Across the Fruited Plain Part 6

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

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

It was pleasant in the grapefruit grove, where the rich green trees made good-smelling aisles of clean earth, and the men picked the pale round fruit ever so carefully, clipping it gently so as not to bruise the skin and cause decay. It hardly seemed to belong to the same world as the ill-smelling pickers' camp of rags, boards, and tin.

d.i.c.k lost his job after the first few days. He had been hired because he was so tall and strong; but the foreman said he was bruising too much fruit. At first Grandma said she was glad he was fired, for he had been making himself sick eating fruit. But she was soon sorry that he had nothing to do.

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

But if camp was hard for them all, it was hardest for Grandma and Jimmie 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 pickers watched 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 she was buried under a ma.s.s of wet canvas.

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

Until dawn the Beechams could only huddle together in the small refuge Daddy contrived against the dripping, p.r.i.c.king blackness.

When day came, the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but fitfully, as if they, too, were tired out. The family scurried around putting up the tent and building a fire and drying things out before the men must go to the grove. Rose-Ellen and d.i.c.k and even Jimmie felt less dismal when they steamed before the washtub stove and ate something hot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Putting up the tent]

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

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

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

"I don't wonder. I don't wonder a bit. Our preacher telephoned this 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 and we'll take her to my doctor."

Mrs. King's doctor gave Sally medicine and told Grandma about feeding her orange juice and chopped vegetables and eggs as well as milk. Grandma sighed as she wondered how she would get these good things for the sick baby. However, Sally did seem to be somewhat better when they returned. Mrs. King and Grandma were talking over how to get supplies when the men came back to the tent.

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

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

5 CISSY FROM THE ONION MARSHES

"Well, I should think you'd be glad to get clear of this," cried their visitor. "Florida camps ain't all so bad."

"We've no money to move, ma'am," Grandpa said bluntly. "It took near all we'd earned to get here, and now no job!"

"This Italian next door says they're advertising for, cotton pickers in Texas," Daddy said, cradling Sally in one arm while he held her little clawlike hand in his, feeling its fever.

"We haven't got wings, to fly there," Grandma objected.

Mrs. King looked thoughtfully around the wretched shelter. A few clothes hung from corner posts; a few tin dishes were piled in a box cupboard. The children were clean as children could be in such a place. But the visitor's glance lingered longest on the clock.

"Your clock and mine are like as two peas," she observed. "Forty years ago I got mine, on my wedding day."

"Mine was a wedding present, too. And my feather beds that I had to let go at fifty cents apiece. . . ." Grandma quavered.

"These are queer times." Mrs. King shook her head. "I do wish I had the means to lend a hand like a real neighbor. There's this, though--my mister took in a big old auto on a debt, and he'll leave you have it for what the debt was--fifteen dollars, seems like."

"You reckon he will?" Grandpa demanded.

"He better!" said Mrs. King.

"Even fifteen dollars won't leave us scarcely enough to eat on,"

Grandpa muttered.

"But we've got to get to a place where there's work," Daddy reminded him.

They went to see the car, and found it a big, strong old Reo, with fairly good tires. So they bought it.

Grandma had one piece of jewelry left, besides her wide gold wedding ring--a cameo brooch. She traded it for a nanny goat.

On the ever useful dump the men found a wrecked trailer and they mended it so that it would hold the goat, which the children named Carrie. Later, Grandma thought, they might get some laying hens, too.

Two days after the Big Storm, they set out for the Texas cottonfields. Mrs. King stuck a big box of lunch into the car, and an old tent which she said she couldn't use.

"I hope I'll be forgiven for never paying heed to fruit tramps--fruit workers--before," she said soberly. "From now on I aim to. Though I shan't find none like you-all, with a Seth Thomas clock and suchlike."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Off to the cotton fields]

After the truck ride from Jersey even a fifteen-dollar automobile was luxury, with its roomy seats and two folding seats that let down between.

Grandma joked, in her tart way, "I never looked to be touring the country in my own auto!"

Rose-Ellen jiggled in the back seat. "Peekaneeka, Gramma!" she said.

When it rained, the children scurried to fasten the side curtains and then huddled together to keep warm while they played tick-tack-toe or guessing games. For meals they stopped where they could milk Carrie and build a small fire. At night they put up the tent, unless a farmer or a policeman ordered them to move on.

At first it seemed more of a peekaneeka than any of their adventures thus far. They met and pa.s.sed many old cars like their own, and the children counted the strange things that were tied on car or trailer tops while Grandma counted license plates-when Sally was not too fussy. There was always something new to see, especially when they were pa.s.sing through Louisiana.

Daddy said Louisiana was the one state in the country that had parishes instead of counties, and that that was because it had been French in the early days. Almost everything else about it seemed as strange to the children--the Spanish moss hanging in long streamers from the live oak trees; the bayous, or arms of the river, clogged with water hyacinths; the fields of sugar cane; and the Negro cabins, with their gla.s.sless windows and their big black kettles boiling in the back yards.

"But the funniest thing I saw," Rose-Ellen said later, "was a cow lying in the bayou, with purple water hyacinths draped all over her, as if it was on purpose."

After a few days, though, even this peekaneeka grew wearisome to the children; while Daddy and Grandpa grew more and more anxious about an angry spat-spat-spat from the Reo. So they were all glad to reach the cotton fields they had been steering toward.