“It might be raining.”
“Let’s go anyway, rain or shine.”
She took her books and went into her yard. “See you tomorrow,” she said.
He did not turn toward home. He walked in the nervous night past the high school and past the skating rink—a floor with a big tent over it, and a mechanical orchestra clanging away. Not a soul was skating. The old man who owned it sat miserably in his booth, flipping the end of a roll of tickets against his forefinger.
Main Street was deserted. The wind skidded papers on the sidewalk. Tom Meek, the constable, came out of Bell’s candy store and fell into step with Cal. “Better hook that tunic collar, soldier,” he said softly.
“Hello, Tom. The damn thing’s too tight.”
“I don’t see you around the town at night lately.”
“No.”
“Don’t tell me you reformed.”
“Maybe.”
Tom prided himself on his ability to kid people and make it sound serious. He said, “Sounds like you got a girl.”
Cal didn’t answer.
“I heard your brother faked his age and joined the army. Are you picking off his girl?”
“Oh, sure—sure,” said Cal.
Tom’s interest sharpened. “I nearly forgot,” he said. “I hear Will Hamilton is telling around you made fifteen thousand dollars in beans. That true?”
“Oh, sure,” said Cal.
“You’re just a kid. What are you going to do with all that money?”
Cal grinned at him. “I burned it up.”
“How do you mean?”
“Just set a match to it and burned it.”
Tom looked into his face. “Oh, yeah! Sure. Good thing to do. Got to go in here. Good night.” Tom Meek didn’t like people to kid him. “The young punk son of a bitch,” he said to himself. “He’s getting too smart for himself.”
Cal moved slowly along Main Street, looking in store windows. He wondered where Kate was buried. If he could find out, he thought he might take a bunch of flowers, and he laughed at himself for the impulse. Was it good or was he fooling himself? The Salinas wind would blow away a tombstone, let along a bunch of carnations. For some reason he remembered the Mexican name for carnations. Somebody must have told him when he was a kid. They were called Nails of Love—and marigolds, the Nails of Death. It was a word like nails—claveles. Maybe he’d better put marigolds on his mother’s grave. “I’m beginning to think like Aron,” he said to himself.
Chapter 54
1
The winter seemed reluctant to let go its bite. It hung on cold and wet and windy long after its time. And people repeated, “It’s those damned big guns they’re shooting off in France—spoiling the weather in the whole world.”
The grain was slow coming up in the Salinas Valley, and the wildflowers came so late that some people thought they wouldn’t come at all.
We knew—or at least we were confident—that on May Day, when all the Sunday School picnics took place in the Alisal, the wild azaleas that grew in the skirts of the stream would be in bloom. They were a part of May Day.
May Day was cold. The picnic was drenched out of existence by a freezing rain, and there wasn’t an-open blossom on the azalea trees. Two weeks later they still weren’t out.
Cal hadn’t known it would be like this when he had made azaleas the signal for his picnic, but once the symbol was set it could not be violated.
The Ford sat in Windham’s shed, its tires pumped up, and with two new dry cells to make it start easily on Bat. Lee was alerted to make sandwiches when the day came, and he got tired of waiting and stopped buying sandwich bread every two days.
“Why don’t you just go anyway?” he said.
“I can’t,” said Cal. “I said azaleas.”
“How will you know?”
“The Silacci boys live out there, and they come into school every day. They say it will be a week or ten days.”
“Oh, Lord!” said Lee. “Don’t overtrain your picnic.”
Adam’s health was slowly improving. The numbness was going from his hand. And he could read a little—a little more each day.
“It’s only when I get tired that the letters jump,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t get glasses to ruin my eyes. I knew my eyes were all right.”
Lee nodded and was glad. He had gone to San Francisco for the books he needed and had written for a number of separates. He knew about as much as was known about the anatomy of the brain and the symptoms and severities of lesion and thrombus. He had studied and asked questions with the same unwavering intensity as when he had trapped and pelted and cured a Hebrew verb. Dr. H. C. Murphy had got to know Lee very well and had gone from a professional impatience with a Chinese servant to a genuine admiration for a scholar. Dr. Murphy had even borrowed some of Lee’s news separates and reports on diagnosis and practice. He told Dr. Edwards, “That Chink knows more about the pathology of cerebral hemorrhage than I do, and I bet as much as you do.” He spoke with a kind of affectionate anger that this should be so. The medical profession is unconsciously irritated by lay knowledge.
When Lee reported Adam’s improvement he said, “It does seem to me that the absorption is continuing—”
“I had a patient,” Dr. Murphy said, and he told a hopeful story.
“I’m always afraid of recurrence,” said Lee.
“That you have to leave with the Almighty,” said Dr. Murphy. “We can’t patch an artery like an inner tube. By the way, how do you get him to let you take his blood pressure?”
“I bet on his and he bets on mine. It’s better than horse racing.”
“Who wins?”
“Well, I could,” said Lee. “But I don’t. That would spoil the game—and the chart.”
“How do you keep him from getting excited?”
“It’s my own invention,” said Lee. “I call it conversational therapy.”
“Must take all your time.”
“It does,” said Lee.
2
On May 28, 1918, American troops carried out their first important assignment of World War I. The First Division, General Bullard commanding, was ordered to capture the village of Cantigny. The village, on high ground, dominated the Avre River valley. It was defended by trenches, heavy machine guns, and artillery. The front was a little over a mile wide.
At 6:45 A.M., May 28, 1918, the attack was begun after one hour of artillery preparation. Troops involved were the 28th Infantry (Col. Ely), one battalion of the 18th Infantry (Parker), a company of the First Engineers, the divisional artillery (Summerall), and a support of French tanks and flame throwers.