“Oh, he’s kinda—moody. Well, good night. An’ if you see that squirt Connie, tell ’im we’ve went south.”
“I got so many people to look out for an’ tell stuff to, I can’t ever remember ’em all.”
“Don’t put yourself out too much,” Tom said. He went out the screen door carrying Uncle John’s dusty black hat. He crossed the concrete road and walked along the edge of it. Below him in the sunken field, the Hooverville lay; and the little fires flickered and the lanterns shone through the tents. Somewhere in the camp a guitar sounded, slow chords, struck without any sequence, practice chords. Tom stopped and listened, and then he moved slowly along the side of the road, and every few steps he stopped to listen again. He had gone a quarter of a mile before he heard what he listened for. Down below the embankment the sound of a thick, tuneless voice, singing drably. Tom cocked his head, the better to hear.
And the dull voice sang, “I’ve give my heart to Jesus, so Jesus take me home. I’ve give my soul to Jesus, so Jesus is my home.” The song trailed off to a murmur, and then stopped. Tom hurried down from the embankment, toward the song. After a while he stopped and listened again. And the voice was close this time, the same slow, tuneless singing, “Oh, the night that Maggie died, she called me to her side, an’ give to me them ol’ red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. They was baggy at the knees——”
Tom moved cautiously forward. He saw the black form sitting on the ground, and he stole near and sat down. Uncle John tilted the pint and the liquor gurgled out of the neck of the bottle.
Tom said quietly, “Hey, wait! Where do I come in?”
Uncle John turned his head. “Who you?”
“You forgot me awready? You had four drinks to my one.”
“No, Tom. Don’ try fool me. I’m all alone here. You ain’t been here.”
“Well, I’m sure here now. How ’bout givin’ me a snort?”
Uncle John raised the pint again and the whisky gurgled. He shook the bottle. It was empty. “No more,” he said. “Wanta die so bad. Wanta die awful. Die a little bit. Got to. Like sleepin’. Die a little bit. So tar’d. Tar’d. Maybe—don’ wake up no more.” His voice crooned off. “Gonna wear a crown—a golden crown.”
Tom said, “Listen here to me, Uncle John. We’re gonna move on. You come along, an’ you can go right to sleep up on the load.”
John shook his head. “No. Go on. Ain’t goin’. Gonna res’ here. No good goin’ back. No good to nobody—jus’ a-draggin’ my sins like dirty drawers ’mongst nice folks. No. Ain’t goin’.”
“Come on. We can’t go ’less you go.”
“Go ri’ ’long. I ain’t no good. I ain’t no good. Jus’ a-draggin’ my sins, a-dirtyin’ ever’body.”
“You got no more sin’n anybody else.”
John put his head close, and he winked one eye wisely. Tom could see his face dimly in the starlight. “Nobody don’ know my sins, nobody but Jesus. He knows.”
Tom got down on his knees. He put his hand on Uncle John’s forehead, and it was hot and dry. John brushed his hand away clumsily.
“Come on,” Tom pleaded. “Come on now, Uncle John.”
“Ain’t goin’ go. Jus’ tar’d. Gon’ res’ ri’ here. Ri’ here.”
Tom was very close. He put his fist against the point of Uncle John’s chin. He made a small practice arc twice, for distance; and then, with his shoulder in the swing, he hit the chin a delicate perfect blow. John’s chin snapped up and he fell backwards and tried to sit up again. But Tom was kneeling over him and as John got one elbow up Tom hit him again. Uncle John lay still on the ground.
Tom stood up and, bending, he lifted the loose sagging body and boosted it over his shoulder. He staggered under the loose weight. John’s hanging hands tapped him on the back as he went, slowly, puffing up the bank to the highway. Once a car came by and lighted him with the limp man over his shoulder. The car slowed for a moment and then roared away.
Tom was panting when he came back to the Hooverville, down from the road and to the Joad truck. John was coming to; he struggled weakly. Tom set him gently down on the ground.
Camp had been broken while he was gone. Al passed the bundles up on the truck. The tarpaulin lay ready to bind over the load.
Al said, “He sure got a quick start.”
Tom apologized. “I had to hit ’im a little to make ’im come. Poor fella.”
“Didn’ hurt ’im?” Ma asked.
“Don’ think so. He’s a-comin’ out of it.”
Uncle John was weakly sick on the ground. His spasms of vomiting came in little gasps.
Ma said, “I lef’ a plate a potatoes for you, Tom.”
Tom chuckled. “I ain’t just in the mood right now.”
Pa called, “Awright, Al. Sling up the tarp.”
The truck was loaded and ready. Uncle John had gone to sleep. Tom and Al boosted and pulled him up on the load while Winfield made a vomiting noise behind the truck and Ruthie plugged her mouth with her hand to keep from squealing.
“Awready,” Pa said.
Tom asked, “Where’s Rosasharn?”
“Over there,” said Ma. “Come on, Rosasharn. We’re a-goin’.”
The girl sat still, her chin sunk on her breast. Tom walked over to her. “Come on,” he said.
“I ain’t a-goin’.” She did not raise her head.
“You got to go.”
“I want Connie. I ain’t a-goin’ till he comes back.”
Three cars pulled out of the camp, up the road to the highway, old cars loaded with the camps and the people. They clanked up to the highway and rolled away, their dim lights glancing along the road.
Tom said, “Connie’ll find us. I lef’ word up at the store where we’d be. He’ll find us.”
Ma came up and stood beside him. “Come on, Rosasharn. Come on, honey,” she said gently.
“I wanta wait.”
“We can’t wait.” Ma leaned down and took the girl by the arm and helped her to her feet.
“He’ll find us,” Tom said. “Don’ you worry. He’ll find us.” They walked on either side of the girl.
“Maybe he went to get them books to study up,” said Rose of Sharon. “Maybe he was a-gonna surprise us.”
Ma said, “Maybe that’s jus’ what he done.” They led her to the truck and helped her up on top of the load, and she crawled under the tarpaulin and disappeared into the dark cave.
Now the bearded man from the weed shack came timidly to the truck. He waited about, his hands clutched behind his back. “You gonna leave any stuff a fella could use?” he asked at last.
Pa said, “Can’t think of nothin’. We ain’t got nothin’ to leave.”
Tom asked, “Ain’t ya gettin’ out?”
For a long time the bearded man stared at him. “No,” he said at last.
“But they’ll burn ya out.”
The unsteady eyes dropped to the ground. “I know. They done it before.”
“Well, why the hell don’t ya get out?”
The bewildered eyes looked up for a moment, and then down again, and the dying firelight was reflected redly. “I don’ know. Takes so long to git stuff together.”
“You won’t have nothin’ if they burn ya out.”
“I know. You ain’t leavin’ nothin’ a fella could use?”
“Cleaned out, slick,” said Pa. The bearded man vaguely wandered away. “What’s a matter with him?” Pa demanded.
“Cop-happy,” said Tom. “Fella was sayin’—he’s bull-simple. Been beat over the head too much.”
A second little caravan drove past the camp and climbed to the road and moved away.
“Come on, Pa. Let’s go. Look here, Pa. You an’ me an’ Al ride in the seat. Ma can get on the load. No. Ma, you ride in the middle. Al”—Tom reached under the seat and brought out a big monkey wrench—“Al, you get up behind. Take this here. Jus’ in case. If anybody tries to climb up—let ’im have it.”
Al took the wrench and climbe
d up the back board, and he settled himself cross-legged, the wrench in his hand. Tom pulled the iron jack handle from under the seat and laid it on the floor, under the brake pedal. “Awright,” he said. “Get in the middle, Ma.”
Pa said, “I ain’t got nothin’ in my han’.”
“You can reach over an’ get the jack handle,” said Tom. “I hope to Jesus you don’ need it.” He stepped on the starter and the clanking flywheel turned over, the engine caught and died, and caught again. Tom turned on the lights and moved out of the camp in low gear. The dim lights fingered the road nervously. They climbed up to the highway and turned south. Tom said, “They comes a time when a man gets mad.”
Ma broke in, “Tom—you tol’ me—you promised me you wasn’t like that. You promised.”
“I know, Ma. I’m a-tryin’. But them deputies—Did you ever see a deputy that didn’ have a fat ass? An’ they waggle their ass an’ flop their gun aroun’. Ma,” he said, “if it was the law they was workin’ with, why, we could take it. But it ain’t the law. They’re a-workin’ away at our spirits. They’re a-tryin’ to make us cringe an’ crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin’ to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on’y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin’ a sock at a cop. They’re workin’ on our decency.”
Ma said, “You promised, Tom. That’s how Pretty Boy Floyd done. I knowed his ma. They hurt him.”
“I’m a-tryin’, Ma. Honest to God, I am. You don’ want me to crawl like a beat bitch, with my belly on the groun’, do you?”
“I’m a-prayin’. You got to keep clear, Tom. The fambly’s breakin’ up. You got to keep clear.”
“I’ll try, Ma. But when one a them fat asses gets to workin’ me over, I got a big job tryin’. If it was the law, it’d be different. But burnin’ the camp ain’t the law.”
The car jolted along. Ahead, a little row of red lanterns stretched across the highway.
“Detour, I guess,” Tom said. He slowed the car and stopped it, and immediately a crowd of men swarmed about the truck. They were armed with pick handles and shotguns. They wore trench helmets and some American Legion caps. One man leaned in the window, and the warm smell of whisky preceded him.
“Where you think you’re goin’?” He thrust a red face near to Tom’s face.
Tom stiffened. His hand crept down to the floor and felt for the jack handle. Ma caught his arm and held it powerfully. Tom said, “Well—” and then his voice took on a servile whine. “We’re strangers here,” he said. “We heard about they’s work in a place called Tulare.”
“Well, goddamn it, you’re goin’ the wrong way. We ain’t gonna have no goddamn Okies in this town.”
Tom’s shoulders and arms were rigid, and a shiver went through him. Ma clung to his arm. The front of the truck was surrounded by the armed men. Some of them, to make a military appearance, wore tunics and Sam Browne belts.
Tom whined, “Which way is it at, mister?”
“You turn right around an’ head north. An’ don’t come back till the cotton’s ready.”
Tom shivered all over. “Yes, sir,” he said. He put the car in reverse, backed around and turned. He headed back the way he had come. Ma released his arm and patted him softly. And Tom tried to restrain his hard smothered sobbing.
“Don’ you mind,” Ma said. “Don’ you mind.”
Tom blew his nose out the window and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “The sons-of-bitches——”
“You done good,” Ma said tenderly. “You done jus’ good.”
Tom swerved into a side dirt road, ran a hundred yards, and turned off his lights and motor. He got out of the car, carrying the jack handle.
“Where you goin’?” Ma demanded.
“Jus’ gonna look. We ain’t goin’ north.” The red lanterns moved up the highway. Tom watched them cross the entrance of the dirt road and continue on. In a few moments there came the sounds of shouts and screams, and then a flaring light arose from the direction of the Hooverville. The light grew and spread, and from the distance came a crackling sound. Tom got in the truck again. He turned around and ran up the dirt road without lights. At the highway he turned south again, and he turned on his lights.
Ma asked timidly, “Where we goin’, Tom?”
“Goin’ south,” he said. “We couldn’ let them bastards push us aroun’. We couldn’. Try to get aroun’ the town ’thout goin’ through it.”
“Yeah, but where we goin’?” Pa spoke for the first time. “That’s what I want ta know.”
“Gonna look for that gov’ment camp,” Tom said. “A fella said they don’ let no deputies in there. Ma—I got to get away from ’em. I’m scairt I’ll kill one.”
“Easy, Tom.” Ma soothed him. “Easy, Tommy. You done good once. You can do it again.”
“Yeah, an’ after a while I won’t have no decency lef’.”
“Easy,” she said. “You got to have patience. Why, Tom—us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people—we go on.”
“We take a beatin’ all the time.”
“I know.” Ma chuckled. “Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin’. Don’ you fret none, Tom. A different time’s comin’.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’ know how.”
They entered the town and Tom turned down a side street to avoid the center. By the street lights he looked at his mother. Her face was quiet and a curious look was in her eyes, eyes like the timeless eyes of a statue. Tom put out his right hand and touched her on the shoulder. He had to. And then he withdrew his hand. “Never heard you talk so much in my life,” he said.
“Wasn’t never so much reason,” she said.
He drove through the side streets and cleared the town, and then he crossed back. At an intersection the sign said “99.” He turned south on it.
“Well, anyways they never shoved us north,” he said. “We still go where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.”
The dim lights felt along the broad black highway ahead.
Chapter 21
The moving, questing people were migrants now. Those families which had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the whole West to rove in. And they scampered about, looking for work; and the highways were streams of people, and the ditch banks were lines of people. Behind them more were coming. The great highways streamed with moving people. There in the Middle-and Southwest had lived a simple agrarian folk who had not changed with industry, who had not formed with machines or known the power and danger of machines in private hands. They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life.
And then suddenly the machines pushed them out and they swarmed on the highways. The movement changed them; the highways, the camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them. The children without dinner changed them, the endless moving changed them. They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them—hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people.
In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They’re degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thiev
es. They’ll steal anything. They’ve got no sense of property rights.
And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they’re filthy. We can’t have them, in the schools. They’re strangers. How’d you like to have your sister go out with one of ’em?
The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them—armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can’t let these Okies get out of hand. And the men who were armed did not own the land, but they thought they did. And the clerks who drilled at night owned nothing, and the little storekeepers possessed only a drawerful of debts. But even a debt is something, even a job is something. The clerk thought, I get fifteen dollars a week. S’pose a goddamn Okie would work for twelve? And the little storekeeper thought, How could I compete with a debtless man?
And the migrants streamed in on the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it—fought with a low wage. If that fella’ll work for thirty cents, I’ll work for twenty-five.
If he’ll take twenty-five, I’ll do it for twenty.
No, me, I’m hungry. I’ll work for fifteen. I’ll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin’ out, an’ they can’t run aroun’. Give ’em some windfall fruit, an’ they bloated up. Me. I’ll work for a little piece of meat.
And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we’ll have serfs again.
And now the great owners and the companies invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the companies who also owned the canneries. As time went on, there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too went on the highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work.
The Grapes of Wrath Page 39
