“How are you?” Joseph and Mary asked.
“Okay,” said Suzy. “Fauna wants some yellow pads and a couple of pencils—soft pencils.”
The Patrón laid them out. “She does a lot of writing,” he said. “She’s used six pads in about a month.”
“She’s doing astrology.”
“You believe that stuff?”
“No, but it don’t do no harm.”
“I knew a guy made a good living with it,” said the Patrón.
“Oh, she don’t charge nothing,” said Suzy.
“I know,” said the Patrón. “I can’t figure why not. Fauna ain’t dumb.”
“She sure ain’t,” said Suzy.
Doc came in with two empty beer bottles. “Get a couple of cold ones back on the ice, will you?” he asked.
Suzy glanced at him, took him in, and looked away. His beard shocked her a little. She didn’t stare at him the way you don’t stare at a cripple.
The Patrón said, “Why don’t you put in an icebox? Then you can take a case at a time.”
“It’s easier to let you keep the ice,” said Doc.
“You know Suzy here? She’s new at the Bear Flag.”
“How do you do?” said Doc.
“How do you do?” said Suzy. She would have said “Hi” to anyone else.
When Doc had gone the Patrón said, “That’s a funny guy.”
“It takes all kinds,” said Suzy.
“He knows stuff I ain’t even heard of.” The Patrón was defending Doc the way everyone did.
“Kind of hoity-toity?” asked Suzy.
“Hell no! That’s the way he always talks. He don’t know no other way.”
“Well, I guess it takes all kinds,” said Suzy.
“He gets bugs and stuff out of the ocean and sells them.”
“Who to?”
“Why, there’s people’ll buy anything,” said the Patrón.
“I guess so. Why don’t other people do it?”
“Too much work, and you got to know what to get.”
“Say, why does he wear that beard? I used to know a wrestler wore one.”
“I don’t know why,” said the Patrón. “Why’d the wrestler?”
“Thought it made him look tough.”
“Well, maybe Doc the same—but no, he don’t want to be tough.” The Patrón went on, “In the Army they made a guy with a beard shave it off. Said a guy with a beard wanted to be different, and the best way to not get along in the barracks is to be different.”
“Maybe that’s it,” said Suzy. “I don’t mind a different guy if he ain’t too different.”
“Dames can take it,” said the Patrón. “They don’t like it but they can take it. What the hell am I doing all this talking for? I got work to do!”
Suzy asked, “You Mexican?”
“American. My old man was Mexican.”
“Can you talk that spick[43] talk?”
“Sure.”
“Polly-voo?”
“That ain’t the same kind,” said the Patrón.
“Be seeing you,” said Suzy, and she went out and let the screen door slam.
She ain’t a bad kid, the Patrón thought, but I’d sure kick her the hell out of the Bear Flag.
Doc looked out the window of Western Biological. He watched Suzy walk past the vacant lot and up to the front porch of the Bear Flag. Just as she was about to climb the steps she turned and looked around. She thought someone was looking at her. She didn’t see Doc.
8
The Great Roque War[44]
Pacific Grove[45] and Monterey sit side by side on a hill bordering the bay. The two towns touch shoulders but they are not alike. Whereas Monterey was founded a long time ago by foreigners, Indians and Spaniards and such, and the town grew up higgledy-piggledy without plan or purpose, Pacific Grove sprang full blown from the iron heart of a psycho-ideo-legal religion. It was formed as a retreat in the 1880s and came fully equipped with laws, ideals, and customs. On the town’s statute books a deed is void if liquor is ever brought on the property. As a result, the sale of iron-and-wine tonic is fantastic. Pacific Grove has a law that requires you to pull your shades down after sundown, and forbids you to pull them down before. Scorching on bicycles is forbidden, as is sea bathing and boating on Sundays. There is one crime which is not defined but which is definitely against the law. Hijinks are forbidden. It must be admitted that most of these laws are not enforced to the hilt. The fence that once surrounded the Pacific Grove retreat is no longer in existence.
Once, during its history, Pacific Grove was in trouble, deep trouble. You see, when the town was founded many old people moved to the retreat, people you’d think didn’t have anything to retreat from. These old people became grumpy after a while and got to interfering in everything and causing trouble, until a philanthropist named Deems presented the town with two roque courts.
Roque is a complicated kind of croquet, with narrow wickets and short-handled mallets. You play off the sidelines, like billiards. Very complicated, it is. They say it develops character.
In a local sport there must be competition and a prize. In Pacific Grove a cup was given every year for the winning team on the roque courts. You wouldn’t think a thing like that would work up much heat, particularly since most of the contestants were over seventy. But it did.
One of the teams was called the Blues and the other the Greens. The old men wore little skullcaps and striped blazers in their team colors.
Well, it wasn’t more than two years before all hell broke loose. The Blues would practice in the court right alongside the Greens but they wouldn’t speak to them. And then it got into the families of the teams. You were a Blue family or a Green family. Finally the feeling spread outside the family. You were a partisan of the Blues or a partisan of the Greens. It got so that the Greens tried to discourage intermarriage with the Blues, and vice versa. Pretty soon it reached into politics, so that a Green wouldn’t think of voting for a Blue. It split the church right down the middle. The Blues and the Greens wouldn’t sit on the same side. They made plans to build separate churches.
Of course everything got really hot at tournament time. Things were very touchy. Those old men brought a passion to the game you wouldn’t believe. Why, two octogenarians would walk away into the woods and you’d find them locked in mortal combat. They even developed secret languages so that each wouldn’t know what the other was talking about.
Well, things got so hot and feeling ran so high that the county had to take notice of it. A Blue got his house burned down and then a Green was found clubbed to death with a roque mallet in the woods. A roque mallet is short-handled and heavy and can be a very deadly weapon. The old men got to carrying mallets tied to their wrists by thongs, like battle-axes. They didn’t go anyplace without them. There wasn’t any crime each didn’t charge the other with, including things they’d outgrown and couldn’t have done if they’d wanted to. The Blues wouldn’t trade in Green stores. The whole town was a mess.
The original benefactor, Mr. Deems, was a nice old fellow. He used to smoke a little opium, when it was legal, and this kept him healthy and rested so that he didn’t get high blood pressure or tuberculosis. He was a benevolent man, but he was also a philosopher. When he saw what he had created by giving the roque courts to the Pacific Grove retreat he was saddened and later horrified. He said he knew how God felt.
The tournament came July 30, and feeling was so bad that people were carrying pistols. Blue kids and Green kids had gang wars. Mr. Deems, after a period of years, finally figured that as long as he felt like God he might as well act like God. There was too much violence in town.
44
The Great Roque War: An American variant of croquet (the name was derived by removing the first and last letters), roque is played on a rolled sand court with permanently anchored wickets. The mallets, with which the ball is struck, have a short handle (approximately twenty-four inches), and the ends of the mallet are faced with stone. According to Susan Shillinglaw’s
45
Pacific Grove: Sedate Pacific Grove, Monterey’s next-door neighbor on the Peninsula, began in 1875 as a summer Methodist tent camp and religious retreat (on property owned by land baron David Jack), then in 1879 became the site of a Pacific Coast arm of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, modeled on the Methodist Sunday school teachers’ training camp established in 1874 at Lake Chautauqua, New York. Pacific Grove’s roots, as Steinbeck notes, were religiously, philosophically, and politically conservative.