“Yes,” said Doc. “In Mexico. They’re kind of peppery.”
Fauna was not one to beat around bushes. “You must get sick of everybody wanting something from you,” she said.
Doc smiled. “I’d be sicker if they didn’t,” he said. “What can I do for you? Say, thanks for the cake and the beer last night!”
Fauna asked, “What did you think of the kid?”
“Strange,” said Doc. “Somehow I can’t see her working at the Bear Flag.”
“Neither can I,” said Fauna. “She ain’t no good at it but it looks like I’m stuck with her. Trouble with Suzy is, she’s got a streak of lady in her and I don’t know how to root it out.”
Doc munched his sausages and sipped his beer thoughtfully. “I never thought of it, but that could be a drawback,” he said.
“She’s a nice kid,” said Fauna. “I like her fine. But she’s a liability in a business way.”
“Why don’t you kick her out?”
“Oh, I can’t,” said Fauna. “She’s had a tough time. I never had no gift for kicking people out. What I’d like is if she’d pick up and go. She got no future as a floozy.”
“She threw the book at me,” said Doc.
“You see?” said Fauna. “She’s a character. That ain’t no good in a house.”
“She slapped me in the face with a few basic truths,” said Doc. “That’s a quick eye she’s got.”
“And a quicker tongue,” said Fauna. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Why, of course,” said Doc. “Anything I can.”
“I can’t go to nobody else,” Fauna went on, “they wouldn’t understand.”
“What is it?”
“Doc,” said Fauna, “I knocked around and I seen all kinds. I tell you, if you got a streak of lady in you it spoils you for anything else. Now you never come over to the Bear Flag. You play the field. I personally think that costs you more but I ain’t one to mess in the way people want to live.”
“I don’t think I’m following you,” said Doc.
“Okay, I’ll lay out the deck. When you’re making a play for one of them babes, them amateurs, you got to do quite a lot of talking before you make the sack—ain’t that right?”
Doc smiled ruefully. “Right,” he said.
“Well, do you always mean every word of it?”
Doc pinched his lower lip. “Why—why—I guess right at the moment I do.”
“But afterward?”
“Afterward, if I were to think about it—”
“That’s what I mean,” said Fauna. “So if you happen to tell a little teensy-beensy bit of baloney you don’t blow your brains out.”
“You’d do well in the analysis business,” said Doc. “What do you want me to do?”
“This kid Suzy’s lousy with new roses. She ain’t a good hustler because of that streak of lady. I don’t know if she’d make a good lady or not. I want her off my neck. Doc, would it do you any harm to make a play for her? I mean, like you do with them dames that come in here.”
“What good could that possibly do?” he asked.
“Well, maybe I’m wrong, but the way I figure it, you can use new roses if you want to. If you made a pitch for the kid, like she was a lady, why, she might turn lady on you.”
“I still can’t see what good it would do,” said Doc.
“It would get her the hell out of the Bear Flag,” said Fauna. “She wouldn’t want to congregate with no more floozies.”
“How about me?” said Doc.
“You don’t marry them others, do you?”
“No, but—”
“Take a whang at her, will you, Doc?” Fauna begged. “Can’t do you no harm. Why, hell, she might scram out of here and take up typewriting or telephone operating. Will you do that for me, Doc?”
He said, “It doesn’t seem honest.”
Fauna changed her tack. “I was talking to her last night and she said she couldn’t remember when a guy had treated her like a girl. What harm would that do?”
“Might make her miserable.”
“Might make her fly the coop.”
“Maybe she likes it the way it is.”
“She don’t. I tell you she’s a blowed-in-the-glass lady. Look, Doc, you take her out to dinner and I’ll buy the dinner. You don’t have to make no pass. Just be nice to her.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Think you might do it?”
“I might.”
“That’s a good kid if you treat her right. You’d be doing me a big favor.”
“Suppose she won’t go?”
“She will. I won’t give her no choice.”
Doc looked out the window and a warmth crept through him, and suddenly he felt better than he could remember feeling.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“I’ll throw in three bottles of champagne whenever you say the word,” said Fauna.
After lunch Joe Elegant read Fauna his latest chapter. He explained the myth and the symbol. “You see,” he said, “the grandmother stands for guilt.”
“Ain’t she dead and buried?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a kind of a messy guilt.”
“It’s the reality below reality,” said Joe Elegant.
“Balls!” said Fauna. “Listen, Joe, whyn’t you write a story about something real?”
“Maybe you can tell me about the art of writing?” he said.
“I sure as hell can,” said Fauna. “There’s this guy, and he makes love to this dame.”
“Very original,” said Joe.
“When a man says words he believes them, even if he thinks he’s lying.”
“For goodness’ sake! What are you talking about?”
“I bet I get rid of a certain person and put up a new gold star. You want to take that bet?”
“How did Doc like the cake?” Joe Elegant asked.
“He loved it,” said Fauna.
And this was the second event of that Sweet Thursday.
21
Sweet Thursday Was One Hell of a Day
Fission took place in the Palace Flop house, and from there a chain reaction flared up in all directions. Cannery Row caught fire. Mack and the boys had the energy and the enthusiasm of plutonium. Only very lazy men could have done so much in so short a time. Oh, the meetings, the messages carried, the plans and counterplans! Mack had to make more and more raffle tickets. What started as a kind of gentle blackmail assumed the nature of an outpouring of popular love for Doc. People bought tickets, sold tickets, traded tickets. Emissaries covered the Southern Pacific Depot, the Greyhound Bus Station. Joe Blaikey, the constable, carried tickets in his pocket and canceled parking summonses if the lawbreaker bought a two-dollar chance on the Palace Flop house.
Whitey No. 1 invaded the foreign and fancy purlieus of Pebble Beach and Carmel and the Highlands. Whitey No. 2’s method was characteristically direct. The first man to refuse him got a rock through his windshield, and the news traveled.
To the boys it had become a crusade. And the winning ticket, of course, with Doc’s name on it, was in a tomato can, buried in the vacant lot. By tacit agreement no one mentioned the raffle to Doc. To Doc’s friends Mack and the boys mentioned the rigging of the lottery, but to strangers—who cared? It was a perfect example of the collective goodness and generosity of a community.
But if communities have a group Good Fairy they also have an Imp who works parallel with and sometimes in collaboration with the Good Fairy. Cannery Row’s Imp saw the Good Fairy stirring to life, and he sprang to action. Into the ears of his clients he whispered a few words, and his constituents grinned with evil pleasure and their thoughts went like this: The Patrón is a wise guy. He’s a newcomer, nice clothes, makes his money off poor helpless wetbacks because he’s smart. Lee Chong must have sold him the Palace Flop house and he’s forgot it or he never knew it. Once Doc wins it the Patrón won’t dare make a move.