Across the Fruited Plain Part 10

When he paid them, the foreman said, "No more work here. All cleaned up."

"Good land," Grandma protested, her voice shaking, "bring us from Coloraydo for a half day's work?"

"Sorry," said the foreman. "First come, first served."

In a blank quietness, the Beechams went on to hunt a camp. And here they were fortunate, for they came upon a neat tent city with a sign declaring it a Government Camp. Tents set on firm platforms faced inward toward central buildings, and everything was clean and orderly. They drove in. Yes, they could pitch their tent there, the man in the office said; there was one vacant floor. The rent was a dollar a week, but they could work it out, if they would rather, cleaning up the camp. Grandpa said they'd better work it out, since it might be hard to find jobs near by.

Even Rose-Ellen, even d.i.c.k and Jimmie, were excited over the laundry tubs in the central building, and more interested in the shower baths. Twice a day they washed themselves, and their clothes were kept fresher than they had been for a long time.

Neighbors came calling, besides; and there were entertainments every week, with the whole camp taking part.

"Seems like home," said Grandpa. "If only we could find work."

The nurse on duty found that the sore on d.i.c.k's hand was scabies--the itch--picked up in some other camp, and she treated and bandaged it carefully.

Every day the men went out hunting jobs, taking others with them to share the cost of gasoline; and every day they came back discouraged. Even in the fine camp, money leaked out steadily for food. At last the Beechams gave up hope of finding work.

They set out for California, the fairyland of plenty, as they thought.

At first California looked like any other state, but soon the children began naming their discoveries aloud. "Lookit! Oranges on trees!" "Roses! And those red Christmas flowers growing high as the garage!" "Palm trees--like feather dusters stuck on telegraph poles!"

"Little white houses and gardens!" crooned Grandma.

Soon, too, they saw the familiar posters: PICKERS WANTED; and the Reo followed the signs to the fields.

They were pea-fields, this time, but Grandma, peering at the pea-pickers' camp, cried, "My land, if this ain't Floridy all over again!"

"Maybe the owner ain't got the cash to put up decent chicken-coops for folks to live in," Grandpa sputtered, "but if I was him I'd dig ditches for a living before I'd put humans into pigpens like these."

"Let's go a piece farther," Grandma urged.

Grandpa fingered his old wallet. "Five dollars is the least we can keep against the car breaking down. We've got six-fifty now."

So for long months they worked in the peas and lived in the "jungle" camp, pitching their tent at the very edge of its dirt and smell.

Shacks of sc.r.a.p tin, s.h.i.+ngled with rusty pail covers, stood next to shacks made of burlap and pasteboard cartons. Ragged tents huddled behind the shacks, using the same back wall. Mattresses that looked as if they came from the dump lay on the ground with tarpaulins stretched above them as roofs, and these were the only homes of whole families who lived and slept and ate in swarms of stinging flies.

One of the few pleasant things was the Christian Center not very far away. Every morning its car chugged up to the jungle and carried off a load of children. Jimmie and Sally were always in the load. The back seat was crowded, and a helper sat in front with the driver and held Sally, while Jimmie sat between. He liked to sit there, for the driver looked like Her! Only short instead of tall, and plump instead of thin, and with curly dark hair, but with the same kind smile.

Here in California the other children were supposed to pick only outside school hours; but the school was too far from the camp and there was no bus. So d.i.c.k and Rose-Ellen picked peas all day with their elders.

"The more we earn," d.i.c.k said soberly, "the sooner we can get away from this place."

"The only trouble is," Rose-Ellen answered, "we get such an appet.i.te that we eat more than we earn, except when we're sick."

The sun blistered d.i.c.k's fair skin until he was ill from the burn; and Rose-Ellen sometimes grew so sick and dizzy with the heat that she had to crawl into her pea hamper for shade instead of picking. There was much sickness in this camp, anyway. There was only one well, and it was not protected from filth. The flies were everywhere. Grandma boiled all the water, but she could not keep out the germ-laden flies. The family took turns lying miserably sick on an automobile-seat bed and wis.h.i.+ng for the end of the pea-picking.

But after the early peas, they must wait for the February peas; and before they were picked, Jimmie complained that his throat felt sore. Next day he and Sally both broke out with measles.

Grandma had her hands full, keeping the toddler from running out into suns.h.i.+ne and rain; but it was Jimmie who really worried her, he was so sick. And when he had stopped muttering and tossing with fever, he woke one night with an earache.

"Mercy to us!" Grandma cried distractedly. "We ain't even got salt enough for a hot salt bag, or carbolic and oil to drop in his poor blessed ear!"

Indeed that night seemed to all of them like a dark cage, shutting them away from any help for Jimmie.

Next morning, Miss Pinkerton, the nurse at the Center, came to see Jimmie. She looked grave as she examined him. "If you belonged in the county, I could get him into a county hospital,"

she said. "But we'll do our best for him here."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nursing Jimmie]

Nursing in a tent was a bad dream for patient and nurses. Grandma kept boiling water to irrigate his ear and sterilize the utensils, Rose-Ellen told stories, shouting so he could hear. At night Daddy held him in strong, tired arms and sang funny songs he had learned in his one year of college. Grandma tempted Jimmie's appet.i.te with eggs and sugar and vanilla beaten up with Carrie's milk, and with little broiled hamburgers and fresh vegetables--food such as the Beechams hadn't had for months.

The rest of them had no such food even now. Carrie was giving less milk every day, so that there was hardly enough for Sally and Jimmie. Grandma said she'd lost her appet.i.te, staying in the tent so close, and she was glad to reduce, anyway. Grandpa said there was nothing like soup; so the kettle was kept boiling all the time, with soupbones so bare they looked as if they'd been polished, and onions and potatoes and beans. That soup didn't make any of them fat.

But Jimmie grew better, and one s.h.i.+ning morning Miss Pinkerton stopped and said, "Jimmie's well enough to go with me on my daily round. He needs a change."

After she had carted two or three loads of children to the Center, she went to visit the sick ones in the camps for miles around. First they went to another "jungle," one where trachoma was bad. Here she left Jimmie in the car; but he could watch, for the children came outdoors to have the blue-stone or argyrol in their swollen red eyes. The treatment was painful, but without it the small sufferers might become blind.

The next camp had an epidemic of measles, and in the next, ten miles away, Miss Pinkerton vaccinated ten children.

By this time, the sun was high, and Jimmie began to think anxiously of lunch. Miss Pinkerton steered into the orchard country, where there was no sign of a store. He was relieved when she nosed the car in under the shade of a magnolia tree and said, "My clock says half-past eating time. What does yours say?"

First Miss Pinkerton scrubbed her hands with water and carbolic-smelling soap, and then she unwrapped a waxed-paper package and spread napkins. For Jimmie she laid out a meat sandwich, a jam sandwich, a big orange-colored persimmon, and a cookie: not a dull store cookie, but a thick homemade one. The churches of the neighborhood took turns baking them for the Center. Jimmie ate every crumb.

In the next camp--asparagus--was a Mexican boy with a badly hurt leg. He had gashed it when he was topping beets, and his people had come on into cotton and into peas, without knowing how to take care of the throbbing wound. When Miss Pinkerton first saw it, she doubted whether leg or boy could be saved. It was still bad, and the boy's mother stood and cried while Miss Pinkerton dressed it, there under the strip-of-canvas house.

Miss Pinkerton saw Jimmie staring at that shelter and at the helpless mother, and she whispered, "Aren't you lucky to have a Grandma like yours, Jimmie-boy?"

When the leg was all neatly rebandaged, the boy caught at Miss Pinkerton with a shy hand. "_Gracias_--thank you," he said, "but why you take so long trouble for us, Lady, when we don't pay you nothing?"

"I don't think there's anything so well worth taking trouble for as just boys and girls," Miss Pinkerton said.

The boy frowned thoughtfully. "Other peoples don't think like that way," he persisted. "For why should you?"

"Well, it's really because of Jesus," Miss Pinkerton answered slowly. "You've heard about Jesus, haven't you?"

"Not me," the boy said. "Who is he?"

"He was G.o.d's Son, and he taught men to love one another. He taught them about G.o.d, too."

"G.o.d? I've heard the name, but I ain't never seen that guy either."

"Like to hear about him?" Miss Pinkerton asked.

The boy dropped down on the running board with his bandaged leg stretched out before him. Other children came running. Sitting on the running board, too, Miss Pinkerton told them about Jesus, how he used his life to help other people be kinder to each other.

The camp children listened with mouths open, and brushed the rough hair from their eyes to see the pictures she took from the car. The boy's mother stood with her arms wrapped in her dirty ap.r.o.n and listened, too.