Pigtails said to Winfield, “You can git in the nex’ game.”
The watching lady warned them, “When she comes back an’ wants to be decent, you let her. You was mean yourself, Amy.” The game went on, while in the Joad tent Ruthie wept miserably.
The truck moved along the beautiful roads, past orchards where the peaches were beginning to color, past vineyards with the clusters pale and green, under lines of walnut trees whose branches spread half across the road. At each entrance-gate Al slowed; and at each gate there was a sign: “No help wanted. No trespassing.”
Al said, “Pa, they’s boun’ to be work when them fruits gets ready. Funny place—they tell ya they ain’t no work ’fore you ask ’em.” He drove slowly on.
Pa said, “Maybe we could go in anyways an’ ask if they know where they’s any work. Might do that.”
A man in blue overalls and a blue shirt walked along the edge of the road. Al pulled up beside him. “Hey, mister,” Al said. “Know where they’s any work?”
The man stopped and grinned, and his mouth was vacant of front teeth. “No,” he said. “Do you? I been walkin’ all week, an’ I can’t tree none.”
“Live in that gov’ment camp?” Al asked.
“Yeah!”
“Come on, then. Git up back, an’ we’ll all look.” The man climbed over the side-boards and dropped in the bed.
Pa said, “I ain’t got no hunch we’ll find work. Guess we got to look, though. We don’t even know where-at to look.”
“Shoulda talked to the fellas in the camp,” Al said. “How you feelin’, Uncle John?”
“I ache,” said Uncle John. “I ache all over, an’ I got it comin’. I oughta go away where I won’t bring down punishment on my own folks.”
Pa put his hand on John’s knee. “Look here,” he said, “don’ you go away. We’re droppin’ folks all the time—Grampa an’ Granma dead, Noah an’ Connie—run out, an’ the preacher—in jail.”
“I got a hunch we’ll see that preacher agin,” John said.
Al fingered the ball on the gear-shift lever. “You don’ feel good enough to have no hunches,” he said. “The hell with it. Le’s go back an’ talk, an’find out where they’s some work. We’re jus’ huntin’ skunks under water.” He stopped the truck and leaned out the window and called back, “Hey! Lookie! We’re a-goin’ back to the camp an’ try an’ see where they’s work. They ain’t no use burnin’ gas like this.”
The man leaned over the truck side. “Suits me,” he said. “My dogs is wore clean up to the ankle. An’ I ain’t even got a nibble.”
Al turned around in the middle of the road and headed back.
Pa said, “Ma’s gonna be purty hurt, ’specially when Tom got work so easy.”
“Maybe he never got none,” Al said. “Maybe he jus’ went lookin’, too. I wisht I could get work in a garage. I’d learn that stuff quick, an’ I’d like it.”
Pa grunted, and they drove back toward the camp in silence.
When the committee left, Ma sat down on a box in front of the Joad tent, and she looked helplessly at Rose of Sharon. “Well—” she said, “well—I ain’t been so perked up in years. Wasn’t them ladies nice?”
“I get to work in the nursery,” Rose of Sharon said. “They tol’ me. I can find out all how to do for babies, an’ them I’ll know.”
Ma nodded in wonder. “Wouldn’t it be nice if the menfolks all got work?” she asked. “Them a-workin’, an’ a little money comin’ in?” Her eyes wandered into space. “Them a-workin’, an’ us a-workin’ here, an’ all them nice people. Fust thing we get a little ahead I’d get me a little stove—nice one. They don’ cost much. An’ then we’d get a tent, big enough, an’ maybe secon’-han’ springs for the beds. An’ we’d use this here tent jus’ to eat under. An’ Sat’dy night we’ll go to the dancin’. They says you can invite folks if you want. I wisht we had some frien’s to invite. Maybe the men’ll know somebody to invite.”
Rose of Sharon peered down the road. “That lady that says I’ll lose the baby—” she began.
“Now you stop that,” Ma warned her.
Rose of Sharon said softly, “I seen her. She’s a-comin’ here, I think. Yeah! Here she comes. Ma, don’t let her——”