Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego — nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, “Yes, ma’am,” and his voice was toneless.
For a moment she stood over him as though waiting for him to move so that she could whip at him again; but Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in. She turned at last to the other two.
Old Candy was watching her, fascinated. “If you was to do that, we’d tell,” he said quietly. “We’d tell about you framin’ Crooks.”
“Tell an’ be damned,” she cried. “Nobody’d listen to you, an’ you know it. Nobody’d listen to you.”
Candy subsided. “No....” he agreed. “Nobody’d listen to us.”
Lennie whined, “I wisht George was here. I wisht George was here.”
Candy stepped over to him. “Don’t you worry none,” he said. “I jus’ heard the guys comin’ in. George’ll be in the bunk house right now, I bet.” He turned to Curley’s wife. “You better go home now,” he said quietly. “If you go right now, we won’t tell Curley you was here.”
She appraised him coolly. “I ain’t sure you heard nothing.”
“Better not take no chances,” he said. “If you ain’t sure, you better take the safe way.”
She turned to Lennie. “I’m glad you bust up Curley a little bit. He got it comin’ to him. Sometimes I’d like to bust him myself.” She slipped out the door and disappeared into the dark barn. And while she went through the barn, the halter chains rattled, and some horses snorted and some stamped their feet.
Crooks seemed to come slowly out of the layers of protection he had put on. “Was that the truth what you said about the guys come back?” he asked.
“Sure. I heard ‘em.”
“Well, I didn’t hear nothing.”
“The gate banged,” Candy said, and he went on, “Jesus Christ, Curley’s wife can move quiet. I guess she had a lot of practice, though.”
Crooks avoided the whole subject now. “Maybe you guys better go,” he said. “I ain’t sure I want you in here no more. A colored man got to have some rights even if he don’t like ‘em.”
Candy said, “That bitch didn’t ought to of said that to you.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Crooks said dully. “You guys comin’ in an’ settin’ made me forget. What she says is true.”
The horses snorted out in the barn and the chains rang and a voice called, “Lennie. Oh, Lennie. You in the barn?”
“It’s George,” Lennie cried. And he answered, “Here, George. I’m right in here.”
In a second George stood framed in the door, and he looked disapprovingly about. “What you doin’ in Crooks’ room? You hadn’t ought to be here.”
Crooks nodded. “I tol’ ‘em, but they come in anyways.”
“Well, why’n’t you kick ‘em out?”
“I di’n’t care much,” said Crooks. “Lennie’s a nice fella.”
Now Candy aroused himself. “Oh, George! I been figurin’ and figurin’. I got it doped out how we can even make some money on them rabbits.”
George scowled. “I thought I tol’ you not to tell nobody about that.”
Candy was crestfallen. “Didn’t tell nobody but Crooks.”
George said, “Well you guys get outa here. Jesus, seems like I can’t go away for a minute.”
Candy and Lennie stood up and went toward the door. Crooks called, “Candy!”
“Huh?”
“’Member what I said about hoein’ and doin’ odd jobs?”
“Yeah,” said Candy. “I remember.”
“Well, jus’ forget it,” said Crooks. “I didn’t mean it. Jus’ foolin’. I wouldn’ want to go no place like that.”
“Well, O.K., if you feel like that. Good night.”
The three men went out of the door. As they went through the barn the horses snorted and the halter chains rattled.
Crooks sat on his bunk and looked at the door for a moment, and then he reached for the liniment bottle. He pulled out his shirt in back, poured a little liniment in his pink palm and, reaching around, he fell slowly to rubbing his back.
Tne end of the great barn was piled high with new hay and over the pile hung the four-taloned Jackson fork suspended from its pulley. The hay came down like a mountain slope to the other end of the barn, and there was a level place as yet unfilled with the new crop. At the sides the feeding racks were visible, and between the slats the heads of horses could be seen.
It was Sunday afternoon. The resting horses nibbled the remaining wisps of hay, and they stamped their feet and they bit the wood of the mangers and rattled the halter chains. The afternoon sun sliced in through the cracks of the barn walls and lay in bright lines on the hay. There was the buzz of flies in the air, the lazy afternoon humming.
From outside came the clang of horseshoes on the playing peg and the shouts of men, playing, encouraging, jeering. But in the barn it was quiet and humming and lazy and warm.
Only Lennie was in the barn, and Lennie sat in the hay beside a packing case under a manger in the end of the barn that had not been filled with hay. Lennie sat in the hay and looked at a little dead puppy that lay in front of him. Lennie looked at it for a long time, and then he put out his huge hand and stroked it, stroked it clear from one end to the other.
And Lennie said softly to the puppy, “Why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so little as mice. I didn’t bounce you hard.” He bent the pup’s head up and looked in its face, and he said to it, “Now maybe George ain’t gonna let me tend no rabbits, if he fin’s out you got killed.”
He scooped a little hollow and laid the puppy in it and covered it over with hay, out of sight; but he continued to stare at the mound he had made. He said, “This ain’t no bad thing like I got to go hide in the brush. Oh! no. This ain’t. I’ll tell George I foun’ it dead.”
He unburied the puppy and inspected it, and he stroked it from ears to tail. He went on sorrowfully, “But he’ll know. George always knows. He’ll say, ‘You done it. Don’t try to put nothing over on me.’ An’ he’ll say, ‘Now jus’ for that you don’t get to tend no rabbits!’”