The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that’s us.
This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us.
We can’t start again.
The bitterness we sold to the junk man—he got it all right, but we have it still.
And when the owner men told us to go, that’s us; and when the tractor hit the house, that’s us until we’re dead.
To California or any place—every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness.
And some day—the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way.
And they’ll all walk together, and there’ll be a dead terror from it.
The tenant men scuffed home to the farms through the red dust.
When everything that could be sold was sold, stoves and bedsteads, chairs and tables, little corner cupboards, tubs and tanks, still there were piles of possessions; and the women sat among them, turning them over and looking off beyond and back, pictures, square glasses, and here’s a vase.
Now you know well what we can take and what we can’t take.
We’ll be camping out—a few pots to cook and wash in, and mattresses and comforts, lantern and buckets, and a piece of canvas. Use that for a tent.
This kerosene can.
Know what that is?
That’s the stove.
And clothes—take all the clothes.
And—the rifle?
Wouldn’t go out naked of a rifle.
When shoes and clothes and food, when even hope is gone, we’ll have the rifle.
When grampa came—did I tell you?—he had pepper and salt and a rifle.
Nothing else.
That goes.
And a bottle for water.
That just about fills us.
Right up the sides of the trailer, and the kids can set in the trailer, and granma on a mattress.
Tools, a shovel and saw and wrench and pliers.
An ax, too.
We had that ax forty years.
Look how she’s wore down.
And ropes, of course.
The rest?
Leave it—or burn it up.
And the children came.
If Mary takes that doll, that dirty rag doll, I got to take my Injun bow.
I got to.
An’ this roun stick—big as me.
I might need this stick.
I had this stick so long—a month, or maybe a year.
I got to take it.
And what’s it like in California?
The women sat among the doomed things, turning them over and looking past them and back.
This book.
My father had it.
He liked a book.
Pilgrim’s Progress.
Used to read it.
Got his name in it.
And his pipe—still smells rank.
And this picture—an angel.
I looked at that before the fust three come—didn’t seem to do much good.