The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck Read Free Book Online

about the gaunt old house with its staring vacant windows. The white paint fell off in long scales; the shingles curled up shaggily. The farm itself went completely wild. It was owned by a distant cousin of George Battle’s, who had never seen it.
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    In 1921 the Mustrovics took possession of the Battle farm. Their coming was sudden and mysterious. One morning they were there, an old man and his old wife, skeleton people with tight yellow skin stretched and shiny over their high cheek bones. Neither of them spoke English. Communication with the valley was carried on by their son, a tall man with the same high cheek bones, with coarse-cropped black hair growing halfway down his forehead, and with soft, sullen black eyes. He spoke English with an accent, and he only spoke his wants.
    At the store the people gently questioned him, but they received no information.
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    â€œWe always thought that place was haunted. Seen any ghosts yet?” T. B. Allen, the storekeeper, asked.
    â€œNo,” said young Mustrovic.
    â€œIt’s a good farm all right when you get the weeds off.”
    Mustrovic turned and walked out of the store.
    â€œThere’s something about that place,” said Allen. “Everybody who lives there hates to talk.”
    The old Mustrovics were rarely seen, but the young man worked every daylight hour on the farm. All by himself he cleared the land and planted it, pruned the trees and sprayed them. At any hour he could be seen working feverishly, half running about his tasks, with a look on his face as though he expected time to stop before a crop was in.
    The family lived and slept in the kitchen of the big house. All the other rooms were shut up and vacant, the broken windows unmended. They had stuck fly-paper over the holes in the kitchen windows to keep out the air. They did not paint the house nor take care of it in any way, but under the frantic efforts of the young man, the land began to grow beautiful again. For two years he slaved on the soil. In the grey of the dawn he emerged from the house, and the last of the dusk was gone before he went back into it.
    One morning, Pat Humbert, driving to the store, noticed that no smoke came from the Mustrovic chimney. “The place looks deserted again,” he said to Allen. “ ’Course we never saw anybody but that young fellow around there, but something’s wrong. What I mean is, the place kind of feels deserted.”
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    For three days the neighbors watched the chimney apprehensively. They hated to investigate and make fools of themselves. On the fourth day Pat Humbert and T. B. Allen and John Whiteside walked up to the house. It was rustlingly still. It really did seem deserted. John Whiteside knocked at the kitchen door. When there was no answer and no movement, he turned the knob. The door swung open. The kitchen was immaculately clean, and the table set; there were dishes on the table, saucers of porridge, and fried eggs and sliced bread. On the food a little mold was forming. A few flies wandered aimlessly about in the sunshine that came through the open door. Pat Humbert shouted, “Anybody here?” He knew he was silly to do it.
    They searched the house thoroughly, but it was vacant. There was no furniture in any rooms except the kitchen. The farm was completely deserted—had been deserted at a moment’s notice.
    Later, when the sheriff was informed, he found out nothing revealing. The Mustrovics had paid cash for the farm, and in going away had left no trace. No one saw them go, and no one ever saw them again. There was not even any crime in that part of the country that they might have taken part in. Suddenly, just as they were about to sit down to breakfast one morning, the Mustrovics had disappeared. Many, many times the case was discussed at the store, but no one could advance a tenable solution.
    The weeds sprang up on the land again, and the wild berry vines climbed into the branches of the