The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck Read Free Book Online

ladybug. That’s from my mother’s side. That’s pirate talk. It was an execution, you know.”
    “They were not pirates. You said yourself, whalers, and you said they had letters of what-you-call-it from the Continental Congress.”
    “The ships they fired on thought they were pirates. And those Roman G.I.’s thought it was an execution.”
    “I’ve made you mad. I like you better silly.”
    “I am silly. Everybody knows that.”
    “You always mix me up. You’ve got every right to be proud— Pilgrim Fathers and whaling captains right in one family.”
    “Have they?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Would my great ancestors be proud to know they produced a goddam grocery clerk in a goddam wop store in a town they used to own?”
    “You are not. You’re more like the manager, keep the books and bank the money and order the goods.”
    “Sure. And I sweep out and carry garbage and kowtow to Marullo, and if I was a goddam cat, I’d be catching Marullo’s mice.”
    She put her arms around him. “Let’s be silly,” she said. “Please don’t say swear words on Good Friday. I do love you.”
    “Okay,” he said after a moment. “That’s what they all say. Don’t think that lets you lie jaybird naked with a married man.”
    “I was going to tell you about the children.”
    “They in jail?”
    “Now you’re silly again. Maybe it’s better if they tell you.”
    “Now why don’t you—”
    “Margie Young-Hunt’s going to read me again today.”
    “Like a book? Who’s Margie Young-Hunt, what is she, that all our swains—”
    “You know if I was jealous—I mean they say when a man pretends he don’t notice a pretty girl—”
    “Oh, that one. Girl? She’s had two husbands.”
    “The second one died.”
    “I want my breakfast. Do you believe that stuff?”
    “Well Margie saw about Brother in the cards. Someone near and dear, she said.”
    “Someone near and dear to me is going to get a kick in the pants if she doesn’t haul freight—”
    “I’m going—eggs?”
    “I guess so. Why do they call it Good Friday? What’s good about it?”
    “Oh! You!” she said. “You always make jokes.”
     
The coffee was made and the eggs in a bowl with toast beside them when Ethan Allen Hawley slid into the dinette near the window.
    “I feel good,” he said. “Why do they call it Good Friday?”
    “Spring,” she said from the stove.
    “Spring Friday?”
    “Spring fever. Is that the children up?”
    “Fat chance. Lazy little bastards. Let’s get ’em up and whip ’em.”
    “You talk terrible when you’re silly. Will you come home twelve to three?”
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?”
    “Women. Sneak ’em in. Maybe that Margie.”
    “Now Ethan, don’t you talk like that. Margie’s a good friend. She’d give you the shirt off her back.”
    “Yah? Where’d she get the shirt?”
    “That’s Pilgrim talk again.”
    “I bet you anything we’re related. She’s got pirate blood.”
    “Oh! You’re just silly again. Here’s your list.” She tucked it in his breast pocket. “Seems like a lot. But it’s Easter weekend, don’t forget—and two dozen eggs, don’t forget. You’re going to be late.”
    “I know. Might miss a two-bit sale for Marullo. Why two dozen?”
    “For dyeing. Allen and Mary Ellen asked specially. You better go.”
    “Okay, bugflower—but can’t I just go up and beat the hell out of Allen and Mary Ellen?”
    “You spoil them rotten, Eth. You know you do.”
    “Farewell, O ship of state,” he said, and slammed the screen door after him and went out into the green-gold morning.
    He looked back at the fine old house, his father’s house and his great-grandfather’s, white-painted shiplap with a fanlight over the front door, and Adam decorations and a widow’s walk on the roof. It was deep-set in the greening garden among lilacs a hundred years old, thick as your waist, and swelling with buds. The elms of Elm Street joined their tops and yellowed out in new-coming