That trip to Florida surprised the Beechams, but not happily.
First, the driver shook his head at featherbeds, dishes, trunk.
"I take three grown folks, three kids, one baby, twenty-eight
dollars," he growled. "No furniture."
Argument did no good. Hastily the family sorted out their most
needed clothing and made it into small bundles. The driver
scowled at even those.
"My featherbeds!" cried Grandma, weeping for once.
Hurriedly she sold the beds for a dollar to her next-door
neighbor. The clock she would not leave and it took turns with
the baby sitting on grown-up laps.
At each stop the springless truck seats were crowded tighter with
people, till there was hardly room for the passengers' feet. The
crowding did help warm the unheated truck; but Grandma's face
grew gray with pain as cold and cramp made her "rheumatiz tune
up."
And there was no place at all to take care of a baby.
When they had traveled two hours they wondered how they could
bear thirteen hundred miles, cold, aching, wedged motionless.
All they could look forward to was lunchtime, when they could
stretch themselves and ease their gnawing stomachs; but the sun
climbed high and the truck still banged along without stopping.
The children could hear a man in front angrily asking the driver,
"When we get-it--the dinner?"
The driver faced ahead as if he were deaf.
"When we get-it--the grub?" roared the man, pounding the driver's
shoulder.
"If we stop once an hour, we don't get there in time for your
jobs," the driver growled, and drove on.
Not till dark did they stop to eat. Grandpa, clambering down
stiffly, had to lift Grandma and Sally out. Daddy took Jimmie,
sobbing with weariness. Dick and Rose-Ellen tumbled out, feet
asleep and bodies aching. When they stumbled into the roadside
hamburger stand, the lights blurred before their eyes, and the
hot steamy air with its cooking smells made Rose-Ellen so dizzy
that she could hardly eat the hamburger and potato chips and
coffee slammed down before her on the sloppy counter. Jimmie
went to sleep with his head in his plate and had to be wakened to
finish.
Still, the food did help them, and when they were wedged into
their seats again, they could begin to look forward to the
night's rest. Grandpa said likely they wouldn't drive much after
ten, and Grandma said, "Land of love, ten? Does he think a
body's made of leather?"
On and on they went, toppling sleepily against each other, aching
so hard that the ache wakened them, hearing dimly the same angry
man arguing with the driver. "When we stop to sleep, hah? I ask
you, when we stop to sleep?"
They didn't stop at all.
Rose-Ellen was forever wishing she could wake up enough to pull
up the extra quilt which always used to be neatly rolled at the
foot of her bed. Once, through uneasy dreams, she felt Daddy
shaking her gently, and while she tried to pull away and back
into sleep, Grandpa's determinedly cheerful voice said, "Always
did want to see Washington, D. C., and here we are. Look quick
and you'll see the United States Capitol."
From the rumbling truck, Rose-Ellen and Dick focused
sleep-blurred eyes with a mighty effort and saw the great dome
and spreading wings, flooded with light.
"Puts me in mind of a mother eagle brooding her young," Grandpa
muttered.
"Land of love, enough sight of them eaglets is out from under her
wings, finding slim pickin's," Grandma snapped.
"Looks like white wax candles." Rose-Ellen yawned widely and went
to sleep again.
When gray morning dawned, she did not know which was worse-the
sleepiness or the hunger. The angry man demanded over and over,
"When we stop for breakfast?"
They didn't stop.
Grandma had canned milk and boiled water along, and with all the
Beechams working together, they got the baby's bottles filled.
Poor Sally couldn't understand the cold milk, but she was so
hungry she finally drank it, staring reproachfully at her bottle.
Not till he had engine trouble did the driver halt. Fortunately
the garage where he stopped had candy and pop for sale. Grandpa
had his family choose each a chocolate bar and a bottle. He
wanted to get more, for fear they would not stop for the noon
meal, but in five minutes all the supplies were sold.
Rose-Ellen tried to make her chocolate almond bar last; she
chewed every bite till it slid down her throat; and then, alas,
she was so sick that it didn't stay down.
Grandpa and Daddy talked with others about making the driver give
them rest and food; but there was nothing they could do: the
padrone, back in Philadelphia, already had their money for the
trip.
The children walked about while they waited. It was not cold,
but the dampness chilled them. It was queer country, the highway
running between swamps of black water, where gray trees stood
veiled in gray moss. Gray cabins sat every-which-way in the
clearing, heavy shutters swinging at their glassless windows.
A pale, thin girl talked to Rose-Ellen. She was Polish, and her
name was Rose, too. When Rose-Ellen asked her if she had ever
heard of such a dreadful trip, she shrugged and said she was used
to going without sleep.
Last year, in asparagus, she and her parents and two brothers
cared for twenty-two acres, and when it grew hot "dat grass,
oooop she go and we work all night for git ahead of her."
Asparagus, even Rose-Ellen knew could grow past using in a day.
The Polish Rose said that they got up at four in the morning and
were in the fields at half-past; and sometimes worked till near
midnight.
"Mornings," she said, "I think I die, so bad I want the sleep.
And then the boss, he no give us half our wages. Now most a year
it has been."
Curiously Rose-Ellen asked her about school.
"No money, no time, no clo'es," said Polish Rose.
The truck-driver shouted to his people to pile in and the truck
went on. By noon the Beechams were seeing their first palm trees
and winter flowers. Grandpa and Daddy tried to tell the children
about the things they were passing, but the children were too
sleepy and sickish to care. Grandma's mouth was a thin line of
pain and the baby wailed until people looked around crossly,
though there were other crying babies.
The truck reached its destination late on the second evening and
piled out its passengers at a grapefruit camp. Rose-Ellen had
been picturing a village of huts like those at the bogs, or
bright-papered shacks like the oystershuckers'. Though the
featherbeds were gone, it would be delicious to lie on the floor,
uncrowded, and sheltered from the night.
But no such shelter awaited them. Instead, they were pointed to
a sort of hobo camp with lights glimmering through torn canvas.
A heavy odor scented the darkness.