Free The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck Page A

smelled it. He drove the blade again and again into the ground and smelled it again, wiped it on his trouser leg, and felt the edge with his thumb.
    Muley took a quart bottle of water out of his hip pocket and set it on the porch. "Go easy on that there water," he said. "That's all there is. This here well's filled in."
    Tom took up a rabbit in his hand. "One of you go get some bale wire outa the barn. We'll make a fire with some a this broken plank from the house." He looked at the dead rabbit. "There ain't nothin' so easy to get ready as a rabbit," he said. He lifted the skin of the back, slit it, put his fingers in the hole, and tore the skin off. It slipped off like a stocking, slipped off the body to the neck, and off the legs to the paws. Joad picked up the knife again and cut off head and feet. He laid the skin down, slit the rabbit along the ribs, shook out the intestines onto the skin, and then threw the mess off into the cotton field. And the clean-muscled little body was ready. Joad cut off the legs and cut the meaty back into two pieces. He was picking up the second rabbit when Casy came back with a snarl of bale wire in his hand. "Now build up a fire and put some stakes up," said Joad. "Jesus Christ, I'm hungry for these here creatures!" He cleaned and cut the rest of the rabbits and strung them on the wire. Muley and Casy tore splintered boards from the wrecked house-corner and started a fire, and they drove a stake into the ground on each side to hold the wire.
    Muley came back to Joad. "Look out for boils on that jackrabbit," he said. "I don't like to eat no jackrabbit with boils." He took a little cloth bag from his pocket and put it on the porch.
    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 lot 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