Sweet Thursday (15 page)

Fauna always drew the shades of her bedroom tight down. Because of the late hours of business, she had to sleep until noon to get her proper rest. On the morning of Sweet Thursday the sun played a trick on her. The windowshade had a hole in it no bigger than the point of a pin. The playful sun picked up the doings of Cannery Row, pushed them through the pinhole, turned them upside down, and projected them in full color on the wall of Fauna's bedroom. Wide Ida waddled across the wall upside down, wearing a print dress sewn with red poppies and on her head a black beret. The Pacific Gas & Electric truck rolled across her wall upside down, its wheels in the air. Mack strode toward the grocery store head down. And a little later, Doc, weary, feet over his head, walked along the wallpaper carrying a quart of beer that would have spilled if it had not been an illusion. At first Fauna tried to go back to sleep, but she was afraid she might miss something. It was the little colored ghost of upside-down Doc that drew her from her couch.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. And this had happened to Fauna. She was glad when she raised the shade and saw how beautiful was the day. The roof of the Hediondo Cannery where seagulls had perched glowed like a pearl.

Fauna brushed her hair severely back and put on a close-fitting hat of black sequins. She wore her dark-gray knitted suit and carried gloves. In the kitchen she put six bottles of beer in a paper bag, and then, as an afterthought, she rooted out one of the shrunken monkey heads as a present. When she climbed the stairs of Western Biological and stood at the top, puffing a little, you might have thought she was soliciting for the Red Cross instead of for the Bear Flag.

Doc was frying sausages, sprinkling a little chocolate over them. It gave them an odd and Oriental flavor, he thought.

“You're up early,” he greeted Fauna.

“I figured one quart of beer wouldn't last long.”

“It didn't,” said Doc. “Have a couple of sausages?”

“Don't mind if I do,” said Fauna. For she knew that he who gives to you is in debt to you. “This here's a monkey head that I picked up in my travels.”

“Interesting,” said Doc.

“You know, there's some folks think they're people's heads,” said Fauna.

“Don't see how they could. See the shape of the eyes and ears? Look at the nose.”

“Oh, some folks don't look at people very close,” said Fauna. “I'll have a bottle of beer with you.”

The taste of the chocolate sausages intrigued her. “I never tasted nothing like it,” she observed. “Did you ever eat grasshoppers, Doc?”

“Yes,” said Doc. “In Mexico. They're kind of peppery.”

Fauna was not one to beat around bushes. “You must get sick of everybody wanting something from you,” she said.

Doc smiled. “I'd be sicker if they didn't,” he said. “What can I do for you? Say, thanks for the cake and the beer last night!”

Fauna asked, “What did you think of the kid?”

“Strange,” said Doc. “Somehow I can't see her working at the Bear Flag.”

“Neither can I,” said Fauna. “She ain't no good at it but it looks like I'm stuck with her. Trouble with Suzy is, she's got a streak of lady in her and I don't know how to root it out.”

Doc munched his sausages and sipped his beer thoughtfully. “I never thought of it, but that could be a drawback,” he said.

“She's a nice kid,” said Fauna. “I like her fine. But she's a liability in a business way.”

“Why don't you kick her out?”

“Oh, I can't,” said Fauna. “She's had a tough time. I never had no gift for kicking people out. What I'd like is if she'd pick up and go. She got no future as a floozy.”

“She threw the book at me,” said Doc.

“You see?” said Fauna. “She's a character. That ain't no good in a house.”

“She slapped me in the face with a few basic truths,” said Doc. “That's a quick eye she's got.”

“And a quicker tongue,” said Fauna. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Why, of course,” said Doc. “Anything I can.”

“I can't go to nobody else,” Fauna went on, “they wouldn't understand.”

“What is it?”

“Doc,” said Fauna, “I knocked around and I seen all kinds. I tell you, if you got a streak of lady in you it spoils you for anything else. Now you never come over to the Bear Flag. You play the field. I personally think that costs you more but I ain't one to mess in the way people want to live.”

“I don't think I'm following you,” said Doc.

“Okay, I'll lay out the deck. When you're making a play for one of them babes, them amateurs, you got to do quite a lot of talking before you make the sack—ain't that right?”

Doc smiled ruefully. “Right,” he said.

“Well, do you always mean every word of it?”

Doc pinched his lower lip. “Why—why—I guess right at the moment I do.”

“But afterward?”

“Afterward, if I were to think about it—”

“That's what I mean,” said Fauna. “So if you happen to tell a little teensy-beensy bit of baloney you don't blow your brains out.”

“You'd do well in the analysis business,” said Doc. “What do you want me to do?”

“This kid Suzy's lousy with new roses. She ain't a good hustler because of that streak of lady. I don't know if she'd make a good lady or not. I want her off my neck. Doc, would it do you any harm to make a play for her? I mean, like you do with them dames that come in here.”

“What good could that possibly do?” he asked.

“Well, maybe I'm wrong, but the way I figure it, you can use new roses if you want to. If you made a pitch for the kid, like she was a lady, why, she might turn lady on you.”

“I still can't see what good it would do,” said Doc.

“It would get her the hell out of the Bear Flag,” said Fauna. “She wouldn't want to congregate with no more floozies.”

“How about me?” said Doc.

“You don't marry them others, do you?”

“No, but—”

“Take a whang at her, will you, Doc?” Fauna begged. “Can't do you no harm. Why, hell, she might scram out of here and take up typewriting or telephone operating. Will you do that for me, Doc?”

He said, “It doesn't seem honest.”

Fauna changed her tack. “I was talking to her last night and she said she couldn't remember when a guy had treated her like a girl. What harm would that do?”

“Might make her miserable.”

“Might make her fly the coop.”

“Maybe she likes it the way it is.”

“She don't. I tell you she's a blowed-in-the-glass lady. Look, Doc, you take her out to dinner and I'll buy the dinner. You don't have to make no pass. Just be nice to her.”

“I'll have to think about it.”

“Think you might do it?”

“I might.”

“That's a good kid if you treat her right. You'd be doing me a big favor.”

“Suppose she won't go?”

“She will. I won't give her no choice.”

Doc looked out the window and a warmth crept through him, and suddenly he felt better than he could remember feeling.

“I'll think about it,” he said.

“I'll throw in three bottles of champagne whenever you say the word,” said Fauna.

After lunch Joe Elegant read Fauna his latest chapter. He explained the myth and the symbol. “You see,” he said, “the grandmother stands for guilt.”

“Ain't she dead and buried?”

“Yes.”

“That's a kind of a messy guilt.”

“It's the reality below reality,” said Joe Elegant.

“Balls!” said Fauna. “Listen, Joe, whyn't you write a story about something real?”

“Maybe
you
can tell
me
about the
art
of writing?” he said.

“I sure as hell can,” said Fauna. “There's this guy, and he makes love to this dame.”

“Very original,” said Joe.

“When a man says words he believes them, even if he thinks he's lying.”

“For goodness' sake! What are you talking about?”

“I bet I get rid of a certain person and put up a new gold star. You want to take that bet?”

“How did Doc like the cake?” Joe Elegant asked.

“He loved it,” said Fauna.

And this was the second event of that Sweet Thursday.

Fission took place in the Palace Flop house, and from there a chain reaction flared up in all directions. Cannery Row caught fire. Mack and the boys had the energy and the enthusiasm of plutonium. Only very lazy men could have done so much in so short a time. Oh, the meetings, the messages carried, the plans and counterplans! Mack had to make more and more raffle tickets. What started as a kind of gentle blackmail assumed the nature of an outpouring of popular love for Doc. People bought tickets, sold tickets, traded tickets. Emissaries covered the Southern Pacific Depot, the Greyhound Bus Station. Joe Blaikey, the constable, carried tickets in his pocket and canceled parking summonses if the lawbreaker bought a two-dollar chance on the Palace Flop house.

Whitey No. 1 invaded the foreign and fancy purlieus of Pebble Beach and Carmel and the Highlands. Whitey No. 2's method was characteristically direct. The first man to refuse him got a rock through his windshield, and the news traveled.

To the boys it had become a crusade. And the winning ticket, of course, with Doc's name on it, was in a tomato can, buried in the vacant lot. By tacit agreement no one mentioned the raffle to Doc. To Doc's friends Mack and the boys mentioned the rigging of the lottery, but to strangers—who cared? It was a perfect example of the collective goodness and generosity of a community.

But if communities have a group Good Fairy they also have an Imp who works parallel with and sometimes in collaboration with the Good Fairy. Cannery Row's Imp saw the Good Fairy stirring to life, and he sprang to action. Into the ears of his clients he whispered a few words, and his constituents grinned with evil plea sure and their thoughts went like this: The Patrón is a wise guy. He's a newcomer, nice clothes, makes his money off poor helpless wetbacks because he's smart. Lee Chong must have sold him the Palace Flop house and he's forgot it or he never knew it. Once Doc wins it the Patrón won't dare make a move.

It is such fun to outsmart a smart guy. The Imp of the Row had a good professional time and for once his job seemed almost virtuous. People bought more tickets from the Patrón than from anyone else. They wanted to watch his face so they could compare it with his face when he found out.

Now ordinarily Mack and the boys would have strung out the ticket sales over weeks, but time was breathing down their necks. If the Patrón got his tax bill from the county their plan would blow up in their faces. They had to take a chance with Friday—Saturday was the deadline. The boys spread the word that there would be medium-heavy refreshments at the Palace Flop house on Saturday night and that contributions of any nature would be welcome.

Mack called on Doc the afternoon of Sweet Thursday. “If you ain't doing anything Saturday night,” he said, “I and the boys are throwing a little wing-ding. R.S.V.P.”

“Moi, je respond oui.”

“Come again?”

“I'll be there,” said Doc.

Then Mack remembered a mission with which he had been entrusted. “I guess I could squirm it out of you, Doc, like I done once before,” he said, “but I'll come right out in the open. When's your birthday?”

A shudder went through Doc. “Please don't give me a party,” he begged. “The last one you gave nearly ruined me.”

“This hasn't got nothing to do with a party—it's a bet,” said Mack. “I stand to win a buck. When is it?” Mack prodded him.

Doc picked the first date that came to him. “July fourth,” he said.

“Why, that's like the Fourth of July!”

“A little,” said Doc, and he felt greatly relieved.

Later that afternoon Fauna and the girls called formally at the Palace Flop house in answer to the note Mack had sent asking them to drink a jolt of good stuff. Suzy did not attend. She had been quiet all morning, and then she mooned away on the path that leads along the sea to the light house on Point Pinos. She looked in the tide pools, and she picked a bunch of the tiny flowers that grow as close to the ocean as they can. Suzy was restless and unhappy. She felt excitement and nausea at the same time. She wanted to smile and she wanted to cry, and she was scared and happy and hopeless. Doc had asked her to have dinner with him, at Sonny Boy's on the pier, and Fauna had urged her to go.

Suzy's first reaction had been violent. “I won't do it!” she said.

“Sure you'll go,” said Fauna. “I may have to persuade you with a indoor-ball bat—but you'll go.”

“You can't make me.”

“Want to test that? Why, I've wore my brain down to the knuckles, trying to do something nice for you.”

“I ain't got nothing to wear,” said Suzy.

“Neither has Doc. If he can go like he does, what right's a chippy to get grand?”

“But hell, Fauna, he's—he's got it inside. People like me got to put on a puff because they got nothing else. I'm afraid I'll turn mean because I don't know how to be nice.”

“Suzy,” said Fauna, “I'm going to give you a piece of advice, and if you won't take it, I may just call Joe Blaikey and get you floated right out of town. Don't throw the first punch! Wait'll you're hit before you put up your dukes. Most of the time they ain't nobody laid a glove on you.”

“Suppose I could wear my suit? It's got a big spot,” said Suzy.

“Ask Joe Elegant to spot-clean it and press it. Tell him I said so.”

And thus it was that Suzy went walking out light house way on Sweet Thursday.

The meeting in the Palace wasn't really necessary, for word of the raffle had got around and Fauna had bought ten tickets and made each girl buy one.

Eddie had borrowed glasses from Wide Ida's—for once, with her permission. She was invited to the meeting too, and she brought two quarts of Pine Canyon whisky.

“It don't cost hardly nothing,” she explained.

Formality took hold of the meeting. Agnes and Mabel kept their knees together when they sat down, and Fauna's look of thunder made Becky snap hers shut so quickly she spilled her drink.

“She's going to be a wallager,” said Mack. “I can't wait to see Doc's face when he wins.”

Wide Ida asked, “How you going to explain it to him he wins when he didn't buy no ticket?”

“Why, we'll say a friend did it and don't want his name mentioned. I saw Doc a little while ago. He said he'd sure be here.”

Fauna said, “Did you find out when is his birthday?”

“Sure. July fourth.”

Fauna exhaled with the sound of escaping gas. “Holy apples! He's a gone goose. He got a born-on Oregon boot. I never seen nothing work out so nice!”

“What're you talking about?” said Mack.

Fauna's eyes were misty. “Mack,” she said huskily, “I don't want to horn in on your party, but why couldn't we make it an engagement party too?”

“Who's engaged?”

“Well, they ain't yet—but they will be.”

“Who?”

“Doc and Suzy. It's right in their horoscopes.”

“S'pose they won't?”

“They will,” said Fauna. “You can just depend on that—they will!”

The little group sat in silence, and then Mack said softly, “Did I say it was going to be a wallager? This here's a
tom
-wallager! They ain't been nothing so stupendous since the Second World War! You
sure
Doc'll go for it?”

“You let me take care of that—and don't none of you blab it to him. One time I managed a fighter, Kiss of Death Kelly, welterweight. I'll have Doc in the ring.”

Eddie asked, “How about Suzy?”

“Suzy's already in the ring,” said Fauna.

They parted quietly, but in their breasts a flame of emotion burned. There never was a day like that Sweet Thursday. And it wasn't over yet.