Late in the spring of our second year on the island, a week or so before school was to let out. I moved my typewriter out to the umbrella table and Don and I decided that if I was ever to have a minute’s uninterrupted quiet Anne and Joan should also have an outside interest and earn at least part of their school clothes. The girls, who had already planned a summer of sleeping late, swimming, talking about boys and not helping, did not greet this decision with hand-clapping. In fact for days and days we ate our meat and potatoes to the broken rhythm of—all the children on Vashon earn money by picking berries—I always worked when I was a boy—I always worked when I was a girl—we do too like you—you can go swimming when you get home, anyway berry picking is not steady work—we do not want your money for whisky—it is not against the law for children to pick berries—of course we don’t expect you to walk ten miles, the farmers call for the pickers—because nobody wants to adopt two great big girls, that’s why. . . .
The berry picking was not much of a success. Late rains had almost ruined the strawberry crop, not enough rain had withered the raspberries, the currants had blight, the mean old man who had the cherry orchard made tiny crippled children climb clear to the top of huge trees just for three wormy cherries, and have you ever seen the thorns on gooseberry bushes?—well, picking nettles would be more fun.
Every morning I injected the girls with maxims—the idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest—all work, even cotton spinning, is noble—fixed them hearty lunches and shoved them out the door. When they came dragging home in the late afternoon I looked hopefully for signs of self-reliance and found only boiling resentment and berry stains which almost looked as if they might have been smeared on purposely and wouldn’t come out even with Chlorox.
In July Mary telephoned and offered Anne a job as messenger for her husband’s laboratories. Anne was delighted. At last she was returning to her rightful place in the city, and she was going to earn lots and lots of money and perhaps, this was a secret hope, Don and I might become so dependent on her earnings we wouldn’t let her go back to school.
Joanie, who to date had earned exactly $3.87, heaved a sigh of relief because certainly we wouldn’t expect her to pick berries alone, and got into the rowboat where she intended to spend the rest of the summer.
Then Anne received her first week’s pay and came staggering home under a dazzling load of skirt material, new white socks, panties with ruffles, a new blouse, paprika lipstick and nail polish and blue eyeshadow. Joan said, “Old First-Born always gets everything. She is your favorite. She always has been.”
Anne said, “Favorite! That’s very amusing. All you do is lie around on the beach getting brown while I run all over downtown in the boiling sun carrying terribly valuable reports. When I’m not running, I’m washing test tubes and how would you like to eat your lunch in a place that smells like boiling urine?”
“Do they really boil urine?” Joan asked.
“Of course we do,” Anne said importantly. “And we kill rabbits by injecting air in their veins. It’s for the pregnancy tests.”
“Yeah, but look at all the money you make.”
“I earn every cent of it,” Anne said. “Those laboratory technicians work me like a slave. I don’t even get to sit down, all day long.”
“I wouldn’t care if I sat down or not if I had all that money,” Joan said. “I sure wish I had a job like yours.”
“Perhaps next year,” Anne said grandly. “When you’re older. Now you’re considered a child and nobody will hire you except the berry farmers and that’s just because they’re such big cheaters and don’t want to pay anything.”
I said, “I feel sorry for the berry farmers. From what you have told me all you and your little friends did was drink Cokes and throw berries at each other.”
“That was only when we were too tired to pick any more,” Joan said. “You should just be out in that boiling sun, crawling around in the dirt trying to find those wizened-up little strawberries.”
With her next paycheck Anne bought a new bathing suit and some huaraches. Joan examined them enviously but continued to spend her days in the rowboat, spearing sole and chasing crabs with her friend Bobby.
With her next paycheck Anne bought two men’s sweaters—one pale blue and one yellow. As she laid out her purchases she said to Joan, “Labor Day is only two weeks away you know.”
Joan said, “Oh, you just think you’re smarter than anybody in the whole world.” But Monday morning after she had washed the breakfast dishes, she made a telephone call. Then with elaborate casualness she approached the umbrella table where I was miserably huddled being creative. She said, “Mommy dear, would you do me the biggest favor in the whole world?”
“Of course,” I said heedlessly thinking in terms of another request for macaroni and cheese, or perhaps some new huaraches.
“Well,” said Joanie, “I just called Karen and she says that maybe I can get a job picking peaches at Hawkins’ orchards. They pay sixty-five cents an hour but if you stay all season you get eighty-five cents. Karen says it’s not hard and last year she earned eighty-two dollars. Will you call the Hawkinses for me, Mommy?”
“Of course,” I said getting up. “Do you want to start tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Joan said, “and tell them they can pick me up on the road by the Falcon’s Nest.”
So I gave the Hawkins number to the operator and after a while a female voice that had been tempered in a forge yelled, “Yeah?” and I said timidly, “Are you hiring peach pickers?” and the voice said, “Any experience?”
“Oh, my yes,” I said.
“Where you live?” the voice asked.
“At Vashon Heights,” I said. “Right near the Falcon’s Nest.”
“Way down there?” the voice said. “Golly, I don’ know. How many of you?”
“Four,” I said, making a mental note that this was not a lie as there were four in our family.
“Okay, then,” said the voice. “We couldn’t come way down there for less. Be on the road at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”
I hung up the phone. Joan said, “What’d they say? Will they take us?”
“Us is right,” I said grimly. “They won’t come down here for less than four. Can you get anybody else? What about those little girls that live down by the store?”
“You mean the Hansens?” Joan said. “I’ll call them but I think they are visiting their grandmother. They have fun in the summer. Their mother says picking berries is for Indians.”
I said, “In wartime everybody works. In England countesses are milking cows and shoveling manure.”
“Why don’t they let their servants do it?” Joan asked.
“Because the servants are working in war plants and all the men are at war,” I said. “Now call the Hansens.”
But the Hansens were at their grandmother’s not working. “See,” Joan said hanging up the phone and sighing heavily.
“Try somebody else,” I said briskly.
“Who?” she asked.
“Your school friends,” I said.
“I don’t know any of their telephone numbers,” Joan said.
“Look them up,” I said.
Finally, after a great deal of urging, she called the few of her schoolmates whose names she could remember and learned that they were all either already working at Hawkins’ or in some other peach orchard.
“Oh, ho,” I said spitefully. “I thought you and Anne were the only children in the whole wide world who had to work in the summer.”
Joan said, “Well, I can’t work because you said Hawkins won’t come down here for only one.” I knew then what was coming as I had known from the minute Mrs. Hawkins said hello.
Joan said, “Why don’t you come, Mommy? You’re not doing anything and that would be two.”
That night when Anne came home she announced that she had quit her job because Aunty Mary thought she should have some vacation and, anyway, she had all her school clothes bu
t her shoes and a new coat and Aunty Mary didn’t think that even Don and I were mean enough to expect little children to earn their own coats. She also said, “It’s certainly going to be too bad for you when school starts, Joan, unless you can persuade your friend who gets her clothes off the city dump to take you along on her next trip.”
Joan said, “You don’t have to worry about me, Miss Barbara Hutton; Mommy and I are going to pick peaches.”
“That’s not fair,” Anne said. “Betty, you didn’t help me with my job.”
“It’s just for one day,” I said. “The Hawkinses wouldn’t come down for only one picker. Tomorrow Joan will arrange with some of her school friends to take my place.”
Don said, “I thought the girls were to learn self-reliance and independence. Why can’t Joan make her own arrangements?”
“Nobody could make arrangements with that voice,” I said. “It even scared me. Anyway it is only for one day.”
“Be sure and fix plenty of sandwiches,” Joan told me the next morning when we were getting ready. “Picking makes you awfully hungry. What have you got for dessert?”
“What’s the matter with peaches?” I said. “We’ll be in a whole orchard of them.”
“Mr. Hawkins doesn’t let you eat the peaches when you’re picking,” Joan said.
It was a hazy morning, with a long white plume where the Seattle shore should be, but the sky behind the big firs was already a clear glassy blue and showed it was going to be a hot day. I put on shorts but when I came out to the kitchen Joan said, “Mrs. Hawkins won’t let the ladies wear shorts, Mommy. She says they’re indecent.”
“Who does this Mrs. Hawkins think she is?” I said crossly. “Everybody wears shorts in summer, even old ladies like me.”
“Wear them if you want to,” Joan said, “but she won’t let you pick. Karen said she sent Ethel and Mary Everts home because they were wearing cut-off jeans and they’re only fifteen and sixteen.”
So I changed into jeans and a white sweatshirt and wooden shoes, which we wear on the beach. Joan wore jeans and a red sweatshirt and huaraches.
As we crunched along the beach at seven-fifteen, Joanie said, “Lucky old Anne, still asleep.”
I said, “She’s been getting up early for weeks and weeks while you’ve been sleeping.”
“But she didn’t have to be at work until ten o’clock,” Joan said. “Look, deer tracks. I bet Bucky has been down taking a swim. Next year I’m going to get a job in town.”
The Hawkins truck stopped for us promptly at seven-thirty but before he would let us in Mr. Hawkins yelled, “Where are the others?”
“Home, sick,” I said.
“Whatsa matter with them?” he asked suspiciously.
“Flu,” I said. “Sort of intestinal flu with nausea and dizziness.”
“Will they be okay tomorrow?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, “that flu never lasts long.”
“Okay,” he said. “Climb in.”
The tailgate of the truck was as high as my chest but I managed, with the help of the ten or eleven children, to scramble in, just as Mr. Hawkins with a roar and a lurch started off. There wasn’t straw or gunny sacks or anything for us to sit on and Mr. Hawkins immediately turned off the paved highway and drove like double greased lightning over what appeared to be partially cleared land. By the time we got to their ranch, Joan said she felt like a milk shake.
After he had unloaded us, Mr. Hawkins said, “Can’t start pickin’ until the mist gits off the trees. You can set around and wait. But the pay don’t start until you start pickin’.”
The pickers put their lunches and jackets in a heap, then lined up on the porch of the packing shed to watch the mist on the trees and look woebegone. Joan, her friend Karen, a pixy-ish little girl with black pigtails and freckles, and I wandered down into the orchard and ate slightly green peaches while Karen gave us the lowdown on picking.
“Pick them with the palm of your hand, like this,” she showed us. “If you use your fingers you get bruise marks and they count against you. We all have numbers so they know who picked what boxes. Mrs. Swensen is the forelady and she’s the meanest old crab you ever saw: ‘No talking in the orchard, girls.’ ‘Faster, girls! Work faster, girls!’ ‘You’re leaving finger marks, Karen!’ ‘Number seventeen report to the packing shed, I’ve tattled on you!’”
“Which one is she?” I asked.
“She wears a big green straw hat,” Karen said, “but she’s still in the house, drinking coffee and tattling to Mrs. Hawkins. When you get tired, and you sure do in the afternoon, climb up to the top of your ladder and sit and eat peaches. You can see the old crab before she sees you and pretend to be picking like sixty. Yesterday she sneaked up to where I was picking, but I saw her coming and when she was right beside the ladder I dropped a great big rotten peach on her head. ‘Oh, excuse me, Mrs. Swensen,’ I said, then busted out laughing. She was awful mad but she couldn’t do anything because I picked the most boxes yesterday. We picked till nine last night and didn’t get home until after eleven.”
“After eleven!” I said. “How awful!”
“Yeah, it is,” Karen said, “but Mr. Hawkins won’t drive the pickers home until they are all through in the packing shed.”
“What about dinner?” Joan asked. “We only brought lunch.”
“Oh, they give you sandwiches and Cokes,” Karen said. “Two halves of a sandwich and one Coke. I could have eaten twenty. I ate about a hundred peaches but they aren’t very filling.”
It was ten o’clock before Mr. Hawkins gave us our tickets and told us to start. I was number twenty-seven—Joanie was twenty-six. Karen had already showed us where the best trees were, so we went down to the other end of the orchard about a mile from the packing shed. The land between and under the trees had been plowed and disked thoroughly and recently, and walking in it was like walking over sand dunes. Joan’s huaraches filled with dirt immediately so she took them off and went barefoot, like Karen. My wooden shoes also filled with dirt and I kept stopping and dumping them.
Karen said, “It would be better if you could take your shoes off too, Mrs. MacDonald, but Mrs. Swensen won’t let the older ladies go barefoot. She says it makes them look tough.”
I was pretty slow filling my first two or three boxes because I couldn’t tell which peaches were ripe enough to pick and was very conscientious about not putting finger marks on them. Joan and Karen filled five boxes to my one, ate peaches by the dozen, threw the rotten ones at each other, skittered up and down their ladders like squirrels and by noon were so far ahead of me I couldn’t even hear their giggles.
The trees were so loaded with fruit, almost every branch had to be supported with a stake. The peaches were very large, a deep golden yellow with flagrantly painted cheeks. Their color was a lovely contrast to the bottle-blue sky, the pointed drooping silky green leaves. As I stood on my ladder and with the heel of my hand gently twisted off a plump golden peach and tucked it in the box beside other plump golden peaches, I decided that this was the life. Beauty, independence and a feeling of harvest. This would be my chosen work. I could see our car loaded with camping equipment, Anne and Joan and Don and me crowded happily inside, singing as we spun along the highways heading for the hop fields, or the orange groves or the apple orchards. What a life! To say nothing of seven or eight dollars apiece per day—let’s see—eight times four is thirty-two dollars a day! Heavens! It was the life. I reached way above my head and picked a small ripe red peach, bit into its sun-warmed juicyness and then nearly fell off the ladder as a nasal voice zinged up at me, “You have two finger marks, Number twenty-seven, and you are not cleaning the trees properly.”
Quickly tucking the small bitten peach into my box, bite-side down, and choking down what was in my mouth, I said, “You mean I am leaving ripe ones, Mrs. Swensen?”
“I certainly do,” she said. “Come here.”
I climbed down. Peering at my wooden shoes through her steel-rim
med spectacles, she said, “What on earth do you have on your feet?”
“Wooden shoes,” I said. “We wear them on the beach.”
“Well, they may be all right for the beach but they are certainly inappropriate for picking peaches,” she said. “Look here, this peach is ripe,” deftly she twisted it off. “And so is this one, and this and this. Where is your flat, Mrs. MacDonald?”
“Up on the ladder,” I said. “I’ll get it.”
When I brought it down she immediately reached in and grabbed the small peach I had been eating. “That one is too small,” she said, then seeing the bitten pieces she added, “Eating the fruit is not encouraged, Mrs. MacDonald. After all, this fruit belongs to the Hawkinses. It represents money to them. Helping ourselves to their fruit is like helping ourselves to their money.”
She handed me the bitten peach and I accepted it humbly with hanging head. “Now,” she said briskly, “you are very slow. Let me see how you are picking.”
I reached over my head and got hold of a peach that looked ripe but was as hard as a stone and apparently cemented to the tree. I twisted and twisted and yanked and twisted and it stayed on the tree.
Mrs. Swensen said, “Here, let me show you.” She reached up and snapped the peach off and laid it in the box.
I felt like telling her that if somebody would loosen them up for me I wouldn’t have any trouble either, but instead I tried another and it did come off finally, after I had wrung it like a dishrag.
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