The fiddle squeaks and the guitar bongs.
Mouth-organ man is red in the face.
Texas boy and the Cherokee girl, pantin’ like dogs an’ a-beatin’ the groun’.
Ol’ folks stan’ a-pattin’ their han’s.
Smilin’ a little, tappin’ their feet.
Back home—in the schoolhouse, it was.
The big moon sailed off to the westward.
An’ we walked, him an’ me—a little ways.
Didn’ talk ’cause our throats was choked up.
Didn’ talk none at all.
An’ purty soon they was a haycock.
Went right to it and laid down there.
Seein’ the Texas boy an’ that girl a-steppin’ away into the dark—think nobody seen ’em go.
Oh, God!
I wisht I was a-goin’ with that Texas boy.
Moon’ll be up ’fore long.
I seen that girl’s ol’ man move out to stop ’em, an’ then he didn’.
He knowed.
Might as well stop the fall from comin’, and might as well stop the sap from movin’ in the trees.
An’ the moon’ll be up ’fore long.
Play more—play the story songs—“As I Walked through the Streets of Laredo.”
The fire’s gone down.
Be a shame to build her up.
Little ol’ moon’ll be up ’fore long.
Beside an irrigation ditch a preacher labored and the people cried.
And the preacher paced like a tiger, whipping the people with his voice, and they groveled and whined on the ground.
He calculated them, gauged them, played on them, and when they were all squirming on the ground he stooped down and of his great strength he picked each one up in his arms and shouted, Take ’em, Christ! and threw each one in the water.
And when they were all in, waist deep in the water, and looking with frightened eyes at the master, he knelt down on the bank and he prayed for them; and he prayed that all men and women might grovel and whine on the ground.
Men and women, dripping, clothes sticking tight, watched; then gurgling and sloshing in their shoes they walked back to the camp, to the tents, and they talked softly in wonder:
We been saved, they said.
We’re washed white as snow.
We won’t never sin again.
And the children, frightened and wet, whispered together:
We been saved.
We won’t sin no more.
Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do ’em.
The migrant people looked humbly for pleasure on the roads.
Chapter 24
On Saturday morning the wash tubs were crowded.
The women washed dresses, pink ginghams and flowered cottons, and they hung them in the sun and stretched the cloth to smooth it.
When afternoon came the whole camp quickened and the people grew excited.
The children caught the fever and were more noisy than usual.
About mid-afternoon child bathing began, and as each child was caught, subdued, and washed, the noise on the playground gradually subsided.
Before five, the children were scrubbed and warned about getting dirty again; and they walked about, stiff in clean clothes, miserable with carefulness.
At the big open-air dance platform a committee was busy.
Every bit of electric wire had been requisitioned.
The city dump had been visited for wire, every tool box had contributed friction tape.
And now the patched, spliced wire was strung out to the dance floor, with bottle necks as insulators.
This night the floor would be lighted for the first time.
By six o’clock the men were back from work or from looking for work, and a new wave of bathing started.