A HARMONICA is easy to carry. Take it out of your hip pocket, knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of tobacco. Now it’s ready. You can do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or chords, or melody with rhythm chords. You can mold the music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it full and round like an organ, making it as sharp and bitter as the reed pipes of the hills. And you can play and put it back in your pocket. It is always with you, always in your pocket. And as you play, you learn new tricks, new ways to mold the tone with your hands, to pinch the tone with your lips, and no one teaches you. You feel around- sometimes alone in the shade at noon, sometimes in the tent door after supper when the women are washing up. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm. And if you lose it or break it, why, it’s no great loss. You can buy another for a quarter.
A guitar is more precious. Must learn this thing. Fingers of the left hand must have callous caps. Thumb of the right hand a horn of callous. Stretch the left-hand fingers, stretch them like a spider’s legs to get the hard pads on the frets.
This was my father’s box. Wasn’t no bigger’n a bug first time he give me C chord. An’ when I learned as good as him, he hardly never played no more. Used to set in the door, an’ listen an’ tap his foot. I’m tryin’ for a break, an’ he’d scowl mean till I get her, an’ then he’d settle back easy, an’ he’d nod. “Play,” he’d say. “Play nice.” It’s a good box. See how the head is wore. They’s many a million songs wore down that wood an’ scooped her out. Some day she’ll cave in like a egg. But you can’t patch her nor worry her no way or she’ll lose tone. Play her in the evening, an’ they’s a harmonica player in the nex’ tent. Makes it pretty nice together.
The fiddle is rare, hard to learn. No frets, no teacher.
Jes’ listen to a ol’ man an’ try to pick it up. Won’t tell how to double. Says it’s a secret. But I watched. Here’s how he done it.
Shrill as a wind, the fiddle, quick and nervous and shrill.
She ain’t much of a fiddle. Give two dollars for her. Fella says they’s fiddles four hundred years old, and they git mellow like whisky. Says they’ll cost fifty-sixty thousan’ dollars. I don’t know. Soun’s like a lie. Harsh ol’ bastard, ain’t she? Wanta dance? I’ll rub up the bow with plenty rosin. Man! Then she’ll squawk. Hear her a mile.
These three in the evening, harmonica and fiddle and guitar. Playing a reel and tapping out the tune, and the big deep strings of the guitar beating like a heart, and the harmonica’s sharp chords and the skirl and squeal of the fiddle. People have to move close. They can’t help it. “Chicken Reel” now, and the feet tap and a young lean buck takes three quick steps, and his arms hang limp. The square closes up and the dancing starts, feet on the bare ground, beating dull, strike with your heels. Hands ’round and swing. Hair falls down, and panting breaths. Lean to the side now.
Look at that Texas boy, long legs loose, taps four times for ever’ damn step. Never seen a boy swing aroun’ like that. Look at him swing that Cherokee girl, red in her cheeks an’ her toe points out. Look at her pant, look at her heave. Think she’s tired? Think she’s winded? Well, she ain’t. Texas boy got his hair in his eyes, mouth’s wide open, can’t get air, but he pats four times for ever’ darn step, an’ he’ll keep a’goin’ with the Cherokee girl.
The fiddle squeaks and the guitar bongs. Mouth-organ man is red in the face. Texas boy and the Cherokee girl, pantin’ like dogs an’ a-beatin’ the groun’. Ol’ folks stan’ a-pattin’ their han’s. Smilin’ a little, tappin’ their feet.
Back home- in the schoolhouse, it was. The big moon sailed off to the westward. An’ we walked, him an’ me- a little ways. Didn’ talk ’cause our throats was choked up. Didn’ talk none at all. An’ purty soon they was a haycock. Went right to it and laid down there. Seein’ the Texas boy an’ that girl a-steppin’ away into the dark- think nobody seen ’em go. Oh, God! I wisht I was a-goin’ with that Texas boy. Moon’ll be up ‘fore long. I seen that girl’s ol’ man move out to stop ’em an’ then he didn’. He knowed. Might as well stop the fall from comin’, and might as well stop the sap from movin’ in the trees. An’ the moon’ll be up ‘fore long.
Play more- play the story songs- “As I Walked through the Streets of Laredo.”
The fire’s gone down. Be a shame to build her up. Little ol’ moon’ll be up ‘fore long.
Beside an irrigation ditch a preacher labored and the people cried. And the preacher paced like a tiger, whipping the people with his voice, and they groveled and whined on the ground. He calculated them, gauged them, played on them, and when they were all squirming on the ground he stooped down and of his great strength he picked each one up in his arms and shouted. Take ’em, Christ! and threw each one in the water. And when they were all in, waist deep in the water, and looking with frightened eyes at the master, he knelt down on the bank and he prayed for them; and he prayed that all men and women might grovel and whine on the ground. Men and women, dripping, clothes sticking tight, watched; then gurgling and sloshing in their shoes they walked back to the camp, to the tents, and they talked softly in wonder:
We been saved, they said. We’re washed white as snow. We won’t never sin again.
And the children, frightened and wet, whispered together:
We been saved. We won’t sin no more.
Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do ’em.
THE MIGRANT PEOPLE looked humbly for pleasure on the roads.
CHAPTER 24
ON SATURDAY MORNING the wash tubs were crowded. The women washed dresses, pink ginghams and flowered cottons, and they hung them in the sun and stretched the cloth to smooth it. When afternoon came the whole camp quickened and the people grew excited. The children caught the fever and were more noisy than usual. About mid-afternoon child bathing began, and as each child was caught, subdued, and washed, the noise on the playground gradually subsided. Before five, the children were scrubbed and warned about getting dirty again; and they walked about, stiff in clean clothes, miserable with carefulness.
At the big open-air dance platform a committee was busy. Every bit of electric wire had been requisitioned. The city dump had been visited for wire, every tool box had contributed friction tape. And now the patched, spliced wire was strung out to the dance floor, with bottle necks as insulators. This night the floor would be lighted for the first time. By six o’clock the men were back from work or from looking for work, and a new wave of bathing started. By seven, dinners were over, men had on their best clothes: freshly washed overalls, clean blue shirts, sometimes the decent blacks. The girls were ready in their print dresses, stretched and clean, their hair braided and ribboned. The worried women watched the families and cleaned up the evening dishes. On the platform the string band practiced, surrounded by a double wall of children. The people were intent and excited.
In the tent of Ezra Huston, chairman, the Central Committee of five men went into meeting. Huston, a tall spare man, wind-blackened, with eyes like little blades, spoke to his committee, one man from each sanitary unit.
“It’s goddamn lucky we got the word they was gonna try to bust up the dance!” he said.
The tubby little representative from Unit Three spoke up. “I think we oughta squash the hell out of em, an’ show ’em.”
“No,” said Huston. “That’s what they want. No, sir. If they can git a fight goin’, then they can run in the cops an’ say we ain’t orderly. They tried it before- other places.” He turned to the sad dark boy from Unit Two. “Got the fellas together to go roun’ the fences an’ see nobody sneaks in?”
The sad boy nodded. “Yeah! Twelve. Tol’ ’em not to hit nobody. Jes’ push ’em out ag’in.”
Huston said, “Will you go out an’ find Willie Eaton? He’s chairman a the entertainment, ain’t he?”