“No.”
“Then we got to buil’ that bank.”
“You got to.”
Pa sloshed through the mud to the stream. His marking stick was four inches down. Twenty men stood in the rain. Pa cried, “We got to build her. My girl got her pains.” The men gathered about him.
“Baby?”
“Yeah. We can’t go now.”
A tall man said, “It ain’t our baby. We kin go.”
“Sure,” Pa said. “You can go. Go on. Nobody’s stoppin’ you. They’s only eight shovels.” He hurried to the lower part of the bank and drove his shovel into the mud. The shovelful lifted with a sucking sound. He drove it again, and threw the mud into the low place on the stream bank. And beside him the other men ranged themselves. They heaped the mud up in a long embankment, and those who had no shovels cut live willow whips and wove them in a mat and kicked them into the bank. Over the men came a fury of work, a fury of battle. When one man dropped the shovel, another took it up. They had shed their coats and hats. Their shirts and trousers clung tightly to their bodies, their shoes were shapeless blobs of mud. A shrill scream came from the Joad car. The men stopped, listened uneasily, and then plunged to work again. And the little levee of earth extended until it connected with the highway embankment on either end. They were tired now, and the shovels moved more slowly. And the stream rose slowly. It edged above the place where the first dirt had been thrown.
Pa laughed in triumph. “She’d come over if we hadn’ a built up!” he cried.
The stream rose slowly up the side of the new wall, and tore at the willow mat. “Higher!” Pa cried. “We got to git her higher!”