Across the Fruited Plain | Page 5

if Grandpa would give
up his shop--just for the cranberry season. We got no place else to go."
Grandpa sighed. "Looks like the shop's give me up already. We could
think about it."

"All together!" whooped Dick. "And not any school!"
"Now, hold your horses," Grandma cautioned. "Beechams don't run off
nobody knows where, without anyway sleeping over it."
But though they "slept over" the problem and talked it over as hard as
they could, going to the cranberry bogs was the best answer they could
find for the difficulty. It seemed the only way for them to stay together.
"Something will surely turn up in a month or two," Daddy said. "And
without my kids"--he spread his big hands--"I haven't a thing to show
for my thirty-two years."
"The thing is," Grandpa summed it up, "when we get out of this house
we've got to pay rent, and I'm not making enough for rent and food, too.
No place to live, or else nothing to eat."
Finally it was decided that they should go.
Now there was much to do. They set aside a few of their most precious
belongings to be stored, like Grandma's grandma's painted dower chest,
full of treasures, and Grandpa's tall desk and Rose-Ellen's dearest doll.
Next they chose the things they must use during their stay in Jersey.
Finally they called in the second-hand man around the corner to buy the
things that were left.
Poor Grandma! She clenched her hands under her patched apron when
the man shoved her beloved furniture around and glanced
contemptuously at the clean old sewing machine that had made them so
many nice clothes. "One dollar for the machine, lady."
Rose-Ellen tucked her hand into Grandma's as they looked at the few
boxes and pieces of furniture they were leaving behind, standing on
stilts in Mrs. Albi's basement to keep dry.
"It's so funny," Rose-Ellen stammered; "almost as if that was all that
was left of our home."

"Funny as a tombstone," said Grandma. Then she went and grabbed the
old Seth Thomas clock and hugged it to her. "This seems the livingest
thing. It goes where I go."
At last, everything was disposed of, and the padrone's agent's big truck
pulled up to their curb. Two feather beds, a trunk, pots, pans, dishes
and the Beechams were piled into the space left by some twenty-five
other people. The truck roared away, with the neighbors shouting
good-by from steps and windows.
Grandma kept her eyes straight ahead so as not to see her house again.
Grandpa shifted Jimmie around to make his lame leg more comfortable,
just as they passed the cobbler's shop with "TO LET" in the window.
Grandpa did not lift his eyes.
"I hope Mrs. Albi will sprinkle them Bronze Beauty chrysanthemums
so they won't all die off," Grandma said in a choked voice.

2: THE CRANBERRY BOG
The truck rumbled through clustering cities, green country and white
villages. All the children stared in fascination until Jimmie grew too
tired and huddled down against Grandma's knees, whining because he
ached and the sun was hot and the truck was crowded.
Grandpa kept pointing out new things-holly trees; muskrat houses
rising in small stick-stacks from the ponds; farms that made their own
rain, with rows and rows of pipes running along six feet in air, to
shower water on the vegetables below.
It was late afternoon, and dark because of the clouds, when the truck
reached the bogs. These bogs weren't at all what Rose-Ellen and Dick
had expected, but only wet-looking fields of low bushes. There was no
chance to look at them now, for everyone was hurrying to get settled.
The padrone led them to a one-room shed built of rough boards and
helped dump their belongings inside. Grandma stood at the door, hands

on hips, and said, "Well, good land of love! If anybody'd told me I'd
live in a shack!"
Rose-Ellen danced around her, shrieking joyously, "Peekaneeka,
Gramma! Peekaneeka!"
Grandma's face creased in an unwilling smile and she said, "You'll get
enough peekaneeka before you're done, or I miss my guess."
"Got here just in time, just in time!" chanted Dick and Rose-Ellen, as a
sudden storm pounded the roof with rain and split the air with thunder
and lightning.
"My land!" cried Grandma. "S'pose this roof will leak on the baby and
Seth Thomas?"
For an hour the Beechams dashed around setting up campkeeping. For
supper they finished the enormous lunch Grandma had brought. After
that came bedtime.
Rose-Ellen lay across the foot of Grandpa and Grandma's goosefeather
bed, spread on the floor. After the rain stopped, fresh air flowed
through the light walls.
Cranberry-picking did not start next morning till ground and bushes
had dried a little. Grandpa and Daddy had time