The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [76]
“I dunno,’’ he said. “Two weeks, maybe ten days if we got luck. Look, Ma, stop your worryin’. I’m a-gonna tell you somepin about bein’ in the pen. You can’t go thinkin’ when you’re gonna be out. You’d go nuts. You got to think about that day, an’ then the nex’ day, about the ball game Sat’dy. That’s what you got to do. Ol’ timers does that. A new young fella gets buttin’ his head on the cell door. He’s thinkin’ how long it’s gonna be. Whyn’t you do that? Jus’ take ever’ day.’’
“That’s a good way,’’ she said, and she filled up her bucket with hot water from the stove, and she put in dirty clothes and began punching them down into the soapy water. “Yes, that’s a good way. But I like to think how nice it’s gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold. An’ fruit ever’place, an’ people just bein’ in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder—that is, if we all get jobs an’ all work—maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An’ the little fellas go out an’ pick oranges right off the tree. They ain’t gonna be able to stand it, they’ll get to yellin’ so.’’
Tom watched her working, and his eyes smiled. “It done you good jus’ thinkin’ about it. I knowed a fella from California. He didn’t talk like us. You’d of knowed he come from some far-off place jus’ the way he talked. But he says they’s too many folks lookin’ for work right there now. An’ he says the folks that pick the fruit live in dirty ol’ camps an’ don’t hardly get enough to eat. He says wages is low an’ hard to get any.’’
A shadow crossed her face. “Oh, that ain’t so,’’ she said. “Your father got a han’bill on yella paper, tellin’ how they need folks to work. They wouldn’ go to that trouble if they wasn’t plenty work. Costs ’em good money to get them han’bills out. What’d they want ta lie for, an’ costin’ ’em money to lie?’’
Tom shook his head. “I don’ know, Ma. It’s kinda hard to think why they done it. Maybe—’’ He looked out at the hot sun, shining on the red earth.
“Maybe what?’’
“Maybe it’s nice, like you says. Where’d Grampa go? Where’d the preacher go?’’
Ma was going out of the house, her arms loaded high with the clothes. Tom moved aside to let her pass. “Preacher says he’s gonna walk aroun’. Grampa’s asleep here in the house. He comes in here in the day an’ lays down sometimes.’’ She walked to the line and began to drape pale blue jeans and blue shirts and long gray underwear over the wire.
Behind him Tom heard a shuffling step, and he turned to look in. Grampa was emerging from the bedroom, and as in the morning, he fumbled with the buttons of his fly. “I heerd talkin’,’’ he said. “Sons-a-bitches won’t let a ol’ fella sleep.’’ His furious fingers managed to flip open the only two buttons on his fly that had been buttoned. And his hand forgot what it had been trying to do. His hand reached in and contentedly scratched under the testicles. Ma came in with wet hands, and her palms puckered and bloated from hot water and soap.
“Thought you was sleepin’. Here, let me button you up.’’ And though he struggled, she held him and buttoned his underwear and his shirt and his fly. “You go aroun’ a sight,’’ she said, and let him go.
And he spluttered angrily, “Fella’s come to a nice—to a nice—when somebody buttons ’em. I want ta be let be to button my own pants.’’
Ma said playfully, “They don’t let people run aroun’ with their clothes unbutton’ in California.’’
“They don’t, hey! Well, I’ll show ’em. They think they’re gonna show me how to act out there? Why, I’ll go aroun’ a-hangin’ out if I wanta!’’
Ma said, “Seems like his language gets worse ever’ year. Showin