Of Mice and Men Chapter 6 Summary

Lennie sits by the deep pool near the river, waiting for George. He’s proud of himself for remembering this is the spot where he’s to wait. George is really the only thing on his mind right now.
Lennie is certain George will now "give him hell," and the big, sad guy remembers that he could run away to a cave and stop bothering George. He says he could get through it, even though there’d be no ketchup.
Almost as if repeating a spell, Lennie says, "If George don’t want me…I’ll go away. I’ll go away."
Just then, who should he conjure out of the dark corners of his dull mind, but his dead Aunt Clara. Lennie, hallucinating, has a pleading conversation with his Aunt Clara, who, the narrator notes, speaks in Lennie’s voice.
Aunt Clara lights into Lennie: she accuses him of never thinking of George, even though George is always so nice to him. "Nice" activities include saving him the bigger piece of pie and giving him all the ketchup, when there is any.
Aunt Clara gets grumpier, listing off all the boozing and women George could have had without Lennie.
While Lennie whines that he’s always trying, Aunt Clara announces he never had any intention of leaving George the hell alone. Aunt Clara swears a surprising amount. Her grammar also leaves something to be desired.
Then, Aunt Clara disappears, only to be replaced by a very large and angry rabbit that (not surprisingly) also has Lennie’s voice.
If you thought the dead aunt was bad, the scary, mind-reading rabbit reaches into Lennie and hits him where it hurts: it scoffs at Lennie’s hope to tend to rabbits.
Though Lennie promises he’d never forget to feed them, the rabbit claims that Lennie "ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbit." (Lennie, rather than pointing out that rabbits don’t tend to wear boots, lays back for another licking from the imaginary and rather mean bunny.)
The rabbit suggests that George will beat Lennie with a stick when he finds him. After the beating, the rabbit promises George will go away and leave Lennie, because he got sick of him.
The rabbit then repeats over and over, "He’s gonna leave you, ya crazy bastard. He’s gonna leave ya all alone."
As Lennie covers his ears in agony and cries out for George, the rabbit (according to the narrator) scuttles back into Lennie’s brain, and George finally appears from the brush.
Lennie is thrilled to see George and begs him to give him hell, so that things can get back to normal. George is strangely quiet even when Lennie tells him that he has done yet another bad thing.
When George refuses to give him hell, Lennie asks George to tell him the dream-farm story again, and about how the two of them are different than other guys.
George takes out Carlson’s Luger and unsnaps the safety. He can hear Curley and the other men approaching. (We, too, feel as though we can hear the men approaching; the rustling in the bushes, the yelling and cursing getting heart-thumpingly closer…closer…closer.)
As George tells the story, Lennie adds his usual eager interruptions and additions about tending rabbits and living off the fat of the land. George tells Lennie to look across the river while he narrates.
Lennie talks about getting the place they’ve always dreamed of, and getting it now. Lennie then tells George he’d worried that George was angry at him. After hearing George promise he’s not mad, and he’s never been mad, Lennie goes back to the dream farm.
As George is readying his courage, Lennie says, "Le’s do it now. Le’s get that place now."
George agrees they’ve got to do it now, and as Lennie continues to look over the bank, envisioning the farm, George puts a gun to the back of Lennie’s head and pulls the trigger.
Lennie lies still in the sand, without quivering, dead.
The other men hear the shot and come running. They think that Lennie had Carlson’s gun and that George wrestled it away from him. George doesn’t correct them.
Slim sees the situation for what it is. He comes over to George quietly and sits close to him, saying simply, "Never you mind…A guy got to sometimes."
As the other men probe George for the nasty details, Slim intervenes. He tells George the two of them should go for a drink, and as he helps him up adds, "You hadda, George. I swear you hadda. Come on with me." The two leave.
Carlson looks at the others and says, "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin’ them two guys?"

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