The Grapes of Wrath | Page 4

He held the screen door a little open. "Week–ten days," he said. "Got to make a run
to Tulsa, an' I never get back soon as I think."
She said crossly, "Don't let the flie s in. Either go out or come in."
"So long," he said, and pushed his way out . The screen door banged behind him. He
stood in the sun, peeling the wrapper from a piece of gum. He was a heavy man, broad
in the shoulders, thick in the stomach. His face was red and his blue eyes long and
slitted from having squinted always at sh arp light. He wore army trousers and high
laced boots. Holding the stick of gum in front of his lips he called through the screen,
"Well, don't do nothing you don't want me to hear about." The waitress was turned
toward a mirror on the back wall. She grunt ed a reply. The truck driver gnawed down
the stick of gum slowly, opening his jaws and lips wide with each bite. He shaped the
gum in his mouth, rolled it unde r his tongue while he walked to the big red truck.
The hitch-hiker stood up and looked acro ss through the windows. "Could ya give
me a lift, mister?"
The driver looked quickly back at the re staurant for a second. "Didn't you see the
No Riders sticker on the win'shield?"
"Sure—I seen it. But sometimes a guy'll be a good guy even if some rich bastard
makes him carry a sticker."
The driver, getting slowly into the truck, c onsidered the parts of this answer. If he
refused now, not only was he not a good guy, but he was forced to carry a sticker, was
not allowed to have company. If he took in the hitch-hiker he was automatically a good
guy and also he was not one whom any rich bastard could kick around. He knew he
was being trapped, but he couldn't see a wa y out. And he wanted to be a good guy. He
glanced again at the restaurant. "Scrunc h down on the running board till we get around
the bend," he said.

The hitch-hiker flopped down out of sight and clung to the door handle. The motor
roared up for a moment, the gears clicked in, and the great truck moved away, first
gear, second gear, third gear , and then a high whining pick -up and fourth gear. Under
the clinging man the highway blurred dizzily by. It was a mile to the first turn in the
road, then the truck slowed down. The hitc h-hiker stood up, eased the door open, and
slipped into the seat. The driver looked over at him, slitting his eyes, and he chewed as
though thoughts and impressions were being sorted and arranged by his jaws before
they were finally filed away in his brain. His eyes began at th e new cap, moved down
the new clothes to the new shoes. The hitch-hi ker squirmed his back against the seat in
comfort, took off his cap, and swabbed hi s sweating forehead and chin with it.
"Thanks, buddy," he said. "My dogs was pooped out."
"New shoes," said the driver. His voice had the same quality of secrecy and
insinuation his eyes had. "You oughtn' to take no walk in new shoes—hot weather."
The hiker looked down at the dusty yellow shoes. "Didn't have no other shoes," he
said. "Guy got to wear 'em if he got no others."
The driver squinted judiciously ahead and built up the speed of the truck a little.
"Goin' far?"
"Uh-uh! I'd a walked her if my dogs wasn't pooped out."
The questions of the driver had the tone of a subtle examination. He seemed to
spread nets, to set traps, with his questions. "Lookin' for a job?" he asked.
"No, my old man got a place, forty acres. He 's a cropper, but we been there a long
time."
The driver looked significan tly at the fields along the road where the corn was
fallen sideways and the dust was piled on it. Little flints shoved through the dusty soil.
The driver said, as though to himself, "A forty-acre croppe r and he ain't been dusted
out and he ain't been tractored out?"
"'Course I ain't heard latel y," said the hitch-hiker.
"Long time," said the driver. A bee flew into the cab and buzzed in back of the
windshield. The driver put out his hand and car efully drove the bee into an air stream
that blew it out of the window. "Croppers go ing fast now," he said. "One cat' takes and
shoves ten families out.