“Sure,” said Joad. “‘Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it.”
“Your pa stole it?”
“Sure, got it a mile an’ a half east of here an’ drug it. Was a family livin’ there, an’ they moved away. Grampa an’ Pa an’ my brother Noah like to took the whole house, but she wouldn’t come. They only got part of her. That’s why she looks so funny on one end. They cut her in two an’ drug her over with twelve head of horses and two mules. They was goin’ back for the other half an’ stick her together again, but before they got there Wink Manley come with his boys and stole the other half. Pa an’ Grampa was pretty sore, but a little later them an’ Wink got drunk together an’ laughed their heads off about it. Wink, he says his house is at stud, an’ if we’ll bring our’n over an’ breed ’em we’ll maybe get a litter of crap houses. Wink was a great ol’ fella when he was drunk. After that him an’ Pa an’ Grampa was friends. Got drunk together ever’ chance they got.”
“Tom’s a great one,” Casy agreed. They plodded dustily on down to the bottom of the draw, and then slowed their steps for the rise. Casy wiped his forehead with his sleeve and put on his flat-topped hat again. “Yes,” he repeated, “Tom was a great one. For a godless man he was a great one. I seen him in meetin’ sometimes when the sperit got into him just a little, an’ I seen him take ten-twelve foot jumps. I tell you when ol’ Tom got a dose of the Holy Sperit you got to move fast to keep from gettin’ run down an’ tromped. Jumpy as a stud horse in a box stall.”
They topped the next rise and the road dropped into an old water-cut, ugly and raw, a ragged course, and freshet scars cutting into it from both sides. A few stones were in the crossing. Joad minced across in his bare feet. “You talk about Pa,” he said. “Maybe you never seen Uncle John the time they baptized him over to Polk’s place. Why, he got to plungin’ an’ jumpin’. Jumped over a feeny bush as big as a piana. Over he’d jump, an’ back he’d jump, howlin’ like a dog-wolf in moon time. Well, Pa seen him, an’ Pa, he figgers he’s the bes’ Jesus-jumper in these parts. So Pa picks out a feeny bush ’bout twicet as big as Uncle John’s feeny bush, and Pa lets out a squawk like a sow litterin’ broken bottles, an’ he takes a run at that feeny bush an’ clears her an’ bust his right leg. That took the sperit out of Pa. Preacher wants to pray it set, but Pa says, no, by God, he’d got his heart full of havin’ a doctor. Well, they wasn’t a doctor, but they was a travelin’ dentist, an’ he set her. Preacher give her a prayin’ over anyways.”
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’t 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’t 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.”
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 OWNERS 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.
In the open doors the women stood looking out, and behind them the children- corn-headed children, with wide eyes, one bare foot on top of the other bare foot, and the toes working. The women and the children watched their men talking to the owner men. They were silent.
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank- or the Company- needs- wants- insists- must have- as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You’ve scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.