Candy nodded solemnly. “That’s jus’ what you done,” he said. “Right this morning when Curley first lit intil your fren’, you says, ‘He better not fool with Lennie if he knows what’s good for ‘um.’ That’s jus’ what you says to me.”
George turned to Lennie. “It ain’t your fault,” he said. “You don’t need to be scairt no more. You done jus’ what I tol’ you to. Maybe you better go in the wash room an’ clean up your face. You look like hell.”
Lennie smiled with his bruised mouth. “I didn’t want no trouble,” he said. He walked toward the door, but just before he came to it, he turned back. “George?”
“What you want?”
“I can still tend the rabbits, George?”
“Sure. You ain’t done nothing wrong.”
“I di’n’t mean no harm, George.”
“Well, get the hell out and wash your face.”
Crooks, the Negro stable buck, had his bunk in the harness room; a little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn. On one side of the little room there was a square four-paned window, and on the other, a narrow plank door leading into the barn. Crooks’ bunk was a long box filled with straw, on which his blankets were flung. On the wall by the window there were pegs on which hung broken harness in process of being mended; strips of new leather; and under the window itself a little bench for leather-working tools, curved knives and needles and balls of linen thread, and a small hand riveter. On pegs were also pieces of harness, a split collar with the horsehair stuffing sticking out, a broken hame, and a trace chain with its leather covering split. Crooks had his apple box over his bunk, and in it a range of medicine bottles, both for himself and for the horses. There were cans of saddle soap and a drippy can of tar with its paint brush sticking over the edge. And scattered about the floor were a number of personal possessions; for, being alone, Crooks could leave his things about, and being a stable buck and a cripple, he was more permanent than the other men, and he had accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back.
Crooks possessed several pairs of shoes, a pair of rubber boots, a big alarm clock and a single-barreled shotgun. And he had books, too; a tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905. There were battered magazines and a few dirty books on a special shelf over his bunk. A pair of large gold-rimmed spectacles hung from a nail on the wall above his bed.
This room was swept and fairly neat, for Crooks was a proud, aloof man. He kept his distance and demanded that other people keep theirs. His body was bent over to the left by his crooked spine, and his eyes lay deep in his head, and because of their depth seemed to glitter with intensity. His lean face was lined with deep black wrinkles, and he had thin, pain-tightened lips which were lighter than his face.
It was Saturday night. Through the open door that led into the barn came the sound of moving horses, of feet stirring, of teeth champing on hay, of the rattle of halter chains. In the stable buck’s room a small electric globe threw a meager yellow light.
Crooks sat on his bunk. His shirt was out of his jeans in back. In one hand he held a bottle of liniment, and with the other he rubbed his spine. Now and then he poured a few drops of the liniment into his pink-palmed hand and reached up under his shirt to rub again. He flexed his muscles against his back and shivered.
Noiselessly Lennie appeared in the open doorway and stood there looking in, his big shoulders nearly filling the opening. For a moment Crooks did not see him, but on raising his eyes he stiffened and a scowl came on his face. His hand came out from under his shirt.
Lennie smiled helplessly in an attempt to make friends.
Crooks said sharply, “You got no right to come in my room. This here’s my room. Nobody got any right in here but me.”
Lennie gulped and his smile grew more fawning. “I ain’t doing nothing,” he said. “Just come to look at my puppy. And I seen your light,” he explained.
“Well, I got a right to have a light. You go on get outa my room. I ain’t wanted in the bunk house, and you ain’t wanted in my room.”
“Why ain’t you wanted?” Lennie asked.
“’Cause I’m black. They play cards in there, but I can’t play because I’m black. They say I stink. Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me.”
Lennie flapped his big hands helplessly. “Ever’body went into town,” he said. “Slim an’ George an’ ever’body. George says I gotta stay here an’ not get in no trouble. I seen your light.”
“Well, what do you want?”
“Nothing — I seen your light. I thought I could jus’ come in an’ set.”
Crooks stared at Lennie, and he reached behind him and took down the spectacles and adjusted them over his pink ears and stared again. “I don’t know what you’re doin’ in the barn anyway,” he complained. “You ain’t no skinner. They’s no call for a bucker to come into the barn at all. You ain’t no skinner. You ain’t got nothing to do with the horses.”
“The pup,” Lennie repeated. “I come to see my pup.”
“Well, go see your pup, then. Don’t come in a place where you’re not wanted.”
Lennie lost his smile. He advanced a step into the room, then remembered and backed to the door again. “I looked at ‘em a little. Slim says I ain’t to pet ‘em very much.”
Crooks said, “Well, you been takin’ ‘em out of the nest all the time. I wonder the old lady don’t move ‘em someplace else.”
“Oh, she don’t care. She lets me.” Lennie had moved into the room again.
Crooks scowled, but Lennie’s disarming smile defeated him. “Come on in and set a while,” Crooks said. “’Long as you won’t get out and leave me alone, you might as well set down.” His tone was a little more friendly. “All the boys gone into town, huh?”
“All but old Candy. He just sets in the bunk house sharpening his pencil and sharpening and figuring.”
Crooks adjusted his glasses. “Figuring? What’s Candy figuring about?”
Lennie almost shouted, “’Bout the rabbits.”
“You’re nuts,” said Crooks. “You’re crazy as a wedge. What rabbits you talkin’ about?”
“The rabbits we’re gonna get, and I get to tend ‘em, cut grass an’ give ‘em water, an’ like that.”