Across the Fruited Plain | Page 9

want to see the dredges come in from the bay." He took them through the open front of the shed to the docks outside. The boats had gone out at three o'clock in the morning, he said, in the deep dark. They were coming in now heavily, loaded high with horny oysters, and Ez pointed out the rake-set iron nets with which the shellfish were dragged from their beds. "Got 'em out of bed good and early!"
"I'd hate to have to eat 'em all," Jimmie said suddenly in his husky little voice.
Everyone laughed, for the big rough shells were traveling into the oyster-house by thousands, on moving belts. Some shells looked as if they were carrying sponges in their mouths, but Ez said it was a kind of moss that grew there. Already the pile of unopened oysters in the shed was higher than a man. The shuckers needed a million to work on next day, Ez said.
[Illustration: Watching the dredges]
When the children had watched awhile, and the boatmen had asked their names, and how old they were and where they came from, Ez took them inside the shed to show them the handling of the newly shucked oysters. First the oysters were dumped into something that looked like Mrs. Albi's electric washer, and washed and washed. Then they were emptied into a flume, a narrow trough along which they were swept into bright cans that held almost a gallon each. The cans were stored in ice-packed barrels, and early next morning would go out in trains and trucks to all parts of the country.
"How many pearls have they found in all these oysters?" Dick demanded in a businesslike voice. "Not any!" Ez said.
"Why can't you eat oysters in months that don't have R in them?" asked Rose-Ellen.
"You could, if there wasn't a law against selling them. It's only a notion, like not turning your dress if you put it on wrong side out. Summer's when oysters lay eggs. You don't stop eating hens because they lay eggs, do you? But now scram, kids. I got work to do."
They left, skipping past the mountains of empty shells outside.
Next day the children went to church school alone. The grown folks were too tired. And on Monday Dick and Rose-Ellen went up the road to the school in the little village.
It was strange to be in school again, and with new schoolmates and teachers and even new books, since this was a different state. Rose-Ellen's grade, the fifth, had got farther in long division than her class at home, and she couldn't understand what they were doing. Dick had trouble, too, for the seventh grade was well started on United States history, and he couldn't catch up. But that was not the worst of it. The two children could not seem to fit in with their schoolmates. The village girls gathered in groups by themselves and acted as if the oyster-shuckers' children were not there at all; and the boys did not give Dick even a chance to show what a good pitcher he was. Both Rose-Ellen and Dick had been leaders in the city school, and now they felt so lonesome that Rose-Ellen often cried when she got home.
It was too long a walk for Jimmie, who begged not to go anyway. Besides, he was needed at home to mind Sally.
Of course the grown folks wanted to earn all they could. The pay was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up until something happened that forced her to.
It was late November, and the fire in the shack must be kept going all day to make the rooms warm enough for Sally. She was creeping now, and during the long hours when the grown folks were working and the older children at school, she had to stay in a chair with a gate across the front which her father had fixed out of an old kitchen armchair. Grandma cushioned it with rags, but it grew hard and tiresome, and sometimes Jimmie could not keep her contented there.
One day Sally cried until he wriggled her out of her nest and spread a quilt for her in a corner of the room as Grandma did. There he sat, fencing her in with his legs while he drew pictures of oyster-houses. He was so busy drawing roofs that he had forgot all about Sally until he was startled by