Sweet Thursday

Read Online Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck - Free Book Online Page B

Book: Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck Read Free Book Online
Authors: John Steinbeck
Ads: Link
said to Fauna, “Doc acts like a guy that needs a dame.”
    â€œHe can have the courtesy of the house anytime,” said Fauna.
    â€œI don’t mean that,” said Mack. “He needs a dame around. He needs a dame to fight with. Why, that can keep a guy so goddam busy defending himself he ain’t got no time to blame himself.”
    Fauna regarded marriage with a benevolent eye. Not only was it a desirable social condition, but it sent her some of her best customers.
    â€œWell, let’s marry him off,” said Fauna.
    â€œOh no,” said Mack. “I wouldn’t go that far. My God! Not Doc!”
    Doc tried to solve his problem in the ancient way. He took a long, leisurely trip to La Jolla, four hundred miles south. He traveled in the old manner, with lots of beer and a young lady companion whose interest in invertebrate zoology Doc thought might be flexible—and it was.
    The whole trip was a success: weather calm and warm, tides low. Under the weed-wreathed boulders of the intertidal zone Doc found, by great good fortune, twenty-eight baby octopi with tentacles four or five inches long. It was a little bonanza for him if he could keep them alive. He handled them tenderly, put them in a wooden collecting bucket, and floated seaweed over them for protection. An excitement was growing in him.
    His companion began to be a little disappointed. Doc’s enthusiasm for the octopi indicated that he was not as flexible as she. And no girl likes to lose center stage, particularly to an octopus. The four-hundred-mile trip back to Monterey was made in a series of short dashes, for Doc stopped every few miles to dampen the sack that covered the collecting bucket.
    â€œOctopi can’t stand heat,” he said.
    He recited no poetry to her. The subject of her eyes, her feelings, her skin, her thought, did not come up. Instead Doc told her about octopi—a subject that would have fascinated her two days before.
    Doc said, “They’re wonderful animals, delicate and complicated and shy.”
    â€œUgly brutes,” said the girl.
    â€œNo, not ugly,” said Doc. “But I see why you say it. People have always been repelled and at the same time fascinated by octopi. Their eyes look baleful and cruel. And all kinds of myths have grown up around octopi too. You know the story of the kraken, of course.”
    â€œOf course,” she said shortly.
    â€œOctopi are timid creatures really,” Doc said excitedly. “Most complicated. I’ll show you when I get them in the aquarium. Of course there can’t be any likeness, but they do have some traits that seem to be almost human. Mostly they hide and avoid trouble, but I’ve seen one deliberately murder another. They appear to feel terror too, and rage. They change color when they’re disturbed and angry, almost like the rage blush of a man.”
    â€œVery interesting,” said the girl, and she tucked her skirt in around her knees.
    Doc went on, “Sometimes they get so mad they collapse and die of something that parallels apoplexy. They’re highly emotional animals. I’m thinking of writing a paper about them.”
    â€œYou might find out what causes human apoplexy,” said the girl, and because he wasn’t listening for it, Doc didn’t hear the satire in her tone.
    There’s no need for giving the girl a name. She never came back to Western Biological. Her interest in science blinked out like a candle, but a flame was lighted in Doc.
    The flame of conception seems to flare and go out, leaving man shaken, and at once happy and afraid. There’s plenty of precedent of course. Everyone knows about Newton’s apple. Charles Darwin and his Origin of Species flashed complete in one second, and he spent the rest of his life backing it up; and the theory of relativity occurred to Einstein in the time it takes to clap your hands. This is the greatest mystery of the human

Similar Books

The Last Mile

Tim Waggoner

Voices of Islam

Vincent J. Cornell

Back in her time

Patricia Corbett Bowman

Whisper Death

John Lawrence Reynolds