The Day of the Locust

by Nathanael West

  “Lo, boys,” he said.

  “Lo, Hink,” said the man with the paper valise.

  Tod didn’t know whether he was included in the greeting, but took a chance and replied.

  “Howdy.”

  Hink prodded the valise with his toe.

  “Coin’ some place, Calvin?” he asked.

  “Azusa, there’s a rodeo.”

  “Who’s running it?”

  “A fellow calls himself ‘Badlands jack.’”

  “That grifter!…You goin’, Earle?” “Nope.”

  “I gotta eat,” said Calvin.

  Hink carefully considered all the information he had received before speaking again.

  “Mono’s makin’ a new Buck Stevens,” he said. “Will Ferris told me they’d use more than forty riders.”

  Calvin turned and looked up at Earle.

  “Still got the piebald vest?” he asked slyly.

  “Why?”

  “It’ll cinch you a job as a road agent.”

  Tod understood that this was a joke of some sort because Calvin and Hink chuckled and slapped their thighs loudly while Earle frowned.

  There was another long silence, then Calvin spoke again. “Ain’t your old man still got some cows?” he asked Earle. But Earle was wary this time and refused to answer. Calvin winked at Tod, slowly and elaborately, contorting one whole side of his face.

  “That’s right, Earle,” Hink said. “Your old man’s still got some stock. Why don’t you go home?”

  They couldn’t get a rise out of Earle, so Calvin answered the question.

  “He dassint. He got caught in a sheep car with a pair of rubber boots on.”

  It was another joke. Calvin and Hink slapped their thighs and laughed, but Tod could see that they were waiting for something else. Earle, suddenly, without even shifting his weight, shot his foot out and kicked Calvin solidly in the rump. This was the real point of the joke. They were delighted by Earle’s fury. Tod also laughed. The way Earle had gone from apathy to action without the usual transition was funny. The seriousness of his violence was even funnier.

  A little while later, Faye drove by in her battered Ford touring car and pulled into the curb some twenty feet away. Calvin and Hink waved, but Earle didn’t budge. He took his time, as befitted his dignity. Not until she tooted her horn did he move. Tod followed a short distance behind him.

  “Hi, cowboy,” said Faye gaily.

  “Lo, honey,” he drawled, removing his hat carefully and replacing it with even greater care. Faye smiled at Tod and motioned for them both to climb in. Tod got in the back. Earle unfolded the jacket he was carrying, slapped it a few times to remove the wrinkles, then put it on and adjusted its collar and shaped the roll of its lapels. He then climbed in beside Faye. She started the car with a jerk. When she reached LaBrea, she turned right to Hollywood Boulevard and then left along it. Tod could see that she was watching Earle out of the corner of her eye and that he was preparing to speak.

  “Get going,” she said, trying to hurry him.

  “What is it?”

  “Looka here, honey, I ain’t got any dough for supper.” She was very much put out.

  “But I told Tod we’d treat him. He’s treated us enough times.”

  “That’s all right,” Tod interposed. “Next time’ll do. I’ve got plenty of money.”

  “No, damn it,” she said without looking around. “I’m sick of it.”

  She pulled into the curb and slammed on the brakes.

  “It’s always the same story,” she said to Earle.

  He adjusted his hat, his collar and his sleeves, then spoke. “We’ve got some grub at camp.”

  “Beans, I suppose.”

  “Nope.”

  She prodded him.

  “Well, what’ve you got?”

  “Mig and me’s set some traps.”

  Faye laughed.

  “Rat traps, eh? We’re going to eat rats.”

  Earle didn’t say anything.

  “Listen, you big, strong, silent dope,” she said, “either make sense, or God damn it, get out of this car.”

  “They’re quail traps,” he said without the slightest change in his wooden, formal manner.

  She ignored his explanation.

  “Talking to you is like pulling teeth. You wear me out.” Tod knew that there was no hope for him in this quarrel. He had heard it all before.

  “I didn’t mean nothing,” Earle said. “I was only funning. I wouldn’t feed you rats.”

  She slammed off the emergency brake and started the car again. At Zacarias Street, she turned into the hills. After climbing steadily for a quarter of a mile, she reached a dirt road and followed it to its end. They all climbed out, Earle helping Faye.

  “Give me a kiss,” she said, smiling her forgiveness.

  He took his hat off ceremoniously and placed it on the hood of the car, then wrapped his long arms around her. They paid no attention to Tod, who was standing off to one side watching them. He saw Earle close his eyes and pucker up his lips like a little boy. But there was nothing boyish about what he did to her. When she had had as much as she wanted, she pushed him away.

  “You, too?” she called gaily to Tod, who had turned his back.

  “Oh, some other time,” he replied, imitating her casualness.

  She laughed, then took out a compact and began to fix her mouth. When she was ready, they started along a little path that was a continuation of the dirt road. Earle led, Faye came next and Tod brought up the rear.

  It was full spring. The path ran along the bottom of a narrow canyon and wherever weeds could get a purchase in its steep banks they flowered in purple, blue and yellow. Orange poppies bordered the path. Their petals were wrinkled like crepe and their leaves were heavy with talcumlike dust.

  They climbed until they reached another canyon. This one was sterile, but its bare ground and jagged rocks were even more brilliantly colored than the flowers of the first. The path was silver, grained with streaks of rose-gray, and the walls of the canyon were turquoise, mauve, chocolate and lavender. The air itself was vibrant pink.

  They stopped to watch a humming bird chase a blue jay. The jay flashed by squawking with its tiny enemy on its tail like a ruby bullet. The gaudy birds burst the colored air into a thousand glittering particles like metal confetti.

  When they came out of this canyon, they saw below them a little green valley thick with trees, mostly eucalyptus, with here and there a poplar and one enormous black live-oak. Sliding and stumbling down a dry wash, they made for the valley.

  Tod saw a man watching their approach from the edge of the wood. Faye also saw him and waved.

  “Hi, Mig!” she shouted.

  “Chinita!” he called back.

  She ran the last ten yards of the slope and the man caught her in his arms.

  He was toffee-colored with large Armenian eyes and pouting black lips. His head was a mass of tight, ordered curls. He wore a long-haired sweater, called a “gorilla” in and around Los Angeles, with nothing under it. His soiled duck trousers were held up by a red bandanna handkerchief. On his feet were a pair of tattered tennis sneakers.

  They moved on to the camp which was located in a clearing in the center of the wood. It consisted of little more than a ramshackle hut patched with tin signs that had been stolen from the highway and a stove without legs or bottom set on some rocks. Near the hut was a row of chicken coops.

  Earle started a fire under the stove while Faye sat down on a box and watched him. Tod went over to look at the chickens. There was one old hen and a half a dozen game cocks. A great deal of pains had been taken in making the coops, which were of grooved boards, carefully matched and joined. Their floors were freshly spread with peat moss.

  The Mexican came over and began to talk about the cocks. He was very proud of them.

  “That’s Hermano, five times winner. He’s one of Street’s Butcher Boys. Pepe and El Negro are still stags. I fight them next week in San Ped
ro. That’s Villa, he’s a blinker, but still good. And that one’s Zapata, twice winner, a Tassel Dom he is. And that’s Jujutla. My champ.”

  He opened the coop and lifted the bird out for Tod. “A murderer is what the guy is. Speedy and how!”

  The cock’s plumage was green, bronze and copper. Its beak was lemon and its legs orange.

  “He’s beautiful,” Tod said.

  “I’ll say.”

  Mig tossed the bird back into the coop and they went back to join the others at the fire.

  “When do we eat?” Faye asked.

  Miguel tested the stove by spitting on it. He next found a large iron skillet and began to scour it with sand. Earle gave Faye a knife and some potatoes to peel, then picked up a burlap sack.

  “I’ll get the birds,” he said.

  Tod went along with him. They followed a narrow path that looked as though it had been used by sheep until they came to a tiny field, covered with high, tufted grass. Earle stopped behind a gum bush and held up his hand to warn Tod.

  A mocking bird was singing near by. Its song was like pebbles being dropped one by one from a height into a pool of water. Then a quail began to call, using two soft guttural notes. Another quail answered and the birds talked back and forth. Their call was not like the cheerful whistle of the Eastern bobwhite. It was full of melancholy and weariness, yet marvelously sweet. Still another quail joined the duet. This one called from near the center of the field. It was a trapped bird, but the sound it made had no anxiety in it, only sadness, impersonal and without hope.

  When Earle was satisfied that no one was there to spy on his poaching, he went to the trap. It was a wire basket about the size of a washtub with a small door in the top. He stooped over and began to fumble with the door. Five birds ran wildly along the inner edge and threw themselves at the wire. One of them, a cock, had a dainty plume on his head that curled forward almost to his beak.

  Earle caught the birds one at a time and pulled their heads off before dropping them into his sack. Then he started back. As he walked along, he held the sack under his left arm. He lifted the birds out with his right hand and plucked them one at a time. Their feathers fell to the ground, point first, weighed down by the tiny drop of blood that trembled on the tips of their quills.

  The sun went down before they reached the camp again. It grew chilly and Tod was glad of the fire. Faye shared her seat on the box with him and they both leaned forward into the heat.

  Mig brought a jug of tequila from the hut. He filled a peanut butter jar for Faye and passed the jug to Tod. The liquor smelled like rotten fruit, but he liked the taste. When he had had enough, Earle took it and then Miguel. They continued to pass it from hand to hand.

  Earle tried to show Faye how plump the game was, but she wouldn’t look. He gutted the birds, then began cutting them into quarters with a pair of heavy tin shears. Faye held her hands over her ears in order not to hear the soft click made by the blades as they cut through flesh and bone. Earle wiped the pieces with a rag and dropped them into the skillet where a large piece of lard was already sputtering.

  For all her squeamishness, Faye ate as heartily as the men did. There was no coffee and they finished with tequila. They smoked and kept the jug moving. Faye tossed away the peanut butter jar and drank like the others, throwing her head back and tilting the jug.

  Tod could sense her growing excitement. The box on which they were sitting was so small that their backs touched and he could feel how hot she was and how restless. Her neck and face had turned from ivory to rose. She kept reaching for his cigarettes.

  Earle’s features were hidden in the shadow of his big hat, but the Mexican sat full in the light of the fire. His skin glowed and the oil in his black curls sparkled. He kept smiling at Faye in a manner that Tod didn’t like. The more he drank, the less he liked it.

  Faye kept crowding Tod, so he left the box to sit on the ground where he could watch her better. She was smiling back at the Mexican. She seemed to know what he was thinking and to be thinking the same thing. Earle, too, became aware of what was passing between them. Tod heard him curse softly and saw him lean forward into the light and pick up a thick piece of firewood.

  Mig laughed guiltily and began to sing.

  “Las palmeras lloran por to ausencia, Las laguna se seco—ay! La cerca de alambre que estaba en El patio tambien se cayo!” His voice was a plaintive tenor and it turned revolutionary song into a sentimental lament, sweet cloying. Faye joined in when he began another stanza. She didn’t know the words, but she was able to carry melody and to harmonize.

  “Pues mi madre las cuidaba, ay! Toditito se acabo—ay!”

  Their voices touched in the thin, still air to form a minor chord and it was as though their bodies had touched. The song was transformed again. The melody remained the same, but the rhythm broke and its beat became ragged. It was a rumba now.

  Earle shifted uneasily and played with his stick. Tod saw her look at him and saw that she was afraid, but instead of becoming wary, she grew still more reckless. She took a long pull at the jug and stood up. She put one hand on each of her buttocks and began to dance.

  Mig seemed to have completely forgotten Earle. He clapped his hands, cupping them to make a hollow, drum-like sound, and put all he felt into his voice. He had changed to a more fitting song.

  “Tony’s wife, The boys in Havana love Tony’s wife…”

  Faye had her hands clasped behind her head now and she rolled her hips to the broken beat. She was doing the “bump.”

  “Tony’s wife, They’re fightin’ their duels about Tony’s wife…”

  Perhaps Tod had been mistaken about Earle. He was using his club on the back of the skillet, using it to bang out the rhythm.

  The Mexican stood up, still singing, and joined her in the dance. They approached each other with short mincing steps. She held her skirt up and out with her thumbs and forefingers and he did the same with his trousers. They met head on, blue-black against pale gold, and used their heads to pivot, then danced back to back with their buttocks touching, their knees bent and wide apart. While Faye shook her breasts and her head, holding the rest of her body rigid, he struck the soft ground heavily with his feet and circled her. They faced each other again and made believe they were cradling their behinds in a shawl.

  Earle pounded the skillet harder and harder until it rang like an anvil. Suddenly he, too, jumped up and began to dance. He did a crude hoe-down. He leaped into the air and knocked his heels together. He whooped. But he couldn’t become part of their dance. Its rhythm was like a smooth glass wall between him and the dancers. No matter how loudly he whooped or threw himself around, he was unable to disturb the precision with which they retreated and advanced, separated and came together again.

  Tod saw the blow before it fell.. He saw Earle raise his stick and bring it down on the Mexican’s head. He heard the crack and saw the Mexican go to his knees still dancing, his body unwilling or unable to acknowledge the interruption.

  Faye had her back to Mig when he fell, but she didn’t turn to look. She ran. She flashed by Tod. He reached for her ankle to pull her down, but missed. He scrambled to his feet and ran after her.

  If he caught her now, she wouldn’t escape. He could hear her on the hill a little way ahead of him. He shouted to her, a deep, agonized bellow, like that a hound makes when it strikes a fresh line after hours of cold trailing. Already he could feel how it would be when he pulled her to the ground.

  But the going was heavy and the stones and sand moved under his feet. He fell prone with his face in a clump of wild mustard that smelled of the rain and sun, clean, fresh and sharp. He rolled over on his back and stared up at the sky. The violent exercise had driven most of the heat out of his blood, but enough remained to make him tingle pleasantly. He felt comfortably relaxed, even happy.

  Somewhere farther up the hill a bird began to sing. He listened. At first the low rich music sounded like water dripping on something hollow, the bottom o
f a silver pot perhaps, then like a stick dragged slowly over the strings of a harp. He lay quietly, listening.

  When the bird grew silent, he made an effort to put Faye out of his mind and began to think about the series of cartoons he was making for his canvas of Los Angeles on fire. He was going to show the city burning at high noon, so that the flames would have to compete with the desert sun and thereby appear less fearful, more like bright flags flying from roofs and windows than a terrible holocaust. He wanted the city to have quite a gala air as it burned, to appear almost gay. And the people who set it on fire would be a holiday crowd.

  The bird began to sing again. When it stopped, Faye was forgotten and he only wondered if he weren’t exaggerating the importance of the people who come to California to die. Maybe they weren’t really desperate enough to set ‘a single city on fire, let alone the whole country. Maybe they were only the pick of America’s madmen and not at all typical of the rest of the land.

  He told himself that it didn’t make any difference because he was an artist, not a prophet. His work would not be judged by the accuracy with which it foretold a future event but by its merit as painting. Nevertheless, he refused to give up the role of Jeremiah. He changed “pick of America’s madmen” to “cream” and felt almost certain that the milk from which it had been skimmed was just as rich in violence. The Angelenos would be first, but their comrades all over the country would follow. There would be civil war.

  He was amused by the strong feeling of satisfaction this dire conclusion gave him. Were all prophets of doom and destruction such happy men?

  He stood up without trying to answer. When he reached the dirt road at the top of the canyon Faye and the car were gone.

  15

  “She went to the pictures with that Simpson guy,” Harry told him when he called to see her the next night.

  He sat down to wait for her. The old man was very ill and lay on the bed with extreme care as though it were a narrow shelf from which he might fall if he moved.