Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
How did the word spread about Doc's arm? Who knows? Fauna heard it with her crullers. Alice, Mabel, and Becky got it with their orange juice. The Patron heard it from Cacahuete, who thereupon rushed to the beach and played three loud and uninhibited choruses of "Sweet Georgia Brown," using six changes of key.
Wide Ida was siphoning Pine Canyon whisky into Old Crow bottles when she heard it.
Mack and the boys had the news early, and it gave them something pressing to do.
Suzy opened up the Poppy that morning. The counter was crowded with breakfasters who dawdled over coffee. It was well into the morning before Suzy heard that Doc had broken his arm. And then she couldn't do anything about it because Ella was getting a permanent. But after she heard it some mid-morning customers got curious ser vice from a Suzy who looked blankly over their heads when they spoke to her. She called Mr. MacMinimin Mr. Gross, and she called Mr. Gross "you" and served his eggs straight up which sickened him.
Mack was first on the scene. He didn't even put on his shoes. He regarded the new cast, which still hadn't cooled off, and listened to the only explanation Doc could think of--that he had got his arm caught between the cot and the wall.
"What you going to do?" Mack asked.
"I don't know. I have to get south, I have to!"
Mack was about to make an offer when a thought came to him that made him say, "Maybe something'll turn up." He bolted for the Palace Flop house.
Once there, he went to Hazel's bed and found it pristine and unwrinkled.
"He ain't been in," said Whitey No. 1.
"Well, what do you think of that?" Mack said with admiration. "Why, the sweet son-of-a-bitch!"
Mack went out to the cypress tree and crawled under its low hanging limbs, and he dragged Hazel out the way you'd drag a puppy from under a bed and half carried him up to the Palace Flop house.
Hazel was far gone in emotional fatigue. "I had to," he said hopelessly.
"Anybody seen Suzy?" Mack asked.
"I seen her go to work early," said Eddie.
"Well, you better go break the news to her. Do it offhand," said Mack. "Now, Hazel, how'd you do it?"
"You mad with me?"
"Hell no," said Mack. "'Course we don't know how she'll work out, but it's a step in the right direction." He turned to the two Whiteys. "I want you should notice Hazel didn't bust Doc's leg. That was good judgment. Doc can walk but he can't work. You, Whitey," he said to Whitey No. 2, "I want you should get over to Doc's and hang around. If anybody offers to drive him down to La Jolla you take care of it. Where's the indoor-ball bat?"
"I throwed it in the bay," said Hazel.
"So that's what it was! Whitey, you get yourself a couple of feet of gas pipe."
Hazel went into collapse. Mack sat on the edge of his bed and placed and replaced cold damp rags on Hazel's feverish brow.
Hazel struggled for speech. "Mack," he said, "I can't do her. I don't care if the stars or even the cops say I got to, I can't do her. I ain't got the poop."
"What you talking about? You already done her."
"I don't mean that. You tell Fauna she got to get somebody else for President of the United States."
Mack stared down at him in amazement. "I'll be damned," he said. "I thought you'd forgot."
"I practiced," said Hazel brokenly. "I don't want to let nobody down, Mack, but I just ain't no good at it. Try and get me off, will you, Mack? Please? Pretty goddam please?"
Mack's eyes brimmed with compassion. "Well, you sweet bastard," he said. "You poor little rabbit. Don't you worry. Ain't nobody going to force you. You done noble stuff. Wasn't nobody with guts but you."
"It ain't oysters," Hazel said. "Hell, I could do that. I'd eat old socks if I had to. It's just--the job's too big for me. I'd mess up the whole country."
Mack said, "You just lay there, Hazel baby, Mack's going to take care of it. There ain't nobody brave as you. Whitey," he said to Whitey No. 1, "you set here on Hazel's bed and kind of pet him. Don't let him get up until I get back." And Mack hurried out.
"You got to do something and do it quick," Mack said to Fauna. "S'pose Hazel gets another noble idea--why, hell, he might kill somebody."
"Yeah," said Fauna, "I can see how it is. Just let me get my stuff together. You think he'd like a nice monkey head?"
"He'd love it," said Mack. "He needs it."
Fauna held her chart in front of Hazel's eyes. "Anybody can make a mistake," she said. "They was a fly speck on the chart. Saturn wasn't in the bicuspid at all."
Hazel said suspiciously, "How do I know you ain't malarkying me now just to make me feel good?"
"How many toes you got?"
"I counted them--nine."
"Count them again."
Hazel slipped off his shoes. "Looks like the same as before," he said.
"Look at that little toe kind of bent under. Hell, Hazel, I may of made a mistake with a fly speck, but you miscounted your toes! You got ten. One bent under."
A slow smile began to spread over Hazel's face, a smile of relieved delight. Then for a moment the shadow of worry came back. "Who you think they'll get instead of me?"
"Nobody knows," said Fauna.
"Well, he better be good," said Hazel ominously. And then he abandoned himself to pure relief. "'I got a little shadow that goes in and out with me,'" he sang.
Fauna rolled up her chart and went home.
Just before noon the expressman picked his unaccustomed way up to the chicken walk to the Palace Flop house.
"I got a great big crate for you guys," he said. "I ain't got no call to deliver it up a rope ladder. Come on down and get it."
"It's here!" Mack cried. "God works in his tum-te-dum way his tum-tums to perform."
Hazel and Whitey No. 1 and Mack were wrestling the big wooden case up the chicken walk when Eddie joined them.
"Suzy come!" he cried. "I come with her. Seemed like she was about to take off any minute. She's in there with him now."
"Give us a hand," said Mack. "How's she look?"
"Fireball," said Eddie.
They carried the case into the Palace and Mack attacked it with a hand ax.
"There she is," he said when the lid was off.
"She's with Doc. Say, what you got?"
"Look!" said Mack. And he and the boys gazed down on the instrument, the great black tube of an eight-inch reflector, eyepieces socketed beside it, and its tripod cradled.
"Biggest one in the whole damn catalogue," said Mack proudly. "Jesus, Doc'll be happy! Eddie, tell us everything that happened, don't leave nothing out."
What a day it was! A day of purple and gold, the proud colors of the Salinas High School. A squadron of baby angels maneuvered at twelve hundred feet, holding a pink cloud on which the word J-O-Y flashed on and off. A seagull with a broken wing took off and flew straight up into the air, squawking, "Joy! Joy!"
Suzy was ahead of her racing feet when Eddie intercepted her. She answered yes and no to Eddie's casual comments on the weather, but not only did she not hear the comments, she didn't know Eddie was beside her.
She went up the steps of Western Biological without seeing Whitey No. 2 standing guard with a sashweight. Her coming relieved him of a duty, but he stuck around to hear.
At the top of the steps Suzy became a breathless, shy girl, and, as anybody knows, there is nothing more indestructible and deadly than a shy young girl. She paused to get her breath and then knocked on the door and went in and forgot to close the door--which was good for Whitey No. 2.
Doc was sitting on his cot gloomily regarding the pile of collecting paraphernalia on the floor.
"I heard you was hurt," Suzy said gently. "I come to see if there was anything I could do."
For a moment Doc's face lightened, then gloom descended. "This shoots the spring tides," he said, staring at the white cast. "I don't know what I'll do."
"Does it hurt much?" Suzy asked.
"Some. It will hurt more later, I guess."
&n
"And turn over rocks that weigh fifty or a hundred pounds?"
"I ain't put together with spit," said Suzy.
"Can you drive a car?"
"Sure," said Suzy.
"You can't do it," he said. And then, from way down in the deep part of him, there came a bubbling shout, "Sure you can! I need you, Suzy. I need you to go with me. It will be terribly hard work and I'm pretty near helpless."
"You can tell me what to do and what to look for."
"Sure I can. And I'm not entirely helpless. I can use my left hand."
"It's a cinch," said Suzy. "When do we start?"
"I've got to go to night. If we drive all night we can make the tide at seven-eighteen tomorrow morning. Think you can make it?"
"Cinch," said Suzy. "If you need me."
"I need you all right. I'd be lost without you. But you'll be a tired kid."
"Who cares?" said Suzy.
"I want to ask you something," said Doc. "Old Jingleballicks has set up a foundation for me at Cal Tech."
"Why not?"
"I don't have to work there."
"Fine."
"I don't know whether I oughtn't to throw it in his face."
"Why don't you?"
"On the other hand, there's all the wonderful equipment."
"Fine," said Suzy.
"I don't like to work for anybody."
"Give it back."
"But there's an invitation to read my paper before the Academy of Science."
"Do it then."
"I don't know whether I can even write the paper. What shall I do, Suzy?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know."
"What's wrong with that? Say, Doc, I got to do a couple of things. Take me maybe two hours. That too long?"
"Just as long as we start by evening."
"I'll come back soon's I finish."
Doc said, "Suzy, I love you."
She was headed for the door. She whirled and faced him. Her brows were straight and her mouth taut. Then she took a slow breath and her lips became full and turned up at the corners and her eyes shone with incredible excitement.
"Brother," said Suzy, "you got yourself a girl!"
40
I'm Sure We Should All Be as Happy as Kings
In the Palace Flop house, Suzy sat on a straight chair surrounded by the boys. She wore a look of furious concentration. Her feet were on two bricks and she held a barrel hoop in her hands. Propped in front of her was a board on which were chalked "ignition key," "speedometer," "choke," and "gas gauge." On the floor on her right side stood an apple box with a mop handle sticking upright out of it.
"Try her again," said Mack. "Turn the key and reach up with your right toe for the starter."
Suzy put her foot on a chalk spot on the floor.
"Chug-a-chug-a-chug," said Hazel happily.
"Push out your clutch."
Suzy pushed her left foot down on a brick.
"Now bring the gear to you and back."
She moved the mop handle to low gear.
"Ease up the gas and let in the clutch. Now clutch out, away from you and forward. Give it gas. Now clutch out and straight back. There, you done it good. Now do it again."
At the end of an hour and a half Suzy had driven the straight chair roughly a hundred and fifty miles.
"You'll do all right," said Mack. "Take it slow. If you can get two miles out of town without ramming into something, you can tell him the truth. He ain't going to turn back then. He'll tell you what to do. I'll get her started and kind of lined up with the street."
"You're a bunch of nice guys," said Suzy.
"Hell, if Hazel can go to all the trouble to break--oop, sorry--the least we can do is see he gets some good out of it. Come on now--whang her through the gears again!"
The evening was as lovely as the day had been. The setting sun pinked up the little white caps on the bay and lighted the serious pelicans pounding home to the sea rocks. The metal cannery walls seemed a soft and precious platinum.
Doc's old car stood in front of Western Biological, its backseat loaded with buckets and pans and nets and crowbars. All Cannery Row was there. The Patron had set out pints of Old Tennis Shoes along the curb. Fauna's hair blazed in the setting sun. The girls gave Suzy quick little hugs. Becky was in romantic tears.
Joe Elegant looked out his lean-to door. He thought he would go to Rome after his book was published.
Doc held a list in his hand and checked equipment.
Only Mack and the boys were missing. And here they came down the chicken walk, balancing among them the tripod and the long black tube. They crossed the track and the lot and they set the tripod down beside the automobile.
Mack cleared his throat. "Friends," he said, "on behalf of I and the boys it gives me plea sure to present Doc with this here."
Doc looked at the gift--a telescope strong enough to bring the moon to his lap. His mouth fell open. Then he smothered the laughter that rose in him.
"Like it?" said Mack.
"It's beautiful."
"Biggest one in the whole goddam catalogue," said Mack.
Doc's voice was choked. "Thanks," he said. He paused. "After all, I guess it doesn't matter whether you look down or up--as long as you look."
"We'll put her inside for you," said Mack. "Give me one of them pints. To Doc!" he cried, and under his breath he whispered to Suzy, "Turn the key. Now, starter."
The ancient engine roared. Doc was sipping from a pint.
"Clutch out--to you and back," Mack said. "Let in the clutch."
Suzy did.
The old car deliberately climbed the curb, ripped off the stairs of Western Biological, careened into the street, and crawled away, scattering lumber as it went.
Doc turned in the seat and looked back. The disappearing sun shone on his laughing face, his gay and eager face. With his left hand he held the bucking steering wheel.
Cannery Row looked after the ancient car. It made the first turn and was gone from sight behind a ware house just as the sun was gone.
Fauna said, "I wonder if I'd be safe to put up her gold star tonight. What the hell's the matter with you, Mack?"
Mack said, "Vice is a monster so frightful of mien, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." He put his arm around Hazel's shoulders. "I think you'd of made a hell of a president," he said.
Notes
Starred notes below also appear in Robert DeMott and Brian Railsback, editors, John Steinbeck: "Travels with Charley" and Later Novels 1947-1962 (New York: Library of America, 2007), pp. 979-82. Special thanks to my research intern, Tracy Kelly, and to Steinbeck specialist Carol Robles for assistance.
DEDICATION
Elizabeth R. Otis (1901-81), Steinbeck's literary agent and confidante, and cofounder in 1928 of New York literary agency McIntosh and Otis. Steinbeck's voluminous correspondence with Otis covered thirty-seven years, from 1931 to his death in 1968; a sampling is available in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (1975), Letters to Elizabeth (1978), and in the Appendix to The Acts of King Arthur. The main collection is housed at Stanford University Library's Department of Special Collections and University Archives. Access the individual Container List of the Steinbeck-Otis correspondence in the John Steinbeck Collection, 1902-1979, at content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf3c6002vx&chunk.id=dsc-1.8.6.
PROLOGUE
Originally titled "Introduction Mack's Contribution," a much longer version of the prologue (156 lines long as opposed to 47) appears in the original autograph manuscript, the typed manuscript, and the unrevised galley proofs of Sweet Thursday (all housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin). It is not known why Steinbeck excised such a large portion of the text.
that book Cannery Row: Steinbeck's earlier roman a clef novel (1945), set in pre-World War II Monterey, featuring the protagonist Doc (based on Edward F. Ricketts) and including in its cast of characters nu
I used the laboratory and Ed himself in a book called Cannery Row. I took it to him in typescript to see whether he would resent it and to offer to make any changes he would suggest. He read it through carefully, smiling, and when he had finished he said, "Let it go that way. It is written in kindness. Such a thing can't be bad." But it was bad in several ways neither of us foresaw. As the book began to be read, tourists began coming to the laboratory, first a few and then in droves. People stopped their cars and stared at Ed with that glassy look that is used on movie stars. Hundreds of people came into the lab to ask questions and peer around. (pp. lvi-lvii)
CHAPTER 1
Cannery Row: Site of numerous fish canneries, fish reduction plants, and processing and packing houses along Ocean View Avenue, Monterey. The street was renamed Cannery Row in 1958. That section of town was called New Monterey, which, Susan Shillinglaw explains in A Journey into Steinbeck's California (2006), was "not Spanish Monterey, not Methodist Pacific Grove, but the shoreline and sloping wooded hills between these places..." (p. 107)
"As with the oysters in Alice...": From "The Walrus and the Carpenter," a poem in chapter four of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), by British writer and mathematician Charles L. Dodgson (1832-98), whose pseudonym was Lewis Carroll: "'O Oysters,' said the Carpenter, / 'You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?' But answer came there none--/ And this was scarcely odd, because / They'd eaten every one."
pilchards: California sardine (Sardinia caerulea). At eleven to fourteen inches in length, it was the state's most important commercial fish until midcentury. According to a graph in Richard F. G. Heimann and John G. Carlisle's The California Marine Fish Catch for 1968 and Historical Review, 1916-1968, reprinted in Michael Hemp, Cannery Row (1986), in 1941-42, the Monterey area sardine catch was a record 250,287 tons. The canning boom driven by World War II saw Monterey become "the Sardine Capital of the World," though in 1947-48, around the time of Doc's discharge from the army, the catch was 17,630 tons (p. 110). Marine scientist Ed Ricketts studied the sardine extensively during his later career, and in his final article on the subject, published in the Monterey Peninsula Herald in 1948 (shortly before his death) and reprinted in Ricketts, Breaking Through (2006), concluded that if "conservation had been adopted early enough, a smaller but streamlined cannery row...would be winding up a fairly successful season, in stead [sic] of dipping, as they must be now, deeply into the red ink of failure" (p. 330). As Katherine Rodger asserts in her Introduction to Breaking Through, his "pleas for moderation fell on deaf ears..." (p. 73). In 1953 to 1954, the year Sweet Thursday was published, a greatly reduced Monterey fleet brought in fifty-eight tons.