreds of black stink bugs crawled. And many of them stuck their tails up in the air. "Look at all them stink bugs," Hazel remarked, grateful to the bugs for being there.

  "They're interesting," said Doc.

  "Well, what they got their asses up in the air for?"

  Doc rolled up his wool socks and put them in the rubber boots and from his pocket he brought out dry socks and a pair of thin moccasins. "I don't know why," he said. "I looked them up recently--they're very common animals and one of the commonest things they do is put their tails up in the air. And in all the books there isn't one mention of the fact that they put their tails up in the air or why."

  Hazel turned one of the stink bugs over with the toe of his wet tennis shoe and the shining black beetle strove madly with floun dering legs to get upright again. "Well, why do you think they do it?"

  "I think they're praying," said Doc.

  "What!" Hazel was shocked.

  "The remarkable thing," said Doc, "isn't that they put their tails up in the air--the really incredibly remarkable thing is that we find it remarkable. We can only use ourselves as yardsticks. If we did something as inexplicable and strange we'd probably be praying--so maybe they're praying."

  "Let's get the hell out of here," said Hazel.

  7

  The Palace Flophouse was no sudden development. Indeed when Mack and Hazel and Eddie and Hughie and Jones moved into it, they looked upon it as little more than shelter from the wind and the rain, as a place to go when everything else had closed or when their welcome was thin and sere with overuse. Then the Palace was only a long bare room, lit dimly by two small windows, walled with unpainted wood smelling strongly of fish meal. They had not loved it then. But Mack knew that some kind of organization was necessary particularly among such a group of ravening individualists.

  A training army which has not been equipped with guns and artillery and tanks uses artificial guns and masquerading trucks to simulate its destructive panoply--and its to
ughening soldiers get used to field guns by handling logs on wheels.

  Mack, with a piece of chalk, drew five oblongs on the floor, each seven feet long and four feet wide, and in each square he wrote a name. These were the simulated beds. Each man had property rights inviolable in his space. He could legally fight a man who encroached on his square. The rest of the room was property common to all. That was in the first days when Mack and the boys sat on the floor, played cards hunkered down, and slept on the hard boards. Perhaps, save for an accident of weather, they might always have lived that way. However, an unprecedented rainfall which went on for over a month changed all that. House-ridden, the boys grew tired of squatting on the floor. Their eyes became outraged by the bare board walls. Because it sheltered them the house grew dear to them. And it had the charm of never knowing the entrance of an outraged landlord. For Lee Chong never came near it. Then one afternoon Hughie came in with an army cot which had a torn canvas. He spent two hours sewing up the rip with fishing line. And that night the others lying on the floor in their squares watched Hughie ooze gracefully into his cot--they heard him sigh with abysmal comfort and he was asleep and snoring before anyone else.

  The next day Mack puffed up the hill carrying a rusty set of springs he had found on a scrap-iron dump. The apathy was broken then. The boys outdid one another in beautifying the Palace Flophouse until after a few months it was, if anything, overfur nished. There were old carpets on the floor, chairs with and without seats. Mack had a wicker chaise longue painted bright red. There were tables, a grandfather clock without dial face or works. The walls were whitewashed which made it almost light and airy. Pictures began to appear--mostly calendars showing improbable luscious blondes holding bottles of Coca-Cola. Henri had contributed two pieces from his chicken-feather period. A bundle of gilded cattails stood in one corner and a sheaf of peacock feathers was nailed to the wall beside the grandfather clock.

  They were some time acquiring a stove and when they did find what they wanted, a silver-scrolled monster with floriated warming ovens and a front like a nickel-plated tulip garden, they had trouble getting it. It was too big to steal and its owner refused to part with it to the sick widow with eight children whom Mack invented and patronized in the same moment. The owner wanted a dollar and a half and didn't come down to eighty cents for three days. The boys closed at eighty cents and gave him an I.O.U. which he probably still has. This transaction took place in Seaside and the stove weighed three hundred pounds. Mack and Hughie exhausted every possibility of haulage for ten days and only when they realized that no one was going to take this stove home for them did they begin to carry it. It took them three days to carry it to Cannery Row, a distance of five miles, and they camped beside it at night. But once installed in the Palace Flophouse it was the glory and the hearth and the center. Its nickel flowers and foliage shone with a cheery light. It was the gold tooth of the Palace. Fired up, it warmed the big room. Its oven was wonderful and you could fry an egg on its shiny black lids.

  With the great stove came pride, and with pride, the Palace became home. Eddie planted morning glories to run over the door and Hazel acquired some rather rare fuchsia bushes planted in five-gallon cans which made the entrance formal and a little cluttered. Mack and the boys loved the Palace and they even cleaned it a little sometimes. In their minds they sneered at unsettled people who had no house to go to and occasionally in their pride they brought a guest home for a day or two.

  Eddie was understudy bartender at La Ida. He filled in when Whitey the regular bartender was sick, which was as often as Whitey could get away with it. Every time Eddie filled in, a few bottles disappeared, so he couldn't fill in too often. But Whitey liked to have Eddie take his place because he was convinced, and correctly, that Eddie was one man who wouldn't try to keep his job permanently. Almost anyone could have trusted Eddie to this extent. Eddie didn't have to remove much liquor. He kept a gallon jug under the bar and in the mouth of the jug there was a funnel. Anything left in the glasses Eddie poured into the funnel before he washed the glasses. If an argument or a song were going on at La Ida, or late at night when good fellowship had reached its logical conclusion, Eddie poured glasses half or two-thirds full into the funnel. The resulting punch which he took back to the Palace was always interesting and sometimes surprising. The mixture of rye, beer, bourbon, scotch, wine, rum and gin was fairly constant, but now and then some effete customer would order a stinger or an anisette or a curacao and these little touches gave a distinct character to the punch. It was Eddie's habit always to shake a little angostura into the jug just before he left. On a good night Eddie got three-quarters of a gallon. It was a source of satisfaction to him that nobody was out anything. He had observed that a man got just as drunk on half a glass as on a whole one, that is, if he was in the mood to get drunk at all.

  Eddie was a very desirable inhabitant of the Palace Flophouse. The others never asked him to help with the housecleaning and once Hazel washed four pairs of Eddie's socks.

  Now on the afternoon when Hazel was out collecting with Doc in the Great Tide Pool, the boys were sitting around in the Palace sipping the result of Eddie's latest contribution. Gay was there too, the latest member of the group. Eddie sipped speculatively from his glass and smacked his lips. "It's funny how you get a run," he said. "Take last night. There was at least ten guys ordered Manhattans. Sometimes maybe you don't get two calls for a Manhattan in a month. It's the grenadine gives the stuff that taste."

  Mack tasted his--a big taste--and refilled his glass. "Yes," he said somberly, "it's little things make the difference." He looked about to see how this gem had set with the others.

  Only Gay got the full impact. "Sure is," he said. "Does--"

  "Where's Hazel today?" Mack asked.

  Jones said, "Hazel went out with Doc to get some starfish."

  Mack nodded his head soberly. "That Doc is a hell of a nice fella," he said. "He'll give you a quarter any time. When I cut myself he put on a new bandage every day. A hell of a nice fella."

  The others nodded in profound agreement.

  "I been wondering for a long time," Mack continued, "what we could do for him--something nice. Something he'd like."

  "He'd like a dame," said Hughie.

  "He's got three four dames," said Jones. "You can always tell--when he pulls them front curtains closed and when he plays that kind of church music on the phonograph."

  Mack said reprovingly to Hughie, "Just because he doesn't run no dame naked through the streets in the daytime, you think Doc's celebrate."

  "What's celebrate?" Eddie asked.

  "That's when you can't get no dame," said Mack.

  "I thought it was a kind of a party," said Jones.

  A silence fell on the room. Mack shifted in his chaise longue. Hughie let the front legs of his chair down on the floor. They looked into space and then they all looked at Mack. Mack said, "Hum!"

  Eddie said, "What kind of a party you think Doc'd like?"

  "What other kind is there?" said Jones.

  Mack mused, "Doc wouldn't like this stuff from the winin' jug."

  "How do you know?" Hughie demanded. "You never offered him none."

  "Oh, I know," said Mack. "He's been to college. Once I seen a dame in a fur coat go in there. Never did see her come out. It was two o'clock the last I looked--and that church music goin'. No--you couldn't offer him none of this." He filled his glass again.

  "This tastes pretty nice after the third glass," Hughie said loyally.

  "No," said Mack. "Not for Doc. Have to be whiskey--the real thing."

  "He likes beer," said Jones. "He's all the time going over to Lee's for beer--sometimes in the middle of the night."

  Mack said, "I figure when you buy beer, you're buying too much tare. Take 8 percent beer--why you're spending your dough for 92 percent water and color and hops and stuff like that. Eddie," he added, "you think you could get four five bottles of whiskey at La Ida next time Whitey's sick?"

&nbs
p; "Sure," said Eddie. "Sure I could get it but that'd be the end--no more golden eggs. I think Johnnie's suspicious anyways. Other day he says, 'I smell a mouse named Eddie.' I was gonna lay low and only bring the jug for a while."

  "Yeah!" said Jones. "Don't you lose that job. If something happened to Whitey, you could fall right in there for a week or so 'til they got somebody else. I guess if we're goin' to give a party for Doc, we got to buy the whiskey. How much is whiskey a gallon?"

  "I don't know," said Hughie. "I never get more than a half pint at a time myself--at one time that is. I figure you get a quart and right away you got friends. But you get a half pint and you can drink it in the lot before--well before you got a lot of folks around."

  "It's going to take dough to give Doc a party," said Mack. "If we're going to give him a party at all it ought to be a good one. Should have a big cake. I wonder when is his birthday?"

  "Don't need a birthday for a party," said Jones.

  "No--but it's nice," said Mack. "I figure it would take ten or twelve bucks to give Doc a party you wouldn't be ashamed of."

  They looked at one another speculatively. Hughie suggested, "The Hediondo Cannery is hiring guys."

  "No," said Mack quickly. "We got good reputations and we don't want to spoil them. Every one of us keeps a job for a month or more when we take one. That's why we can always get a job when we need one. S'pose we take a job for a day or so--why we'll lose our reputation for sticking. Then if we needed a job there wouldn't nobody have us." The rest nodded quick agreement.

  "I figure I'm gonna work a couple of months--November and part of December," said Jones. "Makes it nice to have money around Christmas. We could cook a turkey this year."

  "By God, we could," said Mack. "I know a place up Carmel Valley where there's fifteen hundred in one flock."

  "Valley," said Hughie. "You know I used to collect stuff up the Valley for Doc, turtles and crayfish and frogs. Got a nickel apiece for frogs."

  "Me, too," said Gay. "I got five hundred frogs one time."

  "If Doc needs frogs it's a setup," said Mack. "We could go up the Carmel River and have a little outing and we wouldn't tell Doc what it was for and then we'd give him one hell of a party."