“Oh, my!” Ma said wearily. “Oh! My dear sweet Lord Jesus asleep in a manger! What we goin’ to do now?” She put her forehead in her hand and rubbed her eyes. “What we gonna do now?” A smell of burning potatoes came from the roaring stove. Ma moved automatically and turned them.
“Rosasharn!” Ma called. The girl appeared around the curtain. “Come watch this here supper. Winfiel’, you go out an’ you fin’ Ruthie an’ bring her back here.”
“Gonna whup her, Ma?” he asked hopefully.
“No. This here you couldn’ do nothin’ about. Why, I wonder, did she haf’ to do it? No. It won’t do no good to whup her. Run now, an’ find her an’ bring her back.”
Winfield ran for the car door, and he met the three men tramping up the cat-walk, and he stood aside while they came in.
Ma said softly, “Pa, I got to talk to you. Ruthie tol’ some kids how Tom’s a-hidin’.”
“What?”
“She tol’. Got in a fight an’ tol’.”
“Why, the little bitch!”
“No, she didn’ know what she was a-doin’. Now look, Pa. I want you to stay here. I’m goin’ out an’ try to fin’ Tom an’ tell him. I got to tell ‘im to be careful. You stick here, Pa, an’ kinda watch out for things. I’ll take ‘im some dinner.”
“Awright,” Pa agreed.
“Don’ you even mention to Ruthie what she done. I’ll tell her.”
At that moment Ruthie came in, with Winfield behind her. The little girl was dirtied. Her mouth was sticky, and her nose still dripped a little blood from her fight. She looked shamed and frightened. Winfield triumphantly followed her. Ruthie looked fiercely about, but she went to a corner of the car and put her back in the corner. Her shame and fierceness were blended.
“I tol’ her what you done,” Winfield said.
Ma was putting two chops and some fried potatoes on a tin plate. “Hush, Winfiel’,” she said. “They ain’t no need to hurt her feelings no more’n what they’re hurt.”
Ruthie’s body hurtled across the car. She grabbed Ma around the middle and buried her head in Ma’s stomach, and her strangled sobs shook her whole body. Ma tried to loosen her, but the grubby fingers clung tight. Ma brushed the hair on the back of her head gently, and she patted her shoulders. “Hush,” she said. “You didn’ know.”
Ruthie raised her dirty, tear-stained, bloody face. “They stoled my Cracker Jack!” she cried. “That big son-of-a-bitch of a girl, she belted me-” She went off into hard crying again.
“Hush!” Ma said. “Don’t talk like that. Here. Let go. I’m a-goin’ now.”
“Whyn’t ya whup her, Ma? If she didn’t git snotty with her Cracker Jack ‘twouldn’ a happened. Go on, give her a whup.”
“You jus’ min’ your business, mister,” Ma said fiercely. “You’ll git a whup yourself. Now leggo, Ruthie.”
Winfield retired to a rolled mattress, and he regarded the family cynically and dully. And he put himself in a good position of defense, for Ruthie would attack him at the first opportunity, and he knew it. Ruthie went quietly, heart-brokenly to the other side of the car.
Ma put a sheet of newspaper over the tin plate. “I’m a-goin’ now,” she said.
“Ain’t you gonna eat nothin’ yourself?” Uncle John demanded.
“Later. When I come back. I wouldn’ want nothin’ now.” Ma walked to the open door; she steadied herself down the steep, cleated cat-walk.
On the stream side of the boxcars, the tents were pitched close together, their guy ropes crossing one another, and the pegs of one at the canvas line of the next. The lights shone through the cloth, and all the chimneys belched smoke. Men and women stood in the doorways talking. Children ran feverishly about. Ma moved majestically down the line of tents. Here and there she was recognized as she went by. “Evenin’, Mis’ Joad.”
“Evenin’.”
“Takin’ somepin out, Mis’ Joad?”
“They’s a frien’. I’m takin’ back some bread.”
She came at last to the end of the line of tents. She stopped and looked back. A glow of light was on the camp, and the soft overtone of a multitude of speakers. Now and then a harsher voice cut through. The smell of smoke filled the air. Someone played a harmonica softly, trying for an effect, one phrase over and over.
Ma stepped in among the willows beside the stream. She moved off the trail and waited, silently, listening to hear any possible follower. A man walked down the trail toward the camp, boosting his suspenders and buttoning his jeans as he went. Ma sat very still, and he passed on without seeing her. She waited five minutes and then she stood up and crept on up the trail beside the stream. She moved quietly, so quietly that she could hear the murmur of the water above her soft steps on the willow leaves. Trail and stream swung to the left and then to the right again until they neared the highway. In the gray starlight she could see the embankment and the black round hole of the culvert where she always left Tom’s food. She moved forward cautiously, thrust her package into the hole, and took back the empty tin plate which was left there. She crept back among the willows, forced her way into a thicket, and sat down to wait. Through the tangle she could see the black hole of the culvert. She clasped her knees and sat silently. In a few moments the thicket crept to life again. The field mice moved cautiously over the leaves. A skunk padded heavily and unself-consciously down the trail, carrying a faint effluvium with him. And then a wind stirred the willows delicately, as though it tested them, and a shower of golden leaves coasted down to the ground. Suddenly a gust boiled in and racked the trees, and a cricking downpour of leaves fell. Ma could feel them on her hair and on her shoulders. Over the sky a plump black cloud moved, erasing the stars. The fat drops of rain scattered down, splashing loudly on the fallen leaves, and the cloud moved on and unveiled the stars again. Ma shivered. The wind blew past and left the thicket quiet, but the rushing of the trees went on down the stream. From back at the camp came the thin penetrating tone of a violin feeling about for a tune.
Ma heard a stealthy step among the leaves far to her left, and she grew tense. She released her knees and straightened her head the better to hear. The movement stopped, and after a long moment began again. A vine rasped harshly on the dry leaves. Ma saw a dark figure creep into the open and draw near to the culvert. The black round hole was obscured for a moment, and then the figure moved back. She called softly, “Tom!” The figure stood still, so still, so low to the ground that it might have been a stump. She called again, “Tom, oh, Tom!” Then the figure moved.
“That you, Ma?”
“Right over here.” She stood up and went to meet him.
“You shouldn’ of came,” he said.
“I got to see you, Tom. I got to talk to you.”
“It’s near the trail,” he said. “Somebody might come by.”
“Ain’t you got a place, Tom?”
“Yeah- but if- well, s’pose somebody seen you with me- whole fambly’d be in a jam.”
“I got to, Tom.”
“Then come along. Come quiet.” He crossed the little stream, wading carelessly through the water, and Ma followed him. He moved through the brush, out into a field on the other side of the thicket, and along the plowed ground. The blackening stems of the cotton were harsh against the ground, and a few fluffs of cotton clung to the stems. A quarter of a mile they went along the edge of the field, and then he turned into the brush again. He approached a great mound of wild blackberry bushes, leaned over and pulled a mat of vines aside. “You got to crawl in,” he said.
Ma went down on her hands and knees. She felt sand under her, and then the black inside of the mound no longer touched her, and she felt Tom’s blanket on the ground. He arranged the vines in place again. It was lightless in the cave.
“Where are you, Ma?”
“Here. Right here. Talk soft, Tom.”
“Don’t worry. I been livin’ like a rabbit some time.”
She heard him unwrap his tin plate.
“Pork chops,” she said. “And fry potatoes.”
“God Awmighty, an’ still warm.”
Ma could not see him at all in the blackness, but she could hear him chewing, tearing at the meat and swallowing.
“It’s a pretty good hide-out,” he said.
Ma said uneasily, “Tom- Ruthie tol’ about you.” She heard him gulp.
“Ruthie? What for?”
“Well, it wasn’ her fault. Got in a fight, an’ says her brother’ll lick that other girl’s brother. You know how they do. An’ she tol’ that her brother killed a man an’ was hidin’.”