Adam stirred uneasily. “I wish you’d get off the tack you’re sitting on,” he said irritably. “You make me feel like a column of figures on a blackboard.”
Lee took a pipe from his pocket, a long slender ebony stem with a little cuplike brass bowl. He filled the thimble bowl with tobacco so fine-cut it looked like hair, then lighted the pipe, took four long puffs, and let the pipe go out.
“Is that opium?” Adam demanded.
“No,” said Lee. “It’s a cheap brand of Chinese tobacco, and it has an unpleasant taste.”
“Why do you smoke it then?”
“I don’t know,” said Lee. “I guess it reminds me of something—something I associate with clarity. Not very complicated.” Lee’s eyelids half closed. “All right then—I’m going to try to pull out your thoughts like egg noodles and let them dry in the sun. The woman is still your wife and she is still alive. Under the letter of the will she inherits something over fifty thousand dollars. That is a great deal of money. A sizable chunk of good or of evil could be done with it. Would your brother, if he knew where she is and what she is doing, want her to have the money? Courts always try to follow the wishes of the testator.”
“My brother would not want that,” said Adam. And then he remembered the girls upstairs in the tavern and Charles’ periodic visits.
“Maybe you’ll have to think for your brother,” said Lee. “What your wife is doing is neither good nor bad. Saints can spring from any soil. Maybe with this money she would do some “fine thing. There’s no springboard to philanthropy like a bad conscience.”
Adam shivered. “She told me what she would do if she had money. It was closer to murder than to charity.”
“You don’t think she should have the money then?”
“She said she would destroy many reputable men in Salinas. She can do it too.”
“I see,” said Lee. “I’m glad I can take a detached view of this. The pants of their reputations must have some thin places. Morally, then, you would be against giving her the money?”
“Yes.”
“Well, consider this. She has no name, no background. A whore springs full blown from the earth. She couldn’t very well claim the money, if she knew about it, without your help.”
“I guess that’s so. Yes, I can see that she might not be able to claim it without my help.”
Lee took up the pipe and picked out the ash with a little brass pin and filled the bowl again. While he drew in the four slow puffs his heavy lids raised and he watched Adam.
“It’s a very delicate moral problem,” he said. “With your permission I shall offer it for the consideration of my honorable relatives—using no names of course. They will go over it as a boy goes over a dog for ticks. I’m sure they will get some interesting results.” He laid his pipe on the table. “But you don’t have any choice, do you?”
“What do you mean by that?” Adam demanded. “Well, do you? Do you know yourself so much less than I do?”
“I don’t know what to do,” said Adam. “I’ll have to give it a lot of thought.”
Lee said angrily, “I guess I’ve been wasting my time. Are you lying to yourself or only to me?”
“Don’t speak to me like that!” Adam said.
“Why not? I have always disliked deception. Your course is drawn. What you will do is written—written in every breath you’ve ever taken. I’ll speak any way I want to. I’m crotchety. I feel sand under my skin. I’m. looking forward to the ugly smell of old books and the sweet smell of good thinking. Faced with two sets of morals, you’ll follow your training. What you call thinking won’t change it. The fact that your wife is a whore in Salinas won’t change a thing.”
Adam got to his feet. His face was angry. “You are insolent now that you’ve decided to go away,” he cried. “I tell you I haven’t made up my mind what to do about the money.”
Lee sighed deeply. He pushed his small body erect with his hands against his knees. He walked wearily to the front door and opened it. He turned back and smiled at Adam. “Bull shit!” he said amiably, and he went out and closed the door behind him.
3
Cal crept quietly down the dark hall and edged into the room where he and his brother slept. He saw the outline of his brother’s head against the pillow in the double bed, but he could not see whether Aron slept. Very gently he eased himself in on his side and turned slowly and laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the myriads of tiny colored dots that make up darkness. The window shade bellied slowly in and then the night wind fell and the worn shade flapped quietly against the window.
A gray, quilted melancholy descended on him. He wished with all his heart that Aron had not walked away from him out of the wagon shed. He wished with all his heart that he had not crouched listening at the hall door. He moved his lips in the darkness and made the words silently in his head and yet he could hear them.
“Dear Lord,” he said, “let me be like Aron. Don’t make me mean. I don’t want to be. If you will let everybody like me, why, I’ll give you anything in the world, and if I haven’t got it, why, I’ll go for to get it. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to be lonely. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.” Slow warm tears were running down his cheeks. His muscles were tight and he fought against making any crying sound or sniffle.
Aron whispered from his pillow in the dark, “You’re cold. You’ve got a chill.” He stretched out his hand to Cal’s arm and felt the goose bumps there. He asked softly, “Did Uncle Charles have any money?”
“No,” said Cal.
“Well, you were out there long enough. What did Father want to talk about?”
Cal lay still, trying to control his breathing.
“Don’t you want to tell me?” Aron asked. “I don’t care if you don’t tell me.”
“I’ll tell,” Cal whispered. He turned on his side so that his back was toward his brother. “Father is going to send a wreath to our mother. A great big goddam wreath of carnations.”
Aron half sat up in bed and asked excitedly, “He is? How’s he going to get it clear there?”
“On the train. Don’t talk so loud.”
Aron dropped back to a whisper. “But how’s it going to keep fresh?”
“With ice,” said Cal. “They’re going to pack ice all around it.”
Aron asked, “Won’t it take a lot of ice?”
“A whole hell of a lot of ice,” said Cal. “Go to sleep now.”
Aron was silent, and then he said, “I hope it gets there fresh and nice.”
“It will,” said Cal. And in his mind he cried, “Don’t let me be mean.”
Chapter 31
1
Adam brooded around the house all morning, and at noon he went to find Lee, who was spading the dark composted earth of his vegetable garden and planting his spring vegetables, carrots and beets, turnips, peas, and string beans, rutabaga and kale. The rows were straight planted under a tight-stretched string, and the pegs at the row ends carried the seed package to identify the row. On the edge of the garden in a cold frame the tomato and bell pepper and cabbage sets were nearly ready for transplanting, waiting only for the passing of the frost danger.
Adam said, “I guess I was stupid.”
Lee leaned on his spading fork and regarded him quietly.
“When are you going?” he asked.
“I thought I would catch the two-forty. Then I can get the eight o’clock back.”
“You could put it in a letter, you know,” said Lee.
“I’ve thought of that. Would you write a letter?”
“No. You’re right. I’m the stupid one there. No letters.”
“I have to go,” said Adam. “I thought in all directions and always a leash snapped me back.”
Lee said, “You can be unhonest in many ways, but not in that way. Well, good luck. I’ll be interested to hear what she says and does.”
“I’ll take the rig,” said Adam. “I’ll leave it at the stable in King City. I’m nervous about driving the Ford alone.”
It was four-fifteen when Adam climbed the rickety steps and knocked on the weather-beaten door of Kate’s place. A new man opened the door, a square-faced Finn, dressed in shirt and trousers; red silk armbands held up his full sleeves. He left Adam standing on the porch and in a moment came back and led him to the dining room.