Joad said,
“The jack was clean as a whistle—Jesus God, you got salt too?
By any chance you got some plates an’ a tent in your pocket?” He poured salt in his hand and sprinkled it over the pieces of rabbit strung on the wire.
The fire leaped and threw shadows on the house, and the dry wood crackled and snapped.
The sky was almost dark now and the stars were out sharply.
The gray cat came out of the barn shed and trotted miaowing toward the fire, but, nearly there, it turned and went directly to one of the little piles of rabbit entrails on the ground.
It chewed and swallowed, and the entrails hung from its mouth.
Casy sat on the ground beside the fire, feeding it broken pieces of board, pushing the long boards in as the flame ate off their ends.
The evening bats flashed into the firelight and out again.
The cat crouched back and licked its lips and washed its face and whiskers.
Joad held up his rabbit-laden wire between his two hands and walked to the fire.
“Here, take one end, Muley. Wrap your end around that stake.
That’s good, now!
Let’s tighten her up.
We ought to wait till the fire’s burned down, but I can’t wait.” He made the wire taut, then found a stick and slipped the pieces of meat along the wire until they were over the fire.
And the flames licked up around the meat and hardened and glazed the surfaces.
Joad sat down by the fire, but with his stick he moved and turned the rabbit so that it would not become sealed to the wire. “This here is a party,” he said. “Salt, Muley’s got, an’ water an’ rabbits.
I wish he got a pot of hominy in his pocket.
That’s all I wish.”
Muley said over the fire,
“You fellas’d think I’m touched, the way I live.”
“Touched, nothin’,” said Joad. “If you’re touched, I wisht ever’body was touched.”
Muley continued,
“Well, sir, it’s a funny thing. Somepin went an’ happened to me when they tol’ me I had to get off the place. Fust I was gonna go in an’ kill a whole flock a people. Then all my folks all went away out west.
An’ I got wanderin’ aroun’.
Jus’ walkin’ aroun’. Never went far.
Slep’ where I was.
I was gonna sleep here tonight.
That’s why I come.
I’d tell myself,
‘I’m lookin’ after things so when all the folks come back it’ll be all right.’
But I knowed that wan’t true.
There ain’t nothin’ to look after.
The folks ain’t never comin’ back.
I’m jus’ wanderin’ aroun’ like a damn ol’ graveyard ghos’.”
“Fella gets use’ to a place, it’s hard to go,” said Casy.
“Fella gets use’ to a way a thinkin’, it’s hard to leave. I ain’t a preacher no more, but all the time I find I’m prayin’, not even thinkin’ what I’m doin’.”
Joad turned the pieces of meat over on the wire.
The juice was dripping now, and every drop, as it fell in the fire, shot up a spurt of flame.
The smooth surface of the meat was crinkling up and turning a faint brown.
“Smell her,” said Joad. “Jesus, look down an’ jus’ smell her!”
Muley went on,
“Like a damn ol’ graveyard ghos’.
I been goin’ aroun’ the places where stuff happened.
Like there’s a place over by our forty; in a gully they’s a bush.
Fust time I ever laid with a girl was there.
Me fourteen an’ stampin’ an’ jerkin’ an’ snortin’ like a buck deer, randy as a billygoat.
So I went there an’ I laid down on the groun’, an’ I seen it all happen again.
An’ there’s the place down by the barn where Pa got gored to death by a bull.
An’ his blood is right in that groun’, right now.