Sweet Thursday (25 page)

“What for?”

“Stealing. From the Safeway store. Joe hated to do it.”

“I'll see what I can do. So long, Suzy.”

“You ain't mad?”

“No, Suzy, but I'm sorry.”

“So'm I. But hell, you can't have everything. So long, Doc. Hope you do good at La Jolla.”

When Doc crossed the street this time he hoped no one was watching. He went into the laboratory, walked to his cot, and lay down. He was sick with loss. He couldn't think. Only one thing was sure: he had to go to La Jolla. If he didn't he would die, because there would be nothing left in him to believe in, even to defend. He squinched his eyes closed and looked at the bright points of light swimming on his retinas.

There were footsteps on his porch and the snakes whirred their rattles but not violently.

Hazel opened the door and looked in. He saw Doc's expression and the hope died out of him.

“No soap?” he asked.

“No soap,” said Doc.

“There got to be some way.”

“There isn't,” said Doc.

“Anything I can do?”

“No. Yes, there is too. You know Joe Blaikey?”

“The cop? Sure.”

“Well, he picked up a man in the sand dunes. Find Joe and tell him I'm interested in the man. Tell him to be nice to him. I'll be down to see him as soon as I can. Tell Joe the man is harmless.” Doc rolled on his side and dug in his pocket. “Here's two dollars. Ask Joe to let you see the man and give him—no, stop at the Safeway and buy a dozen candy bars and take them to the seer and then give him the change.”

“Seer?”

“That's the man's name,” said Doc wearily.

“I'll do her right now,” Hazel said proudly. He went out at a dogtrot.

Doc was arranging himself comfortably in his misery again when there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he cried.

There was no answer but a second knock and a wild buzzing from the snakes.

“Oh Christ!” said Doc. “I hope not schoolchildren on a culture tour.”

It was a telegram, a long one, collect. It said:

EUREKA! GREEK WORD MEANING I HAVE FOUND IT. YOU ARE NOW AN INSTITUTION. HAVE SET UP CEPHALOPOD RESEARCH SECTION AT CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. YOU ARE IN CHARGE. SIX THOUSAND A YEAR AND EXPENSES. GET TO WORK ON YOUR DEVILFISH. AM MAKING ARRANGEMENTS FOR YOU TO READ PAPER IN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY SCIENCES AT END OF YEAR. ALL CLEARLY DEDUCTIBLE. CONGRATULATIONS. WISH I COULD HEAR YOUR WORDS WHEN YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS WIRE.

Doc laid the telegram beside him on the cot. “The son-of-a-bitch,” he said.

Hazel sat on the end of the steel cot in the Monterey jail and looked with interest at the seer.

“Open up one of them Baby Ruths,” he said. “If you're a friend of Doc's, can't nothing bad happen to you.”

“I don't know him,” said the seer.

“Well, he knows you. That's your good luck.”

“I don't know any doctors.”

“He ain't that kind. He's a doctor of bugs and stuff like that.”

“Oh yes, I do remember. I gave him dinner.”

“And he give you candy bars.”

“I probably won't eat them.”

“Why, for Chrissake, not?”

“Tell my friend Doc that greed poisoned me. I love candy bars. I stole only one at a time and eased my conscience of a little crime. But yesterday an appetite like a whip overcame me. I stole three. The manager of the Safeway says he knew I was stealing one at a time. He let it go. But when I took three he couldn't let it pass. I don't blame him. Who knows what I would have done next? Some other appetite might have driven me. I'll punish myself by smelling these bars and not eating them.”

“I think you're nuts!” said Hazel.

“I guess so. I have no basis of comparison so I don't know how other people feel.”

“You talk a little like Doc,” said Hazel. “I don't get none of it.”

“How is he?”

“Not too hot. He got troubles.”

“Yes, I could see that. I remember now. He wore loneliness like a shroud. I was afraid for him.”

“Jesus, you do talk like him! He got dame trouble.”

“That was bound to be. When a man is cold he looks for warmth. When he is lonely there's only one cure. Why doesn't he take the woman?”

“She won't have him unless.”

“I see. Sometimes they're that way.”

“Who?”

“Women. What do you mean, unless?”

Hazel looked at the seer with level penetrating eyes. This man talked like Doc. Maybe he could help. But with this thought there came also caution.

“I'd like to ask you something,” Hazel said.

“What?”

“Well, this ain't none of it true. It's a kind of a—a whatcha-macallit—”

“Hypothetical question?”

“I guess so.”

“S'pose there's a guy and he's in trouble.”

“Yes?”

“Well, he can't get out of it. But he got a friend maybe he don't know about.”

“That's you,” said the seer.

“No it ain't! It's some other guy. I forget his name.” He hurried on. “Well, s'pose the guy's in trouble and there's one way he can get out but he can't do it. You think his friend ought to do it?”

“Certainly.”

“Even if it hurt like hell?”

“Certainly.”

“Even if it might maybe not work?”

“Certainly. I don't know what the situation is with your Doc, but I know how it should be with you. If you love him you must do anything to help him—anything. Even kill him to save him incurable pain. This is the highest and most terrible duty of friendship. I gather that what you must do is violent. You must first make sure it can be successful, and you must, second, make sure within yourself that you know you will be punished. It is quite possible that even if you are successful your friend will never speak to you again. That takes a lot of love—maybe the greatest love. Make sure you love him that much.”

Hazel caught his breath, “Hell, there ain't no such guy. It's hypa—it's malarky, a kind of a riddle.”

“I guess you do love him that much,” the seer said.

No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time—he can never return to simplicity.

Under the black cypress tree Hazel writhed on the ground. From between his clenched teeth came little whimpers. As the night drew on and the moon went down, leaving blackness, so desolation fell on Hazel, so that he cried out against the agony of his greatness as that Other did, feeling forsaken.

Hour after hour the struggle went on, and only about three o'clock in the morning was Hazel saturated. Then he accepted it as he had accepted the poisoned presidency of the United States. He was calm, for there was no escape. If anyone had seen him it would have been a dull man who did not find him beautiful.

Hazel picked his chosen instrument from the ground—an indoor-ball bat. He crept like a night-colored cat out of the black shadow of the cypress tree.

In less than three minutes he returned. He lay on his stomach under the tree and wept.

Dr. Horace Dormody hated night calls, like everybody else, but Doc was his friend and he responded to the frenzied voice on the telephone. In the lab he looked at Doc's white face and then at his right arm.

“It's broken all right. I don't know how badly. Think you could get to my car? I want to X-ray.”

And later he said, “Well, that's that. It's clean and it will take time. Now, tell me your cock-and-bull story again.”

“I was asleep,” said Doc. “Only thing I can think is that I must have turned over and it was caught between the cot and the wall.”

“You mean you weren't in a fight?”

“I tell you I was asleep. What are you grinning about? What's so funny?”

Dr. Horace said, “Have it your own way. It's none of my business—unless the other fellow shows up. The tissue over the break is smashed. It looks as though it's been hit with a club.”

“I can't have it!” Doc cried. “I've got to go to La Jolla tomorrow for the spring tides!”

“And turn over rocks?”

“Sure.”

“Try and do it,” said Dr. Horace. “Is the cast getting hot?”

“Yes,” said Doc despondently.

When things get really bad there are some who seek out others who have it worse, for consolation. It is hard to see how this works but it seems to. You balance your trouble against another's, and if yours is lighter you feel better.

You would say the situation in Cannery Row was just about hopeless. Consider, then, the plight of the town of Pacific Grove, and you will understand why the lights burned all night in the Masonic Hall and why there was talk of getting rid of the city government. It wasn't a small thing. The whole town was involved. The butterflies had not arrived.

Pacific Grove benefits by one of those happy accidents of nature that gladden the heart, excite the imagination, and instruct the young.

On a certain day in the shouting springtime great clouds of orangy Monarch butterflies, like twinkling aery fields of flowers, sail high in the air on a majestic pilgrimage across Monterey Bay and land in the outskirts of Pacific Grove in the pine woods. The butterflies know exactly where they are going. In their millions they land on several pine trees—always the same trees. There they suck the thick resinous juice which oozes from the twigs, and they get cockeyed. The first comers suck their fill and then fall drunken to the ground, where they lie like a golden carpet, waving their inebriate legs in the air and giving off butterfly shouts of celebration, while their places on the twigs are taken by new, thirsty millions. After about a week of binge the butterflies sober up and fly away, but not in clouds: they face their Monday morning singly or in pairs.

For a long time Pacific Grove didn't know what it had. Then gradually it was remarked that an increasing number of tourists were drawn to see the butterflies. Where there are tourists there is money, and it is a sin to let it drift away. Pacific Grove had a gravy train right in its lap. And the butterflies came free. It is only natural that the Great Butterfly Festival evolved, and where there is a festival there is bound to be a pageant.

There was ointment trouble at first. Pacific Grove is not only a dry town, but ardently dry. The sale of various tonics of good alcoholic content is the highest in the state, but there is no liquor. The fact that the visiting butterflies came to the dry oasis to get drunk seemed a little unfair, but the town solved this, first, by ignoring it, and then, by hotly denying it. The Butterfly Pageant explains the whole thing: There was once a butterfly princess (sung by Miss Graves), and she wandered away and was lost. Somehow a bunch of Indians (citizens in long brown underwear) got in it. I forget how. Anyway, the loyal subjects searched and searched and at last they found their princess and in their millions came to rescue her. (When they lie flat on their backs their legs are waving greetings to their queen.) It all works out very nicely. The pageant is in the ballpark and tourists can buy butterflies made out of every conceivable material from pine cones to platinum. The town makes a very nice thing of it. Why, the symbol of Pacific Grove on its advertising is the Monarch butterfly.

In all history there has been only one slipup. In 1924, I think it was, the butterflies did not come, and the frantic town was forced to print hundreds of thousands of paper butterflies in two colors and spread them all over. Today a wise city government keeps a huge supply of paper Monarchs on hand in case tragedy should strike again.

Now the time of the arrival is set, give one or two days in either direction. The pageant has been practicing for months, the Indians are trained, the prince has his tights out of mothballs, and the princess flowers toward coloratura luxury.

Perhaps it was an omen. Two days before the insects were due, Miss Graves lost her voice. She was a nice young woman, rather pretty and rather tired. She taught fourth grade, which is enough to tire anyone. Sprays and injections had no effect. Perhaps it was psychosomatic pressure that closed her throat and bottled up all but a dry squawk. Her eyes were feverish with despondency.

And then the days went by and the butterflies did not arrive. At first there was panic in Pacific Grove, and then a blind anger set in and the citizens looked about for someone to blame: The city government was a pushover. It was time for a change. Storekeepers whose bookkeeping was shaky blamed it on the mayor. Moving-picture attendance had fallen off. The city council took the rap for that. The matter became a growl, and the growl a roar: “Turn the rascals out!”

Then there was a hotel fire in King City, sixty miles away, and guess who came boiling out with an overcoat and a blonde? Mayor Cristy of Pacific Grove didn't even trouble to resign. He left town, and just as well. There was talk of tar and feathers. He must have heard. The town hadn't been so upset since the Great Roque War.

The religious block blamed the whole thing on sin without going into details. The cynics wanted to throw the whole council out, together with the chief of police and the water commissioner. More solid citizens placed the blame where it belonged, on Roosevelt-Truman socialism. And the butterflies did not come.

Then the first grade had its scandal. William Taylor 4th brought his crayons home wrapped in the dust cover of the Kinsey report. On being confronted, he panicked and said he got it from the teacher, Miss Bucke. She was questioned, and it developed that her father had signed a petition for the release of Eugene V. Debs in 1918. It had got so nobody could trust anybody.

And Miss Graves went on croaking.

And the butterflies did not come.

So you see, the trouble on Cannery Row wasn't as horrible as you thought.