Journey Work

Get mad, old man, but don't give up; you're not through by a long shot. Somewhere there's a job for you, a job that youth can't do ... a dangerous job, but a good one that'll bring you fame, fortune and peace....
In a central California tomato field a dusty-faced man opened the autodriver of a nuclear-powered truck and inserted a cannery's address card so the truck would know where to deliver its load.
Six old men—the tomato pickers—waited for their pay in the truck's lengthening shadow. Most of them smoked or dozed, too tired for talk.
Ollie Hollveg, tallest and oldest of the pickers, eyed the heavy-set rancher who sat at the tally table figuring the payroll. For this day's work Ollie expected even less pay than usual; the mumbling, pencil-licking rancher—his name was Rost—seemed to be overacting the role of harried proprietor.
Soon Ollie saw his guess confirmed. A look of frustrated rage spread from face to face as each of the other pickers was in turn called to the table and paid.
All were overage. None dared protest.
At seventy a poor man without relatives willing to care for him was supposed to let himself be permanently retired to a Home for Seniles. If he wasn't senile and didn't want a home with barred windows and a barbed wire fence, he had to lie low and keep his mouth shut.
Anyone could charge an overage person with incompetence. The charge was not a crime and so had no defence.
All of which was old stuff to Ollie Hollveg. He'd been dodging the geriatricians for sixteen years. He considered himself used to the setup.
Yet something about the rancher, Rost—maybe his excessive weight, in contrast with the pickers' under-fed gauntness, or maybe his cardboard cowboy boots and imitation sombrero—made Ollie boil in spite of himself.
He tried not to show his feelings. But when he was called to the tally table the rancher scowled up at him defensively and said, Don't glare at me, Hollveg! If you moved as fast picking tomatoes as you do collecting your pay, you'd have earned more than this.