Across the Fruited Plain Part 4

The Big Boss saw them as soon as they tiptoed into the oyster-house. "Ez," he called, "here's some nice kids. Show 'em around, will you?"

Ez was opening clams with a penknife, and spilling them into his mouth. "Want some?" he asked.

The children shook their heads vigorously.

He closed his knife and dropped it into his pocket.

"Well, now first you want to see the dredges come in from the bay." He took them through the open front of the shed to the docks outside. The boats had gone out at three o'clock in the morning, he said, in the deep dark. They were coming in now heavily, loaded high with h.o.r.n.y oysters, and Ez pointed out the rake-set iron nets with which the sh.e.l.lfish were dragged from their beds. "Got 'em out of bed good and early!"

"I'd hate to have to eat 'em all," Jimmie said suddenly in his husky little voice.

Everyone laughed, for the big rough sh.e.l.ls were traveling into the oyster-house by thousands, on moving belts. Some sh.e.l.ls looked as if they were carrying sponges in their mouths, but Ez said it was a kind of moss that grew there. Already the pile of unopened oysters in the shed was higher than a man. The shuckers needed a million to work on next day, Ez said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Watching the dredges]

When the children had watched awhile, and the boatmen had asked their names, and how old they were and where they came from, Ez took them inside the shed to show them the handling of the newly shucked oysters. First the oysters were dumped into something that looked like Mrs. Albi's electric washer, and washed and washed. Then they were emptied into a flume, a narrow trough along which they were swept into bright cans that held almost a gallon each. The cans were stored in ice-packed barrels, and early next morning would go out in trains and trucks to all parts of the country.

"How many pearls have they found in all these oysters?" d.i.c.k demanded in a businesslike voice. "Not any!" Ez said.

"Why can't you eat oysters in months that don't have R in them?"

asked Rose-Ellen.

"You could, if there wasn't a law against selling them. It's only a notion, like not turning your dress if you put it on wrong side out. Summer's when oysters lay eggs. You don't stop eating hens because they lay eggs, do you? But now scram, kids. I got work to do."

They left, skipping past the mountains of empty sh.e.l.ls outside.

Next day the children went to church school alone. The grown folks were too tired. And on Monday d.i.c.k and Rose-Ellen went up the road to the school in the little village.

It was strange to be in school again, and with new schoolmates and teachers and even new books, since this was a different state. Rose-Ellen's grade, the fifth, had got farther in long division than her cla.s.s at home, and she couldn't understand what they were doing. d.i.c.k had trouble, too, for the seventh grade was well started on United States history, and he couldn't catch up. But that was not the worst of it. The two children could not seem to fit in with their schoolmates. The village girls gathered in groups by themselves and acted as if the oyster-shuckers'

children were not there at all; and the boys did not give d.i.c.k even a chance to show what a good pitcher he was. Both Rose-Ellen and d.i.c.k had been leaders in the city school, and now they felt so lonesome that Rose-Ellen often cried when she got home.

It was too long a walk for Jimmie, who begged not to go anyway.

Besides, he was needed at home to mind Sally.

Of course the grown folks wanted to earn all they could. The pay was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up until something happened that forced her to.

It was late November, and the fire in the shack must be kept going all day to make the rooms warm enough for Sally. She was creeping now, and during the long hours when the grown folks were working and the older children at school, she had to stay in a chair with a gate across the front which her father had fixed out of an old kitchen armchair. Grandma cushioned it with rags, but it grew hard and tiresome, and sometimes Jimmie could not keep her contented there.

One day Sally cried until he wriggled her out of her nest and spread a quilt for her in a corner of the room as Grandma did.

There he sat, fencing her in with his legs while he drew pictures of oyster-houses. He was so busy drawing roofs that he had forgot all about Sally until he was startled by her scream. He jerked around in terror. Sally had clambered over the fence of his legs and crept under the stove after her ball. Perhaps a spark had snapped through the half-open slide in the stove door; however it had happened, the flames were running up her little cotton dress.

Poor Baby Sally! Jimmie had never felt so helpless. Hardly knowing why he did it, he dragged the wool quilt off Grandma's bed and scooted across the floor in a flash. While Sally screamed with fright, he wrapped the thick folds tightly around her and hugged her close.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Jimmie saving Sally]

When the grown folks came from work, just ahead of the school children, they found Jimmie and Sally white and shaky but safe.

The woolen quilt had smothered out the flames before Sally was hurt at all; and Jimmie had only a pair of blistered hands.

"If I hadn't put a wool petticoat on her, and wool stockings,"

Grandma kept saying, while she sat and rocked the whimpering baby. "And if our Jimmie hadn't been so smart as to think of the bedclothes. . . .

"Not all children have been so lucky," Daddy said in a shaky voice, crouching beside Grandma and touching Sally's downy head.

"But I hadn't ought to have left her with poor Jimmie,"

Grandma mourned. "If only they had a Center, like at the bogs. I don't believe I can bear it to stay here any longer after this.

Maybe we best go back to the city and put them in a Home."

Daddy objected. "We'll not leave the kids alone again, of course; but we're making a fair living and the Boss says there'll be work through April, and then Pa and I can go out and plant seed oysters if we want."

"Where's the good of a fair living if it's the death of you?"

Grandma's tone was tart. "No, sir, I ain't going to stay, tied in bowknots with rheumatiz, and these poor young-ones. . . ."

Grandpa made a last effort, though he knew it was of little use when Grandma was set. "I bet we could go to work on one of these truck farms, come summer."

Grandma only rocked her straight chair, jerking one foot up and down.

"One of these _padrones_," Daddy said slowly, "is trying to get families to work in Florida. In winter fruits."

Grandma brightened. "Floridy might do us a sight of good, and I always did hanker after palm trees. But how could we get there?"

"They send you down in a truck," said Daddy. "Charge you so much a head and feed and lodge you into the bargain. I figure we've got just about enough to make it."

South into summer!

"That really would be a peekaneeka!" crowed Rose-Ellen.

4: PEEKANEEKA?

That trip to Florida surprised the Beechams, but not happily.

First, the driver shook his head at featherbeds, dishes, trunk.

"I take three grown folks, three kids, one baby, twenty-eight dollars," he growled. "No furniture."

Argument did no good. Hastily the family sorted out their most needed clothing and made it into small bundles. The driver scowled at even those.

"My featherbeds!" cried Grandma, weeping for once.

Hurriedly she sold the beds for a dollar to her next-door neighbor. The clock she would not leave and it took turns with the baby sitting on grown-up laps.

At each stop the springless truck seats were crowded tighter with people, till there was hardly room for the pa.s.sengers' feet. The crowding did help warm the unheated truck; but Grandma's face grew gray with pain as cold and cramp made her "rheumatiz tune up."

And there was no place at all to take care of a baby.