Across the Fruited Plain | Page 7

But picking wasn't play. The Beechams trudged back to their shack that
night, sunburned and dirty and too stiff to straighten their backs,
longing for nothing but to drop down on their beds.
"Good land of love!" Grandma scolded. "Lie down all dirty on my
clean beds? I hope I ain't raised me up a mess of pigs. You young-ones,
you fetch a pail of water from the pump, and we'll see how clean we
can get. My land, what wouldn't I give for a bathtub and a sink! And a
gas stove!"
"Peekaneeka, Gramma!" Dick reminded her, squeezing her.
"Picnic my foot! I'm too old for such goings-on."
[Illustration: Lying down on the beds]
Though Grandma's rheumatism had doubled her up like a jack-knife,
she scrubbed herself with energy and soon had potatoes boiling, pork
sizzling, and tea brewing on the rickety stove. Daddy brought Jimmie
and Sally from the Center. After supper they felt a little better.
Jimmie wouldn't tell about the Center, but from inside his blouse he
hauled a red oilcloth bag, and emptied it out on the table. There were
scissors, crayons, paste, pencil, and squares of colored paper. And there
was a note which Jimmie smoothed out and handed to Daddy.
"From Jimmie Brown," he read, "Bethel Church, Cleveland."
"We-we were s'posed to write thank-you letters!" Jimmie burst out

miserably. "She sat us all down to a table and gave us pens and paper."
"And what did you do, Son?" Daddy asked, smoothing the bristly little
head. "I said could I take mine home," Jimmie mumbled, fishing a
tight-folded sheet of paper from his pocket.
"I'll write it for you," Rose-Ellen offered. She sat down and began the
letter, with Jimmie telling her what he wanted to say.
"But the real honest thing to do will be to tell her you didn't write it
yourself," Grandma said pityingly.
"They have stories and games at night," Jimmie said, changing the
subject. "She said to bring Dick and Rose-Ellen."
Dick and Rose-Ellen were too tired for stories and games that night.
They tumbled into bed as soon as supper was done, and had to be
dragged awake for breakfast. Not till a week's picking had hardened
their muscles did they go to the Center.
When they did go--Jimmie limping along with his clipped head tucked
sulkily between his shoulders as if he were not really proud to take
them-they found the place alive with fun. Besides the three girls and
the woman, there was a young man from a near-by university. He was
organizing ping-pong games and indoor baseball for the boys and girls
and even volleyball for some grown men who had come. Everyone was
busy and everyone happy.
"It's slick here, some ways," Dick said that night.
"For a few weeks," Daddy agreed.
"If it wasn't for the misery in my back, it wouldn't be bad," Grandma
murmured. "But an old body'd rather settle down in her own place.
Who'd ever've thought I'd leave my solid oak dining set after I was
sixty! But I'd like the country fine if we had a real house to live in."
"I'm learning to do spatter prints--for Christmas," said Rose-Ellen,

brushing her hair before going to bed.
"Jimmie, why on earth don't you take this chance to learn reading?"
Daddy coaxed.
"Daddy, you won't tell Her I can't read?" Jimmie begged.
Yet, as October passed, something happened to change Jimmie's mind.
As October passed, too, the Beechams grew skillful at picking. They
couldn't earn much, for it took a lot of cranberries to fill a peck
measure-two gallons-especially this year, when the berries were small;
and the pickers got only fifteen cents a peck. The bogs had to be
flooded every night to keep the fruit from freezing; so every morning
the mud was icy and so were the shower-baths from the wet bushes.
But except for Grandma, they didn't find it hard work now.
"It's sure bad on the rheumatiz," said Grandma one morning, as she
bent stiffly to wash clothes in the tub that had been filled and heated
with such effort. "If we was home, we'd be lighting little kindling fires
in the furnace night and morning. And hot water just by lighting the gas!
Land, I never knew my own luck."
"But I like it here!" Jimmie burst out eagerly. "Do you know something?
I'm going to learn to read! I colored my pictures the neatest of anyone
in the class, and She put them all on the wall. So then I didn't mind
telling her how I never learned to read and write and how Rose-Ellen
wrote my letter to Jimmie Brown in Cleveland."
He beamed so proudly that Grandpa, wringing a sheet for Grandma,
looked sorrowfully at him over his glasses. "It's a