John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good what ever the weather, and everybody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.

On such a day it is impossible to make a good cup of coffee, shoestrings break, cups leap from the shelf by themselves and shatter on the floor, children ordinarily honest tell lies, and children ordinarily good unscrew the tap handles of the gas range and lose the screws and have to be spanked. This is the day the cat chooses to have kittens and house broken dogs wet on the parlor rug.

Oh, it’s awful on such a day! The postman brings overdue bills. If it’s a sunny day it is too damn sunny, and if it is dark who can stand it?

Mack knew it was going to be that kind of a day. He couldn’t find his pants. He fell over a box that had crept out in his path. He cursed each brother in the Palace Flop house, and on his way across the vacant lot he went out of his way to kick a dandelion flower. He was sitting gloomily on a pipe when Eddie came by, and so naturally he walked with Eddie to Wide Ida’s to try to do something about it. He hung around waiting for Wide Ida to go so that Eddie could slip him a drink. But Wide Ida was bending over the bar, cursing a letter.

“Taxes,” she said. “Every time you get going there’s more taxes. You’re lucky, Mack. You don’t own nothing and you don’t make nothing. Until they start taxing skin, you’re safe.”

“What’s the beef?” he asked.

“City and county taxes,” said Wide Ida.

“On what?”

“On this place. It ain’t much, but I was fixed to put a down payment on a new Pontiac.”

It was a statement that ordinarily would have aroused a detached compassion in Mack, together with mild self-congratulation that he was not burdened with taxable assets. But now a nagging worry fell on him, and he went back to the Palace Flop house to worry in greater comfort. He went over the history of the Palace in his mind.

It had belonged to Lee Chong. Long before the war Mack and the boys had rented it from him for five dollars a month, and, naturally enough, they had never paid any rent. Lee Chong would have been shocked if they had. Then Lee Chong sold out to Joseph and Mary. Did the Palace go with the rest? Mack didn’t know, but if it did, the Patrón didn’t know it. He was no Lee Chong. He would have demanded the rent. But if the Patrón did own the place, he would get a tax bill. If he got a tax bill, he was sure to be on the necks of Mack and the boys. The Patrón was not a man to pay out money without getting more money back, that was certain.

It seemed very unjust. Their home, their security, even their social standing, were cast in the balance. Mack lay on his bed and considered what could be done. Suppose the Patrón demanded back rent—clear back for years. You couldn’t trust a man like that. What a lousy day it was! Mack didn’t know what to do, so he called a meeting of the boys, even sent Hazel to bring Eddie back from Wide Ida’s bar.

It was a grim and shaken assembly. Mack explained all the angles until even Hazel seemed to understand the danger. The boys studied their fingers, looked at the ceiling, blew on their knuckles. Eddie got up and walked around his chair to change his thinking luck.

At last Whitey No. 2 said, “We could steal his mail so he won’t get no tax bill.”

“It ain’t practical,” said Mack. “Even if it wasn’t a crime.”

Hazel offered, “We could kill him.”

“You ain’t heard that’s against the law too?” Mack asked.

“I mean, make it like an accident,” said Hazel. “He could fall off Point Lobos.”

“Then somebody else inherits the joint and we don’t even know who.”

The injustice in the theory of private ownership of real estate was descending on them.

“Maybe we could get Doc to talk to him. He likes Doc.” This was Whitey No. 1’s offering.

“That would only draw it to his attention,” said Mack. “Hell, he might even raise the rent.”

“He might even try to collect it,” said Eddie.

Hazel was going into a slow but luminous burn. He gazed about the whitewashed walls of the Palace Flop house, at the Coca-Cola calendar girls, [64] Coca-Cola calendar girls: Illustrators for the Atlanta-based soft drink giant pioneered a type of graphically appealing and colorful calendar art that featured Coca-Cola’s Calendar Girls, who, though provocatively posed in bathing suits, were intended to portray wholesomeness as well as beauty. Steinbeck had used the ubiquitous advertising image in chapter one of The Wayward Bus (1947). at the great and ancient woodstove, at the grandfather clock, at the framed portrait of Romie Jacks. [65] Romie Jacks: Romie Jack was one of the seven surviving children (out of nine) of wealthy and controversial Scottish-born Monterey County land baron David Jack and his wife, Maria Christina Soledad Romie. Romie served as manager of the family’s David Jack Corporation–owned Abbot Hotel (later Cominos Hotel) in Salinas. The Cominos Hotel is featured in Steinbeck’s short story “The Chrysanthemums.” There were honest, unabashed tears in Hazel’s eyes. “The son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “After all our work he takes away our home—the only place where I ever been happy. How can a guy be so goddam mean?”

“He ain’t done it yet,” said Mack. “He don’t even know about it maybe.”

“I wish Doc owned the place,” said Eddie. “We wouldn’t have no trouble with Doc.”

Mack looked at him quickly. “What put that in your head?” he demanded.

“Hell, Doc don’t open his mail for weeks on end. Doc would forget to collect the rent and he’d forget to open a tax bill.”

Excitement shone in Mack’s eyes. “Eddie,” he said, “maybe you put your finger in it.”

“In what?”

“I got to think it over,” said Mack, “but just maybe our darling Eddie here is a genius.”

Eddie blushed with pleasure. “What’d I do, Mack?”

“I can’t tell you now.”

“Hell, Mack, I want to know what I done.”

“It was smart,” said Mack. “It was a stroke of just pure wonderful. Now let’s give the Patrón a going-over. How much guts you think he’s got?”

“Plenty,” said Hazel. “And he’s plenty wise.”

Mack spoke slowly, thinking aloud. “Let’s see. Joseph and Mary, you might say, is a con man in a general kind of way—”

“He’s a nice dresser,” said Hazel.

“A con man can’t make enemies unless, of course, he wants to get out of town. He got to keep everybody happy and friendly.”

“Come on, Mack,” Whitey No. 1 demanded. “Tell us!”

“Fellas,” said Mack, “if I blowed it now and it wasn’t no good, why, you’d kind of lose face in me. I want to think this one out and see if I can’t kind of surround him. But if we do her, you’ll all have to help.”

“Do what?”

“Let me alone now, boys,” said Mack, and he went back to his bed and put his head on his crossed hands and studied the rafters of the Palace Flop house.

Hazel came quietly to his bedside. “You won’t let nobody take our home away, will you, Mack?”

“I promise!” said Mack fervently. “Where’s Eddie?”

“Went back to Wide Ida’s.”

“Will you do something for me, Hazel?”

“Sure, Mack.”

“Take that lard can over there and see can Eddie fill it full of beer without too much fuss. It’ll help me to think better.”

“You’ll get your beer,” said Hazel. “You just keep thinking, Mack. Say, Mack, how do you think Eddie always got a stroke of genius even when he don’t know it and I don’t never have none?”