Cannery Row Read online

  31

  A well-grown gopher took up residence in a thicket of mallow weeds in the vacant lot on Cannery Row. It was a perfect place. The deep green luscious mallows towered up crisp and rich and as they matured their little cheeses hung down provocatively. The earth was perfect for a gopher hole too, black and soft and yet with a little clay in it so that it didn't crumble and the tunnels didn't cave in. The gopher was fat and sleek and he had always plenty of food in his cheek pouches. His little ears were clean and well set and his eyes were as black as old-fashioned pin heads and just about the same size. His digging hands were strong and the fur on his back was glossy brown and the fawn-colored fur on his chest was incredibly soft and rich. He had long curving yellow teeth and a little short tail. Altogether he was a beautiful gopher and in the prime of his life.

  He came to the place over land and found it good and he began his burrow on a little eminence where he could look out among the mallow weeds and see the trucks go by on Cannery Row. He could watch the feet of Mack and the boys as they crossed the lot to the Palace Flophouse. As he dug down into the coal-black earth he found it even more perfect, for there were great rocks under the soil. When he made his great chamber for the storing of food it was under a rock so that it could never cave in no matter how hard it rained. It was a place where he could settle down and raise any number of families and the burrow could increase in all directions.

  It was beautiful in the early morning when he first poked his head out of the burrow. The mallows filtered green light down on him and the first rays of the rising sun shone into his hole and warmed it so that he lay there content and very comfortable.

  When he had dug his great chamber and his four emergency exits and his waterproof deluge room, the gopher began to store food. He cut down only the perfect mallow stems and trimmed them to the exact length he needed and he took them down the hole and stacked them neatly in his great chamber, and arranged them so they wouldn't ferment or get sour. He had found the perfect place to live. There were no gardens about so no one would think of setting a trap for him. Cats there were, many of them, but they were so bloated with fish heads and guts from the canneries that they had long ago given up hunting. The soil was sandy enough so that water never stood about or filled a hole for long. The gopher worked and worked until he had his great chamber crammed with food. Then he made little side chambers for the babies who would inhabit them. In a few years there might be thousands of his progeny spreading out from this original hearthstone.

  But as time went on the gopher began to be a little impatient, for no female appeared. He sat in the entrance of his hole in the morning and made penetrating squeaks that are inaudible to the human ear but can be heard deep in the earth by other gophers. And still no female appeared. Finally in a sweat of impatience he went up across the track until he found another gopher hole. He squeaked provocatively in the entrance. He heard a rustling and smelled female and then out of the hole came an old battle-torn bull gopher who mauled and bit him so badly that he crept home and lay in his great chamber for three days recovering and he lost two toes from one front paw from that fight.

  Again he waited and squeaked beside his beautiful burrow in the beautiful place but no female ever came and after a while he had to move away. He had to move two blocks up the hill to a dahlia garden where they put out traps every night.

  32

  Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool. His mind broke the surface and fell back several times. There was red lipstick on his beard. He opened one eye, saw the brilliant colors of the quilt and closed his eye quickly. But after a while he looked again. His eye went past the quilt to the floor, to the broken plate in the corner, to the glasses standing on the table turned over on the floor, to the spilled wine and the books like heavy fallen butterflies. There were little bits of curled red paper all over the place and the sharp smell of firecrackers. He could see through the kitchen door to the steak plates stacked high and the skillets deep in grease. Hundreds of cigarette butts were stamped out on the floor. And under the firecracker smell was a fine combination of wine and whiskey and perfume. His eye stopped for a moment on a little pile of hairpins in the middle of the floor.

  He rolled over slowly and supporting himself on one elbow he looked out the broken window. Cannery Row was quiet and sunny. The boiler door was open. The door of the Palace Flophouse was closed. A man slept peacefully among the weeds in the vacant lot. The Bear Flag was shut up tight.

  Doc got up and went into the kitchen and lighted the gas water heater on his way to the toilet. Then he came back and sat on the edge of the bed and worked his toes together while he surveyed the wreckage. From up the hill he could hear the church bells ringing. When the gas heater began rumbling he went back to the bathroom and took a shower and he put on blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Lee Chong was closed but he saw who was at the door and opened it. He went to the refrigerator and brought out a quart of beer without being asked. Doc paid him.

  "Good time?" Lee asked. His brown eyes were a little inflamed in their pouches.

  "Good time!" said Doc and he went back to the laboratory with his cold beer. He made a peanut butter sandwich to eat with his beer. It was very quiet in the street. No one went by at all. Doc heard music in his head--violas and cellos, he thought. And they played cool, soft, soothing music with nothing much to distinguish it. He ate his sandwich and sipped his beer and listened to the music. When he had finished his beer, Doc went into the kitchen, and cleared the dirty dishes out of the sink. He ran hot water in it and poured soap chips under the running water so that the foam stood high and white. Then he moved about collecting all the glasses that weren't broken. He put them in the soapy hot water. The steak plates were piled high on the stove with their brown juice and their white grease sticking them together. Doc cleared a place on the table for the clean glasses as he washed them. Then he unlocked the door of the back room and brought out one of his albums of Gregorian music and he put a Pater Noster and Agnus Dei on the turntable and started it going. The angelic, disembodied voices filled the laboratory. They were incredibly pure and sweet. Doc worked carefully washing the glasses so that they would not clash together and spoil the music. The boys' voices carried the melody up and down, simply but with the richness that is in no other singing. When the record had finished, Doc wiped his hands and turned it off. He saw a book lying half under his bed and picked it up and he sat down on the bed. For a moment he read to himself but then his lips began to move and in a moment he read aloud--slowly, pausing at the end of each line.

  Even now

  I mind the coming and talking of wise men from

  towers

  Where they had thought away their youth. And I,

  listening,

  Found not the salt of the whispers of my girl,

  Murmur of confused colors, as we lay near sleep;

  Little wise words and little witty words,

  Wanton as water, honied with eagerness.

  In the sink the high white foam cooled and ticked as the bubbles burst. Under the piers it was very high tide and the waves splashed on rocks they had not reached in a long time.

  Even now

  I mind that I loved cypress and roses, clear,

  The great blue mountains and the small gray hills,

  The sounding of the sea. Upon a day

  I saw strange eyes and hands like butterflies;

  For me at morning larks flew from the thyme

  And children came to bathe in little streams.

  Doc closed the book. He could hear the waves beat under the piles and he could hear the scampering of white rats against the wire. He went into the kitchen and felt the cooling water in the sink. He ran hot water into it. He spoke aloud to the sink and the white rats, and to himself: Even now,

  I know that I have savored the hot taste of life

  Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.

  Just for a small and a forgo
tten time

  I have had full in my eyes from off my girl

  The whitest pouring of eternal light--

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. And the white rats scampered and scrambled in their cages. And behind the glass the rattlesnakes lay still and stared into space with their dusty frowning eyes.

  AVAILABLE FROM VIKING

  The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

  Foreword by Christopher Paolini Steinbeck's only work of fantasy literature--a modern retelling of the legendary Arthurian tales. ISBN 978-0-670-01824-6

  READ MORE JOHN STEINBECK IN PENGUIN

  Cannery Row

  Steinbeck's tough but loving portrait evokes the lives of Monterey's vital laboring class and their emotional triumph over the bleak existence of life in Cannery Row.

  ISBN 978-0-14017738-1

  Of Mice and Men

  A parable about commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss, Of Mice and Men remains one of America's most widely read and beloved novels. ISBN 978-0-14-017739-8

  The Pearl

  The diver Kino believes that his discovery of a beautiful pearl means the promise of a better life for his impoverished family. His fall from innocence is one of Steinbeck's most moving stories about the American dream.

  ISBN 978-0-14-017737-4

  The Red Pony

  This cycle of coming-of-age stories tells of a spirited adolescent boy whose encounters with birth and death teach him about loss and profound emptiness, instead of giving him the more conventional hero's pragmatic "maturity."

  ISBN 978-0-14-017736-7

  Tortilla Flat

  Adopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, Steinbeck created a "Camelot" on a shabby hillside above Monterey on the California coast and peopled it with a colorful band of knights. As Steinbeck chronicles their thoughts and emotions, temptations and lusts, he spins a tale as compelling, and ultimately as touched by sorrow, as the famous legends of the Round Table. ISBN 978-0-14-004240-5

  Travels with Charley in Search of America

  In September 1960, Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America. A picaresque tale, this chronicle of their trip meanders along scenic backroads and speeds along anonymous superhighways, moving from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases.

  ISBN 978-0-14-005320-3

  READ MORE JOHN STEINBECK IN PENGUIN CLASSICS

  America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

  Edited by Jackson J. Benson and Susan Shillinglaw This original new collection brings together for the first time more than fifty of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces, along with the complete text of his last-published and long-out-of-print America and Americans.

  ISBN 978-0-14-243741-4

  Burning Bright: A Play in Story Form

  Introduction by John Ditsky

  Written as a play in story form, this novel traces the story of a man ignorant of his own sterility, a wife who commits adultery to give her husband a child, the father of that child, and the outsider whose actions affect them all.

  ISBN 978-0-14-303944-0

  East of Eden

  Introduction by David Wyatt

  The masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is the powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is both family saga and a modern retelling of the book of Genesis.

  ISBN 978-0-14-018639-0

  The Grapes of Wrath

  Introduction by Robert DeMott

  This Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression follows the western movement of one family and a nation in search of work and human dignity.

  ISBN 978-0-14-303943-3

  In Dubious Battle

  Introduction by Warren French

  This powerful social novel, set in the California apple country, is a story of labor unrest in the migrant community and the search for identity of its protagonist, young Jim Nolan.

  ISBN 978-0-14-303963-1

  The Log from the Sea of Cortez

  Introduction by Richard Astro

  This exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts, drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.

  ISBN 978-0-14-018744-1

  The Long Valley

  Introduction by John H. Timmerman First published in 1938, this collection of stories set in the rich farmland of Salinas Valley includes the O. Henry Prize-winning story "The Murder," as well as one of Steinbeck's most famous short works, "The Snake."

  ISBN 978-0-14-018745-8

  The Moon Is Down

  Introduction by Donald V. Coers In this masterful tale set in Norway during World War II, Steinbeck explores the effects of invasion on both the conquered and the conquerors. As he delves into the emotions of the German commander and the Norwegian traitor, and depicts the spirited patriotism of the Norwegian underground, Steinbeck uncovers profound, often unsettling truths about war--and about human nature. ISBN 978-0-14-018746-5

  Once There Was a War

  Introduction by Mark Bowden

  Steinbeck's dispatches filed from the front lines during World War II vividly evoke the human side of the war.

  ISBN 978-0-14-310479-7

  The Pastures of Heaven

  Introduction by James Nagel

  Each of these interconnected tales is devoted to a family living in a fertile valley on the outskirts of Monterey, California, and the effects, either intentional or unwitting, that one family has on all of them. ISBN 978-0-14-018748-9

  A Russian Journal

  Introduction by Susan Shillinglaw; Photographs by Robert Capa First published in 1948, A Russian Journal is a remarkable memoir and unique historical document that records the writer and acclaimed war photographer's journey through Cold War Russia. ISBN 978-0-14-118019-9

  The Short Reign of Pippin IV

  Edited and Introduction by Robert E. Morsberger and Katherine Morsberger Steinbeck's only work of political satire turns the French Revolution upside down, creating the hilarious characters of the motley royal court of King Pippin.

  ISBN 978-0-14-303946-4

  Sweet Thursday

  Returning to the scene of Cannery Row--the weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, California--Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears, from Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter. ISBN 978-0-14-018750-2

  To a God Unknown

  Introduction by Robert DeMott

  Set in familiar Steinbeck territory, To a God Unknown is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control the forces of nature and, ultimately, to understand the ways of God. ISBN 978-0-14-018751-9

  The Wayward Bus

  Introduction by Gary Scharnhorst

  In this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California's back roads, Steinbeck creates a vivid assortment of characters, all running away from their shattered dreams but hoping that they are running toward the promise of a future. ISBN 978-0-14-243787-2

  The Winter of Our Discontent

  Ethan Hawley works as a clerk in the grocery store owned by an Italian immigrant. His wife is restless, and his teenaged children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards. ISBN 978-0-14-018753-3

  1 "Black Marigolds," translated from the Sanskrit by E. Powys Mathers.

 

 

 
ilter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share