Authors: John Steinbeck
“That was it,” Billy agreed. “He packed mules.”
Grandfather put down his knife and fork and looked around the table. “I remember one time we ran out of meat—” His voice dropped to a curious low sing-song, dropped into a tonal groove the story had worn for itself. “There was no buffalo, no antelope, not even rabbits. The hunters couldn’t even shoot a coyote. That was the time for the leader to be on the watch. I was the leader, and I kept my eyes open. Know why? Well, just the minute the people began to get hungry they’d start slaughtering the team oxen. Do you believe that? I’ve heard of parties that just ate up their draft cattle. Started from the middle and worked toward the ends. Finally they’d eat the lead pair, and then the wheelers. The leader of a party had to keep them from doing that.”
In some manner a big moth got into the room and circled the hanging kerosene lamp. Billy got up and tried to clap it between his hands. Carl struck with a cupped palm and caught the moth and broke it. He walked to the window and dropped it out.
“As I was saying,” Grandfather began again, but Carl interrupted him. “You’d better eat some more meat. All the rest of us are ready for our pudding.”
Jody saw a flash of anger in his mother’s eyes. Grandfather picked up his knife and fork. “I’m pretty hungry, all right,” he said. “I’ll tell you about that later.”
When supper was over, when the family and Billy Buck sat in front of the fireplace in the other room, Jody anxiously watched Grandfather. He saw the signs he knew. The bearded head leaned forward; the eyes lost their sternness and looked wonderingly into the fire; the big lean fingers laced themselves on the black knees.
“I wonder,” he began, “I just wonder whether I ever told you how those thieving Piutes drove off thirty-five of our horses.”
“I think you did,” Carl interrupted. “Wasn’t it just before you went up into the Tahoe country?”
Grandfather turned quickly toward his son-in-law. “That’s right. I guess I must have told you that story.”
“Lots of times,” Carl said cruelly, and he avoided his wife’s eyes. But he felt angry eyes on him, and he said, “’Course I’d like to hear it again.”
Grandfather looked back at the fire. His fingers unlaced and laced again. Jody knew how he felt, how his insides were collapsed and empty. Hadn’t Jody been called a Big-Britches this very afternoon? He arose to heroism and
opened himself to the term Big-Britches again. “Tell me about Indians,” he said softly.
Grandfather’s eyes grew stern again. “Boys always want to hear about Indians. It was a job for men, but boys want to hear about it. Well, let’s see. Did I ever tell you how I wanted each wagon to carry a long iron plate?”
Everyone but Jody remained silent. Jody said, “No. You didn’t.”
“Well, when the Indians attacked, we always put the wagons in a circle and fought from between the wheels. I thought that if every wagon carried a long plate with rifle holes, the men could stand the plates on the outside of the wheels when the wagons were in the circle and they would be protected. It would save lives and that would make up for the extra weight of the iron. But of course the party wouldn’t do it. No party had done it before and they couldn’t see why they should go to the expense. They lived to regret it, too.”
Jody looked at his mother, and knew from her expression that she was not listening at all. Carl picked at a callus on his thumb and Billy Buck watched a spider crawling up the wall.
Grandfather’s tone dropped into its narrative groove again. Jody knew in advance exactly what words would fall. The story droned on, speeded up for the attack, grew sad over the wounds, struck a dirge at the burials on the great plains. Jody sat quietly watching Grandfather. The stern blue eyes were detached. He looked as though he were not very interested in the story himself.
When it was finished, when the pause had been politely respected as the frontier of the story, Billy Buck stood up
and stretched and hitched his trousers. “I guess I’ll turn in,” he said. Then he faced Grandfather. “I’ve got an old powder horn and a cap and ball pistol down to the bunkhouse. Did I ever show them to you?”
Grandfather nodded slowly. “Yes, I think you did, Billy. Reminds me of a pistol I had when I was leading the people across.” Billy stood politely until the little story was done, and then he said, “Good night,” and went out of the house.
Carl Tiflin tried to turn the conversation then. “How’s the country between here and Monterey? I’ve heard it’s pretty dry.”
“It is dry,” said Grandfather. “There’s not a drop of water in the Laguna Seca. But it’s a long pull from’87. The whole country was powder then, and in’61 I believe all the coyotes starved to death. We had fifteen inches of rain this year.”
“Yes, but it all came too early. We could do with some now.” Carl’s eye fell on Jody. “Hadn’t you better be getting to bed?”
Jody stood up obediently. “Can I kill the mice in the old haystack, sir?”
“Mice? Oh! Sure, kill them all off. Billy said there isn’t any good hay left.”
Jody exchanged a secret and satisfying look with Grandfather. “I’ll kill every one tomorrow,” he promised.
Jody lay in his bed and thought of the impossible world of Indians and buffaloes, a world that had ceased to be forever. He wished he could have been living in the heroic time, but he knew he was not of heroic timber. No one living now, save possibly Billy Buck, was worthy to do the things that had been done. A race of giants had lived then, fearless men, men of a staunchness unknown in this day. Jody thought of the wide plains and of the wagons moving
across like centipedes. He thought of Grandfather on a huge white horse, marshaling the people. Across his mind marched the great phantoms, and they marched off the earth and they were gone.
He came back to the ranch for a moment, then. He heard the dull rushing sound that space and silence make. He heard one of the dogs, out in the doghouse, scratching a flea and bumping his elbow against the floor with every stroke. Then the wind arose again and the black cypress groaned and Jody went to sleep.
He was up half an hour before the triangle sounded for breakfast. His mother was rattling the stove to make the flames roar when Jody went through the kitchen. “You’re up early,” she said. “Where are you going?”
“Out to get a good stick. We’re going to kill the mice today.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Why, Grandfather and I.”
“So you’ve got him in it. You always like to have someone in with you in case there’s blame to share.”
“I’ll be right back,” said Jody. “I just want to have a good stick ready for after breakfast.”
He closed the screen door after him and went out into the cool blue morning. The birds were noisy in the dawn and the ranch cats came down from the hill like blunt snakes. They had been hunting gophers in the dark, and although the four cats were full of gopher meat, they sat in a semicircle at the back door and mewed piteously for milk. Doubletree Mutt and Smasher moved sniffing along the edge of the brush, performing the duty with rigid ceremony, but when Jody whistled, their heads jerked up and their tails waved. They plunged down to him, wriggling their
skins and yawning. Jody patted their heads seriously, and moved on to the weathered scrap pile. He selected an old broom handle and a short piece of inch-square scrap wood. From his pocket he took a shoelace and tied the ends of the sticks loosely together to make a flail. He whistled his new weapon through the air and struck the ground experimentally, while the dogs leaped aside and whined with apprehension.
Jody turned and started down past the house toward the old haystack ground to look over the field of slaughter, but Billy Buck, sitting patiently on the back steps, called to him, “You better come back. It’s only a couple of minutes till breakfast.”
Jody changed his course and moved toward the house. He leaned his flail against the steps. “That’s to drive the mice out,” he said. “I’ll bet they’re fat. I’ll bet they don’t know what’s going to happen to them today.”
“No, nor you either,” Billy remarked philosophically, “nor me, nor anyone.”
Jody was staggered by this thought. He knew it was true. His imagination twitched away from the mouse hunt. Then his mother came out on the back porch and struck the triangle, and all thoughts fell in a heap.
Grandfather hadn’t appeared at the table when they sat down. Billy nodded at his empty chair. “He’s all right? He isn’t sick?”
“He takes a long time to dress,” said Mrs. Tiflin. “He combs his whiskers and rubs up his shoes and brushes his clothes.”
Carl scattered sugar on his mush. “A man that’s led a wagon train across the plains has got to be pretty careful how he dresses.”
Mrs. Tiflin turned on him. “Don’t do that, Carl! Please don’t!” There was more of threat than of request in her tone. And the threat irritated Carl.
“Well, how many times do I have to listen to the story of the iron plates, and the thirty-five horses? That time’s done. Why can’t he forget it, now it’s done?” He grew angrier while he talked, and his voice rose. “Why does he have to tell them over and over? He came across the plains. All right! Now it’s finished. Nobody wants to hear about it over and over.”
The door into the kitchen closed softly. The four at the table sat frozen. Carl laid his mush spoon on the table and touched his chin with his fingers.
Then the kitchen door opened and Grandfather walked in. His mouth smiled tightly and his eyes were squinted. “Good morning,” he said, and he sat down and looked at his mush dish.
Carl could not leave it there. “Did—did you hear what I said?”
Grandfather jerked a little nod.
“I don’t know what got into me, sir. I didn’t mean it. I was just being funny.”
Jody glanced in shame at his mother, and he saw that she was looking at Carl, and that she wasn’t breathing. It was an awful thing that he was doing. He was tearing himself to pieces to talk like that. It was a terrible thing to him to retract a word, but to retract it in shame was infinitely worse.
Grandfather looked sidewise. “I’m trying to get right side up,” he said gently. “I’m not being mad. I don’t mind what you said, but it might be true, and I would mind that.”
“It isn’t true,” said Carl. “I’m not feeling well this morning. I’m sorry I said it.”
“Don’t be sorry, Carl. An old man doesn’t see things sometimes. Maybe you’re right. The crossing is finished. Maybe it should be forgotten, now it’s done.”
Carl got up from the table. “I’ve had enough to eat. I’m going to work. Take your time, Billy!” He walked quickly out of the dining-room. Billy gulped the rest of his food and followed soon after. But Jody could not leave his chair.
“Won’t you tell me any more stories?” Jody asked.
“Why, sure I’ll tell them, but only when—I’m sure people want to hear them.”
“I like to hear them, sir.”
“Oh! Of course you do, but you’re a little boy. It was a job for men, but only little boys like to hear about it.”
Jody got up from his place. “I’ll wait outside for you, sir. I’ve got a good stick for those mice.”
He waited by the gate until the old man came out on the porch. “Let’s go down and kill the mice now,” Jody called.
“I think I’ll just sit in the sun, Jody. You go kill the mice.”
“You can use my stick if you like.”
“No, I’ll just sit here a while.”
Jody turned disconsolately away, and walked down toward the old haystack. He tried to whip up his enthusiasm with thoughts of the fat juicy mice. He beat the ground with his flail. The dogs coaxed and whined about him, but he could not go. Back at the house he could see Grandfather sitting on the porch, looking small and thin and black.
Jody gave up and went to sit on the steps at the old man’s feet.
“Back already? Did you kill the mice?”
“No, sir. I’ll kill them some other day.”
The morning flies buzzed close to the ground and the ants dashed about in front of the steps. The heavy smell of
sage slipped down the hill. The porch boards grew warm in the sunshine.
Jody hardly knew when Grandfather started to talk. “I shouldn’t stay here, feeling the way I do.” He examined his strong old hands. “I feel as though the crossing wasn’t worth doing.” His eyes moved up the side-hill and stopped on a motionless hawk perched on a dead limb. “I tell those old stories, but they’re not what I want to tell. I only know how I want people to feel when I tell them.
“It wasn’t Indians that were important, nor adventures, nor even getting out here. It was a whole bunch of people made into one big crawling beast. And I was the head. It was westering and westering. Every man wanted something for himself, but the big beast that was all of them wanted only westering. I was the leader, but if I hadn’t been there, someone else would have been the head. The thing had to have a head.
“Under the little bushes the shadows were black at white noonday. When we saw the mountains at last, we cried—all of us. But it wasn’t getting here that mattered, it was movement and westering.
“We carried life out here and set it down the way those ants carry eggs. And I was the leader. The westering was as big as God, and the slow steps that made the movement piled up and piled up until the continent was crossed.
“Then we came down to the sea, and it was done.” He stopped and wiped his eyes until the rims were red. “That’s what I should be telling instead of stories.”
When Jody spoke, Grandfather started and looked down at him. “Maybe I could lead the people some day,” Jody said.
The old man smiled. “There’s no place to go. There’s the
ocean to stop you. There’s a line of old men along the shore hating the ocean because it stopped them.”
“In boats I might, sir.”
“No place to go, Jody. Every place is taken. But that’s not the worst—no, not the worst. Westering has died out of the people. Westering isn’t a hunger any more. It’s all done. Your father is right. It is finished.” He laced his fingers on his knee and looked at them.
Jody felt very sad. “If you’d like a glass of lemonade I could make it for you.”
Grandfather was about to refuse, and then he saw Jody’s face. “That would be nice,” he said. “Yes, it would be nice to drink a lemonade.”