The heap of finery on Fauna’s bed was impressive. Some of those dresses could have got a girl booked for vagrancy just going out to mail a letter.
Mabel took Fauna aside and spoke to her privately. “My grandma come from the old country,” she said when the door of her room was closed. Mabel opened the bottom drawer of her bureau and lifted out a brown paper parcel sealed against air with strips of cellophane tape. “Grandma left it to Mama, and Mama left it to me,” she said as she tore the paper. “We ain’t none of us needed it.” She removed layer after layer of tissue paper and at last spread a dress out on her bed—a wedding dress of sheerest white linen embroidered with sprays of white flowers—stitches so tiny they seemed to grow out of the cloth. The bodice was close-fitting and the skirt very full. Mabel opened a box and laid beside the dress a silver wedding crown. “I guess she wouldn’t hurt it none,” said Mabel. “Tell her not to spill nothing on it. I’ll polish up the crown, it’s kind of tarnished—real silver!”
Fauna was speechless for once. Her fingers went to the light and lovely fabric. She was a hard woman to break up, but the dress nearly did it. “Snow White!” she said breathlessly. “I better be careful or I’ll get to believing my own pitch. Mabel, I’m going to give you my jet earrings.”
“I don’t want nothing.”
“You want my jet earrings!”
“Aw shoot!” said Mabel.
“Looks like it might nearly fit her,” Fauna observed.
“Well, we can kind of tack it where it don’t.”
“You know, you’re a good girl. You want I should go to work on you?”
“Hell no!” said Mabel. “I like it here. There’s a veil too in this here bag.”
“I don’t know if we can get away with a veil, but we’ll try,” said Fauna.
“Oh hell, she don’t know a veil from a hole in the ground,” said Mabel.
If only people would give the thought, the care, the judgment to international affairs, to politics, even to their jobs, that they lavish on what to wear to a masquerade, the world would run in greased grooves. On the surface Cannery Row was quieter than usual, but below the surface it seethed. In one corner of the Palace Flop house, Whitey No. 2 gave careful lessons to little Johnny Carriaga in the art of palming cards. Johnny had been borrowed for the occasion—or, more truthfully, rented—since Alberto Carriaga had received sixty-two cents, the price of a gallon of wine, for the use of his firstborn. It was planned that Johnny should be dressed as Cupid, with paper wings, bow and arrow, and quiver. The quiver was added as a hiding place for the winning raffle ticket. For although nearly everyone on the Row knew the raffle was rigged, a certain pride made it necessary to carry the deception off with dignity. Because of a small distrust of Johnny the arrows in the quiver were tipped with rubber suction cups.
Whitey No. 2 had cut a card the exact size of a raffle ticket. “Now try it again, Johnny,” he said. “No, I can see the edge of it. Look! Sort of squeeze the edges in your palm, like this. Now try it again. That’s right! That’s good. Now let’s see you get it out of the quiver. You make a pass with the bow—like this—so they look at your other hand, and you say—”
“I know,” said Johnny. “ ‘I’m Cupid, God of Love, and I draw a bead on unsuspecting hearts.’ ”
“God! That’s beautiful,” said Eddie. “I wonder where Mack got that?”
“He made it up,” said Whitey No. 2. “Now when you shove up the bow with your right hand, you get the ticket out of the quiver with your left. Try it.”
“ ‘I-am-Cupid-God-of-Love,’ ” said Johnny, and he brandished the bow.
“That’s good,” said Whitey No. 2. “It will take a little more practice though. Don’t look at your left hand, Johnny. Look at the bow. Now here’s the bowl. Dig around the cards without dropping the ticket. Go on, practice.”
“I want thirty-five cents,” said Johnny.
“What!”
“If I don’t get thirty-five cents I’ll tell.”
“Mack,” said Whitey No. 2, “this here kid’s jumped the price.”
“Give it to him,” said Mack. “I’ll flip him double or nothing later.”
“Not with that two-headed nickel, you won’t,” said Johnny.
“Seems like kids got no respect for their elders nowadays,” Eddie observed. “If I ever said that, my old man would of clobbered me.”
“Maybe your old man wasn’t rigging no raffle,” said Johnny.
Whitey No. 1 said, “This kid ain’t honest. You know where bad kids go, Johnny?”
“I sure do, and I been there,” said Johnny.
“Give him the thirty-five cents,” said Mack.
What hidden, hoarded longings there are in all of us! Behind the broken nose and baleful eye may be a gentle courtier; behind the postures and symbols and myths of Joe Elegant there may be the hunger to be a man. If one could be, for only an evening, what ever in the world one wished, what would it be? What secret would come out?
To a certain extent the theme of the Palace Flop house raffle and engagement party was chosen because of Hazel. He was definitely dwarf material. But when he had reviewed the story, asked questions, and got as clear a picture as he ever got of anything, Hazel elected to be Prince Charming. He saw himself in white silk knee breeches and an Eton jacket, his left hand fondling the hilt of a small sword.
They offered him Grumpy, lovable old Grumpy, the prize part of all. They offered him Sweet Pea the Skunk, but Hazel stuck to his dream. It was Prince Charming or he wouldn’t attend. Friendships have foundered on less.
“All right,” said Mack, “you go ahead. I was going to help you with your costume, but I know when I’m stumped. Hazel, if you’re Prince Charming, you’re on your own.”
“Who cares?” said Hazel. “Who wants your help? I’ll bet you’re mad because you wanted to be Prince Charming.”
“Not me,” said Mack. “I’m going as a tree.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a forest, ain’t it?” said Mack. “I want a little anenmity. You can’t see the tree for the forest.”
Hazel went to sit under the cypress tree. He was gloomy and he was frightened because ideas did not come to him, and when he sought them they ran screaming away. But he was determined. He could not let the office down. A man sentenced to be President could not go as a dwarf. It wasn’t dignified. Later in the morning he went to the back door of the Bear Flag and called for help from Joe Elegant.
Joe smiled. “I’ll help you,” he said maliciously.
All over the Row trunks were being opened, and the smell of mothballs penetrated as far as the middle of the street. And all over the Row the story was being rewritten to fit the wardrobe. By unspoken agreement no one planned to be Snow White.
In Western Biological, Doc awakened wracked with pain from sleeping on the floor. He lay still for a moment, trying to isolate the part of him that hurt worst. Not the least of his agony was his memory of forcing Old Jingleballicks to take his bed. A crazy, alcoholic generosity, probably masochistic in origin, had prompted the sacrifice. He raised up on one shattered elbow and looked at the old bastard sleeping so sweetly—his halo of yellow hair surrounding his polished pink pate, his breath puffing in small comfortable snores.
“Wake up!” Doc shouted in fury.
The pale eyes flickered. “What’s for breakfast?” said Old Jay.
“Don’t you even have the decency to have a hangover?”
“Certainly I do,” said Old Jay with dignity. “How’s about some beer?”