Sweet Thursday

21 Sweet Thursday Was One Hell of a Day

Fission took place in the Palace Flop house, and from there a chain reaction flared up in all directions. Cannery Row caught fire. Mack and the boys had the energy and the enthusiasm of plutonium. Only very lazy men could have done so much in so short a time. Oh, the meetings, the messages carried, the plans and counterplans! Mack had to make more and more raffle tickets. What started as a kind of gentle blackmail assumed the nature of an outpouring of popular love for Doc. People bought tickets, sold tickets, traded tickets. Emissaries covered the Southern Pacific Depot, the Greyhound Bus Station. Joe Blaikey, the constable, carried tickets in his pocket and canceled parking summonses if the lawbreaker bought a two-dollar chance on the Palace Flop house.

Whitey No. 1 invaded the foreign and fancy purlieus of Pebble Beach and Carmel and the Highlands. Whitey No. 2’s method was characteristically direct. The first man to refuse him got a rock through his windshield, and the news traveled.

To the boys it had become a crusade. And the winning ticket, of course, with Doc’s name on it, was in a tomato can, buried in the vacant lot. By tacit agreement no one mentioned the raffle to Doc. To Doc’s friends Mack and the boys mentioned the rigging of the lottery, but to strangers—who cared? It was a perfect example of the collective goodness and generosity of a community.

But if communities have a group Good Fairy they also have an Imp who works parallel with and sometimes in collaboration with the Good Fairy. Cannery Row’s Imp saw the Good Fairy stirring to life, and he sprang to action. Into the ears of his clients he whispered a few words, and his constituents grinned with evil pleasure and their thoughts went like this: The Patrón is a wise guy. He’s a newcomer, nice clothes, makes his money off poor helpless wetbacks because he’s smart. Lee Chong must have sold him the Palace Flop house and he’s forgot it or he never knew it. Once Doc wins it the Patrón won’t dare make a move.

It is such fun to outsmart a smart guy. The Imp of the Row[84] had a good professional time and for once his job seemed almost virtuous. People bought more tickets from the Patrón than from anyone else. They wanted to watch his face so they could compare it with his face when he found out.

Now ordinarily Mack and the boys would have strung out the ticket sales over weeks, but time was breathing down their necks. If the Patrón got his tax bill from the county their plan would blow up in their faces. They had to take a chance with Friday—Saturday was the deadline. The boys spread the word that there would be medium-heavy refreshments at the Palace Flop house on Saturday night and that contributions of any nature would be welcome.

Mack called on Doc the afternoon of Sweet Thursday. “If you ain’t doing anything Saturday night,” he said, “I and the boys are throwing a little wing-ding. R.S.V.P.”

“Moi, je respond oui.”

“Come again?”

“I’ll be there,” said Doc.

Then Mack remembered a mission with which he had been entrusted. “I guess I could squirm it out of you, Doc, like I done once before,” he said, “but I’ll come right out in the open. When’s your birthday?”

A shudder went through Doc. “Please don’t give me a party,” he begged. “The last one you gave nearly ruined me.”

“This hasn’t got nothing to do with a party—it’s a bet,” said Mack. “I stand to win a buck. When is it?” Mack prodded him.

Doc picked the first date that came to him. “July fourth,” he said.

“Why, that’s like the Fourth of July!”

“A little,” said Doc, and he felt greatly relieved.

Later that afternoon Fauna and the girls called formally at the Palace Flop house in answer to the note Mack had sent asking them to drink a jolt of good stuff. Suzy did not attend. She had been quiet all morning, and then she mooned away on the path that leads along the sea to the light house on Point Pinos. She looked in the tide pools, and she picked a bunch of the tiny flowers that grow as close to the ocean as they can. Suzy was restless and unhappy. She felt excitement and nausea at the same time. She wanted to smile and she wanted to cry, and she was scared and happy and hopeless. Doc had asked her to have dinner with him, at Sonny Boy’s on the pier, and Fauna had urged her to go.

Suzy’s first reaction had been violent. “I won’t do it!” she said.

“Sure you’ll go,” said Fauna. “I may have to persuade you with a indoor-ball bat—but you’ll go.”

“You can’t make me.”

“Want to test that? Why, I’ve wore my brain down to the knuckles, trying to do something nice for you.”

“I ain’t got nothing to wear,” said Suzy.

“Neither has Doc. If he can go like he does, what right’s a chippy to get grand?”

“But hell, Fauna, he’s—he’s got it inside. People like me got to put on a puff because they got nothing else. I’m afraid I’ll turn mean because I don’t know how to be nice.”

“Suzy,” said Fauna, “I’m going to give you a piece of advice, and if you won’t take it, I may just call Joe Blaikey and get you floated right out of town. Don’t throw the first punch! Wait’ll you’re hit before you put up your dukes. Most of the time they ain’t nobody laid a glove on you.”

“Suppose I could wear my suit? It’s got a big spot,” said Suzy.

“Ask Joe Elegant to spot-clean it and press it. Tell him I said so.”

And thus it was that Suzy went walking out light house way on Sweet Thursday.

The meeting in the Palace wasn’t really necessary, for word of the raffle had got around and Fauna had bought ten tickets and made each girl buy one.

Eddie had borrowed glasses from Wide Ida’s—for once, with her permission. She was invited to the meeting too, and she brought two quarts of Pine Canyon whisky.

“It don’t cost hardly nothing,” she explained.

Formality took hold of the meeting. Agnes and Mabel kept their knees together when they sat down, and Fauna’s look of thunder made Becky snap hers shut so quickly she spilled her drink.

“She’s going to be a wallager,” said Mack. “I can’t wait to see Doc’s face when he wins.”

Wide Ida asked, “How you going to explain it to him he wins when he didn’t buy no ticket?”

“Why, we’ll say a friend did it and don’t want his name mentioned. I saw Doc a little while ago. He said he’d sure be here.”

Fauna said, “Did you find out when is his birthday?”

“Sure. July fourth.”

Fauna exhaled with the sound of escaping gas. “Holy apples! He’s a gone goose. He got a born-on Oregon boot. I never seen nothing work out so nice!”

“What’re you talking about?” said Mack.

Fauna’s eyes were misty. “Mack,” she said huskily, “I don’t want to horn in on your party, but why couldn’t we make it an engagement party too?”

“Who’s engaged?”

“Well, they ain’t yet—but they will be.”

“Who?”

“Doc and Suzy. It’s right in their horoscopes.”

“S’pose they won’t?”

“They will,” said Fauna. “You can just depend on that—they will!”

The little group sat in silence, and then Mack said softly, “Did I say it was going to be a wallager? This here’s a tom-wallager![85] They ain’t been nothing so stupendous since the Second World War! You sure Doc’ll go for it?”

“You let me take care of that—and don’t none of you blab it to him. One time I managed a fighter, Kiss of Death Kelly, welterweight. I’ll have Doc in the ring.”

Eddie asked, “How about Suzy?”

“Suzy’s already in the ring,” said Fauna.

They parted quietly, but in their breasts a flame of emotion burned. There never was a day like that Sweet Thursday. And it wasn’t over yet.