Tom said, “Ma, what’s eatin’ on you? What ya wanna do this-a-way for? What’s the matter’th you anyways? You gone johnrabbit on us?”
Ma’s face softened, but her eyes were still fierce. “You done this ’thout thinkin’ much,” Ma said. “What we got lef’ in the worl’? Nothin’ but us. Nothin’ but the folks. We come out an’ Grampa, he reached for the shovel-shelf right off. An’ now, right off, you wanna bust up the folks——”
Tom cried, “Ma, we was gonna catch up with ya. We wasn’t gonna be gone long.”
Ma waved the jack handle. “S’pose we was camped, and you went on by. S’pose we got on through, how’d we know where to leave the word, an’ how’d you know where to ask?” She said, “We got a bitter road. Granma’s sick. She’s up there on the truck a-pawin’ for a shovel herself. She’s jus’ tar’d out. We got a long bitter road ahead.”
Uncle John said, “But we could be makin’ some money. We could have a little bit saved up, come time the other folks got there.”
The eyes of the whole family shifted back to Ma. She was the power. She had taken control. “The money we’d make wouldn’t do no good,” she said. “All we got is the family unbroke. Like a bunch a cows, when the lobos are ranging, stick all together. I ain’t scared while we’re all here, all that’s alive, but I ain’t gonna see us bust up. The Wilsons here is with us, an’ the preacher is with us. I can’t say nothin’ if they want to go, but I’m a-goin’ cat-wild with this here piece a bar-arn if my own folks busts up.” Her tone was cold and final.
Tom said soothingly, “Ma, we can’t all camp here. Ain’t no water here. Ain’t even much shade here. Granma, she needs shade.”
“All right,” said Ma. “We’ll go along. We’ll stop first place they’s water an’ shade. An’—the truck’ll come back an’ take you in town to get your part, an’ it’ll bring you back. You ain’t goin’ walkin’ along in the sun, an’ I ain’t havin’ you out all alone, so if you get picked up there ain’t nobody of your folks to he’p ya.”
Tom drew his lips over his teeth and then snapped them open. He spread his hands helplessly and let them flop against his sides. “Pa,” he said, “if you was to rush her one side an’ me the other an’ then the res’ pile on, an’ Granma jump down on top, maybe we can get Ma ’thout more’n two-three of us gets killed with that there jack handle. But if you ain’t willin’ to get your head smashed, I guess Ma’s went an’filled her flush. Jesus Christ, one person with their mind made up can shove a lot of folks aroun’! You win, Ma. Put away that jack handle ’fore you hurt somebody.”
Ma looked in astonishment at the bar of iron. Her hand trembled. She dropped her weapon on the ground, and Tom, with elaborate care, picked it up and put it back in the car. He said, “Pa, you jus’ got set back on your heels. Al, you drive the folks on an’ get ’em camped, an’ then you bring the truck back here. Me an’ the preacher’ll get the pan off. Then, if we can make it, we’ll run in Santa Rosa an’ try an’ get a con-rod. Maybe we can, seein’ it’s Sat’dy night. Get jumpin’ now so we can go. Lemme have the monkey wrench an’ pliers outa the truck.” He reached under the car and felt the greasy pan. “Oh, yeah, lemme have a can, that ol’ bucket, to catch the oil. Got to save that.” Al handed over the bucket and Tom set it under the car and loosened the oil cap with a pair of pliers. The black oil flowed down his arm while he unscrewed the cap with his fingers, and then the black stream ran silently into the bucket. Al had loaded the family on the truck by the time the bucket was half full. Tom, his face already smudged with oil, looked out between the wheels. “Get back fast!” he called. And he was loosening the pan bolts as the truck moved gently across the shallow ditch and crawled away. Tom turned each bolt a single turn, loosening them evenly to spare the gasket.
The preacher knelt beside the wheels. “What can I do?”
“Nothin’, not right now. Soon’s the oil’s out an’ I get these here bolts loose, you can he’p me drop the pan off.” He squirmed away under the car, loosening the bolts with a wrench and turning them out with his fingers. He left the bolts on each end loosely threaded to keep the pan from dropping. “Ground’s still hot under here,” Tom said. And then, “Say, Casy, you been awful goddamn quiet the las’ few days. Why, Jesus! When I first come up with you, you was makin’ a speech ever’ half-hour or so. An’ here you ain’t said ten words the las’ couple days. What’s a matter—gettin’ sour?”
Casy was stretched out on his stomach, looking under the car. His chin, bristly with sparse whiskers, rested on the back of one hand. His hat was pushed back so that it covered the back of his neck. “I done enough talkin’ when I was a preacher to las’ the rest a my life,” he said.
“Yeah, but you done some talkin’ sence, too.”
“I’m all worried up,” Casy said. “I didn’ even know it when I was a-preachin’ aroun’, but I was doin’ consid’able tom-cattin’ aroun’. If I ain’t gonna preach no more, I got to get married. Why, Tommy, I’m a-lustin’ after the flesh.”
“Me too,” said Tom. “Say, the day I come outa McAlester I was smokin’. I run me down a girl, a hoor girl, like she was a rabbit. I won’t tell ya what happened. I wouldn’ tell nobody what happened.”
Casy laughed. “I know what happened. I went a-fastin’ into the wilderness one time, an’ when I come out the same damn thing happened to me.”
“Hell it did!” said Tom. “Well, I saved my money anyway, an’ I give that girl a run. Thought I was nuts. I should a paid her, but I on’y got five bucks to my name. She said she didn’ want no money. Here, roll in under here an’ grab a-holt. I’ll tap her loose. Then you turn out that bolt an’ I turn out my end, an’ we let her down easy. Careful that gasket. See, she comes off in one piece. They’s on’y four cylinders to these here ol’ Dodges. I took one down one time. Got main bearings big as a cantaloupe. Now—let her down—hold it. Reach up an’ pull down that gasket where it’s stuck—easy now. There!” The greasy pan lay on the ground between them, and a little oil still lay in the wells. Tom reached into one of the front wells and picked out some broken pieces of babbitt. “There she is,” he said. He turned the babbitt in his fingers. “Shaft’s up. Look in back an’ get the crank. Turn her over till I tell you.”
Casy got to his feet and found the crank and fitted it. “Ready?”
“Reach—now easy—little more—little more—right there.”
Casy kneeled down and looked under again. Tom rattled the connecting-rod bearing against the shaft. “There she is.”
“What ya s’pose done it?” Casy asked.
“Oh, hell, I don’ know! This buggy been on the road thirteen years. Says sixty-thousand miles on the speedometer. That means a hunderd an’ sixty, an’ God knows how many times they turned the numbers back. Gets hot—maybe somebody let the oil get low—jus’ went out.” He pulled the cotter-pins and put his wrench on a bearing bolt. He strained and the wrench slipped. A long gash appeared on the back of his hand. Tom looked at it—the blood flowed evenly from the wound and met the oil and dripped into the pan.
“That’s too bad,” Casy said. “Want I should do that an’ you wrap up your han’?”
“Hell, no! I never fixed no car in my life ’thout cuttin’ myself. Now it’s done I don’t have to worry no more.” He fitted the wrench again. “Wisht I had a crescent wrench,” he said, and he hammered the wrench with the butt of his hand until the bolts loosened. He took them out and laid them with the pan bolts in the pan, and the cotter-pins with them. He loosened the bearing bolts and pulled out the piston. He put piston and connecting-rod in the pan. “There, by God!” He squirmed free from under the car and pulled the pan out with him. He wiped his hand on a piece of gunny sacking and inspected the cut. “Bleedin’ like a son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “Well, I can stop that.” He urinated on the ground, picked up a handful of the resulting mud, and plastered it over the wound. Only for a moment did the blood ooze out, and then it stopped. “Bes’ damn thing in the worl’ to stop b
leedin’,” he said.
“Han’ful a spider web’ll do it too,” said Casy.
“I know, but there ain’t no spider web, an’ you can always get piss.” Tom sat on the running board and inspected the broken bearing. “Now if we can on’y find a ’25 Dodge an’ get a used con-rod an’ some shims, maybe we’ll make her all right. Al must a gone a hell of a long ways.”
The shadow of the billboard was sixty feet out by now. The afternoon lengthened away. Casy sat down on the running board and looked westward. “We gonna be in high mountains pretty soon,” he said, and he was silent for a few moments. Then, “Tom!”
“Yeah?”
“Tom, I been watchin’ the cars on the road, them we passed an’ them that passed us. I been keepin’ track.”
“Track a what?”
“Tom, they’s hunderds a families like us all a-goin’ west. I watched. There ain’t none of ’em goin’ east—hunderds of ’em. Did you notice that?”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Why—it’s like—it’s like they was runnin’ away from soldiers. It’s like a whole country is movin’.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “They is a whole country movin’. We’re movin’ too.”
“Well—s’pose all these here folks an’ ever’body—s’pose they can’t get no jobs out there?”
“Goddamn it!” Tom cried. “How’d I know? I’m jus’ puttin’ one foot in front a the other. I done it at Mac for four years, jus’ marchin’ in cell an’ out cell an’ in mess an’ out mess. Jesus Christ, I thought it’d be somepin different when I come out! Couldn’t think a nothin’ in there, else you go stir happy, an’ now can’t think a nothin’.” He turned on Casy. “This here bearing went out. We didn’ know it was goin’, so we didn’ worry none. Now she’s out an’ we’ll fix her. An’ by Christ that goes for the rest of it! I ain’t gonna worry. I can’t do it. This here little piece of iron an’ babbitt. See it? Ya see it? Well, that’s the only goddamn thing in the world I got on my mind. I wonder where the hell Al is.”
Casy said, “Now look, Tom. Oh, what the hell! So goddamn hard to say anything.”
Tom lifted the mud pack from his hand and threw it on the ground. The edge of the wound was lined with dirt. He glanced over to the preacher. “You’re fixin’ to make a speech,” Tom said. “Well, go ahead. I like speeches. Warden used to make speeches all the time. Didn’t do us no harm an’ he got a hell of a bang out of it. What you tryin’ to roll out?”
Casy picked the backs of his long knotty fingers. “They’s stuff goin’ on and they’s folks doin’ things. Them people layin’ one foot down in front of the other, like you says, they ain’t thinkin’ where they’re goin’, like you says—but they’re all layin’ ’em down the same direction, jus’ the same. An’ if ya listen, you’ll hear a movin’, an’ a sneakin’, an’ a rustlin’, an’—an’ a res’lessness. They’s stuff goin’ on that the folks doin’ it don’t know nothin’ about—yet. They’s gonna come somepin outa all these folks goin’ wes’—outa all their farms lef’ lonely. They’s gonna come a thing that’s gonna change the whole country.”
Tom said, “I’m still layin’ my dogs down one at a time.”
“Yeah, but when a fence comes up at ya, ya gonna climb that fence.”
“I climb fences when I got fences to climb,” said Tom.
Casy sighed. “It’s the bes’ way. I gotta agree. But they’s different kinda fences. They’s folks like me that climbs fences that ain’t even strang up yet—an’ can’t he’p it.”
“Ain’t that Al a-comin’?” Tom asked.
“Yeah. Looks like.”
Tom stood up and wrapped the connecting-rod and both halves of the bearing in the piece of sack. “Wanta make sure I get the same,” he said.
The truck pulled alongside the road and Al leaned out the window.
Tom said, “You was a hell of a long time. How far’d you go?”
Al sighed. “Got the rod out?”
“Yeah.” Tom held up the sack. “Babbitt jus’ broke down.”
“Well, it wasn’t no fault of mine,” said Al.
“No. Where’d you take the folks?”
“We had a mess,” Al said. “Granma got to bellerin’, an’ that set Rosasharn off an’ she bellered some. Got her head under a mattress an’ bellered. But Granma, she was just layin’ back her jaw an’ bayin’ like a moonlight houn’ dog. Seems like Granma ain’t got no sense no more. Like a little baby. Don’ speak to nobody, don’ seem to reco’nize nobody. Jus’ talks on like she’s talkin’ to Grampa.”
“Where’d ya leave ’em?” Tom insisted.
“Well, we come to a camp. Got shade an’ got water in pipes. Costs half a dollar a day to stay there. But ever’body’s so goddamn tired an’ wore out an’ mis’able, they stayed there. Ma says they got to ’cause Granma’s so tired an’ wore out. Got Wilson’s tent up an’ got our tarp for a tent. I think Granma gone nuts.”
Tom looked toward the lowering sun. “Casy,” he said, “somebody got to stay with this car or she’ll get stripped. You jus’ as soon?”
“Sure. I’ll stay.”
Al took a paper bag from the seat. “This here’s some bread an’ meat Ma sent, an’ I got a jug a water here.”
“She don’t forget nobody,” said Casy.
Tom got in beside Al. “Look,” he said. “We’ll get back jus’ as soon’s we can. But we can’t tell how long.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Awright. Don’t make no speeches to yourself. Get goin’, Al.” The truck moved off in the late afternoon. “He’s a nice fella,” Tom said. “He thinks about stuff all the time.”
“Well, hell—if you been a preacher, I guess you got to. Pa’s all mad about it costs fifty cents jus’ to camp under a tree. He can’t see that noways. Settin’ a-cussin’. Says nex’ thing they’ll sell ya a little tank a air. But Ma says they gotta be near shade an’ water ’cause a Granma.” The truck rattled along the highway, and now that it was unloaded, every part of it rattled and clashed. The side-board of the bed, the cut body. It rode hard and light. Al put it up to thirty-eight miles an hour and the engine clattered heavily and a blue smoke of burning oil drifted up through the floor boards.
“Cut her down some,” Tom said. “You gonna burn her right down to the hub caps. What’s eatin’ on Granma?”
“I don’t know. ’Member the las’ couple days she’s been airy-nary, sayin’ nothin’ to nobody? Well, she’s yellin’ an’ talkin’ plenty now, on’y she’s talkin’ to Grampa. Yellin’ at him. Kinda scary, too. You can almos’ see ’im a-settin’ there grinnin’ at her the way he always done, a-fingerin’ hisself an’ grinnin’. Seems like she sees him a-settin’ there, too. She’s jus’ givin’ him hell. Say, Pa, he give me twenty dollars to hand you. He don’ know how much you gonna need. Ever see Ma stand up to ’im like she done today?”
“Not I remember. I sure did pick a nice time to get paroled. I figgered I was gonna lay aroun’ an’ get up late an’ eat a lot when I come home. I was goin’ out an’ dance, an’ I was gonna go tom-cattin’—an’ here I ain’t had time to do none of them things.”
Al said, “I forgot. Ma give me a lot a stuff to tell you. She says don’t drink nothin’, an’ don’ get in no arguments, an’ don’t fight nobody. ’Cause she says she’s scairt you’ll get sent back.”
“She got plenty to get worked up about ’thout me givin’ her no trouble,” said Tom.
“Well, we could get a couple beers, can’t we? I’m jus’ a-ravin’ for a beer.”
“I dunno,” said Tom. “Pa’d crap a litter of lizards if we buy beers.”
“Well, look, Tom. I got six dollars. You an’ me could get a couple pints an’ go down the line. Nobody don’t know I got that six bucks. Christ, we could have a hell of a time for ourselves.”
“Keep ya jack,” Tom said. “When we get out to the coast you an’ me’ll take her an’ we’ll raise hell. Maybe when we’re workin’—” He turned in the seat.
“I didn’ think you was a fella to go down the line. I figgered you was talkin’ ’em out of it.”
“Well, hell, I don’t know nobody here. If I’m gonna ride aroun’ much, I’m gonna get married. I’m gonna have me a hell of a time when we get to California.”
“Hope so,” said Tom.
“You ain’t sure a nothin’ no more.”
“No, I ain’t sure a nothin’.”
“When ya killed that fella—did—did ya ever dream about it or anything? Did it worry ya?”
“No.”
“Well, didn’ ya never think about it?”
“Sure. I was sorry ’cause he was dead.”
“Ya didn’t take no blame to yourself ?”
“No. I done my time, an’ I done my own time.”
“Was it—awful bad—there?”
Tom said nervously, “Look, Al. I done my time, an’ now it’s done. I don’ wanna do it over an’ over. There’s the river up ahead, an’ there’s the town. Let’s jus’ try an’ get a con-rod an’ the hell with the res’ of it.”
“Ma’s awful partial to you,” said Al. “She mourned when you was gone. Done it all to herself. Kinda cryin’ down inside of her throat. We could tell what she was thinkin’ about, though.”
Tom pulled his cap down low over his eyes. “Now look here, Al. S’pose we talk ’bout some other stuff.”
“I was jus’ tellin’ ya what Ma done.”
“I know—I know. But—I ruther not. I ruther jus’—lay one foot down in front a the other.”
Al relapsed into an insulted silence. “I was jus’ tryin’ to tell ya,” he said, after a moment.
Tom looked at him, and Al kept his eyes straight ahead. The lightened truck bounced noisily along. Tom’s long lips drew up from his teeth and he laughed softly. “I know you was, Al. Maybe I’m kinda stir-nuts. I’ll tell ya about it sometime maybe. Ya see, it’s jus’ somepin you wanta know. Kinda interestin’. But I got a kind a funny idear the bes’ thing’d be if I forget about it for a while. Maybe in a little while it won’t be that way. Right now when I think about it my guts gets all droopy an’ nasty feelin’. Look here, Al, I’ll tell ya one thing—the jail house is jus’ a kind a way a drivin’ a guy slowly nuts. See? An’ they go nuts, an’ you see ’em an’ hear ’em, an’ pretty soon you don’ know if you’re nuts or not. When they get to screamin’ in the night sometimes you think it’s you doin’ the screamin’—an’ sometimes it is.”
The Grapes of Wrath Page 26
