The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Page A

Well, I was layin’ under a tree when I figured that out, and I went to sleep. And it come night, an’ it was dark when I come to. They was a coyote squawkin’ near by. Before I knowed it, I was sayin’ out loud. ‘The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.”’ He paused and looked up from the palm of his hand, where he had laid down the words.
    Joad was grinning at him, but Joad’s eyes were sharp and interested, too. “You give her a goin’-over,” he said. “You figured her out.”
    Casy spoke again, and his voice rang with pain and confusion. “I says,‘What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ An’ I says, ‘Don’t you love Jesus?’ Well, I thought an’ thought, an’finally I says, ‘No, I don’t know nobody name’ Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. An’ sometimes I love ’em fit to bust, an’ I want to make ’em happy, so I been preachin’ somepin I thought would make ’em happy.’ An’ then—I been talkin’ a hell of a lot. Maybe you wonder about me using bad words. Well, they ain’t bad to me no more. They’re jus’ words folks use, an’ they don’t mean nothing bad with ’em. Anyways, I’ll tell you one more thing I thought out; an’ from a preacher it’s the most unreligious thing, and I can’t be a preacher no more because I thought it an’ I believe it.”
    “What’s that?” Joad asked.
    Casy looked shyly at him. “If it hits you wrong, don’t take no offense at it, will you?”
    “I don’t take no offense ’cept a bust in the nose,” said Joad. “What did you figger?”
    “I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit—the human sperit—the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a suddent—I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”
    Joad’s eyes dropped to the ground, as though he could not meet the naked honesty in the preacher’s eyes. “You can’t hold no church with idears like that,” he said. “People would drive you out of the country with idears like that. Jumpin’ an’ yellin’. That’s what folks like. Makes ’em feel swell. When Granma got to talkin’ in tongues, you couldn’t tie her down. She could knock over a full-growed deacon with her fist.”
    Casy regarded him broodingly. “Somepin I like to ast you,” he said. “Somepin that been eatin’ on me.”
    “Go ahead. I’ll talk, sometimes.”
    “Well”—the preacher said slowly—“here’s you that I baptized right when I was in the glory roof-tree. Got little hunks of Jesus jumpin’ outa my mouth that day. You won’t remember ’cause you was busy pullin’ that pigtail.”
    “I remember,” said Joad. “That was Susy Little. She bust my finger a year later.”
    “Well—did you take any good outa that baptizin’? Was your ways better?”
    Joad thought about it. “No-o-o, can’t say as I felt anything.”
    “Well—did you take any bad from it? Think hard.”
    Joad picked up the bottle and took a swig. “They wasn’t nothing in it, good or bad. I just had fun.” He handed the flask to the preacher.
    He sighed and drank and looked at the low level of the whisky and took another tiny drink. “That’s good,” he said. “I got to worryin’ about whether in messin’ around maybe I done somebody a hurt.”
    Joad looked over toward his coat and saw the turtle, free of the cloth and hurrying away in the direction he had been following when Joad found him. Joad watched him for a