“Don’t yell,” said Tom. “Let’s creep up on ’em, like,” and he walked so fast that the dust rose as high as his waist. And then he came to the edge of the cotton field. Now they were in the yard proper, earth beaten hard, shiny hard, and a few dusty crawling weeds on the ground. And Joad slowed as though he feared to go on. The preacher, watching him, slowed to match his step. Tom sauntered forward, sidled embarrassedly toward the truck. It was a Hudson Super-Six sedan, and the top had been ripped in two with a cold chisel. Old Tom Joad stood in the truck bed and he was nailing on the top rails of the truck sides. His grizzled, bearded face was low over his work, and a bunch of six-penny nails stuck out of his mouth. He set a nail and his hammer thundered it in. From the house came the clash of a lid on the stove and the wail of a child. Joad sidled up to the truck bed and leaned against it. And his father looked at him and did not see him. His father set another nail and drove it in. A flock of pigeons started from the deck of the tank house and flew around and settled again and strutted to the edge to look over; white pigeons and blue pigeons and grays, with iridescent wings.
Joad hooked his fingers over the lowest bar of the truck side. He looked up at the aging, graying man on the truck. He wet his thick lips with his tongue, and he said softly, “Pa.”
“What do you want?” old Tom mumbled around his mouthful of nails. He wore a black, dirty slouch hat and a blue work shirt over which was a buttonless vest; his jeans were held up by a wide harness-leather belt with a big square brass buckle, leather and metal polished from years of wearing; and his shoes were cracked and the soles swollen and boat-shaped from years of sun and wet and dust. The sleeves of his shirt were tight on his forearms, held down by the bulging powerful muscles. Stomach and hips were lean, and legs, short, heavy, and strong. His face, squared by a bristling pepper and salt beard, was all drawn down to the forceful chin, a chin thrust out and built out by the stubble beard which was not so grayed on the chin, and gave weight and force to its thrust. Over old Tom’s unwhiskered cheek bones the skin was as brown as meerschaum, and wrinkled in rays around his eye-corners from squinting. His eyes were brown, black-coffee brown, and he thrust his head forward when he looked at a thing, for his bright dark eyes were failing. His lips, from which the big nails protruded, were thin and red.
He held his hammer suspended in the air, about to drive a set nail, and he looked over the truck side at Tom, looked resentful at being interrupted. And then his chin drove forward and his eyes looked at Tom’s face, and then gradually his brain became aware of what he saw. The hammer dropped slowly to his side, and with his left hand he took the nails from his mouth. And he said wonderingly, as though he told himself the fact, “It’s Tommy—” And then, still informing himself, “It’s Tommy come home.” His mouth opened again, and a look of fear came into his eyes. “Tommy,” he said softly, “you ain’t busted out? You ain’t got to hide?” He listened tensely.
“Naw,” said Tom. “I’m paroled. I’m free. I got my papers.” He gripped the lower bars of the truck side and looked up.
Old Tom laid his hammer gently on the floor and put his nails in his pocket. He swung his leg over the side and dropped lithely to the ground, but once beside his son he seemed embarrassed and strange. “Tommy,” he said, “we are goin’ to California. But we was gonna write you a letter an’ tell you.” And he said, incredulously, “But you’re back. You can go with us. You can go!” The lid of a coffee pot slammed in the house. Old Tom looked over his shoulder. “Le’s supprise ’em,” he said, and his eyes shone with excitement. “Your ma got a bad feelin’ she ain’t never gonna see you no more. She got that quiet look like when somebody died. Almost she don’t want to go to California, fear she’ll never see you no more.” A stove lid clashed in the house again. “Le’s supprise ’em,” old Tom repeated. “Le’s go in like you never been away. Le’s jus’ see what your ma says.” At last he touched Tom, but touched him on the shoulder, timidly, and instantly took his hand away. He looked at Jim Casy.
Tom said, “You remember the preacher, Pa. He come along with me.”
“He been in prison too?”
“No, I met ’im on the road. He been away.”
Pa shook hands gravely. “You’re welcome here, sir.”
Casy said, “Glad to be here. It’s a thing to see when a boy comes home. It’s a thing to see.”