t. He's short-handed around here, needs you pretty bad. Don't
ever let him back you down. I think he was born tough, and just naturally
likes to see everything tough."
"New pickers?" He hollered out about fifty feet before he got to us. He
was holding the top wire of a fence, spraddling it, and he was sort of a
chunky built, low-set man. You could tell he had to grunt and stretch to
make it over the fence. "New hands?"
The mother said, "Well, I ain't so new no more." She smiled at the
boss, then she looked down at the deep dirt.
"I mean you're new around here, ain't you?" He was yanking at his belt
trying to poke his two or three shirts down inside his pants. Everything
about him seemed to be greasy, and bagging down to the ground.
"New here," the mother said. Everybody else was standing there waiting
for him or the belt, one or the other, to come out winner. "Just blowed in
on a bad tire."
"Know yer Exter Selecks pretty well?"
"We don't fool around with no thin' but the very best," I told him.
"Well, far's that goes, I hope I don't ketch you foolin' around in this
orchard when the order comes in."
"Order comes where?" the girl asked him.
"Cann'ry order. Ain't come yet. Due today. Very latest tomorrow. Well,
get your stuff all unpacked over yonder under those trees." He was looking
at the old car steaming at the mouth. Then he turned around and started
walking away.
I took a couple of steps behind him and said, "Say, boss, I don't think
these people quite understand all of this order business. If we're goin' to
even eat, we gotta get some work 'cause we ain't got no money. Cain't wait
even another day."
He stopped and turned around to me, and told me, "Listen, I don't know
who you are, but you drive in here with a bunch of pickers. You wanta work,
don't you?" He waved his hands around in the air so much that he worked his
shirt out from under his belt again and fought with his britches to try to
keep them from falling down. "You don't act like you ever picked an apricot
before! Or did you?" He eyed me up and down the front.
"No, I never picked an apricot before, except to eat. I play music for
a livin'. I don't have to pick your dam apricots for my livin'! Just these
other people. That's their only way of eatin'! They've got a busted tire,
mister. This is far as they can get. No work, no eat!" I told him.
"Come on down. Sign up."
"Sign up? Where?" I asked him.
"Store. Can't you see that fillin' station, big as it is?
And store?" He was pointing ahead of himself and walking away.
I took several steps alongside of him and then told him, "I'm not with
these people, I cain't sign up for them. What is it we got to sign?"
"Register book," he told me. Then he stopped real quick and asked me,
"You ain't with these folks? How come?" He was giving me the real combing
down with his eyes. "How come you so interested in my business?"
"I was just hitchin'. These people let me ride. I sing in saloons for a
livin'," I told him.
"I guess I won't need you to work for me, then. You can take your
ukelelaydeehoo and beat it."
"Well, I ain't in no awful big rush," I said to the man. "I thought I
might hang around till they get their tire fixed." Then I turned around and
hollered to the people, "Say! Somebody's got to come down to th' store an'
sign some-thin'!"
"Sign which?" I heard somebody say.
"Register up! Sign somethin' or other!" I told them.
"You better go, honey," I heard the old man say to the young girl. "You
got good eyes. See better'n me. An' you write a better hand than yer
brother's."
So the girl and me walked along kicking clods apart in under the
apricot trees. She was trying to fix her hair back over her ear some way and
saying, "I've signed a lot of these register books. Just to keep track of
who's working, and how much you've got coming, and all how many's in your
family and stuff like that. You can sign up, too."
" 'Fraid I won't," I told her.
"Not going to work?" she asked me.
"Not pickin' apercots."
"I was just thinking how much fun we'd have picking together. We'd get
a lot more picked, even if you didn't pick a single apricot."
"Hows that? Now?"
"You play your guitar and sing for us out in the orchard, and we'll
work just that much easier and better. See, mister singin' man?"
"You know, you're an awful, awful smart girl. You know what I'm gonna
do?"
"What?"
"I'm gonna get you a real good job. Best job in th' whole state of
California!"
"Movie star?"
"Hell, no. Gov'nor!"
"Me be gov'nor?"
"We can tell everybody that you're gonna win this war quick!"
"Lady be gov'nor, hey?"
'Tell ever'body you're gonna take all th' pretty red an' green neon
signs an' all th' pretty lit-up nickel phonographs out of th' road houses,
an' cat houses, an' joints, an' put 'em around in th' factories an' in th'
shops an' in th' fields!"
"What's a cat house?"
"Skip it."
"Home for little cats?"
"Some of 'em ain't so little. Anyway, then, instead of drawin'
ever'body from out on th' job down to th' saloon, see, it'd draw ever'body
from th' saloon out on to th' job. An' we'd all have such a good time
workin' that we'd work 'bout three times harder."
''And win the war! Here's the sign-'em-up store,'' she said, and I held
her hand till she could jump across a puddle of oil on the ground close to
the porch. We slammed in through an old screen door. "So dark in here I
won't be able to make out where to sign my name. Say, mister boss man, do
you hang around this old dark hole much of your time?" she asked the owner.
"How much of my time I spend inside my own place of business is my own
affair, little lady. Here. I suppose you can at least write your name!" He
growled and his belly ached because he was such an old growler. "Sign th'
name of every member of your family an' put a cross by th' ones that'll be
pickin'. Right down this list here."
I watched her write the names of all four members of her family. "Four.
Used to be eight," she told herself almost, I guessed, by force of habit.
"Who owns your car an' trailer?'' the storekeeper
asked her.
She looked up at him. "My father. Why?"
"Be needin' some things to cook an' eat, won't you?" He glanced over
his specks at her.
"Yes, I guess so."
"Take this security note down to your old man. Tell `im to sign it an'
bring it back an' you're good for twenty-five dollars worth of credit here
at th' store. Just a little piece of paper we all sign."
I'd been walking around over the store, taking a look at the price
tags. "Eagle Milk, two bits a can?" I asked him. "Goshamighty, never did see
Eagle Milk cost more'n eighteen cents, even in all of th' Texas an' Oklahoma
oil booms!''
"If you don't want it, leave it on th' shelf!" He cut his eyes over at
me.
She let the pencil drop. "Things are so awful high. I just don't quite
hardly see how we can even afford to eat anything." She took me by the hand
and looked like she was sorry the boss had heard her.
"Me, I wouldn't sign th' dam thing if I starved plum to death," I said
to her. "But you folks, 'course, there's your whole family; bad tire; sorta
stuck here."
The girl carried the slip back to her folks and we had to shake hands
with twenty-five or thirty other people around in the bunch before we got a
chance to talk about the credit business. Gray-looking clothes and old
floppy sacks and rags everywhere. Broke-down cars and homemade trailers.
People smiled and pointed to their own, bragging, "Built 'er jist like I
wanted 'er, my own way." "Yes sir, took me right onto six months of hard old
pinchin' an' savin' ta git th' money ta throw this'n together." "Our'n looks
like th' Los Angeles junk heap headin' down th' highways, but them slick
purty cars duck off ta one side ta let us pass!" We'd all laugh when
somebody told a good one on their jaloppy or trailer. "Mine wants ta run so
fast I gotta keep it loaded fulla rocks ta keep it from jist takin' off like
a big bird!"
"I just don't know. I just don't know," the old man was saying, rubbing
his hand around over his face at the same time. "Mama, what do you think,
what you got to say about this here Goddem credit?" He looked around for his
wife, but she wasn't in the crowd. Then he asked his boy, "I dam me, if I
know, what do you think? Run a big risk a-losin th' whole business." He
looked at the rest of his family. "You helped me, you helped me build th'
whole works. You got somethin' to say in th' way things is got an' got rid
of." Then he asked another man there, "Hay, mister, do you know a dam thing
about this dam infernal credit slip?"
"Do I know?" A tall gangling man thumbed his overhall suspenders and
told the old man, "See this slip of mine? Just exactly like yours. I advise
you not sign nothin' for nobody."
"Much ablige," the old man said. "I wish to hell an' little santypedes
I could find my wife! Runs off 'n' hides. Cain't find 'er high ner low!
Lory! Lorrry! Where'n th' hell are you hidin' at?" He was calling through
his hands.
"Go ahead and sign that thing, Pa." His wife was laying stretched out
on an old slice of gray canvas, looking up through the limbs of a
wild-looking tree of some kind, talking between the leaves, right on out
into the open bright sky. "You know you'll sign it, anyhow. You'll think of
ten thousand mean things to say about the store man. You'll think of five
thousand things wrong with this orchard here. You'll say there's a blue
jillion things wrong with how th' country's run; but you'll sign it. You'll
cuss old mister Hitler an' Mussolini and Kaiser Bill an' Father Coffin; an'
then you'll think about th' soldiers fightin' Hitler, an' you'll say you
just got to pick th' fruit for 'em; an' you'll think about yer own little
hungry youngins, an' you'll sign it. ... If it said bring your left eye an'
yer right arm down to that old store when you went to buy somethin', you'd
sign it I know what's in back of that old head of your'n. Th' whole world's
fightin' to keep from bein' hungry. Yore own little family's standin' around
with their bellies crawlin'. Hand my man an endelible pencil, somebody. He's
goin' to write his name on a slip. Gonna lose all we got here. He's thinkin'
'bout all of them soldiers out yonder shootin' an' he's gonna write his name
down on a Comp'ny Credit slip. ..."
The sun went down on everybody. You could hear the jingle of the
four-for-a-nickel knives and forks. "Smells like ever'body's a-eatin' 'bout
th' same supper 'roun' here," the father was saying.
"Sow bosom and beans!" The girl laughed at my elbow and her hair
touched my face when she took the tin plates away. "But when you've worked
real hard and are good and hungry, it smells good, don't it?"
A lady from a car across from our trailer walked over with a tin bucket
in each hand and said, "I brung ye these rag buckits, bugs 'n' skeeters, `n'
all kindsa bitin', stingin', 'n' jist arguin' vermits is a gonna make a big
land rush f'r this place quick's we light these lanterns. Ye jist strike a
match to these here rags, see, an' push 'em right back down inta th' buckit
real tight, an' leave 'em smolder along. Makes a cloud of smoke almost's bad
as them fellers that usta sling tear gas at us 'fore th' war come along an'
we quit our strikin'."
"I'm one that's shore glad we quit that strikin'," the mother said, "
'cause just ain't right for one buncha people to up an' quit work, an'
another bunch to drive down an' shoot you full of that old tear gas, crops
of all kinds a-goin' to waste all around. That's a right friendly lady,
ain't she? Just walked off 'fore any of us had a chance to thank her for
them buckets.''
Her daughter eased around in the dark and I felt her take a good warm
seat beside me on the beer case, and I took her by the hand and said, "Yep
siree, you've got an awful honest hard-workin' set of hands on you."
She squeezed mine a little and said, "Could I, do you think, learn how
to play the guitar?''
"If ya try, ya would. Want ta take lessons? Shucks, I could show ya th'
easy part in a little o' no time."
"You two quit'cher flirtin' an' sing us a song. Happ'n ta know th'
Talkin' Blues?"
"I'll teach ya after th' dishes an' stuffs all put away." I was just
catching part of what the person talking was saying, "Huh? Th' Talkin'
Blues? I know a few verses."
"While you're doing your Talking Blues," the girl told me, "I'll try
not to make any noise, but I've just got to put these dishes back into their
boxes."
"Okay," I said, then started playing and talking:
If you wanta get to heaven,
Let me tell you what to do,
Just grease your feet in a mutton stew,
Just slide out of the devil's hand
And ooze over into the Promised Land!
Take it easy. An' go greasy.
Down in the hen house on my knees
I thought I heard a chicken sneeze;
Nothin' but a rooster a-sayin' his prayers,
An' givin' out thanks fer th' hens upstairs.
Rooster preachin'. Hens a-singin'.
Little young chickens jest a-hopin'.
Now I been here an' I been there,
Rambled aroun' most everywhere,
Purtiest little gal that I ever did see
A-walkin' up an' down by th' side of me.
Mouth wide open. Catchin' flies.
Knows I'm crazy.
Everybody would snigger and laugh between verses. I played the guitar
while several other folks added verses they'd picked up somewhere. A woman
with a blue bonnet on held her chin in one hand and fanned the insects of
all kinds off her baby asleep at her feet on a old sack; she sung:
Down in th' holler settin' on a log,
Hand on my trigger an' my eye on a hog;
Pulled that trigger, th' gun went 'zip';
Grabbed mister hog with all of my grip.
Cain't eat hog eyes. But I need greasin'.
"Well, this singing is fine and dandy!" The girl talked up at her work
with the dishes. "But this isn't getting these dishes clean! Mister guitar
picker, come on here, help me carry up a bucket of water from the river!"
As I followed her along I heard somebody in the crowd laugh out, "He
shore didn't hafta be coaxed none!"
"You know I never did ask you yer name yet." I was talking and
following her along a path under the trees down to the banks of the river.
"I s'pose ya got one, ain't ya?"
"Ruth. I already know yours; I'll call you Curley. Lordy, I wonder how
deep this water runs along in here. It's pretty and clear. You can almost
see the fish swimming around.'' She waded out barefooted and left her shoes
kicked off on the bank. She dipped up two buckets of water and made an awful
pretty picture standing there reflecting upside-down with all of the trees
and banks. "Pretty cold," she was trying to put her wet feet back into her
sandals.
"Dry yer feet 'fore ya put 'em back in yer shoes!" I took the buckets
and set them on the ground a few feet from the path, and held her hand while
we walked back into the underbrush. We both dropped down on some leaves and
I dried her feet one at a time with my handkerchief.
"Feels good to have somebody kneel down and dry my feet!"
"Makes 'em warmer. Yeah. It feels fine."
"But how do you know how it feels, it's me that's getting my feet
dried."
"Yeah, but it's me that's doin' th' dryin'."
"My skin is ail sunburned and rough-looking. I'm always going without
stockings and scratching the hide off on twigs and bushes. They look
terrible."
"Look all right to me. You got 'em wet plumb up above yer knees."
"You mind?"
"Naw, I don't mind. Fact, I was just thinkin', I sort of wish you'd
waded out deeper."
"Teach me a guitar lesson."
"Right now?"
"Show me something real easy to do."
I put both arms around her and made a pillow with my hand out of the
leaves; then I picked up a handful of leaves and dropped them in her hair
and said, "This is easy to do." And I kissed her four times and said, "And
this is easy, and this is easy, and this, and this." I put my face against
her neck and felt her put her arms around mine, felt her cheek warm up and
she told me, "Is this your first guitar lesson?"
"This is what you call the first and easy steps."
"You're warm and I'm all cold from wading the water."
"If you had ice-cicles hangin' in yer hair, you'd feel warm ta me."
"Teach me the next lesson."
"Next lesson is mostly learning how ta use yer hands an' fingers.
Gettin' th' feel of th' instrument. Gettin' use ta th' strings that're
attached."
"Strings attached?"
"A few."
"What?"
"I want me 'n' you ta be tied t'gether, sort of b'long ta one another,
an' be like this all th' time. Jest like we are now. An' you c'n be
gov'nor."
"Who's Governor?"
"My gov'nor."
"Teach me lessons on the guitar? Buy me penny candy twice a week?"
"Penny candy, twice a week."
"I'm thinkin' about it.''
"You look mighty purty layin' here thinkin' 'bout it."
"And you look good, too. Tell me all about yourself. Tell me all about
where you've been. All about your guitar. I'll bet if it could talk it could
tell a lot."
"It does talk."
"Guitar talks? What does it say?"
"Said it liked you. A whole big bunch."
"All o' these tree limbs full, an' that river full, an' two buckets
over. That enuf?"
"Gosh. Nobody ever did love me that much before!"
"I did, but I jest didn't see ya till now. I been a-lookin' fer you up
an' down a lotta roads--jest now locatin' ya. I know. Tell it by lookin' in
yer eyes there, all over yer face, even behind yer ears there."
"How does it happen that you've got to play in saloons? I don't like
for you to sing in old liquor joints."
"Oh, I dunno, goin' 'crost th' country, ya know, saloons is handy on
th' side of th' road, make a nickel er two, an' light out ag'in."
"Going where? Hunting what?"
"This."
"Maybe some day you'll find better places to play. huh? Sing? Oh, like
on the stage or radio or something like that?"
"I like ta go where th' big work jobs are, like buildin' dams, an' oil
fields, an' harvestin' th' crops. Might find a steady job if you'd push me
jest a little."
We were silent for a while.
"No," she said in my ear, "don't look. Don't watch the sun go down.
Don't watch it get dark. Don't tell me any story about a sheet of paper
called a marriage license, no, don't tell me anything like that, just stay
here and don't make big promises; you're right here right now; tomorrow
you'll be up and gone; I know that; but for now, just say you'll think about
me, and wherever you ramble off to, when you get tired of rambling, just
think about this, huh?"
"Okay." And I heard her heart beat under my ear when I laid my head on
her breast. "I'm sorry I ain't no very good talker. Cain't think of much
worth sayin' right now. You talk awhile, I'll do th' listenin'."
"Let's both just lay here and listen and think."
Her skin felt warm to the touch of my hands and my fingers combed her
hair through the scattered leaves. Her lips were moist like damp earth under
the leaves there. She was a warmth and a movement and a life that no man can
live good without. I blinked my eyelashes in her ear, but she just smiled
and kept her eyes closed like she was dreaming something.
We lugged the buckets of water up to the camp and I was walking behind
her, brushing leaves and twigs out of her hair. We poured water and washed
pots and pans together, and listened to the others. Pretty good crowd
around.
"Hey, mister!" a boy about fifteen was saying above the others, "ever
find that indelible pencil you was lookin' for?"
"No, never did. Why? You got one?" The father of our bunch told the
boy. "Thank ye."
Then a big fellow, wearing a patched and re-patched shirt with a quick
sharp sound in his voice, spoke up, "Say, old man, want me to tell you all
there is to know about these slips?"
"Wis't somebody would."
"Okay." He put his foot up on an apple crate and pointed his pipe out
into the dark, and while he was talking the only three things that lit up in
the night was his pipe, a white button on his shirt, and the light from the
fires of the ragpots shining in his eyes. "You're gonna think it over. This
fruit will be set back a week or ten days on account of one dam thing or
another. Cannery order. Weather. Market. What the hell. Anyway, you'll sign
that credit slip tonight. You'll take it down in the morning to buy your
stuff and go to work. You'll get a bill of goods and find out the crops have
been held up a few days. So you'll buy a few more days. You'll buy shy.
Skimp. Do without a lot of things you need. Try to keep your bill down."
When this fellow talked I looked him over; he was wearing rags, hit hard,
stuck down. He kept smoking his pipe and resting his wore-out boot on the
box.
"I'd buy light. We'd try ta go easy. Wouldn't we, kids? Mama?" Their
papa was holding his yellow slip in his hand on his knee, squatted down
cross-legged, and every time he said a word he pointed his indelible pencil
around at everybody.
"You'll get about ten days or two weeks behind at the store. Might be a
few scattered 'cots to pick, but not half enough to feed and keep your
bunch. Then the weather will warm up and force the boss to pick the 'cots.
You'll go to work. Make enough to live on while you're working."
"We c'n make that, all right, cain't we, Mama?"
"You'll just barely make enough to keep you going while you work. But
you won't make enough to be able to pay the ten days' bill you owe. You'll
just be ten days behind the world. Twenty dollars, twenty-five. Ten days!
Behind the world!"
The crowd drifted away to bed, everybody going his own way thinking.
Ruth and me set on the steps of the trailer and talked for an hour or two.
Early next morning by the rising sun I was bending over washing my face
with water out of the filling station hose, thinking I'd get something off
of the store boss even if it was just free water. I saw the old man come
walking all by his self, slow across the orchard. I was drying my face on
the tail of my shirt when he walked up behind me and said, "Ain't you th'
guitar man?"
I smiled up at him and said I was.
"Early mornin' sun's right good on a man, ain't it?" he asked me. Then,
trying to hold the little yellow slip behind his back so I couldn't see it,
he spit over into a little puddle of used oil and said, "I gotta step inside
of th' store here a minnit."
I was thinking to myself that old man had come down a hard road, then I
heard someone say, "Good-morning, Governor." I turned around and there was
Ruth standing behind a little bush on the sunny side of the store,
"What're ya hidin' in th' flower beds about?" I asked her.
"Eavesdroppin' on yer old man, huh?"
She was digging four holes with her shoe heels in the dirt of the
flower bed, and saying, "No. I don't have to sneak around and eavesdrop on
that old man of mine to know what he's going to do. He'll just hand the
Company man his credit slip, and won't say much. Maybe how pretty the
morning is. I'll tell you a secret if you'll not tell." She got her fourth
hole dug and looked around to see if anybody was looking. "I stole four of
these big pretty yellow apricots. I had them for breakfast. And now I'm
planting them back here by the side of this old store. Grow up some day.
Then I can rest easy knowing I paid him back."
I lifted her head up and kissed her and said, "Didja make a wish for
each one ya planted?"
She shook her head "yes."
"Any of 'em about you 'n' me?"
"Yes." She patted the ground with her foot where she had planted the
fourth seed. "First, I hope you go on with your rambling. Second, I hope you
get enough of it, and find out you don't like it. Third, I hope you keep on
with your music and singing, because you've got it in you, and you think
you're some kind of a preacher or a doctor going around to saloons listening
to people's troubles, and you think you can lift their spirits a little,
make somebody feel a little better. Fourth, I want to give you this mailing
address; it's a family of my kinfolks, they always keep pretty close track
of us and send all of our mail."
We stood in the sun out of sight behind a bush and held each other
close again, and I kissed her eyelids while she said, "Both of us have been
looking for this very thing for a long time. Both of us have thought we
found it somewhere before."
"And somethin' happened an' busted it all up. I hoped a lot when I was
a kid. Jest fast as one hope got tore up, I had all kindsa fun jest a-hopin'
somethin' new. But lately, I guess, my hopin' machine's been a little on th'
blink. I think if you loved me much's I love you, we could sleep under a
railroad bridge an' be all right."
"You're one kind of a liar.''
"Liar?"
"Yes. You've had better things. I can tell. So have I. Ten dozen times.
Then they go. You hit the road and stumble around from town to town, and all
along, you see pretty farms, pretty cars, pretty people, pretty towns, and
you don't think you can ever make enough money with your guitar and singing
to have all of this, so you lie, you lie to your ownself, and you say
'Everybody else in the whole world is all haywire, all wrong, I hate their
pretty world, because I can't find a hole to break into it!' And every
breath you're a liar. Maybe a good guy, and maybe I love you, but still a
liar." She put her face on my shoulder.
We sat down out of sight between a tall bush and the side of the store
building, and for another hour talked low and thought together.
"Yesterday, last night, I pot my handkerchief all wet dryin' yer legs
off; now, this mornin' I b'lieve ya got more water in yer eyes th'n there is
in th' river down yonder. Feel bad?"
"Oh, no." She tried to smile. "You don't mind me calling you a liar? We
all lie some. I lie, too."
"Yeah. I know. I am a liar. I know th' real things I'm a-lookin' fer.
Workin'. Makin' money. Buildin' up somethin'. Little house with ever'thing
in it. An' you there. I knew what I wanted. But I couldn't have none of it
if I didn't find my work. I wanted ta pick out my own kinda work. I'll work
like a Goddam dog, but I aim ta pick out my work. I coulda got a job pushin'
a truck er a tractor, wheelin' a wheelbarrow, pullin' a cross-cut saw,
paintin' signs, er even doin' picture work; but while I was singin' on th'
radio in Los Angeles I got more'n fifteen thousan' letters tellin' me ta
keep on singin' them good îl' songs, makin' up new ones, tellin' tall tales,
jokes, an' singin' ta a whole ocean fulla folks I couldn't see. Letters from
guys on ships at sea; letters from farm families, folks that trail around
pickin' crops; fact'ry workers all over th' country; desert rats pannin' fer
gold; even widders up in Reno there a gettin' on a beeline fer their fourth
husban'. People yell, an' laff, an' cry, hug me, kiss me, cuss me, take
swings at me, in saloons an' likker joints. An' still, th' big shots that
owns them radio stations says I ain't got what folks wants. Ya see, I happ'n
ta know. An' I swore a long time ago I'd stick ta my guitar an' my singin'.
But most radio stations, they won't let ya sing th' real songs. They want ya
ta sing pure îl' bull manure an' nothin' else. So I cain't never git ahold
of money an' stuff it'd take ta keep you an' me in a house an' home--so I
been a-lyin' ta my own self now fer a good long time, sayin' I didn't want
no little house an' alla that.
"But, Ruth, I think I know. I'm hittin' th' road ag'in. Right now.
Right this minute. Don't know how far I'll hafta go till I find out where I
c'n sing what I want ta sing an' my brain's hangin' jest as fulla new ideas
fer songs as a tree on à hill full of all colors o'blossoms. I'll sing
anywheres they 'll stand an' listen. An' they'll see to it I don't starve
out. They 'll see to it that me an' you c'n be together."
Her lips felt like butterflies lighting on mó face. The people from the
trailers and cars walked in twos and threes, kicking up the morning dust and
gathering all around the store, forty or fifty all told, stomping from one
foot to the other one, whittling or digging under finger nails with long
keen knives. "Man, howdy! Am I just fairly itchin' to grab that fruit off'n
them old heavy limbs!"
"I did`nt come out hyere t' Californiooo f'r no Goddam sunbath!"
'Trot out yore work, mister!''
"Hurry out here, mister orchard boss, read that tellygram that says for
me to exert my manly muscles in th' art of snatchin' apercots!"
"I done had my ham `n' eggs, `n' or'nge joose! My veins is runnin' full
a vitaphones!"
When one would blast loose with a wisecrack, the whole crowd would
laugh and a little rumble would run through them like an earthquake.
"Hey! Guitar man!" One old boy seen me and Ruth walk up from the side
of the store. "Could you turn loose of that purty gal this mornin' long
enough to sing us a little song?"
I said I reckoned as to how I could.
"Play us somethin' 'bout all of us standin' 'roun' here waitin' to go
to work!"
So I flipped a few strings to see if the box was in tune, and I smiled
a little at Ruth watching me:
I work in your orchards of peaches and prunes
Sleep on the ground 'neath the light of the moon
On the edge of your city you see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind.
Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters come down
Every state in this Union us migrants has been
We will work in your fight and we'll fight till we win!
They just kept quiet till I got done. Then every single person seemed
like they took a deep breath, started to say something, maybe; but I heard a
screen door slam behind me, and when I looked around, I saw Ruth's old dad
walk out onto the little porch, and the orchard boss walked out with him.
The boss carried a piece of paper in his hand, and he waved it in the air,
meaning for all of us get quiet.
"Quiet, everybody. Listen. Hhhhmmmmm. Won't bother to read all of this
order.
'dear sirs: due to cold weather of THE PAST THIRTY DAYS, THE APRICOT
CROP WILL NOT BE RIPE ENOUGH TO BE SUITABLE FOR CANNING. THERE WILL BE A TEN
DAY WAITING PERIOD TO ALLOW THE FRUIT TO MATURE. PICKERS MAY STAND BY AND
AWAIT ORDERS, AS THE WEATHER MAY TAKE A WARM CHANGE AND RIPEN THE FRUIT
SOONER. USUAL CREDIT SLIPS MAY BE OBTAINED BY MAKING THE PROPER ARRANGEMENTS
at the company store'
.... Hhhhmmm. Yes. Anybody want to ask any questions?" He looked out
over the bunch.
I believe this was the quietest crowd I was ever in. A kid about
fifteen asked his mama, "What're we alla gonna do now, Mama? Jes' be
useless?" I heard a little girl not more than nine crying, "Papa, why don't
we get in our car 'n' leave this îl' place?" And her daddy told
her, "We ain't got no gas, honey. We sent it all to th' soldiers to fight
that old mean Hitler man with." Everybody talked so quiet the orchard boss
never heard a word. He thought we was all scattering out without a sound,
like a herd of lost sheep.
Ruth squeezed my hand.
"Why don't ye come on back down to th' camp an' sing us ten days worth
of them there good songs?" Her dad was asking at my back. "We got ten days'
credit. Ye'll eat. Stay?"
"Mighty nice of ya." I put my guitar back over my shoulder, then told
him, "Guess I'd better hit th' road. Keep goin'. Lookin'. I hope you folks
come outta this hard spot."
"I don't mind the spots getting hard!" Ruth leaned up against the gas
pump. "War ain't fought with powder puffs." She was blinking her eyes fast.
"I'd kind of like ta stay here, spend some time. I feel like half of
me's stayin' an' half of me's goin'. Kinda funny," I told her.
"Remember the four seeds I planted and the four hopes I hoped?" Ruth
looked me up and down. "I'm hoping another hope, we can get some work to
help win this war."
I shook the old man's hand. Then Ruth's. And as I walked off down the
road, the old man hollered out to my back:
"I'm mailin' all my gas 'n' tires on to my son! Drives one of them
there jeeps!"
Chapter ÕVIII
CROSSROADS
There was big drops of sweat standing out on my forehead and my fingers
didn't feel like they was mine. I was floating in high finances, sixty-five
stories above the ground, leaning my elbow on a stiff-looking tablecloth as
white as a runaway ghost, and tapping my finger on the side of a big
fishbowl. The bowl was full of clear water with a bright red rose as wide as
your hand sunk down in the water, which made the rose look bigger and redder
and the leaves greener than they actually was. But everything else in the
room looked this same way when you looked through the rose bowls of water on
the other twenty-five or thirty tables. Each row of tables was in a
horseshoe curve, and each curve a little higher than the one below. I was at
the lowest. The price of the table for the night was twenty-five dollars.
Sixty-five stories back to the world. Quite a little elevator ride down
to where the human race was being run. The name of the place, the Rainbow
Room, in the city called New York, in the building called Rockefeller's
Center, where the shrimps are boiled in Standard Oil. I was waiting to take
an audition to see about getting a job singing there. Classiest joint I'd
ever seen. I looked all around at the deep rugs like a grassy lawn, and the
wavy drapes bellied back from the windows, and laughed to myself as I heard
the other performers crack jokes at the whole works.
"This must be th' ravin' ward, th' way they got things all padded up."
A sissy-looking little man in a long tail coat was waiting for his time to
try out.
"I just don't think they mowed th' upholst'ry yet this year," some lady
with a accordion folded acrost her lap was whispering.
"An' them tables," I almost laughed, saying, "is jest like this here
buildin, th' higher up ya git, th' colder it gits.''
The man that had been our guide and got us up there in the first place,
walked across the rug with his nose in the air like a trained seal, grinned
up at us waiting to take our tryouts, and said, "Sssshhh. Quiet, everybody!"
Everybody slumped down and straightened up and set tight and got awful
quiet while three or four men, and a lady or two dressed to match the
fixtures, walked in through a high arch door from the main terrace and took
seats at one of the tables.
"Main boss?" I said behind the back of my hand to the others at our
table.
Heads shook up and down, "yes.'' I noticed that everybody put on a
different face, like wax people almost, tilting their heads in the breeze,
grinning into the late afternoon sun that fell across the floor, and smiling
like they'd never missed a meal. This look is the look that most show folks
learn pretty early in the game; they paint it on their faces, or sort of
mold it on, so it will always smile like a monkey through his bars, so
nobody will know their rent ain't paid up yet, or they ain't had no job this
season or last, and that they just finished a sensational, whirlwind run of
five flops in a row. The performers looked like rich customers shining in
the sun, and the head boss with his table full of middle-size bosses looked
like they'd been shot at and missed. Through the water in the rose-bowls
everything in the place had an upside-down look; the floor looked like the
ceiling and the halls looked like the walls, and the hungry looked like they
was rich, and the rich looked like they was hungry.
Finally somebody must of made a motion or give a signal, because a girl
in a gunny-sack dress got up and sung a song that told how she was already
going on thirteen, and was getting pretty hot under the collar, tired of
waiting and afraid of being an old maid, and wanting to be a hillbilly
bride. Heads shook up and down and the big boss and middle-size bosses and
agents and handlers smiled across the empty tables. I hear somebody whisper,
"She's hired."
"Next! Woody Guthrie!" a snazzy-looking gent was saying over the mike.
"Reckin that's me," I was mumbling under my chin, talking to myself,
and looking out the window, thinking. I reached in my pocket and spun a thin
dime out acrost the tablecloth and watched it whirl around and around, first
heads, then tails, and said to myself, "Some difference 'tween that there
apercot orchard las' June where th' folks wuz stuck down along th' river
bottom, an' this here Rainbow Room on an August afternoon. Gosh, I come a
long ways in th' last few months. Ain't made no money ta speak about, but
I've stuck my head in a lot of plain an' fancy places. Some good, some just
barely fair, an' some awful bad. I wrote up a lot of songs for union folks,
sung 'em all over ever'where, wherever folks got together an' talked an'
sung, from Madison Square Garden to a Cuban Cigar Makers' tavern in Spanish
Harlem an hour later; from th' padded studios of CBS an' NBC to th'
wild back country in th' raggedy Ghetto. In some places I was put on
display as a freak, and others as a hero, an' in th' tough joints around th'
Battery Park, I wuz jes' another shadow blund'rin' along with th' rest. It
had been like this here little ol' dime spinnin', a whirl of heads an'
tails. I'd liked mostly th' union workers, an' th' soldiers an' th' men in
fightin' clothes, shootin' clothes, shippin' clothes, or farmin' clothes,
'cause singing with them made me friends with them, an' I felt like I was
somehow in on their work. But this coin spinnin', that's my las' dime--an'
this Rainbow Room job, well, rumors are it'll pay as much as seventy-five a
week, an' seventy-five a week is dam shore seventy-five a week."
"Woody Guthrie!"
"Comin'!" I walked up to the microphone, gulping and trying to think of
something to sing about. I was a little blank in the head or something, and
no matter how dam hard I tried, I just couldn't think up any kind of a song
to sing--just empty.
'What will be your first selection, Mister Guthrie?''
"Little tune, I guess, call'd New York City." And so I forked the
announcer out of the way with the wiry end of my guitar handle and made up
these words as I sung:
This Rainbow Room she's mighty fine
You can spit from here to th' Texas line!
In New York City
Lord, New York City
This is New York City, an' I really gotta know my
line!
This Rainbow Room is up so high
That John D.'s spirit comes a-driftin' by
This is New York City
She's New York City
I'm in New York City an' I really gotta know my
line!
New York town's on a great big boom
Got me a-singin' in the Rainbow Room
That's New York City
That's New York City
She's old New York City
Where I really gotta know my line!
I took the tune to church, took it holy roller, shot in a few split
notes, oozed in a fake one, come down barrel house, hit off a good old
cross-country lonesome note or two, trying to get that old guitar to help
me, to talk with me, talk for me and say what I was thinking, just this one
time.
Well this Rainbow Room's a funny place ta play
Its a long way's from here to th' U.S.A.
An' back ta New York City
God! New York City
Hey! New York City
Where I really gotta know my line!
The microphone man come running out and