“What’d the deputy say?” Huston asked.
“Well, the deputy got mad.
An’ he says,
‘You goddamn reds is all the time stirrin’ up trouble,’ he says.
‘You better come along with me.’
So he takes this little guy in, an’ they give him sixty days in jail for vagrancy.”
“How’d they do that if he had a job?” asked Timothy Wallace.
The tubby man laughed.
“You know better’n that,” he said. “You know a vagrant is anybody a cop don’t like.
An’ that’s why they hate this here camp.
No cops can get in.
This here’s United States, not California.”
Huston sighed.
“Wisht we could stay here.
Got to be goin’ ’fore long.
I like this here.
Folks gits along nice; an’, God Awmighty, why can’t they let us do it ’stead of keepin’ us miserable an’ puttin’ us in jail?
I swear to God they gonna push us into fightin’ if they don’t quit a-worryin’ us.” Then he calmed his voice. “We jes’ got to keep peaceful,” he reminded himself.
“The committee got no right to fly off’n the handle.”
The tubby man from Unit Three said,
“Anybody that thinks this committee got all cheese an’ crackers ought to jes’ try her.
They was a fight in my unit today—women.
Got to callin’ names, an’ then got to throwin’ garbage.
Ladies’ Committee couldn’ handle it, an’ they come to me.
Want me to bring the fight in this here committee.
I tol’ ’em they got to handle women trouble theirselves.
This here committee ain’t gonna mess with no garbage fights.”
Huston nodded.
“You done good,” he said.
And now the dusk was falling, and as the darkness deepened the practicing of the string band seemed to grow louder.
The lights flashed on and two men inspected the patched wire to the dance floor.
The children crowded thickly about the musicians.
A boy with a guitar sang the
“Down Home Blues,” chording delicately for himself, and on his second chorus three harmonicas and a fiddle joined him.
From the tents the people streamed toward the platform, men in their clean blue denim and women in their ginghams.
They came near to the platform and then stood quietly waiting, their faces bright and intent under the light.
Around the reservation there was a high wire fence, and along the fence, at intervals of fifty feet, the guards sat in the grass and waited.
Now the cars of the guests began to arrive, small farmers and their families, migrants from other camps.
And as each guest came through the gate he mentioned the name of the camper who had invited him.
The string band took a reel tune up and played loudly, for they were not practicing any more.
In front of their tents the Jesus-lovers sat and watched, their faces hard and contemptuous.
They did not speak to one another, they watched for sin, and their faces condemned the whole proceeding.
At the Joad tent Ruthie and Winfield had bolted what little dinner they had, and then they started for the platform.
Ma called them back, held up their faces with a hand under each chin, and looked into their nostrils, pulled their ears and looked inside, and sent them to the sanitary unit to wash their hands once more.
They dodged around the back of the building and bolted for the platform, to stand among the children, close-packed about the band.
Al finished his dinner and spent half an hour shaving with Tom’s razor.
Al had a tight-fitting wool suit and a striped shirt, and he bathed and washed and combed his straight hair back.
And when the washroom was vacant for a moment, he smiled engagingly at himself in the mirror, and he turned and tried to see himself in profile when he smiled.
He slipped his purple arm-bands on and put on his tight coat. And he rubbed up his yellow shoes with a piece of toilet paper.
A late bather came in, and Al hurried out and walked recklessly toward the platform, his eye peeled for girls.