Tortilla Flat (19 page)

At the wharf they found more evidence of their friend. “He was here,” the fishermen said. “He wanted to fight everybody. Benito broke an oar on Danny’s head. Then Danny broke some windows, and then a policeman took him to jail.”

Hot on the path of their wayward friend, they continued. “McNear brought him in last night,” the sergeant said. “Some way he got loose before morning. When we catch him, we’ll give him six months.”

The friends were tired of the chase. They went home, and to their horror they found that the new sack of potatoes that Pilon had found only that morning was gone.

“Now it is too much,” Pilon cried. “Danny is crazy, and he is in danger. Some terrible thing will happen to him if we do not save him.”

“We will search,” said Jesus Maria.

“We will look behind every tree and every shed,” Pablo guaranteed.

“Under the boats on the beach,” Big Joe suggested.

“The dogs will help,” the Pirate said.

Pilon shook his head. “That is not the way. Every time we come to a place after Danny has gone. We must wait in some place where he will come. We must act as wise men, not as fools.”

“But where will he come?”

The light struck all of them at once. “Torrelli’s! Sooner or later Danny will go to Torrelli’s. We must go there to catch him, to restrain him in the madness that has fallen upon him.”

“Yes,” they agreed. “We must save Danny.”

In a body they visited Torrelli, and Torrelli would not let them in. “Ask me,” he cried through the door, “have I seen Danny? Danny brought three blankets and two cooking pots, and I gave him a gallon of wine. What did that [127] devil do then? My wife he insulted and me he called bad names. My baby he spanked, my dog he kicked! He stole the hammock from my porch.” Torrelli gasped with emotion. “I chased him to get my hammock back, and when I returned, he was with my wife! Seducer, thief, drunkard! That is your friend Danny! i myself will see that he goes to penitentiary.”

The eyes of the friends glinted. “Oh Corsican pig,” Pilon said evenly. “You speak of our friend. Our friend is not well.”

Torrelli locked the door. They could hear the bolt slide, but Pilon continued to speak through the door. “Oh, Jew,” he said, “if thou wert a little more charitable with thy wine, these things would not happen. See that thou keepest that cold frog which is thy tongue from dirtying our friend. See thou treatest him gently, for his friends are many. We will tear thy stomach out if thou art not nice to him.”

Torrelli made no sound inside the locked house, but he trembled with rage and fear at the ferocity of the tones. He was relieved when he heard the footsteps of the friends receding up the path.

That night, after the friends had gone to bed, they heard a stealthy step in the kitchen. They knew it was Danny, but he escaped before they could catch him. They wandered about in the dark, calling disconsolately, “Come, Danny, our little sugar friend, we need thee with us.”

There was no reply, but a thrown rock struck Big Joe in the stomach and doubled him up on the ground. Oh, how the friends were dismayed, and how their hearts were heavy!

“Danny is running to his death,” they said sadly. “Our little friend is in need, and we cannot help him.”

It was difficult to keep house now, for Danny had stolen nearly everything in it. A chair turned up at a bootlegger’s. All the food was taken, and once, when they were searching for Danny in the woods, he stole the airtight stove; but it was heavy, he abandoned it in the gulch. Money there was none, for Danny stole the Pirate’s wheelbarrow and traded it to Joe Ortiz for a bottle of whisky. Now all peace had gone from Danny’s house, and there was only worry and sadness.

[128] “Where is our happiness gone?” Pablo mourned. “Somewhere we have sinned. It is a judgment. We should go to confession.”

No more did they discuss the marital parade of Cornelia Ruiz. Gone were the moralities, lost were the humanities. Truly the good life lay in ruins. And into the desolation came the rumors.

“Danny committed partial rape last night.”

“Danny has been milking Mrs. Palochico’s goat.”

“Danny was in a fight with some soldiers the night before last.”

Sad as they were at his moral decay, the friends. were not a little jealous of the good time Danny was having.

“If he is not crazy, he will be punished,” said Pilon. “Be sure of that. Danny is sinning in a way which, sin for sin, beats any record I ever heard of. Oh, the penances when he wants to be decent again! In a few weeks Danny has piled up more sins than Old Ruiz did in a lifetime.”

That night Danny, unhindered by the friendly dogs, crept into the house as silently as the moving shadow of a limb under a street light, and wantonly he stole Pilon’s shoes. In the morning it did not take Pilon long to understand what had happened. He went firmly to the porch and sat down in the sun and regarded his feet.

“Now he has gone too far,” Pilon said. “Pranks he has played, and we were patient. But now he turns to crime. This is not the Danny we know. This is another man, a bad man. We must capture this bad man.”

Pablo looked complacently down at his shoes. “Maybe this is only a prank too,” he suggested.

“No,” Pilon said severely. “This is crime. They were not very good shoes, but it is a crime against friendship to take them. And that is the worst kind of crime. If Danny will steal the shoes of his friends, there is no crime he will stop at.”

The friends nodded in agreement. “Yes, we must catch him,” said Jesus Maria of the humanities. “We know he is sick. We will tie him to his bed and try to cure him of the sickness. We must try to wipe the darkness from his brain.”

“But now,” said Pablo, “before we catch him, we must [129] remember to put our shoes under our pillows when we sleep.”

The house was in a state of siege. All about it raged Danny, and Danny was having a wonderful time.

Seldom did the face of Torrelli show any emotions but suspicion and anger. In his capacity as bootlegger, and in his dealings with the people of Tortilla Flat, those two emotions were often called into his heart, and their line was written on his face. Moreover, Torrelli had never visited anyone. He had only to stay at home to have everyone visit him. Consequently, when Torrelli walked up the road toward Danny’s house in the morning, his face suffused with a ferocious smile of pleasure and anticipation, the children ran into their yards and peeked through the pickets at him; the dogs caressed their stomachs with their tails and fled with backward, fearful looks; men, meeting him, stepped out of his path and clenched their fists to repel a madman.

This morning the fog covered the sky. The sun, after a number of unsuccessful skirmishes, gave up and retired behind the gray folds. The pine trees dripped dusty dew on the ground; and in the faces of the few people who were about, the day was reflected with somber looks and gray skins. There were no hearty greetings. There was none of that human idealism which blandly hopes this day will be better than all other days.

Old Roca, seeing Torrelli smiling, went home and told his wife, “That one has just killed and eaten his children. You will see!”

Torrelli was happy, for in his pocket there was a folded, precious paper. His fingers sought his coat again and again, and pressed until a little crackling sound assured Torrelli that the paper was still there. As he walked through the gray morning, he muttered to himself.

“Nest of snakes,” he said. “I will wipe out this pestilence f Danny’s friends. No more will I give wine for goods, and have the goods stolen again. Each man alone is not so bad, but the nest of them! Madonna, look down how I will cast them out into the street! The toads, the lice, the [130] stinging flies! When they sleep in the woods again, they will not be so proud.

“I would have them know that Torrelli has triumphed. They thought to cheat me, despoil my house of furniture and my wife of virtue! They will see that Torrelli, the great sufferer, can strike back. Oh, yes, they will see!”

Thus he muttered as he walked, and his fingers crackled the paper in his pocket. The trees dripped mournful drops into the dust. The seagulls circled in the air, screaming tragically. Torrelli moved like gray Fate on Danny’s house.

In Danny’s house there was gloom. The friends could not sit on the porch in the sunshine, for there was no sunshine. No one can produce a better reason for gloom. They had brought back the stolen stove from the gulch and set it up. They clustered to it now, and Johnny Pom-pom, who had come to call, told the news he had.

“Tito Ralph,” he said, “is no longer the jailer down at the city jail. No, this morning the police judge sent him away.”

“I liked Tito Ralph,” said Pilon. “When a man was in jail, Tito Ralph would bring him a little wine. And he knew more stories than a hundred other men. Why did he lose his job, Johnny Pom-pom?”

“That is what I came to tell. Tito Ralph, you know, was often in jail, and he was a good prisoner. He knew how a jail should be run. After a while he knew more about the jail than anyone. Then Daddy Marks, the old jailer, died, and Tito Ralph took his place. Never has there been such a good jailer as Tito Ralph. Everything he did just right. But he has one little fault. When he drinks wine, he forgets he is the jailer. He escapes, and they have to catch him.”

The friends nodded. “I know,” said Pablo. “I have heard he is hard to catch too. He hides.”

“Yes,” continued Johnny Pom-pom, “except for that, he is the best jailer they ever had. Well, this is the thing that I came to tell. Last night Danny had enough wine for ten men, and he drank it. Then he drew pictures on windows. He was very rich, he bought eggs to throw at a Chinaman. And one of those eggs missed the Chinaman and hit a policeman. So, Danny was in jail.

[131] “But he was rich. He sent Tito Ralph out to get some wine, and then some more wine. There were four men in the jail. They all drank wine. And at last that fault of Tito Ralph’s came out. So he escaped, and all the others escaped with him. They caught Tito Ralph this morning and told him he could not be jailer any more. He was so sad that he broke a window, and now he is in jail again.”

“But Danny,” Pilon cried. “What about Danny?”

“Oh, Danny,” said Johnny Pom-pom, “he escaped too. They did not catch him.”

The friends sighed in dismay.

“Danny is getting bad,” Pilon said seriously. “He will not come to a good end. I wonder where he got the money.”

It was at this moment that the triumphant Torrelli opened the gate and strode up the path. The Pirate’s dogs got up nervously from their corner and moved toward the door, snarling. The friends looked up and questioned one another with their eyes. Big Joe picked up the pick handle that had so lately been used on him. The heavy confident step of Torrelli pounded on the porch. The door flew open, and there stood Torrelli, smiling. He did not bluster at them. No, he approached as delicately as a house cat. He patted them kindly, as a house cat pats a cockroach.

“Oh, my friends,” he said gently, at their looks of alarm. “My dear good friends and customers. My heart is torn that I must be a carrier of bad news to those whom I love.”

Pilon leaped up. “It is Danny. He is sick, he is hurt. Tell us.”

Torrelli shook his head daintily. “No, my little ones, it is not Danny. My heart bleeds, but I must tell you that you cannot live here any more.” His eyes gloated at the amazement his words wrought. Every mouth dropped open, every eye went blank with astonishment.

“That is foolish,” Pablo cried. “Why can’t we live here any more?”

Torrelli’s hand went lovingly into his breast pocket, and his fingers brought out the precious paper and waved it in the air. “Imagine my suffering,” Torrelli went on. “Danny does not own this house any more.”

“What!” they cried. “What do you mean? How does not [132] Danny own his house any more? Speak, O Corsican pig.”

Torrelli giggled, a thing so terrible that the paisanos stepped back from him. “Because,” he said, “the house belongs to me. Danny came to me and sold me his house for twenty-five dollars last night.” Fiendishly he watched the thoughts crowd on their faces.

“It is a lie,” their faces said. “Danny would not do such a thing.” And then, “But Danny has been doing many bad things lately. He has been stealing from us. Maybe he has sold the house over our heads.”

“It is a lie,” Pilon cried aloud. “It is a dirty wop lie.”

Torrelli smiled on and waved the paper. “Here I have proof,” he said. “Here is the paper Danny signed. It is what we of business call a bill of sale.”

Pablo came to him furiously. “You got him drunk. He did not know what he did.”

Torrelli opened the paper a little bit. “The law will not be interested in that,” he said. “And so, my dear little friends, it is my terrible duty to tell you that you must leave my house. I have plans for it.” His face lost its smile then, and all the cruelty came back into it. “If you are not out by noon, I will send a policeman.”

Pilon moved gently toward him. Oh, beware, Torrelli, when Pilon moves smiling on you! Run, hide yourself in some iron room and weld up the door. “I do not understand these things,” Pilon said gently. “Of course I am sad that Danny should do a thing like this.”

Torrelli giggled again.

“I never had a house to sell,” Pilon continued. “Danny signed this paper, is that it?”

“Yes,” Torrelli mimicked him, “Danny signed this paper. That is it.”

Pilon blundered on, stupidly. “That is the thing that proves you own this house?”

“Yes, O little fool. This is the paper that proves it.”

Pilon looked puzzled. “I thought you must take it down and have some record made.”

Torrelli laughed scornfully. Oh, beware, Torrelli! Do you not see how quietly these snakes are moving? There is Jesus Maria in front of the door. There is Pablo by the [133] kitchen door. See Big Joe’s knuckles white on the pick handle.

Torrelli said, “You know nothing of business, little hobos and tramps. When I leave here I shall take this paper down and—”

It happened so quickly that the last words belched out explosively. His feet flew up in the air. He landed with a great thump on the floor and clawed at the air with his fat hands. He heard the stove lid clang.