Pablo and Pilon sighed with relief.
“How are Mrs. Morales’ chickens getting along?” Pilon asked casually.
Danny shook his head sadly. “Every one of those chickens is dead. Mrs. Morales put up some string beans in jars, and the jars blew up, and she fed the beans to the chickens, and those chickens all died, every one.”
“Where are those chickens now?” Pablo demanded.
Danny waved two fingers back and forth in negation. “Someone told Mrs. Morales not to eat those chickens or she would be sick, but we scraped the insides good and sold them to the butcher.”
“Has anybody died?” Pablo asked.
“No. I guess those chickens would have been all right.”
“Perhaps you bought a little wine with the money from those chickens?” Pilon suggested.
Danny smiled cynically at him. “Mrs. Morales did, and I went to her house last night. That is a pretty woman in some lights, and not so old either.”
[23] The alarm came back to Pablo and Pilon.
“My Cousin Weelie says she is fifty years old,” Pilon said excitedly.
Danny spread his hands: “What is it how old in years she is?” he observed philosophically. “She is lively, that one. She owns her house and has two hundred dollars in the bank.” Then Danny became a little embarrassed. “I would like to make a present to Mrs. Morales.”
Pilon and Pablo regarded their feet and tried by strenuous mental effort to ward off what was coming. But their effort had no value.
“If I had a little money,” said Danny, “I would buy her a box of big candy.” He looked meaningly at his tenants, but neither one answered him. “I would need only a dollar or two,” he suggested.
“Chin Kee is drying squids,” Pilon observed. “Perhaps you could cut squids for half a day.”
Danny spoke pointedly. “It would not look well for a man who owns two houses to cut squids. But perhaps if a little rent were ever paid—”
Pilon arose angrily. “Always the rent,” he cried. “You would force us into the streets—into the gutters, while you sleep in your soft bed. Come, Pablo,” Pilon said angrily, “we will get money for this miser, this Jew.”
The two of them stalked off.
“Where will we get money?” Pablo asked.
“I don’t know,” said Pilon. “Maybe he won’t ask again.” But the inhuman demand had cut deep into their mental peace. “We will call him ‘Old Jew’ when we see him,” said Pilon. “We have been his friends for years. When he was in need, we fed him. When he was cold, we clothed him”
“When was that?” Pablo asked.
“Well, we would have, if he needed anything and we had it. That is the kind of friends we were to him. And now be crushes our friendship into the ground for a box of big candy to give to an old fat woman.”
“Candy is not good for people,” said Pablo.
So much emotion had exhausted Pilon. He sat down in the ditch beside the road and put his chin in his hands and was disconsolate.
Pablo sat down too, but he only did it to rest, for his [24] friendship with Danny was not as old and beautiful as Pilon’s was.
The bottom of the ditch was choked with dry grass and bushes. Pilon, staring downward in his-sorrow and resentment, saw a human arm sticking out from under a bush. And then, beside the arm, a half-full gallon bottle of wine. He clutched Pablo’s arm and pointed.
Pablo stared. “Maybe he is dead, Pilon.”
Pilon had got his breath and his fine clear vision again. “If he is dead, the wine will do him no good. He can’t be buried with it.”
The arm stirred, swept back the bushes, and disclosed the frowsy face and red stubble beard of Jesus Maria Corcoran. “Ai, Pilon. Ai, Pablo,” he said hazily. “Que tomas?”
Pilon leaped down the bank on him. “Amigo, Jesus Maria! you are not well!”
Jesus Maria smiled sweetly. “Just drunk,” he murmured. He rose to his knees. “Come have a drink, my friends. Drink deep. There is plenty more.”
Pilon tilted the bottle over his elbow. He swallowed four times and over a pint left the jug. Then Pablo took the bottle from him, and Pablo played with it as a cat plays with a feather. He polished the mouth with his sleeve. He smelled the wine. He took three or four preliminary sips and let a few drops run all around his mouth, to tantalize himself. At last, “Madre de Dios, que vino!” he said. He raised the jug and the red wine gurgled happily down his throat.
Pilon’s hand was out long before Pablo had to breathe again. Pilon turned a soft and admiring countenance to his friend Jesus Maria. “Hast thou discovered a treasure in the woods?” he asked. “Has some great man died and named thee in his will, my little friend?”
Jesus Maria was a humanitarian, and kindness was always in him. He cleared his throat and spat. “Give me a drink,” he said. “My throat is dry. I will tell you how it was.” He drank dreamily, like a man who has so much wine that he can take his time in drinking it, can even spill a little without remorse. “I was sleeping on the beach two nights ago,” he said. “Out on the beach near Seaside. In [25] the night the little waves washed a rowboat to the shore. Oh, a nice little rowboat, and the oars were there. I got in and rowed it down to Monterey. It was easily worth twenty dollars, but trade was slow, and I only got seven.”
“Thou hast money left?” Pilon put in excitedly.
“I am telling you how it was,” Jesus Maria said with some dignity. “I bought two gallons of wine and brought them up here to the woods, and then I went to walk with Arabella Gross. For her I bought one pair of silk drawers in Monterey. She liked them—so soft they were, and so pink. And then I bought a pint of whisky for Arabella, and then after a while we met some soldiers and she went away with them.”
“Oh, the thief of a good man’s money!” Pilon cried in horror.
“No,” said Jesus Maria dreamily. “It was time she went anyway. And then I came here and went to sleep.”
“Then thou hast no more money?”
“I don’t know,” said Jesus Maria. “I will see.” He fished in his pocket and brought out three crumpled dollar bills and a dime. “Tonight,” he said, “I will buy for Arabella Gross one of those little things that goes around higher up.”
“You mean the little silk pockets on a string?”
“Yes,” said Jesus Maria, “and not so little as you might think either.” He coughed to clear his throat.
Instantly Pilon was filled with solicitude. “It is the night air,” he said. “It is not good to sleep out in the open. Come, Pablo, we will take him to our house and cure this cold of his. The malady of the lungs has a good start, but we will cure it.”
“What are you talking about?” said Jesus Maria. “I’m all right.”
“So you think,” said Pilon. “So Rudolfo Kelling thought. And you yourself went to his funeral a month ago. So Angelina Vasquez thought. She died last week.”
Jesus Maria was frightened. “What do you think is the matter?”
“It is sleeping in this night air,” Pilon said sagely. “Your lungs will not stand it.”
Pablo wrapped the wine jug in a big weed, so disguising [26] it that anyone passing would have been consumed with curiosity until he knew what that weed contained.
Pilon walked beside Jesus Maria, touching him now and then under the elbow to remind him that he was not a well man. They took him to their house and laid him on a cot, and although the day was warm, they covered him with an old comforter. Pablo spoke movingly of those poor ones who writhed and suffered with tuberculosis. And then Pilon pitched his voice to sweetness. He spoke with reverence of the joy of living in a little house. When the night was far gone, and all the talk and wine were gone, and outside the deadly mists clung to the ground like the ghosts of giant leeches, then one did not go out to lie in the sickly damp of a gulch. No, one got into a deep, soft, warm bed and slept like a little child.
Jesus Maria went to sleep at this point. Pilon and Pablo had to wake him up and give him a drink. Then Pilon spoke movingly of the mornings when one lay in one’s warm nest until the sun was high enough to be of some use. One did not go shivering about in the dawn, beating one’s hands to keep them from freezing.