John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

Middle mind hooted, “You can’t not have it too. What ever happens, you’ve got her. Take a feel of your pulse, listen to your pounding heart. Why? You just heard the iron door of the boiler clang, that’s why. You haven’t even thought what that means yet, but you’ve got a pain in your gut because of that clang and because it’s three-thirteen in the morning.”

Low mind said, “Nothing’s bad. It’s all part of one thing—the good and bad. Do you know any man and woman—no matter how close—who don’t have good and bad? Let me out! Or, by God, I’ll set my claws in you and I’ll tear at you for all your life! Let me out, I say! Feel this, this red burning? That’s rage. Will you let it out or will it fester here until it makes you sick and crazy? Look at the time. You heard that iron door.”

Doc looked at his watch—3:17. “Why that son-of-a-bitch!” he said aloud. He snapped off his light and went to the window and looked out toward the strip of light the street lamp threw on the vacant lot. Then he opened his front door and crept down the stairs. Crossing the street, he followed a broad shadow and hid in it.

The Patrón was sitting on a big rusty pipe trying to work out a puzzle. He had it laid out and the pieces didn’t make sense. Here was himself, young, good-looking, snappy dresser, and making dough. And here was a dame, a dime-a-dozen dame, living in a boiler, working for her keep. The Patrón knew methods too, and, if not scientific, they had served him well enough so that he could depend on them. You sweet talk, you promise, you offer, and in reserve you always hold force. Every dame needs a little force. He felt the swelling knuckles of his right hand. This dame was nuts. She didn’t listen to his pitch, and when he brought up force she slammed the iron door and damn near took his fingers off. He was going to lose the nails of all four fingers. The dirty bitch! Thus, musing bitterly, he did not hear Doc’s approach.

Doc’s fingers locked in the collar of the Patrón’s striped shirt and yanked him to his feet. By reflex the Patrón lashed out with his foot and kicked Doc’s legs from under him. The two fell together and rolled in the mallow weeds. Joseph and Mary tried for the groin with his knee, while Doc’s delicate strong fingers laced around the throat. The Patrón felt the thumbs seeking the hollow below his Adam’s apple. He tore at the white face with his fingers and Doc’s thumbs went home. Flaring lights whirled in the Patrón’s eyes and his brain turned red. He knew that in two seconds his thorax would collapse under the thumbs and he would be dead. He had seen it happen. He knew it and, so knowing, he went limp and in sweating terror felt the thumbs relax.

The Patrón lay still, and his sickened mind figured the chances—the groin again or butt of head to chin? But if he missed the terrible thumbs would come again. He was weak and afraid—afraid even to speak for fear the wrong word might draw the seeking thumbs. “Doc,” he whispered, “I give up. You got me.”

“Go near that girl again and I’ll tear your throat out,” Doc whispered back.

“I won’t. I swear to God I won’t.”

In the grocery under the seven-watt light, the Patrón tried to get the cork out of a pint with his mashed fingers but had to pass the bottle to Doc.

Doc felt the sickness that follows rage—and he also felt silly. He took a gulp of whisky and passed the bottle over the counter. Joseph and Mary drank and then bent over, coughing and spluttering. Doc had to run around the counter to beat him on the back. When he could speak, Joseph and Mary looked at Doc with wonder.

“I can’t understand it,” he said. “Where’d you learn that trick? What’d you want to do it for? You might of killed me.”

“I guess I wanted to,” said Doc. “I must have wanted to.” He laughed embarrassedly. “I thought you were making a pass at Suzy.”

“I was,” said Joseph and Mary. “Jesus, Doc, I didn’t know you was that way with her.”

“I’m not,” said Doc. “Give me a drink.”

“You wasn’t playing tiddlywinks,” said Joseph and Mary. “Now don’t get excited. She give me the bum’s rush. Hell, she damn near took off my fingers with that door. You ain’t got any competition from me, Doc. She’s all yours.”

“She won’t even see me,” said Doc.

“Won’t? What in hell is the matter with her?”

“Who knows?”

They rested their elbows on the counter and faced each other.

“Beats me,” said Joseph and Mary. “What you going to do?”

Doc smiled. “Hazel said take her flowers and a candy bar.”

“He might have something there. I can’t figure her.” Gingerly the Patrón let a little whisky dribble down his throat and winced as it passed the bruised place. “I guess she’s just nuts,” he said. “And if she’s nuts, a guy’s got to do nuts things. You don’t think you could say the hell with her?”

“I have, over and over.”

“Don’t do no good?”

“Not a bit. I know it’s damn foolishness, but there it is.”

“I knew guys like that. There ain’t nothing to do about it, I guess.” His eyes sharpened. “I remember something,” he said. “When I was talking to her through that damn firedoor tonight she says, ‘When I find a guy that’s up to his eyes I’ll dive in,’ she says. And I says, ‘For Doc?’ ‘Hell no!’ she says. ‘He’s sliced like package bacon.’ ”

“I guess she’s right,” said Doc.

“That ain’t what I was thinking. Look, Doc, when you had the hooks in me, if I’d went on—well, would you of?”

“I guess so. I can hardly believe it of myself, but I guess I would have. I never did anything like that before. Why?”

“Well, I just thought—a guy that’ll do a killing with his hands ain’t sliced too thin. Let’s finish the pint, Doc, and then I’ll help you.”

“Help me what?”

“Flowers,” said Joseph and Mary. “We got an hour before daylight. Up above Light house Avenue there’s front yards just lousy with flowers.”

Joe Elegant was only the cook at the Bear Flag, not the bouncer, with the result that his services were never required late at night. He retired early and set his alarm clock for four. This gave him three or four hours every morning over his portable to tap out green letters on green paper.

The book was going well. His hero had been born in a state of shock and nothing subsequent had reassured him. When a symbol wasn’t slapping him in the mouth, a myth was kicking his feet out from under him. It was a book of moods, of dank rooms with cryptic wallpaper, of pale odors, of decaying dreams. There wasn’t a character in the whole of The Pi Root of Oedipus who wouldn’t have made the observation ward. The hero had elderly aunts beside whom the Marquis de Sade was an altar boy. The pile of green manuscript was three inches thick, and Joe Elegant was beginning to plan his photograph for the back of the dust cover: open collar, he thought, and a small, wry smile, and one hand relaxed in front of him with an open poison ring on the third finger. He knew which reviewers he could depend on and why. He typed: “A pool scummed with Azolla. In the open water in the middle of the pond a dead fish floated belly up…”

Joe Elegant sighed, leaned back, and scratched his stomach. He yawned, went into the Bear Flag’s kitchen, and started a pot of coffee. While it was heating he walked out into a glorious morning. The pelicans were drumming in for a run of tom cod, and little pink Kleenex clouds hung over the bay. Joe saw the flowers in front of the boiler door and moved over to inspect them—a huge bouquet of tulips, early roses, jonquils, and iris. They might have been anyone’s offering, except that their stems were in a museum jar.