John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

Hazel got up and brushed the cypress dirt from his clothes. He walked up past the rusty pipes and the empty boiler, crossed the railroad track, and went up the chicken walk. Behind him, muffled by the canneries, he could hear Cacahuete playing “Stormy Weather” on his trumpet and the sea lions on China Point barking.

In the Palace, Mack and the boys were playing tick-tack-toe with a piece of chalk on the floor. The wining jug was set conveniently near.

“Hi, Hazel,” said Mack. “Draw up.”

“Mack,” Hazel said sadly, “I want you should step outside with me and put up your dukes.”

Mack rocked back on his heels. “What!”

“I’m going to beat the holy hell out of you,” said Hazel.

“Why?” Mack asked.

This was just the question Hazel was afraid of. He tried to find a quick, tough answer. “You just step out and you’ll find out,” he said.

“Hazel—” Mack stood up. “Hazel baby, what’s eating you? Tell me. See if I can’t make it right.”

Hazel felt the whole situation leaving his hands. “You can’t treat Doc that way,” he said fiercely. “Not Doc!”

“What way am I treating him? I ain’t done nothing to Doc, except maybe hustle him a little. But we all done that—even you tried.”

“You said he can’t write his paper, that’s what you done.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes!” said Mack.

“You’re yellow then.”

“Okay, I’m yellow. Sometime when I ain’t feeling yellow I’ll paddywhack you. Sit down. Have a jolt from the jug.”

They babied Hazel and pampered him until his eyes were damp with appreciation. But when Hazel’s mind dug in it would not let loose. “You got to help him,” he repeated. “He ain’t happy, he just mopes. You got to help him.”

Mack said, “It ain’t entirely our fault. Trouble is, Doc lets concealment like a worm in the bud feed on his damask cheek.” [56] “lets concealment…his damask cheek”: Mack quoting Shakespeare is one of the incongruous comedic effects Steinbeck strove for in Sweet Thursday. Spoken by Viola in act II, scene 4, line 111 of William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, or What You Will (ca. 1601–02): “A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?”

“He sure as hell does,” said Whitey No. 2.

“I ain’t going to stand for no excuses,” said Hazel.

Mack studied the problem from every angle. “Hazel’s right,” he said at last. “We’ve been selfish. We never in our lives had such a good friend as Doc, and we’re letting him down. Makes me feel ashamed. It’s Hazel showed the way. If I was in trouble I wouldn’t want Hazel to do no figuring but I sure would like to have him for a friend.”

Hazel ducked his head in embarrassment. In his life so few compliments had come his way that he didn’t know how to cope with them.

Mack went on, “I make a solemn move we all stand up and drink a toast to Hazel—a noble, noble soul!”

“Aw, hell, fellas,” said Hazel, and he wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

They stood in a circle around him, Mack and Eddie, Whitey No. 1 and Whitey No. 2, and each one tipped the jug over his elbow and drank to Hazel. Good feeling was running so high they did it again, and were about to do it a third time when Hazel said, “Ain’t there something we can drink to so I can get a drink?”

“To Lefty Grove!” [57] Lefty Grove: Robert Moses (Lefty) Grove, one of the greatest pitchers in major-league baseball history. Grove (1900–75) retired in 1941 with a career record of 300-141. His .680 lifetime winning percentage is eighth all-time, but none of the seven men ahead of him won more than 236 games. Grove was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947. In 1999, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. said Eddie.

That broke the ice. An era of good feeling set in. They dug up another keg of the private stock Eddie had saved during the war. He started the bung and smelled it delicately.

“I remember this one,” he said. “They was some guys up from South America and they brought in a bottle of absinthe.” [58] absinthe: A distilled, highly alcoholic, anise-flavored spirit derived from herbs including the flowers and leaves of the medicinal plant wormwood (Artemisia absinthium).

“Perfumes the whole house,” said Mack.

It was like old times, they reminded one another. If Gay were only here—let’s drink a toast to good old Gay, our departed friend.

The absinthe had soothed the mixture in the keg and added something sweet and old-fashioned. A courtliness crept into the speech of the dwellers of the Palace Flop house, an old-world courtesy. Everyone vied to be last, not first, at the refilled jug.

“Next dough we get we’ll go up to Woolworth’s [59] Woolworth’s: The F. W. Woolworth Company was a nationwide retail corporation whose five-and-dime stores became a nearly universal presence in America. The first Woolworth’s store was founded in 1878 by Frank Winfield Woolworth; the chain closed in 1997. and get some glasses,” said Mack.

“Hell,” said Whitey No. 2, “they’ll just get broke. But I see what you mean.”

Somehow they felt they were living in a moment when history pauses and takes stock and changes course. They knew they would look back on this night as a beginning. At such times men feel the nudge toward oratory.

Mack steadied himself against the stove and begged their attention by rapping on the stovepipe. “Gentlemen,” he said, “let us here highly resolve to get Doc’s ass out of the sling of despond.”

Eddie said, “Remember we done something like that once and damn near ruined him.”

Mack’s golden mood held. “We were younger then,” he said. “This time we’re going to think her out and she’s going to be foolproof.”

Hazel was so far won back into comradeship that he had relaxed into happy incoherence. “To Lefty Grove!” he said.

Mack opened the oven door and sat on it. “I’ve give it a lot of thought,” he said. “Lately I done hardly nothing else.”

“You never do hardly nothing else,” said Whitey No. 2.

Mack ignored him. “I got a theory—”

“Aw, shut up!” said Eddie.

“Who you talking to?” said Whitey No. 2.

“I don’t know,” said Eddie innocently, “but if the shoe fits—”

“I got a theory, if you ain’t too pie-eyed to listen,” said Mack. When he had them quiet he went on, “When you hear my theory you might get kind of violent. I want you to sleep on it before you talk. I think Doc needs a wife.”

“What!”

“Well, hell, he don’t have to marry her,” said Mack. “You know what I mean…” If the absinthe had not given them tolerance he might have had a series of fights right then. “Kindly do not interrupt,” he said. “I will now review the dame situation in the U.S. You take a look at divorces and the reasons for them and you can only think one thing: the only guy that shouldn’t have nothing to do with picking out a wife is the guy that’s going to marry her. That’s a fact. It’s a fact that if he’s left alone a guy practically always marries the wrong kind of dame.”

“Play it safe and don’t marry nobody,” said Whitey No. 2.

“There’s some guys can’t operate that way,” said Mack.

“Are you suggesting we turn Doc, our true friend, in?”

“I asked you not to shoot off your face until you slept on it,” said Mack with dignity.

Hazel tugged at his sleeve. “Ain’t you joking, Mack?”