This picnic way of living had one advantage; it made moving easy.
One day the Beechams were picking; the next day they had joined
with two other families and hired a truck to take them and their
belongings to Oystershell, on the inlet of the bay near by.
Pauline Isabel's family were going to a Negro oystershucking
village almost in sight of Oystershell. "It's sure nice there!"
Pauline assured them happily. "I belong to a girls' club that
meets every day after school; in the Meth'dis' church. We got a
sure good school, too, good as any white school, up the road a
piece."
The Beechams said good-by to Pauline's family, who had become
their friends. Then they said good-by to Miss Abbott. That was
hard for Jimmie. He butted his shaven little head against Her
and then limped away as fast as he could.
The ride to Oystershell was exciting. Autumn had changed the
look of the land. "God has taken all the red and yellow he's
got, and just splashed it on in gobs," said Rose-Ellen as they
traveled toward the seashore.
"What I like," Dick broke in, "is to see the men getting in the
salt hay with their horses on sleds."
The marshes were too soft to hold up anything so small as a hoof,
so when farmers used horses there, they fastened broad wooden
shoes on the horses' feet. Nowadays, though, horses were giving
place to tractors.
The air had an increasingly queer smell, like iodized salt in
boiling potatoes. The Beechams were nearing the salt-water
inlets of the bay, where the tides rose and fell like the
ocean-of which the inlets were part.
The tide was high when they drove down from Phillipsville to the
settlement of Oystershell. The rows of wooden houses, the
oyster-sheds and the company store seemed to be wading on stilts,
and most people wore rubber boots.
Grandma said, "If the bog was bad for my rheumatiz, what's this
going to be?"
A man showed the Beechams a vacant house in the long rows. "Not
much to look at," he acknowledged, "but the rent ain't much,
either. The roofs are tight and a few have running water, case
you want it bad enough to pay extra."
"To think a rusty pipe and one faucet in my kitchen would ever be
a luxury!" Grandma muttered. "But, my land, even the humpy
wall-paper looks good now."
It was gay, clean paper, though pasted directly on the boards.
The house had a kitchen-dining-sitting room and one bedroom, with
walls so thin they let through every word of the next-door radio.
"That's going to be a peekaneeka, sure," Grandma said grimly.
Children were not allowed to work in the oysters, but Grandma was
going to try. The children could tell she was nervous about it,
by the way her foot jerked up and down when she gave Sally her
bottle that night; but she said she expected she wasn't too dumb
to do what other folks could.
The children were still asleep when the grown-ups went to work in
the six o'clock darkness of that November Saturday. When they
woke, mush simmered on the cookstove and a bottle of milk stood
on the table. It took time to feed Sally and wash dishes and
make beds; and then Dick and Rose-Ellen ran over to the nearest
long oyster-house and peeked through a hole in the wall.
Down each side, raised above the fishy wet floor, ran a row of
booths, each with a desk and step, made of rough boards. On each
step stood a man or woman, in boots and heavy clothes, facing the
desk. Only instead of pen and paper, these people had buckets,
oysters, knives. As fast as they could, they were opening the
big, horny oyster shells and emptying the oysters into the
buckets.
Next time, Dick stayed with Sally, and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie
peeked. They were startled when a big hand dropped on each of
their heads.
"You kids skedaddle," ordered a big man. "If you want to see
things, come back at four."
By four o'clock the grown folks were home, tired and smelling of
fish; Dick and Rose-Ellen were prancing on tiptoe to go, and
even Jimmie was ready.
"This is what he is like," said Rose-Ellen, "the man who said
we could." She stuck in her chin and threw out her chest and
tried to stride.
"That's the Big Boss, all right," Daddy said, laughing. "Guess
it's O.K. But mind your _p_'s and _q_'s."
"And stick together. Specially in a strange place." Grandma
wearily picked up the baby.
The Big Boss saw them as soon as they tiptoed into the
oyster-house. "Ez," he called, "here's some nice kids. Show 'em
around, will you?"
Ez was opening clams with a penknife, and spilling them into his
mouth. "Want some?" he asked.
The children shook their heads vigorously.
He closed his knife and dropped it into his pocket.
"Well, now first you want to see the dredges come in from the
bay." He took them through the open front of the shed to the
docks outside. The boats had gone out at three o'clock in the
morning, he said, in the deep dark. They were coming in now
heavily, loaded high with horny oysters, and Ez pointed out the
rake-set iron nets with which the shellfish were dragged from
their beds. "Got 'em out of bed good and early!"
"I'd hate to have to eat 'em all," Jimmie said suddenly in his
husky little voice.
Everyone laughed, for the big rough shells were traveling into
the oyster-house by thousands, on moving belts. Some shells
looked as if they were carrying sponges in their mouths, but Ez
said it was a kind of moss that grew there. Already the pile of
unopened oysters in the shed was higher than a man. The shuckers
needed a million to work on next day, Ez said.
[Illustration: Watching the dredges]
When the children had watched awhile, and the boatmen had asked
their names, and how old they were and where they came from, Ez
took them inside the shed to show them the handling of the newly
shucked oysters. First the oysters were dumped into something
that looked like Mrs. Albi's electric washer, and washed and
washed. Then they were emptied into a flume, a narrow trough
along which they were swept into bright cans that held almost a
gallon each. The cans were stored in ice-packed barrels, and
early next morning would go out in trains and trucks to all parts
of the country.
"How many pearls have they found in all these oysters?" Dick
demanded in a businesslike voice. "Not any!" Ez said.
"Why can't you eat oysters in months that don't have R in them?"
asked Rose-Ellen.
"You could, if there wasn't a law against selling them. It's
only a notion, like not turning your dress if you put it on wrong
side out. Summer's when oysters lay eggs. You don't stop eating
hens because they lay eggs, do you? But now scram, kids. I got
work to do."
They left, skipping past the mountains of empty shells outside.
Next day the children went to church school alone. The grown
folks were too tired. And on Monday Dick and Rose-Ellen went up
the road to the school in the little village.
It was strange to be in school again, and with new schoolmates
and teachers and even new books, since this was a different
state. Rose-Ellen's grade, the fifth, had got farther in long
division than her class at home, and she couldn't understand what
they were doing. Dick had trouble, too, for the seventh grade
was well started on United States history, and he couldn't catch
up. But that was not the worst of it. The two children could
not seem to fit in with their schoolmates. The village girls
gathered in groups by themselves and acted as if the oyster-shuckers'
children were not there at all; and the boys did not give Dick even
a chance to show what a good pitcher he was. Both Rose-Ellen
and Dick had been leaders in the city school, and now they felt
so lonesome that Rose-Ellen often cried when she got home.
It was too long a walk for Jimmie, who begged not to go anyway.
Besides, he was needed at home to mind Sally.
Of course the grown folks wanted to earn all they could. The pay
was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of
cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized
oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds
were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb
hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's
rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up
until something happened that forced her to.
It was late November, and the fire in the shack must be kept
going all day to make the rooms warm enough for Sally. She was
creeping now, and during the long hours when the grown folks were
working and the older children at school, she had to stay in a
chair with a gate across the front which her father had fixed out
of an old kitchen armchair. Grandma cushioned it with rags, but
it grew hard and tiresome, and sometimes Jimmie could not keep
her contented there.
One day Sally cried until he wriggled her out of her nest and
spread a quilt for her in a corner of the room as Grandma did.
There he sat, fencing her in with his legs while he drew pictures
of oyster-houses. He was so busy drawing roofs that he had
forgot all about Sally until he was startled by her scream. He
jerked around in terror. Sally had clambered over the fence of
his legs and crept under the stove after her ball. Perhaps a
spark had snapped through the half-open slide in the stove door;
however it had happened, the flames were running up her little
cotton dress.
Poor Baby Sally! Jimmie had never felt so helpless. Hardly
knowing why he did it, he dragged the wool quilt off Grandma's
bed and scooted across the floor in a flash. While Sally
screamed with fright, he wrapped the thick folds tightly around
her and hugged her close.
[Illustration: Jimmie saving Sally]
When the grown folks came from work, just ahead of the school
children, they found Jimmie and Sally white and shaky but safe.
The woolen quilt had smothered out the flames before Sally was
hurt at all; and Jimmie had only a pair of blistered hands.
"If I hadn't put a wool petticoat on her, and wool stockings,"
Grandma kept saying, while she sat and rocked the whimpering
baby. "And if our Jimmie hadn't been so smart as to think of the
bedclothes. . . .
"Not all children have been so lucky," Daddy said in a
shaky voice, crouching beside Grandma and touching Sally's downy
head.
"But I hadn't ought to have left her with poor Jimmie,"
Grandma mourned. "If only they had a Center, like at the bogs. I
don't believe I can bear it to stay here any longer after this.
Maybe we best go back to the city and put them in a Home."
Daddy objected. "We'll not leave the kids alone again, of
course; but we're making a fair living and the Boss says there'll
be work through April, and then Pa and I can go out and plant
seed oysters if we want."
"Where's the good of a fair living if it's the death of you?"
Grandma's tone was tart. "No, sir, I ain't going to stay, tied
in bowknots with rheumatiz, and these poor young-ones. . . ."
Grandpa made a last effort, though he knew it was of little use
when Grandma was set. "I bet we could go to work on one of these
truck farms, come summer."
Grandma only rocked her straight chair, jerking one foot up and
down.
"One of these _padrones_," Daddy said slowly, "is trying to get
families to work in Florida. In winter fruits."
Grandma brightened. "Floridy might do us a sight of good, and I
always did hanker after palm trees. But how could we get there?"
"They send you down in a truck," said Daddy. "Charge you so much
a head and feed and lodge you into the bargain. I figure we've
got just about enough to make it."
South into summer!
"That really would be a peekaneeka!" crowed Rose-Ellen.