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 moment and then got slowly to his feet and retrieved him and wrapped him in the coat again. “I ain’t got no present for the kids,” he said. “Nothin’ but this ol’ turtle.”
“It’s a funny thing,” the preacher said. “I was thinkin’ about ol’ Tom Joad when you come along. Thinkin’ I’d call in on him. I used to think he was a godless man. How is Tom?”
“I don’ know how he is. I ain’t been home in four years.”
“Didn’t he write to you?”
Joad was embarrassed. “Well, Pa wasn’t no hand to write for pretty, or to write for writin’. He’d sign up his name as nice as anybody, an’ lick his pencil. But Pa never did write no letters. He always says what he couldn’tell a fella with his mouth wasn’tworth leanin’on no pencil about.”
“Been out travelin’ around?” Casy asked.
Joad regarded him suspiciously. “Didn’ you hear about me? I was in all the papers.”
“No—I never. What?” He jerked one leg over the other and settled lower against the tree. The afternoon was advancing rapidly, and a richer tone was growing on the sun.
Joad said pleasantly, “Might’s well tell you now an’ get it over with. But if you was still preachin’ I wouldn’t tell, fear you get prayin’ over me.” He drained the last of the pint and flung it from him, and the flat brown bottle skidded lightly over the dust. “I been in McAlester them four years.”
Casy swung around to him, and his brows lowered so that his tall forehead seemed even taller. “Ain’t wantin’ to talk about it, huh? I won’t ask you no questions, if you done something bad——”
“I’d do what I done—again,” said Joad. “I killed a guy in a fight. We was drunk at a dance. He got a knife in me, an’ I killed him with a shovel that was layin’ there. Knocked his head plumb to squash.”
Casy’s eyebrows resumed their normal level. “You ain’t ashamed of nothin’ then?”
“No,” said Joad, “I ain’t. I got seven years, account of he had a knife in me. Got out in four—parole.”
“Then you ain’t heard nothin’ about your folks for four years?”
“Oh, I heard. Ma sent me a card two years ago, an’ las’ Christmus Granma sent a card. Jesus, the guys in the cell block laughed! Had a tree an’ shiny stuff looks like snow. It says in po’try:
“‘Merry Christmus, purty child,
Jesus meek an’ Jesus mild,
Underneath the Christmus tree
There’s a gif ’ for you from me.’
I guess Granma never read it. Prob’ly got it from a drummer an’ picked out the one with the mos’ shiny stuff on it. The guys in my cell block goddamn near died laughin’. Jesus Meek they called me after that. Granma never meant it funny; she jus’ figgered it was so purty she wouldn’ bother to read it. She lost her glasses the year I went up. Maybe she never did find ’em.”