“Hush!” Ma said. “Don’ talk like that. Here. Let go. I’m a-goin’ now.”
“Whyn’t ya whup her, Ma? If she didn’t git snotty with her Cracker Jack ’twouldn’ a happened. Go on, give her a whup.”
“You jus’ min’ your business, mister,” Ma said fiercely. “You’ll git a whup yourself. Now leggo, Ruthie.”
Winfield retired to a rolled mattress, and he regarded the family cynically and dully. And he put himself in a good position of defense, for Ruthie would attack him at the first opportunity, and he knew it. Ruthie went quietly, heartbrokenly to the other side of the car.
Ma put a sheet of newspaper over the tin plate. “I’m a-goin’ now,” she said.
“Ain’t you gonna eat nothin’ yourself ?” Uncle John demanded.
“Later. When I come back. I wouldn’ want nothin’ now.” Ma walked to the open door; she steadied herself down the steep, cleated cat-walk.
On the stream side of the boxcars, the tents were pitched close together, their guy ropes crossing one another, and the pegs of one at the canvas line of the next. The lights shone through the cloth, and all the chimneys belched smoke. Men and women stood in the doorways talking. Children ran feverishly about. Ma moved majestically down the line of tents. Here and there she was recognized as she went by. “Evenin’, Mis’ Joad.”
“Evenin’.”
“Takin’ somepin out, Mis’ Joad?”
“They’s a frien’. I’m takin’ back some bread.”
She came at last to the end of the line of tents. She stopped and looked back. A glow of light was on the camp, and the soft overtone of a multitude of speakers. Now and then a harsher voice cut through. The smell of smoke filled the air. Someone played a harmonica softly, trying for an effect, one phrase over and over.
Ma stepped in among the willows beside the stream. She moved off the trail and waited, silently, listening to hear any possible follower. A man walked down the trail toward the camp, boosting his suspenders and buttoning his jeans as he went. Ma sat very still, and he passed on without seeing her. She waited five minutes and then she stood up and crept on up the trail beside the stream. She moved quietly, so quietly that she could hear the murmur of the water above her soft steps on the willow leaves. Trail and stream swung to the left and then to the right again until they neared the highway. In the gray starlight she could see the embankment and the black round hole of the culvert where she always left Tom’s food. She moved forward cautiously, thrust her package into the hole, and took back the empty tin plate which was left there. She crept back among the willows, forced her way into a thicket, and sat down to wait. Through the tangle she could see the black hole of the culvert. She clasped her knees and sat silently. In a few moments the thicket crept to life again. The field mice moved cautiously over the leaves. A skunk padded heavily and unself-consciously down the trail, carrying a faint effluvium with him. And then a wind stirred the willows delicately, as though it tested them, and a shower of golden leaves coasted down to the ground. Suddenly a gust boiled in and racked the trees, and a cricking downpour of leaves fell. Ma could feel them on her hair and on her shoulders. Over the sky a plump black cloud moved, erasing the stars. The fat drops of rain scattered down, splashing loudly on the fallen leaves, and the cloud moved on and unveiled the stars again. Ma shivered. The wind blew past and left the thicket quiet, but the rushing of the trees went on down the stream. From back at the camp came the thin penetrating tone of a violin feeling about for a tune.
Ma heard a stealthy step among the leaves far to her left, and she grew tense. She released her knees and straightened her head, the better to hear. The movement stopped, and after a long moment began again. A vine rasped harshly on the dry leaves. Ma saw a dark figure creep into the open and draw near to the culvert. The black round hole was obscured for a moment, and then the figure moved back. She called softly, “Tom!” The figure stood still, so still, so low to the ground that it might have been a stump. She called again, “Tom, oh, Tom!” Then the figure moved.
“That you, Ma?”
“Right over here.” She stood up and went to meet him.
“You shouldn’ of came,” he said.
“I got to see you, Tom. I got to talk to you.”
“It’s near the trail,” he said. “Somebody might come by.”
“Ain’t you got a place, Tom?”
“Yeah—but if—well, s’pose somebody seen you with me—whole fambly’d be in a jam.”