“I can’t figger what’s best.
Seems like if we get on the main highway they’ll be more cops.
With my face this-a-way, they’d pick me right up.
Maybe we oughta keep to back roads.”
Ma said,
“Hammer on the back.
Get Al to stop.”
Tom pounded the front board with his fist; the truck pulled to a stop on the side of the road.
Al got out and walked to the back.
Ruthie and Winfield peeked out from under their blanket.
“What ya want?” Al demanded.
Ma said,
“We got to figger what to do.
Maybe we better keep on the back roads.
Tom says so.”
“It’s my face,” Tom added. “Anybody’d know.
Any cop’d know me.”
“Well, which way you wanta go?
I figgered north.
We been south.”
“Yeah,” said Tom, “but keep on back roads.”
Al asked,
“How ’bout pullin’ off an’ catchin’ some sleep, goin’ on tomorra?”
Ma said quickly,
“Not yet.
Le’s get some distance fust.”
“O.K.” Al got back in his seat and drove on.
Ruthie and Winfield covered up their heads again.
Ma called,
“Is Winfiel’ all right?”
“Sure, he’s awright,” Ruthie said. “He been sleepin’.”
Ma leaned back against the truck side. “Gives ya a funny feelin’ to be hunted like. I’m gittin’ mean.”
“Ever’body’s gittin’ mean,” said Pa. “Ever’body.
You seen that fight today.
Fella changes.
Down that gov’ment camp we wasn’ mean.”
Al turned right on a graveled road, and the yellow lights shuddered over the ground.
The fruit trees were gone now, and cotton plants took their place.
They drove on for twenty miles through the cotton, turning, angling on the country roads.
The road paralleled a bushy creek and turned over a concrete bridge and followed the stream on the other side.
And then, on the edge of the creek the lights showed a long line of red boxcars, wheelless; and a big sign on the edge of the road said,
“Cotton Pickers Wanted.”
Al slowed down.
Tom peered between the side-bars of the truck.
A quarter of a mile past the boxcars Tom hammered on the car again.
Al stopped beside the road and got out again.
“Now what ya want?”
“Shut off the engine an’ climb up here,” Tom said.
Al got into the seat, drove off into the ditch, cut lights and engine.
He climbed over the tail gate.