The Log From The Sea Of Cortez Part 8

A kind of anesthesia settled on the people who knew Ed Ricketts. There was not sorrow really but rather puzzled questions-what are we going to do? how can we rearrange our lives now? Everyone who knew him turned inward. It was a strange thing-quiet and strange. We were lost and could not find ourselves.

It is going to be difficult to write down the things about Ed Ricketts that must be written, hard to separate ent.i.ties. And anyone who knew him would find it difficult. Maybe some of the events are imagined. And perhaps some very small happenings may have grown out of all proportion in the mind. And then there is the personal impact. I am sure that many people, seeing this account, will be sure to say, "Why, that's not true. That's not the way he was at all. He was this way and this." And the speaker may go on to describe a person this writer did not know at all. But no one who knew him will deny the force and influence of Ed Ricketts. Everyone near him was influenced by him, deeply and permanently. Some he taught how to think, others how to see or hear. Children on the beach he taught how to look for and find beautiful animals in worlds they had not suspected were there at all. He taught everyone without seeming to.

Nearly everyone who knew him has tried to define him. Such things were said of him as, "He was half-Christ and half-goat." He was a great teacher and a great lecher-an immortal who loved women. Surely he was an original and his character was unique, but in such a way that everyone was related to him, one in this way and another in some different way. He was gentle but capable of ferocity, small and slight but strong as an ox, loyal and yet untrustworthy, generous but gave little and received much. His thinking was as paradoxical as his life. He thought in mystical terms and hated and distrusted mysticism. He was an individualist who studied colonial animals with satisfaction.

We have all tried to define Ed Ricketts with little success. Perhaps it would be better to put down the ma.s.s of material from our memories, anecdotes, quotations, events. Of course some of the things will cancel others, but that is the way he was. The essence lies somewhere. There must be some way of finding it.

Finally there is another reason to put Ed Ricketts down on paper. He will not die. He haunts the people who knew him. He is always present even in the moments when we feel his loss the most.

One night soon after his death a number of us were drinking beer in the laboratory. We laughed and told stories about Ed, and suddenly one of us said in pain, "We'll have to let him go! We'll have to release him and let him go." And that was true not for Ed but for ourselves. We can't keep him, and still he will not go away.

Maybe if I write down everything I can remember about him, that will lay the ghost. It is worth trying anyway. It will have to be true or it can't work. It must be no celebration of his virtues, because, as was said of another man, he had the faults of his virtues. There can be no formula. The simplest and best way will be just to remember-as much as I can.

The statistics on Ed Ricketts would read: Born in Chicago, played in the streets, went to public school, studied biology at the University of Chicago. Opened a small commercial laboratory in Pacific Grove, California. Moved to Cannery Row in Monterey. Degrees-Bachelor of Science only; clubs, none; honors, none. Army service-both World Wars. Killed by a train at the age of fifty-two. Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar.

I was sitting in a dentist's waiting room in New Monterey, hoping the dentist had died. I had a badly aching tooth and not enough money to have a good job done on it. My main hope was that the dentist could stop the ache without charging too much and without finding too many other things wrong.

The door to the slaughterhouse opened and a slight man with a beard came out. I didn't look at him closely because of what he held in his hand, a b.l.o.o.d.y molar with a surprisingly large piece of jawbone sticking to it. He was cursing gently as he came through the door. He held the reeking relic out to me and said, "Look at that G.o.d-d.a.m.ned thing." I was already looking at it. "That came out of me," he said.

"Seems to be more jaw than tooth," I said.

"He got impatient, I guess. I'm Ed Ricketts."

"I'm John Steinbeck. Does it hurt?"

"Not much. I've heard of you."

"I've heard of you, too. Let's have a drink."

That was the first time I ever saw him. I had heard that there was an interesting man in town who ran a commercial laboratory, had a library of good music, and interests wider than invertebratology. I had wanted to come across him for some time.

We did not think of ourselves as poor then. We simply had no money. Our food was fairly plentiful, what with fis.h.i.+ng and planning and a minimum of theft. Entertainment had to be improvised without benefit of currency. Our pleasures consisted in conversation, walks, games, and parties with people of our own financial nonexistence. A real party was dressed with a gallon of thirty-nine-cent wine, and we could have a h.e.l.l of a time on that. We did not know any rich people, and for that reason we did not like them and were proud and glad we didn't live that that way. way.

We had been timid about meeting Ed Ricketts because he was rich people by our standards. This meant that he could depend on a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a month and he had an automobile. To us this was fancy, and we didn't see how anyone could go through that kind of money. But we learned.

Knowing Ed Ricketts was instant. After the first moment I knew him, and for the next eighteen years I knew him better than I knew anyone, and perhaps I did not know him at all. Maybe it was that way with all of his friends. He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an impact. It wasn't Ed who had died but a large and important part of oneself.

When I first knew him, his laboratory was an old house in Cannery Row which he had bought and transformed to his purposes. The entrance was a kind of showroom with mounted marine specimens in gla.s.s jars on shelves around the walls. Next to this room was a small office, where for some reason the rattlesnakes were kept in cages between the safe and the filing cabinets. The top of the safe was piled high with stationery and filing cards. Ed loved paper and cards. He never ordered small amounts but huge supplies of it.

On the side of the building toward the ocean were two more rooms, one with cages for white rats-hundreds of white rats, and reproducing furiously. This room used to get pretty smelly if it was not cleaned with great regularity-which it never was. The other rear room was set up with microscopes and slides and the equipment for making and mounting and baking the delicate microorganisms which were so much a part of the laboratory income. In the bas.e.m.e.nt there was a big stockroom with jars and tanks for preserving the larger animals, and also the equipment for embalming and injecting the cats, dogfish, frogs, and other animals that were used by dissection cla.s.ses.

This little house was called Pacific Biological Laboratories, Inc., as strange an operation as ever outraged the corporate laws of California. When, after Ed's death, the corporation had to be liquidated, it was impossible to find out who owned the stock, how much of it there was, or what it was worth. Ed kept the most careful collecting notes on record, but sometimes he would not open a business letter for weeks.

How the business ran for twenty years no one knows, but it did run even though it staggered a little sometimes. At times it would spurt ahead with system and efficiency and then wearily collapse for several months. Orders would pile up on the desk. Once during a weary period someone sent Ed a cheesecake by parcel post. He thought it was preserved material of some kind, and when he finally opened it three months later we could not have identified it had it not been that a note was enclosed which said, "Eat this cheesecake at once. It's very delicate."

Often the desk was piled so high with unopened letters that they slid tiredly to the floor. Ed believed completely in the theory that a letter unanswered for a week usually requires no answer, but he went even farther. A letter unopened for a month does not require opening.

Every time some definite statement like that above is set down I think of exceptions. Ed carried on a large and varied correspondence with a number of people. He answered letters quickly and at length, using a typewriter with elite type to save s.p.a.ce. The purchase of a typewriter was a long process with him, for much of the type had to be changed from business signs to biologic signs, and he also liked to have some foreign-language signs on his typewriter, tilde for Spanish, accents and cedilla for French, umlaut for German. He rarely used them but he liked to have them.

The days of the laboratory can be split into two periods. The era before the fire and that afterwards. The fire was interesting in many respects.

One night something went wrong with the electric current on the whole water front. Where 220 volts were expected and prepared for, something like two thousand volts suddenly came through. Since in the subsequent suits the electric company was found blameless by the courts, this must be set down to an act of G.o.d. What happened was that a large part of Cannery Row burst into flames in a moment. By the time Ed awakened, the laboratory was a sheet of fire. He grabbed his typewriter, rushed to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and got his car out just in time, and just before the building was about ready to crash into its own bas.e.m.e.nt. He had no pants but he had transportation and printing. He always admired his choice. The scientific library, acc.u.mulated with such patience and some of it irreplaceable, was gone. All the fine equipment, the microscopes, the museum jars, the stock-everything was gone. Besides typewriter and automobile, only one thing was saved.

Ed had a remarkably fine safe. It was so good that he worried for fear some misguided and romantic burglar might think there was something of value in it and, trying to open it, might abuse and injure its beautiful mechanism. Consequently he not only never locked the safe but contrived a wood block so that it could not be locked. Also, he pasted a note above the combination, a.s.suring all persons that the safe was not locked. Then it developed that there was nothing to put in the safe anyway. Thus the safe became the repository of foods which might attract the flies of Cannery Row, and there were clouds of them drawn to the refuse of the fish canneries but willing to come to other foods. And it must be said that no fly was ever able to negotiate the safe.

But to get back to the fire. After the ashes had cooled, there was the safe lying on its side in the bas.e.m.e.nt where it had fallen when the floor above gave way. It must have been an excellent safe, for when we opened it we found half a pineapple pie, a quarter of a pound of Gorgonzola cheese, and an open can of sardines-all of them except the sardines in good condition. The sardines were a little dry. Ed admired that safe and used to refer to it with affection. He would say that if there had had been valuable things in the safe it would surely have protected them. "Think how delicate Gorgonzola is," he said. "It couldn't have been very hot inside that safe. The cheese is still delicious." been valuable things in the safe it would surely have protected them. "Think how delicate Gorgonzola is," he said. "It couldn't have been very hot inside that safe. The cheese is still delicious."

In spite of a great erudition, or perhaps because of it, Ed had some naive qualities. After the fire there were a number of suits against the electric company, based on the theory, later proved wrong, that if the fires were caused by error or negligence on the part of the company, the company should pay for the damage.

Pacific Biological Laboratories, Inc., was one of the plaintiffs in this suit. Ed went over to Superior Court in Salinas to testify. He told the truth as clearly and as fully as he could. He loved true things and believed in them. Then he became fascinated by the trial and the jury and he spent much time in court, inspecting the legal system with the same objective care he would have lavished on a new species of marine animal.

Afterwards he said calmly and with a certain wonder, "You see how easy it is to be completely wrong about a simple matter. It was always my conviction-or better, my impression-that the legal system was designed to arrive at the truth in matters of human and property relations.h.i.+ps. You see, I had forgotten or never considered one thing. Each side wants to win, and that factor warps any original intent to the extent that the objective truth of the matter disappears in emphasis. Now you take the case of this fire," he went on. "Both sides wanted to win, and neither had any interest in, indeed both sides seemed to have a kind of abhorrence for, the truth." It was an amazing discovery to him and one that required thinking out. Because he loved true things, he thought everyone did. The fact that it was otherwise did not sadden him. It simply interested him. And he set about rebuilding his laboratory and replacing his books with an antlike methodicalness.

Ed's use of words was unorthodox and, until you knew him, somewhat startling. Once, in getting a catalogue ready, he wanted to advise the trade that he had plenty of hagfish available. Now the hagfish is a most disgusting animal both in appearance and texture, and some of its habits are nauseating. It is a perfect animal horror. But Ed did not feel this, because the hagfish has certain functions which he found fascinating. In his catalogue he wrote, "Available in some quant.i.ties, delightful and beautiful hagfish."

He admired worms of all kinds and found them so desirable that, searching around for a pet name for a girl he loved, he called her "Wormy." She was a little huffy until she realized that he was using not the adjective but a diminutive of the noun. His use of this word meant that he found her pretty, interesting, and desirable. But still it always sounded to the girl like an adjective.

Ed loved food, and many of the words he used were eating words. I have heard him refer to a girl, a marine animal, and a plain song as "delicious."

His mind had no horizons. He was interested in everything. And there were very few things he did not like. Perhaps it would be well to set down the things he did not like. Maybe they would be some kind of key to his personality, although it is my conviction that there is no such key.

Chief among his hatreds was old age. He hated it in other people and did not even conceive of it in himself. He hated old women and would not stay in a room with them. He said he could smell them. He had a remarkable sense of smell. He could smell a mouse in a room, and I have seen him locate a rattlesnake in the brush by smell.

He hated women with thin lips. "If the lips are thin-where will there be any fullness?" he would say. His observation was certainly physical and open to verification, and he seemed to believe in its accuracy and so do I, but with less vehemence.

He loved women too much to take any nonsense from the thin-lipped ones. But if a girl with thin lips painted on fuller ones with lipstick, he was satisfied. "Her intentions are correct," he said. "There is a psychic fullness, and sometimes that can be very fine."

He hated hot soup and would pour cold water into the most beautifully prepared bisque.

He unequivocally hated to get his head wet. Collecting animals in the tide pools, he would be soaked by the waves to his eyebrows, but his head was invariably covered and safe. In the shower he wore an oilskin sou'wester-a ridiculous sight.

He hated one professor whom he referred to as "old jingle ballicks." It never developed why he hated "old jingle ballicks."

He hated pain inflicted without good reason. Driving through the streets one night, he saw a man beating a red setter with a rake handle. Ed stopped the car and attacked the man with a monkey wrench and would have killed him if the man had not run away.

Although slight in build, when he was angry Ed had no fear and could be really dangerous. On an occasion one of our cops was pistol-whipping a drunk in the middle of the night. Ed attacked the cop with his bare hands, and his fury was so great that the cop released the drunk.

This hatred was only for reasonless cruelty. When the infliction of pain was necessary, he had little feeling about it. Once during the depression we found we could buy a live sheep for three dollars. This may seem incredible now but it was so. It was a great deal of food and even for those days a great bargain. Then we had the sheep and none of us could kill it. But Ed cut its throat with no emotion whatever, and even explained to the rest of us who were upset that bleeding to death is quite painless if there is no fear involved. The pain of opening a vein is slight if the instrument is sharp, and he had opened the jugular with a scalpel and had not frightened the animal, so that our secondary or empathic pain was probably much greater than that of the sheep.

His feeling for psychic pain in normal people also was philosophic. He would say that nearly everything that can happen to people not only does happen but has happened for a million years. "Therefore," he would say, "for everything that can happen there is a channel or mechanism in the human to take care of it-a channel worn down in prehistory and transmitted in the genes."

He disliked time intensely unless it was part of an observation or an experiment. He was invariably and consciously late for appointments. He said he had once worked for a railroad where his whole life had been regulated by a second hand and that he had then conceived his disgust, a disgust for exactness in time. To my knowledge, that is the only time he ever spoke of the railroad experience. If you asked him to dinner at seven, he might get there at nine. On the other hand, if a good low collecting tide was at 6:53, he would be in the tide pool at 6:52.

The farther I get into this the more apparent it becomes to me that no rule was final. He himself was not conscious of any rules of behavior in himself, although he observed behavior patterns in other people with delight.

For many years he wore a beard, not large, and slightly pointed, which accentuated his half-goat, half-Christ appearance. He had started wearing the beard because some girl he wanted thought he had a weak chin. He didn't have a weak chin, but as long as she thought so he cultivated his beard. This was probably during the period of the prognathous Arrow Collar men in the advertising pages. Many girls later he was still wearing the beard because he was used to it. He kept it until the Army made him shave it off in the Second World War. His beard sometimes caused a disturbance. Small boys often followed Ed, baaing like sheep. He developed a perfect defense against this. He would turn and baa back at them, which invariably so embarra.s.sed the boys that they slipped shyly away.

Ed had a strange and courteous relations.h.i.+p with dogs, although he never owned one or wanted to. Pa.s.sing a dog on the street, he greeted it with dignity and, when driving, often tipped his hat and smiled and waved at dogs on the sidewalk. And d.a.m.ned if they didn't smile back at him. Cats, on the other hand, did not arouse any enthusiasm in him. However, he always remembered one cat with admiration. It was in the old days before the fire when Ed's father was still alive and doing odd jobs about the laboratory. The cat in question took a dislike to Ed's father and developed a spite tactic which charmed Ed. The cat would climb up on a shelf and pee on Ed's father when he went by-the cat did it not once but many times.

Ed regarded his father with affection. "He has one quality of genius," Ed would say. "He is always wrong. If a man makes a million decisions and judgments at random, it is perhaps mathematically tenable to suppose that he will be right half the time and wrong half the time. But you take my father-he is wrong all of the time about everything. That is a matter not of luck but of selection. That requires genius."

Ed's father was a rather silent, shy, but genial man who took so many aspirins for headaches that he had developed a chronic acetanilide poisoning and the quaint dullness that goes with it. For many years he worked in the bas.e.m.e.nt stockroom, packing specimens to be s.h.i.+pped and even mounting some of the larger and less delicate forms. His chief pride, however, was a human fetus which he had mounted in a museum jar. It was to have been the lone child of a Negress and a Chinese. When the mother succ.u.mbed to a lover's quarrel and a large dose of a.r.s.enic administered by person or persons unknown, the autopsy revealed her secret, and her secret was acquired by Pacific Biological. It was much too far advanced to be of much value for study so Ed's father inherited it. He crossed its little legs in a Buddha pose, arranged its hands in an att.i.tude of semi-prayer, and fastened it securely upright in the museum jar. It was rather a startling figure, for while it had negroid features, the preservative had turned it to a pale ivory color. It was Dad Ricketts' great pride. Children and many adults made pilgrimages to the bas.e.m.e.nt to see it. It became famous in Cannery Row.

One day an Italian woman blundered into the bas.e.m.e.nt. Although she did not speak any English, Dad Ricketts naturally thought she had come to see his prize. He showed it to her; whereupon, to his amazement and embarra.s.sment, she instantly undressed to show him her fine scar from a Caesarian section.

Cats were a not inconsiderable source of income to Pacific Biological Laboratories, Inc. They were chloroformed, the blood drained, and embalming fluid and color ma.s.s injected in the venous and arterial systems. These finished cats were sold to schools for study of anatomy.

When an order came in for, say, twenty-five cats, there was only one way to get them, since the ASPCA will not allow the raising of cats for laboratory purposes. Ed would circulate the word among the small boys of the neighborhood that twenty-five cents apiece would be paid for cats. It saddened Ed a little to see how venially warped the cat-loving small boys of Monterey were. They sold their own cats, their aunts' cats, their neighbors' cats. For a few days there would be scurrying footsteps and soft thumps as cats in gunny sacks were secretly deposited in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Then guileless and innocent-faced little catacides would collect their quarters and rush for Wing Chong's grocery for pop and cap pistols. No matter what happened, Wing Chong made some small profit.

Once a lady who liked cats very much, if they were the better sort of cats, remarked to Ed, "Of course I realize that these things are necessary. I am very broad-minded. But, thank heaven, you do not get pedigreed cats."

Ed rea.s.sured her by saying, "Madam, that's about the only kind I do get. Alley cats are too quick and intelligent. I get the sluggish stupid cats of the rich and indulgent. You can look through the bas.e.m.e.nt and see whether I have yours-yet." That friends.h.i.+p based on broad-mindedness did not flourish.

If there were a complaint and a recognition Ed always gave the cat back. Once two small boys who had obviously read about the oldest cheat in the world worked it twice on Ed before he realized it. One of them sold the cat and collected, the other came in crying and got the cat back. They should have got another cat the third time. If they had been clever and patient they would have made a fortune, but even Ed recognized a bright yellow cat with a broken tail the third time he bought it.

Everyone, so Ed said, has at least one biologic theory, and some people develop many. Ed was very tolerant of these flights of theoretic fancy. A strange group flowed through the laboratory.

There were, for instance, the people who suddenly discovered parallels in nature, like the man who conceived the thought that tuna, which is called commercially "Chicken of the Sea," might be related to chickens, because, as he said, "Their eyes look alike." Ed's reply to this man was that he rarely liked to make a positive statement, but in this case he was willing to venture the conviction that there was no very close relation between chickens and tunas.

One day there came into the laboratory a young Chinese, dressed in the double-breasted height of fas.h.i.+on, smelling of lily of the valley, and bringing a mysterious air with him. He was about twenty-three and his speech was that of an American high-school boy. He suggested darkly that he would like to see Ed alone. Ed happily joined the mystery and indicated that I was his a.s.sociate and the sharer of his secrets. We found ourselves speaking in heavy, pregnant whispers.

Our visitor asked, "Have you got any cat blood?"

"No, not right now," Ed replied. "It is true I do draw off the blood when I inject cats. What do you want it for?"

Our visitor said tightly, "I'm making an experiment." Then, to prove that we could trust his judgment and experience, he flipped his lapel to show the badge of a detective correspondence school. And he drew out his diploma to back up the badge. We were delighted with him. But he would not explain what he needed the cat blood for. Ed promised that he would save some blood from the next series of cats. We all nodded mysteriously back and forth and our visitor left quietly, walking on his toes.

Mysteries were constant at the laboratory. A thing happened one night which I later used as a short story. I wrote it just as it happened. I don't know what it means and do not even answer the letters asking what its philosophic intent is. It just happened. Very briefly, this is the incident. A woman came in one night wanting to buy a male rattlesnake. It happened that we had one and knew it was a male because it had recently copulated with another snake in the cage. The woman paid for the snake and then insisted that it be fed. She paid for a white rat to be given it. Ed put the rat in the cage. The snake struck and killed it and then unhinged its jaws preparatory to swallowing it. The frightening thing was that the woman, who had watched the process closely, moved her jaws and stretched her mouth just as the snake was doing. After the rat was swallowed, she paid for a year's supply of rats and said she would come back. But she never did come back. What happened or why I have no idea. Whether the woman was driven by a s.e.xual, a religious, a zoophilic, or a gustatory impulse we never could figure. When I wrote the story just as it happened there were curious reactions. One librarian wrote that it was not only a bad story but the worst story she had ever read. A number of orders came in for snakes. I was denounced by a religious group for having a perverted imagination, and one man found symbolism of Moses smiting the rock in the account.

I shall mention only a few other of the mysteries. There was the persecution with flowers, for example. Someone who must have been watching the laboratory waited until we were out on several occasions and then placed a line of white flowers across the doorstep. This happened a number of times and seems to have been meant as a hex. Such a curse is practiced by some northern Indians to bring death to anyone who steps over the flowers. But who put them there and whether that was the intention we never found out.

During the time when the Klan was spreading its sheets all over the nation the laboratory got its share of attention. Small red cards with the printed words, "We are watching you, K.K.K.," were slipped under the door on several occasions.

Mysteries had a bad effect on Ed Ricketts. He hated all thoughts and manifestations of mysticism with an intensity which argued a basic and undefeatable belief in them. He refused to have his fortune told or his palm read even in fun. The play with a Ouija board drove him into a nervous rage. Ghost stories made him so angry that he would leave a room where one was being told.

In the course of time Ed's father died. There was an intercom phone between the bas.e.m.e.nt and the upstairs office. Once after his father's death Ed admitted to me that he had a waking nightmare that the intercom phone would ring, that he would lift the receiver and hear his father's voice on the other end. He had dreamed of this, and it was becoming an obsession with him. I suggested that someone might play a practical joke and that it might be a good idea to disconnect the phone. This he did instantly, but he went further and removed both phones. "It would be worse disconnected," he said. "I couldn't stand that."

I think that if anyone had played such a joke, Ed would have been very ill from shock. The white flowers bothered him a great deal.

I have said that his mind had no horizons, but that is untrue. He forbade his mind to think of metaphysical or extra-physical matters, and his mind refused to obey him.

Life on Cannery Row was curious and dear and outrageous. Across the street from Pacific Biological was Monterey's largest, most genteel and respected wh.o.r.ehouse. It was owned and operated by a very great woman who was beloved and trusted by all who came in contact with her except those few whose judgment was twisted by a limited virtue. She was a large-hearted woman and a law-abiding citizen in every way except one-she did violate the nebulous laws against prost.i.tution. But since the police didn't seem to care, she felt all right about it and even made little presents in various directions.

During the depression Madam paid the grocery bills for most of the dest.i.tute families on Cannery Row. When the Chamber of Commerce collected money for any cause and businessmen were a.s.sessed at ten dollars, Madam was always nicked for a hundred. The same was true for any mendicant charity. She halfway paid for the widows and orphans of policemen and firemen. She was expected to and did contribute ten times the ordinary amount toward any civic brainstorm of citizens who pretended she did not exist. Also, she was a wise and tolerant pushover for any hard-luck story. Everyone put the bee on her. Even when she knew it was a fake she dug down.

Ed Ricketts maintained relations of respect and friendliness with Madam. He did not patronize the house. His s.e.x life was far too complicated for that. But Madam brought many of her problems to him, and he gave her the best of his thinking and his knowledge, both scientific and profane.

There seems to be a tendency toward hysteria among girls in such a house. I do not know whether hysterically inclined types enter the business or whether the business produces hysteria. But often Madam would send a girl over to the laboratory to talk to Ed. He would listen with great care and concern to her troubles, which were rarely complicated, and then he would talk soothingly to her and play some of his favorite music to her on his phonograph. The girl usually went back reinforced with his strength. He never moralized in any way. He would be more likely to examine the problem carefully, with calm and clarity, and to lift the horrors out of it by easy examination. Suddenly the girl would discover that she was not alone, that many other people had the same problems-in a word that her misery was not unique. And then she usually felt better about it.

There was a tacit but strong affection between Ed and Madam. She did not have a license to sell liquor to be taken out. Quite often Ed would run out of beer so late at night that everything except Madam's house was closed. There followed a ritual which was thoroughly enjoyed by both parties. Ed would cross the street and ask Madam to sell him some beer. She invariably refused, explaining every time that she did not have a license. Ed would shrug his shoulders, apologize for asking, and go back to the lab. Ten minutes later there would be soft footsteps on the stairs and a little thump in front of the door and then running slippered steps down again. Ed would wait a decent interval and then go to the door. And on his doorstep, in a paper bag, would be six bottles of ice-cold beer. He would never mention it to Madam. That would have been breaking the rules of the game. But he repaid her with hours of his time when she needed his help. And his help was not inconsiderable.

Sometimes, as happens even in the soundest wh.o.r.ehouse, there would be a fight on a Sat.u.r.day night-one of those things which are likely to occur when love and wine come together. It was only sensible that Madam would not want to bother the police or a doctor with her little problem. Then her good friend Ed would patch up cut faces and torn ears and split mouths. He was a good operator and there were never any complaints. And naturally no one ever mentioned the matter since he was not a doctor of medicine and had no license to practice anything except philanthropy. Madam and Ed had the greatest respect for each other. "She's one h.e.l.l of a woman," he said. "I wish good people could be as good."

Just as Madam was the target for every tired heist, so Ed was the fall guy for any illicit scheme that could be concocted by the hustling instincts of some of the inhabitants of Cannery Row. The people of the Row really loved Ed, but this affection did not forbid them from subjecting him to any outrageous scheming that occurred to them. In nearly all cases he knew the game before the play had even started and his hand would be in his pocket before the intricate gambit had come to a request. But he would cautiously wait out the pitch before he brought out the money. "It gives them so much pleasure to earn it," he would say.

He never gave much. He never had much. But in spite of his wide experience in chicanery, now and then he would be startled into admiration by some particularly audacious or imaginative approach to the problem of a touch.

One evening while he was injecting small dogfish in the bas.e.m.e.nt, one of his well-known clients came to him with a face of joy.

"I am a happy man," the hustler proclaimed, and went on to explain how he had arrived at the true philosophy of rest and pleasure.

"You think I've got nothing, Eddie," the man lectured him. "But you don't know from my simple outsides what I've got inside."

Ed moved restlessly, waiting for the trap.

"I've got peace of mind, Eddie. I've got a place to sleep, not a palace but comfortable. I'm not hungry very often. And best of all I've got friends. I guess I'm gladdest of all for my friends."

Ed braced himself. Here it comes, he thought.

"Why, Ed," the client continued, "some nights I just lay in my bed and thank G.o.d for my blessings. What does a man need, Eddie-a few things like food and shelter and a few little tiny vices, like liquor and women-and tobacco-"

Ed could feel it moving in on him. "No liquor," he said.

"I ain't drinking," the client said with dignity, "didn't you hear?"

"How much?" Ed asked.

"Only a dime, Eddie boy. I need a couple of sacks of tobacco. I don't mind using the brown papers on the sacks. I like the brown papers."

Ed gave him a quarter. He was delighted. "Where else in the world could you find a man who would lavish care and thought and art and emotion on a lousy dime?" he said. He felt that it had been worth more than a quarter, but he did not tell his client so.

On another occasion Ed was on his way across the street to Wing Chong's grocery for a couple of quarts of beer. Another of his clients was sitting comfortably in the gutter in front of the store. He glanced casually at the empty quart bottles Ed carried in his hand.

"Say Doc," he said, "I'm having a little trouble peeing. What's a good diuretic?"

Ed fell into that hole. "I never needed to think beyond beer," he said.

The man looked at the bottles in Ed's hand and raised his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. And only then did Ed realize that he had been had. "Oh, come on in," he said, and he bought beer for both of them.

Afterward he said admiringly, "Can you imagine the trouble he went to for that beer? He had to look up the word diuretic, and then he had to plan to be there just when I went over for beer. And he had to read my mind quite a bit. If any part of his plan failed, it all failed. I think it is remarkable."