Cannery Row

“He’d like a dame,” said Hughie.

“He’s got three four dames,” said Jones. “You can always tell — when he pulls them front curtains closed and when he plays that kind of church music on the phonograph.”

Mack said reprovingly to Hughie, “Just because he doesn’t run no dame naked through the streets in the daytime, you think Doc’s celebrate.”

“What’s celebrate?” Eddie asked.

“That’s when you can’t get no dame,” said Mack.

“I thought it was a kind of a party,” said Jones.

A silence fell on the room. Mack shifted in his chaise longue. Hughie let the front legs of his chair down on the floor. They looked into space and then they all looked at Mack. Mack said, “Hum!”

Eddie said, “What kind of a party you think Doc’d like?”

“What other kind is there?” said Jones.

Mack mused, “Doc wouldn’t like this stuff from the winin’ jug.”

“How do you know?” Hughie demanded. “You never offered him none.”

“Oh, I know,” said Mack. “He’s been to college. Once I seen a dame in a fur coat go in there. Never did see her come out. It was two o’clock the last I looked — and that church music goin’. No — you couldn’t offer him none of this.” He filled his glass again.

“This tastes pretty nice after the third glass,” Hughie said loyally.

“No,” said Mack. “Not for Doc. Have to be whiskey — the real thing.”

“He likes beer,” said Jones. “He’s all the time going over to Zee’s for beer — sometimes in the middle of the night.”

Mack said, “I figure when you buy beer, you’re buying too much tare. Take 8 per cent beer — why you’re spending your dough for 92 percent water and color and hops and stuff like that. Eddie,” he added, “you think you could get four five bottles of whiskey at La Ida next time Whitey’s sick?”

“Sure,” said Eddie. “Sure I could get it but that’d be the end — no more golden eggs. I think Johnnie’s suspicious anyways. Other day he says, ‘I smell a mouse named Eddie.’ I was gonna lay low and only bring the jug for a while.”

“Yeah!” said Jones. “Don’t you lose that job. If something happened to Whitey, you could fall right in there for a week or so ’til they got somebody else. I guess if we’re goin’ to give a party for Doc, we got to buy the whiskey. How much is whiskey a gallon?”

“I don’t know,” said Hughie. “I never get more than a half pint at a time myself — at one time that is. I figure you get a quart and right away you got friends. But you get a half pint and you can drink it in the lot before-well before you got a lot of folks around.”

“It’s going to take dough to give Doc a party,” said Mack. “If we’re going to give him a party at all it ought to be a good one. Should have a big cake. I wonder when is his birthday?”

“Don’t need a birthday for a party,” said Jones.

“No — but it’s nice,” said Mack. “I figure it would take ten or twelve bucks to give Doc a party you wouldn’t be ashamed of.”

They looked at one another speculatively. Hughie suggested, “The Hediondo Cannery is hiring guys.”

“No,” said Mack quickly. “We got good reputations and we don’t want to spoil them. Every one of us keeps a job for a month or more when we take one. That’s why we can always get a job when we need one. S’pose we take a job for a day or so — why we’ll lose our reputation for sticking. Then if we needed a job there wouldn’t nobody have us.” The rest nodded quick agreement.

“I figure I’m gonna work a couple of months — November and part of December,” said Jones. “Makes it nice to have money around Christmas. We could cook a turkey this year.”

“By God, we could,” said Mack. “I know a place up Carmel Valley where there’s fifteen hundred in one flock.”

“Valley,” said Hughie. “You know I used to collect stuff up the Valley for Doc, turtles and crayfish and frogs. Got a nickel apiece for frogs.”

“Me, too,” said Gay. “I got five hundred frogs one time.”

“If Doc needs frogs it’s a setup,” said Mack. “We could go up the Carmel River and have a little outing and we wouldn’t tell Doc what it was for and then we’d give him one hell of a party.”

A quiet excitement grew in the Palace Flophouse. “Gay,” said Mack, “take a look out the door and see if Doc’s car is in front of his place.”

Gay set down his glass and looked out. “Not yet,” he said.

“Well, he ought to be back any minute,” said Mack. “Now here’s how we’ll go about it....”

Chapter VIII

In April 1932 the boiler at the Hediondo Cannery blew a tube for the third time in two weeks and the board of directors consisting of Mr. Randolph and a stenographer decided that it would be cheaper to buy a new boiler than to have to shut down so often. In time the new boiler arrived and the old one was moved into the vacant lot between Lee Chong’s and the Bear Flag Restaurant where it was set on blocks to await an inspiration on Mr. Randolph’s part on how to make some money out of it. Gradually the plant engineer removed the tubing to use to patch other outworn equipment at the Hediondo. The boiler looked like an old-fashioned locomotive without wheels. It had a big door in the center of its nose and a low fire door. Gradually it became red and soft with rust and gradually the mallow weeds grew up around it and the flaking rust fed the weeds. Flowering myrtle crept up its sides and the wild anise perfumed the air about it. Then someone threw out a datura root and the thick fleshy tree grew up and the great white bells hung down over the boiler door and at night the flowers smelled of love and excitement, an incredibly sweet and moving odor.

In 1935 Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy moved into the boiler. The tubing was all gone now and it was a roomy, dry, and safe apartment. True, if you came in through the fire door you bad to get down on your hands and knees, but once in there was head room in the middle and you couldn’t want a dryer, warmer place to stay. They shagged a mattress through the fire door and settled down. Mr. Malloy was happy and contented there and for quite a long time so was Mrs. Malloy.

Below the boiler on the hill there were numbers of large pipes also abandoned by the Hediondo. Toward the end of 1937 there was a great catch of fish and the canneries were working full time and a housing shortage occurred. Then it was that Mr. Malloy took to renting the larger pipes as sleeping quarters for single men at a very nominal fee. With a piece of tar paper over one end and a square of carpet over the other, they made comfortable bedrooms, although men used to sleeping curled up had to change their habits or move out. There were those too who claimed that their snores echoing back from the pipes woke them up. But on the whole Mr. Malloy did a steady small business and was happy.