The Grapes of Wrath (49 page)

Ma said, “You promised, Tom. That’s how Pretty Boy Floyd done. I knowed his ma. They hurt him.”

“I’m a-tryin’, Ma. Honest to God, I am. You don’ want me to crawl like a beat bitch, with my belly on the groun’, do you?”

“I’m a-prayin’. You got to keep clear, Tom. The fambly’s breakin’ up. You got to keep clear.”

“I’ll try, Ma. But when one a them fat asses gets to workin’ me over, I got a big job tryin’. If it was the law, it’d be different. But burnin’ the camp ain’t the law.”

The car jolted along. Ahead, a little row of red lanterns stretched across the highway.

“Detour, I guess,” Tom said. He slowed the car and stopped it, and immediately a crowd of men swarmed about the truck. They were armed with pick handles and shotguns. They wore trench helmets and some American Legion caps. One man leaned in the window, and the warm smell of whisky preceded him.

“Where you think you’re goin’?” He thrust a red face near to Tom’s face.

Tom stiffened. His hand crept down to the floor and felt for the jack handle. Ma caught his arm and held it powerfully. Tom said, “Well—” and then his voice took on a servile whine. “We’re strangers here,” he said. “We heard about they’s work in a place called Tulare.”

“Well, goddamn it, you’re goin’ the wrong way. We ain’t gonna have no goddamn Okies in this town.”

Tom’s shoulders and arms were rigid, and a shiver went through him. Ma clung to his arm. The front of the truck was surrounded by the armed men. Some of them, to make a military appearance, wore tunics and Sam Browne belts.

Tom whined, “Which way is it at, mister?”

“You turn right around an’ head north. An’ don’t come back till the cotton’s ready.”

Tom shivered all over. “Yes, sir,” he said. He put the car in reverse, backed around and turned. He headed back the way he had come. Ma released his arm and patted him softly. And Tom tried to restrain his hard smothered sobbing.

“Don’ you mind,” Ma said. “Don’ you mind.”

Tom blew his nose out the window and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “The sons-of-bitches——”

“You done good,” Ma said tenderly. “You done jus’ good.”

Tom swerved into a side dirt road, ran a hundred yards, and turned off his lights and motor. He got out of the car, carrying the jack handle.

“Where you goin’?” Ma demanded.

“Jus’ gonna look. We ain’t goin’ north.” The red lanterns moved up the highway. Tom watched them cross the entrance of the dirt road and continue on. In a few moments there came the sounds of shouts and screams, and then a flaring light arose from the direction of the Hooverville. The light grew and spread, and from the distance came a crackling sound. Tom got in the truck again. He turned around and ran up the dirt road without lights. At the highway he turned south again, and he turned on his lights.

Ma asked timidly, “Where we goin’, Tom?”

“Goin’ south,” he said. “We couldn’ let them bastards push us aroun’. We couldn’. Try to get aroun’ the town ’thout goin’ through it.”

“Yeah, but where we goin’?” Pa spoke for the first time. “That’s what I want ta know.”

“Gonna look for that gov’ment camp,” Tom said. “A fella said they don’ let no deputies in there. Ma—I got to get away from ’em. I’m scairt I’ll kill one.”

“Easy, Tom.” Ma soothed him. “Easy, Tommy. You done good once. You can do it again.”

“Yeah, an’ after a while I won’t have no decency lef’.”

“Easy,” she said. “You got to have patience. Why, Tom—us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people—we go on.”

“We take a beatin’ all the time.”

“I know.” Ma chuckled. “Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin’. Don’ you fret none, Tom. A different time’s comin’.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’ know how.”

They entered the town and Tom turned down a side street to avoid the center. By the street lights he looked at his mother. Her face was quiet and a curious look was in her eyes, eyes like the timeless eyes of a statue. Tom put out his right hand and touched her on the shoulder. He had to. And then he withdrew his hand. “Never heard you talk so much in my life,” he said.

“Wasn’t never so much reason,” she said.

He drove through the side streets and cleared the town, and then he crossed back. At an intersection the sign said “99.” He turned south on it.

“Well, anyways they never shoved us north,” he said. “We still go where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.”

The dim lights felt along the broad black highway ahead.

The moving, questing people were migrants now. Those families which had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the whole West to rove in. And they scampered about, looking for work; and the highways were streams of people, and the ditch banks were lines of people. Behind them more were coming. The great highways streamed with moving people. There in the Middle-and Southwest had lived a simple agrarian folk who had not changed with industry, who had not formed with machines or known the power and danger of machines in private hands. They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life.

And then suddenly the machines pushed them out and they swarmed on the highways. The movement changed them; the highways, the camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them. The children without dinner changed them, the endless moving changed them. They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them—hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people.

In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights.
They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They’re degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They’ll steal anything. They’ve got no sense of property rights.

And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they’re filthy. We can’t have them, in the schools. They’re strangers. How’d you like to have your sister go out with one of ’em?

The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them—armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can’t let these Okies get out of hand. And the men who were armed did not own the land, but they thought they did. And the clerks who drilled at night owned nothing, and the little storekeepers possessed only a drawerful of debts. But even a debt is something, even a job is something. The clerk thought, I get fifteen dollars a week. S’pose a goddamn Okie would work for twelve? And the little storekeeper thought, How could I compete with a debtless man?

And the migrants streamed in on the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it—fought with a low wage. If that fella’ll work for thirty cents, I’ll work for twenty-five.

If he’ll take twenty-five, I’ll do it for twenty.

No, me, I’m hungry. I’ll work for fifteen. I’ll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin’ out, an’ they can’t run aroun’. Give ’em some windfall fruit, an’ they bloated up. Me. I’ll work for a little piece of meat.

And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we’ll have serfs again.

And now the great owners and the companies invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who
owned no canneries lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the companies who also owned the canneries. As time went on, there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too went on the highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work.

And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.

It was late when Tom Joad drove along a country road looking for the Weedpatch camp. There were few lights in the countryside. Only a sky glare behind showed the direction of Bakersfield. The truck jiggled slowly along and hunting cats left the road ahead of it. At a crossroad there was a little cluster of white wooden buildings.

Ma was sleeping in the seat and Pa had been silent and withdrawn for a long time.

Tom said, “I don’ know where she is. Maybe we’ll wait till daylight an’ ast somebody.” He stopped at a boulevard signal and another car stopped at the crossing. Tom leaned out. “Hey, mister. Know where the big camp is at?”

“Straight ahead.”

Tom pulled across into the opposite road. A few hundred yards, and then he stopped. A high wire fence faced the road, and a wide-gated driveway turned in. A little way inside the gate there was a small house with a light in the window. Tom turned in. The whole truck leaped into the air and crashed down again.

“Jesus!” Tom said. “I didn’ even see that hump.”

A watchman stood up from the porch and walked to the car. He leaned on the side. “You hit her too fast,” he said. “Next time you’ll take it easy.”

“What is it, for God’s sake?”

The watchman laughed. “Well, a lot of kids play in here. You tell folks to go slow and they’re liable to forget. But let ’em hit that hump once and they don’t forget.”

“Oh! Yeah. Hope I didn’ break nothin’. Say—you got any room here for us?”

“Got one camp. How many of you?”

Tom counted on his fingers. “Me an’ Pa an’ Ma, Al an’ Rosasharn an’ Uncle John an’ Ruthie an’ Winfiel’. Them last is kids.”

“Well, I guess we can fix you. Got any camping stuff?”

“Got a big tarp an’ beds.”

The watchman stepped up on the running board. “Drive down the end of that line an’ turn right. You’ll be in Number Four Sanitary Unit.”

“What’s that?”

“Toilets and showers and wash tubs.”

Ma demanded, “You got wash tubs—running water?”

“Sure.”

“Oh! Praise God,” said Ma.

Tom drove down the long dark row of tents. In the sanitary building a low light burned. “Pull in here,” the watchman said. “It’s a nice place. Folks that had it just moved out.”

Tom stopped the car. “Right there?”

“Yeah. Now you let the others unload while I sign you up. Get to sleep. The camp committee’ll call on you in the morning and get you fixed up.”

Tom’s eyes drew down. “Cops?” he asked.

The watchman laughed. “No cops. We got our own cops. Folks here elect their own cops. Come along.”

Al dropped off the truck and walked around. “Gonna stay here?”

“Yeah,” said Tom. “You an’ Pa unload while I go to the office.”

“Be kinda quiet,” the watchman said. “They’s a lot of folks sleeping.”

Tom followed through the dark and climbed the office steps and entered a tiny room containing an old desk and a chair. The guard sat down at the desk and took out a form.

“Name?”

“Tom Joad.”

“That your father?”

“Yeah.”

“His name?”

“Tom Joad, too.”

The questions went on. Where from, how long in the State, what
work done. The watchman looked up. “I’m not nosy. We got to have this stuff.”

“Sure,” said Tom.

“Now—got any money?”

“Little bit.”

“You ain’t destitute?”

“Got a little. Why?”

“Well, the camp site costs a dollar a week, but you can work it out, carrying garbage, keeping the camp clean—stuff like that.”

“We’ll work it out,” said Tom.

“You’ll see the committee tomorrow. They’ll show you how to use the camp and tell you the rules.”

Tom said, “Say—what is this? What committee is this, anyways?”

The watchman settled himself back. “Works pretty nice. There’s five sanitary units. Each one elects a Central Committee man. Now that committee makes the laws. What they say goes.”

“S’pose they get tough,” Tom said.

“Well, you can vote ’em out jus’ as quick as you vote ’em in. They’ve done a fine job. Tell you what they did—you know the Holy Roller preachers all the time follow the people around, preachin’ an’ takin’ up collections? Well, they wanted to preach in this camp. And a lot of the older folks wanted them. So it was up to the Central Committee. They went into meeting and here’s how they fixed it. They say, ‘Any preacher can preach in this camp. Nobody can take up a collection in this camp.’ And it was kinda sad for the old folks, ’cause there hasn’t been a preacher in since.”

Tom laughed and then he asked, “You mean to say the fellas that runs the camp is jus’ fellas—campin’ here?”