The Grapes of Wrath (40 page)

“No,” she said. “No. When I was a little girl I use’ ta sing. Folks roun’ about use’ ta say I sung as nice as Jenny Lind. Folks use’ ta come an’ listen when I sung. An’—when they stood—an’ me a-singin’, why, me an’ them was together more’n you could ever know. I was thankful. There ain’t so many folks can feel so full up, so close, an’ them folks standin’ there an’ me a-singin’. Thought maybe I’d sing in theaters, but I never done it. An’ I’m glad. They wasn’t nothin’ got in between me an’ them. An’—that’s why I wanted you to pray. I wanted to feel that clostness, oncet more. It’s the same thing, singin’ an’ prayin’, jus’ the same thing. I wisht you could a-heerd me sing.”

He looked down at her, into her eyes. “Good-by,” he said.

She shook her head slowly back and forth and closed her lips tight. And the preacher went out of the dusky tent into the blinding light.

The men were loading up the truck, Uncle John on top, while the others passed equipment up to him. He stowed it carefully, keeping the surface level. Ma emptied the quarter of a keg of salt pork into a pan, and Tom and Al took both little barrels to the river and washed them. They tied them to the running boards and carried water in buckets to fill them. Then over the tops they tied canvas to keep them from slopping the water out. Only the tarpaulin and Granma’s mattress were left to be put on.

Tom said, “With the load we’ll take, this ol’ wagon’ll boil her head off. We got to have plenty water.”

Ma passed the boiled potatoes out and brought the half sack from the tent and put it with the pan of pork. The family ate standing, shuffling their feet and tossing the hot potatoes from hand to hand until they cooled.

Ma went to the Wilson tent and stayed for ten minutes, and then she came out quietly. “It’s time to go,” she said.

The men went under the tarpaulin. Granma still slept, her mouth wide open. They lifted the whole mattress gently and passed it up on
top of the truck. Granma drew up her skinny legs and frowned in her sleep, but she did not awaken.

Uncle John and Pa tied the tarpaulin over the cross-piece, making a little tight tent on top of the load. They lashed it down to the side-bars. And then they were ready. Pa took out his purse and dug two crushed bills from it. He went to Wilson and held them out. “We want you should take this, an”’—he pointed to the pork and potatoes—“an’ that.”

Wilson hung his head and shook it sharply. “I ain’t a-gonna do it,” he said. “You ain’t got much.”

“Got enough to get there,” said Pa. “We ain’t left it all. We’ll have work right off.”

“I ain’t a-gonna do it,” Wilson said. “I’ll git mean if you try.”

Ma took the two bills from Pa’s hand. She folded them neatly and put them on the ground and placed the pork pan over them. “That’s where they’ll be,” she said. “If you don’ get ’em, somebody else will.” Wilson, his head still down, turned and went to his tent; he stepped inside and the flaps fell behind him.

For a few moments the family waited, and then, “We got to go,” said Tom. “It’s near four, I bet.”

The family climbed on the truck, Ma on top, beside Granma. Tom and Al and Pa in the seat, and Winfield on Pa’s lap. Connie and Rose of Sharon made a nest against the cab. The preacher and Uncle John and Ruthie were in a tangle on the load.

Pa called, “Good-by, Mister and Mis’ Wilson.” There was no answer from the tent. Tom started the engine and the truck lumbered away. And as they crawled up the rough road toward Needles and the highway, Ma looked back. Wilson stood in front of his tent, staring after them, and his hat was in his hand. The sun fell full on his face. Ma waved her hand at him, but he did not respond.

Tom kept the truck in second gear over the rough road, to protect the springs. At Needles he drove into a service station, checked the worn tires for air, checked the spares tied to the back. He had the gas tank filled, and he bought two five-gallon cans of gasoline and a two-gallon can of oil. He filled the radiator, begged a map, and studied it.

The service-station boy, in his white uniform, seemed uneasy until the bill was paid. He said, “You people sure have got nerve.”

Tom looked up from the map. “What you mean?”

“Well, crossin’ in a jalopy like this.”

“You been acrost?”

“Sure, plenty, but not in no wreck like this.”

Tom said, “If we broke down maybe somebody’d give us a han’.”

“Well, maybe. But folks are kind of scared to stop at night. I’d hate to be doing it. Takes more nerve than I’ve got.”

Tom grinned. “It don’t take no nerve to do somepin when there ain’t nothin’ else you can do. Well, thanks. We’ll drag on.” And he got in the truck and moved away.

The boy in white went into the iron building where his helper labored over a book of bills. “Jesus, what a hard-looking outfit!”

“Them Okies? They’re all hard-lookin’.”

“Jesus, I’d hate to start out in a jalopy like that.”

“Well, you and me got sense. Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain’t human. A human being wouldn’t live like they do. A human being couldn’t stand it to be so dirty and miserable. They ain’t a hell of a lot better than gorillas.”

“Just the same I’m glad I ain’t crossing the desert in no Hudson Super-Six. She sounds like a threshing machine.”

The other boy looked down at his book of bills. And a big drop of sweat rolled down his finger and fell on the pink bills. “You know, they don’t have much trouble. They’re so goddamn dumb they don’t know it’s dangerous. And, Christ Almighty, they don’t know any better than what they got. Why worry?”

“I’m not worrying. Just thought if it was me, I wouldn’t like it.”

“That’s ’cause you know better. They don’t know any better.” And he wiped the sweat from the pink bill with his sleeve.

The truck took the road and moved up the long hill, through the broken, rotten rock. The engine boiled very soon and Tom slowed down and took it easy. Up the long slope, winding and twisting through dead country, burned white and gray, and no hint of life in it. Once Tom stopped for a few moments to let the engine cool, and then he traveled on. They topped the pass while the sun was still up, and looked down on the desert—black cinder mountains in the distance, and the yellow
sun reflected on the gray desert. The little starved bushes, sage and greasewood, threw bold shadows on the sand and bits of rock. The glaring sun was straight ahead. Tom held his hand before his eyes to see at all. They passed the crest and coasted down to cool the engine. They coasted down the long sweep to the floor of the desert, and the fan turned over to cool the water in the radiator. In the driver’s seat, Tom and Al and Pa, and Winfield on Pa’s knee, looked into the bright descending sun, and their eyes were stony, and their brown faces were damp with perspiration. The burnt land and the black, cindery hills broke the even distance and made it terrible in the reddening light of the setting sun.

Al said, “Jesus, what a place. How’d you like to walk acrost her?”

“People done it,” said Tom. “Lots a people done it; an’ if they could, we could.”

“Lots must a died,” said Al.

“Well, we ain’t come out exac’ly clean.”

Al was silent for a while, and the reddening desert swept past. “Think we’ll ever see them Wilsons again?” Al asked.

Tom flicked his eyes down to the oil gauge. “I got a hunch nobody ain’t gonna see Mis’ Wilson for long. Jus’ a hunch I got.”

Winfield said, “Pa, I wanta get out.”

Tom looked over at him. “Might’s well let ever’body out ’fore we settle down to drivin’ tonight.” He slowed the car and brought it to a stop. Winfield scrambled out and urinated at the side of the road. Tom leaned out. “Anybody else?”

“We’re holdin’ our water up here,” Uncle John called.

Pa said, “Winfiel’, you crawl up on top. You put my legs to sleep a-settin’ on ’em.” The little boy buttoned his overalls and obediently crawled up the back board and on his hands and knees crawled over Granma’s mattress and forward to Ruthie.

The truck moved on into the evening, and the edge of the sun struck the rough horizon and turned the desert red.

Ruthie said, “Wouldn’ leave you set up there, huh?”

“I didn’ want to. It wasn’t so nice as here. Couldn’ lie down.”

“Well, don’ you bother me, a-squawkin’ an’ a-talkin’,” Ruthie said, “’cause I’m goin’ to sleep, an’ when I wake up, we gonna be there! ’Cause Tom said so! Gonna seem funny to see pretty country.”

The sun went down and left a great halo in the sky. And it grew very dark under the tarpaulin, a long cave with light at each end—a flat triangle of light.

Connie and Rose of Sharon leaned back against the cab, and the hot wind tumbling through the tent struck the backs of their heads, and the tarpaulin whipped and drummed above them. They spoke together in low tones, pitched to the drumming canvas, so that no one could hear them. When Connie spoke he turned his head and spoke into her ear, and she did the same to him. She said, “Seems like we wasn’t never gonna do nothin’ but move. I’m so tar’d.”

He turned his head to her ear. “Maybe in the mornin’. How’d you like to be alone now?” In the dusk his hand moved out and stroked her hip.

She said, “Don’t. You’ll make me crazy as a loon. Don’t do that.” And she turned her head to hear his response.

“Maybe—when ever’body’s asleep.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But wait till they get to sleep. You’ll make me crazy, an’ maybe they won’t get to sleep.”

“I can’t hardly stop,” he said.

“I know. Me neither. Le’s talk about when we get there; an’ you move away ’fore I get crazy.”

He shifted away a little. “Well, I’ll get to studyin’ nights right off,” he said. She sighed deeply. “Gonna get one a them books that tells about it an’ cut the coupon, right off.”

“How long, you think?” she asked.

“How long what?”

“How long ’fore you’ll be makin’ big money an’ we got ice?”

“Can’t tell,” he said importantly. “Can’t really rightly tell. Fella oughta be studied up pretty good ’fore Christmus.”

“Soon’s you get studied up we could get ice an’ stuff, I guess.”

He chuckled. “It’s this here heat,” he said. “What you gonna need ice roun’ Christmus for?”

She giggled. “Tha’s right. But I’d like ice any time. Now don’t. You’ll get me crazy!”

The dusk passed into dark and the desert stars came out in the soft sky, stars stabbing and sharp, with few points and rays to them, and the
sky was velvet. And the heat changed. While the sun was up, it was a beating, flailing heat, but now the heat came from below, from the earth itself, and the heat was thick and muffling. The lights of the truck came on, and they illuminated a little blur of highway ahead, and a strip of desert on either side of the road. And sometimes eyes gleamed in the lights far ahead, but no animal showed in the lights. It was pitch dark under the canvas now. Uncle John and the preacher were curled in the middle of the truck, resting on their elbows, and staring out the back triangle. They could see the two bumps that were Ma and Granma against the outside. They could see Ma move occasionally, and her dark arm moving against the outside.

Uncle John talked to the preacher. “Casy,” he said, “you’re a fella oughta know what to do.”

“What to do about what?”

“I dunno,” said Uncle John.

Casy said, “Well, that’s gonna make it easy for me!”

“Well, you been a preacher.”

“Look, John, ever’body takes a crack at me ’cause I been a preacher. A preacher ain’t nothin’ but a man.”

“Yeah, but—he’s—a
kind
of a man, else he wouldn’ be a preacher. I wanna ast you—well, you think a fella could bring bad luck to folks?”

“I dunno,” said Casy. “I dunno.”

“Well—see—I was married—fine, good girl. An’ one night she got a pain in her stomach. An’ she says, ‘You better get a doctor.’ An’ I says, ‘Hell, you jus’ et too much.”’ Uncle John put his hand on Casy’s knee and he peered through the darkness at him. “She give me a
look
. An’ she groaned all night, an’ she died the next afternoon.” The preacher mumbled something. “You see,” John went on, “I kil’t her. An’ sence then I tried to make it up—mos’ly to kids. An’ I tried to be good, an’ I can’t. I get drunk, an’ I go wild.”

“Ever’body goes wild,” said Casy. “I do too.”

“Yeah, but you ain’t got a sin on your soul like me.”

Casy said gently, “Sure I got sins. Ever’body got sins. A sin is somepin you ain’t sure about. Them people that’s sure about ever’thing an’ ain’t got no sin—well, with that kind a son-of-a-bitch, if I was God I’d kick their ass right outa heaven! I couldn’ stand ’em!”

Uncle John said, “I got a feelin’ I’m bringin’ bad luck to my own folks. I got a feelin’ I oughta go away an’ let ’em be. I ain’t comf ’table bein’ like this.”

Casy said quickly, “I know this—a man got to do what he got to do. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I don’t think they’s luck or bad luck. On’y one thing in this worl’ I’m sure of, an’ that’s I’m sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella’s life. He got to do it all hisself. Help him, maybe, but not tell him what to do.”

Uncle John said disappointedly, “Then you don’ know?”

“I don’ know.”

“You think it was a sin to let my wife die like that?”

“Well,” said Casy, “for anybody else it was a mistake, but if you think it was a sin—then it’s a sin. A fella builds his own sins right up from the groun’.”

“I got to give that a goin’-over,” said Uncle John, and he rolled on his back and lay with his knees pulled up.

The truck moved on over the hot earth, and the hours passed. Ruthie and Winfield went to sleep. Connie loosened a blanket from the load and covered himself and Rose of Sharon with it, and in the heat they struggled together, and held their breaths. And after a time Connie threw off the blanket and the hot tunneling wind felt cool on their wet bodies.

On the back of the truck Ma lay on the mattress beside Granma, and she could not see with her eyes, but she could feel the struggling body and the struggling heart; and the sobbing breath was in her ear. And Ma said over and over, “All right. It’s gonna be all right.” And she said hoarsely, “You know the family got to get acrost. You know that.”