Shark wetted his pen in the ink bottle and entered the fact of the foreclosure in his ledger. “Lettuce,” he mused. “Everybody’s putting in lettuce. The market’s going to be flooded. Seems to me I might put in potatoes and make some money. That’s fine bottom land.” He noted in the book the planting of three hundred acres of potatoes. His eye traveled along the line. Thirty thousand dollars lay in the bank just drawing bank interest.
It seemed a shame. The money was practically idle. A frown of concentration settled over his eyes. He wondered how San Jose Building and Loan was. It paid six per cent. It wouldn’t do to rush into it blindly without investigating the company. As he closed the ledger for the night, Shark determined to talk to John Whiteside about it. Sometimes those companies went broke, the officers absconded, he thought uneasily.
Before the Munroe family moved into the valley, Shark suspected all men and boys of evil intent toward Alice, but when once he had set eyes on young Jimmie Munroe, his fear and suspicion narrowed until it had all settled upon the sophisticated Jimmie. The boy was lean and handsome of face, his mouth was well developed and sensual, and his eyes shone with that insulting cockiness high school boys assume. Jimmie was said to drink gin; he wore town clothes of wool—never overalls. His hair shone with oil, and his whole manner and posture were of a rakishness that set the girls of the Pastures of Heaven giggling and squirming with admiration and embarrassment. Jimmie watched the girls with quiet, cynical eyes, and tried to appear dissipated for their benefit. He knew that young girls are vastly attracted to young men with pasts. Jimmie had a past. He had been drunk several times at the Riverside Dance Palace; he had kissed at least a hundred girls, and, on three occasions, he had sinful adventures in the willows by the Salinas River. Jimmie tried to make his face confess his vicious life, but, fearing that his appearance was not enough, he set free a number of mischievous little rumors that darted about the Pastures of Heaven with flattering speed.
Shark Wicks heard the rumors. In Shark there grew up a hatred of Jimmie Munroe that was born of fear of Jimmie’s way with women. What chance, Shark thought, would beautiful, stupid Alice have against one so steeped in knowledge of worldliness?
Before Alice had ever seen the boy, Shark forbade her to see him. He spoke with such vehemence that a mild interest was aroused in the dull brain of the girl.
“Don’t you ever let me catch you talking to that Jimmie Munroe,” he told her.
“Who’s Jimmie Munroe, Papa?”
“Never you mind who he is. Just don’t let me catch you talking to him. You hear me! Why, I’ll skin you alive if you even look at him.”
Shark had never laid a hand on Alice for the same reason that he would not have whipped a Dresden vase. He even hesitated to caress her for fear of leaving a mark. Punishment was never necessary. Alice had always been a good and tractable child. Badness must originate in an idea or an ambition. She had never experienced either.
And again—“You haven’t been talking to that Jimmie Munroe, have you?”
“No, Papa.”
“Well, just don’t let me catch you at it.”
After a number of repetitions of this order, a conviction crept into the thickened cells of Alice’s brain that she would really like to see Jimmie Munroe. She even had a dream about him, which shows how deeply she was stirred. Alice very rarely dreamed about anything In her dream, a man who looked like the Indian on her room calendar, and whose name was Jimmie, drove up in a shiny automobile and gave her a large juicy peach. When she bit into the peach, the juice ran down her chin and embarrassed her. Then her mother awakened her for she was snoring. Katherine was glad her daughter snored. It was one of the equaling imperfections. But at the same time it was not ladylike.
Shark Wicks received a telegram. “Aunt Nellie passed away last night. Funeral Saturday.” He got into his Ford and drove to the farm of John Whiteside to say he couldn’t attend the school board meeting. John Whiteside was clerk of the board. Before he left, Shark looked worried for a moment and then said, “I been wanting to ask you what you thought about that San Jose Building and Loan Company.”
John Whiteside smiled. “I don’t know much about that particular company,” he said.
“Well, I’ve got thirty thousand lying in the bank drawing three per cent. I thought I could turn a little more interest than that if I looked around.”
John Whiteside pursed his lips and blew softly and tapped the stream of air with his forefinger. “Offhand, I’d say Building and Loan was your best bet.”
“Oh, that ain’t my way of doing business. I don’t want bets,” Shark cut in. “If I can’t see a sure profit in a thing, I won’t go into it. Too many people bet.”
“That was only a manner of speaking, Mr. Wicks. Few Building and Loan Companies go under. And they pay good interest.”
“I’ll look into it anyway,” Shark decided. “I’m going up to Oakland for Aunt Nellie’s funeral, and I’ll just stop off a few hours in San Jose and look into this company.”
At the Pastures of Heaven General Store that night there were new guesses made at the amount of Shark’s wealth, for Shark had asked the advice of several men.
“Well anyway, there’s one thing you can say,” T. B. Allen concluded, “Shark Wicks is nobody’s fool. He’ll ask a man’s advice as well as the next one, but he’s not going to take anybody’s say-so until he looks into it himself.”
“Oh, he’s nobody’s fool,” the gathering concurred.
Shark went to Oakland on Saturday morning, leaving his wife and daughter alone for the first time in his life. On Saturday evening Tom Breman called by to take Katherine and Alice to a dance at the schoolhouse.
“Oh, I don’t think Mr. Wicks would like it,” Katherine said, in a thrilled, frightened tone.
“He didn’t tell you not to go, did he?”
“No, but—he’s never been away before. I don’t think he’d like it.”
“He just never thought of it,” Tom Breman assured her. “Come on! Get your things on.”
“Let’s go, Ma,” said Alice.
Katherine knew her daughter could make such an easy decision because she was too stupid to be afraid. Alice was no judge of consequences. She couldn’t think of the weeks of torturing conversation that would follow when Shark returned. Katherine could hear him already. “I don’t see why you’d want to go when I wasn’t here. When I left, I kind of thought you two would look after the place, and the first thing you did was run off to a dance.” And then the questions—“Who did Alice dance with? Well—what did he say? Why didn’t you hear it? You ought to of heard.” There would be no anger on Shark’s part, but for weeks and weeks he would talk about it, just keep talking about it until she hated the whole subject of dances. And when the right time of the month came around, his questions would buzz like mosquitoes, until he was sure Alice wasn’t going to have a baby. Katherine didn’t think it worth the fun of going to the dance if she had to listen to all the fuss afterwards.
“Let’s go, Ma,” Alice begged her. “We never went any place alone in our lives.”
A wave of pity arose in Katherine. The poor girl had never had a moment of privacy in her life. She had never talked nonsense with a boy because her father would not let her out of earshot.
“All right,” she decided breathlessly. “If Mr. Breman will wait ’till we get ready, we will go.” She felt very brave to be encouraging Shark’s unease.
Too great beauty is almost as great a disadvantage to a country girl as ugliness is. When the country boys looked at Alice, their throats tightened, their hands and feet grew restless and huge, and their necks turned red. Nothing could force them to talk to her nor to dance with her. Instead, they danced furiously with less beautiful girls, became as noisy as self-conscious children and showed off frantically. When her head was turned, they peeked at Alice, but when she looked at them, they strove to give an impression of unawareness of her presence. Alice, who had always been treated in this way, was fairly unconscious of her beauty. She was almost resigned to the status of a wall flower at the dances.
Jimmie Munroe was leaning against a wall with elegant nonchalance and superb ennui when Katherine and Alice entered the schoolhouse door. Jimmie’s trousers had twenty-seven-inch bottoms, his patent leather shoes were as square across the toes as bricks. A black jazz-bow tie fluttered at the neck of a white silk shirt, and his hair lay glitteringly on his head. Jimmie was a town boy. He swooped like a lazy hawk. Before Alice had taken off her coat he was beside her. In the tired voice he had acquired in high school he demanded, “Dancing, baby?”