Cannery Row Page 5

  "Well, maybe we can't go then," said Mack sadly.

  Now Doc really needed the frogs. He tried to work out some method which was business and not philanthropy. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll give you a note to my gas station so you can get ten gallons of gas. How will that be?"

  Mack smiled. "Fine," he said. "That will work out just fine. I and the boys will get an early start tomorrow. Time you get back from the south, we'll have more damn frogs than you ever seen in your life."

  Doc went to the labeling desk and wrote a note to Red Williams at the gas station, authorizing the issue of ten gallons of gasoline to Mack. "Here you are," he said.

  Mack was smiling broadly. "Doc," he said, "you can get to sleep tonight and not even give frogs a thought. We'll have piss pots full of them by the time you get back."

  Doc watched him go a little uneasily. Doc's dealings with Mack and the boys had always been interesting but rarely had they been profitable to Doc. He remembered ruefully the time Mack sold him fifteen tom cats and by night the owners came and got every one. "Mack," he had asked, "why all tom cats?"

  Mack said, "Doc, it's my own invention but I'll tell you because you're a good friend. You make a big wire trap and then you don't use bait. You use--well--you use a lady cat. Catch every God damn tom cat in the country that way."

  From the laboratory Mack crossed the street and went through the swinging screen doors into Lee Chong's grocery. Mrs. Lee was cutting bacon on the big butcher's block. A Lee cousin primped up slightly wilted heads of lettuce the way a girl primps a loose finger wave. A cat lay asleep on a big pile of oranges. Lee Chong stood in his usual place back of the cigar counter and in front of the liquor shelves. His tapping finger on the change mat speeded up a little when Mack came in.

  Mack wasted no time in sparring. "Lee," he said, "Doc over there's got a problem. He's got a big order for frogs from the New York Museum. Means a lot to Doc. Besides the dough there's a lot of credit getting an order like that. Doc's got to go south and I and the boys said we'd help him out. I think a guy's friends ought to help him out of a hole when they can, especially a nice guy like Doc. Why I bet he spends sixty seventy dollars a month with you."

  Lee Chong remained silent and watchful. His fat finger barely moved on the change mat but it flicked slightly like a tense cat's tail.

  Mack plunged into his thesis. "Will you let us take your old truck to go up Carmel Valley for frogs for Doc--for good old Doc?"

  Lee Chong smiled in triumph. "Tluck no good," he said. "Bloke down."

  This staggered Mack for a moment but he recovered. He spread the order for gasoline on the cigar counter. "Look!" he said. "Doc needs them frogs. He give me this order for gas to get them. I can't let Doc down. Now Gay is a good mechanic. If he fixes your truck and puts it in good shape, will you let us take it?"

  Lee put back his head so that he could see Mack through his half-glasses. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the proposition. The truck really wouldn't run. Gay really was a good mechanic and the order for gasoline was definite evidence of good faith.

  "How long you be gone?" Lee asked.

  "Maybe half a day, maybe a whole day. Just 'til we get the frogs."

  Lee was worried but he couldn't see any way out. The dangers were all there and Lee knew all of them. "Okay," said Lee.

  "Good," said Mack. "I knew Doc could depend on you. I'll get Gay right to work on that truck." He turned about to leave. "By the way," he said. "Doc's paying us five cents apiece for those frogs. We're going to get seven or eight hundred. How about taking a pint of Old Tennis Shoes just 'til we can get back with the frogs?"

  "No!" said Lee Chong.

  10

  Frankie began coming to Western Biological when he was eleven years old. For a week or so he just stood outside the basement door and looked in. Then one day he stood inside the door. Ten days later he was in the basement. He had very large eyes and his hair was a dark wiry dirty shock. His hands were filthy. He picked up a piece of excelsior and put it in a garbage can and then he looked at Doc where he worked labeling specimen bottles containing purple Velella. Finally Frankie got to the work bench and he put his dirty fingers on the bench. It took Frankie three weeks to get that far and he was ready to bolt every instant of the time.

  Finally one day Doc spoke to him. "What's your name, son?"

  "Frankie."

  "Where do you live?"

  "Up there," a gesture up the hill.

  "Why aren't you in school?"

  "I don't go to school."

  "Why not?"

  "They don't want me there."

  "Your hands are dirty. Don't you ever wash?"

  Frankie looked stricken and then he went to the sink and scrubbed his hands and always afterwards he scrubbed his hands almost raw every day.

  And he came to the laboratory every day. It was an association without much talk. Doc by a telephone call established that what Frankie said was true. They didn't want him in school. He couldn't learn and there was something a little wrong with his coordination. There was no place for him. He wasn't an idiot, he wasn't dangerous, his parents, or parent, would not pay for his keep in an institution. Frankie didn't often sleep at the laboratory but he spent his days there. And sometimes he crawled in the excelsior crate and slept. That was probably when there was a crisis at home.

  Doc asked, "Why do you come here?"

  "You don't hit me or give me a nickel," said Frankie.

  "Do they hit you at home?"

  "There's uncles around all the time at home. Some of them hit me and tell me to get out and some of them give me a nickel and tell me to get out."

  "Where's your father?"

  "Dead," said Frankie vaguely.

  "Where's your mother?"

  "With the uncles."

  Doc clipped Frankie's hair and got rid of the lice. At Lee Chong's he got him a new pair of overalls and a striped sweater and Frankie became his slave.

  "I love you," he said one afternoon. "Oh, I love you."

  He wanted to work in the laboratory. He swept out every day, but there was something a little wrong. He couldn't get a floor quite clean. He tried to help with grading crayfish for size. There they were in a bucket, all sizes. They were to be grouped in the big pans--laid out--all the three-inch ones together and all the four-inch ones and so forth. Frankie tried and the perspiration stood on his forehead but he couldn't do it. Size relationships just didn't get through to him.

  "No," Doc would say. "Look, Frankie. Put them beside your finger like this so you'll know which ones are this long. See? This one goes from the tip of your finger to the base of your thumb. Now you just pick out another one that goes from the tip of your finger down to the same place and it will be right." Frankie tried and he couldn't do it. When Doc went upstairs Frankie crawled in the excelsior box and didn't come out all afternoon.

  But Frankie was a nice, good, kind boy. He learned to light Doc's cigars and he wanted Doc to smoke all the time so he could light the cigars.

  Better than anything else Frankie loved it when there were parties upstairs in the laboratory. When girls and men gathered to sit and talk, when the great phonograph played music that throbbed in his stomach and made beautiful and huge pictures form vaguely in his head, Frankie loved it. Then he crouched down in a corner behind a chair where he was hidden and could watch and listen. When there was laughter at a joke he didn't understand Frankie laughed delightedly behind his chair and when the conversation dealt with abstractions his brow furrowed and he became intent and serious.

  One afternoon he did a desperate thing. There was a small party in the laboratory. Doc was in the kitchen pouring beer when Frankie appeared beside him. Frankie grabbed a glass of beer and rushed it through the door and gave it to a girl sitting in a big chair.

  She took the glass and said, "Why, thank you," and she smiled at him.

  And Doc coming through the door said, "Yes, Frankie is a great help to me."

  Fra
nkie couldn't forget that. He did the thing in his mind over and over, just how he had taken the glass and just how the girl sat and then her voice--"Why, thank you," and Doc--"a great help to me--Frankie is a great help to me--sure Frankie is a great help-- Frankie," and Oh my God!

  He knew a big party was coming because Doc bought steaks and a great deal of beer and Doc let him help clean out all the upstairs. But that was nothing, for a great plan had formed in Frankie's mind and he could see just how it would be. He went over it again and again. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

  Then the party started and people came and sat in the front room, girls and young women and men.

  Frankie had to wait until he had the kitchen to himself and the door closed. And it was some time before he had it so. But at last he was alone and the door was shut. He could hear the chatter of conversation and the music from the great phonograph. He worked very quietly--first the tray--then get out the glasses without breaking any. Now fill them with beer and let the foam settle a little and then fill again.

  Now he was ready. He took a great breath and opened the door. The music and the talk roared around him. Frankie picked up the tray of beer and walked through the door. He knew how. He went straight toward the same young woman who had thanked him before. And then right in front of her, the thing happened, the coordination failed, the hands fumbled, the muscles panicked, the nerves telegraphed to a dead operator, the responses did not come back. Tray and beer collapsed forward into the young woman's lap. For a moment Frankie stood still. And then he turned and ran.

  The room was quiet. They could hear him run downstairs, and go into the cellar. They heard a hollow scrabbling sound--and then silence.

  Doc walked quietly down the stairs and into the cellar. Frankie was in the excelsior box burrowed down clear to the bottom, with the pile of excelsior on top of him. Doc could hear him whimpering there. Doc waited for a moment and then he went quietly back upstairs.

  There wasn't a thing in the world he could do.

  11

  The Model T Ford truck of Lee Chong had a dignified history. In 1923 it had been a passenger car belonging to Dr. W. T. Waters. He used it for five years and sold it to an insurance man named Rattle. Mr. Rattle was not a careful man. The car he got in clean nice condition he drove like fury. Mr. Rattle drank on Saturday nights and the car suffered. The fenders were broken and bent. He was a pedal rider too and the bands had to be changed often. When Mr. Rattle embezzled a client's money and ran away to San Jose, he was caught with a high-hair blonde and sent up within ten days.

  The body of the car was so battered that its next owner cut it in two and added a little truck bed.

  The next owner took off the front of the cab and the windshield. He used it to haul squids and he liked a fresh breeze to blow in his face. His name was Francis Almones and he had a sad life, for he always made just a fraction less than he needed to live. His father had left him a little money but year by year and month by month, no matter how hard Francis worked or how careful he was, his money grew less until he just dried up and blew away.

  Lee Chong got the truck in payment of a grocery bill.

  By this time the truck was little more than four wheels and an engine and the engine was so crotchety and sullen and senile that it required expert care and consideration. Lee Chong did not give it these things, with the result that the truck stood in the tall grass back of the grocery most of the time with the mallows growing between its spokes. It had solid tires on its back wheels and blocks held its front wheels off the ground.

  Probably any one of the boys from the Palace Flophouse could have made the truck run, for they were all competent practical mechanics, but Gay was an inspired mechanic. There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works. Indeed there are men near whom a car runs better. And such a one was Gay. His fingers on a timer or a carburetor adjustment screw were gentle and wise and sure. He could fix the delicate electric motors in the laboratory. He could have worked in the canneries all the time had he wished, for in that industry, which complains bitterly when it does not make back its total investment every year in profits, the machinery is much less important than the fiscal statement. Indeed, if you could can sardines with ledgers, the owners would have been very happy. As it was they used decrepit, struggling old horrors of machines that needed the constant attention of a man like Gay.

  Mack got the boys up early. They had their coffee and immediately moved over to the truck where it lay among the weeds. Gay was in charge. He kicked the blocked-up front wheels. "Go borrow a pump and get those pumped up," he said. Then he put a stick in the gasoline tank under the board which served as a seat. By some miracle there was a half inch of gasoline in the tank. Now Gay went over the most probable difficulties. He took out the coil boxes, scraped the points, adjusted the gap, and put them back. He opened the carburetor to see that gas came through. He pushed on the crank to see that the whole shaft wasn't frozen and the pistons rusted in their cylinders.

  Meanwhile the pump arrived and Eddie and Jones spelled each other on the tires.

  Gay hummed, "Dum tiddy--dum tiddy," as he worked. He removed the spark plugs and scraped the points and bored the carbon out. Then Gay drained a little gasoline into a can and poured some into each cylinder before he put the spark plugs back. He straightened up. "We're going to need a couple of dry cells," he said. "See if Lee Chong will let us have a couple."

  Mack departed and returned almost immediately with a universal No which was designed by Lee Chong to cover all future requests.

  Gay thought deeply. "I know where's a couple-- pretty good ones too, but I won't go get them."

  "Where?" asked Mack.

  "Down cellar at my house," said Gay. "They run the front doorbell. If one of you fellas wants to kind of edge into my cellar without my wife seeing you, they're on top of the side stringer on the left-hand side as you go in. But for God's sake, don't let my wife catch you."

  A conference elected Eddie to go and he departed.

  "If you get caught don't mention me," Gay called out after him. Meanwhile Gay tested the bands. The low-high pedal didn't quite touch the floor so he knew there was a little band left. The brake pedal did touch the floor so there was no brake, but the reverse pedal had lots of band left. On a Model T Ford the reverse is your margin of safety. When your brake is gone, you can use reverse as a brake. And when the low gear band is worn too thin to pull up a steep hill, why you can turn around and back up it. Gay found there was plenty of reverse and he knew everything was all right.

  It was a good omen that Eddie came back with the dry cells without trouble. Mrs. Gay had been in the kitchen. Eddie could hear her walking about but she didn't hear Eddie. He was very good at such things.

  Gay connected the dry cells and he advanced the gas and retarded the spark lever. "Twist her tail," he said.

  He was such a wonder, Gay was--the little mechanic of God, the St. Francis of all things that turn and twist and explode, the St. Francis of coils and armatures and gears. And if at some time all the heaps of jalopies, cut-down Dusenbergs, Buicks, De Sotos and Plymouths, American Austins and Isotta-Fraschinis praise God in a great chorus--it will be largely due to Gay and his brotherhood.

  One twist--one little twist and the engine caught and labored and faltered and caught again. Gay advanced the spark and reduced the gas. He switched over to the magneto and the Ford of Lee Chong chuckled and jiggled and clattered happily as though it knew it was working for a man who loved and understood it.

  There were two small technical legal difficulties with the truck--it had no recent license plates and it had no lights. But the boys hung a rag permanently and accidentally on the rear plate to conceal its vintage and they dabbed the front plate with good thick mud. The equipment of the expedition was slight: some long-handled frog nets and some gunny sacks. City hunters going out for sport load themselves
with food and liquor, but not Mack. He presumed rightly that the country was where food came from. Two loaves of bread and what was left of Eddie's wining jug was all the supply. The party clambered on the truck--Gay drove and Mack sat beside him; they bumped around the corner of Lee Chong's and down through the lot, threading among the pipes. Mr. Malloy waved at them from his seat by the boiler. Gay eased across the sidewalk and down off the curb gently because the front tires showed fabric all the way around. With all their alacrity, it was afternoon when they got started.

  The truck eased into Red Williams' service station. Mack got out and gave his paper to Red. He said, "Doc was a little short of change. So if you'll put five gallons in and just give us a buck instead of the other five gallons, why that's what Doc wants. He had to go south, you know. Had a big deal down there."

  Red smiled good-naturedly. "You know, Mack," he said, "Doc got to figuring if there was some kind of loophole, and he put his finger on the same one you did. Doc's a pretty bright fellow. So he phoned me last night."

  "Put in the whole ten gallons," said Mack. "No-- wait. It'll slop around and spill. Put in five and give us five in a can--one of them sealed cans."

  Red smiled happily. "Doc kind of figured that one too," he said.

  "Put in ten gallons," said Mack. "And don't go leaving none in the hose."

  The little expedition did not go through the center of Monterey. A delicacy about the license plates and the lights made Gay choose back streets. There would be the time when they would go up Carmel Hill and down into the Valley, a good four miles on a main highway, exposed to any passing cop until they turned up the fairly unfrequented Carmel Valley road. Gay chose a back street that brought them out on the main highway at Peter's Gate just before the steep Carmel Hill starts. Gay took a good noisy clattering run at the hill and in fifty yards he put the pedal down to low. He knew it wouldn't work, the band was worn too thin. On the level it was all right but not on a hill. He stopped, let the truck back around and aimed it down the hill. Then he gave it the gas and the reverse pedal. And the reverse was not worn. The truck crawled steadily and slowly but backward up Carmel Hill.