John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath

Muley still sat regarding his meat. “Maybe I oughtn’ to a-talked like that,” he said. “Fella should maybe keep stuff like that in his head.”

Casy looked over, his mouth full of rabbit. He chewed, and his muscled throat convulsed in swallowing. “Yes, you should talk,” he said. “Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin’ man can talk the murder right out of his mouth an’ not do no murder. You done right. Don’t you kill nobody if you can help it.” And he bit out another hunk of rabbit. Joad tossed the bones in the fire and jumped up and cut off the wire. Muley was eating slowly now, and his nervous little eyes went from one to the other of his companions. Joad ate scowling like an animal, and a ring of grease formed around his mouth.

For a long time Muley looked at him, almost timidly. He put down the hand that held the meat. “Tommy,” he said. Joad looked up and did not stop gnawing the meat. “Yeah?” he said, around a mouthful.

“Tommy, you ain’t mad with me talkin’ about killin’ people? You ain’t huffy, Tom?”

“No,” said Tom. “I ain’t huffy. It’s just somepin that happened.”

“Ever’body knowed it was no fault of yours,” said Muley. “Ol’ man Turnbull said he was gonna get you when ya come out. Says nobody can kill one a his boys. All the folks hereabouts talked him outa it, though.”

“We was drunk,” Joad said softly. “Drunk at a dance. I don’ know how she started. An’ then I felt that knife go in me, an’ that sobered me up. Fust thing I see is Herb comin’ for me again with his knife. They was this here shovel leanin’ against the schoolhouse, so I grabbed it an’ smacked ’im over the head. I never had nothing against Herb. He was a nice fella. Come a-bullin’ after my sister Rosasharn when he was a little fella. No, I liked Herb.”

“Well, ever’body tol’ his pa that, an’ finally cooled ’im down. Somebody says they’s Hatfield blood on his mother’s side in ol’ Turnbull, an’ he’s got to live up to it. I don’t know about that. Him an’ his folks went on to California six months ago.”

Joad took the last of the rabbit from the wire and passed it around. He settled back and ate more slowly now, chewed evenly, and wiped the grease from his mouth with his sleeve. And his eyes, dark and half closed, brooded as he looked into the dying fire. “Ever’body’s goin’ west,” he said. “I got me a parole to keep. Can’t leave the state.”

“Parole?” Muley asked. “I heard about them. How do they work?”

“Well, I got out early, three years early. They’s stuff I gotta do, or they send me back in. Got to report ever’ so often.”

“How they treat ya there in McAlester? My woman’s cousin was in McAlester an’ they give him hell.”

“It ain’t so bad,” said Joad. “Like ever’place else. They give ya hell if ya raise hell. You get along O.K. les’ some guard gets it in for ya. Then you catch plenty hell. I got along O.K. Minded my own business, like any guy would. I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an’ stuff like that, too; not just word writin’. My ol’ man’ll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa’s gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don’t like no fancy stuff like that. He don’t even like word writin’. Kinda scares ’im I guess. Ever’ time Pa seen writin’, somebody took somepin away from ’im.”

“They didn’t give you no beatin’s or nothin’ like that?”

“No, I jus’ tended my own affairs. ’Course you get goddamn good an’ sick a-doin’ the same thing day after day for four years. If you done somepin you was ashamed of, you might think about that. But, hell, if I seen Herb Turnbull comin’ for me with a knife right now, I’d squash him down with a shovel again.”

“Anybody would,” said Muley. The preacher stared into the fire, and his high forehead was white in the settling dark. The flash of little flames picked out the cords of his neck. His hands, clasped about his knees, were busy pulling knuckles.

Joad threw the last bones into the fire and licked his fingers and then wiped them on his pants. He stood up and brought the bottle of water from the porch, took a sparing drink, and passed the bottle before he sat down again. He went on. “The thing that give me the mos’ trouble was, it didn’ make no sense. You don’t look for no sense when lightnin’ kills a cow, or it comes up a flood. That’s jus’ the way things is. But when a bunch of men take an’ lock you up four years, it ought to have some meaning. Men is supposed to think things out. Here they put me in, an’ keep me an’ feed me four years. That ought to either make me so I won’t do her again or else punish me so I’ll be afraid to do her again”—he paused—“but if Herb or anybody else come for me, I’d do her again. Do her before I could figure her out. Specially if I was drunk. That sort of senselessness kind a worries a man.”

Muley observed, “Judge says he give you a light sentence ’cause it wasn’t all your fault.”

Joad said, “They’s a guy in McAlester—lifer. He studies all the time. He’s sec’etary of the warden—writes the warden’s letters an’ stuff like that. Well, he’s one hell of a bright guy an’ reads law an’ all stuff like that. Well, I talked to him one time about her, ’cause he reads so much stuff. An’ he says it don’t do no good to read books. Says he’s read ever’thing about prisons now, an’ in the old times; an’ he says she makes less sense to him now than she did before he starts readin’. He says it’s a thing that started way to hell an’ gone back, an’ nobody seems to be able to stop her, an’ nobody got sense enough to change her. He says for God’s sake don’t read about her because he says for one thing you’ll jus’ get messed up worse, an’ for another you won’t have no respect for the guys that work the gover’ments.”

“I ain’t got a hell of a lot of respec’ for ’em now,” said Muley. “On’y kind a gover’ment we got that leans on us fellas is the ’safe margin a profit.’ There’s one thing that got me stumped, an’ that’s Willy Feeley—drivin’ that cat’, an’ gonna be a straw boss on lan’ his own folks used to farm. That worries me. I can see how a fella might come from some other place an’ not know no better, but Willy belongs. Worried me so I went up to ’im and ast ’im. Right off he got mad. ’I got two little kids,’ he says. ’I got a wife an’ my wife’s mother. Them people got to eat.’ Gets madder’n hell. ’Fust an’ on’y thing I got to think about is my own folks,’ he says. ’What happens to other folks is their look-out,’ he says. Seems like he’s ’shamed, so he gets mad.”

Jim Casy had been staring at the dying fire, and his eyes had grown wider and his neck muscles stood higher. Suddenly he cried, “I got her! If ever a man got a dose of the sperit, I got her. Got her all of a flash!” He jumped to his feet and paced back and forth, his head swinging. “Had a tent one time. Drawed as much as five hundred people ever’ night. That’s before either you fellas seen me.” He stopped and faced them. “Ever notice I never took no collections when I was preachin’ out here to folks—in barns an’ in the open?”

“By God, you never,” said Muley. “People around here got so use’ to not givin’ you money they got to bein’ a little mad when some other preacher came along an’ passed the hat. Yes, sir!”

“I took somepin to eat,” said Casy. “I took a pair a pants when mine was wore out, an’ a ol’ pair a shoes when I was walkin’ through to the groun’, but it wasn’t like when I had the tent. Some days there I’d take in ten or twenty dollars. Wasn’t happy that-a-way, so I give her up, an’ for a time I was happy. I think I got her now. I don’t know if I can say her. I guess I won’t try to say her—but maybe there’s a place for a preacher. Maybe I can preach again. Folks out lonely on the road, folks with no lan’, no home to go to. They got to have some kind of home. Maybe—” He stood over the fire. The hundred muscles of his neck stood out in high relief, and the firelight went deep into his eyes and ignited red embers. He stood and looked at the fire, his face tense as though he were listening, and the hands that had been active to pick, to handle, to throw ideas, grew quiet, and in a moment crept into his pocket. The bats flittered in and out of the dull firelight, and the soft watery burble of a night hawk came from across the fields.