I don’ know.”
Ma patted her knee.
“Look,” she said.
“Look here at me.
I’m a-gonna tell ya.
In a little while it ain’t gonna be so bad.
In a little while.
An’ that’s true.
Now come on.
We’ll go get washed up, an’ we’ll put on our nice dress an’ we’ll set by the dance.” She led Rose of Sharon toward the sanitary unit.
Pa and Uncle John squatted with a group of men by the porch of the office. “We nearly got work today,” Pa said. “We was jus’ a few minutes late. They awready got two fellas. An’, well, sir, it was a funny thing. They’s a straw boss there, an’ he says,
‘We jus’ got some two-bit men. ’Course we could use twenty-cent men.
We can use a lot a twenty-cent men.
You go to your camp an’ say we’ll put a lot a fellas on for twenty cents.”’
The squatting men moved nervously.
A broad-shouldered man, his face completely in the shadow of a black hat, spatted his knee with his palm.
“I know it, goddamn it!” he cried. “An’ they’ll git men.
They’ll git hungry men.
You can’t feed your fam’ly on twenty cents an hour, but you’ll take anything.
They got you goin’ an’ comin’.
They jes’ auction a job off.
Jesus Christ, pretty soon they’re gonna make us pay to work.”
“We would of took her,” Pa said. “We ain’t had no job.
We sure would a took her, but they was them guys in there, an’ the way they looked, we was scairt to take her.”
Black Hat said,
“Get crazy thinkin’!
I been workin’ for a fella, an’ he can’t pick his crop.
Cost more jes’ to pick her than he can git for her, an’ he don’ know what to do.”
“Seems to me —” Pa stopped.
The circle was silent for him. “Well—I jus’ thought, if a fella had a acre. Well, my woman she could raise a little truck an’ a couple pigs an’ some chickens.
An’ us men could get out an’ find work, an’ then go back.
Kids could maybe go to school.
Never seen sech schools as out here.”
“Our kids ain’t happy in them schools,” Black Hat said.
“Why not?
They’re pretty nice, them schools.”
“Well, a raggedy kid with no shoes, an’ them other kids with socks on, an’ nice pants, an’ them a-yellin’‘Okie.’
My boy went to school.
Had a fight evr’ day.
Done good, too.
Tough little bastard.
Ever’ day he got to fight.
Come home with his clothes tore an’ his nose bloody.
An’ his ma’d whale him.
Made her stop that.
No need ever’body beatin’ the hell outa him, poor little fella.
Jesus! He give some a them kids a goin’-over, though—them nice-pants sons-a-bitches.
I dunno. I dunno.”
Pa demanded,
“Well, what the hell am I gonna do?