Across the Fruited Plain | Page 7

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 pity you didn't tell her sooner, young-one," he said. "The cranberries will be over in a few more days, and we'll be going back."
"Back to Philadelphia?" Rose-Ellen demanded. "Where? Not to a Home? I won't! I'd rather go on and shuck oysters like Pauline Isabel and her folks. I'd rather go on where they're cutting marsh hay. I'd rather--"
"Well, now," Grandpa's words were slow, "what about it, kids? What about it, Grandma? Do we go back to the city and-and part company till times are better? Or go on into oysters together?"
The tears stole down Jimmie's cheeks, but he didn't say anything. Daddy didn't say anything, either. He picked Sally up and hugged her so hard that she grunted and then put her tiny hands on his cheeks and peered into his eyes, chirping at him like a little bird.
"I calculate we'll go on into oysters," said Grandpa.

3: SHUCKING OYSTERS
This picnic way of living had one advantage;