Chapter 2

"Well, all sorts of things," said the girl. "They sing and make things and learn Bible verses. And in the afternoon they have a nap-time. It's loads of fun for them."

"They take their lunch along?" Grandma inquired.

"Oh, no! A good hot lunch is part of the program."

"But, then, how much does it cost?"

"A nickel apiece a day."

"Come, come, young lady, that don't make sense," Grandpa objected. "You'd lose money lickety-split."

The girl laughed. "We aren't doing it for money. We get money and supplies from groups of women in all the different churches. The owner of the bog helps, too. But we'll have to hurry, or your row boss will be tooting his whistle." Her eyes were admiring children and shack as she talked. Though not like Grandma's lost house, this camp was already clean and orderly.

So the three went to the Center, the girl carrying Sally, and Jimmie hobbling along in sulky silence.

Jimmie had stayed so much at home that he didn't know how to behave with strangers. Because he didn't want anyone to guess that he was bashful, he frowned fiercely. Because he didn't want anyone to think him "sissy," he had his wavy hair clipped till his head looked like a golf ball. He was a queer, unhappy boy.

He was unhappier when they reached the big, bright, shabby house that was the Center. Could it be safe to let Sally mingle with the ragged, dirty children who were flocking in, he wondered?

His anxiety soon vanished. The babies were bathed and the bigger children sent to rows of wash-basins. In a jiffy, clean babies lay taking their bottles in clean baskets and clean children were dressed in clean play-suits.

Besides the yellow-haired girl (her name was Miss Abbott, but Jimmie never called her anything but "Her" and "She"), there were two girls and an older woman, all busy. When clean-up time was past and the babies asleep, the older ones had a worship service with songs and stories.

After worship came play. Outdoors were sandpiles and swings. Indoors were books and games. Jimmie longed for storybooks and reading class; but how could he tell Her that he was nine years old and couldn't read? He huddled in a corner, scowling, and turned pages as if he were reading.

Meanwhile the rest of the family had answered the whistle of the row boss, and were being introduced to the cranberries. Dick and Rose-Ellen were excited and happy, for it was the first fruit they had ever picked. Though the wet bushes gave them shower baths, the sun soon dried them. Since the ground was deep in mud, they had gone barefoot, on the advice of Pauline Isabel, the colored girl in a neighboring shack. The cool mud squshed up between their toes and plastered their legs pleasantly.

The grown folks had been given wooden hands for picking--scoops with finger-like cleats! At first they were awkward at stripping the branches, but soon the berries began to drop briskly into the scoops. The children, who could get at the lower branches more easily, picked by hand; and before noon all the Beecham fingers were sore from the prickly stems and leaves. In the afternoon they had less trouble, for an Italian family near by showed them how to wrap their fingers with adhesive tape.

But picking wasn't play. The Beechams trudged back to their shack that night, sunburned and dirty and too stiff to straighten their backs, longing for nothing but to drop down on their beds.

"Good land of love!" Grandma scolded. "Lie down all dirty on my clean beds? I hope I ain't raised me up a mess of pigs. You young-ones, you fetch a pail of water from the pump, and we'll see how clean we can get. My land, what wouldn't I give for a bathtub and a sink! And a gas stove!"

"Peekaneeka, Gramma!" Dick reminded her, squeezing her.

"Picnic my foot! I'm too old for such goings-on."

Though Grandma's rheumatism had doubled her up like a jack-knife, she scrubbed herself with energy and soon had potatoes boiling, pork sizzling, and tea brewing on the rickety stove. Daddy brought Jimmie and Sally from the Center. After supper they felt a little better.

Jimmie wouldn't tell about the Center, but from inside his blouse he hauled a red oilcloth bag, and emptied it out on the table. There were scissors, crayons, paste, pencil, and squares of colored paper. And there was a note which Jimmie smoothed out and handed to Daddy.

"From Jimmie Brown," he read, "Bethel Church, Cleveland."

"We-we were s'posed to write thank-you letters!" Jimmie burst out miserably. "She sat us all down to a table and gave us pens and paper."

"And what did you do, Son?" Daddy asked, smoothing the bristly little head. "I said could I take mine home," Jimmie mumbled, fishing a tight-folded sheet of paper from his pocket.

"I'll write it for you," Rose-Ellen offered. She sat down and began the letter, with Jimmie telling her what he wanted to say.

"But the real honest thing to do will be to tell her you didn't write it yourself," Grandma said pityingly.

"They have stories and games at night," Jimmie said, changing the subject. "She said to bring Dick and Rose-Ellen."

Dick and Rose-Ellen were too tired for stories and games that night. They tumbled into bed as soon as supper was done, and had to be dragged awake for breakfast. Not till a week's picking had hardened their muscles did they go to the Center.

When they did go--Jimmie limping along with his clipped head tucked sulkily between his shoulders as if he were not really proud to take them-they found the place alive with fun. Besides the three girls and the woman, there was a young man from a near-by university. He was organizing ping-pong games and indoor baseball for the boys and girls and even volleyball for some grown men who had come. Everyone was busy and everyone happy.

"It's slick here, some ways," Dick said that night.

"For a few weeks," Daddy agreed.

"If it wasn't for the misery in my back, it wouldn't be bad," Grandma murmured. "But an old body'd rather settle down in her own place. Who'd ever've thought I'd leave my solid oak dining set after I was sixty! But I'd like the country fine if we had a real house to live in."

"I'm learning to do spatter prints--for Christmas," said Rose-Ellen, brushing her hair before going to bed.

"Jimmie, why on earth don't you take this chance to learn reading?" Daddy coaxed.

"Daddy, you won't tell Her I can't read?" Jimmie begged.

Yet, as October passed, something happened to change Jimmie's mind.

As October passed, too, the Beechams grew skillful at picking. They couldn't earn much, for it took a lot of cranberries to fill a peck measure-two gallons-especially this year, when the berries were small; and the pickers got only fifteen cents a peck. The bogs had to be flooded every night to keep the fruit from freezing; so every morning the mud was icy and so were the shower-baths from the wet bushes. But except for Grandma, they didn't find it hard work now.

"It's sure bad on the rheumatiz," said Grandma one morning, as she bent stiffly to wash clothes in the tub that had been filled and heated with such effort. "If we was home, we'd be lighting little kindling fires in the furnace night and morning. And hot water just by lighting the gas! Land, I never knew my own luck."

"But I like it here!" Jimmie burst out eagerly. "Do you know something? I'm going to learn to read! I colored my pictures the neatest of anyone in the class, and She put them all on the wall. So then I didn't mind telling her how I never learned to read and write and how Rose-Ellen wrote my letter to Jimmie Brown in Cleveland."

He beamed so proudly that Grandpa, wringing a sheet for Grandma, looked sorrowfully at him over his glasses. "It's a pity you didn't tell her sooner, young-one," he said. "The cranberries will be over in a few more days, and we'll be going back."

"Back to Philadelphia?" Rose-Ellen demanded. "Where? Not to a Home? I won't! I'd rather go on and shuck oysters like Pauline Isabel and her folks. I'd rather go on where they're cutting marsh hay. I'd rather--"

"Well, now," Grandpa's words were slow, "what about it, kids? What about it, Grandma? Do we go back to the city and-and part company till times are better? Or go on into oysters together?"

The tears stole down Jimmie's cheeks, but he didn't say anything. Daddy didn't say anything, either. He picked Sally up and hugged her so hard that she grunted and then put her tiny hands on his cheeks and peered into his eyes, chirping at him like a little bird.

"I calculate we'll go on into oysters," said Grandpa.

3: SHUCKING OYSTERS

This picnic way of living had one advantage; it made moving easy. One day the Beechams were picking; the next day they had joined with two other families and hired a truck to take them and their belongings to Oystershell, on the inlet of the bay near by.

Pauline Isabel's family were going to a Negro oystershucking village almost in sight of Oystershell. "It's sure nice there!" Pauline assured them happily. "I belong to a girls' club that meets every day after school; in the Meth'dis' church. We got a sure good school, too, good as any white school, up the road a piece."

The Beechams said good-by to Pauline's family, who had become their friends. Then they said good-by to Miss Abbott. That was hard for Jimmie. He butted his shaven little head against Her and then limped away as fast as he could.

The ride to Oystershell was exciting. Autumn had changed the look of the land. "God has taken all the red and yellow he's got, and just splashed it on in gobs," said Rose-Ellen as they traveled toward the seashore.

"What I like," Dick broke in, "is to see the men getting in the salt hay with their horses on sleds."

The marshes were too soft to hold up anything so small as a hoof, so when farmers used horses there, they fastened broad wooden shoes on the horses' feet. Nowadays, though, horses were giving place to tractors.

The air had an increasingly queer smell, like iodized salt in boiling potatoes. The Beechams were nearing the salt-water inlets of the bay, where the tides rose and fell like the ocean-of which the inlets were part.

The tide was high when they drove down from Phillipsville to the settlement of Oystershell. The rows of wooden houses, the oyster-sheds and the company store seemed to be wading on stilts, and most people wore rubber boots.

Grandma said, "If the bog was bad for my rheumatiz, what's this going to be?"

A man showed the Beechams a vacant house in the long rows. "Not much to look at," he acknowledged, "but the rent ain't much, either. The roofs are tight and a few have running water, case you want it bad enough to pay extra."

"To think a rusty pipe and one faucet in my kitchen would ever be a luxury!" Grandma muttered. "But, my land, even the humpy wall-paper looks good now."

It was gay, clean paper, though pasted directly on the boards. The house had a kitchen-dining-sitting room and one bedroom, with walls so thin they let through every word of the next-door radio.

"That's going to be a peekaneeka, sure," Grandma said grimly.

Children were not allowed to work in the oysters, but Grandma was going to try. The children could tell she was nervous about it, by the way her foot jerked up and down when she gave Sally her bottle that night; but she said she expected she wasn't too dumb to do what other folks could.

The children were still asleep when the grown-ups went to work in the six o'clock darkness of that November Saturday. When they woke, mush simmered on the cookstove and a bottle of milk stood on the table. It took time to feed Sally and wash dishes and make beds; and then Dick and Rose-Ellen ran over to the nearest long oyster-house and peeked through a hole in the wall.

Down each side, raised above the fishy wet floor, ran a row of booths, each with a desk and step, made of rough boards. On each step stood a man or woman, in boots and heavy clothes, facing the desk. Only instead of pen and paper, these people had buckets, oysters, knives. As fast as they could, they were opening the big, horny oyster shells and emptying the oysters into the buckets.

Next time, Dick stayed with Sally, and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie peeked. They were startled when a big hand dropped on each of their heads.

"You kids skedaddle," ordered a big man. "If you want to see things, come back at four."

By four o'clock the grown folks were home, tired and smelling of fish; Dick and Rose-Ellen were prancing on tiptoe to go, and even Jimmie was ready.

"This is what he is like," said Rose-Ellen, "the man who said we could." She stuck in her chin and threw out her chest and tried to stride.

"That's the Big Boss, all right," Daddy said, laughing. "Guess it's O.K. But mind your _p_'s and _q_'s."

"And stick together. Specially in a strange place." Grandma wearily picked up the baby.

The Big Boss saw them as soon as they tiptoed into the oyster-house. "Ez," he called, "here's some nice kids. Show 'em around, will you?"

Ez was opening clams with a penknife, and spilling them into his mouth. "Want some?" he asked.

The children shook their heads vigorously.

He closed his knife and dropped it into his pocket.

"Well, now first you want to see the dredges come in from the bay." He took them through the open front of the shed to the docks outside. The boats had gone out at three o'clock in the morning, he said, in the deep dark. They were coming in now heavily, loaded high with horny oysters, and Ez pointed out the rake-set iron nets with which the shellfish were dragged from their beds. "Got 'em out of bed good and early!"

"I'd hate to have to eat 'em all," Jimmie said suddenly in his husky little voice.

Everyone laughed, for the big rough shells were traveling into the oyster-house by thousands, on moving belts. Some shells looked as if they were carrying sponges in their mouths, but Ez said it was a kind of moss that grew there. Already the pile of unopened oysters in the shed was higher than a man. The shuckers needed a million to work on next day, Ez said.

When the children had watched awhile, and the boatmen had asked their names, and how old they were and where they came from, Ez took them inside the shed to show them the handling of the newly shucked oysters. First the oysters were dumped into something that looked like Mrs. Albi's electric washer, and washed and washed. Then they were emptied into a flume, a narrow trough along which they were swept into bright cans that held almost a gallon each. The cans were stored in ice-packed barrels, and early next morning would go out in trains and trucks to all parts of the country.

"How many pearls have they found in all these oysters?" Dick demanded in a businesslike voice. "Not any!" Ez said.

"Why can't you eat oysters in months that don't have R in them?" asked Rose-Ellen.

"You could, if there wasn't a law against selling them. It's only a notion, like not turning your dress if you put it on wrong side out. Summer's when oysters lay eggs. You don't stop eating hens because they lay eggs, do you? But now scram, kids. I got work to do."

They left, skipping past the mountains of empty shells outside.

Next day the children went to church school alone. The grown folks were too tired. And on Monday Dick and Rose-Ellen went up the road to the school in the little village.

It was strange to be in school again, and with new schoolmates and teachers and even new books, since this was a different state. Rose-Ellen's grade, the fifth, had got farther in long division than her class at home, and she couldn't understand what they were doing. Dick had trouble, too, for the seventh grade was well started on United States history, and he couldn't catch up. But that was not the worst of it. The two children could not seem to fit in with their schoolmates. The village girls gathered in groups by themselves and acted as if the oyster-shuckers' children were not there at all; and the boys did not give Dick even a chance to show what a good pitcher he was. Both Rose-Ellen and Dick had been leaders in the city school, and now they felt so lonesome that Rose-Ellen often cried when she got home.

It was too long a walk for Jimmie, who begged not to go anyway. Besides, he was needed at home to mind Sally.

Of course the grown folks wanted to earn all they could. The pay was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up until something happened that forced her to.

It was late November, and the fire in the shack must be kept going all day to make the rooms warm enough for Sally. She was creeping now, and during the long hours when the grown folks were working and the older children at school, she had to stay in a chair with a gate across the front which her father had fixed out of an old kitchen armchair. Grandma cushioned it with rags, but it grew hard and tiresome, and sometimes Jimmie could not keep her contented there.

One day Sally cried until he wriggled her out of her nest and spread a quilt for her in a corner of the room as Grandma did. There he sat, fencing her in with his legs while he drew pictures of oyster-houses. He was so busy drawing roofs that he had forgot all about Sally until he was startled by her scream. He jerked around in terror. Sally had clambered over the fence of his legs and crept under the stove after her ball. Perhaps a spark had snapped through the half-open slide in the stove door; however it had happened, the flames were running up her little cotton dress.

Poor Baby Sally! Jimmie had never felt so helpless. Hardly knowing why he did it, he dragged the wool quilt off Grandma's bed and scooted across the floor in a flash. While Sally screamed with fright, he wrapped the thick folds tightly around her and hugged her close.

When the grown folks came from work, just ahead of the school children, they found Jimmie and Sally white and shaky but safe. The woolen quilt had smothered out the flames before Sally was hurt at all; and Jimmie had only a pair of blistered hands.

"If I hadn't put a wool petticoat on her, and wool stockings," Grandma kept saying, while she sat and rocked the whimpering baby. "And if our Jimmie hadn't been so smart as to think of the bedclothes. . . .

"Not all children have been so lucky," Daddy said in a shaky voice, crouching beside Grandma and touching Sally's downy head.

"But I hadn't ought to have left her with poor Jimmie," Grandma mourned. "If only they had a Center, like at the bogs. I don't believe I can bear it to stay here any longer after this. Maybe we best go back to the city and put them in a Home."

Daddy objected. "We'll not leave the kids alone again, of course; but we're making a fair living and the Boss says there'll be work through April, and then Pa and I can go out and plant seed oysters if we want."

"Where's the good of a fair living if it's the death of you?" Grandma's tone was tart. "No, sir, I ain't going to stay, tied in bowknots with rheumatiz, and these poor young-ones. . . ."

Grandpa made a last effort, though he knew it was of little use when Grandma was set. "I bet we could go to work on one of these truck farms, come summer."

Grandma only rocked her straight chair, jerking one foot up and down.

"One of these _padrones_," Daddy said slowly, "is trying to get families to work in Florida. In winter fruits."

Grandma brightened. "Floridy might do us a sight of good, and I always did hanker after palm trees. But how could we get there?"

"They send you down in a truck," said Daddy. "Charge you so much a head and feed and lodge you into the bargain. I figure we've got just about enough to make it."

South into summer!

"That really would be a peekaneeka!" crowed Rose-Ellen.

4: PEEKANEEKA?

That trip to Florida surprised the Beechams, but not happily.

First, the driver shook his head at featherbeds, dishes, trunk. "I take three grown folks, three kids, one baby, twenty-eight dollars," he growled. "No furniture."

Argument did no good. Hastily the family sorted out their most needed clothing and made it into small bundles. The driver scowled at even those.

"My featherbeds!" cried Grandma, weeping for once.

Hurriedly she sold the beds for a dollar to her next-door neighbor. The clock she would not leave and it took turns with the baby sitting on grown-up laps.

At each stop the springless truck seats were crowded tighter with people, till there was hardly room for the passengers' feet. The crowding did help warm the unheated truck; but Grandma's face grew gray with pain as cold and cramp made her "rheumatiz tune up."

And there was no place at all to take care of a baby.

When they had traveled two hours they wondered how they could bear thirteen hundred miles, cold, aching, wedged motionless. All they could look forward to was lunchtime, when they could stretch themselves and ease their gnawing stomachs; but the sun climbed high and the truck still banged along without stopping.

The children could hear a man in front angrily asking the driver, "When we get-it--the dinner?"

The driver faced ahead as if he were deaf.

"When we get-it--the grub?" roared the man, pounding the driver's shoulder.

"If we stop once an hour, we don't get there in time for your jobs," the driver growled, and drove on.

Not till dark did they stop to eat. Grandpa, clambering down stiffly, had to lift Grandma and Sally out. Daddy took Jimmie, sobbing with weariness. Dick and Rose-Ellen tumbled out, feet asleep and bodies aching. When they stumbled into the roadside hamburger stand, the lights blurred before their eyes, and the hot steamy air with its cooking smells made Rose-Ellen so dizzy that she could hardly eat the hamburger and potato chips and coffee slammed down before her on the sloppy counter. Jimmie went to sleep with his head in his plate and had to be wakened to finish.

Still, the food did help them, and when they were wedged into their seats again, they could begin to look forward to the night's rest. Grandpa said likely they wouldn't drive much after ten, and Grandma said, "Land of love, ten? Does he think a body's made of leather?"

On and on they went, toppling sleepily against each other, aching so hard that the ache wakened them, hearing dimly the same angry man arguing with the driver. "When we stop to sleep, hah? I ask you, when we stop to sleep?"

They didn't stop at all.

Rose-Ellen was forever wishing she could wake up enough to pull up the extra quilt which always used to be neatly rolled at the foot of her bed. Once, through uneasy dreams, she felt Daddy shaking her gently, and while she tried to pull away and back into sleep, Grandpa's determinedly cheerful voice said, "Always did want to see Washington, D. C., and here we are. Look quick and you'll see the United States Capitol."

From the rumbling truck, Rose-Ellen and Dick focused sleep-blurred eyes with a mighty effort and saw the great dome and spreading wings, flooded with light.

"Puts me in mind of a mother eagle brooding her young," Grandpa muttered.

"Land of love, enough sight of them eaglets is out from under her wings, finding slim pickin's," Grandma snapped.

"Looks like white wax candles." Rose-Ellen yawned widely and went to sleep again.

When gray morning dawned, she did not know which was worse-the sleepiness or the hunger. The angry man demanded over and over, "When we stop for breakfast?"

They didn't stop.