John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

“No,” said Mack, “I ain’t joking.”

“If anything bad come to Doc, you know what I’d do to you?” Hazel asked.

“Yes,” said Mack. “I think I do—and I think I’d have it coming.”

Hazel’s bed was a four-poster on which the bedposts were two-by-fours topped by a quilt. He had built it from memory of a moving picture. When the Palace Flop house was quiet at last, Hazel lay in his bed and looked up at the log-cabin pattern of his canopy. His mind was whirling. He wished there were some simpler way to help Doc than by the major operation Mack had suggested. Once he got up and looked out the door and saw that the green shaded light was on in the laboratory.

“The poor bastard,” he whispered.

He didn’t sleep well and his dreams were shaped like mushrooms.

Joe Elegant [61] Joe Elegant: Various candidates have been proposed as the model for Joe Elegant—notably mythologist Joseph Campbell and novelist Truman Capote—though, given the self-parodying nature of Sweet Thursday, Louis Owens, in John Steinbeck’s Re-Vision of America (1985), plausibly offers the “…young John Steinbeck, author of such ponderously mythical novels as Cup of Gold and To a God Unknown with their naive and heavy-handed wielding of symbols” (p. 194). was a pale young man with bangs. He smoked foreign cigarettes in a long ebony holder and he cooked for the Bear Flag. The girls said he made the best popovers in the world, and he could give a massage that would shake the kinks out of a Saturday night when the fleet was in. He sneered most of the time, and except at mealtime kept to himself in his little lean-to behind the Bear Flag, from which the rattle of his typewriter could be heard late at night.

One morning soon after she had come Suzy was having her coffee while Joe Elegant cleared the table of crumbs from earlier breakfasts.

“You make good coffee,” Suzy said.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t look like a guy who would work here.”

“It’s temporary, I assure you.”

“I got a wonderful recipe for gumbo. Want me to give it to you?”

“Fauna designs the meals.”

“You ain’t very friendly.”

“Why should I be?”

He was passing behind her. Suzy reached up, hooked her fingers in his shirt collar, twisted and yanked his face down level with her own. “Listen you,” she began, and she scowled into his popping eyes. “Oh, the hell with it,” said Suzy and released him.

Joe Elegant stepped back and massaged his throat and smoothed his shirt.

“Sorry,” said Suzy.

“It’s quite all right.”

“What makes you so mean?”

“You said it. I don’t belong here.”

“Where do you belong?”

“I don’t think you’d understand.”

“You too good for the place?”

“Let’s say I’m different.”

“No kidding!” said Suzy.

“I’m writing a novel.”

“You are? What about? I love novels.”

“You wouldn’t like this one.”

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t understand it.”

“Then what good is it?”

“It isn’t intended for the mass.”

“I’m the mass, huh? I guess you got something there. I bet you could write a pretty nice hunk of stuff.”

Joe Elegant swallowed and his face twitched convulsively. “Sometime I’ll read you some of it.”

“Say, that would be nice. But you said I couldn’t understand it.”

“I’ll explain it as I go along.”

“I’d like that. There’s one whole hell of a lot I don’t understand.”

“Do you like brownies?” he asked.

“I love them.”

“I’ll make you some. Maybe you’ll come to my apartment some afternoon. I could give you a cup of tea.”

“Say, you’re a nice fella! Got any more coffee?”

“I’ll make a fresh pot.”

Doc spent a restless night. His head was full of yellow pads and seers and octopi. Ordinarily he would have worked or read since he couldn’t sleep, but now if he turned on a light he would see the yellow pad and the marshaled pencils.

As the dawn crept over the bay he decided to go for a very long walk, perhaps to follow the shoreline all the way around to Carmel. He arose, and since it was still dusky in the laboratory he turned on the lights to make his coffee.

Wide Ida, from the entrance of La Ida, saw his lights come on. She put an unlabeled pint bottle of brown liquor in a paper bag and crossed the street to Western Biological.

“Doc,” she said, “would you work this stuff over?”

“What is it?”

“They say it’s whisky. I just want to know if it’ll kill anybody. I got a pretty good buy. They make it up in Pine Canyon.”

“That’s against the law,” said Doc.

“Killing people is against the law too,” said Wide Ida.

Doc was torn between bootlegging and murder. He thought sadly that he was always involved in something like this—not good or bad but bad and less bad. He made a fairly quick analysis. “It’s not poison,” he said, “but it won’t build good healthy stomachs. There’s some fusel oil [62] fusel oil: An oily, colorless liquid with a disagreeable odor and taste. It is a mixture of alcohols and fatty acids, formed during the alcoholic fermentation of organic materials. Fusel oil is used as a solvent in the manufacture of certain lacquers and enamels (it dissolves nitrocellulose). It is poisonous to humans. in it. But I guess it’s no worse than Old Tennis Shoes.”

“Thanks, Doc. What do I owe you?”

“Oh, maybe a quart—but not this stuff.”

“I’ll send over some Old Taylor.”

“You don’t have to go off the deep end,” said Doc.

“Doc, I hear you got trouble.”

“Me? What kind of trouble?”

“I just heard,” said Wide Ida.

Doc said angrily, “I’ve got no trouble. What’s all the talk! God Almighty, everybody treats me as though I had a disease. What kind of trouble?”

“If there’s anything I can do,” she said and went out quickly, leaving the pint behind.

Doc took a sip of it, made a face, and took a swig. His heart was pounding angrily. He could not admit that the pity of his friends only confirmed his frustration. He knew that pity and contempt are brothers. He set his chin. “I will get the spring tides at La Jolla,” he said to himself. “I will get a new microscope.” And the very lowest voice whispered, “Somewhere there’s warmth.”

He sat down at his desk and wrote viciously: “Parallels must be related.” He took another drink from the pint and opened yesterday’s mail. There was an order for six sets of slides—starfish, embryonic series, for the Oakland Polytechnic [63] Oakland Polytech: Oakland Technical High School, in Oakland, California, known locally as Oakland Tech, is a public high school located on 4351 Broadway in North Oakland. It is one of six comprehensive public high school campuses in Oakland. Founded in 1917, it is the alma mater of Clint Eastwood, Rickey Henderson, Huey P. Newton, and the Pointer Sisters. High School. He was almost glad to do the old and practiced work. He got his collecting buckets together, threw rubber boots in his old car, and drove out to the Great Tide Pool.