John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

Consider what was in store for the ticket holders: a party at the Palace Flop house; a raffle that amounted to a potlatch; an engagement of exciting proportions unknown in the annals of the Row; and, on top of this, a costume party! Any one of these would have been enough. Together they threatened to be a celebration close to a catastrophe.

Fauna breathed a sigh of relief for it solved her greatest problem. She wanted to dress Suzy in a certain way, and Suzy, being the tough monkey she was, would have resisted. Now it was easy. There’s little difference between the wardrobe of Snow White and that of a lovely young bride.

There will be those who will consider that Fauna took too much upon herself in engineering a marriage without the knowledge or collusion of either party, and such skeptics will be perfectly right. But it was Fauna’s conviction, born out of long experience, that most people, one, did not know what they wanted; two, did not know how to go about getting it; and three, didn’t know when they had it.

Fauna was one of those rare people who not only have convictions but are quite willing to take responsibility for them. She knew that Doc and Suzy should be together. And since they were too confused, or thoughtless, or shy to bring about that happy state, Fauna was prepared to do it for them. Her critics will cry, “Suppose she is wrong! Maybe this association has no chance of success.” And Fauna’s answer to this, if she had heard it, would have been, “They ain’t doing so good now. It might work. What they got to lose? And when you look at it, what chance has anybody got? Doc put on a tie, didn’t he? And if I’m wrong it’s my fault. Sure, they’ll fight now and then. Who don’t? But maybe they’ll get something too. What’s the odds for anybody?”

And if it was suggested that people should have the right to choose for themselves after thinking it over, she would have replied, “Who thinks? I can think because I ain’t part of it.”

And if she had been accused of being a busybody she would have said, “Damn right! Done it all my life!” You couldn’t win an argument with Fauna because she would agree with you and then go right on as she had planned. She had taken up astrology because she found that people who won’t take advice from a wise and informed friend will blindly follow the orders of the planets—which, by all reports, are fairly remote and aloof. Doc would refuse astrology, so he had to be sandbagged. Fauna expected no thanks. She had given that up long ago. Doc could not interpret the black voice of his guts, but it sounded loud in Fauna’s ears. She knew his loneliness. When she was with him, that low voice drowned out all the others.

On Saturday morning she made every girl in the house bring out every article of clothing she possessed and lay it on the bed in her office.

Now Mabel was a natural-born, blowed-in-the-glass hustler. In any time, under any system, after a period of orientation, Mabel would have found herself doing exactly what she was doing in Cannery Row. This was not a matter of Fate, but rather a combination of aptitudes and inclinations. Born in a hovel or a castle, Mabel would have gravitated toward hustling.

The heap of finery on Fauna’s bed was impressive. Some of those dresses could have got a girl booked for vagrancy just going out to mail a letter.

Mabel took Fauna aside and spoke to her privately. “My grandma come from the old country,” she said when the door of her room was closed. Mabel opened the bottom drawer of her bureau and lifted out a brown paper parcel sealed against air with strips of cellophane tape. “Grandma left it to Mama, and Mama left it to me,” she said as she tore the paper. “We ain’t none of us needed it.” She removed layer after layer of tissue paper and at last spread a dress out on her bed—a wedding dress of sheerest white linen embroidered with sprays of white flowers—stitches so tiny they seemed to grow out of the cloth. The bodice was close-fitting and the skirt very full. Mabel opened a box and laid beside the dress a silver wedding crown. “I guess she wouldn’t hurt it none,” said Mabel. “Tell her not to spill nothing on it. I’ll polish up the crown, it’s kind of tarnished—real silver!”

Fauna was speechless for once. Her fingers went to the light and lovely fabric. She was a hard woman to break up, but the dress nearly did it. “Snow White!” she said breathlessly. “I better be careful or I’ll get to believing my own pitch. Mabel, I’m going to give you my jet earrings.”

“I don’t want nothing.”

“You want my jet earrings!”

“Aw shoot!” said Mabel.

“Looks like it might nearly fit her,” Fauna observed.

“Well, we can kind of tack it where it don’t.”

“You know, you’re a good girl. You want I should go to work on you?”

“Hell no!” said Mabel. “I like it here. There’s a veil too in this here bag.”

“I don’t know if we can get away with a veil, but we’ll try,” said Fauna.

“Oh hell, she don’t know a veil from a hole in the ground,” said Mabel.

If only people would give the thought, the care, the judgment to international affairs, to politics, even to their jobs, that they lavish on what to wear to a masquerade, the world would run in greased grooves. On the surface Cannery Row was quieter than usual, but below the surface it seethed. In one corner of the Palace Flop house, Whitey No. 2 gave careful lessons to little Johnny Carriaga in the art of palming cards. Johnny had been borrowed for the occasion—or, more truthfully, rented—since Alberto Carriaga had received sixty-two cents, the price of a gallon of wine, for the use of his firstborn. It was planned that Johnny should be dressed as Cupid, with paper wings, bow and arrow, and quiver. The quiver was added as a hiding place for the winning raffle ticket. For although nearly everyone on the Row knew the raffle was rigged, a certain pride made it necessary to carry the deception off with dignity. Because of a small distrust of Johnny the arrows in the quiver were tipped with rubber suction cups.

Whitey No. 2 had cut a card the exact size of a raffle ticket. “Now try it again, Johnny,” he said. “No, I can see the edge of it. Look! Sort of squeeze the edges in your palm, like this. Now try it again. That’s right! That’s good. Now let’s see you get it out of the quiver. You make a pass with the bow—like this—so they look at your other hand, and you say—”

“I know,” said Johnny. “ ‘I’m Cupid, God of Love, and I draw a bead on unsuspecting hearts.’ ”

“God! That’s beautiful,” said Eddie. “I wonder where Mack got that?”

“He made it up,” said Whitey No. 2. “Now when you shove up the bow with your right hand, you get the ticket out of the quiver with your left. Try it.”

“ ‘I-am-Cupid-God-of-Love,’ ” said Johnny, and he brandished the bow.

“That’s good,” said Whitey No. 2. “It will take a little more practice though. Don’t look at your left hand, Johnny. Look at the bow. Now here’s the bowl. Dig around the cards without dropping the ticket. Go on, practice.”

“I want thirty-five cents,” said Johnny.

“What!”

“If I don’t get thirty-five cents I’ll tell.”

“Mack,” said Whitey No. 2, “this here kid’s jumped the price.”

“Give it to him,” said Mack. “I’ll flip him double or nothing later.”

“Not with that two-headed nickel, you won’t,” said Johnny.

“Seems like kids got no respect for their elders nowadays,” Eddie observed. “If I ever said that, my old man would of clobbered me.”

“Maybe your old man wasn’t rigging no raffle,” said Johnny.

Whitey No. 1 said, “This kid ain’t honest. You know where bad kids go, Johnny?”