Free The Long Valley by John Steinbeck Page A

sky.
    “Ya!”
    The heavy knife lanced out and sunk into the post again. Mama moved forward like a ship and scattered the play.
    “All day you do foolish things with the knife, like a toy-baby,” she stormed. “Get up on thy huge feet that eat up shoes. Get up!” She took him by one loose shoulder and hoisted at him. Pepé grinned sheepishly and came half-heartedly to his feet. “Look!” Mama cried. “Big lazy, you must catch the horse and put on him thy father’s saddle. You must ride to Monterey. The medicine bottle is empty. There is no salt. Go thou now, Peanut! Catch the horse.”
    A revolution took place in the relaxed figure of Pepé. “To Monterey, me? Alone? Sí , Mama.”
    She scowled at him. “Do not think, big sheep, that you will buy candy. No, I will give you only enough for the medicine and the salt.”
    Pepé smiled. “Mama, you will put the hatband on the hat?”
    She relented then. “Yes, Pepé. You may wear the hatband.”
    His voice grew insinuating. “And the green handkerchief, Mama?”
    “Yes, if you go quickly and return with no trouble, the silk green handkerchief will go. If you make sure to take off the handkerchief when you eat so no spot may fall on it....”
    “ Sí, Mama. I will be careful. I am a man.”
    “Thou? A man? Thou art a peanut.”
    He went into the rickety barn and brought out a rope, and he walked agilely enough up the hill to catch the horse.
    When he was ready and mounted before the door, mounted on his father’s saddle that was so old that the oaken frame showed through torn leather in many places, then Mama brought out the round black hat with the tooled leather band, and she reached up and knotted the green silk handkerchief about his neck. Pepé’s blue denim coat was much darker than his jeans, for it had been washed much less often.
    Mama handed up the big medicine bottle and the silver coins. “That for the medicine,” she said, “and that for the salt. That for a candle to burn for the papa. That for dulces for the little ones. Our friend Mrs. Rodriguez will give you dinner and maybe a bed for the night. When you go to the church say only ten Paternosters and only twenty-five Ave Marias. Oh! I know, big coyote. You would sit there flapping your mouth over Aves all day while you looked at the candles and the holy pictures. That is not good devotion to stare at the pretty things.”
    The black hat, covering the high pointed head and black thatched hair of Pepé, gave him dignity and age. He sat the rangy horse well. Mama thought how handsome he was, dark and lean and tall. “I would not send thee now alone, thou little one, except for the medicine,” she said softly. “It is not good to have no medicine, for who knows when the toothache will come, or the sadness of the stomach. These things are.”
    “Adios, Mama,” Pepé cried. “I will come back soon. You may send me often alone. I am a man.”
    “Thou art a foolish chicken.”
    He straightened his shoulders, flipped the reins against the horse’s shoulder and rode away. He turned once and saw that they still watched him, Emilio and Rosy and Mama. Pepé grinned with pride and gladness and lifted the tough buckskin horse to a trot.
    When he had dropped out of sight over a little dip in the road, Mama turned to the black ones, but she spoke to herself. “He is nearly a man now,” she said. “It will be a nice thing to have a man in the house again.” Her eyes sharpened on the children. “Go to the rocks now. The tide is going out. There will be abalones to be found.” She put the iron hooks into their hands and saw them down the steep trail to the reefs. She brought the smooth stone metate to the doorway and sat grinding her corn to flour and looking occasionally at the road over which Pepé had gone. The noonday came and then the afternoon, when the little ones beat the abalones on a rock to make them tender and Mama patted the tortillas to make them thin. They ate their dinner as the red