Judy's Journey

by Lois Lenski

  “We’ll have us a picnic supper,” said Papa, trying to be gay. “We’ll camp out for the night and count the stars!”

  Only Judy laughed. The others were too tired. Judy helped Papa rig up a shelter out of Mama’s quilts against the side of the car. They ate their meager supper and stretched out on bedding spread on the ground. The ground was hard but they slept heavily.

  In the middle of the night Joe Bob woke up. Out of the stillness came a weird cry: A-whoo-a-whoo-a-whoo! A-whoo-a-whoo-a-whoo! He heard a rustling in the bushes.

  “Papa!” shrieked the boy. “They’re comin’—the bad men, to rob you!”

  Papa was awake at once. “How can they rob me, son, when I got nothin’ for ’em to take?”

  Joe Bob could not stop crying. “Wisht I had my little ole puppy dog to sleep with me,” he sobbed.

  “Cryin’ won’t bring him back, son,” said Papa.

  The next morning Papa got up early and disappeared. By the time the others woke up, he was back with a large fish. He built up a campfire and Mama fried fish and made hushpuppies out of corn meal. Breakfast tasted good and they forgot the fears of the night before.

  That day they passed many miles of pine forest and cypress swamp. Even after they left Georgia and came into Florida, there was little change in the landscape. Lonnie was fretful and Mama had to fuss with him. She did not talk much, but once she asked a question.

  “Where we headin’ for, Jim?”

  “We’ll go down through the center of the state—the lake country,” said Papa. “We might stop there if I can git me a job in the citrus. Big orange country round them lakes. If not, we’ll go on down to South Florida where it’s good and warm. Feller I met back home told me there’s money to be made down there in beans, tomatoes and celery—cash money!”

  “Cash money?” asked Mama, a little frightened at the sound of the two words. It had been so long since she or Papa had seen more than a handful at cotton settling time.

  “Yes ma’m!” said Papa.

  “What doin’?” asked Mama.

  “Pickin’ beans,” said Papa. “They grow more beans to the square inch down there than anywhere else in the U. S. A. Need thousands of pickers, the man said. Even young uns can pick.”

  “Oh Papa,” said Judy, “can we help earn cash money?”

  “I can pick beans,” said Joe Bob. “I’ve picked cotton.”

  “I can pick too,” said Cora Jane. “Faster’n you, Joe Bob.”

  “Well, me and Mama’ll do the pickin’,” said Papa, “and you-all can go to school every day. But that feller said that a man with his wife and a few young uns to help him could mop up a whole week’s wages for one day’s pick.”

  “They give a week’s pay for one day?” asked Mama.

  “Yes ma’m!” said Papa.

  “But Jim, you said we was goin’ where you could make a crop’ o’ your own.”

  “We’ll work in beans for a while if it brings in cash money,” said Papa. “We’ll save enough to make the down payment on a little farm of our own.”

  Papa liked to talk about Florida. “All them rich Yankee millionaires come down there and lie in the sun on Palm Beach and forget how cold it is up north .…”

  “They have snow up north,” said Judy. “Did you ever see snow, Papa?”

  “I’d like to see snow jest once,” said Joe Bob. “Is it like cotton?”

  “I never saw snow,” said Papa. “Your Mama and me was born in Alabama and we never been up north where them Yankees live. Never wanted to go neither, ’cause one of them killed my Great-Grandpap long years ago in the War Between the States. They come down here, that Yankee army, and stole our crops and killed our men and freed the slaves and brung sorrow and destruction on us all. No-sir-ree, we-uns don’t have no truck with them biggety Yankees, we don’t.”

  “My Great-Grandma used to tell how hard they had it after that war,” said Mama, “and how her and her young uns nigh starved to death.”

  “But I betcha snow is fun,” said Joe Bob.

  “It looks like sand, but it’s cold as ice,” said Judy. “Teacher told us that at school.”

  “We used to play like cotton was snow,” said Joe Bob.

  “Yes,” added Judy, “you and me and Pinky and Daisy and Porky and Arlie—in the cotton field, instead o’ pickin’ cotton.”

  They laughed—but already it seemed a long time ago.

  Papa was so busy dreaming about the future he didn’t notice a lazy cow suddenly rise to her feet in the ditch and start to cross the road. The jalopy was bearing down hard before he saw her. He turned the wheel and swerved to the left to avoid hitting the animal, then turned quickly back into the road again.

  “Danged ole critter!” exclaimed Papa. “Mighty close shave. We almost had roast beef for dinner that time!”

  Cora Jane, standing in front of her mother’s knees, was knocked against the windshield and began to cry lustily.

  “Why didn’t you bump her gentle-like and git us a cow?” asked Judy. “Got to have a cow on our farm, don’t we?”

  “Yes, but we don’t want to pay damages and go to jail,” laughed Papa.

  “This-here one was a Florida cow,” said Joe Bob. “She was skinnier than them Georgia critters.”

  “Not much difference that I can see,” said Papa. “They leave ’em run in the woods to take care of themselves. Never feed ’em, and it don’t look like there’s much green grass for ’em to eat, pore things. That un we come nigh hittin’ was so skinny, you could hang your hat on her hip-bone, it stuck out so fur.”

  Judy laughed. “Papa …” she began. “Papa …”

  “What is it, sugarpie?” asked Papa.

  “Thought you said it would be summer in Florida,” Judy went on. “The grass ain’t green nor nothin’.”

  “Just you wait, honey!” Papa promised. “Where we’re goin’, it’ll be summer all year round.”

  Pine trees, their trunks close together like a million standing toothpicks, with palmetto thickets at their base, lined the roadside for hours. But at last there was a change. It was Judy who saw the first orange tree.

  “Looky! Looky! Oranges growing on trees!” she cried.

  “Mama, I want one to suck,” said Joe Bob.

  “Me too,” said Cora Jane.

  “What! You-all think it’s settling time?” asked Judy

  Judy had not forgotten settlement time. The family always went to town when the cotton crop was sold. Even when the crop wasn’t very good, it was a time to celebrate with something good to eat—maybe a few oranges to suck. When the crop was good and there was some cash money left over, it meant new clothes for everybody. Once, long ago, Mama got her sewing-machine and another time the iron bed—but Papa never got his new wagon. Judy remembered how few oranges there had been in the little house in the cotton field.

  “Let’s stop and pick and suck,” begged Joe Bob.

  Orange groves with their rich dark glistening leaves and golden balls of fruit lined the road now for miles, with the occasional break of a stretch of pine woods or a clear blue lake. The grass began to grow greener and the sky bluer. It began to feel more like summer. The children threw off their ragged coats and their bare legs were no longer cold.

  All of a sudden the car began a queer knocking sound and Papa had to stop. He stopped by an orange grove and there on the ground lay ever so many good ripe oranges. While Papa got out his tools and fixed the engine and Mama tended Lonnie, the children ran into the grove and picked up oranges.

  That night they had oranges for supper. The food they had brought from Alabama was all gone but a little flour and cornmeal. They sat on the grassy bank and sucked oranges—more oranges than they had ever had in their lives before. Mama squeezed some juice in a cup and offered it to the baby. It was Lonnie’s first taste—and he spat it out. He did not like it.

  “Let’s find us a lake to camp by,” said Papa when the engine was fixed.

  “A lake all our own,” added Ju
dy.

  They left the main road and turned off on a network of sandy side roads. Papa always liked to explore. They passed farmhouses with wide verandahs and shade trees clustered close. The houses had house plants growing in large tin buckets on the verandahs, and one had a front yard full of blooming flowers.

  “Looky!” cried Judy. “Flowers! It is summer! Summer in January!” She squeezed Papa’s arm. “It’s summer jest like you said it would be, Papa.”

  “Shore!” answered Papa, smiling.

  CHAPTER III

  The Little Lake

  THE LAKE WAS BEAUTIFUL. It was a perfect circle. The water was so clear and blue and glistening, they could see the fish swimming many feet below. All the Drummonds got out of the Ford and looked at it. All but Mama. She laid the sleeping Lonnie on the rose carpet on the front seat, took a carton from the back of the car and handed out soap.

  “You’re all as dirty as pigs,” she said. “Git in that water and wash yourselves.”

  Judy remembered the muddy creek down below the cotton field where they used to wash in the summertime. Now they had a whole lakeful of clear, clean water and it was not cold at all.

  Papa had driven the jalopy to the far side of the lake, and there in a clear place among the saw palmettos he had pitched camp. Scrub oaks grew on all sides and tall pines in the distance. “Nobody’ll see us here so far from the road,” Papa said. “We’ll take our peace and rest a while.”

  The children paddled and splashed. Papa found the wreck of an old boat buried in weeds and grass at one side of the lake. He pulled it up on the bank and said he would fix it in the morning. Then all of a sudden darkness fell and they hurried to bed.

  “We’ll go fishin’, Papa,” said Joe Bob the next morning.

  “Bet your life we will,” said Papa.

  “All our vittles is gone, Jim,” said Mama.

  “We’ll eat fish and I’ll set a line for cooters,” said Papa. “How about cooter turtle soup?”

  Papa fixed up the holes in the boat, baited a line and strung it from one side of the lake to the other. The sun came out, pleasantly warm. Judy spread a quilt on the lake shore and Papa stretched out to rest. While the children splashed in the water and played with the boat, and Mama fussed with the clothes and supplies, Judy sat down beside Papa.

  “Let’s name it,” she said. “We’ll call it the ‘Mirror of the Sky.’ Down in the water you can see the white clouds and the blue sky and the trees and birds flying over. The lake is a looking-glass, and everything is upside down.”

  They propped their heads on their hands and looked down, then up.

  “Mirror of the Sky—that’s a nice idea, honey,” said Papa. Papa poked a crawling ant with a blade of grass and they watched it for a long time. Mama came and sat down too and little Lonnie crawled on the quilt. He looked better and seemed more active.

  “Nothin’ like bein’ outdoors,” said Papa thoughtfully. “I’d hate to work all day long in a factory, sittin’ by a roarin’ machine and feedin’ something into it, and rushin’ and hustlin’ to keep up with the blamed thing. Nothin’ worse than bein’ whistled in and whistled out. Machine’s a big monster tryin’ to gobble a feller up and break his spirit. Even when you’re a sharecropper, you can be outdoors.”

  “But you can’t call your soul your own,” said Mama.

  “There’s no hope of gettin’ ahead if a man can’t be his own boss,” Papa agreed. “Whatever happens, I’m proud I had the spunk to light out when I did.”

  “Whatever happens,” said Mama, “we can’t worst ourselves much.”

  “A little piece of land is all I want,” Papa went on. “This is the only country in the world where all men are free and equal—that’s what we stand for, anyway. The first settlers come here to git land, and for a long time everybody went west to git land. This country’s always been a place where a man had the right to own a little piece of land.”

  “Maybe there ain’t land enough to go round any more,” said Mama. “So many big companies buyin’ it up, a lone man ain’t got a chance.”

  “There must be some places left .…” said Papa. “Well, look what’s comin’—”

  Several cows appeared, and soon the lake was surrounded by a large herd. The children took sticks and tried to chase them away.

  “Woods cows,” said Papa.

  “Can we milk ’em and git us some milk?” asked Judy.

  “Them skinny things?” laughed Papa. “Most of ’em’s beef cattle, not milk cows, but don’t give me a T-bone steak.”

  That afternoon the children took a long walk. A quarter of a mile away, they came to a large citrus grove. The trees were loaded with beautiful golden fruit and more fruit lay on the ground, starting to rot.

  “We’ll git us some oranges and tote ’em back,” said Judy.

  They began to pick them up. Suddenly, through the shadowy interior of the grove, they saw a man approaching. He waved a stick and called out, but they could not hear what he said.

  “Golly! It looks like Old Man Reeves,” cried Judy, frightened. “We better run. But don’t drop the oranges—it ain’t stealin’ when we take ’em off the ground.”

  The children ran as fast as they could.

  “Will he catch us?” panted Joe Bob.

  “And beat us?” cried Cora Jane.

  “Keep running,” called Judy.

  The man did not follow, but turned around and went back.

  “Papa, would he put us in jail for takin’ oranges off the ground?” asked Cora Jane.

  “Can’t never tell,” said Papa. “I don’t know these-here Crackers or what they’d do.”

  That night the woods cows came again and the children chased them away. Mama made turtle soup for supper and they went to bed early. They hadn’t been sleeping long when Joe Bob awoke, crying.

  “There’s somethin’ in the bushes,” he told Papa. “I heard it movin’—there it is. See?”

  Papa saw two bright eyes shining straight at him from the darkness. He started after the animal with Mama’s broom. Soon he came back and told Joe Bob to go to sleep again. But Papa did not close his own eyes all night.

  The next morning when the children ran to play in the lake, they stopped suddenly on shore. A strange form was in the water, half-buried by grasses and weeds, not far from Papa’s boat. It looked like a floating log—until it moved. Then it lifted its head and bellowed. It made a curiously hollow but powerful noise.

  “Alligator! Alligator!” shrieked the children.

  “An alligator in our lake,” said Judy. “I never thought we’d git an alligator too.”

  “Likely he crawled overland from some pond or stream that dried up,” said Papa. “Must be hungry, makin’ such a noise.”

  “Can we feed him, Papa?” asked Joe Bob.

  “He’d like a fat pig,” said Papa, “if we had one. Likely he’ll go off somewheres else and not bother us. I got to go to town soon, if I’m to get back before night. Want to go along?”

  “What town, Papa?” asked Judy.

  “Nearest one we can find,” said Papa. “We’ll go exploring.”

  Mama and the children stayed at the lake while Judy drove off in the car-and-trailer with her father. It took a good while to find a town, and still longer to find the store Papa wanted.

  It was a funny store, with old stoves, beds and chairs standing on the sidewalk. The man, who had bushy hair all over his face, spent a long time looking over the furniture in the trailer. Was Papa swapping again? Judy knew how Papa loved to swap and she grew worried. She wanted to keep a few things for that farm they were going to get. She listened to the men’s voices and when she heard the words sewing-machine, she jumped quickly out of the Ford.

  The man and a boy helper were carrying Mama’s bureau into his store.

  “Papa! You’re not swapping Mama’s sewing-machine, are you?” She grabbed Papa’s arm and shook it. “Papa! Listen to me!” She stamped her foot but Papa turned away.

  “Pa
pa! If you swap Mama’s sewing-machine …”

  “Git back in the car and stay there!” said Papa angrily.

  Papa almost never spoke a cross word to Judy. But she did not care how mad he got. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. She’d fight him if he swapped Mama’s sewing-machine.

  “Papa … Papa …”

  “Git back in that car and stay there!” repeated Papa.

  Slowly Judy climbed back into her seat. She watched out the back car window and saw the table go into the secondhand store, but not the sewing-machine: She felt better. She saw the man bring out a large bulky bundle of heavy canvas and put it on top of the trailer. What was Papa getting?

  He didn’t explain when he came back to his seat. He didn’t say a word. But Judy guessed he must have gotten some money to boot, because he stopped at a store and came out with two large paper bags full of groceries. He was smiling.

  “Now we’ll eat again, honey,” he said. “I got us some flour and meal and fatback and saleratus and coffee and black-eyed peas. Here’s a dime for you. Want to go in the store and git some candy?”

  Judy looked at the dime. She closed her fist over it tightly. “No,” she said. “I’ll keep it—a while anyway.”

  Papa started the jalopy, and on the edge of town they passed a big barn with a sign that said: G. A. PRATT—STABLES. All the cars and trucks and wagons on the road seemed to be turning in at the gate.

  “Wonder what’s goin’ on,” said Papa. “Let’s go see.”

  Judy smiled. Papa was always ready to do the unexpected. He went in to look around and soon came out again.

  “Come on, git out,” he said. “It’s as good as a circus. They’re auctionin’ off livestock in there and farmers from all over the county are biddin’. Likely we could git us that cow you said we’d ought to have on our farm.”

  Judy climbed down. “But how can you pay for a cow, Papa, without cash money? Don’t we have to pay for the farm first?”

  “Shore do,” said Papa. “But let’s go in—this is free.”

  They walked through the barn to the “auction ring” at the back. Rows of seats were built up on three sides for a grandstand. The place was crowded, but they managed to slip into the second row from the front.