Across the Fruited Plain Part 8

"But we'll be lucky if the brakebands of the auto last till we get over the mountains," said Daddy.

The spring drive up through Texas was pleasant, between blossoming yellow trees and yuccas like wax candles and pink bouquets of peach trees and mocking birds' songs.

The mountain pa.s.s between New Mexico and Colorado was beautiful, too, and exciting. In places it was a shelf shoved against the mountain, and Jimmie said it tickled his stomach to look down on the tops of other automobiles, traveling the loop of road below them. Even Carrie, riding haughtily in her trailer, let out an anguished bleat when she hung on the very edge of a curve. And the Reo groaned and puffed.

Up through Colorado they chugged; past Pike's Peak; through Denver, flat on the plain with a blue mountain wall to its west; on through the farmlands north of it to the sugar-beet town which was their goal.

Beyond the town stood an adobe village for beetworkers on the Lukes fields, where the Beechams were to work.

"Mud houses," d.i.c.k exclaimed, crumbling off a piece of mud plaster thick with straw.

"Like the bricks the Israelites made in Egypt," said Grandpa; "only Pharaoh wanted them to do without the straw."

"It's a Mexican village," observed Grandma. "I'd feel like a cat in a strange garret here. And not a smidgin of shade. That shack off there under the cottonwood tree looks cooler."

"It's a chicken-coop!" squealed Rose-Ellen as they walked over to it. "Gramma wants to live in a chicken-coop!"

"It's empty. And it'd be a sight easier to clean than some places where humans have lived," Grandma replied stoutly.

So the Beechams got permission to live in the farmer's old chicken-coop. It had two rooms, and the men pitched the tent beside it for a bedroom. They had time to set up "chicken-housekeeping,"

as Rose-Ellen called it, before the last of May, when beet work began. They made a pretty cheerful place of this new home; though, of course, it had no floor and no window gla.s.s, and sun and stars shone in through its roof, and the only running water was in the irrigation ditch. Even under the glistening cottonwood tree it was a stifling cage on a hot day.

They were all going to work, except Jimmie and Sally. It would take all of them, new hands that they were, to care for the twenty acres they were to work. Mr. Lukes said that children under sixteen were not supposed to be employed, but of course they could always help their parents. Daddy said that was one way to get around the Child Labor Law.

So the Beechams were to thin the beets and hoe them and top them, beginning the last of May and finishing in October, and the pay would be twenty-six dollars an acre. The government made the farmers pay that price, no matter how poor the crop was.

"Five hundred and twenty dollars sounds like real money!" Daddy rejoiced.

"Near five months, though," Grandma reckoned, "and with prices like they are, we're lucky to feed seven hungry folks on sixty dollars a month. And we're walking ragbags, with our feet on the ground. And them brakebands--and new tires."

"Five times sixty is three hundred," Rose-Ellen figured.

"You'll find it won't leave more than enough to get us on to the next work place," Grandpa muttered.

It was lucky the chicken-coop was in sight of their acres.

Before she left home in the early morning, Grandma saw to it that there was no fire in the old-new washtub stove, and that Sally's knitted string harness was on, so that she could not reach the irrigation ditch, and that Carrie was tethered.

The beets, planted two months ago, had come up in even green rows. Now they must be thinned. With short-handled hoes the grown people chopped out foot-long strips of plants. d.i.c.k and Rose-Ellen followed on hands and knees, and pulled the extra plants from the clumps so that a single strong plant was left every twelve inches.

The sun rose higher and hotter in the big blue bowl of sky.

Rose-Ellen's ragged dress clung to her, wet with sweat, and her arms and face p.r.i.c.kled with heat. Grandma looked at her from under the ap.r.o.n she had flung over her head.

"Run and stretch out under the cottonwood awhile," she said. "No use for to get sunstroke."

Rose-Ellen went silently, thankfully. It was cooler in the shade of the tree. She looked up through the fluttering green leaves at the floating clouds shining in the sun. Jimmie hobbled around her, driving Sally with her knitted reins, but they did not keep their sister awake. The sun was almost noon-high when she opened her eyes, and she hurried guiltily back to the beets.

She had never seen such a big field, its green and brown stripes waving up and down to the skyline. It made her ache to think that five Beechams must take out these extra thousands of three-inch plants; and after that, hoe them; and after that. . . .

Her knees were so sore that night that Grandpa bought her overalls. He got her and d.i.c.k big straw hats, too, though it was too late to keep their faces from blistering. All the Beechams but Grandma wore overalls. She couldn't bring herself to it. That night she made herself a sunbonnet out of an old shirt, sitting close to a candle stuck in a pop bottle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rose-Ellen and d.i.c.k]

"I clean forgot to look over the beans and put them to soak," she said wearily, from her bed.

Rose-Ellen scooped herself farther into her layer of straw. She ought to offer to get up and look over those beans, but she simply couldn't make herself.

"It seems like I can't stay up another ten minutes," Grandma excused herself, "after the field work and redding up and such.

But we're getting like all the rest of them, buying the groceries that we can fix easiest, even though they cost twice as much and ain't half as nourishing. And when you can't trade at but one place it's always dearer. . . ."

Mr. Lukes had guaranteed their account at the store, because of the pay due them at the end of the season. So they went on buying there, even though its prices were high and its goods of poor quality, because they did not have money to spend anywhere else.

When the thinning was done, they must begin all over again, working with the short-handled hoes, cutting out any extra plants, loosening the ground. By that time they were more used to the work; and in July came a rest time, when all they needed to do was to turn the waters of the big ditch into the little ditches that crinkled between the rows. It was lucky there was irrigation water, or the growing plants would have died in the heat, since there had been little rain.

Rose-Ellen loved to watch the water moving through the fields as if it were alive, catching the rosy gold of sunset in its zigzag mirrors. She missed the Eastern fireflies at night; otherwise the evenings were a delight. Colorado sunsets covered the west with glory, and then came quick coolness. Dry as it was, the cottonwood leaves made a sound like refreshing rain, and the cicadas hummed comfortably. All the Beechams stayed outside till far into the night, for the chicken-house was miserably hot at the end of every day.

"The Garcias' and Martinezes' houses are better if they are mud and haven't any shade," Rose-Ellen told Grandma. "The walls are so thick that inside they're like cool caves."

She and d.i.c.k had made friends in the Mexican village with Vicente Garcia and her brother Joe, and with Nico Martinez, next door to the Garcias', and her brothers. Even when they all picked beans in the morning, during the vacation from sugar beets, there were these long, cool evenings for play.

Grandma complained. "I don't know what else to blame for d.i.c.k's untidy ways. Hair sticking up five ways for Christmas, and fingernails in mourning and the manners of a heathen. I'm afraid that sore on his hand may be something catching. Those Garcias and Martinezes of yours . . . !"

"The Garcias maybe, but not the Martinezes," Rose-Ellen objected.

"Gramma, you go to their houses sometime and see."

One evening Grandma did. Jimmie had come excitedly leading home the quaintest of all the babies of the Mexican village, Vicente Garcia's little sister. He had found her balancing on her stomach on the bank of the ditch. Three years old, she was, and slim and straight, with enormous eyes and a great tangle of sunburned brown curls. Her dress made her quainter still, for it was low-necked and sleeveless, and came to her tiny ankles so that she looked like a child from an old-fashioned picture.

Grandma and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie walked home with her, and Grandma's eyes widened at sight of the two-roomed Garcia house.

Ten people lived and slept, ate and cooked there, and it looked as if it had never met a broom or soapsuds.

The Martinez home was different, perfectly neat, even to the scrubbed oilcloth on the table. Afterwards Grandma said the bottoms of the pans weren't scoured, but she couldn't feel to blame Mrs. Martinez, with five young ones besides the new baby to look after. When the Beechams went home, Mrs. Martinez gave them a covered dish of _enchiladas_.

Even Grandma ate those enchiladas without hesitation, though they were so peppery that she had to cool her mouth with frequent swallows of water. They were made of tidily rolled _tortillas_ (Mexican corn-cakes, paper-thin), stuffed with meat and onion and invitingly decorated with minced cheese and onion tops. They looked, smelled and tasted delicious.

In turn, Grandma sent biscuits, baked in the Dutch oven Grandpa had bought her. Grandma had always been proud of her biscuits.

In July the Mexican children took d.i.c.k and Rose-Ellen to the vacation school held every summer in one of the town churches.

The Beechams were not surprised at Nico's dressed-up daintiness when she called for them. Grandma said she was perfect, from the ribbon bows on her shining hair to the socks that matched her smart print dress. But it was surprising to see Vicente come from the cluttered, dirty Garcia rooms, almost as clean and sweet as Nico, though with nails more violently red.

The Beechams found it a problem to dress at all in their chicken-apartment. d.i.c.k tried to get ready in one room and Rose-Ellen in the other, and everything she wanted was in his room and everything he wanted in hers. Their small belongings had to be packed in boxes, and all the boxes emptied out to find them. Clean clothes--still unironed, of course--had to be hung up, and they could not be covered well enough so flies and moth-millers did not speck them.

"I do admire your Mexican friends," Grandma admitted grudgingly, "keeping so nice in such a hullabaloo."

"They are admire-able in lots of ways," Rose-Ellen answered. "I never knew anyone I liked much better than Nico. And the Mexicans are the very best in all the art work at the vacation school. I think the j.a.panese learn quickest."