“No,” he said shortly.
“I wish I knew,” she said as though he had not answered.
Tom did not speak again as they walked down the hill. But on the porch he said suddenly, “You’re lonely here. You don’t want to stay.” He waited for a moment. “Answer me. Isn’t that true?”
“I want to stay here more than I want to stay anyplace else.” She asked, “Do you ever go to women?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Is it any good to you?”
“Not much.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
In silence they went back to the house. Tom lighted the lamp in the old living room. The horsehair sofa he had rebuilt raised its gooseneck against the wall, and the green carpet had tracks worn light between the doors.
Tom sat down by the round center table. Dessie sat on the sofa, and she could see that he was still embarrassed from his last admission. She thought, How pure he is, how unfit for a world that even she knew more about than he did. A dragon killer, he was, a rescuer of damsels, and his small sins seemed so great to him that he felt unfit and unseemly. She wished her father were here. Her father had felt greatness in Tom. Perhaps he would know now how to release it out of its darkness and let it fly free.
She took another tack to see whether she could raise some spark in him. “As long as we’re talking about ourselves, have you ever thought that our whole world is the valley and a few trips to San Francisco, and have you ever been farther south than San Luis Obispo? I never have.”
“Neither have I,” said Tom.
“Well, isn’t that silly?”
“Lots of people haven’t,” he said.
“But it’s not a law. We could go to Paris and to Rome or to Jerusalem. I would dearly love to see the Colosseum.”
He watched her suspiciously, expecting some kind of joke. “How could we?” he asked. “That takes a lot of money.”
“I don’t think it does,” she said. “We wouldn’t have to stay in fancy places. We could take the cheapest boats and the lowest class. That’s how our father came here from Ireland. And we could go to Ireland.”
Still he watched her, but a burning was beginning in his eyes.
Dessie went on, “We could take a year for work, save every penny. I can get some sewing to do in King City. Will would help us. And next summer you could sell all the stock and we could go. There’s no law forbids it.”
Tom got up and went outside. He looked up at the summer stars, at blue Venus and red Mars. His hands flexed at his sides, closed to fists and opened. Then he turned and went back into the house. Dessie had not moved.
“Do you want to go, Dessie?”
“More than anything in the world.”
“Then we will go!”
“Do you want to go?”
“More than anything in the world,” he said, and then, “Egypt—have you given a thought to Egypt?”
“Athens,” she said.
“Constantinople!”
“Bethlehem!”
“Yes, Bethlehem,” said he suddenly, “Go to bed. We’ve got a year of work—a year. Get some rest. I’m going to borrow money from Will to buy a hundred shoats.”
“What will you feed them?”
“Acorns,” said Tom. “I’ll make a machine to gather acorns.”
After he had gone to his room she could hear him knocking around and talking softly to himself. Dessie looked out her window at the starlit night and she was glad. But she wondered whether she really wanted to go, or whether Tom did. And as she wondered the whisper of pain grew up from her side.
When Dessie got up in the morning Tom was already at his drawing board, beating his forehead with his fist and growling to himself. Dessie looked over his shoulder. “Is it the acorn machine?”
“It should be easy,” he said. “But how to get out the sticks and rocks?”
“I know you’re the inventor, but I invented the greatest acorn picker in the world and it’s ready to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Children,” she said. “Those restless little hands.”
“They wouldn’t do it, not even for pay.”
“They would for prizes. A prize for everyone and a big prize for the winner—maybe a hundred-dollar prize. They’d sweep the valley clean. Will you let me try?”
He scratched his head. “Why not?” he said. “But how would you collect the acorns?”
“The children will bring them in,” said Dessie. “Just let me take care of it. I hope you have plenty of storage space.”
“It would be exploiting the young, wouldn’t it?”
“Certainly it would,” Dessie agreed. “When I had my shop I exploited the girls who wanted to learn to sew—and they exploited me. I think I will call this The Great Monterey County Acorn Contest. And I won’t let everyone in. Maybe bicycles for prizes—wouldn’t you pick up acorns in hope of a bicycle, Tom?”
“Sure I would,” he said. “But couldn’t we pay them too?”
“Not with money,” Dessie said. “That would reduce it to labor, and they will not labor if they can help it, Nor will I.”
Tom leaned back from his board and laughed. “Nor will I,” he said. “All right, you are in charge of acorns and I am in charge of pigs.”
Dessie said, “Tom, wouldn’t it be ridiculous if we made money, we of all people?”
“But you made money in Salinas,” he said.
“Some—not much. But oh, I was rich in promises. If the bills had ever been paid we wouldn’t need pigs. We could go to Paris tomorrow.”
“I’m going to drive in and talk to Will,” said Tom. He pushed his chair back from the drawing board. “Want to come with me?”
“No, I’ll stay and make my plans. Tomorrow I start The Great Acorn Contest.”
2
On the ride back to the ranch in the late afternoon Tom was depressed and sad. As always, Will had managed to chew up and spit out his enthusiasm. Will had pulled his lip, rubbed his eyebrows, scratched his nose, cleaned his glasses, and made a major operation of cutting and lighting a cigar. The pig proposition was full of holes, and Will was able to put his fingers in the holes.
The Acorn Contest wouldn’t work although he was not explicit about why it wouldn’t. The whole thing was shaky, particularly in these times. The very best Will was able to do was to agree to think about it.