The Red Pony, books in English
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
THE RED PONY
by John Steinbeck
I THE GIFT
II THE GREAT MOUNTAINS
III THE PROMISE
IV THE LEADER OF THE PEOPLE
THE RED PONY
I. THE GIFT
AT DAYBREAK Billy Buck emerged from the bunkhouse and stood for a moment on the porch looking
up at the sky. He was a broad, bandy-legged little man with a walrus mustache, with square hands,
puffed and muscled on the palms. His eyes were a contemplative, watery grey and the hair which
protruded from under his Stetson hat was spiky and weathered Billy was still stuffing his shirt into his
blue jeans as he stood on the porch. He unbuckled his belt and tightened it again. The belt showed,
by the worn shiny places opposite each hole, the gradual increase of Billy's middle over a period of
years. When he had seen to the weather, Billy cleared each nostril by holding its mate closed with his
forefinger and blowing fiercely. Then he walked down to the barn, rubbing his hands together. He
curried and brushed two saddle horses in the stalls, talking quietly to them all the time; and he had
hardly finished when the iron triangle started ringing at the ranch house. Billy stuck the brush and
currycomb together and laid them on the rail, and went up to breakfast. His action had been so
deliberate and yet so wasteless of time that he came to the house while Mrs. Tiflin was still ringing
the triangle. She nodded her grey head to him and withdrew into the kitchen. Billy Buck sat down on
the steps, because he was a cow hand, and it wouldn't be fitting that he should go first into the
dining-room. He heard Mr. Tiflin in the house, stamping his feet into his boots.
The high jangling note of the triangle put the boy Jody in motion. He was only a little boy, ten years
old, with hair like dusty yellow grass and with shy polite grey eyes, and with a mouth that worked
when he thought. The triangle picked him up out of sleep. It didn't occur to him to disobey the harsh
note. He never had: no one he knew ever had. He brushed the tangled hair out of his eyes and
skinned his nightgown off. In a moment he was dressed-blue chambray shirt and overalls. It was late
in the summer, so of course there were no shoes to bother with. In the kitchen he waited until his
mother got from in front of the sink and went back to the stove. Then he washed himself and
brushed back his wet hair with his fingers. His mother turned sharply on him as he left the sink. Jody
looked shyly away.
"I've got to cut your hair before long," his mother said.
"Breakfast's on the table. Go on in, so Billy can come."
Jody sat at the long table which was covered with white oilcloth washed through to the fabric in
some places. The fried eggs lay in rows on their platter. Jody took three eggs on his plate and
followed with three thick slices of crisp bacon. He carefully scraped a spot of blood from one of the
egg yolks.
Billy Buck clumped in. "That won't hurt you," Billy explained. "That's only a sign the rooster leaves."
Jody's tall stern father came in then and Jody knew from the noise on the floor that he was wearing
boots, but he looked under the table anyway, to make sure. His father turned off the oil lamp over
the table, for plenty of morning light now came through the windows.Jody did not ask where his
father and Billy Buck were riding that day, but he wished he might go along. His father was a
disciplinarian. Jody obeyed him in everything without questions of any kind. Now, Carl Tiflin sat down
and reached for the egg platter.
"Got the cows ready to go, Billy?" he asked.
"In the lower corral," Billy said. "I could just as well take them in alone."
"Sure you could. But a man needs company. Besides your throat gets pretty dry." Carl Tiflin was jovial
this morning.
Jody's mother put her head in the door. "What time do you think to be back, Carl?"
"I can't tell. I've got to see some men in Salinas. Might be gone till dark."
The eggs and coffee and big biscuits disappeared rapidly. Jody followed the two men out of the
house. He watched them mount their horses and drive six old milk cows out of the corral and start
over the hill toward Salinas. They were going to sell the old cows to the butcher.
When they had disappeared over the crown of the ridge Jody walked up the hill in back of the house.
The dogs trotted around the house corner hunching their shoulders and grinning horribly with
pleasure. Jody patted their heads-Doubletree Mutt with the big thick tail and yellow eyes, and
Smasher, the shepherd, who had killed a coyote and lost an ear in doing it. Smasher's one good ear
stood up higher than a collie's ear should. Billy Buck said that always happened. After the frenzied
greeting the dogs lowered their noses to the ground in a businesslike way and went ahead, looking
back now and then to make sure that the boy was coming. They walked up through the chicken yard
and saw the quail eating with the chickens. Smasher chased the chickens a little to keep in practice in
case there should ever be sheep to herd. Jody continued on through the large vegetable patch where
the green corn was higher than his head.
The cow-pumpkins were green and small yet. He went on to the sagebrush line where the cold spring
ran out of its pipe and fell into a round wooden tub. He leaned over and drank close to the green
mossy wood where the water tasted best. Then he turned and looked back on the ranch, on the low,
whitewashed house girded with red geraniums, and on the long bunkhouse by the cypress tree
where Billy Buck lived alone. Jody could see the great black kettle under the cypress tree. That was
where the pigs were scalded. The sun was coming over the ridge now, glaring on the whitewash of
the houses and barns, making the wet grass blaze softly. Behind him, in the tall sagebrush, the birds
were scampering on the ground, making a great noise among the dry leaves; the squirrels piped
shrilly on the side-hills. Jody looked along at the farm buildings. He felt an uncertainty in the air, a
feeling of change and of loss and of the gain of new and unfamiliar things. Over the hillside two big
black buzzards sailed low to the ground and their shadows slipped smoothly and quickly ahead of
them. Some animal had died in the vicinity. Jody knew it. It might be a cow or it might be the remains
of a rabbit. The buzzards overlooked nothing. Jody hated them as all decent things hate them, but
they could not be hurt because they made away with carrion.
After a while, the boy sauntered down hill again. The dogs had long ago given him up and gone into
the brush to do things in their own way. Back through the vegetable garden he went, and he paused
for a moment to smash a green muskmelon with his heel, but he was not happy about it. It was a bad
thing to do, he knew perfectly well. He kicked dirt over the ruined melon to conceal it.
Back at the house his mother bent over his rough hands, inspecting his fingers and nails. It did little
good to start him clean to school for too many things could happen on the way. She sighed over the
black cracks onhis fingers, and then gave him his books and his lunch and started him on the mile
walk to school. She noticed that his mouth was working a good deal this morning.
Jody started his journey. He filled his pockets with little pieces of white quartz that lay in the road,
and every so often he took a shot at a bird or at some rabbit that had stayed sunning itself in the
road too long. At the crossroads over the bridge he met two friends and the three of them walked to
school together, making ridiculous strides and being rather silly. School had just opened two weeks
before. There was still a spirit of revolt among the pupils.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon when Jody topped the hill and looked down on the ranch again.
He looked for the saddle horses, but the corral was empty. His father was not back yet. He went
slowly, then, toward the afternoon chores. At the ranch house, he found his mother sitting on the
porch, mending socks.
"There's two doughnuts in the kitchen for you," she said. Jody slid to the kitchen, and returned with
half of one of the doughnuts already eaten and his mouth full.
His mother asked him what he had learned in school that day, but she didn't listen to his doughnut-
muffled answer. She interrupted, "Jody, tonight see you fill the wood-box clear full. Last night you
crossed the sticks and it wasn't only about half full. Lay the sticks flat tonight.
And Jody, some of the hens are hiding eggs, or else the dogs are eating them. Look about in the grass
and see if you can find any nests"
': Jody, still eating, went out and did his chores. He saw the quail come down to eat with the chickens
when he threw out the grain. For some reason his father was proud to have them come. He never
allowed any shooting near the house for fear the quail might go away.
When the wood-box was full, Jody took his twenty-two rifle up to the cold spring at the brush line.
He drank again and then aimed the gun at all manner of things, at rocks, at birds on the wing, at the
big black pig kettle under the cypress tree, but he didn't shoot for he had no cartridges and wouldn't
have until he was twelve. If his father had seen him aim the rifle in the direction of the house he
would have put the cartridges off another year.
Jody remembered this and did not point the rifle down the hill again. Two years was enough to wait
for cartridges. Nearly all of his father's presents were given with reservations which hampered their
value somewhat. It was good discipline.
The supper waited until dark for his father to return.
When at last he came in with Billy Buck, Jody could smell the delicious brandy on their breaths.
Inwardly he rejoiced, for his father sometimes talked to him when he smelled of brandy, sometimes
even told things he had done in the wild days when he was a boy.
After supper, Jody sat by the fireplace and his shy polite eyes sought the room corners, and he
waited for his father to tell what it was he contained, for Jody knew he had news of some sort. But
he was disappointed. His father pointed a stern finger at him.
"You'd better go to bed, Jody. I'm going to need you in the morning."
That wasn't so bad. Jody liked to do the things he had to do as long as they weren't routine things. He
looked at the floor and his mouth worked out a question before he spoke it. "What are we going to
do in the morning, kill a pig?" he asked softly.
"Never you mind. You better get to bed."
When the door was closed behind him, Jody heard his father and Billy Buck chuckling and he knew it
was a joke of some kind. And later, when he lay in bed, trying to make words out of murmurs in the
other room, he heard his father protest, "But, Ruth, I didn't give much for him."
Jody heard the hoot-owls hunting mice down by the barn, and he heard a fruit tree limb tap-tapping
against the house. A cow was lowing when he went to sleep.
When the triangle sounded in the morning, Jody dressed more quickly even than usual. In the
kitchen, while he washed his face and combed back his hair, his mother addressed him irritably.
"Don't you go out until you get a good breakfast in you."
He went into the dining-room and sat at the long white table. He took a steaming hotcake from the
platter, arranged two fried eggs on it, covered them with another hotcake and squashed the whole
thing with his fork.
His father and Billy Buck came in. Jody knew from the sound of the floor that both of them were
wearing flatheeled shoes, but he peered under the table to make sure. His father turned off the oil
lamp, for the day had arrived, and he looked stern and disciplinary, but Billy `Buck didn't look at Jody
at all. He avoided the shy questioning eyes of the boy and soaked a whole piece of toast in his coffee.
Carl Tiflin said crossly, "You come with us after break fast!"
Jody had trouble with his food then, for he felt a kind of doom in the air. After Billy had tilted his
saucer and drained the coffee which had slopped into it, and had wiped his hands on his jeans, the
two men stood up from the table and went out into the morning light together, and Jody respectfully
followed a little behind them. He tried to keep his mind from running ahead, tried to keep it
absolutely motionless.
His mother called, "Carl! Don't you let it keep him from school."
They marched past the cypress, where a singletree hung from a limb to butcher the pigs on, and past
the black iron kettle, so it was not a pig killing. The sun shone over the hill and threw long, dark
shadows of the trees and buildings. They crossed a stubble-field to shortcut to the barn. Jody's father
unhooked the door and they went in. They had been walking toward the sun on the way down. The
barn was black as night in contrast and warm from the hay and from the beasts. Jody's father moved
over toward the one box stall. "Come herel" he ordered. Jody could begin to see things now.
He looked into the box stall and then stepped back quickly.
A red pony colt was looking at him out of the stall.
Its tense ears were forward and a light of disobedience was in its eyes. Its coat was rough and thick
as an aire-dale's fur and its mane was long and tangled. Jody's throat collapsed in on itself and cut his
breath short.
"He needs a good currying," his father said, "and if I ever hear of you not feeding him or leaving his
stall dirty, I'll sell him off in a minute."
Jody couldn't bear to look at the pony's eyes any more. He gazed down at his hands for a moment,
and he asked very shyly, "Mine?" No one answered him. He put his hand out toward the pony. Its
grey nose came close, sniff ing loudly, and then the lips drew back and the strong teeth closed on
Jody's fingers. The pony shook its head up and down and seemed to laugh with amusement.
Jody regarded his bruised fingers. "Well," he said with pride- "Well, I guess he can bite all right." The
two men laughed., somewhat in relief. Carl Tiflin went out of the barn and walked up a side-hill to be
by himself, for he was embarrassed, but Billy Buck stayed. It was easier to talk to Billy Buck. Jody
asked again-"Mine?"
Billy became professional in tone. "Surel That is, if you look out for him and break him right. I'll show
you how. He's just a colt. You can't ride him for some time."
Jody put out his bruised hand again, and this time the red pony let his nose be rubbed. "I ought to
have a carrot," Jody said. "Where'd we get him, Billy?"
"Bought him at a sheriff's auction," Billy explained.
"A show went broke in Salinas and had debts. The sheriff was selling off their stuff."
The pony stretched out his nose and shook the fore-lock from his wild eyes. Jody stroked the nose a
little.
He said softly, "There isn't a-saddle?"
Billy Buck laughed. "I'd forgot. Come along."
In the harness room he lifted down a little saddle of red morocco leather. "It's just a show saddle,"
Billy Buck said disparagingly. "It isn't practical for the brush, but it was cheap at the sale."
Jody couldn't trust himself to look at the saddle either, and he couldn't speak at all. He brushed the
shining red leather with his fingertips, and after a long time he said, "It'll look pretty on him though."
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]