John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

“It’s here!” Mack cried. “God works in his tum-te-dum way his tum-tums to perform.”

Hazel and Whitey No. 1 and Mack were wrestling the big wooden case up the chicken walk when Eddie joined them.

“Suzy come!” he cried. “I come with her. Seemed like she was about to take off any minute. She’s in there with him now.”

“Give us a hand,” said Mack. “How’s she look?”

“Fireball,” said Eddie.

They carried the case into the Palace and Mack attacked it with a hand ax.

“There she is,” he said when the lid was off.

“She’s with Doc. Say, what you got?”

“Look!” said Mack. And he and the boys gazed down on the instrument, the great black tube of an eight-inch reflector, eyepieces socketed beside it, and its tripod cradled.

“Biggest one in the whole damn catalogue,” said Mack proudly. “Jesus, Doc’ll be happy! Eddie, tell us everything that happened, don’t leave nothing out.”

What a day it was! A day of purple and gold, the proud colors of the Salinas High School. [126] Salinas High School: Steinbeck’s alma mater; he graduated in 1918. A squadron of baby angels maneuvered at twelve hundred feet, holding a pink cloud on which the word J-O-Y flashed on and off. A seagull with a broken wing took off and flew straight up into the air, squawking, “Joy! Joy!”

Suzy was ahead of her racing feet when Eddie intercepted her. She answered yes and no to Eddie’s casual comments on the weather, but not only did she not hear the comments, she didn’t know Eddie was beside her.

She went up the steps of Western Biological without seeing Whitey No. 2 standing guard with a sashweight. Her coming relieved him of a duty, but he stuck around to hear.

At the top of the steps Suzy became a breathless, shy girl, and, as anybody knows, there is nothing more indestructible and deadly than a shy young girl. She paused to get her breath and then knocked on the door and went in and forgot to close the door—which was good for Whitey No. 2.

Doc was sitting on his cot gloomily regarding the pile of collecting paraphernalia on the floor.

“I heard you was hurt,” Suzy said gently. “I come to see if there was anything I could do.”

For a moment Doc’s face lightened, then gloom descended. “This shoots the spring tides,” he said, staring at the white cast. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Does it hurt much?” Suzy asked.

“Some. It will hurt more later, I guess.”

“I’ll go down to La Jolla with you.”

“And turn over rocks that weigh fifty or a hundred pounds?”

“I ain’t put together with spit,” said Suzy.

“Can you drive a car?”

“Sure,” said Suzy.

“You can’t do it,” he said. And then, from way down in the deep part of him, there came a bubbling shout, “Sure you can! I need you, Suzy. I need you to go with me. It will be terribly hard work and I’m pretty near helpless.”

“You can tell me what to do and what to look for.”

“Sure I can. And I’m not entirely helpless. I can use my left hand.”

“It’s a cinch,” said Suzy. “When do we start?”

“I’ve got to go tonight. If we drive all night we can make the tide at seven-eighteen tomorrow morning. Think you can make it?”

“Cinch,” said Suzy. “If you need me.”

“I need you all right. I’d be lost without you. But you’ll be a tired kid.”

“Who cares?” said Suzy.

“I want to ask you something,” said Doc. “Old Jingleballicks has set up a foundation for me at Cal Tech.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have to work there.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t know whether I oughtn’t to throw it in his face.”

“Why don’t you?”

“On the other hand, there’s all the wonderful equipment.”

“Fine,” said Suzy.

“I don’t like to work for anybody.”

“Give it back.”

“But there’s an invitation to read my paper before the Academy of Science.”

“Do it then.”

“I don’t know whether I can even write the paper. What shall I do, Suzy?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong with that? Say, Doc, I got to do a couple of things. Take me maybe two hours. That too long?”

“Just as long as we start by evening.”

“I’ll come back soon’s I finish.”

Doc said, “Suzy, I love you.”

She was headed for the door. She whirled and faced him. Her brows were straight and her mouth taut. Then she took a slow breath and her lips became full and turned up at the corners and her eyes shone with incredible excitement.

“Brother,” said Suzy, “you got yourself a girl!”

In the Palace Flop house, Suzy sat on a straight chair surrounded by the boys. She wore a look of furious concentration. Her feet were on two bricks and she held a barrel hoop in her hands. Propped in front of her was a board on which were chalked “ignition key,” “speedometer,” “choke,” and “gas gauge.” On the floor on her right side stood an apple box with a mop handle sticking upright out of it.

“Try her again,” said Mack. “Turn the key and reach up with your right toe for the starter.”

Suzy put her foot on a chalk spot on the floor.

“Chug-a-chug-a-chug,” said Hazel happily.

“Push out your clutch.”

Suzy pushed her left foot down on a brick.

“Now bring the gear to you and back.”

She moved the mop handle to low gear.

“Ease up the gas and let in the clutch. Now clutch out, away from you and forward. Give it gas. Now clutch out and straight back. There, you done it good. Now do it again.”

At the end of an hour and a half Suzy had driven the straight chair roughly a hundred and fifty miles.

“You’ll do all right,” said Mack. “Take it slow. If you can get two miles out of town without ramming into something, you can tell him the truth. He ain’t going to turn back then. He’ll tell you what to do. I’ll get her started and kind of lined up with the street.”

“You’re a bunch of nice guys,” said Suzy.

“Hell, if Hazel can go to all the trouble to break—oop, sorry—the least we can do is see he gets some good out of it. Come on now—whang her through the gears again!”

The evening was as lovely as the day had been. The setting sun pinked up the little white caps on the bay and lighted the serious pelicans pounding home to the sea rocks. The metal cannery walls seemed a soft and precious platinum.

Doc’s old car stood in front of Western Biological, its backseat loaded with buckets and pans and nets and crowbars. All Cannery Row was there. The Patrón had set out pints of Old Tennis Shoes along the curb. Fauna’s hair blazed in the setting sun. The girls gave Suzy quick little hugs. Becky was in romantic tears.

Joe Elegant looked out his lean-to door. He thought he would go to Rome after his book was published.

Doc held a list in his hand and checked equipment.

Only Mack and the boys were missing. And here they came down the chicken walk, balancing among them the tripod and the long black tube. They crossed the track and the lot and they set the tripod down beside the automobile.

Mack cleared his throat. “Friends,” he said, “on behalf of I and the boys it gives me pleasure to present Doc with this here.”