Casy said, “If I was still a preacher I’d say the arm of the Lord had struck. But now I don’t know what happened. I been away. I didn’t hear nothin’.” They walked toward the concrete well-cap, walked through cotton plants to get to it, and the bolls were forming on the cotton, and the land was cultivated.
“We never planted here,” Joad said. “We always kept this clear. Why, you can’t get a horse in now without he tromps the cotton.” They paused at the dry watering trough, and the proper weeds that should grow under a trough were gone and the old thick wood of the trough was dry and cracked. On the well-cap the bolts that had held the pump stuck up, their threads rusty and the nuts gone. Joad looked into the tube of the well and listened. He dropped a clod down the well and listened. “She was a good well,” he said. “I can’t hear water.” He seemed reluctant to go to the house. He dropped clod after clod down the well. “Maybe they’re all dead,” he said. “But somebody’d a told me. I’d a got word some way.”
“Maybe they left a letter or something to tell in the house. Would they of knowed you was comin’ out?”
“I don’ know,” said Joad. “No, I guess not. I didn’t know myself till a week ago.”
“Le’s look in the house. She’s all pushed out a shape. Something knocked the hell out of her.” They walked slowly toward the sagging house. Two of the supports of the porch roof were pushed out so that the roof flopped down on one end. And the house-corner was crushed in. Through a maze of splintered wood the room at the corner was visible. The front door hung open inward, and a low strong gate across the front door hung outward on leather hinges.
Joad stopped at the step, a twelve-by-twelve timber. “Doorstep’s here,” he said. “But they’re gone- or Ma’s dead.” He pointed to the low gate across the front door. “If Ma was anywheres about, that gate’d be shut an’ hooked. That’s one thing she always done- seen that gate was shut.” His eyes were warm. “Ever since the pig got in over to Jacobs’ an’ et the baby. Milly Jacobs was jus’ out in the barn. She come in while the pig was still eatin’ it. Well, Milly Jacobs was in a family way, an’ she went ravin’. Never did get over it. Touched ever since. But Ma took a lesson from it. She never lef’ that pig gate open ‘less she was in the house herself. Never did forget. No- they’re gone- or dead.” He climbed to the split porch and looked into the kitchen. The windows were broken out, and throwing rocks lay on the floor, and the floor and walls sagged steeply away from the door, and the sifted dust was on the boards. Joad pointed to the broken glass and the rocks. “Kids,” he said. “They’ll go twenty miles to bust a window. I done it myself. They know when a house is empty, they know. That’s the fust thing kids do when folks move out.” The kitchen was empty of furniture, stove gone and the round stovepipe hole in the wall showing light. On the sink shelf lay an old beer opener and a broken fork with its wooden handle gone. Joad slipped cautiously into the room, and the floor groaned under his weight. An old copy of the Philadelphia Ledger was on the floor against the wall, its pages yellow and curling. Joad looked into the bedroom- no bed, no chairs, nothing. On the wall a picture of an Indian girl in color, labeled Red Wing. A bed slat leaning against the wall, and in one corner a woman’s high button shoe, curled up at the toe and broken over the instep. Joad picked it up and looked at it. “I remember this,” he said. “This was Ma’s. It’s all wore out now. Ma liked them shoes. Had ’em for years. No, they’ve went- an’ took ever’thing.”
The sun had lowered until it came through the angled end windows now, and it flashed on the edges of the broken glass. Joad turned at last and went out and crossed the porch. He sat down on the edge of it and rested his bare feet on the twelve-by-twelve step. The evening light was on the fields, and the cotton plants threw long shadows on the ground, and the molting willow tree threw a long shadow.
Casy sat down beside Joad. “They never wrote you nothin’?” he asked.
“No. Like I said, they wasn’t people to write. Pa could write, but he wouldn’t. Didn’t like to. It give him the shivers to write. He could work out a catalogue order as good as the nex’ fella, but he wouldn’t write no letters just for ducks.” They sat side by side, staring off into the distance. Joad laid his rolled coat on the porch beside him. His independent hands rolled a cigarette, smoothed it and lighted it, and he inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out through his nose. “Somepin’s wrong,” he said. “I can’t put my finger on her. I got an itch that somepin’s wronger’n hell. Just this house pushed aroun’ an’ my folks gone.”
Casy said, “Right over there the ditch was, where I done the baptizin’. You wasn’t mean, but you was tough. Hung onto that little girl’s pigtail like a bulldog. We baptize’ you both in the name of the Holy Ghos’, and still you hung on. Ol’ Tom says, ‘Hol’ ‘im under water.’ So I shove your head down till you start to bubblin’ before you’d let go a that pigtail. You wasn’t mean, but you was tough. Sometimes a tough kid grows up with a big jolt of the sperit in him.”
A lean gray cat came sneaking out of the barn and crept through the cotton plants to the end of the porch. It leaped silently up to the porch and crept low-belly toward the men. It came to a place between and behind the two, and then it sat down, and its tail stretched out straight and flat to the floor, and the last inch of it flicked. The cat sat and looked off into the distance where the men were looking.
Joad glanced around at it. “By God! Look who’s here. Somebody stayed.” He put out his hand, but the cat leaped away out of reach and sat down and licked the pads of its lifted paw. Joad looked at it, and his face was puzzled. “I know what’s the matter,” he cried. “That cat jus’ made me figger what’s wrong.”
“Seems to me there’s lots wrong,” said Casy.
“No, it’s more’n jus’ this place. Whyn’t that cat jus’ move in with some neighbors- with the Rances. How come nobody ripped some lumber off this house? Ain’t been nobody here for three-four months, an’ nobody’s stole no lumber. Nice planks on the barn shed, plenty good planks on the house, winda frames- an’ nobody’s took ’em. That ain’t right. That’s what was botherin’ me, an’ I couldn’t catch hold of her.”
“Well, what’s that figger out for you?” Casy reached down and slipped off his sneakers and wriggled his long toes on the step.
“I don’ know. Seems like maybe there ain’t any neighbors. If there was, would all them nice planks be here? Why, Jesus Christ! Albert Rance took his family, kids an’ dogs an’ all, into Oklahoma City one Christmus. They was gonna visit with Albert’s cousin. Well, folks aroun’ here thought Albert moved away without sayin’ nothin’- figgered maybe he got debts or some woman’s squarin’ off at him. When Albert come back a week later there wasn’t a thing lef’ in his house- stove was gone, beds was gone, winda frames was gone, an’ eight feet of plankin’ was gone off the south side of the house so you could look right through her. He come drivin’ home just as Muley Graves was going away with the doors an’ the well pump. Took Albert two weeks drivin’ aroun’ the neighbors’ ‘fore he got his stuff back.”
Casy scratched his toes luxuriously. “Didn’t nobody give him an argument? All of ’em jus’ give the stuff up?”
“Sure. They wasn’t stealin’ it. They thought he lef’ it, an’ they jus’ took it. He got all of it back- all but a sofa pilla, velvet with a pitcher of an Injun on it. Albert claimed Grampa got it. Claimed Grampa got Injun blood, that’s why he wants that pitcher. Well, Grampa did get her, but he didn’t give a damn about the pitcher on it. He jus’ liked her. Used to pack her aroun’ an’ he’d put her wherever he was gonna sit. He never would give her back to Albert. Says, ‘If Albert wants this pilla so bad, let him come an’ get her. But he better come shootin’, ’cause I’ll blow his goddamn stinkin’ head off if he comes messin’ aroun’ my pilla.’ So finally Albert give up an’ made Grampa a present of that pilla. It give Grampa idears, though. He took to savin’ chicken feathers. Says he’s gonna have a whole damn bed of feathers. But he never got no feather bed. One time Pa got mad at a skunk under the house. Pa slapped that skunk with a two-by-four, and Ma burned all Grampa’s feathers so we could live in the house.” He laughed. “Grampa’s a tough ol’ bastard. Jus’ set on that Injun pilla an’ says, ‘Let Albert come an’ get her. Why,’ he says, ‘I’ll take that squirt and wring ‘im out like a pair of drawers.'”