"Not if I play 'em close. What I got to lose? What breaks did I ever get?"
4
Kate was feeling better. The new medicine seemed to be doing her some good. The pain in her hands was abated, and it seemed to her that her fingers were straighter, the knuckles not so swollen. She had had a good night's sleep, the first in a long time, and she felt good, even a little excited. She planned to have a boiled egg for breakfast. She got up and put on a dressing gown and brought a hand mirror back to the bed. Lying high against the pillows, she studied her face.
The rest had done wonders. Pain makes you set your jaw, and your eyes grow falsely bright with anxiety, and the muscles over the temples and along the cheeks, even the weak muscles near to the nose, stand out a little, and that is the look of sickness and of resistance to suffering.
The difference in her rested face was amazing. She looked ten years younger. She opened her lips and looked at her teeth. Time to go for a cleaning. She took care of her teeth. The gold bridge where the molars were gone was the only repair in her mouth. It was remarkable how young she looked, Kate thought. Just one night's sleep and she snapped back. That was another thing that fooled them. They thought she would be weak and delicate. She smiled to herself--delicate like a steel trap. But then she always took care of herself--no liquor, no drugs, and recently she had stopped drinking coffee. And it paid off. She had an angelic face. She put the mirror a little higher so that the crepe at her throat did not reflect.
Her thought jumped to that other angelic face so like hers--what was his name?--what the hell was his name--Alec? She could see him, moving slowly past, his white surplice edged with lace, his sweet chin down and his hair glowing under the candlelight. He held the oaken staff and its brass cross angled ahead of him. There was something frigidly beautiful about him, something untouched and untouchable. Well, had anything or anybody ever really touched Kate--really got through and soiled her? Certainly not. Only the hard outside had been brushed by contacts. Inside she was intact--as clean and bright as this boy Alec--was that his name?
She chuckled--mother of two sons--and she looked like a child. And if anyone had seen her with the blond one--could they have any doubt? She thought how it would be to stand beside him in a crowd and let people find out for themselves. What would--Aron, that was the name--what would he do if he knew? His brother knew. That smart little son of a bitch--wrong word--must not call him that. Might be too true. Some people believed it. And not smart bastard either--born in holy wedlock. Kate laughed aloud. She felt good. She was having a good time.
The smart one--the dark one--bothered her. He was like Charles. She had respected Charles--and Charles would probably have killed her if he could.
Wonderful medicine--it not only stopped the arthritic pain, it gave her back her courage. Pretty soon she could sell out and go to New York as she had always planned. Kate thought of her fear of Ethel. How sick she must-have been--the poor dumb old bag! How would it be to murder her with kindness? When Joe found her, how about--well, how about taking her on to New York? Keep her close.
A funny notion came to Kate. That would be a comical murder, and a murder no one under any circumstances could solve or even suspect. Chocolates--boxes of chocolates, bowls of fondant, bacon, crisp bacon--fat, port wine, and then butter, everything soaked in butter and whipped cream; no vegetables, no fruit--and no amusement either. Stay in the house, dear. I trust you. Look after things. You're tired. Go to bed. Let me fill your glass. I got these new sweets for you. Would you like to take the box to bed? Well, if you don't feel good why don't you take a physic? These cashews are nice, don't you think? The old bitch would blow up and burst in six months. Or how about a tapeworm? Did anyone ever use tapeworms? Who was the man who couldn't get water to his mouth in a sieve--Tantalus?
Kate's lips were smiling sweetly and a gaiety was coming over her. Before she went it might be good to give a party for her sons. Just a simple little party with a circus afterward for her darlings--her jewels. And then she thought of Aron's beautiful face so like her own and a strange pain--a little collapsing pain--arose in her chest. He wasn't smart. He couldn't protect himself. The dark brother might be dangerous. She had felt his quality. Cal had beaten her. Before she went away she would teach him a lesson. Maybe--why, sure--maybe a dose of the clap might set that young man back on his heels.
Suddenly she knew that she did not want Aron to know about her. Maybe he could come to her in New York. He would think she had always lived in an elegant little house on the East Side. She would take him to the theater, to the opera, and people would see them together and wonder at their loveliness, and recognize that they were either brother and sister or mother and son. No one could fail to know. They could go together to Ethel's funeral. She would need an oversized coffin and six wrestlers to carry it. Kate was so filled with amusement at her thoughts that she did not hear Joe's knocking on the door. He opened it a crack and looked in and saw her gay and smiling face.
"Breakfast," he said and nudged the door open with the edge of the linen-covered tray. He pushed the door closed with his knee. "Want it there?" he asked and gestured toward the gray room with his chin.
"No. I'll have it right here. And I want a boiled egg and a piece of cinnamon toast. Four and a half minutes on the egg. Make sure. I don't want it gooey."
"You must feel better, ma'am."
"I do," she said. "That new medicine is wonderful. You look dragged by dogs, Joe. Don't you feel well?"
"I'm all right," he said and set the tray on the table in front of the big deep chair. "Four and a half minutes?"
"That's right. And if there's a good apple--a crisp apple--bring that too."
"You ain't et like this since I knew you," he said.
In the kitchen, waiting for the cook to boil the egg, he was apprehensive. Maybe she knew. He'd have to be careful. But hell! she couldn't hate him for something he didn't know. No crime in that.
Back in her room he said, "Didn't have no apples. He said this was a good pear."
"I'd like that even better," said Kate.
He watched her chip off the egg and dip a spoon into the shell. "How is it?"
"Perfect!" said Kate. "Just perfect."
"You look good," he said.
"I feel good. You look like hell. What's the matter?"
Joe went into it warily. "Ma'am, there ain't nobody needs five hundred like I do."
She said playfully, "There isn't anyone who needs--"
"What?"
"Forget it. What are you trying to say? You couldn't find her--is that it? Well, if you did a good job looking, you'll get your five hundred. Tell me about it." She picked up the salt shaker and scattered a few grains into the open eggshell.
Joe put an artificial joy on his face. "Thanks," he said. "I'm in a spot. I need it. Well, I looked in Pajaro and Watsonville. Got a line on her in Watsonville but she'd went to Santa" Cruz. Got a smell of her there but she was gone."
Kate tasted the egg and added more salt. "That all?"
"No," said Joe. "I went it blind there. Dropped down to San Luis an' she had been there too but gone."
"No trace? No idea where she went?"
Joe fiddled with his fingers. His whole pitch, maybe his whole life, depended on his next words, and he was reluctant to say them.
"Come on," she said at last. "You got something--what is it?"
"Well, it ain't much. I don't know what to think of it."
"Don't think. Just tell. I'll think," she said sharply.
"Might not even be true."
"For Christ's sake!" she said angrily.
"Well, I talked to the last guy that seen her. Guy named Joe, like me--"
"Did you get his grandmother's name?" she asked sarcastically.
"This guy Joe says she loaded up on beer one night an' she said how she's going to come back to Salinas an' lay low. Then she dropped out of sight. This guy Joe didn't know nothing more."
Kate was startled out of control.
Joe read her quick start, the apprehension, and then the almost hopeless fear and weariness. Whatever it was, Joe had something. He had got the breaks at last.
She looked up from her lap and her twisted fingers. "We'll forget the old fart," she said. "You'll get your five hundred, Joe."
Joe breathed shallowly, afraid that any sound might drag her out of her self-absorption. She had believed him. More than that, she was believing things he had not told her. He wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible. He said, "Thank you, ma'am," but very softly, and he moved silently toward the door.
His hand was on the knob when she spoke with elaborate casualness. "Joe, by the way--"
"Ma'am?"
"If you should hear anything about--her, let me know, will you?"
"I sure will. Want me to dig into it?"
"No. Don't bother. It isn't that important."
In his room, with the door latched, Joe sat down and folded his arms. He smiled to himself. And instantly he began to work out the future course. He decided to let her brood on it till, say, next week. Let her relax, and then bring up Ethel again. He did not know what his weapon was or how he was going to use it. But he did know that it was very sharp and he itched to use it. He would have laughed out loud if he had known that Kate had gone to the gray room and locked its door, and that she sat still in the big chair and her eyes were closed.
PART FIVE
Chapter 46
Sometimes, but not often, a rain comes to the Salinas Valley in November. It is so rare that the Journal or the Index or both carry editorials about it. The hills turn to a soft green overnight and the air smells good. Rain at this time is not particularly good in an agricultural sense unless it is going to continue, and this is extremely unusual. More commonly, the dryness comes back and the fuzz of grass withers or a little frost curls it and there's that amount of seed wasted.
The war years were wet years, and there were many people who blamed the strange intransigent weather on the firing of the great guns in France. This was seriously considered in articles and in arguments.
We didn't have many troops in France that first winter, but we had millions in training, getting ready to go--painful as the war was, it was exciting too. The Germans were not stopped. In fact, they had taken the initiative again, driving methodically toward Paris, and God knew when they could be stopped--if they could be stopped at all. General Pershing would save us if we could be saved. His trim, beautifully uniformed soldierly figure made its appearance in every paper every day. His chin was granite and there was no wrinkle on his tunic. He was the epitome of a perfect soldier. No one knew what he really thought.
We knew we couldn't lose and yet we seemed to be going about losing. You couldn't buy flour, white flour, any more without taking four times the quantity of brown flour. Those who could afford it ate bread and biscuits made with white flour and made mash for the chickens with the brown.
In the old Troop C armory the Home Guard drilled, men over fifty and not the best soldier material, but they took setting-up exercises twice a week, wore Home Guard buttons and overseas caps, snapped orders at one another, and wrangled eternally about who should be officers. William C. Burt died right on the armory floor in the middle of a push-up. His heart couldn't take it.
There were Minute Men too, so called because they made one-minute speeches in favor of America in moving-picture theaters and in churches. They had buttons too.
The women rolled bandages and wore Red Cross uniforms and thought of themselves as Angels of Mercy. And everybody knitted something for someone. There were wristlets, short tubes of wool to keep the wind from whistling up soldiers' sleeves, and there were knitted helmets with only a hole in front to look out of. These were designed to keep the new tin helmets from freezing to the head.
Every bit of really first-grade leather was taken for officers' boots and for Sam Browne belts. These belts were handsome and only officers could wear them. They consisted of a wide belt and a strip that crossed the chest and passed under the left epaulet. We copied them from the British, and even the British had forgotten their original purpose, which was possibly to support a heavy sword. Swords were not carried except on parade, but an officer would not be caught dead without a Sam Browne belt. A good one cost as much as twenty-five dollars.
We learned a lot from the British--and if they had not been good fighting men we wouldn't have taken it. Men began to wear their handkerchiefs in their sleeves and some foppish lieutenants carried swagger sticks. One thing we resisted for a long time, though. Wrist-watches were just too silly. It didn't seem likely that we would ever copy the Limeys in that.
We had our internal enemies too, and we exercised vigilance. San Jose had a spy scare, and Salinas was not likely to be left behind--not the way Salinas was growing.
For about twenty years Mr. Fenchel had done hand tailoring in Salinas. He was short and round and he had an accent that made you laugh. All day he sat cross-legged on his table in the little shop on Alisal Street, and in the evening he walked home to his small white house far out on Central Avenue. He was forever painting his house and the white picket fence in front of it. Nobody had given his accent a thought until the war came along, but suddenly we knew. It was German. We had our own personal German. It didn't do him any good to bankrupt himself buying war bonds. That was too easy a way to cover up.
The Home Guard wouldn't take him in. They didn't want a spy knowing their secret plans for defending Salinas. And who wanted to wear a suit made by an enemy? Mr. Fenchel sat all day on his table and he didn't have anything to do, so he basted and ripped and sewed and ripped on the same piece of cloth over and over.
We used every cruelty we could think of on Mr. Fenchel. He was our German. He passed our house every day, and there had been a time when he spoke to every man and woman and child and dog, and everyone had answered. Now no one spoke to him, and I can see now in my mind his tubby loneliness and his face full of hurt pride.
My little sister and I did our part with Mr. Fenchel, and it is one of those memories of shame that still makes me break into a sweat and tighten up around the throat. We were standing in our front yard on the lawn one evening and we saw him coming with little fat steps. His black homburg was brushed and squarely set on his head. I don't remember that we discussed our plan but we must have, to have carried it out so well.
As he came near, my sister and I moved slowly across the street side by side. Mr. Fenchel looked up and saw us moving toward him. We stopped in the gutter as he came by.
He broke into a smile and said, "Gut efning, Chon. Gut efning, Mary."
We stood stiffly side by side and we said in unison, "Hoch der Kaiser!"
I can see his face now, his startled innocent blue eyes. He tried to say something and then he began to cry. Didn't even try to pretend he wasn't. He just stood there sobbing. And do you know?--Mary and I turned around and walked stiffly across the street and into our front yard. We felt horrible. I still do when I think of it.
We were too young to do a good job on Mr. Fenchel. That took strong men--about thirty of them. One Saturday night they collected in a bar and marched in a column of fours out Central Avenue, saying, "Hup! Hup!" in unison. They tore down Mr. Fenchel's white picket fence and burned the front out of his house. No Kaiser-loving son of a bitch was going to get away with it with us. And then Salinas could hold up its head with San Jose.
Of course that made Watsonville get busy. They tarred and feathered a Pole they thought was a German. He had an accent.
We of Salinas did all of the things that are inevitably done in a war, and we thought the inevitable thoughts. We screamed over good rumors and died of panic at bad news. Everybody had a secret that he had to spread obliquely to keep its identity as a secret. Our pattern of life changed in the usual manner. Wages and prices went up. A whisper of shortage caused us to buy and store food. Nice quiet ladies clawed one another over a can of tomatoes.
It wasn't all bad or cheap or hysterical
. There was heroism too. Some men who could have avoided the army enlisted, and others objected to the war on moral or religious grounds and took the walk up Golgotha which normally comes with that. There were people who gave everything they had to the war because it was the last war and by winning it we would remove war like a thorn from the flesh of the world and there wouldn't be any more such horrible nonsense.
There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope--I hope he didn't suffer--and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is. And it is true that there were some people who, when their sorrow was beginning to lose its savor, gently edged it toward pride and felt increasingly important because of their loss. Some of these even made a good thing of it after the war was over. That is only natural, just as it is natural for a man whose life function is the making of money to make money out of a war. No one blamed a man for that, but it was expected that he should invest a part of his loot in war bonds. We thought we invented all of it in Salinas, even the sorrow.
Chapter 47
1
In the Trask house next to Reynaud's Bakery, Lee and Adam put up a map of the western front with lines of colored pins snaking down, and this gave them a feeling of participation. Then Mr. Kelly died and Adam Trask was appointed to take his place on the draft board. He was the logical man for the job. The ice plant did not take up much of his time, and he had a clear service record and an honorable discharge himself.
Adam Trask had seen a war--a little war of maneuver and butchery, but at least he had experienced the reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can. Adam didn't remember his war very well. Certain sharp pictures stood out in his memory, a man's face, the piled and burning bodies, the clang of saber scabbards at fast trot, the uneven, tearing sound of firing carbines, the thin cold voice of a bugle in the night. But Adam's pictures were frozen. There was no motion or emotion in them--illustrations in the pages of a book, and not very well drawn.