Across the Fruited Plain | Page 4

cream-color, and the
table wore an embroidered flour-sack cover. Grandpa pottered with a
loose door-latch until Grandma wrung the suds from her hands and
cried fiercely, "What's the use doing such things, Grampa? You know
good and well we can't stay on here. Everything's being taken away
from us, even our children. . . ."
[Illustration: Grandpa pottering]
"Miss Piper come to see you, too?" Grandpa groaned.
"Taken away? Us?" gasped Rose-Ellen.
"What's all this?" Daddy demanded. He stood in the doorway staring at
Grandpa and Grandma, and his bright dark eyes looked almost as
unbelieving as they had when Mother slipped away from him. "You
can't mean they want to take away our children?"
Dick came to the door with half of Jimmie's funnies, his mouth open;
and Jimmie hobbled in, bent almost double, thin hand on crippled knee.
Julie slipped politely away.
Then the news came out. The woman from the "Family Society" had
called that day and had advised Grandma to put the children into a
Home. When Grandma would not listen, the woman went on to the
shop and talked with Grandpa.
"Her telling us they wasn't getting enough milk and vegetables!"
Grandma scolded, wiping her eyes with one hand and smoothing back
Rose-Ellen's curls with the other. "Saying Jimmie'd ought to be where
he'd get sunshine without roasting. Good as telling me we don't know
how to raise children, and her without a young-one to her name."
Grandpa blew his nose. "Well, it takes money to give the kids the
vittles they ought to have."
"I won't go away from my own house!" howled Jimmie.

Rose-Ellen and Dick blinked at each other. It was one thing to scrap a
little and quite another to be entirely apart. And the baby. . . .
"Would Miss Piper take . . . Sally?" Rose-Ellen quavered.
Grandma nodded, lips tight.
"They shan't!" Rose-Ellen whispered.
"Nonsense!" Daddy said hoarsely, his hands tightening on Jimmie's
shoulder and Rose-Ellen's. "It's better for families to stick together,
even if they don't get everything they need. Ma, you think it's better,
don't you?"
He looked anxiously at his parents and they looked pityingly at him, as
if he were a boy again, and before they knew it the whole family were
crying together, Grandpa and Daddy pretending they had colds.
Then came a knock at the door, and Grandma mopped her eyes with
her apron and answered. Julie's mother stood there, a comfortable
brown woman with shining black hair and gold earrings, the youngest
Albi enthroned on her arm. Mrs. Albi's eyebrows had risen to the
middle of her forehead, and she patted Grandma's shoulder plumply.
[Illustration: Mrs. Albi]
"Now, now, now, now!" she comforted in a big voice. "All will be well,
praise God. Julie, she tell me. All will be well."
"How on earth can all be well?" Grandma protested. "I don't see no
prospects."
"This summer as you know," said Mrs. Albi, "we went into Jersey. For
two months we all pick the berries. Enough we earn to put-it food into
our mouth. And the keeds! They go white and skinny, and they come
home, like you see it, brown and fat." Her voice rose and she waved the
baby dramatically. "Not so good the houses, I would not lie to you. But
we make like we have the peekaneeka. By night the cool fresh air blow

on us and by day the warm fresh air. And vegetables and fruit so cheap,
so cheap."
"But what good will that do us, Mis' Albi?" Grandma asked flatly. "It's
close onto September and berries is out."
"The cranberry bog!" Mrs. Albi shouted triumphantly. "Only today the
padrone, he come to my people asking who will pick the cranberry.
And that Jersey air, it will bring the fat and the red to these Jimmie's
cheeks and to the bambina's!" Mrs. Albi wheezed as she ran out of
breath.
The Beechams stared at her. Many Italians and Americans went to the
farms to pick berries and beans. The Beechams had never thought of
doing so, since Grandpa had his cobbling and Daddy his photograph
finishing.
"Well, why shouldn't we?" Daddy fired the question into the stillness.
"But school?" asked Rose-Ellen, who liked school.
Mrs. Albi waved a work-worn palm. "You smart, Rosie. You ketch up
all right."
"That's okeydoke with me!" Dick exclaimed, yanking his sister's curls.
"You can have your old school."
Sally woke with a cry like a kitten's mew and Rose-Ellen lugged her
out, balanced on her hip. Mrs. Albi's Michael was the same age, but he
would have made two of Sally. Above Sally's small white face her pale
hair stood up thinly; her big gray eyes and little pale mouth were
solemn.
"Why," Grandma said doubtfully, "we . . . why,