East of Eden Page 8

  "Listen to this," he said to the operator.

  "I already read it."

  "You did?"

  "It comes over the wire," said the operator. "I wrote it down."

  "Oh! Yes, sure. 'Urgent need you telegraph me one hundred dollars. Coming home. Adam.' "

  "Came collect," the operator said. "You owe me sixty cents."

  "Valdosta, Georgia--I never heard of it."

  "Neither'd I, but it's there."

  "Say, Carlton, how do you go about telegraphing money?"

  "Well, you bring me a hundred and two dollars and sixty cents and I send a wire telling the Valdosta operator to pay Adam one hundred dollars. You owe me sixty cents too."

  "I'll pay--say, how do I know it's Adam? What's to stop anybody from collecting it?"

  The operator permitted himself a smile of worldliness. "Way we go about it, you give me a question couldn't nobody else know the answer. So I send both the question and the answer. Operator asks this fella the question, and if he can't answer he don't get the money."

  "Say, that's pretty cute. I better think up a good one."

  "You better get the hundred dollars while Old Breen still got the window open."

  Charles was delighted with the game. He came back with the money in his hand. "I got the question," he said.

  "I hope it ain't your mother's middle name. Lot of people don't remember."

  "No, nothing like that. It's this. 'What did you give Father on his birthday just before you went in the army?' "

  "It's a good question but it's long as hell. Can't you cut it down to ten words?"

  "Who's paying for it? Answer is, 'A pup.' "

  "Wouldn't nobody guess that," said Carlton. "Well, it's you paying, not me."

  "Be funny if he forgot," said Charles. "He wouldn't ever get home."

  3

  Adam came walking out from the village. His shirt was dirty and the stolen clothes were wrinkled and soiled from having been slept in for a week. Between the house and the barn he stopped and listened for his brother, and in a moment he heard him hammering at something in the big new tobacco barn. "Oh, Charles!" Adam called.

  The hammering stopped, and there was silence. Adam felt as though his brother were inspecting him through the cracks in the barn. Then Charles came out quickly and hurried to Adam and shook hands.

  "How are you?"

  "Fine," said Adam.

  "Good God, you're thin!"

  "I guess I am. And I'm years older too."

  Charles inspected him from head to foot. "You don't look prosperous."

  "I'm not."

  "Where's your valise?"

  "I haven't got one."

  "Jesus Christ! Where've you been?"

  "Mostly wandering around all over."

  "Like a hobo?"

  "Like a hobo."

  After all the years and the life that had made creased leather out of Charles' skin and redness in his dark eyes, Adam knew from remembering that Charles was thinking of two things--the questions and something else.

  "Why didn't you come home?"

  "I just got to wandering. Couldn't stop. It gets into you. That's a real bad scar you've got there."

  "That's the one I wrote you about. Gets worse all the time. Why didn't you write? Are you hungry?" Charles' hands itched into his pockets and out and touched his chin and scratched his head.

  "It may go away. I saw a man once--bartender--he had one that looked like a cat. It was a birthmark. His nickname was Cat."

  "Are you hungry?"

  "Sure, I guess I am."

  "Plan to stay home now?"

  "I--I guess so. Do you want to get to it now?"

  "I--I guess so," Charles echoed him. "Our father is dead."

  "I know."

  "How the hell do you know?"

  "Station agent told me. How long ago did he die?"

  " 'Bout a month."

  "What of?"

  "Pneumonia."

  "Buried here?"

  "No. In Washington. I got a letter and newspapers. Carried him on a caisson with a flag over it. The Vice-President was there and the President sent a wreath. All in the papers. Pictures too--I'll show you. I've got it all."

  Adam studied his brother's face until Charles looked away. "Are you mad at something?" Adam asked.

  "What should I be mad at?"

  "It just sounded--"

  "I've got nothing to be mad at. Come on, I'll get you something to eat."

  "All right. Did he linger long?"

  "No. It was galloping pneumonia. Went right out."

  Charles was covering up something. He wanted to tell it but he didn't know how to go about it. He kept hiding in words. Adam fell silent. It might be a good thing to be quiet and let Charles sniff and circle until he came out with it.

  "I don't take much stock in messages from the beyond," said Charles. "Still, how can you know? Some people claim they've had messages--old Sarah Whitburn. She swore. You just don't know what to think. You didn't get a message, did you? Say, what the hell's bit off your tongue?"

  Adam said, "Just thinking." And he was thinking with amazement, Why, I'm not afraid of my brother! I used to be scared to death of him, and I'm not any more. Wonder why not? Could it be the army? Or the chain gang? Could it be Father's death? Maybe--but I don't understand it. With the lack of fear, he knew he could say anything he wanted to, whereas before he had picked over his words to avoid trouble. It was a good feeling he had, almost as though he himself had been dead and resurrected.

  They walked into the kitchen he remembered and didn't remember. It seemed smaller and dingier. Adam said almost gaily, "Charles, I been listening. You want to tell me something and you're walking around it like a terrier around a bush. You better tell before it bites you."

  Charles' eyes sparked up with anger. He raised his head. His force was gone. He thought with desolation, I can't lick him any more. I can't.

  Adam chuckled. "Maybe it's wrong to feel good when our father's just died, but you know, Charles, I never felt better in my whole life. I never felt as good. Spill it, Charles. Don't let it chew on you."

  Charles asked, "Did you love our father?"

  "I won't answer you until I know what you're getting at."

  "Did you or didn't you?"

  "What's that got to do with you?"

  "Tell me."

  The creative free boldness was all through Adam's bones and brain. "All right, I'll tell you. No. I didn't. Sometimes he scared me. Sometimes--yes, sometimes I admired him, but most of the time I hated him. Now tell me why you want to know."

  Charles was looking down at his hands. "I don't understand," he said. "I just can't get it through my head. He loved you more than anything in the world."

  "I don't believe that."

  "You don't have to. He liked everything you brought him. He didn't like me. He didn't like anything I gave him. Remember the present I gave him, the pocketknife? I cut and sold a load of wood to get that knife. Well, he didn't even take it to Washington with him. It's right in his bureau right now. And you gave him a pup. It didn't cost you a thing. Well, I'll show you a picture of that pup. It was at his funeral. A colonel was holding it--it was blind, couldn't walk. They shot it after the funeral."

  Adam was puzzled at the fierceness of his brother's tone. "I don't see," he said. "I don't see what you're getting at."

  "I loved him," said Charles. And for the first time that Adam could remember, Charles began to cry. He put his head down in his arms and cried.

  Adam was about to go to him when a little of the old fear came back. No, he thought, if I touched him he would try to kill me. He went to the open doorway and stood looking out, and he could hear his brother's sniffling behind him.

  It was not a pretty farm near the house--never had been. There was litter about it, an unkemptness, a rundownness, a lack of plan; no flowers, and bits of paper and scraps of wood scattered about on the ground. The house was not pretty either. It was a well-built shanty fo
r shelter and cooking. It was a grim farm and a grim house, unloved and unloving. It was no home, no place to long for or to come back to. Suddenly Adam thought of his stepmother--as unloved as the farm, adequate, clean in her way, but no more wife than the farm was a home.

  His brother's sobbing had stopped. Adam turned. Charles was looking blankly straight ahead. Adam said, "Tell me about Mother."

  "She died. I wrote you."

  "Tell me about her."

  "I told you. She died. It's so long ago. She wasn't your mother."

  The smile Adam had once caught on her face flashed up in his mind. Her face was projected in front of him.

  Charles' voice came through the image and exploded it. "Will you tell me one thing--not quick--think before you tell me, and maybe don't answer unless it's true, your answer."

  Charles moved his lips to form the question in advance. "Do you think it would be possible for our father to be--dishonest?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Isn't that plain enough? I said it plain. There's only one meaning to dishonest."

  "I don't know," said Adam. "I don't know. No one ever said it. Look what he got to be. Stayed overnight in the White House. The Vice-President came to his funeral. Does that sound like a dishonest man? Come on, Charles," he begged, "tell me what you've been wanting to tell me from the minute I got here."

  Charles wet his lips. The blood seemed to have gone out of him, and with it energy and all ferocity. His voice became a monotone. "Father made a will. Left everything equal to me and you."

  Adam laughed. "Well, we can always live on the farm. I guess we won't starve."

  "It's over a hundred thousand dollars," the dull voice went on.

  "You're crazy. More like a hundred dollars. Where would he get it?"

  "It's no mistake. His salary with the G.A.R. was a hundred and thirty-five dollars a month. He paid his own room and board. He got five cents a mile and hotel expenses when he traveled."

  "Maybe he had it all the time and we never knew."

  "No, he didn't have it all the time."

  "Well, why don't we write to the G.A.R. and ask? Someone there might know."

  "I wouldn't dare," said Charles.

  "Now look! Don't go off half-cocked. There's such a thing as speculation. Lots of men struck it rich. He knew big men. Maybe he got in on a good thing. Think of the men who went to the gold rush in California and came back rich."

  Charles' face was desolate. His voice dropped so that Adam had to lean close to hear. It was as toneless as a report. "Our father went into the Union Army in June 1862. He had three months' training here in this state. That makes it September. He marched south. October twelfth he was hit in the leg and sent to the hospital. He came home in January."

  "I don't see what you're getting at."

  Charles' words were thin and sallow. "He was not at Chancellorsville. He was not at Gettysburg or the Wilderness or Richmond or Appomattox."

  "How do you know?"

  "His discharge. It came down with his other papers."

  Adam sighed deeply. In his chest, like beating fists, was a surge of joy. He shook his head almost in disbelief.

  Charles said, "How did he get away with it? How in hell did he get away with it? Nobody ever questioned it. Did you? Did I? Did my mother? Nobody did. Not even in Washington."

  Adam stood up. "What's in the house to eat? I'm going to warm up something."

  "I killed a chicken last night. I'll fry it if you can wait."

  "Anything quick?"

  "Some salt pork and plenty of eggs."

  "I'll have that," said Adam.

  They left the question lying there, walked mentally around it, stepped over it. Their words ignored it but their minds never left it. They wanted to talk about it and could not. Charles fried salt pork, warmed up a skillet of beans, fried eggs.

  "I plowed the pasture," he said. "Put it in rye."

  "How did it do?"

  "Just fine, once I got the rocks out." He touched his forehead. "I got this damn thing trying to pry out a stone."

  "You wrote about that," Adam said. "Don't know whether I told you your letters meant a lot to me."

  "You never wrote much what you were doing," said Charles.

  "I guess I didn't want to think about it. It was pretty bad, most of it."

  "I read about the campaigns in the papers. Did you go on those?"

  "Yes. I didn't want to think about them. Still don't."

  "Did you kill Injuns?"

  "Yes, we killed Injuns."

  "I guess they're real ornery."

  "I guess so."

  "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

  "I don't want to."

  They ate their dinner under the kerosene lamp. "We'd get more light if I would only get around to washing that lampshade."

  "I'll do it," said Adam. "It's hard to think of everything."

  "It's going to be fine having you back. How would you like to go to the inn after supper?"

  "Well, we'll see. Maybe I'd like just to sit awhile."

  "I didn't write about it in a letter, but they've got girls at the inn. I didn't know but you'd like to go in with me. They change every two weeks. I didn't know but you'd like to look them over."

  "Girls?"

  "Yes, they're upstairs. Makes it pretty handy. And I thought you just coming home--"

  "Not tonight. Maybe later. How much do they charge?"

  "A dollar. Pretty nice girls mostly."

  "Maybe later," said Adam. "I'm surprised they let them come in."

  "I was too at first. But they worked out a system."

  "You go often?"

  "Every two or three weeks. It's pretty lonesome here, a man living alone."

  "You wrote once you were thinking of getting married."

  "Well, I was. Guess I didn't find the right girl."

  All around the main subject the brothers beat. Now and then they would almost step into it, and quickly pull away, back into crops and local gossip and politics and health. They knew they would come back to it sooner or later. Charles was more anxious to strike in deep than Adam was, but then Charles had had the time to think of it, and to Adam it was a new field of thinking and feeling. He would have preferred to put it over until another day, and at the same time he knew his brother would not permit him to.

  Once he said openly, "Let's sleep on that other thing."

  "Sure, if you want to," said Charles.

  Gradually they ran out of escape talk. Every acquaintance was covered and every local event. The talk lagged and the time went on.

  "Feel like turning in?" Adam asked.

  "In a little while."

  They were silent, and the night moved restlessly about the house, nudging them and urging them.

  "I sure would like to've seen that funeral," said Charles.

  "Must have been pretty fancy."

  "Would you care to see the clippings from the papers? I've got them all in my room."

  "No. Not tonight."

  Charles squared his chair around and put his elbows on the table. "We'll have to figure it out," he said nervously. "We can put it off all we want, but we goddam well got to figure what we're going to do."

  "I know that," said Adam. "I guess I just wanted some time to think about it."

  "Would that do any good? I've had time, lots of time, and I just went in circles. I tried not to think about it, and I still went in circles. You think time is going to help?"

  "I guess not. I guess not. What do you want to talk about first? I guess we might as well get into it. We're not thinking about anything else."

  "There's the money," said Charles. "Over a hundred thousand dollars--a fortune."

  "What about the money?"

  "Well, where did it come from?"

  "How do I know? I told you he might have speculated. Somebody might have put him onto a good thing there in Washington."

  "Do you believe that?"

  "I don't believe an
ything," Adam said. "I don't know, so what can I believe?"

  "It's a lot of money," said Charles. "It's a fortune left to us. We can live the rest of our lives on it, or we can buy a hell of a lot of land and make it pay. Maybe you didn't think about it, but we're rich. We're richer than anybody hereabouts."

  Adam laughed. "You say it like it was a jail sentence."

  "Where did it come from?"

  "What do you care?" Adam asked. "Maybe we should just settle back and enjoy it."

  "He wasn't at Gettysburg. He wasn't at any goddam battle in the whole war. He was hit in a skirmish. Everything he told was lies."

  "What are you getting at?" said Adam.

  "I think he stole the money," Charles said miserably. "You asked me and that's what I think."

  "Do you know where he stole it?"

  "No."

  "Then why do you think he stole it?"

  "He told lies about the war."

  "What?"

  "I mean, if he lied about the war--why, he could steal."

  "How?"

  "He held jobs in the G.A.R.--big jobs. He maybe could have got into the treasury, rigged the books."

  Adam sighed. "Well, if that's what you think, why don't you write to them and tell them? Have them go over the books. If it's true we could give back the money."

  Charles' face was twisted and the scar on his forehead showed dark. "The Vice-President came to his funeral. The President sent a wreath. There was a line of carriages half a mile long and hundreds of people on foot. And do you know who the pall bearers were?"

  "What are you digging at?"

  " 'Spose we found out he's a thief. Then it would come out how he never was at Gettysburg or anyplace else. Then everybody would know he was a liar too, and his whole life was a goddam lie. Then even if sometimes he did tell the truth, nobody would believe it was the truth."

  Adam sat very still. His eyes were untroubled but he was watchful. "I thought you loved him," he said calmly. He felt released and free.

  "I did. I do. That's why I hate this--his whole life gone--all gone. And his grave--they might even dig him up and throw him out." His words were ragged with emotion. "Didn't you love him at all?" he cried.

  "I wasn't sure until now," said Adam. "I was all mixed up with how I was supposed to feel. No. I did not love him."

  "Then you don't care if his life is spoiled and his poor body rooted up and--oh, my God almighty!"

  Adam's brain raced, trying to find words for his feeling. "I don't have to care."

  "No, you don't," Charles said bitterly. "Not if you didn't love him, you don't. You can help kick him in the face."

  Adam knew that his brother was no longer dangerous. There was no jealousy to drive him. The whole weight of his father was on him, but it was his father and no one could take his father away from him.