I won’t tell them about it, said Abra. You’re pretty sure of yourself. Yes, she said, I’m pretty sure of myself. Will you kiss me? Right here? Right in the street? Why not? Everybody’d see. I want them to, said Abra. Aron said, No. I don’t like to make things public like that. She stepped around in front of him and stopped him. You look here, mister. You kiss me now. Why? She said slowly, So everybody will know that I’m Mrs. Lettuce-head.
Adam found his father out. It wasn’t that his father changed but that some new quality came to Adam. He had always hated the discipline, as every normal animal does, but it was just and true and inevitable as measles, not to be denied or cursed, only to be hated. And then–it was very fast, almost a click in the brain–Adam knew that, for him at least, his father’s methods had no reference to anything in the world except his father. The techniques and training were not designed for the boys at all but only to make Cyrus a great man. And the same click in the brain told Adam that his father was not a great man, that he was, indeed, a very strong-willed and concentrated little man wearing a huge busby. Who knows what causes this–a look in the eye, a lie found out, a moment of hesitation?–then god comes crashing down in a child’s brain.
I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry youeras too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixten inches of rain. And then the dry yars would come, and sometimes thre would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
Young Adam was always an obedient child. Something in him shrank from violence, from contention, from the silent shrieking tensions that can rip at a house. He contributed to the quiet he wished for by offering no violence, no contention, and to do this he had to retire into secretness, since there is some violence in everyone. He covered his life with a veil of vagueness, while behind his quiet eyes a rich full life went on. This did not protect him from assault but it allowed him an immunity.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.