The Grapes of Wrath (43 page)

The men squatted on their hams, sharp-faced men, lean from hunger and hard from resisting it, sullen eyes and hard jaws. And the rich land was around them.

D’ja hear about the kid in that fourth tent down?

No, I jus’ come in.

Well, that kid’s been a-cryin’ in his sleep an’ a-rollin’ in his sleep. Them folks thought he got worms. So they give him a blaster, an’ he died. It was what they call black-tongue the kid had. Comes from not gettin’ good things to eat.

Poor little fella.

Yeah, but them folks can’t bury him. Got to go to the county stone orchard.

Well, hell.

And hands went into pockets and little coins came out. In front of the tent a little heap of silver grew. And the family found it there.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won’t all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat.

And the associations of owners knew that some day the praying would stop.

And there’s the end.

The family, on top of the load, the children and Connie and Rose of Sharon and the preacher were stiff and cramped. They had sat in the heat in front of the coroner’s office in Bakersfield while Pa and Ma and Uncle John went in. Then a basket was brought out and the long bundle lifted down from the truck. And they sat in the sun while the examination went on, while the cause of death was found and the certificate signed.

Al and Tom strolled along the street and looked in store windows and watched the strange people on the sidewalks.

And at last Pa and Ma and Uncle John came out, and they were subdued and quiet. Uncle John climbed up on the load. Pa and Ma got in the seat. Tom and Al strolled back and Tom got under the steering wheel. He sat there silently, waiting for some instruction. Pa looked straight ahead, his dark hat pulled low. Ma rubbed the sides of her mouth with her fingers, and her eyes were far away and lost, dead with weariness.

Pa sighed deeply. “They wasn’t nothin’ else to do,” he said.

“I know,” said Ma. “She would a liked a nice funeral, though. She always wanted one.”

Tom looked sideways at them. “County?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Pa shook his head quickly, as though to get back to some reality. “We didn’ have enough. We couldn’ of done it.” He turned to Ma. “You ain’t to feel bad. We couldn’ no matter how hard we tried, no matter what we done. We jus’ didn’ have it; embalming, an’ a coffinan’ a preacher, an’ a plot in a graveyard. It would of took ten times what we got. We done the bes’ we could.”

“I know,” Ma said. “I jus’ can’t get it outa my head what store she set by a nice funeral. Got to forget it.” She sighed deeply and rubbed the
side of her mouth. “That was a purty nice fella in there. Awful bossy, but he was purty nice.”

“Yeah,” Pa said. “He give us the straight talk, awright.”

Ma brushed her hair back with her hand. Her jaw tightened. “We got to git,” she said. “We got to find a place to stay. We got to get work an’ settle down. No use a-lettin’ the little fellas go hungry. That wasn’t never Granma’s way. She always et a good meal at a funeral.”

“Where we goin’?” Tom asked.

Pa raised his hat and scratched among his hair. “Camp,” he said. “We ain’t gonna spen’ what little’s lef’ till we get work. Drive out in the country.”

Tom started the car and they rolled through the streets and out toward the country. And by a bridge they saw a collection of tents and shacks. Tom said, “Might’s well stop here. Find out what’s doin’, an’ where at the work is.” He drove down a steep dirt incline and parked on the edge of the encampment.

There was no order in the camp; little gray tents, shacks, cars were scattered about at random. The first house was nondescript. The south wall was made of three sheets of rusty corrugated iron, the east wall a square of moldy carpet tacked between two boards, the north wall a strip of roofing paper and a strip of tattered canvas, and the west wall six pieces of gunny sacking. Over the square frame, on untrimmed willow limbs, grass had been piled, not thatched, but heaped up in a low mound. The entrance, on the gunny-sack side, was cluttered with equipment. A five-gallon kerosene can served for a stove. It was laid on its side, with a section of rusty stovepipe thrust in one end. A wash boiler rested on its side against the wall; and a collection of boxes lay about, boxes to sit on, to eat on. A Model T Ford sedan and a two-wheel trailer were parked beside the shack, and about the camp there hung a slovenly despair.

Next to the shack there was a little tent, gray with weathering, but neatly, properly set up; and the boxes in front of it were placed against the tent wall. A stovepipe stuck out of the door flap, and the dirt in front of the tent had been swept and sprinkled. A bucketful of soaking clothes stood on a box. The camp was neat and sturdy. A Model A roadster and a little home-made bed trailer stood beside the tent.

And next there was a huge tent, ragged, torn in strips and the tears mended with pieces of wire. The flaps were up, and inside four wide mattresses lay on the ground. A clothes line strung along the side bore pink cotton dresses and several pairs of overalls. There were forty tents and shacks, and beside each habitation some kind of automobile. Far down the line a few children stood and stared at the newly arrived truck, and they moved toward it, little boys in overalls and bare feet, their hair gray with dust.

Tom stopped the truck and looked at Pa. “She ain’t very purty,” he said. “Want to go somewheres else?”

“Can’t go nowheres else till we know where we’re at,” Pa said. “We got to ast about work.”

Tom opened the door and stepped out. The family climbed down from the load and looked curiously at the camp. Ruthie and Winfield, from the habit of the road, took down the bucket and walked toward the willows, where there would be water; and the line of children parted for them and closed after them.

The flaps of the first shack parted and a woman looked out. Her gray hair was braided, and she wore a dirty, flowered Mother Hubbard. Her face was wizened and dull, deep gray pouches under blank eyes, and a mouth slack and loose.

Pa said, “Can we jus’ pull up anywheres an’ camp?”

The head was withdrawn inside the shack. For a moment there was quiet and then the flaps were pushed aside and a bearded man in shirt sleeves stepped out. The woman looked out after him, but she did not come into the open.

The bearded man said, “Howdy, folks,” and his restless dark eyes jumped to each member of the family, and from them to the truck to the equipment.

Pa said, “I jus’ ast your woman if it’s all right to set out stuff anywheres.”

The bearded man looked at Pa intently, as though he had said something very wise that needed thought. “Set down anywheres, here in this place?” he asked.

“Sure. Anybody own this place, that we got to see ’fore we can camp?”

The bearded man squinted one eye nearly closed and studied Pa. “You wanta camp here?”

Pa’s irritation arose. The gray woman peered out of the burlap shack. “What you think I’m a-sayin’?” Pa said.

“Well, if you wanta camp here, why don’t ya? I ain’t a-stoppin’ you.”

Tom laughed. “He got it.”

Pa gathered his temper. “I jus’ wanted to know does anybody own it? Do we got to pay?”

The bearded man thrust out his jaw. “Who owns it?” he demanded.

Pa turned away. “The hell with it,” he said. The woman’s head popped back in the tent.

The bearded man stepped forward menacingly. “Who owns it?” he demanded. “Who’s gonna kick us outa here? You tell
me
.”

Tom stepped in front of Pa. “You better go take a good long sleep,” he said. The bearded man dropped his mouth open and put a dirty finger against his lower gums. For a moment he continued to look wisely, speculatively at Tom, and then he turned on his heel and popped into the shack after the gray woman.

Tom turned on Pa. “What the hell was that?” he asked.

Pa shrugged his shoulders. He was looking across the camp. In front of a tent stood an old Buick, and the head was off. A young man was grinding the valves, and as he twisted back and forth, back and forth, on the tool, he looked up at the Joad truck. They could see that he was laughing to himself. When the bearded man had gone, the young man left his work and sauntered over.

“H’are ya?” he said, and his blue eyes were shiny with amusement. “I seen you just met the Mayor.”

“What the hell’s the matter with ’im?” Tom demanded.

The young man chuckled. “He’s jus’ nuts like you an’ me. Maybe he’s a little nutser’n me, I don’ know.”

Pa said, “I jus’ ast him if we could camp here.”

The young man wiped his greasy hands on his trousers. “Sure. Why not? You folks jus’ come acrost?”

“Yeah,” said Tom. “Jus’ got in this mornin’.”

“Never been in Hooverville before?”

“Where’s Hooverville?”

“This here’s her.”

“Oh!” said Tom. “We jus’ got in.”

Winfield and Ruthie came back, carrying a bucket of water between them.

Ma said, “Le’s get the camp up. I’m tuckered out. Maybe we can all rest.” Pa and Uncle John climbed up on the truck to unload the canvas and the beds.

Tom sauntered to the young man, and walked beside him back to the car he had been working on. The valve-grinding brace lay on the exposed block, and a little yellow can of valve-grinding compound was wedged on top of the vacuum tank. Tom asked, “What the hell was the matter’th that ol’ fella with the beard?”

The young man picked up his brace and went to work, twisting back and forth, grinding valve against valve seat. The Mayor? Chris’ knows. I guess maybe he’s bull-simple.”

“What’s ‘bull-simple’?”

“I guess cops push ’im aroun’ so much he’s still spinning.”

Tom asked, “Why would they push a fella like that aroun’?”

The young man stopped his work and looked in Tom’s eyes. “Chris’ knows,” he said. “You jus’ come. Maybe you can figger her out. Some fellas says one thing, an’ some says another thing. But you jus’ camp in one place a little while, an’ you see how quick a deputy sheriff shoves you along.” He lifted a valve and smeared compound on the seat.

“But what the hell for?”

“I tell ya I don’t know. Some says they don’t want us to vote; keep us movin’ so we can’t vote. An’ some says so we can’t get on relief. An’ some says if we set in one place we’d get organized. I don’ know why. I on’y know we get rode all the time. You wait, you’ll see.”

“We ain’t no bums,” Tom insisted. “We’re lookin’ for work. We’ll take any kind a work.”

The young man paused in fitting the brace to the valve slot. He looked in amazement at Tom. “Lookin’ for work?” he said. “So you’re lookin’ for work. What ya think ever’body else is lookin’ for? Di’monds? What you think I wore my ass down to a nub lookin’ for?” He twisted the brace back and forth.

Tom looked about at the grimy tents, the junk equipment, at the old cars, the lumpy mattresses out in the sun, at the blackened cans on
fire-blackened holes where the people cooked. He asked quietly, “Ain’t they no work?”

“I don’ know. Mus’ be. Ain’t no crop right here now. Grapes to pick later, an’ cotton to pick later. We’re a-movin’ on, soon’s I get these here valves groun’. Me an’ my wife an’ my kids. We heard they was work up north. We’re shovin’ north, up aroun’ Salinas.”

Tom saw Uncle John and Pa and the preacher hoisting the tarpaulin on the tent poles and Ma on her knees inside, brushing off the mattresses on the ground. A circle of quiet children stood to watch the new family get settled, quiet children with bare feet and dirty faces. Tom said, “Back home some fellas come through with han’bills—orange ones. Says they need lots a people out here to work the crops.”

The young man laughed. “They say they’s three hunderd thousan’ us folks here, an’ I bet ever’ dam’ fam’ly seen them han’bills.”

“Yeah, but if they don’ need folks, what’d they go to the trouble puttin’ them things out for?”

“Use your head, why don’cha?”

“Yeah, but I wanta know.”

“Look,” the young man said. “S’pose you got a job a work, an’ there’s jus’ one fella wants the job. You got to pay ’im what he asts. But s’pose they’s a hunderd men.” He put down his tool. His eyes hardened and his voice sharpened. “S’pose they’s a hunderd men wants that job. S’pose them men got kids, an’ them kids is hungry. S’pose a lousy dime’ll buy a box a mush for them kids. S’pose a nickel’ll buy at leas’ somepin for them kids. An’ you got a hunderd men. Jus’ offer ’em a nickel—why, they’ll kill each other fightin’ for that nickel. Know what they was payin’, las’ job I had? Fifteen cents an hour. Ten hours for a dollar an’ a half, an’ ya can’t stay on the place. Got to burn gasoline gettin’ there.” He was panting with anger, and his eyes blazed with hate. “That’s why them han’bills was out. You can print a hell of a lot of han’bills with what ya save payin’ fifteen cents an hour for fiel’ work.”

Tom said, “That’s stinkin’.”

The young man laughed harshly. “You stay out here a little while, an’ if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.”

“But they is work,” Tom insisted. “Christ Almighty, with all this stuff
a-growin’: orchards, grapes, vegetables—I seen it. They got to have men. I seen all that stuff.”

A child cried in the tent beside the car. The young man went into the tent and his voice came softly through the canvas. Tom picked up the brace, fitted it in the slot of the valve, and ground away, his hand whipping back and forth. The child’s crying stopped. The young man came out and watched Tom. “You can do her,” he said. “Damn good thing. You’ll need to.”

“How ’bout what I said?” Tom resumed. “I seen all the stuff growin’.”

The young man squatted on his heels. “I’ll tell ya,” he said quietly. “They’s a big son-of-a-bitch of a peach orchard I worked in. Takes nine men all the year roun’.” He paused impressively. “Takes three thousan’ men for two weeks when them peaches is ripe. Got to have ’em or them peaches’ll rot. So what do they do? They send out han’bills all over hell. They need three thousan’, an’ they get six thousan’. They get them men for what they wanta pay. If ya don’ wanta take what they pay, goddamn it, they’s a thousan’ men waitin’ for your job. So ya pick, an’ ya pick, an’ then she’s done. Whole part a the country’s peaches. All ripe together. When ya get ’em picked, ever’ goddamn one is picked. There ain’t another damn thing in that part a the country to do. An’ then them owners don’ want you there no more. Three thousan’ of you. The work’s done. You might steal, you might get drunk, you might jus’ raise hell. An’ besides, you don’ look nice, livin’ in ol’ tents; an’ it’s a pretty country, but you stink it up. They don’ want you aroun’. So they kick you out, they move you along. That’s how it is.”