The Grapes of Wrath (11 page)

I guess Granma never read it. Prob’ly got it from a drummer an’ picked out the one with the mos’ shiny stuff on it. The guys in my cell block goddamn near died laughin’. Jesus Meek they called me after that. Granma never meant it funny; she jus’ figgered it was so purty she wouldn’ bother to read it. She lost her glasses the year I went up. Maybe she never did find ’em.”

“How they treat you in McAlester?” Casy asked.

“Oh, awright. You eat regular, an’ get clean clothes, and there’s places to take a bath. It’s pretty nice some ways. Makes it hard not havin’ no women.” Suddenly he laughed. “They was a guy paroled,” he said. “’Bout a month he’s back for breakin’ parole. A guy ast him why he bust his parole. ‘Well, hell,’ he says. ‘They got no conveniences at my old man’s place. Got no ’lectric lights, got no shower baths. There ain’t no books, an’ the food’s lousy.’ Says he come back where they got a few conveniences an’ he eats regular. He says it makes him feel lonesome out there in the open havin’ to think what to do next. So he stole a car an’ come back.” Joad got out his tobacco and blew a brown paper free
of the pack and rolled a cigarette. “The guy’s right, too,” he said. “Las’ night, thinkin’ where I’m gonna sleep, I got scared. An’ I got thinkin’ about my bunk, an’ I wonder what the stir-bug I got for a cell mate is doin’. Me an’ some guys had a strang band goin’. Good one. Guy said we ought to go on the radio. An’ this mornin’ I didn’ know what time to get up. Jus’ laid there waitin’ for the bell to go off.”

Casy chuckled. “Fella can get so he misses the noise of a saw mill.”

The yellowing, dusty, afternoon light put a golden color on the land. The cornstalks looked golden. A flight of swallows swooped overhead toward some waterhole. The turtle in Joad’s coat began a new campaign of escape. Joad creased the visor of his cap. It was getting the long protruding curve of a crow’s beak now. “Guess I’ll mosey along,” he said. “I hate to hit the sun, but it ain’t so bad now.”

Casy pulled himself together. “I ain’t seen ol’ Tom in a bug’s age,” he said. “I was gonna look in on him anyways. I brang Jesus to your folks for a long time, an’ I never took up a collection nor nothin’ but a bite to eat.”

“Come along,” said Joad. “Pa’ll be glad to see you. He always said you got too long a pecker for a preacher.” He picked up his coat roll and tightened it snugly about his shoes and turtle.

Casy gathered in his canvas sneakers and shoved his bare feet into them. “I ain’t got your confidence,” he said. “I’m always scared there’s wire or glass under the dust. I don’t know nothin’ I hate so much as a cut toe.”

They hesitated on the edge of the shade and then they plunged into the yellow sunlight like two swimmers hastening to get to shore. After a few fast steps they slowed to a gentle, thoughtful pace. The cornstalks threw gray shadows sideways now, and the raw smell of hot dust was in the air. The corn field ended and dark green cotton took its place, dark green leaves through a film of dust, and the bolls forming. It was spotty cotton, thick in the low places where water had stood, and bare on the high places. The plants strove against the sun. And distance, toward the horizon, was tan to invisibility. The dust road stretched out ahead of them, waving up and down. The willows of a stream lined across the west, and to the northwest a fallow section was going back to sparse brush. But the smell of burned dust was in the air, and the air was dry,
so that mucus in the nose dried to a crust, and the eyes watered to keep the eyeballs from drying out.

Casy said, “See how good the corn come along until the dust got up. Been a dinger of a crop.”

“Ever’ year,” said Joad. “Ever’ year I can remember, we had a good crop comin’, an’ it never come. Grampa says she was good the first five plowin’s, while the wild grass was still in her.” The road dropped down a little hill and climbed up another rolling hill.

Casy said, “Ol’ Tom’s house can’t be more’n a mile from here. Ain’t she over that third rise?”

“Sure,” said Joad. “’Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it.”

“Your pa stole it?”

“Sure, got it a mile an’ a half east of here an’ drug it. Was a family livin’ there, an’ they moved away. Grampa an’ Pa an’ my brother Noah like to took the whole house, but she wouldn’ come. They only got part of her. That’s why she looks so funny on one end. They cut her in two an’ drug her over with twelve head of horses and two mules. They was goin’ back for the other half an’ stick her together again, but before they got there Wink Manley come with his boys and stole the other half. Pa an’ Grampa was pretty sore, but a little later them an’ Wink got drunk together an’ laughed their heads off about it. Wink, he says his house is at stud, an’ if we’ll bring our’n over an’ breed ’em we’ll maybe get a litter of crap houses. Wink was a great ol’ fella when he was drunk. After that him an’ Pa an’ Grampa was friends. Got drunk together ever’ chance they got.”

“Tom’s a great one,” Casy agreed. They plodded dustily on down to the bottom of the draw, and then slowed their steps for the rise. Casy wiped his forehead with his sleeve and put on his flat-topped hat again. “Yes,” he repeated, “Tom was a great one. For a godless man he was a great one. I seen him in meetin’ sometimes when the sperit got into him just a little, an’ I seen him take ten-twelve foot jumps. I tell you when ol’ Tom got a dose of the Holy Sperit you got to move fast to keep from gettin’ run down an’ tromped. Jumpy as a stud horse in a box stall.”

They topped the next rise and the road dropped into an old water-cut, ugly and raw, a ragged course, and freshet scars cutting into it from
both sides. A few stones were in the crossing. Joad minced across in his bare feet. “You talk about Pa,” he said. “Maybe you never seen Uncle John the time they baptized him over to Polk’s place. Why, he got to plungin’ an’ jumpin’. Jumped over a feeny bush as big as a piana. Over he’d jump, an’ back he’d jump, howlin’ like a dog-wolf in moon time. Well, Pa seen him, an’ Pa, he figgers he’s the bes’ Jesus-jumper in these parts. So Pa picks out a feeny bush ’bout twicet as big as Uncle John’s feeny bush, and Pa lets out a squawk like a sow litterin’ broken bottles, an’ he takes a run at that feeny bush an’ clears her an’ bust his right leg. That took the sperit out of Pa. Preacher wants to pray it set, but Pa says, no, by God, he’d got his heart full of havin’ a doctor. Well, they wasn’t a doctor, but they was a travelin’ dentist, an’ he set her. Preacher give her a prayin’ over anyways.”

They plodded up the little rise on the other side of the water-cut. Now that the sun was on the wane some of its impact was gone, and while the air was hot, the hammering rays were weaker. The strung wire on crooked poles still edged the road. On the right-hand side a line of wire fence strung out across the cotton field, and the dusty green cotton was the same on both sides, dusty and dry and dark green.

Joad pointed to the boundary fence. “That there’s our line. We didn’t really need no fence there, but we had the wire, an’ Pa kinda liked her there. Said it give him a feelin’ that forty was forty. Wouldn’t of had the fence if Uncle John didn’ come drivin’ in one night with six spools of wire in his wagon. He give ’em to Pa for a shoat. We never did know where he got that wire.” They slowed for the rise, moving their feet in the deep soft dust, feeling the earth with their feet. Joad’s eyes were inward on his memory. He seemed to be laughing inside himself. “Uncle John was a crazy bastard,” he said. “Like what he done with that shoat.” He chuckled and walked on.

Jim Casy waited impatiently. The story did not continue. Casy gave it a good long time to come out. “Well, what’d he do with that shoat?” he demanded at last, with some irritation.

“Huh? Oh! Well, he killed that shoat right there, an’ he got Ma to light up the stove. He cut out pork chops an’ put ’em in the pan, an’ he put ribs an’ a leg in the oven. He et chops till the ribs was done, an’ he et ribs till the leg was done. An’ then he tore into that leg. Cut off big
hunks of her an’ shoved ’em in his mouth. Us kids hung around slaverin’, an’ he give us some, but he wouldn’ give Pa none. By an’ by he et so much he throwed up an’ went to sleep. While he’s asleep us kids an’ Pa finished off the leg. Well, when Uncle John woke up in the mornin’ he slaps another leg in the oven. Pa says, ‘John, you gonna eat that whole damn pig?’ An’ he says, ‘I aim to, Tom, but I’m scairt some of her’ll spoil ’fore I get her et, hungry as I am for pork. Maybe you better get a plate an’ gimme back a couple rolls of wire.’ Well, sir, Pa wasn’t no fool. He jus’ let Uncle John go on an’ eat himself sick of pig, an’ when he drove off he hadn’t et much more’n half. Pa says, ‘Whyn’t you salt her down?’ But not Uncle John; when he wants pig he wants a whole pig, an’ when he’s through, he don’t want no pig hangin’ around. So off he goes, and Pa salts down what’s left.”

Casy said, “While I was still in the preachin’ sperit I’d a made a lesson of that an’ spoke it to you, but I don’t do that no more. What you s’pose he done a thing like that for?”

“I dunno,” said Joad. “He jus’ got hungry for pork. Makes me hungry jus’ to think of it. I had jus’ four slices of roastin’ pork in four years—one slice ever’ Christmus.”

Casy suggested elaborately, “Maybe Tom’ll kill the fatted calf like for the prodigal in Scripture.”

Joad laughed scornfully. “You don’t know Pa. If he kills a chicken most of the squawkin’ will come from Pa, not the chicken. He don’t never learn. He’s always savin’ a pig for Christmus and then it dies in September of bloat or somepin so you can’t eat it. When Uncle John wanted pork he et pork. He had her.”

They moved over the curving top of the hill and saw the Joad place below them. And Joad stopped. “It ain’t the same,” he said. “Looka that house. Somepin’s happened. They ain’t nobody there.” The two stood and stared at the little cluster of buildings.

The owners of the land came onto the land, or more often a spokesman for the owners came. They came in closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with their fingers, and sometimes they drove big earth augers into the ground for soil tests. The tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust.

In the open doors the women stood looking out, and behind them the children—corn-headed children, with wide eyes, one bare foot on top of the other bare foot, and the toes working. The women and the children watched their men talking to the owner men. They were silent.

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to
such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You’ve scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.

The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn’t fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad.

The owner men went on leading to their point: You know the land’s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.

The squatters nodded—they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land.

Well, it’s too late. And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.

Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.

But—you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without sidemeat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.

The squatting men raised their eyes to understand. Can’t we just hang on? Maybe the next year will be a good year. God knows how much cotton next year. And with all the wars—God knows what price cotton will bring. Don’t they make explosives out of cotton? And uniforms? Get enough wars and cotton’ll hit the ceiling. Next year, maybe. They looked up questioningly.

We can’t depend on it. The bank—the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.

Soft fingers began to tap the sill of the car window, and hard fingers tightened on the restless drawing sticks. In the doorways of the sun-beaten tenant houses, women sighed and then shifted feet so that the one that had been down was now on top, and the toes working. Dogs came sniffing near the owner cars and wetted on all four tires one after another. And chickens lay in the sunny dust and fluffed their feathers
to get the cleansing dust down to the skin. In the little sties the pigs grunted inquiringly over the muddy remnants of the slops.

The squatting men looked down again. What do you want us to do? We can’t take less share of the crop—we’re half starved now. The kids are hungry all the time. We got no clothes, torn an’ ragged. If all the neighbors weren’t the same, we’d be ashamed to go to meeting.

And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won’t work any more. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop. We have to do it. We don’t like to do it. But the monster’s sick. Something’s happened to the monster.