Across the Fruited Plain

by Florence Crannell Means

The lettuce camp housed part of its workers in a huge old barn. The Beechams had three stalls and used their tent for curtains. They cooked out in the barnyard, so it was fortunate that it was the dry season. From May to August the men and Dick picked, trimmed, packed lettuce; but during most of that time the barn-apartment was in quarantine. All the children who had not had scarlet fever came down with it.

It was even hotter than midsummer Philadelphia, and the air was sticky, and black with flies besides, and sickening with odor. Grandma's cushiony pinkness entirely disappeared; she was more the color of a paper-bag, Rose-Ellen thought.

"But land knows," Grandma said, "what I'd have done if the Lord hadn't tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. What with no Center near here and only the public health nurse looking in once in a while, it was lucky the young-ones didn't have the fever bad."

In August they were all well and peeled. Grandma heated tub after tub of water and scrubbed them, hair and all, with yellow laundry soap, and washed their clothes and put the automobile-seat beds into the hot sun. Then they went on up the coast, steering for the hopyards northeast of San Francisco.

It seemed too bad to hurry through San Francisco without really seeing it--that beautiful city crowded steeply by the sea. But the Reo had had to have a new gas-line and a battery, and little money was left to show for the long, sizzling months of work. It was best to stay clear of cities.

The Sacramento Delta region was the strangest the Beechams had ever seen. The broad river, refreshing after months without real rivers, was higher than the fields. Beside the river ran the highway. The Beechams looked down at pear orchards, tule marshes and ranch houses. Everything was so lushly wet that moss grew green even on tree trunks and roofs. Like Holland, Daddy said, it had dikes to keep the water out.

One day they stopped at a fish cannery between highway and river and asked for work. The Reo was having to have her tires patched twice a day, and slow leaks were blown up every time the car stopped for gasoline. The family needed money.

Peering into the cannery, they saw men and women working in a strong-smelling steam, cleaning and cutting up the fish that passed them on an endless belt, making it ready for others to pack in cans. At the feet of some of the women stood boxes with babies in them; and other babies were slung in cloths on their mothers' backs.

There was no work for the Beechams, and they climbed into the Reo once more and stared down on the other side of the road, where the foreman had told them his packers lived. Even from that distance it was plain that this was a Chinese village, not American at all.

"The little babies were so sweet, with their shiny black eyes. But, my gracious, they don't get any sun or air at all!" Rose-Ellen squeezed Sally thankfully. Even though the baby was underweight and had violet shadows under her blue eyes, she looked healthier than most babies they saw.