Illustration: Waiting at the roadside
Illustration: Waiting at the roadside
"I never was so hungry in all my days," Jimmie kept saying.
All the children watched that strip of pavement with the hot air quivering above it, but still the car did not come.
Suddenly Rose-Ellen clutched Dick's arm. "Those two men look like . . . look like. . . . TheyareGrampa and Daddy. But what have they done with the car?"
"Where's the car?" Dick shouted, as the men came up.
"W'ere tar?" Sally echoed, patting her hands against the bulging gunnysack her father carried.
"Here's the car," Daddy answered, pointing to the sack.
"You . . . sold it, Dad?" Dick demanded. "How much?"
"Five dollars." Daddy's jaw tightened. "They called it junk. Well, the grub will last a little while. . . ."
"And when Gramma's rested, we can pull the trailer and kind of hike along toward them apples," Grandpa said stoutly.
But Grandma looked as if she'd never be rested. She lay quite still except for the breath that blew out her gray lips and drew them in again, and her closed eyes were hollow. The other six stood around and gazed at her in terror. Anyone else could be sick and the earth went on turning, but . . . Grandma!
They were too intent to notice the car stopping beside them until a man's voice said, "Sorry, folks, but you'll have to move on. Against regulations, this is."
"We're Americans, ain't we?" Grandpa blustered, shaken with anxiety and anger. "You can't shove us off the earth."
"Be on your way in twenty-four hours," the man said, pushing back his coat to show the star on his vest. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."
"Americans?" Daddy said harshly, watching the sheriff go. "We're folks without a country."
"May as well give the young-ones some of the grub we bought," Grandpa said patiently.
It was while they were hungrily munching the dry bread and cheese that another car came upon them and with it another swift change in their changing life.
Two young women stepped out of the chirpy Ford sedan. Neither of them looked like Her, nor even Her No. II--yet Jimmie whispered excitedly to Rose-Ellen, "I bet you a nickel they're Christian Centerers!"
And they were. Sent by the churches, like the Center workers in the cranberries, in the peas and in Cissy's onions, they went out through the country to help the people who needed them. The sheriff, it seemed, had told them about the Beechams when he met them a few minutes ago.
First they looked in at Grandma, still asleep with the Seth Thomas ticking beside her. "Why, I've heard of you from Miss Pinkerton," said one young woman. "She said you were the kind of people who deserved a better chance. Maybe I can help you get one." Then they talked long and earnestly with Grandpa and Daddy.
Grandpa had flapped his hands at the children and said, "Skedaddle, young-ones!" So the children could hear nothing of the talk except that it was all questions and answers that grew more and more brisk and eager. It ended in hooking the trailer, which carried the tent and Carrie, to the sedan, into which was helped a dazed Grandma. The rest of the family was packed in and off they all rattled to town.
There the "Centerers" left the Beechams in a restaurant, but only to come back in a few minutes, beaming.
"We got them on long distance, and it's all right!" they told Grandpa and Daddy.
"What's all right?" asked Grandma, beginning to be more like her old self once more.
"A real nice place to stay in the grape country," Grandpa said quickly. "And Miss Joyce here, she's going to take us down there tomorrow. Down in the San Joaquin Valley."
Next morning Miss Joyce came to the tourist camp where they had slept and breakfasted. She looked long at Carrie. Was Carrie worth taking? Did she give much milk?
Jimmie burst into tears. "Well, even if she doesn't, she does the best she can," he sobbed. "Isn't she one of the family?"
Miss Joyce patted his frail little shoulder and said "Oh, well . . . !"
So Carrie was fastened into her trailer again, and the sedan rattled southward all day, through peach orchards and vineyards where the grapevines were fastened to short stakes so that they looked like bushes instead of vines.
"It's . . . real sightly country," said Grandma, who felt much better after her rest. "If only a body could settle down, I can't figure any place much nicer. Them trees now, with the sun slanting through.--We ain't stopping here?"
Yes, the sedan, with the trailer swaying after it, was banging into a tiny village of brown and white cottages, with green gardens between them and stately eucalyptus trees shading them, while behind them stretched evenly spaced young fruit trees. Before the one empty cottage the sedan stopped. The Beechams and Miss Joyce went in.
There was little furniture in the clean house, but Grandma, dropping down on a wooden chair, looked around her with bright eyes. "A sitting room!" she said. "A sitting room! Seems like we were real folks again, just for a little while. Grampa, you fetch in the clock and set it on that shelf, will you?"
Grandpa brought in the old Seth Thomas, its hands pointing to half-past three. "Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" it said, as contentedly as if it had always lived there.
Illustration: Bringing in the clock
Illustration: Bringing in the clock
The children went tiptoeing, hobbling, rushing through the clean, bare rooms, their voices echoing as they called back their news. "Gramma, there's a real bathroom!" "Gramma, soon's you feel better you can bake a pie in this gas stove!" "Gramma, here's an e-_lec_-tric refrigerator! And a washing machine! And a screened porch with a table to eat at!"
Good California smells of eucalyptus trees and, herbs and flowers drifted through open doors and windows, together with the chuckling, scolding, joyous clamor of mocking birds.
"I . . . I wish we didn't have to move on again!" Grandma said.
"It's a pretty good set-up," Grandpa agreed. "Good school over yonder; and a church--and big enough garden for all our garden sass and to can some." He was ticking off the points on his fingers. "And a chicken-house, and then this here cooperative farm where the folks all work together and share the profits."
Jimmie flung himself down on the floor, sobbing. "I don't want to go on anywhere," he hiccupped. "I want to stay here."
But Dick was looking from Grandpa to Miss Joyce and then to Daddy who had come, smiling, in at the back door. "You mean. . . ." The words choked Dick. "You mean we might settle here? But how? Who fixed it?"
"The government!" Grandpa said triumphantly. "Mind you, this place is the government's fixing, to give migrants a chance to take root again. It's an experiment they are trying, and we are having the chance to work with them. We can buy this place and pay for it over a long term of years. We've got the Christian Center and the government to thank."
"Why, maybe after a while we could even send for the goods we stored at Mrs. Albi's!" Grandma cried dazedly.
"You mean this is home? Home?" shrieked Rose-Ellen.
"Carrie thinks so," Daddy, said with a smile. "Run along and see if she doesn't. Run along!"
The children rushed past him into the backyard. There stood Carrie, still a moth-eaten-looking white goat. But now she had a new gleam in her amber eyes, and at her feet a tiny, curly kid, as black as coal.
"Maaaaaaa!" Carrie said proudly. From within the brown and white cottage Seth Thomas pealed out twelve chimes--eight extra--as if he, too, were shouting for joy.
Illustration: Carrie and her kid
Illustration: Carrie and her kid