Free East of Eden by John Steinbeck Page B

very dear and desirable.
    While he waited to change trains in Kansas City, he heard his name called and a message was shoved into his hand—orders to report to Washington to the office of the Secretary of War. Adam in his five years had absorbed rather than learned never to wonder about an order. To an enlisted man the high far gods in Washington were crazy, and if a soldier wanted to keep his sanity he thought about generals as little as possible.
    In due course Adam gave his name to a clerk and went to sit in an anteroom. His father found him there. It took Adam a moment to recognize Cyrus, and much longer to get used to him. Cyrus had become a great man. He dressed like a great man—black broadcloth coat and trousers, wide black hat, overcoat with a velvet collar, ebony cane which he made to seem a sword. And Cyrus conducted himself like a great man. His speech was slow and mellow, measured and unexcited, his gestures were wide, and new teeth gave him a vulpine smile out of all proportion to his emotion.
    After Adam had realized that this was his father he was still puzzled. Suddenly he looked down—no wooden leg. The leg was straight, bent at the knee, and the foot was clad in a polished kid congress gaiter. When he moved there was a limp, but not a clumping wooden-legged limp.
    Cyrus saw the look. “Mechanical,” he said, “Works on a hinge. Got a spring. Don’t even limp when I set my mind to it. I’ll show it to you when I take it off. Come along with me.”
    Adam said, “I’m under orders, sir. I’m to report to Colonel Wells.”
    “I know you are. I told Wells to issue the orders. Come along.”
    Adam said uneasily, “If you don’t mind, sir, I think I’d better report to Colonel Wells.”
    His father reversed himself. “I was testing you,” he said grandly. “I wanted to see whether the army has any discipline these days. Good boy. I knew it would be good for you. You’re a man and a soldier, my boy.”
    “I’m under orders, sir,” said Adam. This man was a stranger to him. A faint distaste arose in Adam. Something was not true. And the speed with which doors opened straight to the Colonel, the obsequious respect of that officer, the words, “The Secretary will see you now, sir,” did not remove Adam’s feeling.
    “This is my son, a private soldier, Mr. Secretary—just as I was—a private soldier in the United States Army.”
    “I was discharged a corporal, sir,” said Adam. He hardly heard the exchange of compliments. He was thinking, This is the Secretary of War. Can’t he see that this isn’t the way my father is? He’s play-acting. What’s happened to him? It’s funny the Secretary can’t see it.
    They walked to the small hotel where Cyrus lived, and on the way Cyrus pointed out the sights, the buildings, the spots of history, with the expansiveness of a lecturer. “I live in a hotel,” he said. “I’ve thought of getting a house, but I’m on the move so much it wouldn’t hardly pay. I’m all over the country most of the time.”
    The hotel clerk couldn’t see either. He bowed to Cyrus, called him “Senator,” and indicated that he would give Adam a room if he had to throw someone out.
    “Send a bottle of whisky to my room, please.”
    “I can send some chipped ice if you like.”
    “Ice!” said Cyrus. “My son is a soldier.” He rapped his leg with his stick and it gave forth a hollow sound. “I have been a soldier—a private soldier. What do we want ice for?”
    Adam was amazed at Cyrus’s accommodations. He had not only a bedroom but a sitting room beside it, and the toilet was in a closet right in the bedroom.
    Cyrus sat down in a deep chair and sighed. He pulled up his trouser leg, and Adam saw the contraption of iron and leather and hard wood. Cyrus unlaced the leather sheath that held it on his stump and stood the travesty-on-flesh beside his chair. “It gets to pinching pretty bad,” he said.
    With the leg off, his father became himself again, the