‘Well, hell,’ he says.
‘They got no conveniences at my old man’s place.
Got no ’lectric lights, got no shower baths.
There ain’t no books, an’ the food’s lousy.’
Says he come back where they got a few conveniences an’ he eats regular.
He says it makes him feel lonesome out there in the open havin’ to think what to do next.
So he stole a car an’ come back.” Joad got out his tobacco and blew a brown paper free of the pack and rolled a cigarette. “The guy’s right, too,” he said. “Las’ night, thinkin’ where I’m gonna sleep, I got scared.
An’ I got thinkin’ about my bunk, an’ I wonder what the stir-bug I got for a cell mate is doin’. Me an’ some guys had a strang band goin’.
Good one.
Guy said we ought to go on the radio.
An’ this mornin’ I didn’ know what time to get up.
Jus’ laid there waitin’ for the bell to go off.”
Casy chuckled.
“Fella can get so he misses the noise of a saw mill.”
The yellowing, dusty, afternoon light put a golden color on the land.
The cornstalks looked golden.
A flight of swallows swooped overhead toward some waterhole.
The turtle in Joad’s coat began a new campaign of escape.
Joad creased the visor of his cap.
It was getting the long protruding curve of a crow’s beak now.
“Guess I’ll mosey along,” he said. “I hate to hit the sun, but it ain’t so bad now.”
Casy pulled himself together.
“I ain’t seen ol’ Tom in a bug’s age,” he said. “I was gonna look in on him anyways.
I brang Jesus to your folks for a long time, an’ I never took up a collection nor nothin’ but a bite to eat.”
“Come along,” said Joad. “Pa’ll be glad to see you.
He always said you got too long a pecker for a preacher.” He picked up his coat roll and tightened it snugly about his shoes and turtle.
Casy gathered in his canvas sneakers and shoved his bare feet into them.
“I ain’t got your confidence,” he said. “I’m always scared there’s wire or glass under the dust.
I don’t know nothin’ I hate so much as a cut toe.”
They hesitated on the edge of the shade and then they plunged into the yellow sunlight like two swimmers hastening to get to shore.
After a few fast steps they slowed to a gentle, thoughtful pace.
The cornstalks threw gray shadows sideways now, and the raw smell of hot dust was in the air.
The corn field ended and dark green cotton took its place, dark green leaves through a film of dust, and the bolls forming.
It was spotty cotton, thick in the low places where water had stood, and bare on the high places.
The plants strove against the sun.
And distance, toward the horizon, was tan to invisibility.
The dust road stretched out ahead of them, waving up and down.
The willows of a stream lined across the west, and to the northwest a fallow section was going back to sparse brush.
But the smell of burned dust was in the air, and the air was dry, so that mucus in the nose dried to a crust, and the eyes watered to keep the eyeballs from drying out.
Casy said,
“See how good the corn come along until the dust got up.
Been a dinger of a crop.”
“Ever’ year,” said Joad. “Ever’ year I can remember, we had a good crop comin’, an’ it never come.
Grampa says she was good the first five plowin’s, while the wild grass was still in her.”
The road dropped down a little hill and climbed up another rolling hill.
Casy said,
“Ol’ Tom’s house can’t be more’n a mile from here.
Ain’t she over that third rise?”
“Sure,” said Joad. “’Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it.”
“Your pa stole it?”