The Grapes of Wrath (21 page)

Ma said, “Seems like his language gets worse ever’ year. Showin’ off, I guess.”

The old man thrust out his bristly chin, and he regarded Ma with his shrewd, mean, merry eyes. “Well, sir,” he said, “we’ll be a-startin’ ’fore long now. An’, by God, they’s grapes out there, just a-hangin’ over inta the road. Know what I’m a-gonna do? I’m gonna pick me a wash tub full a grapes, an’ I’m gonna set in ’em, an’ scrooge aroun’, an’ let the juice run down my pants.”

Tom laughed. “By God, if he lives to be two hunderd you never will get Grampa house broke,” he said. “You’re all set on goin’, ain’t you, Grampa?”

The old man pulled out a box and sat down heavily on it. “Yes, sir,” he said. “An’ goddamn near time, too. My brother went on out there forty years ago. Never did hear nothin’ about him. Sneaky son-of-a-bitch, he was. Nobody loved him. Run off with a single-action Colt of mine. If I ever run across him or his kids, if he got any out in California, I’ll ask ’em for that Colt. But if I know ’im, an’ he got any kids, he cuckoo’d ’em, an’ somebody else is a-raisin’ ’em. I sure will be glad to get out there. Got a feelin’ it’ll make a new fella outa me. Go right to work in the fruit.”

Ma nodded. “He means it, too,” she said. “Worked right up to three months ago, when he throwed his hip out the last time.”

“Damn right,” said Grampa.

Tom looked outward from his seat on the doorstep. “Here comes that preacher, walkin’ aroun’ from the back side a the barn.”

Ma said, “Curiousest grace I ever heerd, that he give this mornin’. Wasn’t hardly no grace at all. Jus’ talkin’, but the sound of it was like a grace.”

“He’s a funny fella,” said Tom. “Talks funny all the time. Seems like he’s talkin’ to hisself, though. He ain’t tryin’ to put nothin’ over.”

“Watch the look in his eye,” said Ma. “He looks baptized. Got that look they call lookin’ through. He sure looks baptized. An’ a-walkin’ with his head down, a-starin’ at nothin’ on the groun’. There
is
a man that’s baptized.” And she was silent, for Casy had drawn near the door.

“You gonna get sun-shook, walkin’ around like that,” said Tom.

Casy said, “Well, yeah—maybe.” He appealed to them all suddenly, to Ma and Grampa and Tom. “I got to get goin’ west. I got to go. I wonder if I kin go along with you folks.” And then he stood, embarrassed by his own speech.

Ma looked to Tom to speak, because he was a man, but Tom did not speak. She let him have the chance that was his right, and then she said, “Why, we’d be proud to have you. ’Course I can’t say right now; Pa says all the men’ll talk tonight and figger when we gonna start. I guess maybe we better not say till all the men come. John an’ Pa an’ Noah an’ Tom an’ Grampa an’ Al an’ Connie, they’re gonna figger soon’s they get back. But if they’s room I’m pretty sure we’ll be proud to have ya.”

The preacher sighed. “I’ll go anyways,” he said. “Somepin’s happening. I went up an’ I looked, an’ the houses is all empty, an’ the lan’ is empty, an’ this whole country is empty. I can’t stay here no more. I got to go where the folks is goin’.I’ll work in the fiel’s, an’ maybe I’ll be happy.”

“An’ you ain’t gonna preach?” Tom asked.

“I ain’t gonna preach.”

“An’ you ain’t gonna baptize?” Ma asked.

“I ain’t gonna baptize. I’m gonna work in the fiel’s, in the green fiel’s, an’ I’m gonna be near to folks. I ain’t gonna try to teach ’em nothin’. I’m gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why the folks walks in the grass, gonna hear ’em talk, gonna hear ’em sing. Gonna listen to kids eatin’ mush. Gonna hear husban’ an’ wife a-poundin’ the mattress in the night. Gonna eat with ’em an’ learn.” His eyes were wet and shining. “Gonna lay in the grass, open an’ honest with anybody that’ll have me. Gonna cuss an’ swear an’ hear the poetry of folks talkin’. All that’s holy, all that’s what I didn’ understan’. All them things is the good things.”

Ma said, “A-men.”

The preacher sat humbly down on the chopping block beside the door. “I wonder what they is for a fella so lonely.”

Tom coughed delicately. “For a fella that don’t preach no more —” he began.

“Oh, I’m a talker!” said Casy. “No gettin’ away from that. But I ain’t preachin’. Preachin’ is tellin’ folks stuff. I’m askin’ ’em. That ain’t preachin’, is it?”

“I don’ know,” said Tom. “Preachin’s a kinda tone a voice, an’ preachin’s a way a lookin’ at things. Preachin’s bein’ good to folks when they wanna kill ya for it. Las’ Christmus in McAlester, Salvation Army come an’ done us good. Three solid hours a cornet music, an’ we set there. They was bein’ nice to us. But if one of us tried to walk out, we’d a-drawed solitary. That’s preachin’. Doin’ good to a fella that’s down an’ can’t smack ya in the puss for it. No, you ain’t no preacher. But don’t you blow no cornets aroun’ here.”

Ma threw some sticks into the stove. “I’ll get you a bite now, but it ain’t much.”

Grampa brought his box outside and sat on it and leaned against the wall, and Tom and Casy leaned back against the house wall. And the shadow of the afternoon moved out from the house.

In the late afternoon the truck came back, bumping and rattling through the dust, and there was a layer of dust in the bed, and the hood was covered with dust, and the headlights were obscured with a red flour. The sun was setting when the truck came back, and the earth was bloody in its setting light. Al sat bent over the wheel, proud and serious and efficient, and Pa and Uncle John, as befitted the heads of the clan, had the honor seats beside the driver. Standing in the truck bed, holding onto the bars of the sides, rode the others, twelve-year-old Ruthie and ten-year-old Winfield, grime-faced and wild, their eyes tired but excited, their fingers and the edges of their mouths black and sticky from licorice whips, whined out of their father in town. Ruthie, dressed in a real dress of pink muslin that came below her knees, was a little serious in her young-ladiness. But Winfield was still a trifle of a snot-nose, a little of a brooder back of the barn, and an inveterate collector and smoker of snipes. And whereas Ruthie felt the might, the responsibility, and the dignity of her developing breasts, Winfield was kid-wild and calfish. Beside them, clinging lightly to the bars, stood Rose of Sharon, and she balanced, swaying on the balls of her feet, and took up the road shock in her knees and hams. For Rose of Sharon was pregnant and careful. Her hair, braided and wrapped around her head, made an ash-blond crown. Her round soft face, which had been voluptuous and inviting a few months ago, had already put on the barrier of pregnancy, the
self-sufficient smile, the knowing perfection-look; and her plump body—full soft breasts and stomach, hard hips and buttocks that had swung so freely and provocatively as to invite slapping and stroking—her whole body had become demure and serious. Her whole thought and action were directed inward on the baby. She balanced on her toes now, for the baby’s sake. And the world was pregnant to her; she thought only in terms of reproduction and of motherhood. Connie, her nineteen-year-old husband, who had married a plump, passionate hoyden, was still frightened and bewildered at the change in her; for there were no more cat fights in bed, biting and scratching with muffled giggles and final tears. There was a balanced, careful, wise creature who smiled shyly but very firmly at him. Connie was proud and fearful of Rose of Sharon. Whenever he could, he put a hand on her or stood close, so that his body touched her at hip and shoulder, and he felt that this kept a relation that might be departing. He was a sharp-faced, lean young man of a Texas strain, and his pale blue eyes were sometimes dangerous and sometimes kindly, and sometimes frightened. He was a good hard worker and would make a good husband. He drank enough, but not too much; fought when it was required of him; and never boasted. He sat quietly in a gathering and yet managed to be there and to be recognized.

Had he not been fifty years old, and so one of the natural rulers of the family, Uncle John would have preferred not to sit in the honor place beside the driver. He would have liked Rose of Sharon to sit there. This was impossible, because she was young and a woman. But Uncle John sat uneasily, his lonely haunted eyes were not at ease, and his thin strong body was not relaxed. Nearly all the time the barrier of loneliness cut Uncle John off from people and from appetites. He ate little, drank nothing, and was celibate. But underneath, his appetites swelled into pressures until they broke through. Then he would eat of some craved food until he was sick; or he would drink jake or whisky until he was a shaken paralytic with red wet eyes; or he would raven with lust for some whore in Sallisaw. It was told of him that once he went clear to Shawnee and hired three whores in one bed, and snorted and rutted on their unresponsive bodies for an hour. But when one of his appetites was sated, he was sad and ashamed and lonely again. He hid from people,
and by gifts tried to make up to all people for himself. Then he crept into houses and left gum under pillows for children; then he cut wood and took no pay. Then he gave away any possession he might have: a saddle, a horse, a new pair of shoes. One could not talk to him then, for he ran away, or if confronted hid within himself and peeked out of frightened eyes. The death of his wife, followed by months of being alone, had marked him with guilt and shame and had left an unbreaking loneliness on him.

But there were things he could not escape. Being one of the heads of the family, he had to govern; and now he had to sit on the honor seat beside the driver.

The three men on the seat were glum as they drove toward home over the dusty road. Al, bending over the wheel, kept shifting eyes from the road to the instrument panel, watching the ammeter needle, which jerked suspiciously, watching the oil gauge and the heat indicator. And his mind was cataloguing weak points and suspicious things about the car. He listened to the whine, which might be the rear end, dry; and he listened to tappets lifting and falling. He kept his hand on the gear lever, feeling the turning gears through it. And he had let the clutch out against the brake to test for slipping clutch plates. He might be a musking goat sometimes, but this was his responsibility, this truck, its running, and its maintenance. If something went wrong it would be his fault, and while no one would say it, everyone, and Al most of all, would know it was his fault. And so he felt it, watched it, and listened to it. And his face was serious and responsible. And everyone respected him and his responsibility. Even Pa, who was the leader, would hold a wrench and take orders from Al.

They were all tired on the truck. Ruthie and Winfield were tired from seeing too much movement, too many faces, from fighting to get licorice whips; tired from the excitement of having Uncle John secretly slip gum into their pockets.

And the men in the seat were tired and angry and sad, for they had got eighteen dollars for every movable thing from the farm: the horses, the wagon, the implements, and all the furniture from the house. Eighteen dollars. They had assailed the buyer, argued; but they were routed when his interest seemed to flag and he had told them he didn’t
want the stuff at any price. Then they were beaten, believed him, and took two dollars less than he had first offered. And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn’t know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them.

Al, his eyes darting from road to panel board, said, “That fella, he ain’t a local fella. Didn’ talk like a local fella. Clothes was different, too.”

And Pa explained, “When I was in the hardware store I talked to some men I know. They say there’s fellas comin’ in jus’ to buy up the stuff us fellas got to sell when we get out. They say these new fellas is cleaning up. But there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it. Maybe Tommy should of went. Maybe he could of did better.”

John said, “But the fella wasn’t gonna take it at all. We couldn’ haul it back.”

“These men I know told about that,” said Pa. “Said the buyer fellas always done that. Scairt folks that way. We jus’ don’ know how to go about stuff like that. Ma’s gonna be disappointed. She’ll be mad an’ disappointed.”

Al said, “When ya think we’re gonna go, Pa?”

“I dunno. We’ll talk her over tonight an’ decide. I’m sure glad Tom’s back. That makes me feel good. Tom’s a good boy.”

Al said, “Pa, some fellas was talkin’ about Tom, an’ they says he’s parole’. An’ they says that means he can’t go outside the State, or if he goes, an’ they catch him, they send ’im back for three years.”

Pa looked startled. “They said that? Seem like fellas that knowed? Not jus’ blowin’ off?”

“I don’ know,” said Al. “They was just a-talkin’ there, an’ I didn’ let on he’s my brother. I jus’ stood an’ took it in.”

Pa said, “Jesus Christ, I hope that ain’t true! We need Tom. I’ll ask ’im about that. We got trouble enough without they chase the hell out of us. I hope it ain’t true. We got to talk that out in the open.”

Uncle John said, “Tom, he’ll know.”

They fell silent while the truck battered along. The engine was noisy, full of little clashings, and the brake rods banged. There was a wooden
creaking from the wheels, and a thin jet of steam escaped through a hole in the top of the radiator cap. The truck pulled a high whirling column of red dust behind it. They rumbled up the last little rise while the sun was still half-face above the horizon, and they bore down on the house as it disappeared. The brakes squealed when they stopped, and the sound printed in Al’s head—no lining left.

Ruthie and Winfield climbed yelling over the side walls and dropped to the ground. They shouted, “Where is he? Where’s Tom?” And then they saw him standing beside the door, and they stopped, embarrassed, and walked slowly toward him and looked shyly at him.

And when he said, “Hello, how you kids doin’?” they replied softly, “Hello! All right.” And they stood apart and watched him secretly, the great brother who had killed a man and been in prison. They remembered how they had played prison in the chicken coop and fought for the right to be prisoner.