“Why do you suppose he done it?” Mack asked.
“Who knows?” said Doc. “Who knows what lies deep in any man’s mind? Who knows what any man wants?”
“He won’t be happy there,” said Mack. “He’ll be lonely out among them foreigners. You know, Doc, I figured it out. It was them goddam movies done it. You remember, he used to close up every Thursday night. That’s because there was a change of bill at the movie house. He never missed a movie. That’s what done it, the movies. I and you, Doc, we know what liars the movies are. He won’t be happy out there. He’ll just be miserable to come back.”
Doc gazed at his run-down laboratory. “I wish I were out there with him,” he said.
“Who don’t?” said Mack. “Why, them South Sea Island girls will kill him. He ain’t as young as he used to be.”
“I know,” said Doc. “You and I should be out there, Mack, to help protect him from himself. I’m wondering, Mack, should I step across the street and get another pint or should I go to bed?”
“Why don’t you flip a coin?”
“You flip the coin,” said Doc. “I don’t really want to go to bed. If you flip it I’ll know how it’s going to come out.”
Mack flipped, and he was right. Mack said, “I’d just as lief step over for you, Doc. You just set here comfortable—I’ll be right back.” And he was.
2
The Troubled Life of Joseph and Mary
Mack came back with a pint of Old Tennis Shoes and he poured some in Doc’s glass and some in his own.
Doc said, “What kind of a fellow is the new owner over there—Mexican, isn’t he?”
“Nice fellow,” said Mack. “Classy dresser. Name of Joseph and Mary Rivas. Smart as a whip, but kind of unfortunate, Doc—unfortunate and funny. You know how it is, when a pimp falls in love it don’t make any difference how much he suffers—it’s funny. And Joseph and Mary’s kind of like that.”
“Tell me about him,” said Doc.
“I been studying him,” said Mack. “He told me some stuff and I put two and two together. He’s smart. You know, Doc, there’s a kind of smartness that cuts its own throat. Haven’t you knew people that was so busy being smart they never had time to do nothing else? Well, Joseph and Mary is kind of like that.”
“Tell me,” said Doc.
“I guess you couldn’t find no two people oppositer than what you and him is,” Mack began. “You’re nice, Doc, nice and egg-heady,[17] but a guy would have to be nuts to think you was smart. Everybody takes care of you because you’re wide open. Anybody is like to throw a sneak-punch at Joseph and Mary just because he’s in there dancing and feinting all the time. And he’s nice too, in a way.”
“Where’d he come from?” Doc asked.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Mack.
Mack was right. Doc and Joseph and Mary were about as opposite as you can get, but delicately opposite. Their differences balanced like figures of a mobile in a light breeze. Doc was a man whose whole direction and impulse was legal and legitimate. Left to his own devices, he would have obeyed every law, down to pausing at boulevard stop signs. The fact that Doc was constantly jockeyed into illicit practices was the fault of his friends, not of himself—the fault of Wide Ida, whom the liquor laws cramped like a tight girdle, and of the Bear Flag, whose business, while accepted and recognized, was certainly mentioned disparagingly in every conceivable statute book.
Mack and the boys had lived so long in the shadow of the vagrancy laws that they considered them a shield and an umbrella. Their association with larceny, fraud, loitering, illegal congregation, and conspiracy on all levels was not only accepted, but to a certain extent had become a matter of pride to the inhabitants of Cannery Row. But they were lamblike children of probity and virtue compared to Joseph and Mary. Everything he did naturally turned out to be against the law. This had been true from his earliest childhood. In Los Angeles, where he had been born, he led a gang of pachucos[18] while he was still a child. The charge that he lagged with loaded pennies,[19] if not provable, at least seems reasonable. He rejected the theory of private ownership of removable property almost from birth. At the age of eight he was a pool hustler of such success that Navy officers had been known to put him off limits. When the gang wars started in the Mexican district of Los Angeles, Joseph and Mary rose above pachucos. He set up an ambulatory store, well stocked with switch knives, snap guns, brass knuckles, and, for the very poor, socks loaded with sand, cheap and very effective. At twelve he matriculated at reform school, and two years later emerged with honors. He had learned nearly every criminal technique in existence. This fourteen-year-old handsome boy with sad and innocent eyes could operate the tumblers of a safe with either fingers or stethoscope. He could make second stories as though he had suction cups on his feet. But no sooner had he mastered these arts than he abandoned them, reasoning that the odds were too great. He was always a smart boy. Joseph and Mary was looking for a profession wherein the victim was the partner of the predator. The badger game, the swinging panel, and the Spanish treasure[20] were nearer to his ideal. But even they fell short. He had never made a police blotter and he wanted to keep it that way. Somewhere he felt there was a profession illegal enough to satisfy him morally and yet safe enough not to outrage his instinctive knowledge of the law of averages. You might have said he was well launched on his career when, suddenly, puberty smote him, and for a number of years his activities took a different direction.
In the fields of larceny and fraud Joseph and Mary vegetated for a number of years. He was a man when the fog cleared from before his eyes and he could see again. Then just when he was set to go, the Army got him and kept him as long as it could in good conscience. It is said that his final dishonorable discharge is a masterpiece of understatement.
J and M never could get set. He started again on his career and took a wrong turning, for he fell under the influence of a young and understanding priest, who drew him into the warm bosom of Mother Church, into which Joseph and Mary had been born anyway. Now Joseph and Mary Rivas approved of confession and forgiveness, and he felt, as perhaps François Villon[21] had, that under the protection of the cloth he might find some outlet for his talent. Father Murphy taught him the theory of honest labor, and when Joseph and Mary had got over the shock of the principle he decided to give it a try. He was still malleable, and he succeeded, where Villon had failed, in keeping his hands off church property. With the help of Father Murphy, who had influence in the city government, Joseph and Mary found himself the possessor of a city job, a position of dignity, with a monthly check to be cashed without fear of fingerprinting.
The Plaza in Los Angeles is a pretty square, ornamented with small gardens, palms in great pots, and many, many flowers. It is a landmark, a tourist center, a city pride, for it preserves a Mexican-ness unknown in Mexico. Joseph and Mary, then, was in charge of watering and cultivating the plants in the Plaza—a job that was not only easy and pleasant but kept him in direct touch with those tourists who might be interested in small packets of art studies. Although Joseph and Mary realized he could never get rich in this job, he took a certain pleasure in being partly legal. It gave him the satisfaction most people find in sin.
18
pachucos: Members of Mexican-American youth gangs in the southwestern United States from the 1930s to the 1950s. The pachuco style and culture originated in El Paso, Texas, but moved quickly westward and became especially prominent in East Los Angeles. Pachucos sported loose-fitting “zoot suits” (oversized trousers and jacket, with a characteristic broad felt hat), which presented an exaggerated version of gangster clothing of the 1930s. Pachucos spoke a unique dialect called Calo, a hybrid blend of formal Spanish with English and Gypsy words.
19
lagged with loaded pennies: Joseph and Mary may have used illegally weighted pennies for the coin toss that determined who would be first to break (“lag”) at pool.
20
badger game…Spanish treasure: Illegal or unethical confidence games. The badger game, for instance, is a dishonest trick in which a person is lured into a compromising situation and then blackmailed.