John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

“I won’t take it,” said Hazel.

Mack said, “We could kill him.”

“His stars don’t say it,” Fauna said. “He’s going to live to seventy-eight and die from a spoiled oyster.”

“I don’t like oysters,” said Hazel.

“Maybe you’ll learn in Washington.”

Mack said, “Maybe you made a mistake.”

“That’s what I hoped,” said Fauna. “I went over and over it. No, sir! Hazel is going to be President.”

“Well, we’ve weathered some pretty bad ones,” Eddie offered forlornly.

“Ain’t they no way I can tell them I won’t do it? Hell, I’ll hide out!” said Hazel desperately.

Fauna shook her head dismally. “I’ll check again,” she said, “but I don’t think you got a prayer. You got nine toes, Hazel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, count.”

Hazel took off his shoes and moved his lips. “Nine,” he said bitterly.

“That’s what the horoscope said. We can only pray it’s for the best.”

“Lord!” said Whitey No. 2. “That’s what I call a nine-to-one prayer. Fauna, now you’ve went and made a president out of a sow’s ear, how about getting Doc’s paper wrote?”

“Who’s a sow’s ear?” Hazel demanded.

“William Henry Harrison.” [50] William Henry Harrison: Harrison (1773–1841) was an American military leader, a politician, and the ninth president of the United States (1841), who died thirty days into his term—the briefest presidency in U.S. history and the first U.S. president to die while in office.

“Oh!” said Hazel. “Oh, yeah!”

Agnes piped up in her hoarse soprano, “Doc just ain’t himself. I took him a pint and he didn’t hardly pass the time a day. Just set there looking at that yellow paper. Know what was on that paper?”

“Eggs,” said Whitey No. 1.

“No. I don’t like to tell. It ain’t nice.”

“Hot damn!” said Mack. “Maybe he’s getting well. Go on—what?”

“Well,” said Agnes in a shocked voice, “he’d drew a picture of a lady without no clothes on, and right beside that was one of them damn devilfish, only it was smoking a pipe. Don’t hardly seem like the old Doc.”

Wide Ida shook herself out of a mountainous lethargy. “He used to be the easygoingest guy in the world. Now he’s got a wild hair. Anybody else but Doc, I’d figure it was a dame. But hell! Doc can take dames or let them alone.”

Mack said, “He could even take dames and let them alone.”

Fauna put her hands on her hips. “You fellas sure there ain’t a girl hiding out where he can’t get to her?”

“No,” said Hazel. “I wisht he’d snap out of it. Go over and talk to him, and he don’t say nothing and he don’t listen.”

“Let’s run a few dames past him and see if he picks up,” said Whitey No. 2.

Mack said, “I don’t believe in it but I wish Fauna would do a job on Doc. Might give us an idea.”

Fauna said, “I never seen nobody that wanted me to do a horoscope that believed in it. I ain’t sure I believe in it myself. Sure I’ll do Doc. When’s his birthday?”

With surprise they realized that no one could remember.

“Seems like it was in autumn,” said Eddie.

“Got to have it,” Fauna said. “Mack, you think you could find out?”

“I guess so. Say, Fauna, if you ain’t got too much integrity, could you maybe rig it a little?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, kind of tell him to lay off his goddam paper and get back to horsing around.”

“What’s wrong with his paper if only he gets it wrote?” Hazel demanded.

Mack scratched his stomach. “I guess we got to face it,” he said. “Doc wants to write that crazy paper. Driving himself nuts with it. Know what I think? Doc ain’t never going to write that paper.”

Hazel stood up. “What d’you mean?”

“Well, you know them kind of people they call accident prone? No matter what they do they get hurt. It’s like they want accidents. Well, I think Doc don’t really want to write that paper.”

Whitey No. 1 said, “He sure goes about it the hard way.”

“Ever hear of a substitute?” said Mack.

“You mean like on the bench at football?” Eddie asked.

“Hell no!” said Mack. “I mean like a guy is using something to cover up something else—and maybe he don’t even know it himself.”

Hazel demanded, “You running Doc down?”

“Take it easy,” said Mack. “I think Doc’s scared to write that paper because he knows it’s crazy. Quod erat demonstrandum.” [51] Quod erat demonstrandum: Latin for “that which was to be demonstrated,” indicating that something has been clearly proven. Its acronym, Q.E.D., often appears at the conclusion of mathematical proofs.

“Huh?” asked Fauna.

“Q.E.D.,” said Mack.

“Oh!” said Fauna. “Sure.”

Doc had made changes. His desk was drawn in front of the window. He sat writing rapidly on his yellow pad. “Color change,” he wrote, “seems to be not only a concentration of fluids to the surface but also a warping of tissue, which, perhaps, refracts the light, giving an impression of color.”

A door slammed. Doc looked out at the street. Fauna was teetering down the chicken walk that led from the Palace Flophouse.

Doc looked back at his pad. There were footsteps on the pavement. He looked up. Wide Ida was going toward her bar. Joseph and Mary came out of the Heavenly Flower and crossed the street, climbed the stairs of Western Biological, and knocked.

“Come in,” Doc cried, and there was relief in his voice.

“Thought I’d shovel the dirt a little. That band of mine is practicing upstairs. Drives me crazy.”

“Well, I’m pretty busy,” said Doc.

J and M gazed about the room. “Why do you keep snakes?”

“To sell.”

“Who’d buy snakes?” said J and M. “Say, what you looking at?” He craned his neck. “That’s the new dame. She’s going to give Fauna trouble. Little Mary trouble.”

“Who?” Doc asked.

“You wasn’t listening, I guess.”

“I must get to work,” said Doc.

“You know, I still don’t get it.”

“What?”

“There must be some way to kind of bend the odds in chess.”

“There isn’t. I’ve got to go.”

“What’s the rush?”

“Tide!” said Doc.

Doc walked on the beach beyond the light house. The waves splashed white beside him and sometimes basted his ankles. The sandpipers ran ahead of him as though on little wheels. The golden afternoon moved on toward China, and on the horizon’s edge a lumber schooner balanced.

On Doc’s left the white sand dunes rounded up, and behind them the dark pine trees seemed to hold a piece of night throughout the day.

Doc thought, Under stimulation there is increased pulsing like a man under physical or emotional strain, something like the release of adrenaline—but no way to prove it. No more specimens until spring tides.

His middle voice argued, “Maybe you don’t believe any of it. Why can’t you laugh at yourself? You could once. You’re trapped in a cage of self-importance.”

“Lonesome!” the low voice cried in his guts. “No one to receive from you or give to you. No one warm enough and dear enough.”

Doc wanted desperately to go back to his old life—the hopeless wish of a man wanting to be a little boy, forgetting the pain of little boys. Doc dropped to his knees and dug a hole in the damp sand with a scooped hand. He watched the sea water seep in and crumble the sides of the hole. A sand crab scuttled away from his digging fingers.