The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck
The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas
Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat
like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level
land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like
metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas
1~iver, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine,
but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow
scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.
cinematic
It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and
tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were
mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain did not go
together.
Across the river, on Henry Allen's foothill ranch there was
little work to be done, for the hay was cut and stored and the orchards were
plowed up to receive the rain deeply when it should come. The cattle on the
higher slopes were becoming shaggy and rough-coated.
cinematic
Elisa Allen, working in her flower garden, looked down across
the yard and saw Henry, her husband, talking to two men in business suits. The three of them stood by
the tractor shed, each man
with one foot on the side of the little Ford-son. They smoked cigarettes and
studied the machine as they talked.
Elisa watched
them for a moment and then went back to her work. She was thirty-five. Her
face was lean and strong and her eyes were as clear as water. Her figure
looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled
low down over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost
completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the
snips, the trowel and scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She
wore heavy leather gloves to protect her hands while she worked.
She was cutting down the old year's chrysanthemum stalks with a
pair of short and powerful
scissors. She looked down toward the men by the tractor shed now and
then. Her face was eager and
mature and handsome; even her work with the scissors was over-eager,
over-powerful. The chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her
energy.
She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of
her glove, and left a smudge of earth on her cheek in doing it. Behind her
stood the neat white farm house with red geraniums close-banked around it as
high as the windows. It was
a hard-swept looking little house, with hard-polished windows, and a clean
mud-mat on the front steps.
Elisa cast another glance toward the tractor shed. The
strangers were getting into their Ford coupe. She took off a glove and put her strong fingers down
into the forest of new green chrysanthemum sprouts that were growing around
the old roots. She spread the leaves and looked down among the close-growing
stems. No aphids were there,
no sow bugs or snails or cutworms. Her terrier fingers destroyed such pests
before they could get started.
Elisa started at the sound of her husband's voice. He had come
near quietly, and he leaned over the wire fence that protected her flower
garden from cattle and dogs and chickens.
"At it again," he said. "You've got a strong new
crop coming.
Elisa straightened her back and pulled on the gardening glove
again. "Yes. They'll be strong this coming year." In her tone and
on her face there was a little smugness.
You've got a gift with things," Henry observed. "Some
of those yellow chrysanthemums you had this year were ten inches across. I wish you'd work out in the
orchard and raise some apples that big."
Her eyes sharpened. "Maybe I could do it, too. I've a gift with things, all right.
My mother had it. She could stick anything in the ground and make it grow.
She said it was having planters' hands that knew how to do it."
"Well,
it sure works with flowers," he said. "Henry, who were those
men you were talking to?"
"Why, sure, that's what I came to tell you. They were from
the Western Meat Company. I sold those thirty head of three-year-old steers.
Got nearly my own price, too."
"Good," she said. "Good for you.
"And I thought," he continued, "I thought how
it's Saturday afternoon, and we might go into Salinas for dinner at a
restaurant, and then to a picture show--to celebrate, you see."
"Good," she repeated. "Oh, yes. That will be
good."
Henry put
on his joking tone. "There's fights tonight.
How'd you like to go to the fights?"
"Oh,
no," she said breathlessly. "No, I wouldn't like fights."
"Just fooling, Elisa. We'll go to a movie. Let's see. It's two now. I'm going to take Scotty and bring down
those steers from the hill. It'll take us maybe two hours. We'll go in town
about five and have dinner at the Cominos Hotel.
Like that?"
"Of course I'll like it. It's good to eat away from
home."
"All right, then. I'll go get up a couple of horses."
She said, "I'll have plenty of time to transplant some of
these sets, I guess."
She heard her husband calling Scotty down by the barn. And a
little later she saw the two men ride up the pale yellow hillside in search
of the steers.
There was a little square sandy bed kept for rooting the
chrysanthemums. With her trowel she turned the soil over and over, and
smoothed it and patted it firm. Then she dug ten parallel trenches to receive
the sets. Back at the chrysanthemum bed she pulled out the little crisp
shoots, trimmed off the leaves of each one with her scissors and laid it on a
small orderly pile.
A squeak of wheels and plod of hoofs came from the road. Elisa
looked up. The country road ran along the dense bank of willows and
cotton-woods that bordered the river, and up this road came a curious
vehicle, curiously drawn. It was an old spring-wagon, with a round canvas top
on it like the cover of a prairie schooner. It was drawn by an old bay horse
and a little grey-and-white burro. A big stubble-bearded man sat between the cover
flaps and drove the crawling team. Underneath the wagon, between the hind
wheels, a lean and rangy mongrel dog walked sedately. Words were painted on
the canvas in clumsy, crooked letters. "Pots, pans, knives, sisors, lawn mores, Fixed." Two rows of articles,
and the triumphantly definitive "Fixed" below. The black paint had
run down in little sharp points beneath each letter.
Elisa, squatting on the ground, watched to see the crazy,
loose-jointed wagon pass by. But it didn't pass. It turned into the farm road
in front of her house, crooked old wheels skirling and squeaking. The rangy
dog darted from between the wheels and ran ahead. Instantly the two ranch
shepherds flew out at him. Then all three stopped, and with stiff and
quivering tails, with taut straight legs, with ambassadorial dignity, they
slowly circled, sniffing daintily. The caravan pulled up to Elisa's wire
fence and stopped. Now the newcomer dog, feeling outnumbered, lowered his
tail and retired under the wagon with raised hackles and bared teeth.
The man on the wagon seat called out, "That's a bad dog in
a fight when he gets started."
Elisa laughed. I see he is. How soon does he generally get
started?"
The man caught up her laughter and echoed it heartily.
"Sometimes not for weeks and weeks," he said. He climbed stiffly
down, over the wheel. The horse and the donkey drooped like unwatered flowers.
Elisa saw that he was a very big man. Although his hair and
beard were graying, he did not look old. His worn black suit was wrinkled and
spotted with grease. The laughter had disappeared from his face and eyes the
moment his laughing voice ceased. His eyes were dark, and they were full of
the brooding that gets in the eyes of teamsters and of sailors. The calloused
hands he rested on the wire fence were cracked, and every crack was a black
line. He took off his battered hat.
"I'm off my general road, ma'am," he said. "Does
this dirt road cut over across the river to the Los Angeles highway?"
Elisa stood up and shoved the thick scissors in her apron pocket. "Well, yes,
it does, but it winds around and then fords the river. I don't think your
team could pull through the sand."
He replied with some asperity, "It might surprise you what
them beasts can pull through."
"When they get started?" she asked.
He smiled for a second. "Yes. When they get started."
"Well," said Elisa, "I think you'll save time if
you go back to the Salinas road and pick up the highway there."
He drew a
big finger down the chicken wire and made it sing. "I ain't in any hurry, ma am. I go from Seattle to San Diego
and back every year. Takes all my time. About six months each way. I aim to
follow nice weather."
Elisa took off her gloves and stuffed them in the apron pocket with the
scissors. She touched the under edge of her man's hat, searching for fugitive
hairs. "That sounds
like a nice kind of a way to live," she said.
He leaned confidentially over the fence. "Maybe you
noticed the writing on my wagon. I mend pots and sharpen knives and scissors.
You got any of them things to do?"
"Oh, no," she said quickly. "Nothing like
that." Her eyes hardened with resistance.
"Scissors
(1) is the worst
thing," he explained. "Most people just ruin scissors trying to sharpen
'em, but I know how. I got a special tool. It's a
little bobbit kind of thing, and patented. But it
sure does the trick."
"No. My scissors are all sharp."
"All right, then. Take a pot, (2) " he continued earnestly,
"a bent pot, or a pot with a hole. I can make it like new so you don't
have to buy no new ones. That's a saving for you.
"No," she said shortly. "I tell you I have
nothing like that for you to do."
His face
fell to an exaggerated sadness. His voice took on a whining undertone. "I ain't had a thing to do today. Maybe I won't have no
supper tonight. (3)
You see I'm off my regular road. I know folks on the highway clear from
Seattle to San Diego. They save their things for me to sharpen up because
they know I do it so good and save them money.
"I'm
sorry," Elisa said irritably. "I haven't anything for you to
do."
His eyes left her face and fell to searching the ground. They
roamed about until they came to the chrysanthemum bed where she had been
working. "What's them plants, ma'am?" (4)
The irritation
and resistance melted from Elisa's face.
"Oh, those are chrysanthemums, giant whites and yellows. I raise them
every year, bigger than anybody around here."
"Kind of a long-stemmed flower? Looks like a quick puff of colored smoke?"
he asked.
"That's it. What a nice way to describe them."
"They smell kind of nasty till you get used to them,"
he said.
"It's a good bitter smell," she retorted, "not
nasty at all."
He changed his tone quickly. "I like the smell
myself."
"I had ten-inch blooms this year," she said.
The man leaned farther over the fence. "Look. I know a lady down the road a
piece, has got the nicest garden you ever seen. Got nearly every kind
of flower but no chrysanthemums. Last time I was mending a copper-bottom
washtub for her (that's a hard job but I do it good), she said to me, 'If you
ever run acrost some nice chrysanthemums I wish
you'd try to get me a few seeds.' That's what she told me."
Elisa's eyes grew alert and eager. "She couldn't have
known much about chrysanthemums. You can raise them from seed, but it's much
easier to root the little sprouts you see there."
"Oh," he said. "I s'pose
I can't take none to her, then."
"Why yes you can," Elisa cried. "I can put some
in damp sand, and you can carry them right along with you. They'll take root
in the pot if you keep them damp. And then she can transplant them."
"She'd
sure like to have some, ma'am. You say they're nice ones?"
"Beautiful,"
she said. "Oh, beautiful." Her eyes shone. She tore off the
battered hat and shook out her dark pretty hair. "I'll put them in a flower pot, and you can take them right
with you. Come into the yard."
Note body
positions below
While the man came through the picket fence Elisa ran excitedly along the
geranium-bordered path to the back of the house. And she returned carrying a
big red flower pot. The gloves were forgotten now. She kneeled on the ground by the starting bed
and dug up the sandy soil with her fingers and scooped it into the bright new
flower pot. Then she picked up the little pile of shoots she had prepared.
With her strong fingers she pressed them into the sand and tamped around them
with her knuckles. The
man stood over her. "I'll tell you what to do," she said.
"You remember so you can tell the lady."
"Yes, I'll try to remember."
"Well, look. These will take root in about a month. Then
she must set them out, about a foot apart in good rich earth like this,
see?" She lifted a handful of dark soil for him to look at.
"They'll grow fast and tall. Now remember this. In July tell her to cut
them down, about eight inches from the ground."
"Before they bloom?" he asked.
"Yes, before they bloom." Her face was tight with
eagerness. "They'll grow right up again. About the last of September the
buds will start."
She stopped and seemed perplexed. "It's the budding that
takes the most care," she said hesitantly. "I don't know how to
tell you." She looked deep into his eyes, searchingly. Her mouth opened
a little, and she seemed to be listening. "I'll try to tell you,"
she said. "Did you ever hear of planting hands?"
"Can't say I have, ma am.
"Well, I
can only tell you what it feels like. It's when you're picking off the buds
you don't want. Everything goes right down into your fingertips. You watch
your fingers work. They do it themselves. You can feel how it is. They pick
and pick the buds. They never make a mistake. They're with the plant. Do you
see? Your fingers and the plant. You can feel that, right up your arm. They
know. They never make a mistake. You can feel it. When you're like that you
can't do anything wrong. Do you see that? Can you understand that?"
She was
kneeling on the ground looking up at him. Her breast swelled passionately.
The man's
eyes narrowed. He looked away self-consciously. "Maybe I know," he
said. "Sometimes in the night in the wagon there--"
Elisa's voice
grew husky. She broke in on him. "I've
never lived as you do, but I know what you mean. When the night is dark--why,
the stars are sharp-pointed, and there's quiet. Why, you rise up and up!
Every pointed star gets driven into your body. It's like that. Hot and sharp
and--lovely."
Kneeling
there, her hand went out toward his legs in the greasy black trousers. Her
hesitant fingers almost touched the cloth. Then her hand dropped to the
ground. She crouched
low like a fawning dog.
He said, "It's nice, just like you say. Only when you
don't have no dinner, it ain't."
She stood up then, very straight, and her face was ashamed. She
held the flower pot out to him and placed it gently in his arms. "Here.
Put it in your wagon, on the seat, where you can watch it. Maybe I can find
something for you to do."
At the back of the house she dug in the can pile and found two
old and battered aluminum saucepans. She carried them back and gave them to
him. "Here, maybe you can fix these."
His manner changed. He became professional. "Good as new I
can fix them." At the back of his wagon he set a little anvil, and out
of an oily tool box dug a small machine hammer. Elisa came through the gate
to watch him while he pounded out the dents in the kettles. His mouth grew
sure and knowing. At a difficult part of the work he sucked his under-lip.
"You
sleep right in the wagon?" Elisa asked.
"Right
in the wagon, ma'am. Rain or shine I'm dry as a cow in there."
It must be
nice," she said. "It must be very nice. I wish women could do such
things."
"It ain't the right kind of a life for a woman.
Her upper lip
raised a little, showing her teeth. "How do you know? How can you
tell?" she said.
"I
don't know, ma'am," he protested. "Of course I don't know.
Now here's your kettles, done. You don't have to buy
no new ones.
"How much?"
"Oh, fifty cents'll do. I keep
my prices down and my work good. That's why I have all them
satisfied customers up and down the highway."
Elisa brought him a fifty-cent piece from the house and dropped
it in his hand. "You might be surprised to have a rival some time. I can
sharpen scissors, too. And I can beat the dents out of little pots. I could
show you what a woman might do."
He put his
hammer back in the oily box and shoved the little anvil out of sight.
"It would be a lonely life for a woman, ma'am, and a scary life, too,
with animals creeping under the wagon all night." He climbed over
the singletree, steadying himself with a hand on the burro's white rump. He
settled himself in the seat, picked up the lines. "Thank you kindly,
ma'am," he said. "I'll do like you told me; I'll go back and catch
the Salinas road."
"Mind," she called, "if you're long in getting
there, keep the sand damp."
"Sand, ma'am?. .. Sand? Oh, sure.
You mean around the chrysanthemums. Sure I will." He clucked his tongue.
The beasts leaned luxuriously into their collars. The mongrel dog took his
place between the back wheels. The wagon turned and crawled out the entrance
road and back the way it had come, along the river.
Elisa stood in front of her wire fence watching the slow
progress of the caravan. Her shoulders were straight, her head thrown back,
her eyes half-closed, so that the scene came vaguely into them. Her lips
moved silently, forming the words
"Good-bye--good-bye." Then she whispered,
"That's a bright direction. There's a glowing there." The
sound of her whisper startled her. She shook herself free and looked about to
see whether anyone had been listening. Only the dogs had heard. They lifted
their heads toward her from their sleeping in the dust, and then stretched
out their chins and settled asleep again. Elisa turned and ran hurriedly into
the house.
In the kitchen she reached behind the stove and felt the water
tank. It was full of hot water from the noonday cooking. In the bathroom she
tore off her soiled clothes and flung them into the corner. And then she scrubbed herself with
a little block of pumice, legs and thighs, loins and chest and arms, until
her skin was scratched and red. When she had dried herself she stood in front
of a mirror in her bedroom and looked at her body. She tightened her stomach
and threw out her chest. She turned and looked over her shoulder at her back.
After a while she began to dress, slowly. She put on her newest
underclothing and her nicest stockings and the dress which was the symbol of
her prettiness. She worked carefully on her hair, penciled her
eyebrows and rouged her lips.
Before she was finished she heard the little thunder of hoofs
and the shouts of Henry and his helper as they drove the red steers into the
corral. She heard the gate bang shut and set herself
for Henry's arrival.
His step sounded on the porch. He entered the house calling,
"Elisa, where are you?"
"In my room, dressing. I'm not ready. There's hot
water for your bath. Hurry up. It's getting late."
When she heard him splashing in the tub, Elisa laid his dark
suit on the bed, and shirt and socks and tie beside it. She stood his
polished shoes on the floor beside the bed. Then she went to the porch and
sat primly and stiffly down. She looked toward the river road where the
willow-line was still yellow with frosted leaves so that under the high grey
fog they seemed a thin band of sunshine. This was the only color in the grey afternoon.
She sat unmoving for a long time. Her eyes blinked rarely.
Henry came banging out of the door, shoving his tie inside his
vest as he came. Elisa stiffened and her face grew tight. Henry stopped short
and looked at her. "Why--why, Elisa. You look so nice!"
"Nice?
You think I look nice? What do you mean by 'nice'?"
Henry
blundered on. "I don't know. I mean you look different, strong and
happy."
"I am
strong? Yes, strong. What do you mean 'strong'?"
He looked
bewildered. "You're playing some kind of a game," he said
helplessly. "It's a kind of a play. You look strong enough to break a
calf over your knee, happy enough to eat it like a watermelon."
For a second she lost her rigidity. "Henry! Don't talk
like that. You didn't know what you said." She grew complete again.
"I'm strong," she boasted. "I never knew before how
strong."
Henry looked down toward the tractor shed, and when he brought
his eyes back to her, they were his own again. "I'll get out the car.
You can put on your coat while I'm starting."
Elisa went into the house. She heard him drive to the gate and
idle down his motor, and then she took a long time to put on her hat. She
pulled it here and pressed it there. When Henry turned the motor off she slipped into her coat and went out.
The little roadster bounced along on the dirt road by the
river, raising the birds and driving the rabbits into the brush. Two cranes
flapped heavily over the willow-line and dropped into the river-bed.
Far ahead on the road Elisa saw a dark speck. She knew.
She tried not to look as they passed it, but her eyes would not
obey. She whispered to herself sadly, "He might have thrown them off the
road. That wouldn't have been much trouble, not very much. But he kept the pot," she
explained. "He had to keep the pot. That's why he couldn't get them off the road."
The roadster turned a bend and she saw the caravan ahead. She
swung full around toward her husband so she could not see the little covered
wagon and the mismatched team as the car passed them.
In a moment it was over. The thing was done. She did not look
back. She said loudly, to be heard above the motor, "It will be good,
tonight, a good dinner."
"Now you're changed again," Henry complained. He took
one hand from the wheel and patted her knee. "I ought to take you in to
dinner oftener. It would be good for both of us. We get so heavy out on the
ranch."
"Henry,"
she asked, "could we have wine at dinner?"
"Sure we could. Say! That will be fine."
She was silent for a while; then she said, "Henry, at those prize
fights, do the men hurt each other very much?"
"Sometimes a little, not often. Why?"
"Well,
I've read how they break noses, and blood runs down their chests. I've read
how the fighting gloves get heavy and soggy with blood."
He looked around at her. "What's the matter, Elisa? I
didn't know you read things like that." He brought the car to a stop, then turned to the right over the Salinas River bridge.
"Do any women
ever go to the fights?" she asked.
"Oh, sure, some. What's the matter, Elisa? Do you want to
go? I don't think you'd like it, but I'll take you if you really want to
go."
She relaxed
limply in the seat. "Oh, no. No. I don't want to go. I'm sure I
don't." Her face was turned away from him. "It will be enough if we
can have wine. It will be plenty." She turned up her coat collar so he
could not see that she was crying weakly--like an old woman.
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