East of Eden

“Oh, forget it,” said Charles. “I don’t know why I mentioned it.”

“Good God, no. I’ll pay you in the morning.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Charles. “My brother a jailbird!”

“You don’t have to look so happy.”

“I don’t know why,” said Charles, “but it makes me kind of proud. My brother a jailbird! Tell me this, Adam—why did you wait till just three days before they let you go to make your break?”

Adam smiled. “Two or three reasons,” he said. “I was afraid if I served out my time, why, they’d pick me up again. And I figured if I waited till the end they wouldn’t expect me to run away.”

“That makes sense,” said Charles. “But you said there was one more reason.”

“I guess the other was the most important,” Adam said, “and it’s the hardest to explain. I figured I owed the state six months. That was the sentence. I didn’t feel right about cheating. I only cheated three days.”

Charles exploded with laughter. “You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” he said with affection. “But you say you robbed a store.”

“I sent the money back with ten per cent interest,” Adam said.

Charles leaned forward. “Tell me about the road gang, Adam.”

“Sure I will, Charles. Sure I will.”

Chapter 11

1

Charles had more respect for Adam after he knew about the prison. He felt the warmth for his brother you can feel only for one who is not perfect and therefore no target for your hatred. Adam took some advantage of it too. He tempted Charles.

“Did you ever think, Charles, that we’ve got enough money to do anything we want to do?”

“All right, what do we want?”

“We could go to Europe, we could walk around Paris.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“I thought I heard someone on the stoop.”

“Probably a cat.”

“I guess so. Have to kill off some of them pretty soon.”

“Charles, we could go to Egypt and walk around the Sphinx.”

“We could stay right here and make some good use of our money. And we could get the hell out to work and make some use of the day. Those goddam cats!” Charles jumped to the door and yanked it open and said, “Get!” Then he was silent, and Adam saw him staring at the steps. He moved beside him.

A dirty bundle of rags and mud was trying to worm its way up the steps. One skinny hand clawed slowly at the stairs. The other dragged helplessly. There was a caked face with cracked lips and eyes peering out of swollen, blackened lids. The forehead was laid open, oozing blood back into the matted hair.

Adam went down the stairs and kneeled beside the figure. “Give me a hand,” he said. “Come on, let’s get her in. Here—look out for that arm. It looks broken.”

She fainted when they carried her in.

“Put her in my bed,” Adam said. “Now I think you better go for the doctor.”

“Don’t you think we better hitch up and take her in?”

“Move her? No. Are you crazy?”

“Maybe not as crazy as you. Think about it a minute.”

“For God’s sake, think about what?”

“Two men living alone and they’ve got this in their house.”

Adam was shocked. “You don’t mean it.”

“I mean it all right. I think we better take her in. It’ll be all over the county in two hours. How do you know what she is? How’d she get here? What happened to her? Adam, you’re taking an awful chance.”

Adam said coldly, “If you don’t go now, I’ll go and leave you here.”

“I think you’re making a mistake. I’ll go, but I tell you we’ll suffer for it.”

“I’ll do the suffering,” said Adam. “You go.”

After Charles left, Adam went to the kitchen and poured hoi water from the teakettle into a basin. In his bedroom he dampened a handkerchief in the water and loosened the caked blood and dirt on the girl’s face. She reeled up to consciousness and her blue eyes glinted at him. His mind went back—it was this room, this bed. His stepmother was standing over him with a damp cloth in her hand, and he could feel the little running pains as the water cut through. And she had said something over and over. He heard it but he could not remember what it was.

“You’ll be all right,” he said to the girl. “We’re getting a doctor. He’ll be here right off.”

Her lips moved a little.

“Don’t try to talk,” he said. “Don’t try to say anything.” As he worked gently with his cloth a huge warmth crept over him. “You can stay here,” he said. “You can stay here as long as you want. I’ll take care of you.” He squeezed out the cloth and sponged her matted hair and lifted it out of the gashes in her scalp.

He could hear himself talking as he worked, almost as though he were a stranger listening. “There, does that hurt? The poor eyes—I’ll put some brown paper over your eyes. You’ll be all right. That’s a bad one on your forehead. I’m afraid you’ll have a scar there. Could you tell me your name? No, don’t try. There’s lots of time. There’s lots of time. Do you hear that? That’s the doctor’s rig. Wasn’t that quick?” He moved to the kitchen door. “In here, Doc. She’s in here,” he called.

2

She was very badly hurt. If there had been X-rays in that time the doctor might have found more injuries than he did. As it was he found enough. Her left arm and three ribs were broken and her jaw was cracked. Her skull was cracked too, and the teeth on the left side were missing. Her scalp was ripped and torn and her forehead laid open to the skull. So much the doctor could see and identify. He set her arm, taped her ribs, and sewed up her scalp. With a pipette and an alcohol flame he bent a glass tube to go through the aperture where a tooth was missing so that she could drink and take liquid food without moving her cracked jaw. He gave her a large shot of morphine, left a bottle of opium pills, washed his hands, and put on his coat. His patient was asleep before he left the room.

In the kitchen he sat down at the table and drank the hot coffee Charles put in front of him.

“All right, what happened to her?” he asked.

“How do we know?” Charles said truculently. “We found her on our porch. If you want to see, go look at the marks on the road where she dragged herself.”