You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
There were twenty feet of sand and then black earth again, and even a piece of redwood, that imperishable wood that does not rot. Before the inland sea the valley must have been a forest. And those things had happened right under our feet. And it seemed to me sometimes at night that I could feel both the sea and the redwood forest before it.
greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God.
Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.
When the Spaniards came they had to give everything they saw a name. This is the first duty of any explorer—a duty and a privilege. You must name a thing before you can note it on your hand-drawn map.
After the valleys were settled the names of places refer more to things which happened there, and these to me are the most fascinating of all names because each name suggests a story that has been forgotten.
And of course they were descended from the ancient kings of Ireland, as every Irishman is.
His hands were clever. He was a good blacksmith and carpenter and wood-carver, and he could improvise anything with bits of wood and metal. He was forever inventing a new way of doing an old thing and doing it better and quicker, but he never in his whole life had any talent for making money.
They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit, and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. I don’t know whether it was a divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it. Surely such venture is nearly gone from the world.
I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units—because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.
How Cyrus managed to make this understood without saying it was a triumph of insinuation. No one could call him a liar. And this was mainly because the lie was in his head, and any truth coming from his mouth carried the color of the lie.
she didn’t dare to mention it to her husband. He had devised a method for dealing with sickness which resembled punishment. A stomach ache was treated with a purge so violent that it was a wonder anyone survived it. If she had mentioned her condition, Cyrus might have started a treatment which would have killed her off before her consumption could have done it.
He had always hated the discipline, as every normal animal does, but it was just and true and inevitable as measles, not to be denied or cursed, only to be hated.
Adam knew that, for him at least, his father’s methods had no reference to anything in the world but his father. The techniques and training were not designed for the boys at all but only to make Cyrus a great man. And the same click in the brain told Adam that his father was not a great man, that he was, indeed, a very strong-willed and concentrated little man wearing a huge busby.
She was not his mother—that he knew because he had been told many times. Not from things said but from the tone in which other things were said, he knew that he had once had a mother and that she had done some shameful thing, such as forgetting the chickens or missing the target on the range in the woodlot.
them. It was very different from the flag-waving, shouting bellicosity
Adam said, “You see that stump there, sir? I used to hide between the roots on the far side. After you punished me I used to hide there, and sometimes I went there just because I felt bad.” “Let’s go and see the place,” his father said. Adam led him to it, and Cyrus looked down at the nestlike hole between the roots. “I knew about it long ago,” he said. “Once when you were gone a long time I thought you must have such a place, and I found it because I felt the kind of a place you would need. See how the earth is tamped and the little grass is torn? And while you sat in there you stripped little pieces of bark to shreds. I knew it was the place when I came upon it.” Adam was staring at his father in wonder. “You never came here looking for me,” he said. “No,” Cyrus replied. “I wouldn’t do that. You can drive a human too far. I wouldn’t do that. Always you must leave a man one escape before death. Remember that! I knew, I guess, how hard I was pressing you. I didn’t want to push you over the edge.”
Adam did more detail work than any man in the squadron, but if he killed any enemy it was an accident of ricochet. Being a marksman and sharp-shooter, he was peculiarly fitted to miss.
Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn’t discover the world and its people, he created them.
It was easier to do Joe’s work than to make him do it. His mother and father thought him a poet because he wasn’t any good at anything else.
Adam in his five years had absorbed rather than learned never to wonder about an order. To an enlisted man the high far gods in Washington were crazy, and if a soldier wanted to keep his sanity he thought about generals as little as possible.
They were fed and clothed and taken care of until they were too old, and then they were kicked out. This ending was no deterrent. No one who is young is ever going to be old.
If ever Mr. Edwards had a chance it was now. And indeed a little warning buzz did sound in his brain, but it was not loud enough. About eighty per cent of the girls who came to him needed money to pay off a mortgage. And Mr. Edwards made it an unvarying rule not to believe anything his girls said at any time, beyond what they had for breakfast, and they sometimes lied about that.
Mrs. Edwards was persistently if not profoundly religious.
There was a wall against learning. A man wanted his children to read, to figure, and that was enough. More might make them dissatisfied and flighty.
Olive never accepted the time-payment plan when it became popular. A thing bought on time was a thing you did not own and for which you were in debt. She saved for things she wanted, and this meant that the neighbors had new gadgets as much as two years before we did.
If the Germans had known Olive and had been sensible they would have gone out of their way not to anger her. But they didn’t know or they were stupid.
Samuel suddenly realized that he was making his speech last to prevent silence from falling on the table. He paused, and the silence dropped.
Samuel began to talk to push the silence away. He told how he had first come to the valley fresh from Ireland, but within a few words neither Cathy nor Adam was listening to him. To prove it, he used a trick he had devised to discover whether his children were listening when they begged him to read to them and would not let him stop. He threw in two sentences of nonsense. There was no response from either Adam or Cathy. He gave up.
“I’d never have brought you if I’d known. It’s not fit for any man to see, and sure not for a small boy.” “I didn’t see any,” Samuel piped. “You held my head down.” “I’m glad of that.” “What was it?” “I’ll have to tell you. They were killing a bad man.” “Was it the golden man?” “Yes, it was. And you must put no sorrow on him. He had to be killed. Not once but many times he did dreadful things—things only a fiend could think of. It’s not his hanging sorrows me but that they make a holiday of it that should be done secretly, in the dark.”
“And maybe you can find it healthy to rove all night, but the Lord God will do what He sees fit about that.” It was well known that Liza Hamilton and the Lord God held similar convictions on nearly every subject.
Say, isn’t that Rabbit Holman? Where’ve you been, Rabbit?” “Went prospecting, Mr. Hamilton.” “Find anything, Rabbit?” “Hell, Mr. Hamilton, I couldn’t even find the mule I went out with.”
“Now, Adam, I know what you feel. I promised you I’d take care of things, and I will. I only hope one of those things isn’t you.”
I heard Mr. Trask shot himself in the shoulder with a forty-four and then fired everybody on the ranch. How do you go about shooting yourself in the shoulder with a forty-four, Horace?” “I don’t know. Them Easterners are pretty clever.
Samuel leaned over the basket and put his finger against the small palm of one of the twins and the fingers closed and held on. “I guess the last bad habit a man will give up is advising.” “I don’t want advice.” “Nobody does. It’s a giver’s present.
True enough, the Reverend Billing, when they caught up with him, turned out to be a thief, an adulterer, a libertine, and a zoophilist, but that didn’t change the fact that he had communicated some good things to a great number of receptive people. Billing went to jail, but no one ever arrested the good things he had released.
The honest preachers had energy and go. They fought the devil, no holds barred, boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns.
Castroville Street is now called Market Street, God knows why. Streets used to be named for the place they aimed at. Thus Castroville Street, if you followed it nine miles, brought you to Castroville, Alisal Street to Alisal, and so forth.
One day Samuel strained his back lifting a bale of hay, and it hurt his feelings more than his back, for he could not imagine a life in which Sam Hamilton was not privileged to lift a bale of hay. He felt insulted by his back, almost as he would have been if one of his children had been dishonest.
Liza spoke sharply, “What my mother would mind is what I mind, and I’ll tell you what I mind. You’re never satisfied to let the Testament alone. You’re forever picking at it and questioning it. You turn it over the way a ’coon turns over a wet rock, and it angers me.” “I’m just trying to understand it, Mother.” “What is there to understand? Just read it. There it is in black and white. Who wants you to understand it? If the Lord God wanted you to understand it He’d have given you to understand or He’d have set it down different.”
“There’s something at the hens,” said Adam. A second shrieking started. “It’s Lee at the hens,” said Samuel. “You know, if chickens had government and church and history, they would take a distant and distasteful view of human joy. Let any gay and hopeful thing happen to a man, and some chicken goes howling to the block.”
When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.”
And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them.” “But their blood—” “I don’t very much believe in blood,” said Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”
She most of all would disagree, and so I would not say it to her and let loose the thunder of her disagreement. She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction that a difference of opinion is a personal affront.
Names are a great mystery. I’ve never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this—whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong.
Una’s death struck Samuel like a silent earthquake. He said no brave and reassuring words, he simply sat alone and rocked himself. He felt that it was his neglect had done it. And now his tissue, which had fought joyously against time, gave up a little. His young skin turned old, his clear eyes dulled, and a little stoop came to his great shoulders. Liza with her acceptance could take care of tragedy; she had no real hope this side of Heaven. But Samuel had put up a laughing wall against natural laws, and Una’s death breached his battlements. He became an old man.
one-o’-cat,
“Then what’s going to close it?” “This bar here. It would slip to this spring with the tension the other way.” “I see,” said Samuel. “It might work too, if the gate was truly hung. And it would only take twice as much time to make and keep up as twenty years of getting out of the rig and opening the gate.” Tom protested, “Sometimes with a skittish horse—” “I know,” said his father. “But the main reason is that it’s fun.” Tom grinned. “Caught me,” he said.
Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, but he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick.
And she looked forward to Heaven as a place where clothes did not get dirty and where food did not have to be cooked and dishes washed. Privately there were some things in Heaven of which she did not quite approve. There was too much singing, and she didn’t see how even the Elect could survive for very long the celestial laziness which was promised. She would find something to do in Heaven. There must be something to take up one’s time—some clouds to darn, some weary wings to rub with liniment.
“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don’t know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.” A slight anger came into Adam’s voice.
“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don’t know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
Lee said, “Your medicine acts like poison.” “I take responsibility,” said Samuel. “Long ago I learned this: When a dog has eaten strychnine and is going to die, you must get an ax and carry him to a chopping block. Then you must wait for his next convulsion, and in that moment—chop off his tail. Then, if the poison has not gone too far, your dog may recover. The shock of pain can counteract the poison. Without the shock he will surely die.”
“You’re a brave man,” Lee said. “No, I’m an old man. And if I should have anything on my conscience it won’t be for long.”
Adam had looked at Samuel in his casket and knew that he didn’t want him to be dead. And since the face in the casket did not look like Samuel’s face, Adam
Adam had looked at Samuel in his casket and knew that he didn’t want him to be dead. And since the face in the casket did not look like Samuel’s face, Adam walked away to be by himself and to preserve the man alive.
she picked her words as one picks flowers in a mixed garden and took her time choosing.
“I want you to help me get acquainted with my boys. I want to put this place in shape, or maybe sell it or rent it. I’ll want to know how much money I have left and what I can do with it.” “You wouldn’t lay a trap for me?” Lee asked. “My wish isn’t as strong as it once was. I’m afraid I could be talked out of it or, what would be worse, I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That’s the worst bait of all to a lonely man.”
It is hard now to imagine the difficulty of learning to start, drive, and maintain an automobile. Not only was the whole process complicated, but one had to start from scratch. Today’s children breathe in the theory, habits, and idiosyncracies of the internal combustion engine in their cradles, but then you started with the blank belief that it would not run at all, and sometimes you were right. Also, to start the engine of a modern car you do just two things, turn a key and touch the starter. Everything else is automatic. The process used to be more complicated. It required not only a good memory, a strong arm, an angelic temper, and a blind hope, but also a certain amount of practice of magic, so that a man about to turn the crank of a Model T might be seen to spit on the ground and whisper a spell.
His will, which was drawn and signed in this office, is in our hands and will be sent to you on your request. By its terms it leaves all money, property, and securities to be divided equally between you and your wife. In the event that your wife is deceased, the total goes to you. The will also stipulates that if you are deceased, all property goes to your wife. We judge from your letter that you are still in the land of the living and we wish to offer our congratulations.
“It’s one of the great fallacies, it seems to me,” said Lee, “that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.”
He opened the letter under the lamp and read it. Adam asked, “Well?” “Is there an opening here for a lawyer?” “How do you mean? Oh, I see. Are you making a joke?” “No,” said Lee, “I was not making a joke. In my obscure but courteous Oriental manner I was indicating to you that I would prefer to know your opinion before I offered mine.”
carrots and beets, turnips, peas, and string beans, rutabaga
On a wicker table beside Liza was the cage of Polly parrot. Tom had bought the parrot from a sailor. He was an old bird, reputed to be fifty years old, and he had lived a ribald life and acquired the vigorous speech of a ship’s fo’c’sle. Try as she would, Liza could not make him substitute psalms for the picturesque vocabulary of his youth.
Dessie was not beautiful. Perhaps she wasn’t even pretty, but she had the glow that makes men follow a woman in the hope of reflecting a little of it.
“Let me decide,” she said softly. “I’ve lost something. I want to try to find it again.”
burnished, his face shaved so close that its darkness had a shine like
mother-of-pearl.
Liza said patiently, “Why do you be forever testing, Samuel? Gray ones taste just as good and they’re bigger.” “I’ll let no flimsy fairy tale push me,” Samuel said. And Liza said with her dreadful simplicity, “You’re already pushed by your own contentiousness. You’re a mule of contention, a very mule!”
Liza said patiently, “Why do you be forever testing, Samuel? Gray ones taste just as good and they’re bigger.” “I’ll let no flimsy fairy tale push me,” Samuel said. And Liza said with her dreadful simplicity, “You’re already pushed by your own contentiousness. You’re a mule of contention, a very mule!” “Someone’s got to do these things,” he said sullenly. “Else Fate would not ever get nose-thumbed and mankind would still be clinging to the top branches of a tree.”
Tom Hamilton labored like a giant, not only with his strong arms and rough hands but also with his heart and spirit. The anvil rang in the forge again. He painted the old house white and whitewashed the sheds. He went to King City and studied a flush toilet and then built one of craftily bent tin and carved wood. Because the water came so slowly from the spring, he put a redwood tank beside the house and pumped the water up to it with a handmade windmill so cleverly made that it turned in the slightest wind. And he made metal and wood models of two ideas to be sent to the patent office in the fall. That was not all—he labored with humor and good spirits
Poor Tom did not know and could not learn that dissembling successfully is one of the creative joys of a businessman. To indicate enthusiasm was to be idiotic.
“If they pretended sorrow they’d be liars. It doesn’t mean anything to them. Maybe they’ll think of me sometimes—privately. I don’t want them to be sad. I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.”
Lee lifted the bottle to his lips and took a deep hot drink and panted the fumes out of his burning throat. “Adam,” he said, “I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I’ve never been so goddam lonesome in my life.”
Lee’s voice said, “I know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don’t believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That’s a running sore.”
If Adam had conceived thousands of ideas, the way Sam Hamilton had, they might all have drifted away, but he had only the one. The frozen mastodon stayed in his mind. His little cups of fruit, of pudding, of bits of meat, both cooked and raw, continued in the icebox. He bought every available book on bacteria and began sending for magazines that printed articles of a mildly scientific nature. And as is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed.
“Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.”
That doesn’t interest me. You see, Will, I’m not like a man looking for a job. I’m looking for work. I don’t need a job.”
And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.
ministry for his future. He attended all services in the Episcopal
Aron’s training in worldliness was gained from a young man of no experience, which gave him the ability for generalization only the inexperienced can have.
AT INTERVALS Salinas suffered from a mild eructation of morality. The process never varied much. One burst was like another. Sometimes it started in the pulpit and sometimes with a new ambitious president of the Women’s Civic Club. Gambling was invariably the sin to be eradicated. There were certain advantages in attacking gambling. One could discuss it, which was not true of prostitution. It was an obvious evil and most of the games were operated by Chinese. There was little chance of treading on the toes of a relative.
Adam’s recognition brought a ferment of happiness to Cal. He walked on the balls of his feet. He smiled more often than he frowned, and the secret darkness was seldom on him. Lee, noticing the change in him, asked quietly, “You haven’t found a girl, have you?” “Girl? No. Who wants a girl?” “Everybody,” said Lee.
“Maybe. God knows we haven’t seen much of him lately either. Do you think it’s good for him to be away so much?” “Cal’s trying to find himself,” said Lee. “I guess this personal hide-and-seek is not unusual. And some people are ‘it’ all their lives— hopelessly ‘it.’
“Cal’s trying to find himself,” said Lee. “I guess this personal hide-and-seek is not unusual. And some people are ‘it’ all their lives— hopelessly ‘it.’
“We’re only talking about making a living.” “A living—or money,” Lee said excitedly. “Money’s easy to make if it’s money you want. But with a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.”
Adam could do no dishonesty. He didn’t want anything. You had to crave something to be dishonest. The sheriff wondered what went on behind the wall, what pressures, what pleasures and achings.
He thought of Sam Hamilton. He had knocked on so many doors. He had the most schemes and plans, and no one would give him any money. But of course—he had so much, he was so rich. You couldn’t give him any more. Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight—the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards. He wondered if that were true. They acted that way sometimes.