East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

  3

  Cathy grew more lovely all the time. The delicate blooming skin, the golden hair, the wide-set, modest, and yet promising eyes, the little mouth full of sweetness, caught attention and held it. She finished the eight grades of grammar school with such a good record that her parents entered her in the small high school, although in that time it was not usual for a girl to go on with her studies. But Cathy said she wanted to be a teacher, which delighted her mother and father, for this was the one profession of dignity open to a girl of a good but not well-to-do family. Parents took honor from a daughter who was a teacher.

  Cathy was fourteen when she entered high school. She had always been precious to her parents, but with her entrance into the rarities of algebra and Latin she climbed into clouds where her parents could not follow. They had lost her. They felt that she was translated to a higher order.

  The teacher of Latin was a pale intense young man who had failed in divinity school and yet had enough education to teach the inevitable grammar, Caesar, Cicero. He was a quiet young man who warmed his sense of failure to his bosom. Deep in himself he felt that he had been rejected by God, and for cause.

  For a time it was noticed that a flame leaped in James Grew and some force glowed in his eyes. He was never seen with Cathy and no relationship was even suspected.

  James Grew became a man. He walked on his toes and sang to himself. He wrote letters so persuasive that the directors of his divinity school looked favorably on readmitting him.

  And then the flame went out. His shoulders, held so high and square, folded dejectedly. His eyes grew feverish and his hands twitched. He was seen in church at night, on his knees, moving his lips over prayers. He missed school and sent word that he was ill when it was known that he was walking all alone in the hills beyond the town.

  One night, late, he tapped on the door of the Ames house. Mr. Ames complained his way out of bed, lighted a candle, flung an overcoat over his nightgown, and went to the door. It was a wild and crazy-looking James Grew who stood before him, his eyes shining and his body one big shudder.

  "I've got to see you," he said hoarsely to Mr. Ames.

  "It's after midnight," Mr. Ames said sternly.

  "I've got to see you alone. Put on some clothes and come outside. I've got to talk to you."

  ''Young man, I think you're drunk or sick. Go home and get some sleep. It's after midnight."

  "I can't wait. I've got to talk to you."

  "Come down to the tannery in the morning," said Mr. Ames, and he closed the door firmly on the reeling caller and stood inside, listening. He heard the wailing voice, "I can't wait. I can't wait," and then the feet dragged slowly down the steps.

  Mr. Ames shielded the candlelight away from his eyes with his cupped hand and went back to bed. He thought he saw Cathy's door close very silently, but perhaps the leaping candlelight had fooled his eyes, for a portiere seemed to move too.

  "What in the world?" his wife demanded when he came back to the bedside.

  Mr. Ames didn't know why he answered as he did--perhaps to save discussion. "A drunken man," he said. "Got the wrong house."

  "I don't know what the world is coming to," said Mrs. Ames.

  As he lay in the darkness after the light was out he saw the green circle left in his eyes by the candle flame, and in its whirling, pulsing frame he saw the frantic, beseeching eyes of James Grew. He didn't go back to sleep for a long time.

  In the morning a rumor ran through the town, distorted here and there, added to, but by afternoon the story clarified. The sexton had found James Grew stretched on the floor in front of the altar. The whole top of his head was blown off. Beside him lay a shotgun, and beside it the piece of stick with which he had pushed the trigger. Near him on the floor was a candlestick from the altar. One of the three candles was still burning. The other two had not been lighted. And on the floor were two books, the hymnal and the Book of Common Prayer, one on top of the other. The way the sexton figured it, James Grew had propped the gun barrel on the books to bring it in line with his temple. The recoil of the discharge had thrown the shotgun off the books.

  A number of people remembered having heard an explosion early in the morning, before daylight. James Grew left no letter. No one could figure why he had done it.

  Mr. Ames' first impulse was to go to the coroner with his story of the midnight call. Then he thought, What good would it do? If I knew anything it would be different. But I don't know a single thing. He had a sick feeling in his stomach. He told himself over and over that it was not his fault. How could I have helped it? I don't even know what he wanted. He felt guilty and miserable.

  At dinner his wife talked about the suicide and he couldn't eat. Cathy sat silent, but no more silent than usual. She ate with little dainty nips and wiped her mouth often on her napkin.

  Mrs. Ames went over the matter of the body and the gun in detail. "There's one thing I meant to speak of," she said. "That drunken man who came to the door last night--could that have been young Grew?"

  "No," he said quickly.

  "Are you sure? Could you see him in the dark?"

  "I had a candle," he said sharply. "Didn't look anything like, had a big beard."

  "No need to snap at me," she said. "I just wondered."

  Cathy wiped her mouth, and when she laid the napkin on her lap she was smiling.

  Mrs. Ames turned to her daughter. "You saw him every day in school, Cathy. Has he seemed sad lately? Did you notice anything that might mean--"

  Cathy looked down at her plate and then up. "I thought he was sick," she said. "Yes, he has looked bad. Everybody was talking in school today. And somebody--I don't remember who--said that Mr. Grew was in some kind of trouble in Boston. I didn't hear what kind of trouble. We all liked Mr. Grew." She wiped her lips delicately.

  That was Cathy's method. Before the next day was out everybody in town knew that James Grew had been in trouble in Boston, and no one could possibly imagine that Cathy had planted the story. Even Mrs. Ames had forgotten where she heard it.

  4

  Soon after her sixteenth birthday a change came over Cathy. One morning she did not get up for school. Her mother went into her room and found her in bed, staring at the ceiling. "Hurry, you'll be late. It's nearly nine."

  "I'm not going." There was no emphasis in her voice.

  "Are you sick?"

  "No."

  "Then hurry, get up."

  "I'm not going."

  "You must be sick. You've never missed a day."

  "I'm not going to school," Cathy said calmly. "I'm never going to school again."

  Her mother's mouth fell open. "What do you mean?"

  "Not ever," said Cathy and continued to stare at the ceiling.

  "Well, we'll just see what your father has to say about that! With all our work and expense, and two years before you get your certificate!" Then she came close and said softly, "You aren't thinking of getting married?"

  "No."

  "What's that book you're hiding?"

  "Here, I'm not hiding it."

  "Oh! Alice in Wonderland. You're too big for that."

  Cathy said, "I can get to be so little you can't even see me."

  "What in the world are you talking about?"

  "Nobody can find me."

  Her mother said angrily, "Stop making jokes. I don't know what you're thinking of. What does Miss Fancy think she is going to do?"

  "I don't know yet," said Cathy. "I think I'll go away."

  "Well, you just lie there, Miss Fancy, and when your father comes home he'll have a thing or two to say to you."

  Cathy turned her head very slowly and looked at her mother. Her eyes were expressionless and cold. And suddenly Mrs. Ames was afraid of her daughter. She went out quietly and closed the door. In her kitchen she sat down and cupped her hands in her lap and stared out the window at the weathering carriage house.

  Her daughter had become a stranger to her. She felt, as most parents do at one time o
r another, that she was losing control, that the bridle put in her hands for the governing of Cathy was slipping through her fingers. She did not know that she had never had any power over Cathy. She had been used for Cathy's purposes always. After a while Mrs. Ames put on a bonnet and went to the tannery. She wanted to talk to her husband away from the house.

  In the afternoon Cathy rose listlessly from her bed and spent a long time in front of the mirror.

  That evening Mr. Ames, hating what he had to do, delivered a lecture to his daughter. He spoke of her duty, her obligation, her natural love for her parents. Toward the end of his speech he was aware that she was not listening to him. This made him angry and he fell into threats. He spoke of the authority God had given him over his child and of how this natural authority had been armed by the state. He had her attention now. She looked him right in the eyes. Her mouth smiled a little, and her eyes did not seem to blink. Finally he had to look away, and this enraged him further. He ordered her to stop her nonsense. Vaguely he threatened her with whipping if she did not obey him.

  He ended on a note of weakness. "I want you to promise me that you will go to school in the morning and stop your foolishness."

  Her face was expressionless. The little mouth was straight. "All right," she said.

  Later that night Mr. Ames said to his wife with an assurance he did not feel, "You see, it just needs a little authority. Maybe we've been too lax. But she has been a good child. I guess she just forgot who's boss. A little sternness never hurt anybody." He wished he were as confident as his words.

  In the morning she was gone. Her straw traveling basket was gone and the best of her clothing. Her bed was neatly made. The room was impersonal--nothing to indicate that a girl had grown up in it. There were no pictures, no mementos, none of the normal clutter of growing. Cathy had never played with dolls. The room had no Cathy imprint.

  In his way Mr. Ames was an intelligent man. He clapped on his derby hat and walked quickly to the railroad station. The station agent was certain. Cathy had taken the early morning train. She had bought a ticket for Boston. He helped Mr. Ames write a telegram to the Boston police. Mr. Ames bought a round-trip ticket and caught the nine-fifty train to Boston. He was a very good man in a crisis.

  That night Mrs. Ames sat in the kitchen with the door closed. She was white and she gripped the table with her hands to control her shaking. The sound, first of the blows and then of the screaming, came clearly to her through the closed doors.

  Mr. Ames was not good at whipping because he had never done it. He lashed at Cathy's legs with the buggy whip, and when she stood quietly staring at him with calm cold eyes he lost his temper. The first blows were tentative and timid, but when she did not cry he slashed at her sides and shoulders. The whip licked and cut. In his rage he missed her several times or got too close so that the whip wrapped around her body.

  Cathy learned quickly. She found him out and knew him, and once she had learned she screamed, she writhed, she cried, she begged, and she had the satisfaction of feeling the blows instantly become lighter.

  Mr. Ames was frightened at the noise and hurt he was creating. He stopped. Cathy dropped back on the bed, sobbing. And if he had looked, her father would have seen that there were no tears in her eyes, but rather the muscles of her neck were tight and there were lumps just under her temples where the jaw muscles knotted.

  He said, "Now, will you ever do that again?"

  "No, oh, no! Forgive me," Cathy said. She turned over on the bed so that her father could not see the coldness in her face.

  "See you remember who you are. And don't forget what I am."

  Cathy's voice caught. She produced a dry sob. "I won't forget," she said.

  In the kitchen Mrs. Ames wrestled her hands. Her husband put his fingers on her shoulder.

  "I hated to do it," he said. "I had to. And I think it did her good. She seems like a changed girl to me. Maybe we haven't bent the twig enough. We've spared the rod. Maybe we were wrong." And he knew that although his wife had insisted on the whipping, although she had forced him to whip Cathy, she hated him for doing it. Despair settled over him.

  5

  There seemed no doubt that it was what Cathy needed. As Mr. Ames said, "It kind of opened her up." She had always been tractable but now she became thoughtful too. In the weeks that followed she helped her mother in the kitchen and offered to help more than was needed. She started to knit an afghan for her mother, a large project that would take months. Mrs. Ames told the neighbors about it. "She has such a fine color sense--rust and yellow. She's finished three squares already."

  For her father Cathy kept a ready smile. She hung up his hat when he came in and turned his chair properly under the light to make it easy for him to read.

  Even in school she was changed. Always she had been a good student, but now she began to make plans for the future. She talked to the principal about examinations for her teaching certificate, perhaps a year early. And the principal looked over her record and thought she might well try it with hope of success. He called on Mr. Ames at the tannery to discuss it.

  "She didn't tell us any of this," Mr. Ames said proudly.

  "Well, maybe I shouldn't have told you. I hope I haven't ruined a surprise."

  Mr. and Mrs. Ames felt that they had blundered on some magic which solved all of their problems. They put it down to an unconscious wisdom which comes only to parents. "I never saw such a change in a person in my life," Mr. Ames said.

  "But she was always a good child," said his wife. "And have you noticed how pretty she's getting? Why, she's almost beautiful. Her cheeks have so much color."

  "I don't think she'll be teaching school long with her looks," said Mr. Ames.

  It was true that Cathy glowed. The childlike smile was constantly on her lips while she went about her preparations. She had all the time in the world. She cleaned the cellar and stuffed papers all around the edges of the foundation to block the draft. When the kitchen door squeaked she oiled the hinges and then the lock that turned too hard, and while she had the oil can out she oiled the front-door hinges too. She made it her duty to keep the lamps filled and their chimneys clean. She invented a way of dipping the chimneys in a big can of kerosene she had in the basement.

  "You'd have to see it to believe it," her father said. And it wasn't only at home either. She braved the smell of the tannery to visit her father. She was just past sixteen and of course he thought of her as a baby. He was amazed at her questions about business.

  "She's smarter than some men I could name," he told his foreman. "She might be running the business someday."

  She was interested not only in the tanning processes but in the business end too. Her father explained the loans, the payments, the billing, and the payroll. He showed her how to open the safe and was pleased that after the first try she remembered the combination.

  "The way I look at it is this," he told his wife. "We've all of us got a little of the Old Nick in us. I wouldn't want a child that didn't have some gumption. The way I see it, that's just a kind of energy. If you just check it and keep it in control, why, it will go in the right direction."

  Cathy mended all of her clothes and put her things in order.

  One day in May she came home from school and went directly to her knitting needles. Her mother was dressed to go out. "I have to go to the Altar Guild," she said. "It's about the cake sale next week. I'm chairman. Your father wondered if you would go by the bank and pick up the money for the payroll and take it to the tannery. I told him about the cake sale so I can't do it."

  "I'd like to," said Cathy.

  "They'll have the money ready for you in a bag," said Mrs. Ames, and she hurried out.

  Cathy worked quickly but without hurry. She put on an old apron to cover her clothes. In the basement she found a jelly jar with a top and carried it out to the carriage house where the tools were kept. In the chickenyard she caught a little pullet, took it to the block and chopped its head off, and h
eld the writhing neck over the jelly jar until it was full of blood. Then she carried the quivering pullet to the manure pile and buried it deep. Back in the kitchen she took off the apron and put it in the stove and poked the coals until a flame sprang up on the cloth. She washed her hands and inspected her shoes and stockings and wiped a dark spot from the toe of her right shoe. She looked at her face in the mirror. Her cheeks were bright with color and her eyes shone and her mouth turned up in its small childlike smile. On her way out she hid the jelly jar under the lowest part of the kitchen steps. Her mother had not been gone even ten minutes.

  Cathy walked lightly, almost dancingly around the house and into the street. The trees were breaking into leaf and a few early dandelions were in yellow flower on the lawns. Cathy walked gaily toward the center of the town where the bank was. And she was so fresh and pretty that people walking turned and looked after her when she had passed.

  6

  The fire broke out at about three o'clock in the morning. It rose, flared, roared, crashed, and crumbled in on itself almost before anyone noticed it. When the volunteers ran up, pulling their hose cart, there was nothing for them to do but wet down the roofs of the neighboring houses to keep them from catching fire.

  The Ames house had gone up like a rocket. The volunteers and the ordinary audience fires attract looked around at the lighted faces, trying to see Mr. and Mrs. Ames and their daughter. It came to everyone at once that they were not there. People gazed at the broad ember-bed and saw themselves and their children in there, and hearts rose up and pumped against throats. The volunteers began to dump water on the fire almost as though they might even so late save some corporeal part of the family. The frightened talk ran through the town that the whole Ames family had burned.

  By sunrise everyone in town was tight-packed about the smoking black pile. Those in front had to shield their faces against the heat. The volunteers continued to pump water to cool off the charred mess. By noon the coroner was able to throw wet planks down and probe with a crowbar among the sodden heaps of charcoal. Enough remained of Mr. and Mrs. Ames to make sure there were two bodies. Near neighbors pointed out the approximate place where Cathy's room had been, but although the coroner and any number of helpers worked over the debris with a garden rake they could find no tooth or bone.