East of Eden

Every envelope contained a man’s honor and peace of mind. Effectively used, these pictures could cause half a dozen suicides. Already Kate was on the table at Muller’s with the formalin running into her veins, and her stomach was in a jar in the corner’s office.

When he had seen all of the pictures he called a number. He said into the phone, “Can you drop over to my office? Well, put your lunch off, will you? Yes, I think you’ll see it’s important. I’ll wait for you.”

A few minutes later when the nameless man stood beside his desk in the front office of the old red county jail behind the courthouse, Sheriff Quinn stuck the will out in front of him. “As a lawyer, would you say this is any good?”

His visitor read the two lines and breathed deep through his nose. “Is this who I think it is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if her name was Catherine Trask and this is her handwriting, and if Aron Trask is her son, this is as good as gold.”

Quinn lifted the ends of his fine wide mustache with the back of his forefinger. “You knew her, didn’t you?”

“Well, not to say know. I knew who she was.”

Quinn put his elbows on his desk and leaned forward. “Sit down, I want to talk to you.”

His visitor drew up a chair. His fingers picked at a coat button.

The sheriff asked, “Was Kate blackmailing you?”

“Certainly not. Why should she?”

“I’m asking you as a friend. You know she’s dead. You can tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at—nobody’s blackmailing me.”

Quinn slipped a photograph from its envelope, turned it like a playing card, and skidded it across the desk.

His visitor adjusted his glasses and the breath whistled in his nose. “Jesus Christ,” he said softly.

“You didn’t know she had it?”

“Oh, I knew it all right. She let me know. For Christ’s sake, Horace—what are you going to do with this?”

Quinn took the picture from his hand.

“Horace, what are you going to do with it?”

“Burn it.” The sheriff ruffled the edges of the envelopes with his thumb. “Here’s a deck of hell,” he said. “These could tear the county to pieces.”

Quinn wrote a list of names on a sheet of paper. Then he hoisted himself up on his game leg and went to the iron stove against the north wall of his office. He crunched up the Salinas Morning Journal and lighted it and dropped it in the stove, and when it flared up he dropped the manila envelopes on the flame, set the damper, and closed the stove. The fire roared and the flames winked yellow behind the little isinglass windows in the front of the stove. Quinn brushed his hands together as though they were dirty. “The negatives were in there,” he said. “I’ve been through her desk. There weren’t any other prints.”

His visitor tried to speak but his voice was a husky whisper. “Thank you, Horace.”

The sheriff gimped to his desk and picked up his list. “I want you to do something for me. Here’s a list. Tell everyone on this list I’ve burned the pictures. You know them all, God knows. And they could take it from you. Nobody’s holy. Get each man alone and tell him exactly what happened. Look here!” He opened the stove door and poked the black sheets until they were reduced to powder. “Tell them that,” he said.

His visitor looked at the sheriff, and Quinn knew that there was no power on earth that could keep this man from hating him. For the rest of their lives there would be a barrier between them, and neither one could ever admit it.

“Horace, I don’t know how to thank you.”

And the sheriff said in sorrow, “That’s all right. It’s what I’d want my friends to do for me.”

“The goddam bitch,” his visitor said softly, and Horace Quinn knew that part of the curse was for him.

And he knew he wouldn’t be sheriff much longer. These guilt-feeling men could get him out, and they would have to. He sighed and sat down. “Go to your lunch now,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”

At quarter of one Sheriff Quinn turned off Main Street on Central Avenue. At Reynaud’s Bakery he bought a loaf of French bread, still warm and giving off its wonderful smell of fermented dough.

He used the hand rail to help himself up the steps of the Trask porch.

Lee answered the door, a dish towel tied around his middle. “He’s not home,” he said.

“Well, he’s on his way. I called the draft board. I’ll wait for him.”

Lee moved aside and let him in and seated him in the living room. “You like a nice cup of hot coffee?” he asked.

“I don’t mind if I do.”

“Fresh made,” said Lee and went into the kitchen.

Quinn looked around the comfortable sitting room. He felt that he didn’t want his office much longer. He remembered hearing a doctor say, “I love to deliver a baby, because if I do my work well, there’s joy at the end of it.” The sheriff had thought often of that remark. It seemed to him that if he did his work well there was sorrow at the end of it for somebody. The fact that it was necessary was losing its weight with him. He would be retiring soon whether he wanted to or not.

Every man has a retirement picture in which he does those things he never had time to do—makes the journeys, reads the neglected books he always pretended to have read. For many years the sheriff dreamed of spending the shining time hunting and fishing—wandering in the Santa Lucia range, camping by half-remembered streams. And now that it was almost time he knew he didn’t want to do it. Sleeping on the ground would make his leg ache. He remembered how heavy a deer is and how hard it is to carry the dangling limp body from the place of the kill. And, frankly, he didn’t care for venison anyway. Madame Reynaud could soak it in wine and lace it with spice but, hell, an old shoe would taste good with that treatment.

Lee had bought a percolator. Quinn could hear the water spluttering against the glass dome, and his long-trained mind made the suggestion that Lee hadn’t told the truth about having fresh-made coffee.

It was a good mind the old man had—sharpened in its work. He could bring up whole faces in his mind and inspect them, and also scenes and conversations. He could play them over like a record or a film. Thinking of venison, his mind had gone about cataloguing the sitting room and his mind nudged him, saying, “Hey, there’s something wrong here—something strange.”