“Were they as wild as people say?” Hudson asked him. “You know, all the drinking and the ... women.” He threw out the last word cautiously.

Macready was nodding. “Sure,” he said. “They drank a lot. Course, everyone did then. Men, anyway. Girls, too, but they didn’t make such a show of it. Didn’t want to be considered loose.”

“Did Ricketts have a lot of women around?” Hudson inquired. “They say he was quite a ladies’ man.”

“Depends what you mean by that,” Macready said thoughtfully. “Women certainly liked him. There was something about him made them comfortable with him. He helped a lot of them out.”

“The girls at Flora’s,” suggested Hudson.

“Them and others,” Macready answered. “Never turned away a woman who needed help.”

“What about his own girlfriends?” said Hudson. “He had quite a few.”

“Sure, sure,” agreed Macready. “But not so many as people think. Not so many as Doc in the Steinbeck books did either. I think maybe that’s how they—he and Steinbeck—wanted people to think of him.”

“But it wasn’t true?” Hudson pressed.

“It was a long time ago,” said Macready uncertainly. “You know how it is, you remember some things, forget a lot of others.”

Hudson, sensing that the man was becoming uncomfortable, considered where to take the conversation next. Macready, he thought, knew more than he was saying. It was almost as if he was protecting the image of someone he admired.

“What did he and Steinbeck talk about?” he asked, changing tack.

Macready visibly relaxed. “Anything and everything,” he said. “I didn’t understand the half of it most of the time. They’d get going on about philosophy or religion and I’d just stand at the sink washing bottles and feeling like an ignorant cuss. Sometimes they’d try to explain it to me, and I was always afraid to tell them I had no idea what they were saying. If they weren’t half drunk and needed me to go get them more beer, they probably would have kicked me out of there for being so damn stupid.”

“Did Ricketts ever talk about Steinbeck with you when John wasn’t around?” said Hudson.