East of Eden

Adam said, smiling, “Would you like to take a little something?”

“That I would,” said Samuel. He accepted the bottle and took a quick swallow of whisky and passed it back.

“Uisquebaugh—it’s an Irish word—whisky, water of life—and so it is.”

He took the red straps to his anvil and punched screw holes in them and bent the angles with his hammer and the forked sparks leaped out. Then he dipped the iron hissing into his half-barrel of black water. “There you are,” he said and threw them on the ground.

“I thank you,” said Louis. “How much will that be?”

“The pleasure of your company.”

“It’s always like that,” Louis said helplessly.

“No, when I put your new well down you paid my price.”

“That reminds me—Mr. Trask here is thinking of buying the Bordoni place—the old Sanchez grant—you remember?”

“I know it well,” said Samuel. “It’s a fine piece.”

“He was asking about water, and I told him you knew more about that than anybody around here.”

Adam passed the bottle, and Samuel took a delicate sip and wiped his mouth on his forearm above the soot.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Adam. “I’m just asking some questions.”

“Oh, Lord, man, now you’ve put your foot in it. They say it’s a dangerous thing to question an Irishman because he’ll tell you. I hope you know what you’re doing when you issue me a license to talk. I’ve heard two ways of looking at it. One says the silent man is the wise man and the other that a man without words is a man without thought. Naturally I favor the second—Liza says to a fault. What do you want to know?”

“Well, take the Bordoni place. How deep would you have to go to get water?”

“I’d have to see the spot—some places thirty feet, some places a hundred and fifty, and in some places clear to the center of the world.”

“But you could develop water?”

“Nearly every place except my own.”

“I’ve heard you have a lack here.”

“Heard? Why, God in heaven must have heard! I’ve screamed it loud enough.”

“There’s a four-hundred-acre piece beside the river. Would there be water under it?”

“I’d have to look. It seems to me it’s an odd valley. If you’ll hold your patience close, maybe I can tell you a little bit about it, for I’ve looked at it and poked my stinger down into it. A hungry man gorges with his mind—he does indeed.”

Louis Lippo said, “Mr. Trask is from New England. He plans to settle here. He’s been west before though—in the army, fighting Indians.”

“Were you now? Then it’s you should talk and let me learn.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not? God help my family and my neighbors if I had fought the Indians!”

“I didn’t want to fight them, sir.” The “sir” crept in without his knowing it.

“Yes, I can understand that. It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don’t know and don’t hate.”

“Maybe that makes it easier,” said Louis.

“You have a point, Louis. But some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.”

“I’d rather you told me about this land,” Adam said uneasily, for a sick picture of piled-up bodies came into his mind.

“What time is it?”

Louis stepped out and looked at the sun. “Not past ten o’clock.”

“If I get started I have no self-control. My son Will says I talk to trees when I can’t find a human vegetable.” He sighed and sat down on a nail keg. “I said it was a strange valley, but maybe that’s because I was born in a green place. Do you find it strange, Louis?”

“No, I never been out of it.”

“I’ve dug into it plenty,” Samuel said. “Something went on under it—maybe still is going on. There’s an ocean bed underneath, and below that another world. But that needn’t bother a farming man. Now, on top is good soil, particularly on the flats. In the upper valley it is light and sandy, but mixed in with that, the top sweetness of the hills that washed down on it in the winters. As you go north the valley widens out, and the soil gets blacker and heavier and perhaps richer. It’s my belief that marshes were there once, and the roots of centuries rotted into the soil and made it black and fertilized it. And when you turn it up, a little greasy clay mixes and holds it together. That’s from about Gonzales north to the river mouth. Off to the sides, around Salinas and Blanco and Castroville and Moss Landing, the marshes are still there. And when one day those marshes are drained off, that will be the richest of all land in this red world.”

“He always tells what it will be like someday,” Louis threw in.

“Well, a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does.”

“If I’m going to settle here I need to know about how and what will be,” said Adam. “My children, when I have them, will be on it.”

Samuel’s eyes looked over the heads of his friends, out of the dark forge to the yellow sunlight. “You’ll have to know that under a good part of the valley, some places deep and others pretty near the surface, there’s a layer called hard-pan. It’s a clay, hard-packed, and it feels greasy too. Some places it is only a foot thick, and more in others. And this hard-pan resists water. If it were not there the winter rains would go soaking down and dampen the earth, and in the summer it would rise up to the roots again. But when the earth above the hard-pan is soaked full, the rest runs fresheting off or stands rotting on top. And that’s one of the main curses of our valley.”

“Well, it’s a pretty good place to live, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is, but a man can’t entirely rest when he knows it could be richer. I’ve thought that if you could drive thousands of holes through it to let the water in, it might solve it. And then I tried something with a few sticks of dynamite. I punched a hole through the hard-pan and blasted. That broke it up and the water could get down. But, God in heaven, think of the amount of dynamite! I’ve read that a Swede—the same man who invented dynamite—has got a new explosive stronger and safer Maybe that might be the answer.”