Sweet Thursday (20 page)

Mack and Doc were swept into the conga line. To Doc the room began to revolve slowly and then to rise and fall like the deck of a stately ship in a groundswell. The music roared and tinkled. Hazel beat out rhythm on the stove with his sword until Johnny, aiming carefully, got a bull's-eye on Hazel. Hazel leaped in the air and came down on the oven door, scattering crushed ice all over the floor. One of the guests had got wedged in the grandfather clock. From the outside the Palace Flop house seemed to swell and subside like rising bread.

Doc cupped his hands close to Mack's ear. “Where's Fauna and the girls?” he shouted.

“Later,” Mack cried.

“What?”

“Coming later,” and he added, “Better get here pretty soon before the joint burns down.”

“What?”

“Skip it,” Mack shouted.

At this point Whitey No. 1 fought his way to Mack's side and yelled, “Mack, they're coming!”

Mack rushed to the Espaldas Mojadas and raised both hands at them. Johnny aimed his last arrow at the guitarón and took the fret out clean.

“Hold it!” Mack screamed.

The music stopped, and silence fell on the room. Then the unrealest part of all began to happen.

Very softly the sound of a sweet muted trumpet whispered, and the crazy thing was playing the “Wedding March” from
Lohengrin
, and even as Doc listened the sly brass began playing with it, slid into minors, took a short rhythm ride, and moaned away at blues. The dancers were very still, almost stuffed. Doc found the source of the music—Cacahuete Rivas in the corner of the room, muting his trumpet with a damp sponge.

Then in this dream the paint-splashed curtain was pulled aside, and Fauna, the witch, came through the door, straddling a broom.

Doc thought, God! I'd hate to testify about this. I'd get the booby-hatch!

Fauna barked, “This here's a very happy occasion.” She looked around. “Doc, come here.”

He moved vaguely toward her.

Four girls from the Bear Flag came through the door, dressed in blinding colors. They ranged themselves two on each side of the door, facing inward, holding their beribboned whisky bottles to make an arch.

Fauna dismounted from her broom and ripped off her black wrapper, displaying a sheath of silver lamé. In her hand miraculously appeared a silver wand tipped with a gold star. She struck a pose, riding on her toes as though prepared for flight. “I am your fairy godmother,” she shouted. “I bring you Snow White, the bride!”

Then Suzy appeared in the doorway, a transformed Suzy in a wedding gown. The silver crown was on her head, and from its points a veil was suspended. She looked lovely and young and excited. Her lips were parted.

Fauna yelled, “Doc, come get your girl!”

Doc shook his head to try to wake up. It was a dream, a craziness, the crown, the veil, the virginity. “What in hell is going on?”

It happens that two people standing apart can dip into each other's thoughts. Suzy read his mind or his face. An embarrassed red crept up her neck and darkened her cheeks. She closed her eyes.

And Doc's mind read her pain. His world spun like a top. He heard himself say, “Fairy Godmother, I accept—my—girl.”

Suzy opened her eyes and looked in Doc's eyes. Then her jaw muscles tightened and her eyes grew fierce; her sweet mouth hardened to a line. She took off the crown and veil, looked at them a moment, and placed them gently on an apple box.

The crazy trumpet put a samba beat to the “Wedding March” and a guitar took up the throbbing.

“Listen, you mugs,” said Suzy over the music, “I could live with a stumblebum in a culvert and be a good wife. I could marry a yellow dog and be nice to him. But good Christ! Not Doc!” Suddenly she turned and darted out the door.

Fauna plunged after her. There was no chicken walk out the back way. Suzy slipped and rolled down the embankment and Fauna rolled after her. On the railroad track they gathered themselves together.

“You goddam grandstanding bitch!” said Fauna bitterly. “What do you mean—‘not Doc'?”

“I love him,” said Suzy.

One of the common reactions to shock is lethargy. If, after an automobile accident, one man is howling and writhing and another sits quietly staring into space, it is usually the quiet man who is badly hurt. A community can go into shock too. Cannery Row did. People drew into themselves, kept their doors closed, and didn't visit. Everyone felt guilty, even those who had not planned the party. Merely to have seen it was enough.

Mack and the boys were doubled up with a sense of unhappy fate. It was their third try at doing something nice for Doc, and it was their third failure. They did not know where to turn to escape their own scorn.

Wide Ida became fiercely taciturn. Her customers drank in silence to escape the guilty rage they knew was just under her muscular surface.

Fauna grieved like a lost setter dog. In a lifetime of preposterous plans she had discovered some failures but never before a catastrophe.

Even the Patrón experienced little flashes of an emotion new to him. Always before he had managed to swap guilt for blame of circumstance or enemy, but now his accusing finger bent like a comedy pistol and aimed at his own heart. It was an interesting pain, but a pain nevertheless. He became kindly and thoughtful of all around him—an attitude that frightened people who knew him. There is nothing reassuring about the smile of a tiger.

As for Doc, he was undergoing reorganization so profound that he didn't know it was happening. He was like a watch taken apart on a jeweler's table—all jewels and springs and balances laid out ready for reassembling. For pain or frustration the human has many anodynes, not the least of which is anger.

Doc quarreled viciously with Old Jingleballicks, ordered him out, and told him never to return. Doc fought with the expressman over the quality of the ser vice he had been getting, although it hadn't varied in ten years. Finally he let the word be passed that he was working and did not want to see anyone from Cannery Row or anyplace else. He sat over his yellow pad, the neat pile of Suzy's sharpened pencils beside him, and in his eyes the bleak look of shock.

Suzy was at once the cause and the victim of the disintegration of the Row. It cannot be said that trouble builds character, for just as often it destroys character. But if certain character traits, mixed with certain dreams, are subjected to the fire, sometimes…sometimes…

Ella, the waitress-manager of the Golden Poppy, was no less tired at ten in the morning than at midnight. She was always tired. She not only accepted this but thought everybody was that way. She could not conceive of feet that did not hurt, of a back that did not ache, or of a cook with a good disposition. At breakfast the row of gobbling mouths ruined her appetite and she never got it back. In the slack time around ten she cleaned and mopped the moist restaurant and swept the crumbs from under the counter stools.

Joe Blaikey came in for his morning coffee.

“Just making a fresh pot. Want to wait?” Ella said.

“Sure,” said Joe. “Say, Ella, you heard what happened down in Cannery Row Saturday night?”

“No. What?”

“I don't know. There was a party. I was going to it. Time I got there it was over. Nobody wants to talk about it.”

“I didn't hear,” said Ella. “Fight, you think?”

“Hell no. They'd talk about a fight. They love a fight. Everybody seems to feel kind of ashamed of something. Let me know if you hear anything, will you?”

“Okay. Coffee's about ready, Joe.”

Suzy came in, dressed in her San Francisco suit—gray herringbone tweed, very neat and smart. She sat down on a stool.

“Hi,” said the cop.

“Hi,” said Suzy. “Cup of coffee.”

“Just going through the grounds now. Say, that's a cute outfit,” said Ella.

“Frisco,” said Suzy.

“You moving out?”

“No,” said Suzy, “I'm staying.”

Joe said, “What happened down on the Row the other night?”

Suzy shrugged her shoulders.

“You won't talk neither, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Damnedest thing I ever saw!” said Joe. “Mostly they'd break their necks to tell. Suzy, if anybody got killed you better spill it. You ever hear of that material-witness stuff?”

“Nobody got killed,” said Suzy. And then, “Your name's Ella, ain't it?”

“Till now.”

“Remember you said you wasn't never off shift?”

“Well, I ain't,” said Ella.

“Would you give me a try? Watch me a couple weeks. Then maybe you could go to a movie.”

“Sister, you come to the wrong place. This joint don't make enough profit to hire no waitress.”

“I'll do it for my meals, and I don't eat much.”

Joe Blaikey looked away. It was his method of paying attention.

Ella said, “What's the gag, sister?”

“No gag. I want a job and I'll sling hash for my keep.”

Joe turned his head back slowly. “You'd better tell—” he suggested.

“Sure I'll tell,” said Suzy. “I'm going to fix myself up and I ain't going to run away to do it.”

“What made up your mind?”

“That ain't none of your business. Is it against the law?”

“Happens so seldom it ought to be,” said Joe.

“Come on, Ella,” Suzy begged, “give me a break.”

Ella asked, “What do you think, Joe?”

Joe's eyes went over Suzy's face. He dwelt for a moment on the dyed hair. He said, “You're letting your hair grow out?”

“Yeah.”

“Give her a break, Ella,” he said.

Ella smiled a tired smile. “In them clothes?”

“I'll go change. Take me maybe fifteen minutes. I can cook too, Ella. I'm a pretty good fry cook.”

“Go change your clothes,” said Ella.

Joe Blaikey waited in the street for Suzy to come back. He moved up beside her. “Don't bitch Ella up,” he said gently.

“I won't.”

“You look excited.”

“Joe,” said Suzy, “you remember once you said if I wanted to blow this town you'd lend me the dough?”

“I thought you was staying.”

“I am. I wonder could you stake me not to blow town.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five bucks.”

“Where you going to live?”

“I'll let you know.”

Joe said, “I staked kids before. What the hell have I got to lose?”

“You'll get it back.”

“I know I will,” said Joe.

The boiler that for many years had rested among the mallow weeds in the vacant lot between the Bear Flag and the grocery was the first boiler the Hediondo Cannery ever had, and the Hediondo was the first cannery Monterey ever had. When it was understood that pilchards could be placed raw in cans, doused with tomato sauce or oil, sealed and then cooked in live steam, a new industry came to Monterey. Hediondo started with small capital and skimped and pioneered its way first to success and finally to oblivion. Its first boiler for producing the cooking steam was the triumphant improvisation of William Randolph, engineer, fireman, and president. The boiler itself he got for nothing. It was the whole front end of a locomotive of the Pajaro Valley and Coast Railroad. This engine, encountering a split rail one night, leaped a trestle and dived twenty feet into a mudhole. The railroad company stripped its wheels and valves, whistle and bell, and left the great cylinder standing in the mud.

William Randolph found it, hauled it to Monterey, and set it in concrete at the new Hediondo Cannery. For years it produced low-pressure steam for cooking canned fish, while its tubes blew out at intervals and were replaced.

In 1932, when the cannery was rich and expanding, the old boiler was finally abandoned in the vacant lot to save a moving bill. Old Mr. Randolph was still alive and, although retired, he still hated waste. He stripped out the tubes, leaving only the big cylinder, sixteen feet long and seven feet in diameter. The smokestack was still on it, and its firedoor, two feet wide and eighteen inches high, still swung on rusty pins.

Many people had used the boiler for temporary shelter, but Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy were the first permanent residents. Mr. Malloy, who was good with his hands, after stripping out the remaining tubes, added a number of little comforts.

A boiler as a home has disadvantages as well as advantages. Some people would balk at getting down on hands and knees to crawl in through the firedoor. The floor, being rounded, makes for difficulty both in walking and in arranging furniture. The third inconvenience lies in a lack of light.

The advantages of a boiler can be listed as follows: it is absolutely rainproof; it is cozy; and it has wonderful ventilation. By adjusting the damper and firedoor you can have as much draft as you like.

Under the smokestack Mr. Malloy had built a little brick fireplace for cold winter nights. In addition to all of these advantages, the boiler was fireproof, windproof, earthquake-proof, and almost bombproof. These more than balanced the lack of running water, electricity, and interior plumbing.

There are those, particularly in Carmel-by-the-Sea, who say that Suzy's choice of the boiler as a home was a symbolic retreat to the womb, and, while this may be true, it is also true that this womb had economic factors. At the Golden Poppy, Suzy had her meals free, and in the boiler she had free shelter.

Suzy took the money Joe Blaikey loaned her and went to Holman's Department Store in Pacific Grove. She bought a hammer, saw, assorted nails, two sheets of plywood, a box of pale blue kalsomine and a brush, a tube of Duco cement, a pair of pink cottage curtains with blue flowers, three sheets, two pillow cases, two towels and a washcloth, a teakettle, two cups and saucers, and a box of tea bags. At Joe's Surplus she bought a used army cot and mattress pad, bowl and pitcher and chamberpot, two army blankets, a small mirror, and a kerosene lamp. These supplies exhausted her capital, but at the end of her first week of work at the Golden Poppy, Suzy paid Joe back two dollars and a quarter out of tips.

The Row, in its shame, pretended not to see what was going on at the boiler or to hear the sound of hammering late at night. This was good manners rather than a lack of curiosity.

Fauna held out for ten days, and when she did give in to her natural nosiness she went secretly, late on a Tuesday night, when the Bear Flag was closed for lack of customers. From the window of the Ready Room, Fauna could see a little glow of light coming from the firedoor of the boiler. The smokestack put out a lazy curl of smoke that smelled of pine pitch. Fauna went silently out the front door and up through the mallow weeds.

“Suzy,” she called softly.

“Who is it?”

“Me, Fauna.”

“What do you want?”

“To see if you're all right.”

“I'm all right.”

Fauna got down on her knees and poked her head through the firedoor. The transformation was complete. The curving walls were pale blue, and the curtains were stuck to the walls with Duco cement. It was a pleasant feminine apartment. Suzy sat on her cot in the light from the little fireplace. She had built a dressing table for her mirror and bowl and pitcher, and beside it stood a fruit jar filled with lupines and poppies.

“You sure fixed it up nice,” said Fauna. “Ain't you going to invite me in?”

“Come on in, but don't get stuck in the door.”

“Give me a hand, will you?”

Suzy pulled and boosted her through the firedoor. “Here,” she said, “sit down on the cot. I'm going to get a chair pretty soon.”

“We could make you a hook rug,” said Fauna. “That would look nice.”

“No,” said Suzy. “I want to do it myself. Would you like I should make you a cup of tea?”

“Don't mind if I do,” said Fauna absently, and then, “You sure you ain't mad?”

“I ain't mad. You know, I never had no place of my own before.”

“Well, you've fixed it up real nice,” said Fauna. “I can lend you anything you need. You can use the bathroom over at the Bear Flag.”

“They got a shower down at the Golden Poppy,” said Suzy.

“Now look,” Fauna said. “You got me down and my claws wedged. Don't put the boots to me.”

“I ain't.”

“This here's a nice cup of tea. I got to tell you one thing, Suzy. I don't care if you want to hear it or not. I been wrong quite a lot, but you're going about this wrong. Don't rub Doc's nose in it. That just makes a man mad.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, settling here. He can't look out his window without you're in his hair.” Fauna braced herself for the explosion, and it did not come.

Suzy looked at her hands. “I got real nice nails,” she said. “Down at the Poppy where I got my hands in water all the time I squidge lotion on. Keeps them soft. Fauna, you told me not to run away, and I didn't. I felt like digging a hole in the ground and crawling in and I didn't, because I think what you said was right. I'm going to do it right here in sight.”