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East of Eden Page 81
Author: John Steinbeck

Samuel wrote to Joe, saying, “I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you’d take a cookie on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother. Your last letter only made her think you are not well. Your mother does not believe there are many ills uncurable by good strong soup. She puts your brave attack on the structure of our civilization down to a stomach ache. It worries her. Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven’t even got a shovel yet.”

Liza was getting old. Samuel saw it in her face, and he could not feel old himself, white beard or no. But Liza was living backwards, and that’s the proof.

There was a time when she looked on his plans and prophecies as the crazy shoutings of a child. Now she felt that they were unseemly in a grown man. They three, Liza and Tom and Samuel, were alone on the ranch. Una was married to a stranger and gone away. Dessie had her dressmaking business in Salinas. Olive had married her young man, and Mollie was married and living, believe it or not, in an apartment in San Francisco. There was perfume, and a white bearskin rug in the bedroom in front of the fireplace, and Mollie smoked a gold-tipped cigarette—Violet Milo—with her coffee after dinner.

One day Samuel strained his back lifting a bale of hay, and it hurt his feelings more than his back, for he could not imagine a life in which Sam Hamilton was not privileged to lift a bale of hay. He felt insulted by his back, almost as he would have been if one of his children had been dishonest.

In King City, Dr. Tilson felt him over. The doctor grew more testy with his overworked years.

“You sprained your back.”

“That I did,” said Samuel.

“And you drove all the way in to have me tell you that you sprained your back and charge you two dollars?”

“Here’s your two dollars.”

“And you want to know what to do about it?”

“Sure I do.”

“Don’t sprain it any more. Now take your money back. You’re not a fool, Samuel, unless you’re getting childish.”

“But it hurts.”

“Of course it hurts. How would you know it was strained if it didn’t?”

Samuel laughed. “You’re good for me,” he said. “You’re more than two dollars good for me. Keep the money.”

The doctor looked closely at him. “I think you’re telling the truth, Samuel. I’ll keep the money.”

Samuel went in to see Will in his fine new store. He hardly knew his son, for Will was getting fat and prosperous and he wore a coat and vest and a gold ring on his little finger.

“I’ve got a package made up for Mother,” Will said. “Some little cans of things from France. Mushrooms and liver paste and sardines so little you can hardly see them.”

“She’ll just send them to Joe,” said Samuel.

“Can’t you make her eat them?”

“No,” said his father. “But she’ll enjoy sending them to Joe.”

Lee came into the store and his eyes lighted up. “How do, Missy,” he said.

“Hello, Lee. How are the boys?”

“Boys fine.”

Samuel said, “I’m going to have a glass of beer next door, Lee. Be glad to have you join me.”

Lee and Samuel sat at the little round table in the barroom and Samuel drew figures on the scrubbed wood with the moisture of his beer glass. “I’ve wanted to go to see you and Adam but I didn’t think I could do any good.”

“Well, you can’t do any harm. I thought he’d get over it. But he still walks around like a ghost.”

“It’s over a year, isn’t it?” Samuel asked.

“Three months over.”

“Well, what do you think I can do?”

“I don’t know,” said Lee. “Maybe you could shock him out of it. Nothing else has worked.”

“I’m not good at shocking. I’d probably end up by shocking myself. By the way, what did he name the twins?”

“They don’t have any names.”

“You’re making a joke, Lee.”

“I am not making jokes.”

“What does he call them?”

“He calls them ‘they.’ ”

“I mean when he speaks to them.”

“When he speaks to them he calls them ‘you,’ one or both.”

“This is nonsense,” Samuel said angrily. “What kind of fool is the man?”

“I’ve meant to come and tell you. He’s a dead man unless you can wake him up.”

Samuel said, “I’ll come. I’ll bring a horse whip. No names! You’re damn right I’ll come Lee.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll kill a chicken,” said Lee. “You’ll like the twins, Mr. Hamilton. They’re fine-looking boys. I won’t tell Mr. Trask you’re coming.”

2

Shyly Samuel told his wife he wanted to visit the Trask place. He thought she would pile up strong walls of objection, and for one of the few times in his life he would disobey her wish no matter how strong her objection. It gave him a sad feeling in the stomach to think of disobeying his wife. He explained his purpose almost as though he were confessing. Liza put her hands on her hips during the telling and his heart sank. When he was finished she continued to look at him, he thought, coldly.

Finally she said, “Samuel, do you think you can move this rock of a man?”

“Why, I don’t know, Mother.” He had not expected this. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think it is such an important matter that those babies have names right now?”

“Well, it seemed so to me,” he said lamely.

“Samuel, do you think why you want to go? Is it your natural incurable nosiness? Is it your black inability to mind your own business?”

“Now, Liza, I know my failings pretty well. I thought it might be more than that.”

“It had better be more than that,” she said. “This man has not admitted that his sons live. He has cut them off mid-air.”

“That’s the way it seems to me, Liza.”

“If he tells you to mind your own business—what then?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

Her jaw snapped shut and her teeth clicked. “If you do not get those boys named, there’ll be no warm place in this house for you. Don’t you dare come whining back, saying he wouldn’t do it or he wouldn’t listen. If you do I’ll have to go myself.”

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