Lee nodded again. He knew Doc was away and he also knew where the conversation was going.

“Say, by the way,” said Mack as though he had just thought of it. “We’re a little bit short right now—” He managed to make it sound like a very unusual situation.

“No whiskey,” said Lee Chong and he smiled.

Mack was outraged. “What would we want whiskey for? Why we got a gallon of the finest whiskey you ever laid a lip over — a whole full God damned running over gallon. By the way,” he continued, “I and the boys would like to have you just step up for a snort with us. They told me to ask you.”

In spite of himself Lee smiled with pleasure. They wouldn’t offer it if they didn’t have it.

“No,” said Mack, “I’ll lay it on the line. I and the boys are pretty short and we’re pretty hungry. You know the price of frogs is twenty for a buck, Now Doc is away and we’re hungry. So what we thought is this. We don’t want to see you lose nothing so we’ll make over to you twenty-five frogs for a buck. You got a five-frog profit there and nobody loses his shirt.”

“No,” said Lee. “No money.”

“Well, hell, Lee, all we need is a little groceries. I’ll tell you what — we want to give Doc a little party when he gets back. We got plenty of liquor but we’d like to get maybe some steaks, and stuff like that. He’s such a nice guy. Hell, when your wife had that bad tooth, who give her the laudanum?”

Mack had him. Lee was indebted to Doc — deeply indebted. What Lee was having trouble comprehending was how his indebtedness to Doc made it necessary that he give credit to Mack.

“We don’t want you to have like a mortgage on frogs,” Mack went on. “We will actually deliver right into your hands twenty-five frogs for every buck of groceries you let us have and you can come to the party too.”

Lee’s mind nosed over the proposition like a mouse in a cheese cupboard. He could find nothing wrong with it. The whole thing was legitimate. Frogs were cash as far as Doc was concerned, the price was standard and Lee had a double profit. He had his five-frog margin and also he had the grocery mark-up. The whole thing hinged on whether they actually had any frogs.

“We go see flog,” Lee said at last.

In front of the Palace he had a drink of the whiskey, inspected the damp sacks of frogs, and agreed to the transaction. He stipulated, however, that he would take no dead frogs. Now Mack counted fifty frogs into a can and walked back to the grocery with Lee and got two dollars’ worth of bacon and eggs and bread.

Lee, anticipating a brisk business, brought a big packing case out and put it into the vegetable department. He emptied the fifty frogs into it and covered it with a wet gunny sack to keep his charges happy.

And business was brisk, Eddie sauntered down and bought two frogs’ worth of Bull Durham. Jones was outraged a little later when the price of Coca-Cola went up from one to two frogs. In fact bitterness arose as the day wore on and prices went up. Steak, for instance — the very best steak shouldn’t have been more than ten frogs a pound but Lee set it at twelve and a half. Canned peaches were sky high, eight frogs for a No. 2 can. Lee had a stranglehold on the consumers, He was pretty sure that the Thrift Market or Holman’s would not approve of this new monetary system. If the boys wanted steak, they knew they had to pay Lee’s prices. Feeling ran high when Hazel, who had coveted a pair of yellow silk arm bands for a long time, was told that if he didn’t want to pay thirty-five frogs for them he could go somewhere else. The poison of greed was already creeping into the innocent and laudable merchandising agreement. Bitterness was piling up. But in Lee’s packing case the frogs were piling up too.

Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost. While they were mildly irritated that Lee was taking them for an ecomonic ride or perhaps hop, two dollars’ worth of bacon and eggs was in their stomachs lying right on top of a fine slug of whiskey and right on top of the breakfast was another slug of whiskey. And they sat in their own chairs in their own house and watched Darling learning to drink canned milk out of a sardine can. Darling was and was destined to remain a very happy dog, for in the group of five men there were five distinct theories of dog training, theories which dashed so that Darling never got any training at all. From the first she was a precocious bitch. She slept on the bed of the man who had given her the last bribe. They really stole for her sometimes. They wooed her away from one another. Occasionally all five agreed that things had to change and that Darling must be disciplined, but in the discussion of method the intention invariably drifted away. They were in love with her. They found the little puddles she left on the floor charming. They bored all their acquaintances with her cuteness and they would have killed her with food if in the end she hadn’t had better sense than they.

Jones made her a bed in the bottom of the grandfather clock but Darling never used it. She slept with one or another of them as the fancy moved her. She chewed the blankets, tore the mattresses, sprayed the feathers out of the pillows. She coquetted and played her owners against one another. They thought she was wonderful. Mack intended to teach her tricks and go in vaudeville and he didn’t even housebreak her.

They sat in the afternoon, smoking, digesting, considering, and now and then having a delicate drink from the jug. And each time they warned that they must not take too much, for it was to be for Doc. They must not forget that for a minute.

“What time you figure he’ll be back?” Eddie asked.

“Usually gets in about eight or nine o’clock,” said Mack. “Now we got to figure when we’re going to give it. I think we ought to give it tonight.”

“Sure,” the others agreed.

“Maybe he might be tired,” Hazel suggested. “That’s a long drive.”

“Hell,” said Jones, “nothing rests you like a good party. I’ve been so dog tired my pants was draggin’ and then I’ve went to a party and felt fine.”

“We got to do some real thinkin’,” said Mack. “Where we going to give it — here?”

“Well, Doc, he likes his music. He’s always got his phonograph going at a party. Maybe he’d be more happy if we give it over at his place.”

“You got something there,” said Mack. “But I figure it ought to be like a surprise party. And how we going to make like it’s a party and not just us bringin’ over a jug of whiskey?”

Tags: John Steinbeck Classics
Source: readsnovelonline.net