Across the Fruited Plain | Page 4

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, 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