Cal asks Lee about his mother

Cal has always competed for affection by imitating Aron, and what charms in his brother is suspect in him, so he has built a wall of self-sufficiency with one weak place: leaning against his father's knee to draw an absent-minded caress. He walks Salinas alone at night until Rabbit Holman, drunk on a pint Cal quietly doubles, tells him what everyone knows — that Kate is Adam Trask's wife, mother of the twins, and that her circus is worth ten dollars. Cal goes and sees it, and what sickens him is the faces of the watching men. Afterwards he knocks on Lee's door and asks his questions straight: does his father know, why the lie, did she shoot him, why. Lee answers each one, admits he cannot understand her, and says Adam died when she left. Cal says he hates his mother because he has her in him — and Lee comes out of his chair to forbid it: whatever Cal does, it will be he who does it. Meanwhile Aron turns to the church and a vow of celibacy.

Cal gets his knowledge in the ugliest way — bought with a stranger's whisky, confirmed from a chair in a brothel — and then does the thing the book counts as courage: asks a straight question and takes a straight answer. Lee drops his manner entirely to give it. Cal's decision to spare Aron is the first mercy he has been shown choosing.