The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [88]
Only Muley Graves prowled about restlessly, looking through the bars into the truck, thumping the spare tires hung on the back of the truck. And at last Muley approached Tom. “You goin’ over the State line?’’ he asked. “You gonna break your parole?’’
And Tom shook himself free of the numbness. “Jesus Christ, it’s near sunrise,’’ he said loudly. “We got to get goin’.’’ And the others came out of their numbness and moved toward the truck.
“Come on,’’ Tom said. “Le’s get Grampa on.’’ Pa and Uncle John and Tom and Al went into the kitchen where Grampa slept, his forehead down on his arms, and a line of drying coffee on the table. They took him under the elbows and lifted him to his feet, and he grumbled and cursed thickly, like a drunken man. Out the door they boosted him, and when they came to the truck Tom and Al climbed up, and, leaning over, hooked their hands under his arms and lifted him gently up, and laid him on top of the load. Al untied the tarpaulin, and they rolled him under and put a box under the tarp beside him, so that the weight of the heavy canvas would not be upon him.
“I got to get that ridge pole fixed,’’ Al said. “Do her tonight when we stop.’’ Grampa grunted and fought weakly against awakening, and when he was finally settled he went deeply to sleep again.
Pa said, “Ma, you an’ Granma set in with Al for a while. We’ll change aroun’ so it’s easier, but you start out that way.’’ They got into the cab, and then the rest swarmed up on top of the load, Connie and Rose of Sharon, Pa and Uncle John, Ruthie and Winfield, Tom and the preacher. Noah stood on the ground, looking up at the great load of them sitting on top of the truck.
Al walked around, looking underneath at the springs. “Holy Jesus,’’ he said, “them springs is flat as hell. Lucky I blocked under ’em.’’
Noah said, “How about the dogs, Pa?’’
“I forgot the dogs,’’ Pa said. He whistled shrilly, and one bouncing dog ran in, but only one. Noah caught him and threw him up on the top, where he sat rigid and shivering at the height. “Got to leave the other two,’’ Pa called. “Muley, will you look after ’em some? See they don’t starve?’’
“Yeah,’’ said Muley. “I’ll like to have a couple dogs. Yeah! I’ll take ’em.’’
“Take them chickens, too,’’ Pa said.
Al got into the driver’s seat. The starter whirred and caught, and whirred again. And then the loose roar of the six cylinders and a blue smoke behind. “So long, Muley,’’ Al called.
And the family called, “Good-by, Muley.’’
Al slipped in the low gear and let in the clutch. The truck shuddered and strained across the yard. And the second gear took hold. They crawled up the little hill, and the red dust arose about them. “Chr-ist, what a load!’’ said Al. “We ain’t makin’ no time on this trip.’’
Ma tried to look back, but the body of the load cut off her view. She straightened her head and peered straight ahead along the dirt road. And a great weariness was in her eyes.
The people on top of the load did look back. They saw the house and the barn and a little smoke still rising from the chimney. They saw the windows reddening under the first color of the sun. They saw Muley standing forlornly in the dooryard looking after them. And then the hill cut them off. The cotton fields lined the road. And the truck crawled slowly through the dust toward the highway and the west.
Chapter 11
THE HOUSES were left vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, the disks of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractor and the disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is a life and a vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. That man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land.