Sweet Thursday (18 page)

“You can't prove it,” Old Jingleballicks cried. “It's all talk—overemphasis. Why, you might as well accuse me of neurotic tendencies and be done with it!” His eyes brimmed with tears. “My friend, my thought-friend, my true friend,” he whimpered.

Doc said, “I wouldn't even think of such a thing.”

“You wouldn't?”

“Certainly not.”

“When are you going to start dinner?” said Old Jingleballicks.

“You've eaten my dinner,” said Doc.

“I've got a fine idea,” said Old Jay. “While you start dinner, William and Mary can get a fresh bottle of whisky and I'll set up the chessmen.”

“It's not William and Mary, it's Joseph and Mary.”

“Who is? Oh! My friend, I'm going to teach you the greatest of all games, the ethereal creation of human intelligence. Shall we sugar it up with a little side bet?”

“Why, you dishonest old fraud!” Doc shouted.

“Ten dollars, Mary?”

The Patrón shrugged his shoulders in apology to Doc. “You have to pay to learn things,” he said.

“Make it twenty-five,” Old Jingleballicks said. “You want to live forever?”

Doc opened a can of salmon and a can of spaghetti and stirred the two together in a frying pan. He grated nutmeg over it. Sadly he put the burned stewpot to soak in the sink.

A little after dark the Patrón went back to the grocery and sent Cacahuete to deliver a third bottle of whisky. Upstairs he joined the wetbacks as in advancing and retreating lines they danced the sad and stately measures of the Tehuanos. “Sandunga,” they sang, “Sandunga mama mia…”

In the darkening laboratory Doc and Old Jay went softly into the third bottle of Old Tennis Shoes.

“You've had the bed long enough,” Doc said. “I want it now.”

“All right. As I grow older I expect less and less—and get nothing, even from my so-called friends.”

“Look here! You've eaten and spoiled my first dinner, stuffed my second, swilled my beer, taken two drinks for one of the whisky, appropriated my bed, broken two phonograph records, and I saw you put my fountain pen in your pocket. And how you razzle-dazzled the Patrón out of twenty-five dollars I don't know. You shouldn't have told him that under certain circumstances a knight can jump three squares in one direction—that's not honest.”

“I know,” said Old Jingleballicks. He patted the pillow lovingly. “Now you lie down here and get comfortable. I'll bring you a drink. Feel better now?”

“Oh, I'm all right,” said Doc.

“Say, is that place across the street still running?”

A jagged rage whipped Doc upright. “You stay out of there!” he said. “You old fool! Lie down and go to sleep.”

“Why shouldn't I go? Am I to deny myself the loveliness of women if the price is right? I can hear the tinkle of their sweet voices and see the heaving of their white roundness—”

“Oh, shut up!” Doc said.

“What's the matter, dear friend? I don't remember that you ever starved for love even when it was less near and less reasonable.”

“You go to hell,” said Doc. “But you go to hell here.”

At the very moment Doc and Old Jingleballicks were quarreling over a matter neither of them understood, Mack was sitting, body comfortable but spirit disturbed, in Fauna's office bedroom. In his hand he held a Venetian glass bud vase of whisky. He was pouring out to Fauna a problem that had not come up in his life for many years.

“Don't think that there ain't been parties before at the Palace, and fights,” he said. “Why, when the news come that Gay had went to his reward we give a memorial shindig that they don't hardly do no better at the Salinas Rodeo. Gay would of been proud of it—if he could of got in.”

Fauna said, “There's talk around that three mourners went to join Gay before nightfall next day.”

“Well, you got to expect a certain amount of accidents,” said Mack modestly. “That was all fine. But this here's something special. Not only are loyal hearts framing their dear friend for a hunk of charity, but we got a double-header. Right in the Palace Flop house the holy bounds of matrimony got its spikes dug in on the starting line. This here's a halcyon brawl. I and the boys got real delicate feelings about it.”

“But no clothes,” said Fauna.

“Right! We think somebody got to set a standard. If the loyal friends look like mugs, what'll the mugs look like?”

Fauna nodded. “I see what you mean. How far you want to go—monkeysuits?”

“God no!” Mack said. “Just pants and coats made out of the same stuff and nobody gets in without he's got a necktie on, and none of them bow ties that light up neither. This is a goddam solemn moment, Fauna.”

She scratched her scalp with her pencil.

Mack went on, “I ain't as young as I was. I don't know how many more parties I can take.”

“Don't none of us get no younger,” said Fauna. She tapped her teeth with the pencil. As it happened, she also had a problem, and she intended to ask Mack's advice. Now, suddenly, the two problems crashed together and a solution for both was born. Into Fauna's eyes came the light of triumph as she murmured, “I got it!”

“Give it to me gentle,” said Mack. “I didn't get much sleep today.”

Fauna got up and found the stick with which she directed astrological traffic or whacked a protruding piece of bad posture. She talked better with the wand in her hand. “This here calls for a drink,” she said, and she poured it.

Mack turned the stem of the bud vase in his fingers and sighted through his drink. The red glass made the brown whisky look green.

Fauna said, “There was a queen a long time ago and she was loaded. Didn't think nothing of paying a couple hundred bucks for a house dress. Got so many bracelets she couldn't bend her arms. You know what she done when she had a birthday or a hanging or something?”

“Overalls,” said Mack.

“No, but you're close. Dressed like she's a milkmaid. They'd wash up a cow and the queen'd sit on a gold stool and take a whang at milking. And there's another old dame. Just the top cream of the top cream. Gives them parties can't nobody get in. She wears a head rag. Done it for years. If you look over the crowd and don't see a head rag—she ain't there.”

Mack's hand shook as he raised the bud vase to his lips. “Is it what I think?”

“Masquerade!” cried Fauna. “There's only two kinds of people in the world gives a masquerade—people who got too much and people who ain't got nothing.”

Mack smiled inwardly to himself. “Can I have a freshener?” he asked.

“Help yourself,” said Fauna. “Masquerade has got other things too. People get kind of bored with who they are. Makes them something else for a while.”

Mack spoke with reverence. “They used to say, if you got something you can't figure out, give it to Mack. Fauna, it's your dice. You're a bull-bitch idear dame. God te-tum-tum His wonders to perform.”

“Like it?”

“Like it! Fauna, this here's one
Life
magazine would give its ass for an invite.”

“We got to have a theme.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, we can't let people just run wild. You don't know what kind of stuff they'd wear. I don't want no tramp and gunnysack party.”

“I guess you're right. You got any idears?”

“How about ‘At the court of the Fairy Queen'?”

“No,” said Mack. “First place, we got no right to hurt Joe Elegant's feelings; second place, the cops—”

“Well, how about then ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'?”

“I seen the picture,” said Mack. “I think you got something. Some of them dwarfs looked like mugs. I can't see Hazel as no fairy, but he'd do fine as a great big overgrowed dwarf.”

“That's what's nice about it,” said Fauna. “Gives you some leeway.”

“Do you think this might call for a drink?”

“I sure as hell do! You spread the word, Mack, will you? You come either as a dwarf, a prince, or a princess, or you damn well don't get in. Hold that vase steady.”

“But not Doc,” said Mack.

“You know,” said Fauna, “five'll get you seven Doc wears a tie.”

The communications system on Cannery Row is mysterious to the point of magic and rapid to the speed of light. Fauna and Mack came to the decision that the party should be a masquerade on Friday evening at 9:11½. By 9:12 the magic had started, and by 9:30 everyone who was not asleep, drunk, or away, knew about it. One particularly mean woman who hadn't had a man for a long time commented, “How will you know whether they're in costume or not?”—a statement clearly drawn from her own state of misery. But mainly the news was received with wonder and joy. Mack's tom-wallager had achieved the stature of a bull-bitch tom-wallager.

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?”

“I sure do, and I been there,” said Johnny.

“Give him the thirty-five cents,” said Mack.

What hidden, hoarded longings there are in all of us! Behind the broken nose and baleful eye may be a gentle courtier; behind the postures and symbols and myths of Joe Elegant there may be the hunger to be a man. If one could be, for only an evening, what ever in the world one wished, what would it be? What secret would come out?

To a certain extent the theme of the Palace Flop house raffle and engagement party was chosen because of Hazel. He was definitely dwarf material. But when he had reviewed the story, asked questions, and got as clear a picture as he ever got of anything, Hazel elected to be Prince Charming. He saw himself in white silk knee breeches and an Eton jacket, his left hand fondling the hilt of a small sword.

They offered him Grumpy, lovable old Grumpy, the prize part of all. They offered him Sweet Pea the Skunk, but Hazel stuck to his dream. It was Prince Charming or he wouldn't attend. Friendships have foundered on less.

“All right,” said Mack, “you go ahead. I was going to help you with your costume, but I know when I'm stumped. Hazel, if you're Prince Charming, you're on your own.”

“Who cares?” said Hazel. “Who wants your help? I'll bet you're mad because you wanted to be Prince Charming.”

“Not me,” said Mack. “I'm going as a tree.”

“How do you mean?”

“It's a forest, ain't it?” said Mack. “I want a little anenmity. You can't see the tree for the forest.”

Hazel went to sit under the cypress tree. He was gloomy and he was frightened because ideas did not come to him, and when he sought them they ran screaming away. But he was determined. He could not let the office down. A man sentenced to be President could not go as a dwarf. It wasn't dignified. Later in the morning he went to the back door of the Bear Flag and called for help from Joe Elegant.

Joe smiled. “I'll help you,” he said maliciously.

All over the Row trunks were being opened, and the smell of mothballs penetrated as far as the middle of the street. And all over the Row the story was being rewritten to fit the wardrobe. By unspoken agreement no one planned to be Snow White.

In Western Biological, Doc awakened wracked with pain from sleeping on the floor. He lay still for a moment, trying to isolate the part of him that hurt worst. Not the least of his agony was his memory of forcing Old Jingleballicks to take his bed. A crazy, alcoholic generosity, probably masochistic in origin, had prompted the sacrifice. He raised up on one shattered elbow and looked at the old bastard sleeping so sweetly—his halo of yellow hair surrounding his polished pink pate, his breath puffing in small comfortable snores.

“Wake up!” Doc shouted in fury.

The pale eyes flickered. “What's for breakfast?” said Old Jay.

“Don't you even have the decency to have a hangover?”

“Certainly I do,” said Old Jay with dignity. “How's about some beer?”

“Does your head ache?”

“Yes.”

“Do your joints ache?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have low-blood-pressure depression?”

“Overwhelming.”

“Then I've got you,” said Doc. “You get the beer.”

The pale eyes rolled despairingly. “I'll pay half if you get it.”

“No.”

“Tell you what I'll do—I'll loan you the money.”

“No.”

Old Jingleballicks' eyes were bleak. “Reach me my pants,” he said, and he fished out a quarter and a dime and held them out.

“No,” said Doc.

“God in heaven! What
do
you want?”

“I want two dollars.”

“Why, that would be six bottles!”

“Exactly. You're trapped, Old Jingleballicks, and you know it.”

Old Jay dug deep and found two one-dollar bills. “Maybe I can write it off to entertainment,” he said.

Doc pulled on pants and shirt and went across the street. He took his time. He drank a bottle of beer quickly and then sipped a second while he heard the news of the day from Joseph and Mary.

Back in the laboratory he put the four cold remaining bottles on the table.

“Where's my change?” asked Old Jay.

“I drank your change,” said Doc. He was beginning to feel good. He saw the stricken look. “You cheap old fraud,” he said happily, “for once you've been had.” And he went on, “I wish I could understand you. You must have millions and yet you pinch and squirm and cheat. Why?”

“Please give me beer. I'm dying,” said Old Jingleballicks.

“Then die a little longer,” said Doc. “I love to see you die!”

“It's not my fault,” Old Jay said. “It's a state of mind. You might call it the American state of mind. The tax laws are creating a whole new kind of man—a psyche rather than a psychosis. Two or three generations and we'll maybe set the species. Can I have beer now?”