Breakfast
by John
Steinbeck
This thing fills
me with pleasure. I don't know why, I
can see it in the smallest detail. I
find myself recalling it again and again, each time bringing more detail out of
sunken memory, remembering brings the curious warm pleasure.
It was very early
in the morning. The eastern mountains
were black-blue, but behind them the light stood up faintly colored at the
mountain rims with a washed red, growing colder, grayer and darker as it went
up and overhead until, at a place near the west, it merged with pure night.
And it was cold,
not painfully so, but cold enough so that I rubbed my hands and shoved them
deep into my pockets, and I hunched my shoulders up and scuffled my feet on the
ground. Down in the valley where I was,
the earth was that lavender gray of dawn. I walked along a country road and ahead of me I saw a tent that
was only a little lighter gray than the ground. Beside the tent there was a flash of orange fire seeping
out of the cracks of an old rusty iron stove.
Grey smoke spurted up out of the stubby stovepipe, spurted up a long way
before it spread out and dissipated.
I saw a young woman beside the
stove, really a girl. She was dressed
in a faded cotton skirt and waist[1]. As I came close I saw that she carried a
baby in a crooked arm and the baby was nursing, its head under her waist out of
the cold. The mother moved about,
poking the fire, shifting the rusty lids of the stove to make a greater draft,
opening the oven door; and all the time the baby was nursing, but that didn't
interfere with the mother's work, nor with the light quick gracefulness of her
movements. There was something very
precise and practiced in her movements.
The orange fire flicked out of the cracks in the stove and threw dancing
reflections on the tent.
I was close now
and I could smell frying bacon and baking bread, the warmest, pleasantest odors
I know. From the east the light grew
swiftly. I came near to the stove and
stretched my hands out to it and shivered all over when the warmth struck
me. Then the tent flap jerked up and a
young man came out and an older man followed him. They were dressed in new blue dungarees and in new
dungaree coats with the brass buttons shining.
They were sharp-faced men, and they looked much alike.
The younger had a dark stubble beard and the older had a gray stubble beard. Their heads and faces were wet, their hair dripped with water, and water stood out on their stiff beards and their cheeks shone with water. Together they stood looking quietly at the lightening east; they yawned together and looked at the light on the hill rims. They turned and saw me.
“Morning,” said
the older man. His face was neither
friendly nor unfriendly.
“Morning, sir,” I
said.
“Morning,”
said the young man.
The water was
slowly drying on their faces. They came
to the stove and warmed their hands at it.
The girl kept to
her work, her face averted and her eyes on what she was doing. Her hair was tied back out of her eyes with
a string and it hung down her back and swayed as she worked. She set tin cups on a big packing box, set
tin plates and knives and forks out too.
Then she scooped fried bacon out of the deep grease and laid it on a big
tin platter, and the bacon cricked and rustled as it grew crisp. She opened the rusty oven door and took out
a square pan full of high big biscuits.
When the smell of
that hot bread came out, both of the men inhaled deeply. The young man said softly, “Keerist[2]!”
The elder man
turned to me, “Had your breakfast?”
“No.”
“Well, sit down
with us, then.”
That was the
signal. We went to the packing case and
squatted on the ground about it. The
young man asked, “Picking cotton?”
“No.”
“We had twelve
days’ work so far,” the young man said.
The girl spoke from the stove. “They even got new clothes.”
The two men
looked down at their new dungarees and they both smiled a little.
The girl set out
the platter of bacon, the brown high biscuits, a bowl of bacon gravy and a pot
of coffee, and then she squatted down by the box too. The baby was still nursing, its head up under her waist out of
the cold. I could hear the sucking
noises it made.
We filled our
plates, poured bacon gravy over our biscuits and sugared our coffee. The older man filled his mouth full and he
chewed and chewed and swallowed. Then
he said, “God Almighty, it’s good,” and he filled his mouth again.
The young man
said, “We been eating good for twelve days.”
We all ate
quickly frantically, and refilled our plates and ate quickly again until
we were full and warm. The hot bitter
coffee scalded our throats. We
threw the last little bit with the grounds [3]
in it on the earth and refilled our cups.
There was color
in the light now, a reddish gleam that made the air seem colder. The two men faced the east and their faces
were lighted by the dawn, and I looked up for a moment and saw the image of the
mountain and the light coming over it reflected in the older man’s eyes.
Then the two men
threw the grounds from their cups on the earth and they stood up together. “Got to get going,” the older man said.
The
younger turned to me. “’Fyou want to
pick cotton, we could maybe get you on.”
“No. I got to go along. Thanks for breakfast.”
The older man
waved his hand in a negative. “O.K.
Glad to have you.” The walked
away together. The air was blazing with
light at the eastern skyline. And I
walked away down the country road.
That’s all. I know, of course, some of the reasons why it was pleasant. But there was some element of great beauty there that makes the rush of warmth when I think of it.
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