“I hear you, Lee. What are you saying?”
“He couldn’t help it, Cal. That’s his nature. It was the only way he knew. He didn’t have any choice. But you have. Don’t you hear me? You have a choice.”
The spirals had become so small that the pencil lines ran together and the result was a shiny black dot.
Cal said quietly, “Aren’t you making a fuss about nothing? You must be slipping. You’d think from your tone that I’d killed somebody. Come off it, Lee. Come off it.”
It was silent in the room. After a moment Cal turned from his desk and the room was empty. A cup of coffee on the bureau top sent up a plume of vapor. Cal drank the coffee scalding as it was and went into the living room.
His father looked up apologetically at him.
Cal said, “I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t know how you felt about it.” He took the package of money from where it lay on the mantel and put it in the inside pocket of his coat where it had been before. “I’ll see what I can do about this.” He said casually, “Where are the others?”
“Oh, Abra had to go. Aron walked with her. Lee went out.”
“I guess I’ll go for a walk,” said Cal.
4
The November night was well fallen. Cal opened the front door a crack and saw Lee’s shoulders and head outlined against the white wall of the French Laundry across the street. Lee was sitting on the steps, and he looked lumpy in his heavy coat.
Cal closed the door quietly and went back through the living room. “Champagne makes you thirsty,” he said. His father didn’t look up.
Cal slipped out the kitchen door and moved through Lee’s waning kitchen garden. He climbed the high fence, found the two-by-twelve plank that served as a bridge across the slough of dark water, and came out between Lang’s Bakery and the tinsmith’s shop on Castroville Street.
He walked to Stone Street where the Catholic church is and turned left, went past the Carriaga house, the Wilson house, the Zabala house, and turned left on Central Avenue at the Steinbeck house. Two blocks out Central he turned left past the West End School.
The poplar trees in front of the schoolyard were nearly bare, but in the evening wind a few yellowed leaves still twisted down.
Cal’s mind was numb. He did not even know that the air was cold with frost slipping down from the mountains. Three blocks ahead he saw his brother cross under a streetlight, coming toward him. He knew it was his brother by stride and posture and because he knew it.
Cal slowed his steps, and when Aron was close he said, “Hi. I came looking for you.”
Aron said, “I’m sorry about this afternoon.”
“You couldn’t help it—forget it.” He turned and the two walked side by side. “I want you to come with me,” Cal said. “I want to show you something.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, it’s a surprise. But it’s very interesting. You’ll be interested.”
“Well, will it take long?”
“No, not very long. Not very long at all.”
They walked past Central Avenue toward Castroville Street.
5
Sergeant Axel Dane ordinarily opened the San Jose recruiting office at eight o’clock, but if he was a little late Corporal Kemp opened it, and Kemp was not likely to complain. Axel was not an unusual case. A hitch in the U.S. Army in the time of peace between the Spanish war and the German war had unfitted him for the cold, unordered life of a civilian. One month between hitches convinced him of that. Two hitches in the peacetime army completely unfitted him for war, and he had learned enough method to get out of it. The San Jose recruiting station proved he knew his way about. He was dallying with the youngest Ricci girl and she lived in San Jose.
Kemp hadn’t the time in, but he was learning the basic rule. Get along with the topkick and avoid all officers when possible. He didn’t mind the gentle riding Sergent Dane handed out.
At eight-thirty Dane entered the office to find Corporal Kemp asleep at his desk and a tired-looking kid sat waiting. Dane glanced at the boy and then went in back of the rail and put his hand on Kemp’s shoulder.
“Darling,” he said, “the skylarks are singing and a new dawn is here.”
Kemp raised his head from his arms, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and sneezed. “That’s my sweet,” the sergeant said. “Arise, we have a customer.”
Kemp squinted his crusted eyes. “The war will wait,” he said.
Dane looked more closely at the boy. “God! he’s beautiful. I hope they take good care of him. Corporal, you may think that he wants to bear arms against the foe, but I think he’s running away from love.”
Kemp was relieved that the sergeant wasn’t quite sober. “You think some dame hurt him?” He played any game his sergeant wished. “You think it’s the Foreign Legion?”
“Maybe he’s running away from himself.”
Kemp said, “I saw that picture. There’s one mean son of a bitch of a sergeant in it.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Dane. “Step up, young man. Eighteen, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Dane turned to his man. “What do you think?”
“Hell!” said Kemp. “I say if they’re big enough, they’re old enough.”
The sergeant said, “Let’s say you’re eighteen. And we’ll stick to it, shall we?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You just take this form and fill it out. Now you figure out what year you were born, and you put it down right here, and you remember it.”
Chapter 50
1
Joe didn’t like for Kate to sit still and stare straight ahead—hour after hour. That meant she was thinking, and since her face had no expression Joe had no access to her thoughts. It made him uneasy. He didn’t want his first real good break to get away from him.
He had only one plan himself—and that was to keep her stirred up until she gave herself away. Then he could jump in any direction. But how about it if she sat looking at the wall? Was she stirred up or wasn’t she?
Joe knew she hadn’t been to bed, and when he asked whether or not she wanted breakfast she shook her head so slowly that it was hard to know whether she had heard him or not.
He advised, himself cautiously, “Don’t do nothing! Just stick around and keep your eyes and ears open.” The girls in the house knew something had happened but no two of them had the same story, the goddam chickenheads.
Kate was not thinking. Her mind drifted among impressions the way a bat drifts and swoops in the evening. She saw the face of the blond and beautiful boy, his eyes mad with shock. She heard his ugly words aimed not so much at her as at himself. And she saw his dark brother leaning against the door and laughing.
Kate had laughed too—the quickest and best self-protection. What would her son do? What had he done after he went quietly away?
She thought of Cal’s eyes with their look of sluggish and fulfilled cruelty, peering at her as he slowly closed the door.
Why had he brought his brother? What did he want? What was he after? If she knew she could take care of herself. But she didn’t know.
The pain was creeping in her hands again and there was a new place. Her right hip ached angrily when she moved. She thought, So the pain will move in toward the center, and sooner or later all the pains will meet in the center and join like rats in a clot.
In spite of his advice to himself, Joe couldn’t let it alone. He carried a pot of tea to her door, knocked softly, opened the door, and went in. As far as he could see she hadn’t moved.
He said, “I brought you some tea, ma’am.”
“Put it on the table,” she said, and then as a second thought, “Thank you, Joe.”
“You don’t feel good, ma’am?”
“The pain’s back. The medicine fooled me.”
“Anything I can do?”
She raised her hands. “Cut these off—at the wrists.” She grimaced with the extra pain lifting her hands had caused. “Makes you feel hopeless,” she said plaintively.
Joe had never heard a tone of weakness in her before and his instinct told him it was time to move in. He said, “Maybe you don’t want me to bother you but I got some word about that other.” He knew by the little interval before she answered that she had tensed.
“What other?” she asked softly.
“That dame, ma’am.”
“Oh! You mean Ethel!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m getting tired of Ethel. What is it now?”
“Well, I’ll tell you like it happened. I can’t make nothing out of it. I’m in Kellogg’s cigar store and a fella come up to me. ‘You’re Joe?’ he says, an’ I tell him, ‘Who says?’ ‘You was lookin’ for somebody,’ he says. ‘Tell me about it,’ I says. Never seen the guy before. So he says, ‘That party toi’ me she wants to talk to you.’ An’ I told him, ‘Well, why don’t she?’ He gives me the long look an’ he says, ‘Maybe you forgot what the judge said.’ I guess he means about her coming back.” He looked at Kate’s face, still and pale, the eyes looking straight ahead.