We guaranteed it to be an automobile.
We didn’t guarantee to wet-nurse it.
Now listen here, you—you bought a car, an’ now you’re squawkin’.
I don’t give a damn if you don’t make payments.
We ain’t got your paper.
We turn that over to the finance company. They’ll get after you, not us.
We don’t hold no paper.
Yeah?
Well you jus’ get tough an’ I’ll call a cop.
No, we did not switch the tires.
Run ’im outa here, Joe.
He bought a car, an’ now he ain’t satisfied.
How’d you think if I bought a steak an’ et half an’ try to bring it back?
We’re runnin’ a business, not a charity ward.
Can ya imagine that guy, Joe?
Say—looka there!
Got a Elk’s tooth!
Run over there.
Let ’em glance over that ’36 Pontiac.
Yeah. Square noses, round noses, rusty noses, shovel noses, and the long curves of streamlines, and the flat surfaces before streamlining.
Bargains Today.
Old monsters with deep upholstery—you can cut her into a truck easy.
Two-wheel trailers, axles rusty in the hard afternoon sun.
Used Cars.
Good Used Cars.
Clean, runs good.
Don’t pump oil.
Christ, look at ’er!
Somebody took nice care of ’er.
Cadillacs, La Salles, Buicks, Plymouths, Packards, Chevvies, Fords, Pontiacs.
Row on row, headlights glinting in the afternoon sun.
Good Used Cars.
Soften ’em up, Joe.
Jesus, I wisht I had a thousand jalopies!
Get ’em ready to deal, an’ I’ll close ’em.
Goin’ to California?
Here’s jus’ what you need.
Looks shot, but they’s thousan’s of miles in her.
Lined up side by side.
Good Used Cars.
Bargains.
Clean, runs good.
Chapter 8
The sky grayed among the stars, and the pale, late quarter-moon was insubstantial and thin.
Tom Joad and the preacher walked quickly along a road that was only wheel tracks and beaten caterpillar tracks through a cotton field.
Only the unbalanced sky showed the approach of dawn, no horizon to the west, and a line to the east.
The two men walked in silence and smelled the dust their feet kicked into the air.
“I hope you’re dead sure of the way,” Jim Casy said. “I’d hate to have the dawn come and us be way to hell an’ gone somewhere.” The cotton field scurried with waking life, the quick flutter of morning birds feeding on the ground, the scamper over the clods of disturbed rabbits.
The quiet thudding of the men’s feet in the dust, the squeak of crushed clods under their shoes, sounded against the secret noises of the dawn.
Tom said,