Ma watched his figure blur with the night and disappear into the bushes beside the stream.
“Dear Jesus, I hope it’s awright,” she said.
Al asked,
“You want I should go back now?”
“Yeah,” said Pa.
“Go slow,” said Ma. “I wanta be sure an’ see that culvert he said about.
I got to see that.”
Al backed and filled on the narrow road, until he had reversed his direction.
He drove slowly back to the line of box-cars.
The truck lights showed the cat-walks up to the wide car doors.
The doors were dark.
No one moved in the night.
Al shut off his lights.
“You and Uncle John climb up back,” he said to Rose of Sharon. “I’ll sleep in the seat here.”
Uncle John helped the heavy girl to climb up over the tail board.
Ma piled the pots in a small space.
The family lay wedged close together in the back of the truck.
A baby cried, in long jerking cackles, in one of the boxcars.
A dog trotted out, sniffing and snorting, and moved slowly around the Joad truck.
The tinkle of moving water came from the streambed.
Chapter 27
Cotton Pickers Wanted—placards on the road, handbills out, orange- colored handbills—Cotton Pickers Wanted.
Here, up this road, it says.
The dark green plants stringy now, and the heavy bolls clutched in the pod. White cotton spilling out like popcorn.
Like to get our hands on the bolls.
Tenderly, with the fingertips.
I’m a good picker.
Here’s the man, right here.
I aim to pick some cotton.
Got a bag?
Well, no, I ain’t.
Cost ya a dollar, the bag.
Take it out o’ your first hunderd and fifty.
Eighty cents a hunderd first time over the field.
Ninety cents second time over.
Get your bag there.
One dollar. ’F you ain’t got the buck, we’ll take it out of your first hunderd and fifty.
That’s fair, and you know it.
Sure it’s fair.
Good cotton bag, last all season.
An’ when she’s wore out, draggin’, turn ’er aroun’, use the other end.
Sew up the open end.
Open up the wore end.
And when both ends is gone, why, that’s nice cloth!
Makes a nice pair a summer drawers.
Makes nightshirts.
And well, hell—a cotton bag’s a nice thing.
Hang it around your waist.
Straddle it, drag it between your legs.
She drags light at first.