The watching lady warned them, “When she comes back an’ wants to be decent, you let her. You was mean yourself, Amy.” The game went on, while in the Joad tent Ruthie wept miserably.
THE TRUCK moved along the beautiful roads, past orchards where the peaches were beginning to color, past vineyards with the clusters pale and green, under lines of walnut trees whose branches spread half across the road. At each entrance-gate Al slowed; and at each gate there was a sign: “No help wanted. No trespassing.”
Al said, “Pa, they’s boun’ to be work when them fruits gets ready. Funny place—they tell ya they ain’t no work ’fore you ask ’em.” He drove slowly on.
Pa said, “Maybe we could go in anyways an’ ask if they know where they’s any work. Might do that.”
A man in blue overalls and a blue shirt walked along the edge of the road. Al pulled up beside him. “Hey, mister,” Al said. “Know where they’s any work?”
The man stopped and grinned, and his mouth was vacant of front teeth. “No,” he said. “Do you? I been walkin’ all week, an’ I can’t tree none.”
“Live in that gov’ment camp?” Al asked.
“Yeah!”
“Come on, then. Git up back, an’ we’ll all look.” The man climbed over the side-boards and dropped in the bed.
Pa said, “I ain’t got no hunch we’ll find work. Guess we got to look, though. We don’t even know where-at to look.”