The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [43]
They plodded up the little rise on the other side of the water-cut. Now that the sun was on the wane some of its impact was gone, and while the air was hot, the hammering rays were weaker. The strung wire on crooked poles still edged the road. On the right-hand side a line of wire fence strung out across the cotton field, and the dusty green cotton was the same on both sides, dusty and dry and dark green.
Joad pointed to the boundary fence. “That there’s our line. We didn’t really need no fence there, but we had the wire, an’ Pa kinda liked her there. Said it give him a feelin’ that forty was forty. Wouldn’t of had the fence if Uncle John didn’ come drivin’ in one night with six spools of wire in his wagon. He give ’em to Pa for a shoat. We never did know where he got that wire.’’ They slowed for the rise, moving their feet in the deep soft dust, feeling the earth with their feet. Joad’s eyes were inward on his memory. He seemed to be laughing inside himself. “Uncle John was a crazy bastard,’’ he said. “Like what he done with that shoat.’’ He chuckled and walked on.
Jim Casy waited impatiently. The story did not continue. Casy gave it a good long time to come out. “Well, what’d he do with that shoat?’’ he demanded at last, with some irritation.
“Huh? Oh! Well, he killed that shoat right there, an’ he got Ma to light up the stove. He cut out pork chops an’ put ’em in the pan, an’ he put ribs an’ a leg in the oven. He et chops till the ribs was done, an’ he et ribs till the leg was done. An’ then he tore into that leg. Cut off big hunks of her an’ shoved ’em in his mouth. Us kids hung around slaverin’, an’ he give us some, but he wouldn’ give Pa none. By an’ by he et so much he throwed up an’ went to sleep. While he’s asleep us kids an’ Pa finished off the leg. Well, when Uncle John woke up in the mornin’ he slaps another leg in the oven. Pa says, ‘John, you gonna eat that whole damn pig?’ An’ he says, ‘I aim to, Tom, but I’m scairt some of her’ll spoil ’fore I get her et, hungry as I am for pork. Maybe you better get a plate an’ gimme back a couple rolls of wire.’ Well, sir, Pa wasn’t no fool. He jus’ let Uncle John go on an’ eat himself sick of pig, an’ when he drove off he hadn’t et much more’n half. Pa says, ‘Whyn’t you salt her down?’ But not Uncle John; when he wants pig he wants a whole pig, an’ when he’s through, he don’t want no pig hangin’ around. So off he goes, and Pa salts down what’s left.’’
Casy said, “While I was still in the preachin’ sperit I’d a made a lesson of that an’ spoke it to you, but I don’t do that no more. What you s’pose he done a thing like that for?’’
“I dunno,’’ said Joad. “He jus’ got hungry for pork. Makes me hungry jus’ to think of it. I had jus’ four slices of roastin’ pork in four years—one slice ever’ Christmus.’’
Casy suggested elaborately, “Maybe Tom’ll kill the fatted calf like for the prodigal in Scripture.”4
Joad laughed scornfully. “You don’t know Pa. If he kills a chicken most of the squawkin’ will come from Pa, not the chicken. He don’t never learn. He’s always savin’ a pig for Christmus and then it dies in September of bloat or somepin so you can’t eat it. When Uncle John wanted pork he et pork. He had her.’’
They moved over the curving top of the hill and saw the Joad place below them. And Joad stopped. “It ain’t the same,’’ he said. “Looka that house. Somepin’s happened. They ain’t nobody there.’’ The two stood and stared at the little cluster of buildings.
Chapter 5
THE OWNER of the land came onto the land, or more often a spokesman for the owners came. They came in closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with their fingers, and sometimes they drove big earth augers into the ground for soil tests. The tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust.