“Yes, he will—and the best-looking soldier in the army. When are we going for the azaleas?”

“Not until spring.”

“Let’s go early and take a lunch.”

“It might be raining.”

“Let’s go anyway, rain or shine.”

She took her books and went into her yard. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

He did not turn toward home. He walked in the nervous night past the high school and past the skating rink—a floor with a big tent over it, and a mechanical orchestra clanging away. Not a soul was skating. The old man who owned it sat miserably in his booth, flipping the end of a roll of tickets against his forefinger.

Main Street was deserted. The wind skidded papers on the sidewalk. Tom Meek, the constable, came out of Bell’s candy store and fell into step with Cal. “Better hook that tunic collar, soldier,” he said softly.

“Hello, Tom. The damn thing’s too tight.”

“I don’t see you around the town at night lately.”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me you reformed.”

“Maybe.”

Tom prided himself on his ability to kid people and make it sound serious. He said, “Sounds like you got a girl.”

Cal didn’t answer.

“I heard your brother faked his age and joined the army. Are you picking off his girl?”

“Oh, sure—sure,” said Cal.

Tom’s interest sharpened. “I nearly forgot,” he said. “I hear Will Hamilton is telling around you made fifteen thousand dollars in beans. That true?”

“Oh, sure,” said Cal.

“You’re just a kid. What are you going to do with all that money?”

Cal grinned at him. “I burned it up.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just set a match to it and burned it.”

Tom looked into his face. “Oh, yeah! Sure. Good thing to do. Got to go in here. Good night.” Tom Meek didn’t like people to kid him. “The young punk son of a bitch,” he said to himself. “He’s getting too smart for himself.”

Cal moved slowly along Main Street, looking in store windows. He wondered where Kate was buried. If he could find out, he thought he might take a bunch of flowers, and he laughed at himself for the impulse. Was it good or was he fooling himself? The Salinas wind would blow away a tombstone, let along a bunch of carnations. For some reason he remembered the Mexican name for carnations. Somebody must have told him when he was a kid. They were called Nails of Love—and marigolds, the Nails of Death. It was a word like nails—claveles. Maybe he’d better put marigolds on his mother’s grave. “I’m beginning to think like Aron,” he said to himself.

Chapter 54

[1]

THE WINTER SEEMED RELUCTANT to let go its bite. It hung on cold and wet and windy long after its time. And people repeated, “It’s those damned big guns they’re shooting off in France—spoiling the weather in the whole world.”

The grain was slow coming up in the Salinas Valley, and the wildflowers came so late that some people thought they wouldn’t come at all.