The Grapes of Wrath(182)

Over near the office the men still squatted and talked, and the shrill music came to them.

Pa said, “They’s change a-comin’. I don’ know what. Maybe we won’t live to see her. But she’s a-comin’. They’s a res’less feelin’. Fella can’t figger nothin’ out, he’s so nervous.”

And Black Hat lifted his head up again, and the light fell on his bristly whiskers. He gathered some little rocks from the ground and shot them like marbles, with his thumb. “I don’ know. She’s a-comin’ awright, like you say. Fella tol’ me what happened in Akron, Ohio. Rubber companies. They got mountain people in ’cause they’d work cheap. An’ these here mountain people up an’ joined the union  . Well, sir, hell jes’ popped. All them storekeepers and legioners an’ people like that, they get drillin’ an’ yellin’, ‘Red!’ An’ they’re gonna run the union   right outa Akron. Preachers git a-preachin’ about it, an’ papers a-yowlin’, an’ they’s pick handles put out by the rubber companies, an’ they’re a-buyin’ gas. Jesus, you’d think them mountain boys was reg’lar devils!” He stopped and found some more rocks to shoot. “Well, sir—it was las’ March, an’ one Sunday five thousan’ of them mountain men had a turkey shoot outside a town. Five thousan’ of ’em jes’ marched through town with their rifles. An’ they had their turkey shoot, an’ then they marched back. An’ that’s all they done. Well, sir, they ain’t been no trouble sence then. These here citizens committees give back the pick handles, an’ the storekeepers keep their stores, an’ nobody been clubbed nor tarred an’ feathered, an’ nobody been killed.” There was a long silence, and then Black Hat said, “They’re gettin’ purty mean out here. Burned that camp an’ beat up folks. I been thinkin’. All our folks got guns. I been thinkin’ maybe we ought to git up a turkey shootin’ club an’ have meetin’s ever’ Sunday.”

The men looked up at him, and then down at the ground, and their feet moved restlessly and they shifted their weight from one leg to the other.





Chapter 25


The spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes, swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of pale green lettuce and the spindly little cauliflowers, the gray-green unearthly artichoke plants.

And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight.

Behind the fruitfulness are men of understanding and knowledge and skill, men who experiment with seed, endlessly developing the techniques for greater crops of plants whose roots will resist the million enemies of the earth: the molds, the insects, the rusts, the blights. These men work carefully and endlessly to perfect the seed, the roots. And there are the men of chemistry who spray the trees against pests, who sulphur the grapes, who cut out disease and rots, mildews and sicknesses. Doctors of preventive medicine, men at the borders who look for fruit flies, for Japanese beetle, men who quarantine the sick trees and root them out and burn them, men of knowledge. The men who graft the young trees, the little vines, are the cleverest of all, for theirs is a surgeon’s job, as tender and delicate; and these men must have surgeons’ hands and surgeons’ hearts to slit the bark, to place the grafts, to bind the wounds and cover them from the air. These are great men.

Along the rows, the cultivators move, tearing the spring grass and turning it under to make a fertile earth, breaking the ground to hold the water up near the surface, ridging the ground in little pools for the irrigation, destroying the weed roots that may drink the water away from the trees.

And all the time the fruit swells and the flowers break out in long clusters on the vines. And in the growing year the warmth grows and the leaves turn dark green. The prunes lengthen like little green bird’s eggs, and the limbs sag down against the crutches under the weight. And the hard little pears take shape, and the beginning of the fuzz comes out on the peaches. Grape blossoms shed their tiny petals and the hard little beads become green buttons, and the buttons grow heavy. The men who work in the fields, the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate. The year is heavy with produce. And men are proud, for of their knowledge they can make the year heavy. They have transformed the world with their knowledge. The short, lean wheat has been made big and productive. Little sour apples have grown large and sweet, and that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the birds its tiny fruit has mothered a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow; and each variety with its own flavor. The men who work in the experimental farms have made new fruits: nectarines and forty kinds of plums, walnuts with paper shells. And always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driving the earth to produce.