Across the Fruited Plain

by Florence Crannell Means

  4: PEEKANEEKA?

  That trip to Florida surprised the Beechams, but not happily.

  First, the driver shook his head at featherbeds, dishes, trunk."I take three grown folks, three kids, one baby, twenty-eightdollars," he growled. "No furniture."

  Argument did no good. Hastily the family sorted out their mostneeded clothing and made it into small bundles. The driverscowled at even those.

  "My featherbeds!" cried Grandma, weeping for once.

  Hurriedly she sold the beds for a dollar to her next-doorneighbor. The clock she would not leave and it took turns withthe baby sitting on grown-up laps.

  At each stop the springless truck seats were crowded tighter withpeople, till there was hardly room for the passengers' feet. Thecrowding did help warm the unheated truck; but Grandma's facegrew gray with pain as cold and cramp made her "rheumatiz tuneup."

  And there was no place at all to take care of a baby.

  When they had traveled two hours they wondered how they couldbear thirteen hundred miles, cold, aching, wedged motionless.All they could look forward to was lunchtime, when they couldstretch themselves and ease their gnawing stomachs; but the sunclimbed high and the truck still banged along without stopping.

  The children could hear a man in front angrily asking the driver,"When we get-it--the dinner?"

  The driver faced ahead as if he were deaf.

  "When we get-it--the grub?" roared the man, pounding the driver'sshoulder.

  "If we stop once an hour, we don't get there in time for yourjobs," the driver growled, and drove on.

  Not till dark did they stop to eat. Grandpa, clambering downstiffly, had to lift Grandma and Sally out. Daddy took Jimmie,sobbing with weariness. Dick and Rose-Ellen tumbled out, feetasleep and bodies aching. When they stumbled into the roadsidehamburger stand, the lights blurred before their eyes, and thehot steamy air with its cooking smells made Rose-Ellen so dizzythat she could hardly eat the hamburger and potato chips andcoffee slammed down before her on the sloppy counter. Jimmiewent to sleep with his head in his plate and had to be wakened tofinish.

  Still, the food did help them, and when they were wedged intotheir seats again, they could begin to look forward to thenight's rest. Grandpa said likely they wouldn't drive much afterten, and Grandma said, "Land of love, ten? Does he think abody's made of leather?"

  On and on they went, toppling sleepily against each other, achingso hard that the ache wakened them, hearing dimly the same angryman arguing with the driver. "When we stop to sleep, hah? I askyou, when we stop to sleep?"

  They didn't stop at all.

  Rose-Ellen was forever wishing she could wake up enough to pullup the extra quilt which always used to be neatly rolled at thefoot of her bed. Once, through uneasy dreams, she felt Daddyshaking her gently, and while she tried to pull away and backinto sleep, Grandpa's determinedly cheerful voice said, "Alwaysdid want to see Washington, D. C., and here we are. Look quickand you'll see the United States Capitol."

  From the rumbling truck, Rose-Ellen and Dick focusedsleep-blurred eyes with a mighty effort and saw the great domeand spreading wings, flooded with light.

  "Puts me in mind of a mother eagle brooding her young," Grandpamuttered.

  "Land of love, enough sight of them eaglets is out from under herwings, finding slim pickin's," Grandma snapped.

  "Looks like white wax candles." Rose-Ellen yawned widely and wentto sleep again.

  When gray morning dawned, she did not know which was worse-thesleepiness or the hunger. The angry man demanded over and over,"When we stop for breakfast?"

  They didn't stop.

  Grandma had canned milk and boiled water along, and with all theBeechams working together, they got the baby's bottles filled.Poor Sally couldn't understand the cold milk, but she was sohungry she finally drank it, staring reproachfully at her bottle.

  Not till he had engine trouble did the driver halt. Fortunatelythe garage where he stopped had candy and pop for sale. Grandpahad his family choose each a chocolate bar and a bottle. Hewanted to get more, for fear they would not stop for the noonmeal, but in five minutes all the supplies were sold.

  Rose-Ellen tried to make her chocolate almond bar last; shechewed every bite till it slid down her throat; and then, alas,she was so sick that it didn't stay down.

  Grandpa and Daddy talked with others about making the driver givethem rest and food; but there was nothing they could do: thepadrone, back in Philadelphia, already had their money for thetrip.

  The children walked about while they waited. It was not cold,but the dampness chilled them. It was queer country, the highwayrunning between swamps of black water, where gray trees stoodveiled in gray moss. Gray cabins sat every-which-way in theclearing, heavy shutters swinging at their glassless windows.

  A pale, thin girl talked to Rose-Ellen. She was Polish, and hername was Rose, too. When Rose-Ellen asked her if she had everheard of such a dreadful trip, she shrugged and said she was usedto going without sleep.

  Last year, in asparagus, she and her parents and two brotherscared for twenty-two acres, and when it grew hot "dat grass,oooop she go and we work all night for git ahead of her."Asparagus, even Rose-Ellen knew could grow past using in a day.

  The Polish Rose said that they got up at four in the morning andwere in the fields at half-past; and sometimes worked till nearmidnight.

  "Mornings," she said, "I think I die, so bad I want the sleep.And then the boss, he no give us half our wages. Now most a yearit has been."

  Curiously Rose-Ellen asked her about school.

  "No money, no time, no clo'es," said Polish Rose.

  The truck-driver shouted to his people to pile in and the truckwent on. By noon the Beechams were seeing their first palm treesand winter flowers. Grandpa and Daddy tried to tell the childrenabout the things they were passing, but the children were toosleepy and sickish to care. Grandma's mouth was a thin line ofpain and the baby wailed until people looked around crossly,though there were other crying babies.

  The truck reached its destination late on the second evening andpiled out its passengers at a grapefruit camp. Rose-Ellen hadbeen picturing a village of huts like those at the bogs, orbright-papered shacks like the oystershuckers'. Though thefeatherbeds were gone, it would be delicious to lie on the floor,uncrowded, and sheltered from the night.

  But no such shelter awaited them. Instead, they were pointed toa sort of hobo camp with lights glimmering through torn canvas.A heavy odor scented the darkness.

  Grandpa said, "They can't expect decent folks . . . !"

  Grandma said, "We've got to stretch out somewheres. Even under atree. This baby. . . ."

  Sally was crying a miserable little cry, and an Italian woman whoreminded Rose-Ellen of Mrs. Albi peered out of a patched tent andsaid, "Iss a _bambina_! Oooh, the little so-white _bambina_! Lookyou here, quick! The people next door have leave these tent. Youmove in before some other bodies."

  "These tent" was a top and three walls of dirty canvas. "Ifyou'd told me a Beecham would lay down in a filthy place likethis. . . ." Grandma declared. Rose-Ellen did not hear the end ofthe sentence. She was asleep on the earth floor.

  Next day when the men and Dick were hired to pick grapefruit,Grandpa asked the boss about better living quarters.

  "He said there wasn't any," Grandpa reported later.

  "My land of love, you mean we've got to stay here?" Grandmagroaned.

  Grimly she set to work. The Italian neighbor had brought her apot of stew and some coffee, but now Grandma and Rose-Ellen mustgo to the store for provisions. They brushed their clothes, allwrinkles from the long trip, and demanding the iron Grandma didnot have. They combed their hair and washed. They set out,leaving the baby with Jimmie.

  "Shall I send these?" the grocer asked respectfully, when theyhad given their order. "You're new here, aren't you?" Mussed asthey were, the Beechams still looked respectable.

  Grandma flushed. She hated to have anyone see that flapp
ingcanvas room, but the heap of supplies was heavy. "Please. We'reworking in the grapefruit," she said.

  The grocer's face lost its smile. "Oh, we don't deliver to thecamps," he snapped. "And it's strictly cash."

  Grandma handed him the coins, and she and Rose-Ellen silentlypiled their purchases into the tub they had bought. They had toset it down many times on their way back.

  Bringing back the groceries]

  Next Grandma made a twig broom and they swept the dirty ground.Mrs. Rugieri, next door, showed Grandma her beds, made ofautomobile seats put together on the ground. That night theBeecham men went to the nearest dumps and found enough seats tomake a bed for Grandpa and Grandma and the baby. Fortunately itwas not cold; coats were covering enough.

  On the dump Daddy found also an old tub, from which he made astove, cutting holes in it, turning it upside down, and fasteningin a stovepipe.

  "I don't feel to blame folks so much as I used to for beingdirty," Grandma admitted, when they had done their best to makethe shelter a home. "But all the same, I want for you young-onesto keep away from them. I saw a baby that looked as if it hadmeasles."

  "If only there was a Center," Rose-Ellen complained, "or if theyeven had room for us in school. I feel as if I'd scream, stayingin this horrid tent so much."

  "I didn't know," said Daddy, "that there was a place in our wholecountry where you couldn't live decent and send your kids toschool if you wanted to."

  It was pleasant in the grapefruit grove, where the rich greentrees made good-smelling aisles of clean earth, and the menpicked the pale round fruit ever so carefully, clipping it gentlyso as not to bruise the skin and cause decay. It hardly seemedto belong to the same world as the ill-smelling pickers' camp ofrags, boards, and tin.

  Dick lost his job after the first few days. He had been hiredbecause he was so tall and strong; but the foreman said he wasbruising too much fruit. At first Grandma said she was glad hewas fired, for he had been making himself sick eating fruit. Butshe was soon sorry that he had nothing to do.

  "And them young rapscallions you run with teach you words andways I never thought to see in a Beecham," Grandma scolded.

  But if camp was hard for them all, it was hardest for Grandma andJimmie and Sally, who seemed always ailing.

  "We've got to grit our teeth and hang on," said Grandma.

  Then came the Big Storm.

  All day the air had been heavy, still; weatherwise pickerswatched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night,Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas.Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and shewas buried under a mass of wet canvas.

  At first she could hear no voice through the howling wind andbattering rain. Then Sally's wail sounded, and Grandma's call:"Rose-Ellen! Jimmie! Dick! You all right?"

  Until dawn the Beechams could only huddle together in the smallrefuge Daddy contrived against the dripping, pricking blackness.When day came, the rain still fell and the wind still blew; butfitfully, as if they, too, were tired out. The family scurriedaround putting up the tent and building a fire and drying thingsout before the men must go to the grove. Rose-Ellen and Dick andeven Jimmie felt less dismal when they steamed before the washtubstove and ate something hot.

  Putting up the tent]

  Grandma and Sally felt less relief. Sally's cheeks were hot andred, and she turned her head from side to side, crying andcoughing. Grandma was saying, "My land, my land, I'd give fiveyears of my life to be in my own house with this sick littlemite!" when a smooth gray head thrust aside the tent flap and aneighborly voice said, "Oh, mercy me!"

  Then without waiting for invitation, a crisp gingham dressfollowed the gray head in. "Is she bad sick? Have you-all hadthe doctor? I'm Mrs. King, from town."

  "And you really think we're humans?" Grandma demanded, her cheeksas red as Sally's. "If you do, you're the first since we struckthis place. You'll have to excuse me," she apologized, as thechildren stared at her with astonished eyes. "Seems like we'velost our manners along with everything else."

  "I don't wonder. I don't wonder a bit. Our preacher telephonedthis morning that there was a heap of suffering here in the camp,or like enough we'd not have ought of it, and us church folks,too. Now I got my Ford out on the road; you tote the baby andwe'll take her to my doctor."

  Mrs. King's doctor gave Sally medicine and told Grandma aboutfeeding her orange juice and chopped vegetables and eggs as wellas milk. Grandma sighed as she wondered how she would get thesegood things for the sick baby. However, Sally did seem to besomewhat better when they returned. Mrs. King and Grandma weretalking over how to get supplies when the men came back to thetent.

  "Laid off," said Grandpa wearily, not seeing the caller. "Storm'swrecked the crop so bad he's laying off the newest hired. Saysit's like to ruin him."

  Grandma sat still with the baby whining on her lap. "My land oflove," she said, "what will we do now?"