Adam said, “Are you making this up?”

“No. If you are well and if you are free, I would like to have my little bookshop at last. I would like to die there.”

Adam sat silently for a while, stirring sugar into his lukewarm tea. Then he said, “Funny. I found myself wishing you were a slave so I could refuse you. Of course you can go if you want to. I’ll even lend you money for your bookstore.”

“Oh, I have the money. I’ve had it a long time.”

“I never thought of your going,” Adam said. “I took you for granted.” He straightened his shoulders. “Could you wait a little while?”

“What for?”

“I want you to help me get acquainted with my boys. I want to put this place in shape, or maybe sell it or rent it. I’ll want to know how much money I have left and what I can do with it.”

“You wouldn’t lay a trap for me?” Lee asked. “My wish isn’t as strong as it once was. I’m afraid I could be talked out of it or, what would be worse, I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That’s the worst bait of all to a lonely man.”

Adam said, “A lonely man. I must have been far down in myself not to have thought of that.”

“Mr. Hamilton knew,” said Lee. He raised his head and his fat lids let only two sparks from his eyes show through. “We’re controlled, we Chinese,” he said. “We show no emotion. I loved Mr. Hamilton. I would like to go to Salinas tomorrow if you will permit it.”

“Do anything you want,” said Adam. “God knows you’ve done enough for me.”

“I want to scatter devil papers,” Lee said. “I want to put a little roast pig on the grave of my father.”

Adam got up quickly and knocked over his cup and went outside and left Lee sitting there.

Chapter 27

[1]

THAT YEAR THE RAINS HAD COME so gently that the Salinas River did not overflow. A slender stream twisted back and forth in its broad bed of gray sand, and the water was not milky with silt but clear and pleasant. The willows that grow in the river bed were well leafed, and the wild blackberry vines were thrusting their spiky new shoots along the ground.

It was very warm for March, and the kite wind blew steadily from the south and turned up the silver undersides of the leaves.

Against the perfect cover of vine and bramble and tangled drift sticks, a little gray brush rabbit sat quietly in the sun, drying his breast fur, wet by the grass dew of his early feeding. The rabbit’s nose crinkled, and his ears slewed around now and then, investigating small sounds that might possibly be charged with danger to a brush rabbit. There had been a rhythmic vibration in the ground audible through the paws, so that ears swung and nose wrinkled, but that had stopped. Then there had been a movement of willow branches twenty-five years away and downwind, so that no odor of fear came to the rabbit.