John Steinbeck Fullscreen Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Pause

Can’t leave the state.”

“Parole?” Muley asked. “I heard about them.

How do they work?”

“Well, I got out early, three years early.

They’s stuff I gotta do, or they send me back in.

Got to report ever’ so often.”

“How they treat ya there in McAlester?

My woman’s cousin was in McAlester an’ they give him hell.”

“It ain’t so bad,” said Joad. “Like ever’place else.

They give ya hell if ya raise hell.

You get along O.K. les’ some guard gets it in for ya.

Then you catch plenty hell.

I got along O.K.

Minded my own business, like any guy would.

I learned to write nice as hell.

Birds an’ stuff like that, too; not just word writin’.

My ol’ man’ll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa’s gonna be mad when he sees me do that.

He don’t like no fancy stuff like that.

He don’t even like word writin’.

Kinda scares ’im, I guess.

Ever’ time Pa seen writin’, somebody took somepin away from ’im.”

“They didn’ give you no beatin’s or nothin’ like that?”

“No, I jus’ tended my own affairs. ’Course you get goddamn good an’ sick a-doin’ the same thing day after day for four years.

If you done somepin you was ashamed of, you might think about that.

But, hell, if I seen Herb Turnbull comin’ for me with a knife right now, I’d squash him down with a shovel again.”

“Anybody would,” said Muley.

The preacher stared into the fire, and his high forehead was white in the settling dark.

The flash of little flames picked out the cords of his neck.

His hands, clasped about his knees, were busy pulling knuckles.

Joad threw the last bones into the fire and licked his fingers and then wiped them on his pants.

He stood up and brought the bottle of water from the porch, took a sparing drink, and passed the bottle before he sat down again.

He went on,

“The thing that give me the mos’ trouble was, it didn’ make no sense.

You don’t look for no sense when lightnin’ kills a cow, or it comes up a flood.

That’s jus’ the way things is.

But when a bunch of men take an’ lock you up four years, it ought to have some meaning.

Men is supposed to think things out.

Here they put me in, an’ keep me an’ feed me four years.

That ought to either make me so I won’t do her again or else punish me so I’ll be afraid to do her again”—he paused—“but if Herb or anybody else come for me, I’d do her again. Do her before I could figure her out.

Specially if I was drunk.

That sort of senselessness kind a worries a man.”

Muley observed,

“Judge says he give you a light sentence ’cause it wasn’t all your fault.”

Joad said,

“They’s a guy in McAlester—lifer.

He studies all the time.

He’s sec’etary of the warden—writes the warden’s letters an’ stuff like that.

Well, he’s one hell of a bright guy an’ reads law an’ all stuff like that.

Well, I talked to him one time about her, ’cause he reads so much stuff.

An’ he says it don’t do no good to read books.