Of Mice and Men

by John Steinbeck

Lennie still knelt. He looked off into the darkness across the river. “George, you want I should go away and leave you alone?” “Where the hell could you go?” “Well, I could. I could go off in the hills there. Some place I’d find a cave.” “Yeah? How’d you eat. You ain’t got sense enough to find nothing to eat.” “I’d find things, George. I don’t need no nice food with ketchup. I’d lay out in the sun and nobody’d hurt me. An’ if I foun’ a mouse, I could keep it. Nobody’d take it away from me.” George looked quickly and searchingly at him. “I been mean, ain’t I?” “If you don’ want me I can go off in the hills an’ find a cave. I can go away any time.” “No—look! I was jus’ foolin’, Lennie. ’Cause I want you to stay with me. Trouble with mice is you always kill ’em.” He paused. “Tell you what I’ll do, Lennie. First chance I get I’ll give you a pup. Maybe you wouldn’t kill it. That’d be better than mice. And you could pet it harder.” Lennie avoided the bait. He had sensed his advantage. “If you don’t want me, you only jus’ got to say so, and I’ll go off in those hills right there—right up in those hills and live by myself. An’ I won’t get no mice stole from me.” George said, “I want you to stay with me, Lennie. Jesus Christ, somebody’d shoot you for a coyote if you was by yourself. No, you stay with me. Your Aunt Clara wouldn’t like you running off by yourself, even if she is dead.”