John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath

“Well, they been choppin’ cotton, all of ’em, even the kids an’ your grampa. Gettin’ money together so they can shove on west. Gonna buy a car and shove on west where it’s easy livin’. There ain’t nothin’ here. Fifty cents a clean acre for choppin’ cotton, an’ folks beggin’ for the chance to chop.”

“An’ they ain’t gone yet?”

“No,” said Muley. “Not that I know. Las’ I heard was four days ago when I seen your brother Noah out shootin’ jackrabbits, an’ he says they’re aimin’ to go in about two weeks. John got his notice he got to get off. You jus’ go on about eight miles to John’s place. You’ll find your folks piled in John’s house like gophers in a winter burrow.”

“O.K.,” said Joad. “Now you can ride on your own way. You ain’t changed a bit, Muley. If you want to tell about somepin off northwest, you point your nose straight southeast.”

Muley said truculently, “You ain’t changed neither. You was a smart-aleck kid, an’ you’re still a smart aleck. You ain’t tellin’ me how to skin my life, by any chancet?”

Joad grinned. “No, I ain’t. If you wanta drive your head into a pile a broken glass, there ain’t nobody can tell you different. You know this here preacher, don’t you, Muley? Rev. Casy.”

“Why, sure, sure. Didn’t look over. Remember him well.” Casy stood up and the two shook hands. “Glad to see you again,” said Muley. “You ain’t been aroun’ for a hell of a long time.”

“I been off a-askin’ questions,” said Casy. “What happened here? Why they kickin’ folks off the lan’?”

Muley’s mouth snapped shut so tightly that a little parrot’s beak in the middle of his upper lip stuck down over his under lip. He scowled. “Them sons-a-bitches,” he said. “Them dirty sons-a-bitches. I tell ya, men, I’m stayin’. They ain’t gettin’ rid a me. If they throw me off, I’ll come back, an’ if they figger I’ll be quiet underground, why, I’ll take couple-three of the sons-a-bitches along for company.” He patted a heavy weight in his side coat pocket. “I ain’t a-goin’. My pa come here fifty years ago. An’ I ain’t a-goin’.”

Joad said, “What’s the idear of kickin’ the folks off?”

“Oh! They talked pretty about it. You know what kinda years we been havin’. Dust comin’ up an’ spoilin’ ever’thing so a man didn’t get enough crop to plug up an ant’s ass. An’ ever’body got bills at the grocery. You know how it is. Well, the folks that owns the lan’ says, ’We can’t afford to keep no tenants.’ An’ they says, ’The share a tenant gets is jus’ the margin a profit we can’t afford to lose.’ An’ they says, ’If we put all our lan’ in one piece we can jus’ hardly make her pay.’ So they tractored all the tenants off a the lan’. All ’cept me, an’ by God I ain’t goin’. Tommy, you know me. You knowed me all your life.”

“Damn right,” said Joad, “all my life.”

“Well, you know I ain’t a fool. I know this land ain’t much good. Never was much good ’cept for grazin’. Never should a broke her up. An’ now she’s cottoned damn near to death. If on’y they didn’t tell me I got to get off, why, I’d prob’y be in California right now a-eatin’ grapes an’ a-pickin’ an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitches says I got to get off—an’, Jesus Christ, a man can’t, when he’s tol’ to!”

“Sure,” said Joad. “I wonder Pa went so easy. I wonder Grampa didn’ kill nobody. Nobody never tol’ Grampa where to put his feet. An’ Ma ain’t nobody you can push aroun’ neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time ’cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han’, an’ the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an’ she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn’ even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn’t nothing but a pair a legs in her han’. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin’. How’d my folks go so easy?”

“Well, the guy that comes aroun’ talked nice as pie. ’You got to get off. It ain’t my fault.’ ’Well,’ I says, ’whose fault is it? I’ll go an’ I’ll nut the fella.’ ’It’s the Shawnee Lan’ an’ Cattle Company. I jus’ got orders.’ ’Who’s the Shawnee Lan’ an’ Cattle Company?’ ’It ain’t nobody. It’s a company.’ Got a fella crazy. There wasn’t nobody you could lay for. Lot a the folks jus’ got tired out lookin’ for somepin to be mad at—but not me. I’m mad at all of it. I’m stayin’.”

A large red drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east. The evening star flashed and glittered in the dusk. The gray cat sneaked away toward the open barn shed and passed inside like a shadow.

Joad said, “Well, we ain’t gonna walk no eight miles to Uncle John’s place tonight. My dogs is burned up. How’s it if we go to your place, Muley? That’s on’y about a mile.”

“Won’t do no good.” Muley seemed embarrassed. “My wife an’ the kids an’ her brother all took an’ went to California. They wasn’t nothin’ to eat. They wasn’t as mad as me, so they went. They wasn’t nothin’ to eat here.”

The preacher stirred nervously. “You should of went too. You shouldn’t of broke up the fambly.”

“I couldn’,” said Muley Graves. “Somepin jus’ wouldn’ let me.”

“Well, by God, I’m hungry,” said Joad. “Four solemn years I been eatin’ right on the minute. My guts is yellin’ bloody murder. What you gonna eat, Muley? How you been gettin’ your dinner?”

Muley said ashamedly, “For a while I et frogs an’ squirrels an’ prairie dogs sometimes. Had to do it. But now I got some wire nooses on the tracks in the dry stream brush. Get rabbits, an’ sometimes a prairie chicken. Skunks get caught, an’ coons, too.” He reached down, picked up his sack, and emptied it on the porch. Two cottontails and a jackrabbit fell out and rolled over limply, soft and furry.

“God Awmighty,” said Joad, “it’s more’n four years sence I’ve et fresh-killed meat.”

Casy picked up one of the cottontails and held it in his hand. “You sharin’ with us, Muley Graves?” he asked.

Muley fidgeted in embarrassment. “I ain’t got no choice in the matter.” He stopped on the ungracious sound of his words. “That ain’t like I mean it. That ain’t. I mean”—he stumbled—“what I mean, if a fella’s got somepin to eat an’ another fella’s hungry—why, the first fella ain’t got no choice. I mean, s’pose I pick up my rabbits an’ go off somewheres an’ eat ’em. See?”

“I see,” said Casy. “I can see that. Muley sees somepin there, Tom. Muley’s got a-holt of somepin, an’ it’s too big for him, an’ it’s too big for me.”

Young Tom rubbed his hands together. “Who got a knife? Le’s get at these here miserable rodents. Le’s get at ’em.”

Muley reached in his pants pocket and produced a large horn-handled pocket knife. Tom Joad took it from him, opened a blade, and smelled it. He drove the blade again and again into the ground and smelled it again, wiped it on his trouser leg, and felt the edge with his thumb.

Muley took a quart bottle of water out of his hip pocket and set it on the porch. “Go easy on that there water,” he said. “That’s all there is. This here well’s filled in.”

Tom took up a rabbit in his hand. “One of you go get some bale wire outa the barn. We’ll make a fire with some a this broken plank from the house.” He looked at the dead rabbit. “There ain’t nothin’ so easy to get ready as a rabbit,” he said. He lifted the skin of the back, slit it, put his fingers in the hole, and tore the skin off. It slipped off like a stocking, slipped off the body to the neck, and off the legs to the paws. Joad picked up the knife again and cut off head and feet. He laid the skin down, slit the rabbit along the ribs, shook out the intestines onto the skin, and then threw the mess off into the cotton field. And the clean-muscled little body was ready. Joad cut off the legs and cut the meaty back into two pieces. He was picking up the second rabbit when Casy came back with a snarl of bale wire in his hand. “Now build up a fire and put some stakes up,” said Joad. “Jesus Christ, I’m hungry for these here creatures!” He cleaned and cut the rest of the rabbits and strung them on the wire. Muley and Casy tore splintered boards from the wrecked house-corner and started a fire, and they drove a stake into the ground on each side to hold the wire.