Across the Fruited Plain Part 12

Jimmie scowled at the sermon, but he went in and got his books, and the two boys sat up against the shack wall till dark, Jimmie telling stories to match the pictures. It was a week before they could repeat that pleasant hour. Next day both were ill with the fever that was sweeping the hop camp.

Next time the nurses came they had medicines and suggestions for Grandma. They liked her, and looked smilingly at the clock and approvingly at Carrie and at the covered garbage can and at the food draped with mosquito netting.

"We're going to have to enforce those rules," they told Grandma.

"There wouldn't be half the sickness if everyone minded as you do."

That evening people from all parts of the camp gathered to discuss the renewed orders: Italians, Mexicans, Americans, Indians.

"They says to my mother," a little Indian girl confided to Rose-Ellen, "'You no cover up your grub, we throw him out!'" She laughed into her hands as if it were a great joke.

"They do nothing but talk," said Angelina.

Next day the camp had a surprise. Along came the nurses and men with badges to help them. Into shack after shack they went, inspecting the food supplies. Rose-Ellen, staying home with sick Jimmie, watched a nurse trot out of the Serafini shack, carrying long loaves of bread and loops of sausage, alive with flies, while Mrs. Serafini shouted wrathfully after her. Into the garbage pail popped the bread and sausage and back to the shack trotted the nurse for more.

That night the camp buzzed like a swarm of angry bees, with threats of what the pickers would do to "them fresh nurses."

Grandpa, resting on his doorsill, said, "You just keep cool.

They got the law on their side; we couldn't do a thing. Besides, if you'll hold your horses long enough to see this out, you may find they're doing you a big kindness."

The people went on grumbling, but they covered their food, since they must do so or lose it. And they had to admit that there was much less sickness from that time on.

"Foolishness!" Mrs. Serafini persisted, unwilling to give in.

Yet Rose-Ellen, playing with Baby Pepe, discovered that her hot old swaddlings had been taken off at last. Perhaps Mrs. Serafini was learning something from the nurses after all.

"If you could show me the rest of my aflabet, Rose-Ellen," Jimmie begged, "I could teach Pedro."

"But, goodness!" Rose-Ellen exclaimed. "You never would let us teach you anything, Jimmie. What's happened to you?"

"Well, it's different. I got to keep ahead of Pedro," he explained, and every night he learned a new lesson.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rose-Ellen teaching Jimmie]

Of all the family, though, Jimmie was the only contented one.

Most of the trouble centered round d.i.c.k. He was fourteen now, and not only his voice, but his way, was changing. Through the day he picked hops, but when evening came, he was off and away.

"He's like the Irishman's flea," Grandma scolded, "and that gang he's running with are young scalawags."

"d.i.c.k hasn't a lick of sense," Daddy agreed worriedly. "I'll have to tan him, if he keeps on lighting out every night. That gang set fire to a hop rack last week. They'll be getting into real trouble."

"d.i.c.k thinks he's a man, now he's earning his share of the living," Grandpa reminded them. "When I was his age I had ch.o.r.es to keep me busy, and when you were his age you had gym, and the Y swimming pool. Here there's nothing for the kids in the evening except mischief."

"Well, then," Grandma suggested, "why don't we pull up stakes and leave?"

"They don't like you to leave till harvest's over," Daddy said.

"But it would be great to get into apples in Was.h.i.+ngton, for instance. We'll have to get the boss to cash our pay tickets first."

There came the trouble. The tickets would be cashed when harvest was done, not before. Grandma sagged when she heard. "I ain't sick," she said, "but I'm played out. If we could get where it was cooler and cleaner. . . ."

"Well, we haven't such a lot of pay checks left." Grandpa looked at her anxiously. "Looks like, with prices at the company store so high, if we stayed another month we'd owe them instead of them owing us. We might cash our tickets in groceries and hop along."

"Hop along is right," agreed Daddy. "Those tires were a poor buy.

We haven't money for tires and gas both."

"We'll go as fast as we can, and maybe we can get there before the tires bust," said Grandpa, trying to be gay.

Jimmie didn't try. "I liked it here," he mumbled. "I bet Pedro'll cry if we go away. He can print his first name now, but how's he ever going to learn 'Serafini'?"

9: SETH THOMAS STRIKES TWELVE

At once Daddy and Grandpa set to work on the Reo. It was an "orphan" car, no longer made, and its parts were hard to replace; so the men were always watching the junkyards for other old Reos.

They had learned a great deal about the car in these months, and they soon had it on the road again.

"Give you long enough," said Grandma, "and you'll cobble new soles on its tires and patch its innards. Looks like it's held together with hairpins now."

Daddy drove with one ear c.o.c.ked for trouble, and when anyone spoke to him he said, "Shh! Sounds like her pistons--or maybe it's her vacuum. Anyway, as soon as there's a good stopping place, we'll. . . ."

But it was the tires that gave out first. Bang! Daddy's muscles bulged as he held the lurching car steady. One of the back tires was blown to bits. "Now can we eat?" d.i.c.k demanded. Daddy shook his head as he jumped out to jack up the car. "Got to keep moving. This is our last spare, and there isn't a single tire we can count on."

Sure enough, they hadn't gone far before the familiar b.u.mping stopped them. That last spare was flat.

"Now," Daddy said grimly, "you may as well get lunch while I see whether I can patch this again."

Grandma had been sitting silent, her hand twisted in Sally's little skirt to keep her from climbing over the edge. "Well,"

she said, "you better eat before your hands get any blacker.

d.i.c.k, you haul that shoe-box from under the seat. Rose-Ellen, fetch the crackers from the trailer. Sally, do sit still one minute."

"Crackers?" asked Rose-Ellen, when she had scrambled back. "I don't see a one, Gramma."

"Land's sakes, child, use your eyes for once!" Rose-Ellen rummaged in the part that was part.i.tioned off from Carrie. "I don't see any groceries, Gramma."

Grandpa came back to help her, and stood staring. "d.i.c.k!" he called. "Did you tie that box on like I said?"

d.i.c.k dropped a startled lip. "Gee whiz, Grampa! It was wedged in so tight I never thought."

"No," said Grandpa, "I reckon you never did think." Silently they ate the scanty lunch in the shoe-box, and as silently the men cut "boots" from worn-out tires and cemented them under the holes in the almost worn-out ones. Silently they jogged on again, the engine stuttering and Daddy driving as if on egg-sh.e.l.ls.

"Talk, won't you?" he asked suddenly. "My goodness, everyone is so still--it gets on my nerves."

Sally said, "Goin' by-by!" and leaned forward from Grandma's knees to give her father a strangling hug around the neck. Sally was two and a half now, and lively enough to keep one person busy. The pale curls all over her head were enchanting, and so was her talk. She had learned _Buenos dias_, good day, from a Mexican neighbor; _bambina bella_, pretty baby girl, from the Serafinis, and _Sayonara_, good-by, from a j.a.panese boss in the peas.