Curley’s shoulders dropped and squared. “How long ago’d he go?”
“Five — ten minutes.”
Curley jumped out the door and banged it after him.
Whit stood up. “I guess maybe I’d like to see this,” he said. “Curley’s just spoilin’ or he wouldn’t start for Slim. An’ Curley’s handy, God damn handy. Got in the finals for the Golden Gloves. He got newspaper clippings about it.” He considered. “But jus’ the same, he better leave Slim alone. Nobody don’t know what Slim can do.”
“Thinks Slim’s with his wife, don’t he?” said George.
“Looks like it,” Whit said. “’Course Slim ain’t. Least I don’t think Slim is. But I like to see the fuss if it comes off. Come on, le’s go.”
George said, “I’m stayin’ right here. I don’t want to get mixed up in nothing. Lennie and me got to make a stake.”
Carlson finished the cleaning of the gun and put it in the bag and pushed the bag under his bunk. “I guess I’ll go out and look her over,” he said. Old Candy lay still, and Lennie, from his bunk, watched George cautiously.
When Whit and Carlson were gone and the door closed after them, George turned to Lennie. “What you got on your mind?”
“I ain’t done nothing, George. Slim says I better not pet them pups so much for a while. Slim says it ain’t good for them; so I come right in. I been good, George.”
“I coulda told you that,” said George.
“Well, I wasn’t hurtin’ ‘em none. I jus’ had mine in my lap pettin’ it.”
George asked, “Did you see Slim out in the barn?”
“Sure I did. He tol’ me I better not pet that pup no more.”
“Did you see that girl?”
“You mean Curley’s girl?”
“Yeah. Did she come in the barn?”
“No. Anyways I never seen her.”
“You never seen Slim talkin’ to her?”
“Uh-uh. She ain’t been in the barn.”
“O.K.,” said George. “I guess them guys ain’t gonna see no fight. If there’s any fightin’, Lennie, you keep out of it.”
“I don’t want no fights,” said Lennie. He got up from his bunk and sat down at the table, across from George. Almost automatically George shuffled the cards and laid out his solitaire hand. He used a deliberate, thoughtful slowness.
Lennie reached for a face card and studied it, then turned it upside down and studied it. “Both ends the same,” he said. “George, why is it both ends the same?”
“I don’t know,” said George. “That’s jus’ the way they make ‘em. What was Slim doin’ in the barn when you seen him?”
“Slim?”
“Sure. You seen him in the barn, an’ he tol’ you not to pet the pups so much.”
“Oh, yeah. He had a can a’ tar an’ a paint brush. I don’t know what for.”
“You sure that girl didn’t come in like she come in here today?”
“No. She never come.”
George sighed. “You give me a good whore house every time,” he said. “A guy can go in an’ get drunk and get ever’thing outa his system all at once, an’ no messes. And he knows how much it’s gonna set him back. These here jail baits is just set on the trigger of the hoosegow.”
Lennie followed his words admiringly, and moved his lips a little to keep up. George continued, “You remember Andy Cushman, Lennie? Went to grammar school?”
“The one that his old lady used to make hot cakes for the kids?” Lennie asked.
“Yeah. That’s the one. You can remember anything if there’s anything to eat in it.” George looked carefully at the solitaire hand. He put an ace up on his scoring rack and piled a two, three and four of diamonds on it. “Andy’s in San Quentin right now on account of a tart,” said George.
Lennie drummed on the table with his fingers. “George?”
“Huh?”
“George, how long’s it gonna be till we get that little place an’ live on the fatta the lan’ — an’ rabbits?”
“I don’t know”, said George. “We gotta get a big stake together. I know a little place we can get cheap, but they ain’t givin’ it away.”
Old Candy turned slowly over. His eyes were wide open. He watched George carefully.
Lennie said, “Tell about that place, George.”
“I jus’ tol’ you, jus’ las’ night.”
“Go on — tell again, George.”
“Well, it’s ten acres,” said George. “Got a little win’mill. Got a little shack on it, an’ a chicken run. Got a kitchen, orchard, cherries, apples, peaches, ‘cots, nuts, got a few berries. They’s a place for alfalfa and plenty water to flood it. They’s a pig pen—”
“An’ rabbits, George.”
“No place for rabbits now, but I could easy build a few hutches and you could feed alfalfa to the rabbits.”
“Damn right, I could,” said Lennie. “You God damn right I could.”
George’s hands stopped working with the cards. His voice was growing warmer. “An’ we could have a few pigs. I could build a smoke house like the one gran’pa had, an’ when we kill a pig we can smoke the bacon and the hams, and make sausage an’ all like that. An’ when the salmon run up river we could catch a hundred of ‘em an’ salt ‘em down or smoke ‘em. We could have them for breakfast. They ain’t nothing so nice as smoked salmon. When the fruit come in we could can it — and tomatoes, they’re easy to can. Ever’ Sunday we’d kill a chicken or a rabbit. Maybe we’d have a cow or a goat, and the cream is so God damn thick you got to cut it with a knife and take it out with a spoon.”
Lennie watched him with wide eyes, and old Candy watched him too. Lennie said softly, “We could live offa the fatta the lan’.”
“Sure,” said George. “All kin’s a vegetables in the garden, and if we want a little whisky we can sell a few eggs or something, or some milk. We’d jus’ live there. We’d belong there. There wouldn’t be no more runnin’ round the country and gettin’ fed by a Jap cook. No, sir, we’d have our own place where we belonged and not sleep in no bunk house.”