You all seen him.
Swell guy, ain’t he?
Spends all his time sayin’ what he’s gonna do to guy she don’t like, and he don’t like nobody.
Think I’m gonna stay in that two-by-four house and listen how Curley’s gonna lead with his left twicet, and then bring in the ol’ right cross?
‘One-two,’ he says. ‘Jus’ the ol’ one-two an’ he’ll go down.’” She paused and her face lost its sullenness and grew interested. “Say — what happened to Curley’s han’?”
There was an embarrassed silence.
Candy stole a look at Lennie.
Then he coughed.
“Why.... Curley.... he got his han’ caught in a machine, ma’am.
Bust his han’.”
She watched for a moment, and then she laughed.
“Baloney!
What you think you’re sellin’ me?
Curley started som’pin’ he didn’ finish.
Caught in a machine — baloney!
Why, he ain’t give nobody the good ol’ one-two since he got his han’ bust.
Who bust him?”
Candy repeated sullenly,
“Got it caught in a machine.”
“Awright,” she said contemptuously. “Awright, cover ‘im up if ya wanta.
Whatta I care?
You bindle bums think you’re so damn good.
Whatta ya think I am, a kid?
I tell ya I could of went with shows.
Not jus’ one, neither.
An’ a guy tol’ me he could put me in pitchers....” She was breathless with indignation. “—Sat’iday night.
Ever’body out doin’ som’pin’.
Ever’body!
An’ what am I doin’?
Standin’ here talkin’ to a bunch of bindle stiffs — a nigger an’ a dum-dum and a lousy ol’ sheep — an’ likin’ it because they ain’t nobody else.”
Lennie watched her, his mouth half open.
Crooks had retired into the terrible protective dignity of the Negro.
But a change came over old Candy.
He stood up suddenly and knocked his nail keg over backward.
“I had enough,” he said angrily. “You ain’t wanted here.
We told you you ain’t.
An’ I tell ya, you got floozy idears about what us guys amounts to.
You ain’t got sense enough in that chicken head to even see that we ain’t stiffs.
S’pose you get us canned.
S’pose you do.
You think we’ll hit the highway an’ look for another lousy two-bit job like this.
You don’t know that we got our own ranch to go to, an’ our own house.
We ain’t got to stay here.
We gotta house and chickens an’ fruit trees an’ a place a hunderd time prettier than this.
An’ we got fren’s, that’s what we got.
Maybe there was a time when we was scared of gettin’ canned, but we ain’t no more.
We got our own lan’, and it’s ours, an’ we c’n go to it.”
Curley’s wife laughed at him.
“Baloney,” she said. “I seen too many you guys.
If you had two bits in the worl’, why you’d be in gettin’ two shots of corn with it and suckin’ the bottom of the glass.