Across the Fruited Plain Part 13

Rose-Ellen pulled the baby back and gave her a kiss in the hollow at the back of her neck. Then she tried to think of something to say herself. "Maybe they'll have school and church school at this next place for a change."

"Aw, you're sissy," d.i.c.k grumbled in his new, thick-thin voice.

"If church was so much, why wouldn't it keep folks from being treated like us? Huh?"

Grandma roused herself from her limp stillness. "Maybe you didn't take notice," she said sharply, "that usually when folks was kind, and tried to make those dreadful camps a little decenter, why, it was Christian folks. There wouldn't hardly anything else make 'em treat that horrid itch and trachoma and all the catching diseases--hardly anything but being Christians."

"Aw," d.i.c.k jeered. "If the church folks got together and put their foot down they could clear up the whole business in a jiffy."

"We always been church folks ourselves," Grandma snapped. "It isn't so easy to get a hold."

"Hush up, d.i.c.k," Grandpa ordered with unusual sharpness. "Can't you see Gramma's clean done out?"

Grandma looked "done out," but Rose-Ellen, glancing soberly from one to the other, was sorry for d.i.c.k, too-his blue eyes frowned so unhappily.

Rose-Ellen tried to change the subject. "Apples!" she said. "I love oranges and ripe figs, and those big persimmons that you sort of drown in-but apples are homiest. I'd like to get my teeth into a hard red one and work right around."

That wasn't a good subject, either. "I'm hungry!" Jimmie bellowed.

And just then another tire blew out.

The old Reo had b.u.mped along on its rim for an hour when Grandma said in a thin voice, "Next time we come to any likely shade, I guess we best stop. I'm . . . I'm just beat out."

With an anxious backward glance at her, Daddy stopped the car under a tree.

"I reckon some of you better go on to that town and get some bread and maybe weenies and potatoes," Grandma said faintly.

Grandpa and Daddy pulled out the tent and set it up under the tree, so that Grandma could lie down in its shelter. Then they b.u.mped away, leaving the children to mind Sally and lead Carrie along the edge of the highway to graze, while Grandma slept.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Waiting at the roadside]

"I never was so hungry in all my days," Jimmie kept saying.

All the children watched that strip of pavement with the hot air quivering above it, but still the car did not come.

Suddenly Rose-Ellen clutched d.i.c.k's arm. "Those two men look like . . . look like. . . . They _are_ Grampa and Daddy. But what have they done with the car?"

"Where's the car?" d.i.c.k shouted, as the men came up.

"W'ere tar?" Sally echoed, patting her hands against the bulging gunnysack her father carried.

"Here's the car," Daddy answered, pointing to the sack.

"You . . . sold it, Dad?" d.i.c.k demanded. "How much?"

"Five dollars." Daddy's jaw tightened. "They called it junk.

Well, the grub will last a little while. . . ."

"And when Gramma's rested, we can pull the trailer and kind of hike along toward them apples," Grandpa said stoutly.

But Grandma looked as if she'd never be rested. She lay quite still except for the breath that blew out her gray lips and drew them in again, and her closed eyes were hollow. The other six stood around and gazed at her in terror. Anyone else could be sick and the earth went on turning, but . . . Grandma!

They were too intent to notice the car stopping beside them until a man's voice said, "Sorry, folks, but you'll have to move on.

Against regulations, this is."

"We're Americans, ain't we?" Grandpa bl.u.s.tered, shaken with anxiety and anger. "You can't shove us off the earth."

"Be on your way in twenty-four hours," the man said, pus.h.i.+ng back his coat to show the star on his vest. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."

"Americans?" Daddy said harshly, watching the sheriff go. "We're folks without a country."

"May as well give the young-ones some of the grub we bought,"

Grandpa said patiently.

It was while they were hungrily munching the dry bread and cheese that another car came upon them and with it another swift change in their changing life.

Two young women stepped out of the chirpy Ford sedan. Neither of them looked like Her, nor even Her No. II--yet Jimmie whispered excitedly to Rose-Ellen, "I bet you a nickel they're Christian Centerers!"

And they were. Sent by the churches, like the Center workers in the cranberries, in the peas and in Cissy's onions, they went out through the country to help the people who needed them. The sheriff, it seemed, had told them about the Beechams when he met them a few minutes ago.

First they looked in at Grandma, still asleep with the Seth Thomas ticking beside her. "Why, I've heard of you from Miss Pinkerton," said one young woman. "She said you were the kind of people who deserved a better chance. Maybe I can help you get one." Then they talked long and earnestly with Grandpa and Daddy.

Grandpa had flapped his hands at the children and said, "Skedaddle, young-ones!" So the children could hear nothing of the talk except that it was all questions and answers that grew more and more brisk and eager. It ended in hooking the trailer, which carried the tent and Carrie, to the sedan, into which was helped a dazed Grandma. The rest of the family was packed in and off they all rattled to town.

There the "Centerers" left the Beechams in a restaurant, but only to come back in a few minutes, beaming.

"We got them on long distance, and it's all right!" they told Grandpa and Daddy.

"What's all right?" asked Grandma, beginning to be more like her old self once more.

"A real nice place to stay in the grape country," Grandpa said quickly. "And Miss Joyce here, she's going to take us down there tomorrow. Down in the San Joaquin Valley."

Next morning Miss Joyce came to the tourist camp where they had slept and breakfasted. She looked long at Carrie. Was Carrie worth taking? Did she give much milk?

Jimmie burst into tears. "Well, even if she doesn't, she does the best she can," he sobbed. "Isn't she one of the family?"

Miss Joyce patted his frail little shoulder and said "Oh, well . . . !"

So Carrie was fastened into her trailer again, and the sedan rattled southward all day, through peach orchards and vineyards where the grapevines were fastened to short stakes so that they looked like bushes instead of vines.

"It's . . . real sightly country," said Grandma, who felt much better after her rest. "If only a body could settle down, I can't figure any place much nicer. Them trees now, with the sun slanting through.--We ain't stopping here?"

Yes, the sedan, with the trailer swaying after it, was banging into a tiny village of brown and white cottages, with green gardens between them and stately eucalyptus trees shading them, while behind them stretched evenly s.p.a.ced young fruit trees.

Before the one empty cottage the sedan stopped. The Beechams and Miss Joyce went in.

There was little furniture in the clean house, but Grandma, dropping down on a wooden chair, looked around her with bright eyes. "A sitting room!" she said. "A sitting room! Seems like we were real folks again, just for a little while. Grampa, you fetch in the clock and set it on that shelf, will you?"

Grandpa brought in the old Seth Thomas, its hands pointing to half-past three. "Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" it said, as contentedly as if it had always lived there.