"He's got a can up there," Richard said.
20
In mid-morning the Model T truck rolled triumphantly home to Cannery Row and hopped the gutter and creaked up through the weeds to its place behind Lee Chong's. The boys blocked up the front wheels, drained what gasoline was left into a five-gallon can, took their frogs and went wearily home to the Palace Flophouse. Then Mack made a ceremonious visit to Lee Chong while the boys got a fire going in the big stove. Mack thanked Lee with dignity for lending the truck. He spoke of the great success of the trip, of the hundreds of frogs taken. Lee smiled shyly and waited for the inevitable.
"We're in the chips," Mack said enthusiastically. "Doc pays us a nickel a frog and we got about a thousand."
Lee nodded. The price was standard. Everybody knew that.
"Doc's away," said Mack. "Jesus, is he gonna be happy when he sees all them frogs."
Lee nodded again. He knew Doc was away and he also knew where the conversation was going.
"Say, by the way," said Mack as though he had just thought of it. "We're a little bit short right now--" He managed to make it sound like a very unusual situation.
"No whiskey," said Lee Chong and he smiled.
Mack was outraged. "What would we want whiskey for? Why we got a gallon of the finest whiskey you ever laid a lip over--a whole full God damned running over gallon. By the way," he continued, "I and the boys would like to have you just step up for a snort with us. They told me to ask you."
In spite of himself Lee smiled with pleasure. They wouldn't offer it if they didn't have it.
"No," said Mack, "I'll lay it on the line. I and the boys are pretty short and we're pretty hungry. You know the price of frogs is twenty for a buck. Now Doc is away and we're hungry. So what we thought is this. We don't want to see you lose nothing so we'll make over to you twenty-five frogs for a buck. You got a five-frog profit there and nobody loses his shirt."
"No," said Lee. "No money."
"Well, hell, Lee, all we need is a little groceries. I'll tell you what--we want to give Doc a little party when he gets back. We got plenty of liquor but we'd like to get maybe some steaks, and stuff like that. He's such a nice guy. Hell, when your wife had that bad tooth, who gave her the laudanum?"
Mack had him. Lee was indebted to Doc--deeply indebted. What Lee was having trouble comprehending was how his indebtedness to Doc made it necessary that he give credit to Mack.
"We don't want you to have like a mortgage on frogs," Mack went on. "We will actually deliver right into your hands twenty-five frogs for every buck of groceries you let us have and you can come to the party too."
Lee's mind nosed over the proposition like a mouse in a cheese cupboard. He could find nothing wrong with it. The whole thing was legitimate. Frogs were cash as far as Doc was concerned, the price was standard and Lee had a double profit. He had his five-frog margin and also he had the grocery mark-up. The whole thing hinged on whether they actually had any frogs.
"We go see flog," Lee said at last.
In front of the Palace he had a drink of the whiskey, inspected the damp sacks of frogs, and agreed to the transaction. He stipulated, however, that he would take no dead frogs. Now Mack counted fifty frogs into a can and walked back to the grocery with Lee and got two dollars' worth of bacon and eggs and bread.
Lee, anticipating a brisk business, brought a big packing case out and put it into the vegetable department. He emptied the fifty frogs into it and covered it with a wet gunny sack to keep his charges happy.
And business was brisk. Eddie sauntered down and bought two frogs' worth of Bull Durham. Jones was outraged a little later when the price of Coca-Cola went up from one to two frogs. In fact bitterness arose as the day wore on and prices went up. Steak, for instance--the very best steak shouldn't have been more than ten frogs a pound but Lee set it at twelve and a half. Canned peaches were sky high, eight frogs for a No. 2 can. Lee had a stranglehold on the consumers. He was pretty sure that the Thrift Market or Holman's would not approve of this new monetary system. If the boys wanted steak, they knew they had to pay Lee's prices. Feeling ran high when Hazel, who had coveted a pair of yellow silk arm bands for a long time, was told that if he didn't want to pay thirty-five frogs for them he could go somewhere else. The poison of greed was already creeping into the innocent and laudable merchandising agreement. Bitterness was piling up. But in Lee's packing case the frogs were piling up too.
Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost. While they were mildly irritated that Lee was taking them for an economic ride or perhaps hop, two dollars' worth of bacon and eggs was in their stomachs lying right on top of a fine slug of whiskey and right on top of the breakfast was another slug of whiskey. And they sat in their own chairs in their own house and watched Darling learning to drink canned milk out of a sardine can. Darling was and was destined to remain a very happy dog, for in the group of five men there were five distinct theories of dog training, theories which clashed so that Darling never got any training at all. From the first she was a precocious bitch. She slept on the bed of the man who had given her the last bribe. They really stole for her sometimes. They wooed her away from one another. Occasionally all five agreed that things had to change and that Darling must be disciplined, but in the discussion of method the intention invariably drifted away. They were in love with her. They found the little puddles she left on the floor charming. They bored all their acquaintances with her cuteness and they would have killed her with food if in the end she hadn't had better sense than they.
Jones made her a bed in the grandfather clock but Darling never used it. She slept with one or another of them as the fancy moved her. She chewed the blankets, tore the mattresses, sprayed the feathers out of the pillows. She coquetted and played her owners against one another. They thought she was wonderful. Mack intended to teach her tricks and go in vaudeville and he didn't even housebreak her.
They sat in the afternoon, smoking, digesting, considering, and now and then having a delicate drink from the jug. And each time they warned that they must not take too much, for it was to be for Doc. They must not forget that for a minute.
"What time you figure he'll be back?" Eddie asked.
"Usually gets in about eight or nine o'clock," said Mack. "Now we got to figure when we're going to give it. I think we ought to give it tonight."
"Sure," the others agreed.
"Maybe he might be tired," Hazel suggested. "That's a long drive."
"Hell," said Jones, "nothing rests you like a good party. I've been so dog tired my pants was draggin' and then I've went to a party and felt fine."
"We got to do some real thinkin'," said Mack. "Where we going to give it--here?"
"Well, Doc, he likes his music. He's always got his phonograph going at a party. Maybe he'd be more happy if we give it over at his place."
"You got something there," said Mack. "But I figure it ought to be like a surprise party. And how we going to make like it's a party and not just us bringin' over a jug of whiskey?"
"How about decorations?" Hughie suggested. "Like Fourth of July or Halloween."
Mack's eyes looked off into space and his lips were parted. He could see it all. "Hughie," he said, "I think you got something there. I never would of thought you could do it, but by God you really rang a duck that time." His voice grew mellow and his eyes looked into the future. "I can just see it," he said. "Doc comes home. He's tired. He drives up. The place is all lit up. He thinks somebody's broke in. He goes up the stairs and by God the place has got the hell decorated out of it. There's crepe paper and there's favors and a big cake. Jesus, he'd know it was a party then. And it wouldn't be no little mouse fart party neither. And we're kind of hiding so for a minute he don't know who done it. And then we come out yelling. Can't you see his face? By God, Hughie, I don't know how you thought o
f it."
Hughie blushed. His conception had been much more conservative, based in fact on the New Year's party at La Ida, but if it was going to be like that why Hughie was willing to take credit. "I just thought it would be nice," he said.
"Well, it's a pretty nice thing," said Mack, "and I don't mind saying when the surprise kind of wears off, I'm going to tell Doc who thought it up." They leaned back and considered the thing. And in their minds the decorated laboratory looked like the conservatory at the Hotel del Monte. They had a couple more drinks, just to savor the plan.
Lee Chong kept a very remarkable store. For instance, most stores buy yellow and black crepe paper and black paper cats, masks and papier-mache pumpkins in October. There is a brisk business for Halloween and then these items disappear. Maybe they are sold or thrown out, but you can't buy them say in June. The same is true of Fourth of July equipment, flags and bunting and skyrockets. Where are they in January? Gone--no one knows where. This was not Lee Chong's way. You could buy Valentines in November at Lee Chong's, shamrocks, hatchets and paper cherry trees in August. He had firecrackers he had laid up in 1920. One of the mysteries was where he kept his stock since his was not a very large store. He had bathing suits he had bought when long skirts and black stockings and head bandanas were in style. He had bicycle clips and tatting shuttles and Mah Jong sets. He had badges that said "Remember the Maine" and felt pennants commemorating "Fighting Bob." He had mementos of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915--little towers of jewels. And there was one other unortho doxy in Lee's way of doing business. He never had a sale, never reduced a price and never remaindered. An article that cost thirty cents in 1912 still was thirty cents although mice and moths might seem to some to have reduced its value. But there was no question about it. If you wanted to decorate a laboratory in a general way, not being specific about the season but giving the impression of a cross between Saturnalia and a pageant of the Flags of all Nations, Lee Chong's was the place to go for your stuff.
Mack and the boys knew that, but Mack said, "Where we going to get a big cake? Lee hasn't got nothing but them little bakery cakes."
Hughie had been so successful before he tried again. "Why'n't Eddie bake a cake?" he suggested. "Eddie used to be fry cook at the San Carlos for a while."
The instant enthusiasm for the idea drove from Eddie's brain the admission that he had never baked a cake.
Mack put it on a sentimental basis besides. "It would mean more to Doc," he said. "It wouldn't be like no God damned old soggy bought cake. It would have some heart in it."
As the afternoon and the whiskey went down the enthusiasm rose. There were endless trips to Lee Chong's. The frogs were gone from one sack and Lee's packing case was getting crowded. By six o'clock they had finished the gallon of whiskey and were buying half pints of Old Tennis Shoes at fifteen frogs a crack, but the pile of decorating materials was heaped on the floor of the Palace Flophouse--miles of crepe paper commemorating every holiday in vogue and some that had been abandoned.
Eddie watched his stove like a mother hen. He was baking a cake in the wash basin. The recipe was guaranteed not to fail by the company which made the shortening. But from the first the cake had acted strangely. When the batter was completed it writhed and panted as though animals were squirming and crawling inside it. Once in the oven it put up a bubble like a baseball which grew tight and shiny and then collapsed with a hissing sound. This left such a crater that Eddie made a new batch of batter and filled in the hole. And now the cake was behaving very curiously for while the bottom was burning and sending out a black smoke the top was rising and falling glueyly with a series of little explosions.
When Eddie finally put it out to cool, it looked like one of Bel Geddes' miniatures of a battlefield on a lava bed.
This cake was not fortunate, for while the boys were decorating the laboratory Darling ate what she could of it, was sick in it, and finally curled up in its still warm dough and went to sleep.
But Mack and the boys had taken the crepe paper, the masks, the broomsticks and paper pumpkins, the red, white, and blue bunting, and moved over the lot and across the street to the laboratory. They disposed of the last of the frogs for a quart of Old Tennis Shoes and two gallons of 49-cent wine.
"Doc is very fond of wine," said Mack. "I think he likes it even better than whiskey."
Doc never locked the laboratory. He went on the theory that anyone who really wanted to break in could easily do it, that people were essentially honest and that, finally, there wasn't much the average person would want to steal there anyway. The valuable things were books and records, surgical instruments and optical glass and such things that a practical working burglar wouldn't look at twice. His theory had been sound as far as burglars, snatch thieves, and kleptomaniacs were concerned, but it had been completely ineffective regarding his friends. Books were often "borrowed." No can of beans ever survived his absence and on several occasions, returning late, he had found guests in his bed.
The boys piled the decorations in the anteroom and then Mack stopped them. "What's going to make Doc happiest?" he asked.
"The party!" said Hazel.
"No," said Mack.
"The decorations?" Hughie suggested. He felt responsible for the decorations.
"No," said Mack, "the frogs. That's going to make him feel best of all. Any maybe by the time he gets here, Lee Chong might be closed and he can't even see his frogs until tomorrow. No, sir," Mack cried. "Them frogs ought to be right here, right in the middle of the room with a piece of bunting on it and a sign that says, 'Welcome Home, Doc.' "
The committee which visited Lee met with stern opposition. All sorts of possibilities suggested themselves to his suspicious brain. It was explained that he was going to be at the party so he could watch his property, that no one questioned that they were his. Mack wrote out a paper transferring the frogs to Lee in case there should be any question.
When his protests weakened a little they carried the packing case over to the laboratory, tacked red, white, and blue bunting over it, lettered the big sign with iodine on a card, and they started the decorating from there. They had finished the whiskey by now and they really felt in a party mood. They criss-crossed the crepe paper, and put the pumpkins up. Passers-by in the street joined the party and rushed over to Lee's to get more to drink. Lee Chong joined the party for a while but his stomach was notoriously weak and he got sick and had to go home. At eleven o'clock they fried the steaks and ate them. Someone digging through the records found an album of Count Basie and the great phonograph roared out. The noise could be heard from the boat works to La Ida. A group of customers from the Bear Flag mistook Western Biological for a rival house and charged up the stairs whooping with joy. They were evicted by the outraged hosts but only after a long, happy, and bloody battle that took out the front door and broke two windows. The crashing of jars was unpleasant. Hazel going through the kitchen to the toilet tipped the frying pan of hot grease on himself and the floor and was badly burned.
At one-thirty a drunk wandered in and passed a remark which was considered insulting to Doc. Mack hit him a clip which is still remembered and discussed. The man rose off his feet, described a small arc, and crashed through the packing case in among the frogs. Someone trying to change a record dropped the tone arm down and broke the crystal.
No one has studied the psychology of a dying party. It may be raging, howling, boiling, and then a fever sets in and a little silence and then quickly quickly it is gone, the guests go home or go to sleep or wander away to some other affair and they leave a dead body.
The lights blazed in the laboratory. The front door hung sideways by one hinge. The floor was littered with broken glass. Phonograph records, some broken, some only nicked, were strewn about. The plates with pieces of steak ends and coagulating grease were on the floor, on top of the bookcases, under the bed. Whiskey glasses lay sadly on their sides. Someone trying to climb the bookcases had pulled out a whole section
of books and spilled them in broken-backed confusion on the floor. And it was empty, it was over.
Through the broken end of the packing case a frog hopped and sat feeling the air for danger and then another joined him. They could smell the fine damp cool air coming in the door and in through the broken windows. One of them sat on the fallen card which said "Welcome Home, Doc." And then the two hopped timidly toward the door.
For quite a while a little river of frogs hopped down the steps, a swirling, moving river. For quite a while Cannery Row crawled with frogs--was overrun with frogs. A taxi which brought a very late customer to the Bear Flag squashed five frogs in the street. But well before dawn they had all gone. Some found the sewer and some worked their way up the hill to the reservoir and some went into culverts and some only hid among the weeds in the vacant lot.
And the lights blazed in the quiet empty laboratory.
21
In the back room of the laboratory the white rats in their cages ran and skittered and squeaked. In the corner of a separate cage a mother rat lay over her litter of blind naked children and let them suckle and the mother stared about nervously and fiercely.
In the rattlesnake cage the snakes lay with their chins resting on their own coils and they stared straight ahead out of their scowling dusty black eyes. In another cage a Gila monster with a skin like a beaded bag reared slowly up and clawed heavily and sluggishly at the wire. The anemones in the aquaria blossomed open, with green and purple tentacles and pale green stomachs. The little sea water pump whirred softly and the needles of driven water hissed into the tanks forcing lines of bubbles under the surface.
It was the hour of the pearl. Lee Chong brought his garbage cans out to the curb. The bouncer stood on the porch of the Bear Flag and scratched his stomach. Sam Malloy crawled out of the boiler and sat on his wood block and looked at the lightening east. Over on the rocks near Hopkins Marine Station the sea lions barked monotonously. The old Chinaman came up out of the sea with his dripping basket and flip-flapped up the hill.
The Short Novels of John Steinbeck Page 52