The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck Page A

even those who laughed at the idea. Now a man came along and proved them wrong. More than that, he changed the face of the countryside by removing the accursed farm and substituting a harmless and fertile farm. The people were used to the Battle place as it was. Secretly they resented the change.
    That Bert could remove this animosity was remarkable. Within three months he had become a part of the valley, a solid man, a neighbor. He borrowed tools and had tools borrowed from him. At the end of six months he was elected a member of the school board. To a large extent Bert’s own happiness at being free of his Furies made the people like him. In addition he was a kindly man; he enjoyed doing favors for his friends, and, more important, he had no hesitancy in asking favors.
    At the store he explained his position to a group of farmers, and they admired the honesty of his explanation. It was soon after he had come to the valley. T. B. Allen asked his old question.
    â€œWe always kind of thought that place was cursed. Lots of funny things have happened there. Seen any ghosts yet?”
    Bert laughed. “If you take away all the food from a place, the rats will leave,” he said. “I took all the oldness and darkness away from that place. That’s what ghosts live on.”
    â€œYou sure made a nice looking place of it,” Allen admitted. “There ain’t a better place in the Pastures when it’s kept up,”
    Bert had been frowning soberly as a new thought began to work in his mind. “I’ve had a lot of bad luck,” he said. “I’ve been in a lot of businesses and every one turned out bad. When I came down here, I had a kind of an idea that I was under a curse.” Suddenly he laughed delightedly at the thought that had come to him. “And what do I do? First thing out of the box, I buy a place that’s supposed to be under a curse. Well, I just happened to think, maybe my curse and the farm’s curse got to fighting and killed each other off. I’m dead certain they’ve gone, anyway.”
    The men laughed with him. T. B. Allen whacked his hand down on the counter. “That’s a good one,” he cried. “But here’s a better one. Maybe your curse and the farm’s curse has mated and gone into a gopher hole like a pair of rattlesnakes. Maybe there’ll be a lot of baby curses crawling around the Pastures the first thing we know.”
    The gathered men roared with laughter at that, and T. B. Allen memorized the whole scene so he could repeat it. It was almost like the talk in a play, he thought.

III
    Edward Wicks lived in a small, gloomy house on the edge of the country road in the Pastures of Heaven. Behind the house there was a peach orchard and a large vegetable garden. While Edward Wicks took care of the peaches, his wife and beautiful daughter cultivated the garden and got the peas and string beans and early strawberries ready to be sold in Monterey.
    Edward Wicks had a blunt, brown face and small, cold eyes almost devoid of lashes. He was known as the trickiest man in the valley. He drove hard deals and was never so happy as when he could force a few cents more out of his peaches than his neighbors did. When he could, he cheated ethically in horse trades, and because of his acuteness he gained the respect of the community, but strangely became no richer. However, he liked to pretend that he was laying away money in securities. At school board meetings he asked the advice of the other members about various bonds, and in this way managed to give them the impression that his savings were considerable. The people of the valley called him “Shark” Wicks.
    â€œShark?” they said. “Oh, I’d guess he was worth around twenty thousand, maybe more. He’s nobody’s fool.”
    And the truth was that Shark had never had more than five hundred dollars at one time in his life.
    Shark’s greatest pleasure came