"Mother never let me forget it. Say, wouldn't it be good to ask Jenny and Belle down for a visit?"
"They'd come too," Dessie said. "Let's do it."
When they turned off the county road she said, "Somehow I remember it differently."
"Drier?"
"I guess that's it. Tom, there's so much grass."
"I'm getting twenty head of stock to eat it."
"You must be rich."
"No, and the good year will break the price of beef. I wonder what Will would do. He's a scarcity man. He told me. He said, 'Always deal in scarcities.' Will's smart."
The rutty road had not changed except that the ruts were deeper and the round stones stuck up higher.
Dessie said, "What's the card on that mesquite bush?" She picked it off as they drove by, and it said, "Welcome Home."
"Tom, you did it!"
"I did not. Someone's been here."
Every fifty yards there was another card sticking on a bush, or hanging from the branches of a madrone, or tacked to the trunk of a buckeye, and all of them said, "Welcome Home." Dessie squealed with delight over each one.
They topped the rise above the little valley of the old Hamilton place and Tom pulled up to let her enjoy the view. On the hill across the valley, spelled out in whitewashed stones, were the huge words, "Welcome Home, Dessie." She put her head against his lapel and laughed and cried at the same time.
Tom looked sternly ahead of him. "Now who could have done that?" he said. "A man can't leave the place any more."
In the dawn Dessie was awakened by the chill of pain that came to her at intervals. It was a rustle and a threat of pain; it scampered up from her side and across her abdomen, a nibbling pinch and then a little grab and then a hard catch and finally a fierce grip as though a huge hand had wrenched her. When that relaxed she felt a soreness like a bruise. It didn't last very long, but while it went on the outside world was blotted out, and she seemed to be listening to the struggle in her body. When only the soreness remained she saw how the dawn had come silver to the windows. She smelled the good morning wind rippling the curtains, bringing in the odor of grass and roots and damp earth. After that sounds joined the parade of perception--sparrows haggling among themselves, a bawling cow monotonously beratine a punching hungry calf, a blue jay's squawk of false excitement, the sharp warning of a cock quail on guard and the answering whisper of the hen quail somewhere near in the tall grass. The chickenyard boiled with excitement over an egg, and a big lady Rhode Island Red, who weighed four pounds, hypocritically protested the horror of being lustfully pinned to the ground by a scrawny wreck of a rooster she could have blasted with one blow of her wing.
The cooing of pigeons brought memory into the procession. Dessie remembered how her father had said, sitting at the head of the table, "I told Rabbit I was going to raise some pigeons and--do you know?--he said, 'No white pigeons.' 'Why not white?' I asked him, and he said, 'They're the rare worst of bad luck. You take a flight of white pigeons and they'll bring sadness and death. Get gray ones.' 'Ilike white ones.' 'Get gray ones,' he told me. And as the sky covers me, I'll get white ones."
And Liza said patiently, "Why do you be forever testing, Samuel? Gray ones taste just as good and they're bigger."
"I'll let no flimsy fairy tale push me," Samuel said.
And Liza said with her dreadful simplicity, "You're already pushed by your own contentiousness. You're a mule of contention, a very mule!"
"Someone's got to do these things," he said sullenly. "Else Fate would not ever get nose-thumbed and mankind would still be clinging to the top branches of a tree."
And of course he got white pigeons and waited truculently for sadness and death until he'd proved his point. And here were the great-great-grand squabs cooing in the morning and rising to fly like a whirling white scarf around the wagon shed.
As Dessie remembered, she heard the words and the house around her grew peopled. Sadness and death, she thought, and death and sadness, and it wrenched in her stomach against the soreness. You just have to wait around long enough and it will come.
She heard the air whooshing into the big bellows in the forge and the practice tap for range of hammer on anvil. She heard Liza open the oven door and the thump of a kneaded loaf on the floury board. Then Joe wandered about, looking in unlikely places for his shoes, and at last found them where he had left them under the bed.
She heard Mollie's sweet high voice in the kitchen, reading a morning text from the Bible, and Una's full cold throaty correction.
And Tom had cut Mollie's tongue with his pocketknife and died in his heart when he realized his courage.
"Oh, dear Tom," she said, and her lips moved.
Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces. He was confused now, but Dessie could hold his bit and point him, the way a handler points a thoroughbred at the barrier to show his breeding and his form.
Dessie lay part in pain and a part of her dangled still in sleep while the morning brightened against the window. She remembered that Mollie was going to lead the Grand March at the Fourth of July picnic with no less than Harry Forbes, State Senator. And Dessie had not finished putting the braid on Mollie's dress. She struggled to get up. There was so much braid, and here she lay drowsing.
She cried, "I'll get it done, Mollie. It will be ready."
She got up from her bed and threw her robe around her and walked barefooted through the house crowded with Hamiltons. In the hall they were gone to the bedrooms. In the bedrooms, with the beds neat-made, they were all in the kitchen, and in the kitchen--they dispersed and were gone. Sadness and death. The wave receded and left her in dry awakeness.
The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it--the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.
The stove was warming, with orange light showing around the lids and the soft thunder of drafty flame leaping past the open damper. The kitchen clock flashed its pendulum behind its glass skirt, and it ticked like a little wooden hammer striking on an empty wooden box.
From outside came a whistle as wild and raucous as a reed and pitched high and strange. The whistling scattered a savage melody. Then Tom's steps sounded on the porch, and he came in with an armload of oakwood so high he could not see over it. He cascaded the wood into the woodbox.
"You're up," he said. "That was to wake you if you were still sleeping." His face was lighted with joy. "This is a morning light as down and no time to be slugging."
"You sound like your father," Dessie said, and she laughed with him.
His joy hardened to fierceness. "Yes," he said loudly. "And we'll have that time again, right here. I've been dragging myself in misery like a spine-broken snake. No wonder Will thought I was cracked. But now you're back, and I'll show you. I'll breathe life into life again. Do you hear? This house is going to be alive."
"I'm glad I came," she said, and she thought in desolation how brittle he was now and how easy to shatter, and how she would have to protect him.
"You must have worked day and night to get the house so clean," she said.
"Nothing," said Tom. "A little twist with the fingers."
"I know that twist, but it was with bucket and mop and on your knees--unless you've invented some way to do it by chicken power or the harnessed wind."
"Invented--now that's why I have no time. I've invented a little slot that lets a necktie slip around freely in a stiff collar."
"You don't wear stiff collars."
"I did yesterday. That's when I invented it. And chickens--I'm going to raise millions of them--little houses all over the ranch and a ring on the roof to dip them in a whitewash tank. And eggs will come through on a little conveyor belt--here! I'll draw it."
"I want to draw some breakfast,"
Dessie said. "What's the shape of a fried egg? How would you color the fat and lean of a strip of bacon?"
"You'll have it," he cried, and he opened the stove lid and assaulted the fire with the stove lifter until the hairs on his hand curled and charred. He pitched wood in and started his high whistling.
Dessie said, "You sound like some goat-foot with a wheat flute on a hill in Greece."
"What do you think I am?" he shouted.
Dessie thought miserably, If his is real, why can't my heart be light? Why can't I climb out of my gray ragbag? I will, she screeched inside herself. If he can--I will.
She said, "Tom!"
"Yes."
"I want a purple egg."
Chapter 33
1
The green lasted on the hills far into June before the grass turned yellow. The heads of the wild oats were so heavy with seed that they hung over on their stalks. The little springs trickled on late in the summer. The range cattle staggered under their fat and their hides shone with health. It was a year when the people of the Salinas Valley forgot the dry years. Farmers bought more land than they could afford and figured their profits on the covers of their checkbooks.
Tom Hamilton labored like a giant, not only with his strong arms and rough hands but also with his heart and spirit. The anvil rang in the forge again. He painted the old house white and whitewashed the sheds. He went to King City and studied a flush toilet and then built one of craftily bent tin and carved wood. Because the water came so slowly from the spring, he put a redwood tank beside the house and pumped the water up to it with a handmade windmill so cleverly made that it turned in the slightest wind. And he made metal and wood models of two ideas to be sent to the patent office in the fall.
That was not all--he labored with humor and good spirits. Dessie had to rise very early to get in her hand at the housework before Tom had it all done. She watched his great red happiness, and it was not light as Samuel's happiness was light. It did not rise out of his roots and come floating up. He was manufacturing happiness as cleverly as he knew how, molding it and shaping it.
Dessie, who had more friends than anyone in the whole valley, had no confidants. When her trouble had come upon her she had not talked about it. And the pains were a secret in herself.
When Tom found her rigid and tight from the grabbing pain and cried in alarm, "Dessie, what's the matter?" she controlled her face and said, "A little crick, that's all. Just a little crick. I'm all right now." And in a moment they were laughing.
They laughed a great deal, as though to reassure themselves. Only when Dessie went to her bed did her loss fall on her, bleak and unendurable. And Tom lay in the dark of his room, puzzled as a child. He could hear his heart beating and rasping a little in its beat. His mind fell away from thought and clung for safety to little plans, designs, machines.
Sometimes in the summer evenings they walked up the hill to watch the afterglow clinging to the tops of the western mountains and to feel the breeze drawn into the valley by the rising day-heated air. Usually they stood silently for a while and breathed in peacefulness. Since both were shy they never talked about themselves. Neither knew about the other at all.
It was startling to both of them when Dessie said one evening on the hill, "Tom, why don't you get married?"
He looked quickly at her and away. He said, "Who'd have me?"
"Is that a joke or do you really mean it?"
"Who'd have me?" he said again. "Who'd want a thing like me?"
"It sounds to me as though you really mean it." Then she violated their unstated code. "Have you been in love with someone?"
"No," he said shortly.
"I wish I knew," she said as though he had not answered.
Tom did not speak again as they walked down the hill. But on the porch he said suddenly, "You're lonely here. You don't want to stay." He waited for a moment. "Answer me. Isn't that true?"
"I want to stay here more than I want to stay anyplace else." She asked, "Do you ever go to women?"
"Yes," he said.
"Is it any good to you?"
"Not much."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
In silence they went back to the house. Tom lighted the lamp in the old living room. The horsehair sofa he had rebuilt raised its gooseneck against the wall, and the green carpet had tracks worn light between the doors.
Tom sat down by the round center table. Dessie sat on the sofa, and she could see that he was still embarrassed from his last admission. She thought, How pure he is, how unfit for a world that even she knew more about than he did. A dragon killer, he was, a rescuer of damsels, and his small sins seemed so great to him that he felt unfit and unseemly. She wished her father were here. Her father had felt greatness in Tom. Perhaps he would know now how to release it out of its darkness and let it fly free.
She took another tack to see whether she could raise some spark in him. "As long as we're talking about ourselves, have you ever thought that our whole world is the valley and a few trips to San Francisco, and have you ever been farther south than San Luis Obispo? I never have."
"Neither have I," said Tom.
"Well, isn't that silly?"
"Lots of people haven't," he said.
"But it's not a law. We could go to Paris and to Rome or to Jerusalem. I would dearly love to see the Colosseum."
He watched her suspiciously, expecting some kind of joke. "How could we?" he asked. "That takes a lot of money."
"I don't think it does," she said. "We wouldn't have to stay in fancy places. We could take the cheapest boats and the lowest class. That's how our father came here from Ireland. And we could go to Ireland."
Still he watched her, but a burning was beginning in his eyes.
Dessie went on, "We could take a year for work, save every penny. I can get some sewing to do in King City. Will would help us. And next summer you could sell all the stock and we could go. There's no law forbids it."
Tom got up and went outside. He looked up at the summer stars, at blue Venus and red Mars. His hands flexed at his sides, closed to fists and opened. Then he turned and went back into the house. Dessie had not moved.
"Do you want to go, Dessie?"
"More than anything in the world."
"Then we will go!"
"Do you want to go?"
"More than anything in the world," he said, and then, "Egypt--have you given a thought to Egypt?"
"Athens," she said.
"Constantinople!"
"Bethlehem!"
"Yes, Bethlehem," said he suddenly, "Go to bed. We've got a year of work--a year. Get some rest. I'm going to borrow money from Will to buy a hundred shoats."
"What will you feed them?"
"Acorns," said Tom. "I'll make a machine to gather acorns."
After he had gone to his room she could hear him knocking around and talking softly to himself. Dessie looked out her window at the starlit night and she was glad. But she wondered whether she really wanted to go, or whether Tom did. And as she wondered the whisper of pain grew up from her side.
When Dessie got up in the morning Tom was already at his drawing board, beating his forehead with his fist and growling to himself. Dessie looked over his shoulder. "Is it the acorn machine?"
"It should be easy," he said. "But how to get out the sticks and rocks?"
"I know you're the inventor, but I invented the greatest acorn picker in the world and it's ready to go."
"What do you mean?"
"Children," she said. "Those restless little hands."
"They wouldn't do it, not even for pay."
"They would for prizes. A prize for everyone and a big prize for the winner--maybe a hundred-dollar prize. They'd sweep the valley clean. Will you let me try?"
He scratched his head. "Why not?" he said. "But how would you collect the acorns?"
"The children will bring them in," said Dessie. "Just let me take care of it. I hope you have plenty of sto
rage space."
"It would be exploiting the young, wouldn't it?"
"Certainly it would," Dessie agreed. "When I had my shop I exploited the girls who wanted to learn to sew--and they exploited me. I think I will call this The Great Monterey County Acorn Contest. And I won't let everyone in. Maybe bicycles for prizes--wouldn't you pick up acorns in hope of a bicycle, Tom?"
"Sure I would," he said. "But couldn't we pay them too?"
"Not with money," Dessie said. "That would reduce it to labor, and they will not labor if they can help it, Nor will I."
Tom leaned back from his board and laughed. "Nor will I," he said. "All right, you are in charge of acorns and I am in charge of pigs."
Dessie said, "Tom, wouldn't it be ridiculous if we made money, we of all people?"
"But you made money in Salinas," he said.
"Some--not much. But oh, I was rich in promises. If the bills had ever been paid we wouldn't need pigs. We could go to Paris tomorrow."
"I'm going to drive in and talk to Will," said Tom. He pushed his chair back from the drawing board. "Want to come with me?"
"No, I'll stay and make my plans. Tomorrow I start The Great Acorn Contest."
2
On the ride back to the ranch in the late afternoon Tom was depressed and sad. As always, Will had managed to chew up and spit out his enthusiasm. Will had pulled his lip, rubbed his eyebrows, scratched his nose, cleaned his glasses, and made a major operation of cutting and lighting a cigar. The pig proposition was full of holes, and Will was able to put his fingers in the holes.
The Acorn Contest wouldn't work although he was not explicit about why it wouldn't. The whole thing was shaky, particularly in these times. The very best Will was able to do was to agree to think about it.
At one time during the talk Tom had thought to tell Will about Europe, but a quick instinct stopped him. The idea of traipsing around Europe, unless, of course, you were retired and had your capital out in good securities, would be to Will a craziness that would make the pig plan a marvel of business acumen. Tom did not tell him, and he left Will to "think it over," knowing that the verdict would be against the pigs and the acorns.
Poor Tom did not know and could not learn that dissembling successfully is one of the creative joys of a businessman. To indicate enthusiasm was to be idiotic. And Will really did mean to think it over. Parts of the plan fascinated him. Tom had stumbled on a very interesting thing. If you could buy shoats on credit, fatten them on food that cost next to nothing, sell them, pay off your loan, and take your profit, you would really have done something. Will would not rob his brother. He would cut him in on the profits, but Tom was a dreamer and could not be trusted with a good sound plan. Tom, for instance, didn't even know the price of pork and its probable trend. If it worked out, Will could be depended on to give Tom a very substantial present--maybe even a Ford. And how about a Ford as first and only prize for acorns? Everybody in the whole valley would pick acorns.
East of Eden Page 45
