And Samuel Hamilton resolved to help greatly with the Salinas Valley Eden, to make a secret guilt-payment for his ugly thoughts.
2
Liza Hamilton, her apple cheeks flaming red, moved like a caged leopard in front of the stove when Samuel came into the kitchen in the morning. The oakwood fire roared up past an open damper to heat the oven for the bread, which lay white and rising in the pans. Liza had been up before dawn. She always was. It was just as sinful to her to lie abed after light as it was to be abroad after dark. There was no possible virtue in either. Only one person in the world could with impunity and without crime lie between her crisp ironed sheets after dawn, after sunup, even to the far reaches of midmorning, and that was her youngest and last born, Joe. Only Tom and Joe lived on the ranch now. And Tom, big and red, already cultivating a fine flowing mustache, sat at the kitchen table with his sleeves rolled down as he had been mannered. Liza poured thick batter from a pitcher onto a soapstone griddle. The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanos formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned. A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown. And the kitchen was full of the good sweet smell of them.
Samuel came in from the yard where he had been washing himself. His face and beard gleamed with water, and he turned down the sleeves of his blue shirt as he entered the kitchen. Rolled-up sleeves at the table were not acceptable to Mrs. Hamilton. They indicated either an ignorance or a flouting of the niceties.
“I’m late, Mother,” Samuel said.
She did not look around at him. Her spatula moved like a striking snake and the hot cakes settled their white sides hissing on the soapstone. “What time was it you came home?” she asked.
“Oh, it was late—late. Must have been near eleven. I didn’t look, fearing to waken you.”
“I did not waken,” Liza said grimly. “And maybe you can find it healthy to rove all night, but the Lord God will do what He sees fit about that.” It was well known that Liza Hamilton and the Lord God held similar convictions on nearly every subject. She turned and reached and a plate of crisp hot cakes lay between Tom’s hands. “How does the Sanchez place look?” she asked.
Samuel went to his wife, leaned down from his height, and kissed her round red cheek. “Good morning, Mother. Give me your blessing.”
“Bless you,” said Liza automatically.
Samuel sat down at the table and said, “Bless you, Tom. Well, Mr. Trask is making great changes. He’s fitting up the old house to live in.”
Liza turned sharply from the stove. “The one where the cows and pigs have slept the years?”
“Oh, he’s ripped out the floors and window casings. All new and new painted.”
“He’ll never get the smell of pigs out,” Liza said firmly. “There’s a pungency left by a pig that nothing can wash out or cover up.”
“Well, I went inside and looked around, Mother, and I could smell nothing except paint.”
“When the paint dries you’ll smell pig,” she said.
“He’s got a garden laid out with spring water running through it, and he’s set a place apart for flowers, roses and the like, and some of the bushes are coming clear from Boston.”
“I don’t see how the Lord God puts up with such waste,” she said grimly. “Not that I don’t like a rose myself.”
“He said he’d try to root some cuttings for me,” Samuel said.
Tom finished his hot cakes and stirred his coffee. “What kind of a man is he, Father?”
“Well, I think he’s a fine man—has a good tongue and a fair mind. He’s given to dreaming—”
“Hear now the pot blackguarding the kettle,” Liza interrupted.
“I know, Mother, I know. But have you ever thought that my dreaming takes the place of something I haven’t? Mr. Trask has practical dreams and the sweet dollars to make them solid. He wants to make a garden of his land, and he will do it too.”
“What’s his wife like?” Liza asked.
“Well, she’s very young and very pretty. She’s quiet, hardly speaks, but then she’s having her first baby soon.”
“I know that,” Liza said. “What was her name before?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, where did she come from?”
“I don’t know.”
She put his plate of hot cakes in front of him and poured coffee in his cup and refilled Tom’s cup. “What did you learn then? How does she dress?”
“Why, very nice, pretty—a blue dress and a little coat, pink but tight about the waist.”
“You’ve an eye for that. Would you say they were made clothes or store bought?”
“Oh, I think store bought.”
“You would not know,” Liza said firmly. “You thought the traveling suit Dessie made to go to San Jose was store bought.”
“Dessie’s the clever love,” said Samuel. “A needle sings in her hands.”
Tom said, “Dessie’s thinking of opening a dressmaking shop in Salinas.”
“She told me,” Samuel said. “She’d make a great success of it.”
“Salinas?” Liza put her hands on her hips. “Dessie didn’t tell me.”
“I’m afraid we’ve done bad service to our dearie,” Samuel said. “Here she wanted to save it for a real tin-plate surprise to her mother and we’ve leaked it like wheat from a mouse-hole sack.”
“She might have told me,” said Liza. “I don’t like surprises. Well, go on—what was she doing?”
“Who?”
“Why, Mrs. Trask of course.”
“Doing? Why, sitting, sitting in a chair under an oak tree. Her time’s not far.”
“Her hands, Samuel, her hands—what was she doing with her hands?”
Samuel searched his memory. “Nothing I guess. I remember—she had little hands and she held them clasped in her lap.”
Liza sniffed. “Not sewing, not mending, not knitting?”
“No, Mother.”
“I don’t know that it’s a good idea for you to go over there. Riches and idleness, devil’s tools, and you’ve not a very sturdy resistance.”
Samuel raised his head and laughed with pleasure. Sometimes his wife delighted him but he could never tell her how. “It’s only the riches I’ll be going there for, Liza. I meant to tell you after breakfast so you could sit down to hear. He wants me to bore four or five wells for him, and maybe put windmills and storage tanks.”