The Short Novels of John Steinbeck Read Online Free PDF Page A

this is indeed living.”
    “It’s pretty nice,” Pablo agreed.
    Pilon pounced. “See, Pablo, how would you like to rent part of my house? There would never be the cold ground for you any more. Never the hard sand under the wharf with crabs getting in your shoes. How would you like to live here with me?”
    “Sure,” said Pablo.
    “Look, you will pay only fifteen dollars a month! And you may use all the house except my bed, and all the garden. Think of it, Pablo! And if someone should write you a letter, he will have some place to send it to.”
    “Sure,” said Pablo. “That’s swell.”
    Pilon sighed with relief. He had not realized how the debt to Danny rode on his shoulders. The fact that he was fairly sure Pablo would never pay any rent did not mitigate his triumph. If Danny should ever ask for money, Pilon could say, “I will pay when Pablo pays.”
    They moved on to the next graduation, and Pilon remembered how happy he had been when he was a little boy. “No care then, Pablo. I knew not sin. I was very happy.”
    “We have never been happy since,” Pablo agreed sadly.

4
    How Jesus Maria Corcoran, a Good Man, Became an Unwilling Vehicle of Evil.
    Life passed smoothly on for Pilon and Pablo. In the morning when the sun was up clear of the pine trees, when the blue bay rippled and sparkled below them, they arose slowly and thoughtfully from their beds.
    It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
    Pablo and Pilon in their blue jeans and blue shirts walked in comradeship into the gulch behind the house, and after a little time they returned to sit in the sun on the front porch, to listen to the fish horns on the streets of Monterey, to discuss in wandering, sleepy tones the doings of Tortilla Flat; for there are a thousand climaxes on Tortilla Flat for every day the world wheels through.
    They were at peace there on the porch. Only their toes wriggled on the warm boards when the flies landed on them.
    “If all the dew were diamonds,” Pablo said, “we would be very rich. We would be drunk all our lives.”
    But Pilon, on whom the curse of realism lay uneasily, added, “Everybody would have too many diamonds. There would be no price for them, but wine always costs money. If only it would rain wine for a day, now, and we had a tank to catch it in.”
    “But good wine,” interjected Pablo. “Not rotgut swill like the last you got.”
    “I didn’t pay for it,” said Pilon. “Someone hid it in the grass by the dance hall. What can you expect of wine you find?”
    They sat and waved their hands listlessly at the flies. “Cornelia Ruiz cut up the black Mexican yesterday,” Pilon observed.
    Pablo raised his eyes in mild interest. “Fight?” he asked.
    “Oh, no, the black one did not know Cornelia got a new man yesterday, and he tried to come in. So Cornelia cut him.”
    “He should have known,” Pablo said virtuously.
    “Well, he was down in the town when Cornelia got her new man. The black one just tried to go in through the window when she locked the door.”
    “The black one is a fool,” said Pablo. “Is he dead?”
    “Oh, no. She just cut him up a little bit on the arms. Cornelia was not angry. She just didn’t want the black one to come in.”
    “Cornelia is not a very steady woman,” said Pablo. “But still she has masses sung for her father, ten years dead.”
    “He will need them,” Pilon observed. “He was a bad man and never went to jail for it, and he never went to confession. When old Ruiz was dying the priest came to give him solace, and Ruiz confessed. Cornelia says the priest was white as buckskin when he came out of the sickroom. But afterward that priest said he didn’t believe half what Ruiz confessed.”
    Pablo, with a cat-like stroke, killed a fly that landed on his