Grandma said, "We've got to stretch out somewheres. Even under a
tree. This baby. . . ."
Sally was crying a miserable little cry, and an Italian woman who
reminded Rose-Ellen of Mrs. Albi peered out of a patched tent and
said, "Iss a _bambina_! Oooh, the little so-white _bambina_! Look
you here, quick! The people next door have leave these tent. You
move in before some other bodies."
"These tent" was a top and three walls of dirty canvas. "If
you'd told me a Beecham would lay down in a filthy place like
this. . . ." Grandma declared. Rose-Ellen did not hear the end of
the sentence. She was asleep on the earth floor.
Next day when the men and Dick were hired to pick grapefruit,
Grandpa asked the boss about better living quarters.
"He said there wasn't any," Grandpa reported later.
"My land of love, you mean we've got to stay here?" Grandma
groaned.
Grimly she set to work. The Italian neighbor had brought her a
pot of stew and some coffee, but now Grandma and Rose-Ellen must
go to the store for provisions. They brushed their clothes, all
wrinkles from the long trip, and demanding the iron Grandma did
not have. They combed their hair and washed. They set out,
leaving the baby with Jimmie.
"Shall I send these?" the grocer asked respectfully, when they
had given their order. "You're new here, aren't you?" Mussed as
they were, the Beechams still looked respectable.
Grandma flushed. She hated to have anyone see that flapping
canvas room, but the heap of supplies was heavy. "Please. We're
working in the grapefruit," she said.
The grocer's face lost its smile. "Oh, we don't deliver to the
camps," he snapped. "And it's strictly cash."
Grandma handed him the coins, and she and Rose-Ellen silently
piled their purchases into the tub they had bought. They had to
set it down many times on their way back.
[Illustration: Bringing back the groceries]
Next Grandma made a twig broom and they swept the dirty ground.
Mrs. Rugieri, next door, showed Grandma her beds, made of
automobile seats put together on the ground. That night the
Beecham men went to the nearest dumps and found enough seats to
make a bed for Grandpa and Grandma and the baby. Fortunately it
was not cold; coats were covering enough.
On the dump Daddy found also an old tub, from which he made a
stove, cutting holes in it, turning it upside down, and fastening
in a stovepipe.
"I don't feel to blame folks so much as I used to for being
dirty," Grandma admitted, when they had done their best to make
the shelter a home. "But all the same, I want for you young-ones
to keep away from them. I saw a baby that looked as if it had
measles."
"If only there was a Center," Rose-Ellen complained, "or if they
even had room for us in school. I feel as if I'd scream, staying
in this horrid tent so much."
"I didn't know," said Daddy, "that there was a place in our whole
country where you couldn't live decent and send your kids to
school if you wanted to."
It was pleasant in the grapefruit grove, where the rich green
trees made good-smelling aisles of clean earth, and the men
picked the pale round fruit ever so carefully, clipping it gently
so as not to bruise the skin and cause decay. It hardly seemed
to belong to the same world as the ill-smelling pickers' camp of
rags, boards, and tin.
Dick lost his job after the first few days. He had been hired
because he was so tall and strong; but the foreman said he was
bruising too much fruit. At first Grandma said she was glad he
was fired, for he had been making himself sick eating fruit. But
she was soon sorry that he had nothing to do.
"And them young rapscallions you run with teach you words and
ways I never thought to see in a Beecham," Grandma scolded.
But if camp was hard for them all, it was hardest for Grandma and
Jimmie and Sally, who seemed always ailing.
"We've got to grit our teeth and hang on," said Grandma.
Then came the Big Storm.
All day the air had been heavy, still; weatherwise pickers
watched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night,
Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas.
Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and she
was buried under a mass of wet canvas.
At first she could hear no voice through the howling wind and
battering rain. Then Sally's wail sounded, and Grandma's call:
"Rose-Ellen! Jimmie! Dick! You all right?"
Until dawn the Beechams could only huddle together in the small
refuge Daddy contrived against the dripping, pricking blackness.
When day came, the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but
fitfully, as if they, too, were tired out. The family scurried
around putting up the tent and building a fire and drying things
out before the men must go to the grove. Rose-Ellen and Dick and
even Jimmie felt less dismal when they steamed before the washtub
stove and ate something hot.
[Illustration: Putting up the tent]
Grandma and Sally felt less relief. Sally's cheeks were hot and
red, and she turned her head from side to side, crying and
coughing. Grandma was saying, "My land, my land, I'd give five
years of my life to be in my own house with this sick little
mite!" when a smooth gray head thrust aside the tent flap and a
neighborly voice said, "Oh, mercy me!"
Then without waiting for invitation, a crisp gingham dress
followed the gray head in. "Is she bad sick? Have you-all had
the doctor? I'm Mrs. King, from town."
"And you really think we're humans?" Grandma demanded, her cheeks
as red as Sally's. "If you do, you're the first since we struck
this place. You'll have to excuse me," she apologized, as the
children stared at her with astonished eyes. "Seems like we've
lost our manners along with everything else."
"I don't wonder. I don't wonder a bit. Our preacher telephoned
this morning that there was a heap of suffering here in the camp,
or like enough we'd not have ought of it, and us church folks,
too. Now I got my Ford out on the road; you tote the baby and
we'll take her to my doctor."
Mrs. King's doctor gave Sally medicine and told Grandma about
feeding her orange juice and chopped vegetables and eggs as well
as milk. Grandma sighed as she wondered how she would get these
good things for the sick baby. However, Sally did seem to be
somewhat better when they returned. Mrs. King and Grandma were
talking over how to get supplies when the men came back to the
tent.
"Laid off," said Grandpa wearily, not seeing the caller. "Storm's
wrecked the crop so bad he's laying off the newest hired. Says
it's like to ruin him."
Grandma sat still with the baby whining on her lap. "My land of
love," she said, "what will we do now?"