John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath

“Nobody’s seen me,” said the preacher. “I went off alone, an’ I sat and figured. The sperit’s strong in me, on’y it ain’t the same. I ain’t so sure of a lot of things.” He sat up straighter against the tree. His bony hand dug its way like a squirrel into his overall pocket, brought out a black, bitten plug of tobacco. Carefully he brushed off bits of straw and gray pocket fuzz before he bit off a corner and settled the quid into his cheek. Joad waved his stick in negation when the plug was held out to him. The turtle dug at the rolled coat. Casy looked over at the stirring garment. “What you got there—a chicken? You’ll smother it.”

Joad rolled the coat up more tightly. “An old turtle,” he said. “Picked him up on the road. An old bulldozer. Thought I’d take ’im to my little brother. Kids like turtles.”

The preacher nodded his head slowly. “Every kid got a turtle some time or other. Nobody can’t keep a turtle though. They work at it and work at it, and at last one day they get out and away they go—off somewheres. It’s like me. I wouldn’t take the good ol’ gospel that was just layin’ there to my hand. I got to be pickin’ at it an’ workin’ at it until I got it all tore down. Here I got the sperit sometimes an’ nothin’ to preach about. I got the call to lead people, an’ no place to lead ’em.”

“Lead ’em around and around,” said Joad. “Sling ’em in the irrigation ditch. Tell ’em they’ll burn in hell if they don’t think like you. What the hell you want to lead ’em someplace for? Jus’ lead ’em.” The straight trunk shade had stretched out along the ground. Joad moved gratefully into it and squatted on his hams and made a new smooth place on which to draw his thoughts with a stick. A thick-furred yellow shepherd dog came trotting down the road, head low, tongue lolling and dripping. Its tail hung limply curled, and it panted loudly. Joad whistled at it, but it only dropped its head an inch and trotted fast toward some definite destination. “Goin’ someplace,” Joad explained, a little piqued. “Goin’ for home maybe.”

The preacher could not be thrown from his subject. “Goin’ someplace,” he repeated. “That’s right, he’s goin’ someplace. Me—I don’t know where I’m goin’. Tell you what—I used ta get the people jumpin’ an’ talkin’ in tongues and glory-shoutin’ till they just fell down an’ passed out. An’ some I’d baptize to bring ’em to. An’ then—you know what I’d do? I’d take one of them girls out in the grass, an’ I’d lay with her. Done it ever’ time. Then I’d feel bad, an’ I’d pray an’ pray, but it didn’t do no good. Come the next time, them an’ me was full of the sperit, I’d do it again. I figgered there just wasn’t no hope for me, an’ I was a damned ol’ hypocrite. But I didn’t mean to be.”

Joad smiled and his long teeth parted and he licked his lips. “There ain’t nothing like a good hot meetin’ for pushin’ ’em over,” he said. “I done that myself.”

Casy leaned forward excitedly. “You see,” he cried, “I seen it was that way, an’ I started thinkin’.” He waved his bony big-knuckled hand up and down in a patting gesture. “I got to thinkin’ like this’ Here’s me preachin’ grace. An’ here’s them people gettin’ grace so hard they’re jumpin’ an’ shoutin’. Now they say layin’ up with a girl comes from the devil. But the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass.’ An’ I got to thinkin’ how in hell, s’cuse me, how can the devil get in when a girl is so full of the Holy Sperit that it’s spoutin’ out of her nose an’ ears. You’d think that’d be one time when the devil didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. But there it was.” His eyes were shining with excitement. He worked his cheeks for a moment and then spat into the dust, and the gob of spit rolled over and over, picking up dust until it looked like a round dry little pellet. The preacher spread out his hand and looked at his palm as though he were reading a book. “An’ there’s me,” he went on softly. “There’s me with all them people’s souls in my han’—responsible an’ feelin’ my responsibility—an’ ever time, I lay with one of them girls.” He looked over at Joad and his face looked helpless. His expression asked for help.

Joad carefully drew the torso of a woman in the dirt, breasts, hips, pelvis. “I wasn’t never a preacher,” he said. “I never let nothin’ go by when I could catch it. An’ I never had no idears about it except that I was goddamn glad when I got one.”

“But you wasn’t a preacher,” Casy insisted. “A girl was just a girl to you. They wasn’t nothin’ to you. But to me they was holy vessels. I was savin’ their souls. An’ here with all that responsibility on me I’d just get ’em frothin’ with the Holy Sperit, an’ then I’d take ’em out in the grass.”

“Maybe I should of been a preacher,” said Joad. He brought out his tobacco and papers and rolled a cigarette. He lighted it and squinted through the smoke at the preacher. “I been a long time without a girl,” he said. “It’s gonna take some catchin’ up.”

Casy continued, “It worried me till I couldn’t get no sleep. Here I’d go to preachin’ and I’d say, ’By God, this time I ain’t gonna do it.’ And right while I said it, I knowed I was.”

“You should a got a wife,” said Joad. “Preacher an’ his wife stayed at our place one time. Jehovites they was. Slep’ upstairs. Held meetin’s in our barnyard. Us kids would listen. That preacher’s missus took a god-awful poundin’ after ever’ night meetin’.”

“I’m glad you tol’ me,” said Casy. “I used to think it was jus’ me. Finally it give me such pain I quit an went off by myself an’ give her a damn good thinkin’ about.” He doubled up his legs and scratched between his dry dusty toes. “I says to myself, ’What’s gnawin’ you? Is it the screwin’?’ An’ I says, ’No, it’s the sin.’ An’ I says, ’Why is it that when a fella ought to be just about mule-ass proof against sin, an’ full up of Jesus, why is it that’s the time a fella gets fingerin’ his pants buttons?’” He laid two fingers down in his palm in rhythm, as though he gently placed each word there side by side. “I says, ’Maybe it ain’t a sin. Maybe it’s just the way folks is. Maybe we been whippin’ the hell out of ourselves for nothin’.’ An’ I thought how some sisters took to beatin’ theirselves with a three-foot shag of bobwire. An’ I thought how maybe they liked to hurt themselves, an’ maybe I liked to hurt myself. Well, I was layin’ under a tree when I figured that out, and I went to sleep. And it come night, an’ it was dark when I come to. They was a coyote squawkin’ near by. Before I knowed it, I was sayin’ out loud, ’The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.’” He paused and looked up from the palm of his hand, where he had laid down the words.

Joad was grinning at him, but Joad’s eyes were sharp and interested, too. “You give her a goin’-over,” he said. “You figured her out.”

Casy spoke again, and his voice rang with pain and confusion. “I says, ’What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ’It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ An’ I says, ’Don’t you love Jesus?’ Well, I thought an’ thought, an’ finally I says, ’No, I don’t know nobody name’ Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. An’ sometimes I love ’em fit to bust, an’ I want to make ’em happy, so I been preachin’ somepin I thought would make ’em happy.’ An’ then—I been talkin’ a hell of a lot. Maybe you wonder about me using bad words. Well, they ain’t bad to me no more. They’re jus’ words folks use, an’ they don’t mean nothing bad with ’em. Anyways, I’ll tell you one more thing I thought out; an’ from a preacher it’s the most unreligious thing, and I can’t be a preacher no more because I thought it an’ I believe it.”