Le’s go to the spring.
And young girls found each other and boasted shyly of their popularity and their prospects.
The women worked over the fire, hurrying to get food to the stomachs of the family—pork if there was money in plenty, pork and potatoes and onions. Dutch-oven biscuits or cornbread, and plenty of gravy to go over it. Side-meat or chops and a can of boiled tea, black and bitter.
Fried dough in drippings if money was slim, dough fried crisp and brown and the drippings poured over it.
Those families which were very rich or very foolish with their money ate canned beans and canned peaches and packaged bread and bakery cake; but they ate secretly, in their tents, for it would not have been good to eat such fine things openly.
Even so, children eating their fried dough smelled the warming beans and were unhappy about it.
When supper was over and the dishes dipped and wiped, the dark had come, and then the men squatted down to talk.
And they talked of the land behind them.
I don’ know what it’s coming to, they said.
The country’s spoilt.
It’ll come back though, on’y we won’t be there.
Maybe, they thought, maybe we sinned some way we didn’t know about.
Fella says to me, gov’ment fella, an’ he says, she’s gullied up on ya. Gov’ment fella. He says, if ya plowed ’cross the contour, she won’t gully.
Never did have no chance to try her.
An’ the new super’ ain’t plowin’ ’cross the contour.
Runnin’ a furrow four miles long that ain’t stoppin’ or goin’ aroun’ Jesus Christ Hisself.
And they spoke softly of their homes: They was a little cool-house under the win’mill.
Use’ ta keep milk in there ta cream up, an’ watermelons.
Go in there midday when she was hotter’n a heifer, an’ she’d be jus’ as cool, as cool as you’d want.
Cut open a melon in there an’ she’d hurt your mouth, she was so cool.
Water drippin’ down from the tank.
They spoke of their tragedies: Had a brother Charley, hair as yella as corn, an’ him a growed man.
Played the ’cordeen nice too.
He was harrowin’ one day an’ he went up to clear his lines. Well, a rattlesnake buzzed an’ them horses bolted an’ the harrow went over Charley, an’ the points dug into his guts an’ his stomach, an’ they pulled his face off an’—God Almighty!
They spoke of the future: Wonder what it’s like out there?
Well, the pitchers sure do look nice.
I seen one where it’s hot an’ fine, an’ walnut trees an’ berries; an’ right behind, close as a mule’s ass to his withers, they’s a tall up mountain covered with snow.
That was a pretty thing to see.
If we can get work it’ll be fine.
Won’t have no cold in the winter.
Kids won’t freeze on the way to school.
I’m gonna take care my kids don’t miss no more school.
I can read good, but it ain’t no pleasure to me like with a fella that’s used to it.
And perhaps a man brought out his guitar to the front of his tent.
And he sat on a box to play, and everyone in the camp moved slowly in toward him, drawn in toward him.
Many men can chord a guitar, but perhaps this man was a picker.
There you have something—the deep chords beating, beating, while the melody runs on the strings like little footsteps.
Heavy hard fingers marching on the frets.
The man played and the people moved slowly in on him until the circle was closed and tight, and then he sang
“Ten-Cent Cotton and Forty-Cent Meat.”
And the circle sang softly with him.
And he sang
“Why Do You Cut Your Hair, Girls?”
And the circle sang.
He wailed the song,
“I’m Leaving Old Texas,” that eerie song that was sung before the Spaniards came, only the words were Indian then.
And now the group was welded to one thing, one unit, so that in the dark the eyes of the people were inward, and their minds played in other times, and their sadness was like rest, like sleep.
He sang the “McAlester Blues” and then, to make up for it to the older people, he sang
“Jesus Calls Me to His Side.”
The children drowsed with the music and went into the tents to sleep, and the singing came into their dreams.