The Grapes of Wrath

“That’s a good way,” she said, and she filled up her bucket with hot water from the stove, and she put in dirty clothes and began punching them down into the soapy water. “Yes, that’s a good way. But I like to think how nice it’s gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold. An’ fruit ever’place, an’ people just bein’ in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder— that is, if we all get jobs an’ all work— maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An’ the little fellas go out an’ pick oranges right off the tree. They ain’t gonna be able to stand it, they’ll get to yellin’ so.”

Tom watched her working, and his eyes smiled. “It done you good jus’ thinkin’ about it. I knowed a fella from California. He didn’t talk like us. You’d of knowed he come from some far-off place jus’ the way he talked. But he says they’s too many folks lookin’ for work right there now. An’ he says the folks that pick the fruit live in dirty ol’ camps an’ don’t hardly get enough to eat. He says wages is low an’ hard to get any.”

A shadow crossed her face. “Oh, that ain’t so,” she said. “Your father got a han’bill on yella paper, tellin’ how they need folks to work. They wouldn’t go to that trouble if they wasn’t plenty work. Costs ’em good money to get them han’bills out. What’d they want ta lie for, an’ costin’ ’em money to lie?”

Tom shook his head. “I don’t know, Ma. It’s kinda hard to think why they done it. Maybe—” He looked out at the hot sun, shining on the red earth.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe it’s nice, like you says. Where’d Grampa go? Where’d the preacher go?”

Ma was going out of the house, her arms loaded high with the clothes. Tom moved aside to let her pass. “Preacher says he’s gonna walk aroun’. Grampa’s asleep here in the house. He comes in here in the day an’ lays down sometimes.” She walked to the line and began to drape pale blue jeans and blue shirts and long gray underwear over the wire.

Behind him Tom heard a shuffling step, and he turned to look in. Grampa was emerging from the bedroom, and as in the morning, he fumbled with the buttons of his fly. “I heerd talkin’,” he said. “Sons-a-bitches won’t let a ol’ fella sleep. When you bastards get dry behin’ the ears, you’ll maybe learn to let a ol’ fella sleep.” His furious fingers managed to flip open the only two buttons on his fly that had been buttoned. And his hand forgot what it had been trying to do. His hand reached in and contentedly scratched under the testicles. Ma came in with wet hands, and her palms puckered and bloated from hot water and soap.

“Thought you was sleepin’. Here, let me button you up.” And though he struggled, she held him and buttoned his underwear and his shirt and his fly. “You go aroun’ a sight,” she said, and let him go.

And he spluttered angrily, “Fella’s come to a nice— to a nicewhen somebody buttons ’em. I want ta be let be to button my own pants.”

Ma said playfully, “They don’t let people run aroun’ with their clothes unbutton’ in California.”

“They don’t, hey! Well, I’ll show ’em. They think they’re gonna show me how to act out there? Why, I’ll go aroun’ a-hangin’ out if I wanta!”

Ma said, “Seems like his language gets worse ever’ year. Showin’ off, I guess.”

The old man thrust out his bristly chin, and he regarded Ma with his shrewd, mean, merry eyes. “Well, sir,” he said, “we’ll be a-startin’ ’fore long now. An’, by God, they’s grapes out there, just a-hangin’ over inta the road. Know what I’m a-gonna do? I’m gonna pick me a wash tub full a grapes, an’ I’m gonna set in ’em, an’ scrooge aroun’, an’ let the juice run down my pants.”

Tom laughed. “By God, if he lives to be two hundred you never will get Grampa house broke,” he said. “You’re all set on goin’, ain’t you, Grampa?”

The old man pulled out a box and sat down heavily on it. “Yes, sir,” he said. “An’ goddamn near time, too. My brother went on out there forty years ago. Never did hear nothin’ about him. Sneaky son-of-a-bitch, he was. Nobody loved him. Run off with a single-action Colt of mine. If I ever run across him or his kids, if he got any out in California, I’ll ask ’em for that Colt. But if I know ’im, an’ he got any kids, he cuckoo’d ’em, an’ somebody else is a-raisin’ ’em. I sure will be glad to get out there. Got a feelin’ it’ll make a new fella outa me. Go right to work in the fruit.”

Ma nodded. “He means it, too,” she said. “Worked right up to three months ago, when he throwed his hip out the last time.”

“Damn right,” said Grampa.

Tom looked outward from his seat on the doorstep. “Here comes that preacher, walkin’ aroun’ from the back side a the barn.”

Ma said, “Curiousest grace I ever heerd, that he give this mornin’. Wasn’t hardly no grace at all. Jus’ talkin’, but the sound of it was like a grace.”

“He’s a funny fella,” said Tom. “Talks funny all the time. Seems like he’s talkin’ to hisself, though. He ain’t tryin’ to put nothin’ over.”