In Dubious Battle (11 page)

Jim trembled with excitement. “There’s got to be a plan,” he said. “When the thing busts, there’s got to be a plan all ready to direct it, so it’ll do some good.”

The old man seemed tired after his outburst. “When that big guy busts loose, there won’t be no plan that can hold him. That big guy’ll run like a mad dog, and bite anything that moves. He’s been hungry too long, and he’s been hurt too much; and worst thing of all, he’s had his feelings hurt too much.”

“But if enough men expected it and had a plan——” Jim insisted.

The old man shook his head. “I hope I’m dead before it happens. They’ll be bitin’ out throats with their teeth. They’ll kill each other off an’ after they’re all wore out or dead, it’ll be the same thing over again. I want to die and get shut of it. You young squirts got hopes.” He lifted his full bucket down. “I got no hope. Get out of the way, I’m comin’ down the ladder. We can’t make no money talkin’: that’s for college boys.”

Jim stood aside on a limb and let him down the ladder. The old man emptied his bucket and then went to another tree. Although Jim waited for him, he did not come back. The sorting belt rumbled on its rollers in the packinghouse, and the hammers tapped. Along the highway the big transport trucks roared by. Jim picked his bucket full and took it to the box pile. The checker made a mark in his book.

“You’re going to owe us money if you don’t get off your dime,” the checker said.

Jim’s face went red and his shoulders dropped. “You keep to your God-damn book,” he said.

“Tough guy, huh?”

Then Jim caught himself and grinned in embarrassment. “I’m tired,” he apologized. “It’s a new kind of work to me.”

The blond checker smiled. “I know how it is,” he said. “You get pretty touchy when you’re tired. Why don’t you get up in a tree and have a smoke?”

“I guess I will.” Jim went back to his tree. He hooked his bucket over a limb and went to picking again. He said aloud to himself. “Even me, like a mad dog. Can’t do that. My old man did that.” He did not work quickly, but he reduced his movements to a machine-like perfection. The sun went low, until it left the ground entirely and remained only on the tops of the trees. Far away, in the town, a whistle blew. But Jim worked steadily on. It was growing dusky when the rumble in the packing-house stopped at last and the checkers called out, “Come on in, you men. It’s time to quit.”

Jim climbed down the ladder, emptied his bucket and stacked it up with the others. The checker marked in the
buckets and then totaled the picking. The men stood about for a few moments, rolling cigarettes, talking softly in the evening. They walked slowly away down a row, toward the county road, where the orchard bunk houses were.

Jim saw the old man ahead of him and speeded up to catch him. The thin legs moved with jointed stiffness. “It’s you again,” he said as Jim caught up with him.

“Thought I’d walk in with you.”

“Well, who’s stoppin’ you?” Obviously he was pleased.

“You got any folks here?” Jim asked.

“Folks? No.”

Jim said, “Well, if you’re all alone, why don’t you get into some charity racket and make the county take care of you?”

The old man’s tone was chilled with contempt. “I’m a top-faller. Listen, punk, if you never been in the woods, that don’t mean nothing to you. Damn few top-fallers ever get to be my age. I’ve had punks like you damn near die of heart failure just
watchin
’ me work; and here I’m climbin’ a lousy apple tree. Me take charity! I done work in my life that took guts. I been ninety foot up a pole and had the butt split and snap my safety-belt. I worked with guys that got swatted to pulp with a limb. Me take charity! They’d say, ’Dan, come get your soup,’ and I’d sop my bread in my soup and suck the soup out of it. By Christ, I’d jump out of an apple tree and break my neck before I’d take charity. I’m a top-faller.”

They trudged along between the trees. Jim took off his hat and carried it in his hand. “You didn’t get anything out of it,” he said. “They just kicked you out when you got too old.”

Dan’s big hand found Jim’s arm just above the elbow, and crushed it until it hurt. “I got things out of it while I was at it,” he said. “I’d go up a pole, and I’d know that the boss and the owner of the timber and the president of the company didn’t have the guts to do what I was doing. It was
me.
I’d look down on ever’thing from up there. And ever’thing looked small, and the men were little, but I was up there. I was my own size. I got things out of it, all right.”

“They took all the profits from your work,” Jim said. “They got rich, an’ when you couldn’t go up any more, they kicked you out.”

“Yes,” said Dan, “they did that, all right. I guess I must be gettin’ pretty old, kid. I don’t give a damn if they did—I just don’t give a damn.”

Ahead they could see the low, whitewashed building the owners set aside for the pickers—a low shed nearly fifty yards long, with a door and a little square window every ten feet. Through some of the open doors lamps and candles could be seen burning. Some men sat in the doorways and looked out at the dusk. In front of the long building stood a faucet where a clot of men and women had gathered. As the turn of each came, he cupped his hands under the stream and threw water on his face and hair and rubbed his hands together for a moment. The women carried cans and cooking pots to fill at the faucet. In and out of the dark doorways children swarmed, restless as rats. A tired, soft conversation arose from the group. Men and women were coming back, men from the orchard, women from the sorting and packing house. So built that it formed a short angle at the north end of the building stood the orchard’s store, brightly lighted now.
Here food and work clothes were sold on credit against the working sheets. A line of women and men stood waiting to get in, and another line came out carrying canned goods and loaves of bread.

Jim and old Dan walked up to the building. “There’s the kennel,” Jim said. “It wouldn’t be so bad if you had a woman to cook for you.”

Dan said, “Guess I’ll go over to the store and get me a can of beans. These damn fools pay seventeen cents for a pound of canned beans. Why, they could get four pounds of dried beans for that, and cooked up that’d make nearly eight pounds.”

Jim asked, “Why don’t you do that, Dan?”

“I ain’t got the time. I come in tired an’ I want to eat.”

“Well, what time have the others got? Women work all day, men work all day; and the owner charges three cents extra for a can of beans because the men are too damn tired to go into town for groceries.”

Dan turned his bristly beard to Jim. “You sure worry at the thing, don’t you, kid? Just like a puppy with a knuckle-bone. You chew and chew at it, but you don’t make no marks on it, and maybe pretty soon you break a tooth.”

“If enough guys got to chewing they’d split it.”

“Maybe—but I lived seventy-one years with dogs and men, and mostly I seen ’em try to steal the bone from each other. I never seen two dogs help each other break a bone; but I seen ’em chew hell out of each other tryin’ to steal it.”

Jim said, “You make a guy feel there isn’t much use.”

Old Dan showed his four long, gopher teeth. “I’m
seventy-one,” he apologized. “You get on with your bone, and don’t mind me. Maybe dogs and men ain’t the same as they used to be.”

As they drew nearer on the cloddy ground a figure detached itself from the crowd around the faucet and strolled out toward them. “That’s my pardner,” Jim said. “That’s Mac. He’s a swell guy.”

Old Dan replied ungraciously. “Well, I don’t want to talk to nobody. I don’t think I’ll even heat my beans.”

Mac reached them. “Hello, Jim. How’d you make out?”

“Pretty good. This is Dan, Mac. He was in the north woods when the Wobblies were working up there.”

“Glad to meet you.” Mac put a tone of deference in his voice. “I heard about that time. There was some sabotage.”

The tone pleased old Dan. “I wasn’t no Wobbly,” he said. “I’m a top-faller. Them Wobblies was a bunch of double-crossin’ sons-of-bitches, but they done the work. Damn it, they’d burn down a sawmill as quick as they’d look at it.”

The tone of respect remained in Mac’s voice. “Well, if they got the work done, I guess that’s all you can expect.”

“They was a tough bunch,” said Dan. “A man couldn’t take no pleasure talkin’ to ’em. They hated ever’thing. Guess I’ll go over and get my beans.” He turned to the right and walked away from them.

It was almost dark. Jim, looking up at the sky saw a black V flying across. “Mac, look, what’s that?”

“Wild ducks. Flying pretty early this year. Didn’t you ever see ducks before?”

“I guess not,” said Jim. “I guess I’ve read about them.”

“Say, Jim, you won’t mind if we just have some sardines and bread, will you? We’ve got things to do tonight. I don’t want to take time to cook anything.”

Jim had been walking loosely, tired from the new kind of work. Now his muscles tightened and his head came up. “What you got on, Mac?”

“Well, look. I worked alongside London today. That guy doesn’t miss much. He came about two-thirds of the way. Now he says he thinks he can swing this bunch of stiffs. He knows a guy that kind of throws another crowd. They’re on the biggest orchard of the lot, four thousand acres of apples. London’s so damn mad at this wage drop, he’ll do anything. His friend on the Hunter place is called Dakin. We’re going over there and talk to Dakin tonight.”

“You got it really moving, then?” Jim demanded.

“Looks that way.” Mac went into one of the dark doorways and in a moment he emerged with a can of sardines and a loaf of bread. He laid the bread down on the doorstep and turned the key in the sardine can, rolling back the tin. “Did you sound out the men the way I told you, Jim?”

“Didn’t have much chance. I talked some to old Dan, there.”

Mac paused in opening the can. “What in Christ’s name for? What do you want to talk to him for?”

“Well, we were up in the same tree.”

“Well, why didn’t you get in another tree? Listen, Jim, lots of our people waste their time. Joy would try to convert a litter of kittens. Don’t waste your time on old guys like that. He’s no good. You’ll get yourself converted to hopelessness if you talk to old men. They’ve had all the kick blasted right out of ’em.” He turned the
can lid off and laid the open tin in front of him. “Here, put some fish on a slice of bread. London’s eating his dinner right now. He’ll be ready pretty soon. We’ll go in his Ford.”

Jim took out his pocket-knife, arranged three sardines on a slice of bread and crushed them down a little. He poured some olive oil from the can over them, and then covered them with another slice of bread. “How’s the girl?” he asked.

“What girl?”

“The girl with the baby.”

“Oh, she’s all right. But you’d think I was God the way London talks. I told him I wasn’t a doctor, but he goes right on calling me ‘Doc.’ London gives me credit for a lot. You know, she’ll be a cute little broad when she gets some clothes and some make-up on. Make yourself another sandwich.”

It was quite dark by now. Many of the doors were closed, and the dim lights within the little rooms threw square patches of light on the ground outside. Mac chewed his sandwich. “I never saw such a bunch of bags as this crowd,” he said. “Only decent one in the camp is thirteen years old. I’ll admit she’s got an eighteen-year-old can, but I’m doing no fifty years.”

Jim said, “You seem to be having trouble keeping your economics out of the bedroom.”

“Who the hell wants to keep it out?” Mac demanded. He chuckled. “Every time the sun shines on my back all afternoon I get hot pants. What’s wrong with that?”

The bright, hard stars were out, not many of them, but sharp and penetrating in the cold night sky. From the
rooms nearby came the rise and fall of many voices talking, with now and then a single voice breaking clear.

Jim turned toward the sound. “What’s going on over there, Mac?”

“Crap game. Got it started quick. I don’t know what they’re using for money. Shooting next week’s pay, maybe. Most of ’em aren’t going to have any pay when they settle up with the store. One man tonight in the store got two big jars of mince-meat. Probably eat both jars tonight and be sick tomorrow. They get awful hungry for something nice. Ever notice when you’re hungry, Jim, your mind fastens on just one thing? It’s always mashed potatoes with me, just slimy with melted butter. I s’pose this guy tonight had been thinking about mince-meat for months.”

Along the front of the building a big man moved, and the lights from the windows flashed on him as he passed each one. “Here comes London,” Mac said.

He strode up to them, swinging his shoulders. The tonsure showed white against the black rim of hair. “I finished eatin’,” London said. “Let’s get goin’. My Ford’s around back.” He turned and walked in the direction from which he had come; Mac and Jim followed him. Behind the building a topless model T Ford touring car stood nosed in against the building. The oilcloth seats were frayed and split, so that the coil spring stuck through, and wads of horsehair hung from the holes. London got in and turned the key. The rasp of the points sounded.

“Crank ’er, Jim,” said Mac.

Jim put his weight on the stiff crank. “Spark down? I don’t want my head kicked off.”

“She’s down. Pull out the choke in front there,” said London.

The gas wheezed in. Jim spun the crank. The engine choked and the crank kicked viciously backward. “Nearly got me! Keep that spark down!”

“She always kicks a little,” said London. “Don’t give her no more choke.”

Jim spun the crank again. The engine roared. The little dim lights came on. Jim climbed into the back seat among old tubes and tire-irons and gunny sacks.

“Makes a noise, but she still goes,” London shouted. He backed around and drove out the rough dirt road through the orchard, and turned right on the concrete state highway. The car chattered and rattled over the road; the cold air whistled in through the broken windshield so that Jim crouched down behind the protection of the front seat. Town lights glowed in the sky behind them. On both sides the road was lined with big dark apple trees, and sometimes the lights of houses shone from behind them. The Ford overtook and passed great transport trucks, gasoline tank trucks, silver milk tanks, outlined with little blue lights. From a small ranch house a shepherd dog ran out, and London swerved sharply to avoid hitting him.