Cannery Row

“No,” Doc would say. “Look, Frankie. Put them beside your finger like this so you’ll know which ones are this long. See? This one goes from the tip of your finger to the base of your thumb. Now you just pick out another one that goes from the tip of your finger down to the same place and it will be right.” Frankie tried and he couldn’t do it. When Doc went upstairs Frankie crawled in the excelsior box and didn’t come out all afternoon.

But Frankie was a nice, good, kind boy. He learned to light Doc’s cigars and he wanted Doc to smoke all the time so he could light the cigars.

Better than anything else Frankie loved it when there were parties upstairs in the laboratory. When girls and men gathered to sit and talk, when the great phonograph played music that throbbed in his stomach and made beautiful and huge pictures from vaguely in his head, Frankie loved it. Then he crouched down in a corner behind a chair where he was hidden and could watch and listen. When there was laughter at a joke he didn’t understand Frankie laughed delightedly behind his chair and when the conversation dealt with abstractions his brows furrowed and he became intent and serious.

One afternoon he did a desperate thing. There was a small party in the laboratory. Doc was in the kitchen pouring beer when Frankie appeared beside him. Frankie grabbed a glass of beer and rushed it through the door and gave it to a girl sitting in a big chair.

She took the glass and said, “Why, thank you,” and she smiled at him.

And Doc coming through the door said, “Yes, Frankie is a great help to me.”

Frankie couldn’t forget that. He did the thing in his mind over and over, just how he had taken the glass and just how the girl sat and then her voice — “Why, thank you,” and Doc— “a great help to me — Frankie is a great help to me — sure Frankie is a great help— Frankie,” and Oh my God!

He knew a big party was coming because Doc bought steaks and a great deal of beer and Doc let him help clean out all the upstairs. But that was nothing, for a great plan had formed in Frankie’s mind and he could see just how it would be. He went over it again and again. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

Then the party started and people come and sat in the front room, girls and young women and men.

Frankie had to wait until he had the kitchen to himself and the door closed. And it was some time before he had it so. But at last he was alone and the door was shut. He could hear the chatter of conversation and the music from the great phonograph. Be worked very quietly — first the tray — then get out the glasses without breaking any. Now fill them with beer and let the foam settle a little and then fill again.

Now he was ready. He took a great breath and opened the door. The music and the talk roared around him. Frankie picked up the tray of beer and walked through the door. He knew how. He went straight toward the same young woman who had thanked him before. And then right in front of her, the thing happened, the co-ordination failed, the hands fumbled, the panicked muscles, the nerves telegraphed to a dead operator, the responses did not come back. Tray and beer collapsed forward into the young woman’s lap. For a moment Frankie stood still. And then he turned and ran.

The room was quiet. They could hear him run downstairs, and go into the cellar. They heard a hollow scrabbling sound— and then silence.

Doc walked quietly down the stairs and into the cellar. Frankie was in the excelsior box burrowed down clear to the bottom, with the pile of excelsior on top of him. Doc could hear him whimpering there. Doc waited for a moment and then he went quietly back upstairs.

There wasn’t a thing in the world he could do.

Chapter XI

The Model T Ford truck of Lee Chong had a dignified history. In 1923 it had been a passenger car belonging to Dr. W. T. Waters. He used it for five years and sold it to an insurance man named Rattle. Mr. Rattle was not a careful man. The car he got in clean nice condition he drove like fury. Mr. Rattle drank on Saturday nights and the car suffered. The fenders were broken and bent. He was a pedal rider too and the bands had to be changed often. When Mr. Rattle embezzled a client’s money and ran away to San Jose, he was caught with a high-hair blonde and sent up within ten days.

The body of the car was so battered that its next owner cut it in two and added a little truck bed.

The next owner took off the front of the cab and the windshield. He used it to haul squids and he liked a fresh breeze to blow in his face. His name was Francis Almones and he had a sad life, for he always made just a fraction less than he needed to live. His father had left him a little money but year by year and month by month, no matter how hard Francis worked or how careful he was, his money grew less until he just dried up and blew away.

Lee Chong got the truck in payment of a grocery bill.

By this time the truck was little more than four wheels and an engine and the engine was so crotchety and sullen and senile that it required expert care and consideration. Lee Chong did not give it these things, with the result that the truck stood in the tallgrass back of the grocery most of the time with the mallows growing between its spokes. It had solid tires on its back wheels and blocks held its front wheels off the ground.

Probably any one of the boys from the Palace Flophouse could have made the truck run, for they were all competent practical mechanics, but Gay was an inspired mechanic. There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works. Indeed there are men near whom a car runs better. And such a one was Gay. His fingers on a timer or a carburetor adjustment screw were gentle and wise and sure. He could fix the delicate electric motors in the laboratory. He could have worked in the canneries all the time had he wished, for in that industry, which complains bitterly when it does not make back its total investment every year in profits, the machinery is much less important than the fiscal statement. Indeed, if you could can sardines with ledgers, the owners would have been very happy, As it was they used decrepit, struggling old horrors of machines that needed the constant attention of a man like Gay.

Mack got the boys up early. They had their coffee and immediately moved over to the truck where it lay among the weeds, Gay was in charge. He kicked the blocked-up front wheels. “Go borrow a pump and get those pumped up,” he said. Then he put a stick in the gasoline tank under the board which served as a seat. By some miracle there was a half inch of gasoline in the tank. Now Gay went over the most probable difficulties. He took out the coil boxes, scraped the points, adjusted the gap, and put them back. He opened the carburetor to see that gas came through. He pushed on the crank to see that the whole shaft wasn’t frozen and the pistons rusted in their cylinders.