Cannery Row

The soldier’s tunics were unbuttoned and their belts were threaded through their epaulets. The ties were pulled down a little so the shirt collars could be unbuttoned. And the soldiers wore the girls’ hats, one a tiny yellow straw boater with a bunch of daisies on the crown, the other a white knitted halfhat to which medallions of blue cellophane adhered. They walked holding hands, swinging their hands rhythmically. The soldier on the outside had a large brown paper bag filled with cold canned beer. They strolled softly in the pearly light. They had had a hell of a time and they felt good. They smiled delicately like weary children remembering a party. They looked at one another and smiled and they swung their hands. Past the Bear Flag they went and said “Hiya,” to the bouncer who was scratching his stomach. They listened to the snores from the pipes and laughed a little. At Lee Chong’s they stopped and looked into the messy display window where tools and clothes and food crowded for attention. Swinging their hands and scuffing their feet, they came to the end of Cannery Row and turned up to the railroad track. The girls climbed up on the rails and walked along on them and the soldiers put their arms around the plump waists to keep them from falling. Then they went past the boat works and turned down into the park-like property of the Hopkins Marine Station. There is a tiny curved beach in front of the station, a miniature beach between little reefs. The gentle morning waves licked up the beach and whispered softly. The fine smell of seaweed came from the exposed rocks. As the four came to the beach a sliver of the sun broke over Tom Work’s land across the head of the bay and it gilded the water and made the rocks yellow. The girls sat formally down in the sand and straightened their skirts over their knees. One of the soldiers punched holes in four cans of beer and handed them around. And then the men lay down and put their heads in the girls’ laps and looked up into their faces. And they smiled at each other, a tired and peaceful and wonderful secret.

From up near the station came the barking of a dog — the watchman, a dark and surly man, had seen them and his black and surly cocker spaniel had seen them. He shouted at them and when they did not move he came down on the beach and his dog barked monotonously. “Don’t you know you can’t lay around here? You got to get off. This is private property!”

The soldiers did not even seem to hear him. They smiled on and the girls were stroking their hair over the temples. At last in slow motion one of the soldiers turned his head so that his cheek was cradled between the girl’s legs. He smiled benevolently at the caretaker. “Why don’t you take a flying fuggut the moon?” he said kindly and he turned back to look at the girl.

The sun lighted her blonde hair and she scratched him over one ear. They didn’t even see the caretaker go back to his house.

Chapter XV

By the time the boys got up to the farmhouse Mack was in the kitchen. The pointer bitch lay on her side, and Mack held a cloth saturated with epsom salts against her tick bite. Among her legs the big fat wiener pups nuzzled and bumped for milk and the bitch looked patiently up into Mack’s face saying, “You see how it is? I try to tell him but he doesn’t understand.”

The captain held a lamp and looked down on Mack.

“I’m glad to know about that,” he said.

Mack said, “I don’t want to tell you about your business, sir, but these pups ought to be weaned. She ain’t got a hell of a lot of milk left and them pups are chewin’ her to pieces.”

“I know,” said the captain. “I s’pose I should have drowned them all but one. I’ve been so busy trying to keep the place going. People don’t take the interest in bird dogs they used to. It’s all poodles and boxers and Dobermans.”

“I know,” said Mack. “And there ain’t no dog like a pointer for a man. I don’t know what’s come over people. But you wouldn’t of drowned them, would you, sir?”

“Well,” said the captain, “since my wife went into politics, I’m just running crazy. She got elected to the Assembly for this district and when the Legislature isn’t in session, she’s off making speeches. And when she’s home she’s studying all the time and writing bills.”

“Must be lousy in — I mean it must be pretty lonely,” said Mack. “Now if I had a pup like this—” he picked up a squirming puzz-faced pup— “why I bet I’d have a real bird dog in three years. I’d take a bitch every time.”

“Would you like to have one?” the captain asked.

Mack looked up. “You mean you’d let me have one? Oh! Jesus Christ yes.”

“Take your pick,” said the captain. “Nobody seems to understand bird dogs any more.”

The boys stood in the kitchen and gathered quick impressions. It was obvious that the wife was away — the opened cans, the frying pan with lace from fried eggs still sticking to it, the crumbs on the kitchen table, the open box of shotgun shells on the bread box all shrieked of the lack of a woman, while the white curtains and the papers on the dish shelves and the too small towels on the rack told them a woman had been there, And they were unconsciously glad she wasn’t there. The kind of women who put papers on shelves and had little towels like that instinctively distrusted and disliked Mack and the boys. Such women knew that they were the worst threats to a home, for they offered ease and thought and companionship as opposed to neatness, order, and properness. They were very glad she was away.

Now the captain seemed to feel that they were doing him a favor. He didn’t want them to leave, He said hesitantly, “S’pose you boys would like a little something to warm you up before you go out for the frogs?”

The others looked at Mack. Mack was frowning as though he was thinking it through. “When we’re out doin’ scientific stuff, we make it a kind of a rule not to touch nothin’,” he said, and then quickly as though he might have gone too far, “But seein’ as how you been so nice to us — well I wouldn’t mind a short one myself. I don’t know about the boys.”

The boys agreed that they wouldn’t mind a short one either. The captain got a flashlight and went down in the cellar. They could hear him moving lumber and boxes about and he came back upstairs with a five-gallon oak keg in his arms. He set it on the table. “During Prohibition I got some corn whiskey and laid it away. I just got to thinking I’d like to see how it is. It’s pretty old now. I’d almost forgot it. You see — my wife—” he let it go at that because it was apparent that they understood. The captain knocked out the oak plug from the end of the keg and got glasses down from the shelf that had scallopedged paper laid on it. It is a hard job to pour a small drink from a five-gallon keg. Each of them got half a water glass of the clear brown liquor. They waited ceremoniously for the captain and then they said, “Over the river,” and tossed it back. They swallowed, tasted their tongues, sucked their lips, and there was a far-away look in their eyes.