Across the Fruited Plain

by Florence Crannell Means

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.