The Grapes of Wrath (10 page)

Joad looked at him with drooped eyes, and then he laughed. “Why, you’re the preacher. You’re the preacher. I jus’ passed a recollection about you to a guy not an hour ago.”

“I was a preacher,” said the man seriously. “Reverend Jim Casy—was a Burning Busher. Used to howl out the name of Jesus to glory. And used to get an irrigation ditch so squirmin’ full of repented sinners half of ’em like to drownded. But not no more,” he sighed. “Just Jim Casy now. Ain’t got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears—but they seem kinda sensible.”

Joad said, “You’re bound to get idears if you go thinkin’ about stuff. Sure I remember you. You use ta give a good meetin’. I recollect one time you give a whole sermon walkin’ around on your hands, yellin’ your head off. Ma favored you more than anybody. An’ Granma says you was just lousy with the spirit.” Joad dug at his rolled coat and found the pocket and brought out his pint. The turtle moved a leg but he wrapped it up tightly. He unscrewed the cap and held out the bottle. “Have a little snort?”

Casy took the bottle and regarded it broodingly. “I ain’t preachin’ no more much. The sperit ain’t in the people much no more; and worse’n that, the sperit ain’t in me no more. ’Course now an’ again the sperit gets movin’ an’ I rip out a meetin’, or when folks sets out food I give ’em a grace, but my heart ain’t in it. I on’y do it ’cause they expect it.”

Joad mopped his face with his cap again. “You ain’t too damn holy to take a drink, are you?” he asked.

Casy seemed to see the bottle for the first time. He tilted it and took three big swallows. “Nice drinkin’ liquor,” he said.

“Ought to be,” said Joad. “That’s fact’ry liquor. Cost a buck.”

Casy took another swallow before he passed the bottle back. “Yes, sir!” he said. “Yes, sir!”

Joad took the bottle from him, and in politeness did not wipe the neck with his sleeve before he drank. He squatted on his hams and set
the bottle upright against his coat roll. His fingers found a twig with which to draw his thoughts on the ground. He swept the leaves from a square and smoothed the dust. And he drew angles and made little circles. “I ain’t seen you in a long time,” he said.

“Nobody seen me,” said the preacher. “I went off alone, an’ I sat and figured. The sperit’s strong in me, on’y it ain’t the same. I ain’t so sure of a lot of things.” He sat up straighter against the tree. His bony hand dug its way like a squirrel into his overall pocket, brought out a black, bitten plug of tobacco. Carefully he brushed off bits of straw and gray pocket fuzz before he bit off a corner and settled the quid into his cheek. Joad waved his stick in negation when the plug was held out to him. The turtle dug at the rolled coat. Casy looked over at the stirring garment. “What you got there—a chicken? You’ll smother it.”

Joad rolled the coat up more tightly. “An old turtle,” he said. “Picked him up on the road. An old bulldozer. Thought I’d take ’im to my little brother. Kids like turtles.”

The preacher nodded his head slowly. “Every kid got a turtle some time or other. Nobody can’t keep a turtle though. They work at it and work at it, and at last one day they get out and away they go—off somewheres. It’s like me. I wouldn’ take the good ol’ gospel that was just layin’ there to my hand. I got to be pickin’ at it an’ workin’ at it until I got it all tore down. Here I got the sperit sometimes an’ nothin’ to preach about. I got the call to lead the people, an’ no place to lead ’em.”

“Lead ’em around and around,” said Joad. “Sling ’em in the irrigation ditch. Tell ’em they’ll burn in hell if they don’t think like you. What the hell you want to lead ’em someplace for? Jus’ lead ’em.” The straight trunk shade had stretched out along the ground. Joad moved gratefully into it and squatted on his hams and made a new smooth place on which to draw his thoughts with a stick. A thick-furred yellow shepherd dog came trotting down the road, head low, tongue lolling and dripping. Its tail hung limply curled, and it panted loudly. Joad whistled at it, but it only dropped its head an inch and trotted fast toward some definite destination. “Goin’ someplace,” Joad explained, a little piqued. “Goin’ for home maybe.”

The preacher could not be thrown from his subject. “Goin’ someplace,” he repeated. “That’s right, he’s goin’ someplace. Me—I don’t
know where I’m goin’. Tell you what—I use ta get the people jumpin’ an’ talkin’ in tongues, an’ glory-shoutin’ till they just fell down an’ passed out. An’ some I’d baptize to bring ’em to. An’ then—you know what I’d do? I’d take one of them girls out in the grass, an’ I’d lay with her. Done it ever’ time. Then I’d feel bad, an’ I’d pray an’ pray, but it didn’t do no good. Come the nex’ time, them an’ me was full of the sperit, I’d do it again. I figgered there just wasn’t no hope for me, an’ I was a damned ol’ hypocrite. But I didn’t mean to be.”

Joad smiled and his long teeth parted and he licked his lips. “There ain’t nothing like a good hot meetin’ for pushin”em over,” he said. “I done that myself.”

Casy leaned forward excitedly. “You see,” he cried, “I seen it was that way, an’ I started thinkin’.” He waved his bony big-knuckled hand up and down in a patting gesture. “I got to thinkin’ like this—‘Here’s me preachin’ grace. An’ here’s them people gettin’ grace so hard they’re jumpin’ an’ shoutin’. Now they say layin’ up with a girl comes from the devil. But the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass.’ An’ I got to thinkin’ how in hell, s’cuse me, how can the devil get in when a girl is so full of the Holy Sperit that it’s spoutin’ out of her nose an’ ears. You’d think that’d be one time when the devil didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. But there it was.” His eyes were shining with excitement. He worked his cheeks for a moment and then spat into the dust, and the gob of spit rolled over and over, picking up dust until it looked like a round dry little pellet. The preacher spread out his hand and looked at his palm as though he were reading a book. “An’ there’s me,” he went on softly. “There’s me with all them people’s souls in my han’—responsible an’ feelin’ my responsibility—an’ ever’ time, I lay with one of them girls.” He looked over at Joad and his face looked helpless. His expression asked for help.

Joad carefully drew the torso of a woman in the dirt, breasts, hips, pelvis. “I wasn’t never a preacher,” he said. “I never let nothin’ get by when I could catch it. An’ I never had no idears about it except I was goddamn glad when I got one.”

“But you wasn’t a preacher,” Casy insisted. “A girl was just a girl to you. They wasn’t nothin’ to you. But to me they was holy vessels. I was savin’ their souls. An’ here with all that responsibility on me I’d just get
’em frothin’ with the Holy Sperit, an’ then I’d take ’em out in the grass.”

“Maybe I should of been a preacher,” said Joad. He brought out his tobacco and papers and rolled a cigarette. He lighted it and squinted through the smoke at the preacher. “I been a long time without a girl,” he said. “It’s gonna take some catchin’ up.”

Casy continued, “It worried me till I couldn’t get no sleep. Here I’d go to preachin’ and I’d say, ‘By God, this time I ain’t gonna do it.’ And right while I said it, I knowed I was.”

“You should a got a wife,” said Joad. “Preacher an’ his wife stayed at our place one time. Jehovites they was. Slep’ upstairs. Held meetin’s in our barnyard. Us kids would listen. That preacher’s missus took a godawful poundin’ after ever’ night meetin’.”

“I’m glad you tol’ me,” said Casy. “I use to think it was jus’ me. Finally it give me such pain I quit an’ went off by myself an’ give her a damn good thinkin’ about.” He doubled up his legs and scratched between his dry dusty toes. “I says to myself, ‘What’s gnawin’ you? Is it the screwin’?’ An’ I says, ‘No, it’s the sin.’ An’ I says, ‘Why is it that when a fella ought to be just about mule-ass proof against sin, an’ all full up of Jesus, why is it that’s the time a fella gets fingerin’ his pants buttons?”’ He laid two fingers down in his palm in rhythm, as though he gently placed each word there side by side. “I says, ‘Maybe it ain’t a sin. Maybe it’s just the way folks is. Maybe we been whippin’ the hell out of ourselves for nothin’.’ An’ I thought how some sisters took to beatin’ theirselves with a three-foot shag of bobwire. An’ I thought how maybe they liked to hurt themselves, an’ maybe I liked to hurt myself. Well, I was layin’ under a tree when I figured that out, and I went to sleep. And it come night, an’ it was dark when I come to. They was a coyote squawkin’ near by. Before I knowed it, I was sayin’ out loud. ‘The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.”’ He paused and looked up from the palm of his hand, where he had laid down the words.

Joad was grinning at him, but Joad’s eyes were sharp and interested, too. “You give her a goin’-over,” he said. “You figured her out.”

Casy spoke again, and his voice rang with pain and confusion. “I says,
‘What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ An’ I says, ‘Don’t you love Jesus?’ Well, I thought an’ thought, an’finally I says, ‘No, I don’t know nobody name’ Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. An’ sometimes I love ’em fit to bust, an’ I want to make ’em happy, so I been preachin’ somepin I thought would make ’em happy.’ An’ then—I been talkin’ a hell of a lot. Maybe you wonder about me using bad words. Well, they ain’t bad to me no more. They’re jus’ words folks use, an’ they don’t mean nothing bad with ’em. Anyways, I’ll tell you one more thing I thought out; an’ from a preacher it’s the most unreligious thing, and I can’t be a preacher no more because I thought it an’ I believe it.”

“What’s that?” Joad asked.

Casy looked shyly at him. “If it hits you wrong, don’t take no offense at it, will you?”

“I don’t take no offense ’cept a bust in the nose,” said Joad. “What did you figger?”

“I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit—the human sperit—the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a suddent—I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”

Joad’s eyes dropped to the ground, as though he could not meet the naked honesty in the preacher’s eyes. “You can’t hold no church with idears like that,” he said. “People would drive you out of the country with idears like that. Jumpin’ an’ yellin’. That’s what folks like. Makes ’em feel swell. When Granma got to talkin’ in tongues, you couldn’t tie her down. She could knock over a full-growed deacon with her fist.”

Casy regarded him broodingly. “Somepin I like to ast you,” he said. “Somepin that been eatin’ on me.”

“Go ahead. I’ll talk, sometimes.”

“Well”—the preacher said slowly—“here’s you that I baptized right when I was in the glory roof-tree. Got little hunks of Jesus jumpin’ outa my mouth that day. You won’t remember ’cause you was busy pullin’ that pigtail.”

“I remember,” said Joad. “That was Susy Little. She bust my finger a year later.”

“Well—did you take any good outa that baptizin’? Was your ways better?”

Joad thought about it. “No-o-o, can’t say as I felt anything.”

“Well—did you take any bad from it? Think hard.”

Joad picked up the bottle and took a swig. “They wasn’t nothing in it, good or bad. I just had fun.” He handed the flask to the preacher.

He sighed and drank and looked at the low level of the whisky and took another tiny drink. “That’s good,” he said. “I got to worryin’ about whether in messin’ around maybe I done somebody a hurt.”

Joad looked over toward his coat and saw the turtle, free of the cloth and hurrying away in the direction he had been following when Joad found him. Joad watched him for a moment and then got slowly to his feet and retrieved him and wrapped him in the coat again. “I ain’t got no present for the kids,” he said. “Nothin’ but this ol’ turtle.”

“It’s a funny thing,” the preacher said. “I was thinkin’ about ol’ Tom Joad when you come along. Thinkin’ I’d call in on him. I used to think he was a godless man. How is Tom?”

“I don’ know how he is. I ain’t been home in four years.”

“Didn’t he write to you?”

Joad was embarrassed. “Well, Pa wasn’t no hand to write for pretty, or to write for writin’. He’d sign up his name as nice as anybody, an’ lick his pencil. But Pa never did write no letters. He always says what he couldn’tell a fella with his mouth wasn’tworth leanin’on no pencil about.”

“Been out travelin’ around?” Casy asked.

Joad regarded him suspiciously. “Didn’ you hear about me? I was in all the papers.”

“No—I never. What?” He jerked one leg over the other and settled lower against the tree. The afternoon was advancing rapidly, and a richer tone was growing on the sun.

Joad said pleasantly, “Might’s well tell you now an’ get it over with. But if you was still preachin’ I wouldn’t tell, fear you get prayin’ over me.” He drained the last of the pint and flung it from him, and the flat brown bottle skidded lightly over the dust. “I been in McAlester them four years.”

Casy swung around to him, and his brows lowered so that his tall forehead seemed even taller. “Ain’t wantin’ to talk about it, huh? I won’t ask you no questions, if you done something bad——”

“I’d do what I done—again,” said Joad. “I killed a guy in a fight. We was drunk at a dance. He got a knife in me, an’ I killed him with a shovel that was layin’ there. Knocked his head plumb to squash.”

Casy’s eyebrows resumed their normal level. “You ain’t ashamed of nothin’ then?”

“No,” said Joad, “I ain’t. I got seven years, account of he had a knife in me. Got out in four—parole.”

“Then you ain’t heard nothin’ about your folks for four years?”

“Oh, I heard. Ma sent me a card two years ago, an’ las’ Christmus Granma sent a card. Jesus, the guys in the cell block laughed! Had a tree an’ shiny stuff looks like snow. It says in po’try:

“‘Merry Christmus, purty child,
Jesus meek an’ Jesus mild,
Underneath the Christmus tree
There’s a gif ’ for you from me.’