Well, sir, that’ll get you a little mad, but you ain’t seen nothin’.
People gonna have a look in their eye.
They gonna look at you an’ their face says,
‘I don’t like you, you son-of-a-bitch.’
Gonna be deputy sheriffs, an’ they’ll push you aroun’.
You camp on the roadside, an’ they’ll move you on.
You gonna see in people’s face how they hate you.
An’—I’ll tell you somepin.
They hate you ’cause they’re scairt.
They know a hungry fella gonna get food even if he got to take it.
They know that fallow lan’s a sin an’ somebody’ gonna take it.
What the hell!
You never been called
‘Okie’ yet.”
Tom said,
“Okie?
What’s that?”
“Well, Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma.
Now it means you’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch.
Okie means you’re scum.
Don’t mean nothing itself, it’s the way they say it.
But I can’t tell you nothin’.
You got to go there.
I hear there’s three hunderd thousan’ of our people there—an’ livin’ like hogs, ’cause ever’thing in California is owned.
They ain’t nothin’ left.
An’ them people that owns it is gonna hang on to it if they got ta kill ever’body in the worl’ to do it.
An’ they’re scairt, an’ that makes ’em mad.
You got to see it.
You got to hear it.
Purtiest goddamn country you ever seen, but they ain’t nice to you, them folks.
They’re so scairt an’ worried they ain’t even nice to each other.”
Tom looked down into the water, and he dug his heels into the sand.
“S’pose a fella got work an’ saved, couldn’ he get a little lan’?”
The older man laughed and he looked at his boy, and his silent boy grinned almost in triumph.
And the man said,
“You ain’t gonna get no steady work.
Gonna scrabble for your dinner ever’ day.
An’ you gonna do her with people lookin’ mean at you.
Pick cotton, an’ you gonna be sure the scales ain’t honest.
Some of ’em is, an’ some of ’em ain’t.
But you gonna think all the scales is crooked, an’ you don’ know which ones.
Ain’t nothin’ you can do about her anyways.”
Pa asked slowly,
“Ain’t—ain’t it nice out there at all?”
“Sure, nice to look at, but you can’t have none of it.
They’s a grove of yella oranges—an’ a guy with a gun that got the right to kill you if you touch one. They’s a fella, newspaper fella near the coast, got a million acres——”
Casy looked up quickly,
“Million acres?
What in the worl’ can he do with a million acres?”
“I dunno.