Handbills blew around the adobe village, announcing that five
hundred cotton-pickers were wanted at once in Arizona. The Reo,
full of Beechams and trailing Carrie, headed south.
The surprisingly large grocery bill had been paid, a few clothes
bought, Daddy's ulcerated tooth pulled, and the Reo's patched
tires replaced with better used ones. The result was that the
Beecham pocketbooks were as flat as pancakes.
"Yet we've worked like horses," Daddy said heavily. "And, worse
than that, we've let Gramma and the kids work as I never thought
Beechams would."
"But we can't blame Farmer Lukes," said Grandpa. "With all the
planting and digging and hauling he's done, he says he hasn't a
cent to show for it, once he's paid for his seed. It's too deep
for me."
Down across Colorado, where the names were Spanish, Daddy said,
because it used to be part of Mexico. Down across New Mexico,
where the air smelled of cedar; where scattered adobe houses had
bright blue doors and strings of scarlet chili peppers fringing
their roofs; where Indians sat under brush shelters by the
highway and held up pottery for sale. Down into Arizona, where
Grandma had to admit that the colors she'd seen on the picture
postcards of it were not too bright. Here were red rocks, pink,
blue-gray, white, yellow, purple; and the morning and evening sun
set their colors afire and made them flower gardens of flame.
Here the Indian women wore flounced skirts and velvet tunics and
silver jewelry. They herded flocks of sheep and goats and lived
in houses like inverted brown bowls.
"We've had worse homes, this year," Grandma said. "I'd never
hold up my head if they knew back home." Along the road with the
Reo ran an endless parade of old cars and trailers. There were
snub-nosed Model T's, packed till they bulged; monstrous Packards
with doors tied shut; yellow roadsters that had been smart ten
years ago, jolting along with mattresses on their tops and young
families jammed into their luggage compartments. Once in a while
they met another goat, like Carrie, who wasn't giving as much
milk as before.
"All this great country," Grandma marveled some more, "and no
room for these folks. Half a million of us, some say, without a
place to go."
Dick said, "The kid in that Oklahoma car said the drought dried
up their farm and the wind blew it away. Nothing will grow in
the ground that's left."
"He's from the Dust Bowl," Grandpa assented. "Thousands of these
folks are from the Dust Bowl."
The parade of old cars limped along for two weeks, growing
thicker as it drew near the part of Arizona where the pickers had
been called for. The Beechams saw more and more signs on fences
and poles: FIVE HUNDRED PICKERS WANTED!
"They don't say how much they pay," Grandma noticed.
"Ninety cents a hundred pounds is usual this year, and a fellow
can make a bare living at that," said Daddy.
Soon the procession turned off the road, the Beechams with it.
The place was swarming with pickers.
"How much are you paying?" Daddy asked.
"Fifty cents a hundred."
"Why, man alive, we'd starve on that pay," Daddy growled, the
corners of his jaws white with anger.
"You don't need to work if you don't want to," the manager barked
at him. "Here's two thousand folks glad to work at fifty cents."
Leaving Jimmie to mind Sally in the car, the Beechams went to
picking at once. Grandma had saved their old cotton sacks,
fortunately, since they cost a dollar apiece.
Rose-Ellen's heart thumped as if she were running a race.
Everyone was picking at top speed, for there were far too many
pickers and they all tried to get more than their share. The
Beechams started at noon. At night, when they weighed in, Grandpa
and Daddy each got forty cents, Grandma twenty-five, Dick twenty,
and Rose-Ellen fifteen.
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 Dick 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 Dick'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 scrap tin, shingled 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 Dick and Rose-Ellen picked peas all day
with their elders.
"The more we earn," Dick said soberly, "the sooner we can get
away from this place."
"The only trouble is," Rose-Ellen answered, "we get such an
appetite that we eat more than we earn, except when we're sick."
The sun blistered Dick'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 wishing 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 sunshine 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."
[Illustration: 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 appetite 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 appetite, 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 shining 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 God's Son, and he taught men to love one another. He
taught them about God, too."
"God? 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
apron and listened, too.
[Illustration: Hearing about Jesus]
But it was the boy who sat breathless till the story was done.
Then he scrubbed a ragged sleeve across eyes and nose and spoke
in a choked, angry voice. "I wish I'd been there. I bet them
guys wouldn't-wouldn't got so fresh with--with him. But listen,
Lady!" His dark eyes were fiercely questioning. "Why ain't
nobody told us? It sure seems like we ought to been told
before."
All the way home Jimmie sat silent. As the car stopped, he got
his voice. "Miss Pink'ton, did he mean, honest, he didn't know
about God and Jesus?"
Miss Pinkerton nodded. "He--he didn't know he had a Heavenly
Father."
"And no Gramma either," Jimmie mumbled. "Gee."