Across the Fruited Plain

by Florence Crannell Means

  8: THE HOPYARDS

  Through February, March, and part of April, the Beecham familypicked peas in the Imperial Valley.

  "Peas!" Rose-Ellen exploded the word on their last night in the"jungle" camp. "I don't believe there are enough folks in theworld to cat all the peas we've picked."

  "And they aren't done with when they're picked, even," addedDaddy. "Most of them will be canned; and other folks have toshell and sort them and put them into cans and then cook them andseal and label the cans."

  "What an awful lot of work everything makes," Dick exclaimed.

  "It was different in my Gramma's time." Grandma pursed her lipsas she set a white patch in a blue overall knee. "Then eachfamily grew and canned and made almost everything it used."

  "Now everybody's linked up with everybody else," agreed Grandpa,cobbling a shoe with his little kit. "We use' to get along inwinter with turnips and cabbage and such, and fruit thewomenfolks canned. Of course it's pretty nice to have gardenvegetables and fruit fresh the year round, but. . . ."

  Grandma squinted suddenly over her spectacles. "For the land'ssakes! I never thought of it, but it's turned the country upsidedown and made a million people into 'rubber tramps'--this havingto have fresh green stuff in winter."

  "The owners couldn't handle their crops without the millionworkers coming in just when they're ready to harvest," Daddycontinued the tale. . . .

  "But they haven't anything for us to do the rest of the time; andhow they do hate the sight of us 'rubber tramps,' the minutewe've finished doing their work for them," Dick ended.

  Next morning they started up the coast to pick lettuce. Thecountry was beautiful. Rounded hills, soft looking and of thebrightest green, ran down toward the sea, with really white sheeppastured on them. Grandpa said it put him in mind of heaven.Grandma said it would be heaven-on-earth to live there, if onlyyou had a decent little house and a garden. The desert placeswere as beautiful, abloom with many-colored wildflowers; andthere were fields of artichokes and other vegetables, withChinese and Japanese tending them. Those clean green rowsstretched on endlessly.

  "They make me feel funny," Rose-Ellen complained, "like seeingtoo many folks and too many stars."

  "They've got so many vegetables they dump them into the sea,because if they put them all on the market, the price would godown. But there's not enough so that those that pick them getwhat they need to eat," said Grandpa. "Sometimes too much is notenough."

  The lettuce camp housed part of its workers in a huge old barn.The Beechams had three stalls and used their tent for curtains.They cooked out in the barnyard, so it was fortunate that it wasthe dry season. From May to August the men and Dick picked,trimmed, packed lettuce; but during most of that time thebarn-apartment was in quarantine. All the children who had nothad scarlet fever came down with it.

  It was even hotter than midsummer Philadelphia, and the air wassticky, and black with flies besides, and sickening with odor.Grandma's cushiony pinkness entirely disappeared; she was morethe color of a paper-bag, Rose-Ellen thought.

  "But land knows," Grandma said, "what I'd have done if the Lordhadn't tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. What with no Centernear here and only the public health nurse looking in once in awhile, it was lucky the young-ones didn't have the fever bad."

  In August they were all well and peeled. Grandma heated tub aftertub of water and scrubbed them, hair and all, with yellow laundrysoap, and washed their clothes and put the automobile-seat bedsinto the hot sun. Then they went on up the coast, steering forthe hopyards northeast of San Francisco.

  It seemed too bad to hurry through San Francisco without reallyseeing it--that beautiful city crowded steeply by the sea. Butthe Reo had had to have a new gas-line and a battery, and littlemoney was left to show for the long, sizzling months of work. Itwas best to stay clear of cities.

  The Sacramento Delta region was the strangest the Beechams hadever seen. The broad river, refreshing after months without realrivers, was higher than the fields. Beside the river ran thehighway. The Beechams looked down at pear orchards, tule marshesand ranch houses. Everything was so lushly wet that moss grewgreen even on tree trunks and roofs. Like Holland, Daddy said,it had dikes to keep the water out.

  One day they stopped at a fish cannery between highway and riverand asked for work. The Reo was having to have her tires patchedtwice a day, and slow leaks were blown up every time the carstopped for gasoline. The family needed money.

  Peering into the cannery, they saw men and women working in astrong-smelling steam, cleaning and cutting up the fish thatpassed them on an endless belt, making it ready for others topack in cans. At the feet of some of the women stood boxes withbabies in them; and other babies were slung in cloths on theirmothers' backs.

  There was no work for the Beechams, and they climbed into the Reoonce more and stared down on the other side of the road, wherethe foreman had told them his packers lived. Even from thatdistance it was plain that this was a Chinese village, notAmerican at all.

  "The little babies were so sweet, with their shiny black eyes.But, my gracious, they don't get any sun or air at all!"Rose-Ellen squeezed Sally thankfully. Even though the baby wasunderweight and had violet shadows under her blue eyes, shelooked healthier than most babies they saw.

  The hops were queer and interesting, unlike any other cropsRose-Ellen had met with. The leaves were deep-lobed, shaped alittle like woodbine, but rough to touch. The fruits resembledsmall spruce cones of pale yellow-green tissue paper. The vineswere trained on wires strung along ten-foot poles; they formedaisles that were heavy with drowsy fragrance.

  The picking baskets stood almost as high as Rose-Ellen'sshoulder, and she and Dick were proud of filling one apiece, thefirst day they worked. These baskets held sixty poundseach--more when the weather was not so dry--and sixty poundsmeant ninety cents. School had not started yet, so the childrenworked all day. Sometimes Rose-Ellen could not keep from crying,she was so tired. And when she cried, Grandma's mouth workedover her store teeth in the way that meant she felt bad.

  "But we've got to get in under it, all of us," she scolded, tokeep from crying herself. "We've got to earn what we can. Inever see the beat of it. If we scrabble as hard as we can, wejust only keep from sliding backwards."

  Here in the hopyards the Beechams did not get their pay in money.They were given tickets marked with the amount due them. Thesethey could use for money at the company store.

  "And the prices there are sky-high!" Grandma wrathfully toldGrandpa, waving a pound of coffee before his eyes. "Thirty-fivecents, and not the best grade, mind you! Pink salmon higher thanred ought to be. Bread fifteen cents a loaf! Milk sky-high andCarrie plumb dry!"

  The living quarters were bad, too: shacks, with free straw on thefloor for beds, and mud deep in the dooryards where the campersemptied water. Over it all hung a sick smell of garbage and acloud of flies.

  It was no wonder that scores of children and some older peoplewere sick. The public health nurses, when they came to visit thesick ones, warned the women to cover food and garbage, but mostof the women laughed at the advice.

  "Those doctor always tell us things," the Beechams' Italianneighbor, Mrs. Serafini, said lightly. She was dandling a sadbaby while the sad baby sucked a disk of salami, heavy withspices. "And those nurse also are crazy. Back in asparagus Isend-it my kids to the Center, and what you think? They take offPepe's clothes! They say it is not healthy that she wear theswaddlings. I tell Angelina to say to them that my _madre_ beforeme was dressed so; but again they strip the poor angel."

  "And what did you do then?" Rose-Ellen inquired.

  "No more did I send-it my kids to the Center!" Mrs. Serafinicried dramatically.

  "I'd think myself," Grandma observed dryly, "your baby might feelbetter in such hot weather if she was dressed more like Sally."

  Mrs. Serafini eyed Sally's short crepe dress, worn over a singleflour-sack undergarment. "We have-it our ways, you have-ityours," was a
ll she would say.

  Mrs. Serafini]

  While the elders talked, Jimmie had been staring at Pepe's nextbrother, Pedro. Seven years old, Pedro might have been, but hecould move about only by sitting on the ground and hitchinghimself along. He was crippled much worse than Jimmie.

  "I wonder, couldn't I show Pedro my scrapbook?" he whispered,nudging Grandma.

  "To be sure; and I always said if you'd think more about others,you wouldn't be so sorry for yourself," Grandma replied.

  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, Jimmietelling stories to match the pictures. It was a week before theycould repeat that pleasant hour. Next day both were ill with thefever that was sweeping the hop camp.

  Next time the nurses came they had medicines and suggestions forGrandma. They liked her, and looked smilingly at the clock andapprovingly at Carrie and at the covered garbage can and at thefood 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 youdo."

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

  "They says to my mother," a little Indian girl confided toRose-Ellen, "'You no cover up your grub, we throw him out!'" Shelaughed 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 menwith badges to help them. Into shack after shack they went,inspecting the food supplies. Rose-Ellen, staying home with sickJimmie, watched a nurse trot out of the Serafini shack, carryinglong loaves of bread and loops of sausage, alive with flies,while Mrs. Serafini shouted wrathfully after her. Into thegarbage pail popped the bread and sausage and back to the shacktrotted the nurse for more.

  That night the camp buzzed like a swarm of angry bees, withthreats 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 mayfind they're doing you a big kindness."

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Rose-Ellen teaching Jimmie]

  Of all the family, though, Jimmie was the only contented one.Most of the trouble centered round Dick. He was fourteen now,and not only his voice, but his way, was changing. Through theday he picked hops, but when evening came, he was off and away.

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

  "Dick hasn't a lick of sense," Daddy agreed worriedly. "I'll haveto tan him, if he keeps on lighting out every night. That gangset fire to a hop rack last week. They'll be getting into realtrouble."

  "Dick thinks he's a man, now he's earning his share of theliving," Grandpa reminded them. "When I was his age I had choresto keep me busy, and when you were his age you had gym, and the Yswimming pool. Here there's nothing for the kids in the eveningexcept mischief."

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

  "They don't like you to leave till harvest's over," Daddy said."But it would be great to get into apples in Washington, forinstance. We'll have to get the boss to cash our pay ticketsfirst."

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

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

  "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 beforethe tires bust," said Grandpa, trying to be gay.

  Jimmie didn't try. "I liked it here," he mumbled. "I bet Pedro'llcry if we go away. He can print his first name now, but how's heever 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, andthey soon had it on the road again.

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

  Daddy drove with one ear cocked for trouble, and when anyonespoke to him he said, "Shh! Sounds like her pistons--or maybeit's her vacuum. Anyway, as soon as there's a good stoppingplace, we'll. . . ."

  But it was the tires that gave out first. Bang! Daddy's musclesbulged as he held the lurching car steady. One of the back tireswas blown to bits. "Now can we eat?" Dick demanded. Daddy shookhis head as he jumped out to jack up the car. "Got to keepmoving. This is our last spare, and there isn't a single tire wecan count on."

  Sure enough, they hadn't gone far before the familiar bumpingstopped them. That last spare was flat.

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

  Grandma had been sitting silent, her hand twisted in Sally'slittle skirt to keep her from climbing over the edge. "Well,"she said, "you better eat before your hands get any blacker.Dick, you haul that shoe-box from under the seat. Rose-Ellen,fetch the crackers from the trailer. Sally, do sit still oneminute."

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

  "Land's sakes, child, use your eyes for once!" Rose-Ellenrummaged in the part that was partitioned off from Carrie. "Idon't see any groceries, Gramma."

  Grandpa came back to help her, and stood staring. "Dick!" hecalled. "Did you tie that box on like I said?"

  Dick dropped a startled lip. "Gee whiz, Grampa! It was wedgedin so tight I never thought."

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

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

  Sally said, "Goin' by-by!" and leaned forward from Grandma'sknees to give her father a strangling hug around the neck. Sallywas two and a half now, and lively enough to keep one personbusy. The pale curls all over her head were enchanting, and sowas her talk. She had learned _Buenos dias_, good day, from aMexican neighbor; _bambina bella_, pretty baby girl, from theSerafinis, and _Sayonara_, good-by, from a Japanese boss in thepeas.

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

  "Aw, you're sissy," Dick grumbled in his new, thick-thin voice."If church was
so much, why wouldn't it keep folks from beingtreated like us? Huh?"

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

  "Aw," Dick jeered. "If the church folks got together and puttheir foot down they could clear up the whole business in ajiffy."

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

  "Hush up, Dick," Grandpa ordered with unusual sharpness. "Can'tyou see Gramma's clean done out?"

  Grandma looked "done out," but Rose-Ellen, glancing soberly fromone to the other, was sorry for Dick, too-his blue eyes frownedso unhappily.

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

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

  And just then another tire blew out.

  The old Reo had bumped along on its rim for an hour when Grandmasaid in a thin voice, "Next time we come to any likely shade, Iguess we best stop. I'm . . . I'm just beat out."

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

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

  Grandpa and Daddy pulled out the tent and set it up under thetree, so that Grandma could lie down in its shelter. Then theybumped away, leaving the children to mind Sally and lead Carriealong the edge of the highway to graze, while Grandma slept.

  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 airquivering above it, but still the car did not come.

  Suddenly Rose-Ellen clutched Dick's arm. "Those two men looklike . . . look like. . . . They _are_ Grampa and Daddy. But whathave they done with the car?"

  "Where's the car?" Dick shouted, as the men came up.

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

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

  "You . . . sold it, Dad?" Dick 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 ofhike along toward them apples," Grandpa said stoutly.

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

  They were too intent to notice the car stopping beside them untila man's voice said, "Sorry, folks, but you'll have to move on.Against regulations, this is."

  "We're Americans, ain't we?" Grandpa blustered, shaken withanxiety and anger. "You can't shove us off the earth."

  "Be on your way in twenty-four hours," the man said, pushing backhis coat to show the star on his vest. "I'm sorry, but that's theway it is."

  "Americans?" Daddy said harshly, watching the sheriff go. "We'refolks 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 cheesethat another car came upon them and with it another swift changein their changing life.

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

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

  First they looked in at Grandma, still asleep with the SethThomas ticking beside her. "Why, I've heard of you from MissPinkerton," said one young woman. "She said you were the kind ofpeople who deserved a better chance. Maybe I can help you getone." Then they talked long and earnestly with Grandpa andDaddy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Jimmie burst into tears. "Well, even if she doesn't, she doesthe 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 sedanrattled southward all day, through peach orchards and vineyardswhere the grapevines were fastened to short stakes so that theylooked like bushes instead of vines.

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

  Yes, the sedan, with the trailer swaying after it, was banginginto a tiny village of brown and white cottages, with greengardens between them and stately eucalyptus trees shading them,while behind them stretched evenly spaced young fruit trees.Before the one empty cottage the sedan stopped. The Beechams andMiss Joyce went in.

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

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

  Bringing in the clock]

  The children went tiptoeing, hobbling, rushing through the clean,bare rooms, their voices echoing as they called back their news."Gramma, there's a real bathroom!" "Gramma, soon's you feelbetter you can bake a pie in this gas stove!" "Gramma, here's ane-_lec_-tric refrigerator! And a washing machine! And ascreened porch with a table to eat at!"

  Good California smells of eucalyptus trees and, herbs and flowersdrifted through open doors and windows, together with thechuckling, scolding, joyous clamor of mocking birds.

  "I . . . I wish we didn't have to move on again!" Grandma said.

  "It's a pretty good set-up," Grandpa agreed. "Good school overyonder; and a church--and big enough garden for all our gardensass and to can some." He was ticking off the points on hisfingers. "And a chicken-house, and then this here cooperativefarm where the folks all work together and share the profits."

  Jimmie flung himself down on the floor, sobbing. "I don't wantto go on anywhere," he hiccupped. "I want to stay here."

/>   But Dick was looking from Grandpa to Miss Joyce and then to Daddywho had come, smiling, in at the back door. "You mean. . . ."The words choked Dick. "You mean we might settle here? But how?Who fixed it?"

  "The government!" Grandpa said triumphantly. "Mind you, thisplace is the government's fixing, to give migrants a chance totake root again. It's an experiment they are trying, and we arehaving the chance to work with them. We can buy this place andpay for it over a long term of years. We've got the ChristianCenter and the government to thank."

  "Why, maybe after a while we could even send for the goods westored at Mrs. Albi's!" Grandma cried dazedly.

  "You mean this is home? Home?" shrieked Rose-Ellen.

  "Carrie thinks so," Daddy, said with a smile. "Run along and seeif she doesn't. Run along!"

  The children rushed past him into the backyard. There stoodCarrie, still a moth-eaten-looking white goat. But now she had anew gleam in her amber eyes, and at her feet a tiny, curly kid,as black as coal.

  "Maaaaaaa!" Carrie said proudly. From within the brown and whitecottage Seth Thomas pealed out twelve chimes--eight extra--as ifhe, too, were shouting for joy.

  Carrie and her kid]