“You know how it is,” Samuel said. “When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he’s gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.”
“I heard about your daughter. I’m sorry.”
“I got your letter, Lee. I have it. You said good things.”
“Chinese things,” said Lee. “I seem to get more Chinese as I get older.”
“There’s something changed about you, Lee. What is it?”
“It’s my queue, Mr. Hamilton. I’ve cut off my queue.”
“That’s it.”
“We all did. Haven’t you heard? The Dowager Empress is gone. China is free. The Manchus are not overlords and we do not wear queues. It was a proclamation of the new government. There’s not a queue left anywhere.”
“Does it make a difference, Lee?”
“Not much. It’s easier. But there’s a kind of looseness on the scalp that makes me uneasy. It’s hard to get used to the convenience of it.”
“How is Adam?”
“He’s all right. But he hasn’t changed much. I wonder what he was like before.”
“Yes, I’ve wondered about that. It was a short flowering. The boys must be big.”
“They are big. I’m glad I stayed here. I learned a great deal from seeing the boys grow and helping a little.”
“Did you teach them Chinese?”
“No. Mr. Trask didn’t want me to. And I guess he was right. It would have been a needless complication. But I’m their friend—yes, I’m their friend. They admire their father, but I think they love me. And they’re very different. You can’t imagine how different.”
“In what way, Lee?”
“You’ll see when they come home from school. They’re like two sides of a medal. Cal is sharp and dark and watchful, and his brother—well, he’s a boy you like before he speaks and like more afterwards.”
“And you don’t like Cal?”
“I find myself defending him—to myself. He’s fighting for his life and his brother doesn’t have to fight.”
“I have the same thing in my brood,” said Samuel. “I don’t understand it. You’d think with the same training and the same blood they’d be alike, but they’re not—not at all.”
Later Samuel and Adam walked down the oak-shadowed road to the entrance to the draw where they could look out at the Salinas Valley.
“Will you stay to dinner?” Adam asked.
“I will not be responsible for the murder of more chickens,” said Samuel.
“Lee’s got a pot roast.”
“Well, in that case—”
Adam still carried one shoulder lower than the other from the old hurt. His face was hard and curtained, and his eyes looked at generalities and did not inspect details. The two men stopped in the road and looked out at the valley, green tinged from the early rains.
Samuel said softly, “I wonder you do not feel a shame at leaving that land fallow.”
“I had no reason to plant it,” Adam said. “We had that out before. You thought I would change. I have not changed.”
“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
A slight anger came into Adam’s voice. “Why do you come to lecture me? I’m glad you’ve come, but why do you dig into me?”
“To see whether I can raise a little anger in you. I’m a nosy man. But there’s all that fallow land, and here beside me is all that fallow man. It seems a waste. And I have a bad feeling about waste because I could never afford it. Is it a good feeling to let life lie fallow?”
“What else could I do?”
“You could try again.”
Adam faced him. “I’m afraid to, Samuel,” he said. “I’d rather just go about it this way. Maybe I haven’t the energy or the courage.”
“How about your boys—do you love them?”
“Yes—yes.”
“Do you love one more than the other?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. Something about your tone.”
“Let’s go back to the house,” said Adam. They strolled back under the trees. Suddenly Adam said, “Did you ever hear that Cathy was in Salinas? Did you ever hear such a rumor?”
“Did you?”
“Yes—but I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
Samuel walked silently in the sandy wheel rut of the road. His mind turned sluggishly in the pattern of Adam and almost wearily took up a thought he had hoped was finished. He said at last, “You have never let her go.”
“I guess not. But I’ve let the shooting go. I don’t think about it any more.”
“I can’t tell you how to live your life,” Samuel said, “although I do be telling you how to live it. I know that it might be better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world. And while I tell you, I am myself sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It’s small mining—small mining. You’re too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.”
Adam’s face was bent down, and his jawbone jutted below his temples from clenching.
Samuel glanced at him. “That’s right,” he said. “Set your teeth in it. How we do defend a wrongness! Shall I tell you what you do, so you will not think you invented it? When you go to bed and blow out the lamp—then she stands in the doorway with a little light behind her, and you can see her nightgown stir. And she comes sweetly to your bed, and you, hardly breathing, turn back the covers to receive her and move your head over on the pillow to make room for her head beside yours. You can smell the sweetness of her skin, and it smells like no other skin in the world—”
“Stop it,” Adam shouted at him. “Goddam you, stop it! Stop nosing over my life! You’re like a coyote sniffing around a dead cow.”
“The way I know,” Samuel said softly, “is that one came to me that selfsame way—night after month after year, right to the very now. And I think I should have double-bolted my mind and sealed off my heart against her, but I did not. All of these years I’ve cheated Liza. I’ve given her an untruth, a counterfeit, and I’ve saved the best for those dark sweet hours. And now I could wish that she may have had some secret caller too. But I’ll never know that. I think she would maybe have bolted her heart shut and thrown the key to hell.”
Adam’s hands were clenched and the blood was driven out of his white knuckles. “You make me doubt myself,” he said fiercely. “You always have. I’m afraid of you. What should I do, Samuel? Tell me! I don’t know how you saw the thing so clear. What should I do?”
“I know the ‘shoulds,’ although I never do them, Adam. I always know the ‘shoulds.’ You should try to find a new Cathy. You should let the new Cathy kill the dream Cathy—let the two of them fight it out. And you, sitting by, should marry your mind to the winner. That’s the second-best should. The best would be to search out and find some fresh new loveliness to cancel out the old.”
“I’m afraid to try,” said Adam.
“That’s what you’ve said. And now I’m going to put a selfishness on you. I’m going away, Adam. I came to say good-by.”
“What do you mean?”
“My daughter Olive has asked Liza and me to visit with her in Salinas, and we’re going—day after tomorrow.”
“Well, you’ll be back.”
Samuel went on, “After we’ve visited with Olive for maybe a month or two, there will come a letter from George. And his feelings will be hurt if we don’t visit him in Paso Robles. And after that Mollie will want us in San Francisco, and then Will, and maybe even Joe in the East, if we should live so long.”
“Well, won’t you like that? You’ve earned it. You’ve worked hard enough on that dust heap of yours.”
“I love that dust heap,” Samuel said. “I love it the way a bitch loves her runty pup. I love every flint, the plow-breaking outcroppings, the thin and barren top-soil, the waterless heart of her. Somewhere in my dust heap there’s a richness.”
“You deserve a rest.”
“There, you’ve said it again,” said Samuel. “That’s what I had to accept,” and I have accepted. When you say I deserve a rest, you are saying that my life is over.”
“Do you believe that?”
“That’s what I have accepted.”