Took Albert two weeks drivin’ aroun’ the neighbors’ ’fore he got his stuff back.”
Casy scratched his toes luxuriously.
“Didn’t nobody give him an argument?
All of ’em jus’ give the stuff up?”
“Sure.
They wasn’t stealin’ it.
They thought he lef ’ it, an’ they jus’ took it.
He got all of it back—all but a sofa pilla, velvet with a pitcher of an Injun on it.
Albert claimed Grampa got it.
Claimed Grampa got Injun blood, that’s why he wants that pitcher.
Well, Grampa did get her, but he didn’t give a damn about the pitcher on it.
He jus’ liked her.
Used to pack her aroun’ an’ he’d put her wherever he was gonna sit.
He never would give her back to Albert.
Says,
‘If Albert wants this pilla so bad, let him come an’ get her.
But he better come shootin’, ’cause I’ll blow his goddamn stinkin’ head off if he comes messin’ aroun’ my pilla.’
So finally Albert give up an’ made Grampa a present of that pilla.
It give Grampa idears, though.
He took to savin’ chicken feathers.
Says he’s gonna have a whole damn bed of feathers.
But he never got no feather bed.
One time Pa got mad at a skunk under the house.
Pa slapped that skunk with a two-by-four, and Ma burned all Grampa’s feathers so we could live in the house.” He laughed. “Grampa’s a tough ol’ bastard.
Jus’ set on that Injun pilla an’ says, ‘Let Albert come an’ get her.
Why,’ he says, ‘I’ll take that squirt and wring ’im out like a pair of drawers.”’
The cat crept close between the men again, and its tail lay flat and its whiskers jerked now and then.
The sun dropped low toward the horizon and the dusty air was red and golden.
The cat reached out a gray questioning paw and touched Joad’s coat.
He looked around.
“Hell, I forgot the turtle.
I ain’t gonna pack it all over hell.”
He unwrapped the land turtle and pushed it under the house.
But in a moment it was out, headed southwest as it had been from the first.
The cat leaped at it and struck at its straining head and slashed at its moving feet.
The old, hard, humorous head was pulled in, and the thick tail slapped in under the shell, and when the cat grew tired of waiting for it and walked off, the turtle headed on southwest again.
Young Tom Joad and the preacher watched the turtle go—waving its legs and boosting its heavy, high-domed shell along toward the southwest.
The cat crept along behind for a while, but in a dozen yards it arched its back to a strong taut bow and yawned, and came stealthily back toward the seated men.
“Where the hell you s’pose he’s goin’?” said Joad. “I seen turtles all my life.
They’re always goin’ someplace.
They always seem to want to get there.”
The gray cat seated itself between and behind them again.
It blinked slowly.
The skin over its shoulders jerked forward under a flea, and then slipped slowly back.
The cat lifted a paw and inspected it, flicked its claws out and in again experimentally, and licked its pads with a shell-pink tongue.
The red sun touched the horizon and spread out like a jellyfish, and the sky above it seemed much brighter and more alive than it had been.
Joad unrolled his new yellow shoes from his coat, and he brushed his dusty feet with his hand before he slipped them on.
The preacher, staring off across the fields, said,
“Somebody’s comin’.
Look!