Across the Fruited Plain by Florence Crannell Means
6: AT THE EDGE OF A MEXICAN VILLAGE
Cotton-picking was over, and the Beechams tided themselves overwith odd jobs till spring came and they could move on to steadierwork. This time they were going up into Colorado to work in thebeets.
"And high time!" said Grandma. "We've lived on mush and milk solong we're getting the color of mush ourselves; and our clothesare a caution to snakes."
"But we'll be lucky if the brakebands of the auto last till weget over the mountains," said Daddy.
The spring drive up through Texas was pleasant, betweenblossoming yellow trees and yuccas like wax candles and pinkbouquets of peach trees and mocking birds' songs.
The mountain pass between New Mexico and Colorado was beautiful,too, and exciting. In places it was a shelf shoved against themountain, and Jimmie said it tickled his stomach to look down onthe tops of other automobiles, traveling the loop of road belowthem. Even Carrie, riding haughtily in her trailer, let out ananguished bleat when she hung on the very edge of a curve. Andthe Reo groaned and puffed.
Up through Colorado they chugged; past Pike's Peak; throughDenver, flat on the plain with a blue mountain wall to its west;on through the farmlands north of it to the sugar-beet town whichwas their goal.
Beyond the town stood an adobe village for beetworkers on theLukes fields, where the Beechams were to work.
"Mud houses," Dick exclaimed, crumbling off a piece of mudplaster thick with straw.
"Like the bricks the Israelites made in Egypt," said Grandpa;"only Pharaoh wanted them to do without the straw."
"It's a Mexican village," observed Grandma. "I'd feel like a catin a strange garret here. And not a smidgin of shade. That shackoff there under the cottonwood tree looks cooler."
"It's a chicken-coop!" squealed Rose-Ellen as they walked over toit. "Gramma wants to live in a chicken-coop!"
"It's empty. And it'd be a sight easier to clean than someplaces where humans have lived," Grandma replied stoutly.
So the Beechams got permission to live in the farmer's oldchicken-coop. It had two rooms, and the men pitched the tentbeside it for a bedroom. They had time to set up "chicken-housekeeping,"as Rose-Ellen called it, before the last of May, when beet workbegan. They made a pretty cheerful place of this new home;though, of course, it had no floor and no window glass, and sunand stars shone in through its roof, and the only running waterwas in the irrigation ditch. Even under the glisteningcottonwood tree it was a stifling cage on a hot day.
They were all going to work, except Jimmie and Sally. It wouldtake all of them, new hands that they were, to care for thetwenty acres they were to work. Mr. Lukes said that childrenunder sixteen were not supposed to be employed, but of coursethey could always help their parents. Daddy said that was oneway to get around the Child Labor Law.
So the Beechams were to thin the beets and hoe them and top them,beginning the last of May and finishing in October, and the paywould be twenty-six dollars an acre. The government made thefarmers pay that price, no matter how poor the crop was.
"Five hundred and twenty dollars sounds like real money!" Daddyrejoiced.
"Near five months, though," Grandma reckoned, "and with priceslike they are, we're lucky to feed seven hungry folks on sixtydollars a month. And we're walking ragbags, with our feet on theground. And them brakebands--and new tires."
"Five times sixty is three hundred," Rose-Ellen figured.
"You'll find it won't leave more than enough to get us on to thenext work place," Grandpa muttered.
It was lucky the chicken-coop was in sight of their acres.Before she left home in the early morning, Grandma saw to it thatthere was no fire in the old-new washtub stove, and that Sally'sknitted string harness was on, so that she could not reach theirrigation ditch, and that Carrie was tethered.
The beets, planted two months ago, had come up in even greenrows. Now they must be thinned. With short-handled hoes thegrown people chopped out foot-long strips of plants. Dick andRose-Ellen followed on hands and knees, and pulled the extraplants from the clumps so that a single strong plant was leftevery twelve inches.
The sun rose higher and hotter in the big blue bowl of sky.Rose-Ellen's ragged dress clung to her, wet with sweat, and herarms and face prickled with heat. Grandma looked at her fromunder the apron she had flung over her head.
"Run and stretch out under the cottonwood awhile," she said. "Nouse for to get sunstroke."
Rose-Ellen went silently, thankfully. It was cooler in the shadeof the tree. She looked up through the fluttering green leavesat the floating clouds shining in the sun. Jimmie hobbled aroundher, driving Sally with her knitted reins, but they did not keeptheir sister awake. The sun was almost noon-high when she openedher eyes, and she hurried guiltily back to the beets.
She had never seen such a big field, its green and brown stripeswaving up and down to the skyline. It made her ache to thinkthat five Beechams must take out these extra thousands ofthree-inch plants; and after that, hoe them; and after that. . . .
Her knees were so sore that night that Grandpa bought heroveralls. He got her and Dick big straw hats, too, though it wastoo late to keep their faces from blistering. All the Beechamsbut Grandma wore overalls. She couldn't bring herself to it. Thatnight she made herself a sunbonnet out of an old shirt, sittingclose to a candle stuck in a pop bottle.
Rose-Ellen and Dick]
"I clean forgot to look over the beans and put them to soak," shesaid wearily, from her bed.
Rose-Ellen scooped herself farther into her layer of straw. Sheought to offer to get up and look over those beans, but shesimply couldn't make herself.
"It seems like I can't stay up another ten minutes," Grandmaexcused herself, "after the field work and redding up and such.But we're getting like all the rest of them, buying the groceriesthat we can fix easiest, even though they cost twice as much andain't half as nourishing. And when you can't trade at but oneplace it's always dearer. . . ."
Mr. Lukes had guaranteed their account at the store, because ofthe pay due them at the end of the season. So they went onbuying there, even though its prices were high and its goods ofpoor quality, because they did not have money to spend anywhereelse.
When the thinning was done, they must begin all over again,working with the short-handled hoes, cutting out any extraplants, loosening the ground. By that time they were more used tothe work; and in July came a rest time, when all they needed todo was to turn the waters of the big ditch into the littleditches that crinkled between the rows. It was lucky there wasirrigation water, or the growing plants would have died in theheat, since there had been little rain.
Rose-Ellen loved to watch the water moving through the fields asif it were alive, catching the rosy gold of sunset in its zigzagmirrors. She missed the Eastern fireflies at night; otherwisethe evenings were a delight. Colorado sunsets covered the westwith glory, and then came quick coolness. Dry as it was, thecottonwood leaves made a sound like refreshing rain, and thecicadas hummed comfortably. All the Beechams stayed outside tillfar into the night, for the chicken-house was miserably hot atthe end of every day.
"The Garcias' and Martinezes' houses are better if they are mudand haven't any shade," Rose-Ellen told Grandma. "The walls areso thick that inside they're like cool caves."
She and Dick had made friends in the Mexican village with VicenteGarcia and her brother Joe, and with Nico Martinez, next door tothe Garcias', and her brothers. Even when they all picked beansin the morning, during the vacation from sugar beets, there werethese long, cool evenings for play.
Grandma complained. "I don't know what else to blame for Dick'suntidy ways. Hair sticking up five ways for Christmas, andfingernails in mourning and the manners of a heathen. I'm afraidthat sore on his hand may be something catching. Those Garciasand Martinezes of yours . . . !"
"The Garcias maybe, but not the Martinezes," Rose-Ellen objected."Gramma, you go to their houses sometime and see."
One evening Grandma did. Jim
Grandma and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie walked home with her, andGrandma's eyes widened at sight of the two-roomed Garcia house.Ten people lived and slept, ate and cooked there, and it lookedas if it had never met a broom or soapsuds.
The Martinez home was different, perfectly neat, even to thescrubbed oilcloth on the table. Afterwards Grandma said thebottoms of the pans weren't scoured, but she couldn't feel toblame Mrs. Martinez, with five young ones besides the new baby tolook after. When the Beechams went home, Mrs. Martinez gave thema covered dish of _enchiladas_.
Even Grandma ate those enchiladas without hesitation, though theywere so peppery that she had to cool her mouth with frequentswallows of water. They were made of tidily rolled _tortillas_(Mexican corn-cakes, paper-thin), stuffed with meat and onion andinvitingly decorated with minced cheese and onion tops. Theylooked, smelled and tasted delicious.
In turn, Grandma sent biscuits, baked in the Dutch oven Grandpahad bought her. Grandma had always been proud of her biscuits.
In July the Mexican children took Dick and Rose-Ellen to thevacation school held every summer in one of the town churches.The Beechams were not surprised at Nico's dressed-up daintinesswhen she called for them. Grandma said she was perfect, from theribbon bows on her shining hair to the socks that matched hersmart print dress. But it was surprising to see Vicente comefrom the cluttered, dirty Garcia rooms, almost as clean and sweetas Nico, though with nails more violently red.
The Beechams found it a problem to dress at all in theirchicken-apartment. Dick tried to get ready in one room andRose-Ellen in the other, and everything she wanted was in hisroom and everything he wanted in hers. Their small belongingshad to be packed in boxes, and all the boxes emptied out to findthem. Clean clothes--still unironed, of course--had to be hungup, and they could not be covered well enough so flies andmoth-millers did not speck them.
"I do admire your Mexican friends," Grandma admitted grudgingly,"keeping so nice in such a hullabaloo."
"They are admire-able in lots of ways," Rose-Ellen answered. "Inever knew anyone I liked much better than Nico. And theMexicans are the very best in all the art work at the vacationschool. I think the Japanese learn quickest."
"Do folks treat 'em nice?" asked Grandma.
"In the school," Rose-Ellen told her. "But outside school theyact like even Nico had smallpox. They make me sick!"
Rose-Ellen spoke both indignantly and sorrowfully. That very daythe three girls had come out of the church together, and hadpaused to look over the neat picket fence of the yard next thechurch. It seemed a sweet little yard, smelling of newly cutgrass and flowers. Trees rose high above the small house, andinside the fence were tall spires of delphinium, bluer than thesky.
Looking over the fence]
"The flowers iss so pretty," said Nico.
"And on the porch behind of the vines is a chicken in a goldcage," cried Vicente.
Rose-Ellen folded her lips over a giggle, for the chicken was acanary.
Just then a head popped up behind a red rosebush. The lady of thehouse was gathering flowers, and she held out a bunch toRose-Ellen.
"Don't prick yourself," she warned. "Are you the one they callRose-Ellen?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Rose-Ellen, burying her nose in the flowers.
"I had a little sister named Rose-Ellen," the woman said gently."You come play on the grass sometime, and we'll pick flowers foryour mother."
"And can Nico and Vicente come, too?" Rose-Ellen asked. "They'remy best friends."
The woman looked at Nico and Vicente with cold eyes. "I can't ask_all_ the children," she answered.
"Thank you, ma'am," Rose-Ellen stammered. When they were out ofsight down the road, she threw the roses into the dust. Nicosnatched them up again.
"I wouldn't go there--I wouldn't go there for ten dollars,"Rose-Ellen declared. Vicente looked at her with wise deep eyes."I could 'a' told you," she said, shrugging. "American ladies,they mostly don't like Mexican kids. I don't know why."
October came. It was the time for the topping of the beets. TheMartinez family went back to Denver for school. The Garciasstayed; their children would go into the special room when theyreturned, to have English lessons and to catch up in otherstudies--or rather, to try to catch up.
"But me, always I am two years in back of myself," Vicenteregretted one day, "even with specials room. Early out of schooland late into it, for me that makes too hard."
Now Farmer Lukes went through the Beechams' acres, lifting thebeets loose by machine. Rose-Ellen could not believe they werebeets-great dirt-colored clods, they looked. Not at all like thebeets she knew.
Topping was a new job. With a long hooked knife the beet waslifted and laid across the arm, and then, with a slash or two,freed of its top. The children followed, gathering the beetsinto great piles for Mr. Lukes's wagon to collect.
Vicente and Joe did not make piles; they topped; and Joe boastedthat he was faster than his father as he slashed away with thetopping knife.
"It looks like you'd cut yourself, holding it on your knee likeyou do!" Grandma cried as she watched him one day.
"Not me!" bragged Joe. "Other kids does." The beet tops fellaway under his flashing knife.
From the beet-dump the beets were taken to the sugar factory afew miles away, where they were made into shining white beetsugar. ("And that's another thing I never even guessed!" thoughtRose-Ellen. "What hard work it takes to fill our sugar bowls!")
Sometimes at night now a skim of ice formed on the water bucketin the chicken-house. Goldenrod and asters were puffs of white;the harvest moon shone big and red at the skyline, across milesof rolling farmland; crickets fiddled sleepily and long-tailedmagpies chattered. One clear, frosty night Grandpa said, "Hark!the ducks are flying south. Maybe we best follow."