The Grapes of Wrath Page 11

  “Oh! All at John’s. Well, what they doin’ there? Now stick to her for a second, Muley. Jus’ stick to her. In jus’ a minute you can go on your own way. What they doin’ there?”

  “Well, they been choppin’ cotton, all of ’em, even the kids an’ your grampa. Gettin’ money together so they can shove on west. Gonna buy a car and shove on west where it’s easy livin’. There ain’t nothin’ here. Fifty cents a clean acre for choppin’ cotton, an’ folks beggin’ for the chance to chop.”

  “An’ they ain’t gone yet?”

  “No,” said Muley. “Not that I know. Las’ I heard was four days ago when I seen your brother Noah out shootin’ jack-rabbits, an’ he says they’re aimin’ to go in about two weeks. John got his notice he got to get off. You jus’ go on about eight miles to John’s place. You’ll find your folks piled in John’s house like gophers in a winter burrow.”

  “O.K.” said Joad. “Now you can ride on your own way. You ain’t changed a bit, Muley. If you want to tell about somepin off northwest, you point your nose straight south-east.”

  Muley said truculently, “You ain’t changed neither. You was a smart-aleck kid, an’ you’re still a smart aleck. You ain’t tellin’ me how to skin my life, by any chancet?”

  Joad grinned. “No, I ain’t. If you wanta drive your head into a pile a broken glass, there ain’t nobody can tell you different. You know this here preacher, don’t you, Muley? Rev. Casy.”

  “Why, sure, sure. Didn’t look over. Remember him well.” Casy stood up and the two shook hands. “Glad to see you again,” said Muley. “You ain’t been aroun’ for a hell of a long time.”

  “I been off a-askin’ questions,” said Casy. “What happened here? Why they kickin’ folks off the lan’?”

  Muley’s mouth snapped shut so tightly that a little parrot’s beak in the middle of his upper lip stuck down over his under lip. He scowled. “Them sons-a-bitches,” he said. “Them dirty sons-a-bitches. I tell ya, men, I’m stayin’. They ain’t gettin’ rid a me. If they throw me off, I’ll come back, an’ if they figger I’ll be quiet underground, why, I’ll take couple-three of the sons-a-bitches along for company.” He patted a heavy weight in his side coat pocket. “I ain’t a-goin’. My pa come here fifty years ago. An’ I ain’t a-goin’.”

  Joad said, “What’s the idear of kickin’ the folks off?”

  “Oh! They talked pretty about it. You know what kinda years we been havin’. Dust comin’ up an’ spoilin’ ever’thing so a man didn’t get enough crop to plug up an ant’s ass. An’ ever’body got bills at the grocery. You know how it is. Well, the folks that owns the lan’ says, ‘We can’t afford to keep no tenants.’ An’ they says, ‘The share a tenant gets is jus’ the margin a profit we can’t afford to lose.’ An’ they says, ‘If we put all our lan’ in one piece we can jus’ hardly make her pay.’ So they tractored all the tenants off a the lan’. All ’cept me, an’ by God I ain’t goin’. Tommy, you know me. You knowed me all your life.”

  “Damn right,” said Joad, “all my life.”

  “Well, you know I ain’t a fool. I know this land ain’t much good. Never was much good ’cept for grazin’. Never should a broke her up. An’ now she’s cottoned damn near to death. If on’y they didn’ tell me I got to get off, why, I’d prob’y be in California right now a-eatin’ grapes an’ a-pickin’ an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitches says I got to get off—an’, Jesus Christ, a man can’t, when he’s tol’ to!”

  “Sure,” said Joad. “I wonder Pa went so easy. I wonder Grampa didn’ kill nobody. Nobody never tol’ Grampa where to put his feet. An’ Ma ain’t nobody you can push aroun’, neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time ’cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han’, an’ the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an’ she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn’ even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn’t nothing but a pair a legs in her han’. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin’. How’d my folks go so easy?”

  “Well, the guy that come aroun’ talked nice as pie. ‘You got to get off. It ain’t my fault.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘whose fault is it? I’ll go an’ I’ll nut the fella.’‘It’s the Shawnee Lan’ an’ Cattle Company. I jus’ got orders.’ ‘Who’s the Shawnee Lan’ an’ Cattle Company?’‘It ain’t nobody. It’s a company.’ Got a fella crazy. There wasn’t nobody you could lay for. Lot a the folks jus’ got tired out lookin’ for somepin to be mad at—but not me. I’m mad at all of it. I’m stayin’.”

  A large red drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east. The evening star flashed and glittered in the dusk. The gray cat sneaked away toward the open barn shed and passed inside like a shadow.

  Joad said, “Well, we ain’t gonna walk no eight miles to Uncle John’s place tonight. My dogs is burned up. How’s it if we go to your place, Muley? That’s on’y about a mile.”

  “Won’t do no good.” Muley seemed embarrassed. “My wife an’ the kids an’ her brother all took an’ went to California. They wasn’t nothin’ to eat. They wasn’t as mad as me, so they went. They wasn’t nothin’ to eat here.”

  The preacher stirred nervously. “You should of went too. You shouldn’t of broke up the fambly.”

  “I couldn’,” said Muley Graves. “Somepin jus’ wouldn’ let me.”

  “Well, by God, I’m hungry,” said Joad. “Four solemn years I been eatin’ right on the minute. My guts is yellin’ bloody murder. What you gonna eat, Muley? How you been gettin’ your dinner?”

  Muley said ashamedly, “For a while I et frogs an’ squirrels an’ prairie dogs sometimes. Had to do it. But now I got some wire nooses on the tracks in the dry stream brush. Get rabbits, an’ sometimes a prairie chicken. Skunks get caught, an’ coons, too.” He reached down, picked up his sack, and emptied it on the porch. Two cottontails and a jackrabbit fell out and rolled over limply, soft and furry.

  “God Awmighty,” said Joad, “it’s more’n four years sence I’ve et fresh-killed meat.”

  Casy picked up one of the cottontails and held it in his hand. “You sharin’ with us, Muley Graves?” he asked.

  Muley fidgeted in embarrassment. “I ain’t got no choice in the matter.” He stopped on the ungracious sound of his words. “That ain’t like I mean it. That ain’t. I mean”—he stumbled—“what I mean, if a fella’s got somepin to eat an’ another fella’s hungry—why, the first fella ain’t got no choice. I mean, s’pose I pick up my rabbits an’ go off somewheres an’ eat ’em. See?”

  “I see,” said Casy. “I can see that. Muley sees somepin there, Tom. Muley’s got a-holt of somepin, an’ it’s too big for him, an’ it’s too big for me.”

  Young Tom rubbed his hands together. “Who got a knife? Le’s get at these here miserable rodents. Le’s get at ’em.”

  Muley reached in his pants pocket and produced a large horn-handled pocket knife. Tom Joad took it from him, opened a blade, and smelled it. He drove the blade again and again into the ground and smelled it again, wiped it on his trouser leg, and felt the edge with his thumb.

  Muley took a quart bottle of water out of his hip pocket and set it on the porch. “Go easy on that there water,” he said. “That’s all there is. This here well’s filled in.”

  Tom took up a rabbit in his hand. “One of you go get some bale wire outa the barn. We’ll make a fire with some a this broken plank from the house.” He looked at the dead rabbit. “There ain’t nothin’ so easy to get ready as a rabbit,” he said. He lifted the skin of the back, slit it, put his fingers in the hole, and tore the skin off. It slipped off like a stocking, slipped off the body to the neck, and off the legs to the paws. Joad
picked up the knife again and cut off head and feet. He laid the skin down, slit the rabbit along the ribs, shook out the intestines onto the skin, and then threw the mess off into the cotton field. And the clean-muscled little body was ready. Joad cut off the legs and cut the meaty back into two pieces. He was picking up the second rabbit when Casy came back with a snarl of bale wire in his hand. “Now build up a fire and put some stakes up,” said Joad. “Jesus Christ, I’m hungry for these here creatures!” He cleaned and cut up the rest of the rabbits and strung them on the wire. Muley and Casy tore splintered boards from the wrecked house-corner and started a fire, and they drove a stake into the ground on each side to hold the wire.

  Muley came back to Joad. “Look out for boils on that jackrabbit,” he said. “I don’t like to eat no jackrabbit with boils.” He took a little cloth bag from his pocket and put it on the porch.

  Joad said, “The jack was clean as a whistle—Jesus God, you got salt too? By any chance you got some plates an’ a tent in your pocket?” He poured salt in his hand and sprinkled it over the pieces of rabbit strung on the wire.

  The fire leaped and threw shadows on the house, and the dry wood crackled and snapped. The sky was almost dark now and the stars were out sharply. The gray cat came out of the barn shed and trotted miaowing toward the fire, but, nearly there, it turned and went directly to one of the little piles of rabbit entrails on the ground. It chewed and swallowed, and the entrails hung from its mouth.

  Casy sat on the ground beside the fire, feeding it broken pieces of board, pushing the long boards in as the flame ate off their ends. The evening bats flashed into the firelight and out again. The cat crouched back and licked its lips and washed its face and whiskers.

  Joad held up his rabbit-laden wire between his two hands and walked to the fire. “Here, take one end, Muley. Wrap your end around that stake. That’s good, now! Let’s tighten her up. We ought to wait till the fire’s burned down, but I can’t wait.” He made the wire taut, then found a stick and slipped the pieces of meat along the wire until they were over the fire. And the flames licked up around the meat and hardened and glazed the surfaces. Joad sat down by the fire, but with his stick he moved and turned the rabbit so that it would not become sealed to the wire. “This here is a party,” he said. “Salt, Muley’s got, an’ water an’ rabbits. I wish he got a pot of hominy in his pocket. That’s all I wish.”

  Muley said over the fire, “You fellas’d think I’m touched, the way I live.”

  “Touched, nothin’,” said Joad. “If you’re touched, I wisht ever’body was touched.”

  Muley continued, “Well, sir, it’s a funny thing. Somepin went an’ happened to me when they tol’ me I had to get off the place. Fust I was gonna go in an’ kill a whole flock a people. Then all my folks all went away out west. An’ I got wanderin’ aroun’. Jus’ walkin’ aroun’. Never went far. Slep’ where I was. I was gonna sleep here tonight. That’s why I come. I’d tell myself, ‘I’m lookin’ after things so when all the folks come back it’ll be all right.’ But I knowed that wan’t true. There ain’t nothin’ to look after. The folks ain’t never comin’ back. I’m jus’ wanderin’ aroun’ like a damn ol’ graveyard ghos’.”

  “Fella gets use’ to a place, it’s hard to go,” said Casy. “Fella gets use’ to a way a thinkin’, it’s hard to leave. I ain’t a preacher no more, but all the time I find I’m prayin’, not even thinkin’ what I’m doin’.”

  Joad turned the pieces of meat over on the wire. The juice was dripping now, and every drop, as it fell in the fire, shot up a spurt of flame. The smooth surface of the meat was crinkling up and turning a faint brown. “Smell her,” said Joad. “Jesus, look down an’ jus’ smell her!”

  Muley went on, “Like a damn ol’ graveyard ghos’. I been goin’ aroun’ the places where stuff happened. Like there’s a place over by our forty; in a gully they’s a bush. Fust time I ever laid with a girl was there. Me fourteen an’ stampin’ an’ jerkin’ an’ snortin’ like a buck deer, randy as a billygoat. So I went there an’ I laid down on the groun’, an’ I seen it all happen again. An’ there’s the place down by the barn where Pa got gored to death by a bull. An’ his blood is right in that groun’, right now. Mus’ be. Nobody never washed it out. An’ I put my han’ on that groun’ where my own pa’s blood is part of it.” He paused uneasily. “You fellas think I’m touched?”

  Joad turned the meat, and his eyes were inward. Casy, feet drawn up, stared into the fire. Fifteen feet back from the men the fed cat was sitting, the long gray tail wrapped neatly around the front feet. A big owl shrieked as it went overhead, and the firelight showed its white underside and the spread of its wings.

  “No,” said Casy. “You’re lonely—but you ain’t touched.”

  Muley’s tight little face was rigid. “I put my han’ right on the groun’ where that blood is still. An’ I seen my pa with a hole through his ches’, an’ I felt him shiver up against me like he done, an’ I seen him kind of settle back an’ reach with his han’s an’ his feet. An’ I seen his eyes all milky with hurt, an’ then he was still an’ his eyes so clear—lookin’ up. An’ me a little kid settin’ there, not cryin’ nor nothin’, jus’ settin’ there.” He shook his head sharply. Joad turned the meat over and over. “An’ I went in the room where Joe was born. Bed wasn’t there, but it was the room. An’ all them things is true, an’ they’re right in the place they happened. Joe come to life right there. He give a big ol’ gasp an’ then he let out a squawk you could hear a mile, an’ his granma standin’ there says, ‘That’s a daisy, that’s a daisy,’ over an’ over. An’ her so proud she bust three cups that night.”

  Joad cleared his throat. “Think we better eat her now.”

  “Let her get good an’ done, good an’ brown, awmost black,” said Muley irritably. “I wanta talk. I ain’t talked to nobody. If I’m touched, I’m touched, an’ that’s the end of it. Like a ol’ graveyard ghos’ goin’ to neighbors’ houses in the night. Peters’, Jacobs’, Rance’s, Joad’s; an’ the houses all dark, standin’ like miser’ble ratty boxes, but they was good parties an’ dancin’. An’ there was meetin’s and shoutin’ glory. They was weddin’s, all in them houses. An’ then I’d want to go in town an’ kill folks. ’Cause what’d they take when they tractored the folks off the lan’? What’d they get so their ‘margin a profit’ was safe? They got Pa dyin’ on the groun’, an’ Joe yellin’ his first breath, an’ me jerkin’ like a billy goat under a bush in the night. What’d they get? God knows the lan’ ain’t no good. Nobody been able to make a crop for years. But them sons-a-bitches at their desks, they jus’ chopped folks in two for their margin a profit. They jus’ cut ’em in two. Place where folks live is them folks. They ain’t whole, out lonely on the road in a piled-up car. They ain’t alive no more. Them sons-a-bitches killed ’em.” And he was silent, his thin lips still moving, his chest still panting. He sat and looked down at his hands in the firelight. “I—I ain’t talked to nobody for a long time,” he apologized softly. “I been sneakin’ aroun’ like a ol’ graveyard ghos’.”

  Casy pushed the long boards into the fire and the flames licked up around them and leaped up toward the meat again. The house cracked loudly as the cooler night air contracted the wood. Casy said quietly, “I gotta see them folks that’s gone out on the road. I got a feelin’ I got to see them. They gonna need help no preachin’ can give ’em. Hope of heaven when their lives ain’t lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an’ sad? They gonna need help. They got to live before they can afford to die.”

  Joad cried nervously, “Jesus Christ, le’s eat this meat ’fore it’s smaller’n a cooked mouse! Look at her. Smell her.” He leaped to his feet and slid the pieces of meat along the wire until they were clear of the fire. He took Muley’s knife and sawed through a piece of meat until it was free of the wire. “Here’s for the preacher,” he said.

  “I tol’ you I ain’t no preacher.”

  “Well, here’s for the
man, then.” He cut off another piece. “Here, Muley, if you ain’t too goddamn upset to eat. This here’s jackrabbit. Tougher’n a bull-bitch.” He sat back and clamped his long teeth on the meat and tore out a great bite and chewed it. “Jesus Christ! Hear her crunch!” And he tore out another bite ravenously.

  Muley still sat regarding his meat. “Maybe I oughtn’ to a-talked like that,” he said. “Fella should maybe keep stuff like that in his head.”

  Casy looked over, his mouth full of rabbit. He chewed, and his muscled throat convulsed in swallowing. “Yes, you should talk,” he said. “Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin’ man can talk the murder right out of his mouth an’ not do no murder. You done right. Don’t you kill nobody if you can help it.” And he bit out another hunk of rabbit. Joad tossed the bones in the fire and jumped up and cut more off the wire. Muley was eating slowly now, and his nervous little eyes went from one to the other of his companions. Joad ate scowling like an animal, and a ring of grease formed around his mouth.

  For a long time Muley looked at him, almost timidly. He put down the hand that held the meat. “Tommy,” he said.

  Joad looked up and did not stop gnawing the meat. “Yeah?” he said, around a mouthful.

  “Tommy, you ain’t mad with me talkin’ about killin’ people? You ain’t huffy, Tom?”

  “No,” said Tom. “I ain’t huffy. It’s jus’ somepin that happened.”

  “Ever’body knowed it was no fault of yours,” said Muley. “Ol’ man Turnbull said he was gonna get you when ya come out. Says nobody can kill one a his boys. All the folks hereabouts talked him outa it, though.”

  “We was drunk,” Joad said softly. “Drunk at a dance. I don’ know how she started. An’ then I felt that knife go in me, an’ that sobered me up. Fust thing I see is Herb comin’ for me again with his knife. They was this here shovel leanin’ against the schoolhouse, so I grabbed it an’ smacked ’im over the head. I never had nothing against Herb. He was a nice fella. Come a-bullin’ after my sister Rosasharn when he was a little fella. No, I liked Herb.”