Free Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck Page A

might, if it did not kill them, change their normal reactions. It’s always difficult to evaluate responses that approximate emotions. If I place them in an abnormal situation, can I trust the response to be normal?”
    â€œNo,” said Mack.
    â€œYou cannot dissect for emotion,” Doc went on. “If a human body were found by another species and dissected, there would be no possible way of knowing about its emotions or its thoughts. Now, it occurs to me that the rage, or rather the symptom that seems like rage, must be fairly abnormal in itself. I have seen it happen in aquariums. Does it occur on the sea bottom? Is the observed phenomenon not perhaps limited to the aquarium? No, I can’t permit myself to believe that, or my whole thesis falls.”
    â€œDoc!” Mack cried. “Look, Doc, it’s me—Mack!”
    â€œHello, Mack,” said Doc. “How much did you say?”
    â€œYou’ve already given it to me,” said Mack, and he felt like a fool the moment he’d said it.
    â€œI need better equipment,” said Doc. “Goddam it, I can’t see without better equipment.”
    â€œDoc, how’s about you and me stepping over and getting a half-pint of Old Tennis Shoes?”
    â€œFine,” said Doc.
    â€œI’ll buy,” said Mack. “I’ve got a couple of loose bucks.”
    Doc said sharply, “I’ll have to get some money. Where can I get some money, Mack?”
    â€œI told you, I’ll buy, Doc.”
    â€œI’ll need a wide-angle binocularscope and light. I’ll have to find out about light—maybe a pinpoint spot from across the room. No, they’d move out of that. Maybe there are new kinds of lights. I’ll have to look into it.”
    â€œCome on, Doc.”
    Doc bought a pint of Old Tennis Shoes and later sent Mack out with money to buy another pint. The two of them sat in the laboratory side by side, staring into the aquarium, resting their elbows on the shelf, and they got to the point where they were mixing a little water with the whisky.
    â€œI got an uncle with an eye like them,” said Mack. “Rich old bastard too. I wonder why, when you get rich, you get a cold eye.”
    â€œSelf-protection,” said Doc solemnly. “Conditioned by relatives, I guess.”
    â€œLike I was saying, Doc. Everybody in the Row is worried about you. You don’t have no fun. You wander around like you was lost.”
    â€œI guess it’s re orientation,” said Doc.
    â€œWell, some people think you need a dame to kind of nudge you out of it. I know a guy that every time he gets feeling low he goes back to his wife. Makes him appreciate what he had. He goes away again and feels just fine.”
    â€œShock therapy,” said Doc. “I’m all right, Mack. Don’t let anybody give me a wife though—don’t let them give me a wife! I guess a man needs a direction. That’s what I’ve been needing. You can only go in circles so long.”
    â€œI kind of like it that way,” said Mack.
    â€œI’m going to call my paper ‘Symptoms in Some Cephalopods Approximating Apoplexy.’”
    â€œGreat God Almighty!” said Mack.

4
There Would Be No Game
    As he got to know him, Joseph and Mary regarded Doc with something akin to love—for love feeds on the unknown and unknowable. Doc’s honesty was exotic to Joseph and Mary. He found it strange. It attracted him in spite of the fact that he could not understand it. He felt that there was something he had missed, though he could not figure what it was.
    One day, sitting in Western Biological, Joseph and Mary saw a chess board and, finding that it was a game and being good at games, he asked Doc to teach him. J and M easily absorbed the characters and qualities of castles and bishops and knights and royalty and pawns. During the first game Doc was called to the telephone, and when he returned he